CHAPTER 5
Like the gentleman he’d always been, Mack helped Alice-Ann into her winter coat, then shoved his arms into his own before opening the front door and topping his head with his hat. They stepped onto the front porch, met by a shock of cold air and the strong scent of firewood smoke in the air. Without much thought, she dipped her hands into her coat pockets and pulled out a pair of knit gloves.
“Good idea,” Mack said. He paused at the top of the steps as he retrieved a scarf and a pair of gloves from his own coat. “Do you have a cap or a hat?” He jutted his chin outward an inch or two. “I had to park practically in the next county. Don’t want that little head of yours getting too cold.”
Alice-Ann pulled out the cap that matched the handmade gloves from the opposite pocket and shoved it onto her head, grateful that —at the very least —it kept her frizzy hair from making such a spectacle of itself. She looked up at Mack for approval and received a broad smile in return.
“Good thing there’s a moon tonight,” Alice-Ann said as they started down the steps. She clasped her hands in front of her, the heaviness of the bracelet warm and lovely against her skin, and wished on the stars that she could hold Mack’s hand. Or that he would reach for hers.
Mack looked up too. “It’s a nice one. So full and round. And I believe I see the man.”
Alice-Ann searched for the fictitious resident of the moon as she often did when it hung full and bright in the ink-black country sky. “My mother used to sing a song about the moon.” She grinned at him, slowing her steps, wanting all the time in the world before they reached his truck.
“Can you sing it?”
She nodded. “‘Moon, moon . . . so full and round,’” she sang, her voice a soft soprano. “‘Moon, moon . . . don’t fall down. Stay where you are, right by that star, until moon, moon . . . my love is found.’”
Mack stayed silent for a moment, then breathed in and out, sending a puff of his breath into the night air. “I forgot how pretty your voice is.”
“Mama could sing too. Better than me, for sure.” And if the world grew quiet enough, sometimes she could still hear it.
“You’re a good piano player too, as I recall.” He nudged her with his elbow and she giggled.
“I’ll do in a pinch, but it’s not really a passion or anything.”
“Nah. You’re better than that.”
“Mama,” Alice-Ann said, growing somber, “had the prettiest reading voice too. I still remember the way she’d put on the voices of the characters from the fairy-tale book Papa bought me when I was maybe three or four.” She smiled, thinking of its dog-eared pages and the pretty pinks of the cover. They’d faded over time.
“I love reading, when I have time. Seems like lately, what with school getting harder and harder, and more chores around the house than ever, and helping Papa when I can with the farm, there hasn’t been much of that. But if I can get a book a week at the school library or from the bookmobile when it comes out this way, I’m happy.”
They drew closer to the truck, which looked newly washed. The Army-green color deepened in the dark and the moonlight. “Do you like to write? I mean, letters and such?”
Alice-Ann nodded, unable to speak. They were here now, and she had yet to tell him . . .
“Will you write me while I’m gone?” he asked. “I know Mama will and maybe Daddy —he’s still pretty bent out of shape about all this and my life choices in general —but I’d like to get a few letters from others, you know. Keep me informed as to what’s going on around town.” He rested against the rounded hood of the truck, where chrome letters spelled out DODGE against a red background, and he chuckled. “Alice-Ann Branch.”
She looked up at him. He’d spoken her name like a word in one of the sonnets Mrs. Tankersley made them read in English literature class. Oh, please . . . please . . . take me in your arms. Tell me that you love me.
“I cannot believe you’re sixteen years old now,” he said. “Where has the time gone? One minute you’re a little girl tagging along behind your brother and Carlton and me, and the next you’re walking me out to my truck, nearly grown, and I’m asking you to write me when I go off to war.”
Alice-Ann swallowed. “Can I tell you something?” she blurted, sounding nothing like she’d hoped she would.
“What’s that?” He burrowed his hands into his coat pockets.
She shuffled up beside him, resting herself against the truck’s hood as well. The chill of it went down into her bones and she shivered, pressing her knees together. “Do you remember when I was twelve and I had my birthday party?”
“When you were twelve?” he asked, as though it were so long ago —a lifetime maybe. He looked as if he was hard-pressed to recall it at all.
“Remember, we all went out on that scavenger hunt through the woods and into some of Papa’s empty fields?”
Mack didn’t answer this time, but from what Alice-Ann could see of his face, his mind had begun to search for the exact year.
“You were sixteen,” Alice-Ann said. “You and Carlton and Nelson. And you —”
Mack laughed easily. “Oh yeah. That was the year I brought Annabeth Sowell to the party.”
“And I —”
Mack drew out a hand and pointed to her with one finger. “And you caught us kissing behind the barn.” He shook his head as his hand returned to the pocket and he stared at his shoes. “I remember being so mad with you.”
“That’s because . . .” Alice-Ann turned her head away from him, looking out over the dark field beside them, a field that, come summer, would be ripe with tall stalks of corn. Oh, the memory of that night. Seeing them pressed into the shadows, Mack’s arms around the skinny Annabeth, his full lips against her thin ones. “I deliberately followed you back there, you know. I meant to catch you. To break you two up.”
“Break us up?” He winked. “Now why in the world would you want to do a thing like that?”
She smiled up at him, sheepishly enough, she hoped. “I didn’t like you seeing Annabeth. I didn’t like you seeing anyone. Ever. I guess, fortunately for me, you never really dated one girl long enough for them to even wear your letter jacket.”
“Well . . . I guess —wait a minute.” His voice held the same lilt as always. “What are you telling me, silly girl? Surely you didn’t pull this kind of stuff when our Nelson fell head over heels in love with the alluring Irene.”
Alice-Ann crossed her arms. This wasn’t going as planned. Didn’t the man have a brain in his head? He’d always been fun-loving, hardly serious Mack. But now, with only a few weeks left before he went for his physical and then another few before he left for good, she needed him to focus on her. On her words.
“Mack, you’re not paying attention.” She turned to face him, resting her hip against the frigid cold of the hood. “I’m trying to tell you that since I was twelve years old and you were sixteen that I —I —well, I’ve loved you. Love you, actually.”
The typical quizzical stance of his brow turned downward. “Of course, kiddo. I love you too.”
“No, Mack.” The wind whipped around them and her nose grew icy in protest. She prayed it didn’t start running; that would be the absolute worst thing to happen. “I’m trying to say —I am saying —I am in love with you, Boyd MacKay.” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she threw her face into her hands. “Oh, you must think I’m a ninny. A little girl ninny.”
She half expected him to jump into his truck and leave, speeding away, leaving her standing alone on the side of the Georgia dirt driveway. What had she been thinking, making such a declaration? And to a man four years older than herself? Why, he could have anyone. Anyone. Why should he want a frizzy-haired, plain-faced child who stood out in the freezing cold with a knit cap pulled low over her ears? And the gloves on her trembling hands were not the elegant style worn by the likes of Miss Norma Shearer or Miss Ginger Rogers either. No. These were practically mittens.
Instead, his arms came around her, protective and strong. He pulled her to his chest, and for a moment, she stopped breathing. “Alice-Ann,” he murmured, “that’s about the sweetest thing anyone has ever said to me.”
“I didn’t mean it to be,” she said, her words muffled by his coat.
She’d hoped it to be endearing. Provocative, maybe. But not sweet. Surely not that.
She pulled away from him. “You’re making fun of me,” she said, looking at the new shoes Aunt Bess had purchased for her in town —black perforated leather wedges adorned with a bow. Aunt Bess had paid $1.98 for them, never noticing the sign near the display declaring them a beau bewitcher.
Some bewitching.
Mack crooked his index finger and, using it, raised her chin. His brow remained furrowed and she wondered if he might just possibly kiss her. “What did you mean?”
Alice-Ann felt tears forming. “Never mind,” she said, taking another step back. Mack seeing her cry and her nose all runny was the last thing she wanted. She started back toward the house, but Mack caught her hand and drew her back.
“Don’t do this, Alice-Ann. I can’t bear to have you mad at me.”
“I’m not mad.”
“But you’re not happy.” He released her hand.
“I’d hoped —” Mack chuckled then, and because he had that way with her, she laughed too. “You really do think I’m a ninny,” she said.
“Nah, Alice-Ann. I don’t think that at all. But I do believe you’ve probably got stardust in your eyes when it comes to me.”
“I don’t.”
“What do you want with an old boy like me, anyway? Especially me. I’m hardly beau material. Besides, aren’t there plenty of boys your own age who keep you awake at night?”
She pouted. “Like who?”
Mack leaned against the truck again, bringing her with him. “How about Pete James? I saw him bring you a glass of punch tonight.”
“Pete,” she all but huffed. “He’s such a child. And a glass of punch isn’t a promise ring, you know.” Then again, neither was a cross charm on a bracelet.
“All right then. What about someone else?” He appeared to ponder every male in Bynum. “How about Rodney Fisher?”
Mack obviously didn’t understand a woman of sixteen. When you loved someone, you loved them. Period. “Hardly,” she said.
He grinned at her. “Well, if you’re bent on an old guy, how about Pete’s brother, George Junior?”
Alice-Ann shook her head. “He looks too much like his father.”
Mack laughed. “He does do that, doesn’t he?”
“It’d be like kissing Mister George.”
Mack nudged her. “Kissing, huh?”
Alice-Ann crossed her arms again. “Stop that.” How could she possibly explain to Mack that she never wanted to kiss anyone but him, anyhow? What were the right words to say when trying to express that she wanted him to be the first? The last? The only.
Mack remained silent until, a few moments later, the front door opened and Irene stuck her head out. “Alice-Ann,” she called in the night air. “Aunt Bess says it’s too cold for you to be out here another minute.”
“Can’t you just hear Aunt Bess saying that?” Mack teased. “Irene, go tell Alice right now that it’s much too cold out there for her to be standing out in the middle of the world in the freezing cold.”
Alice-Ann giggled as she straightened, keeping her eyes on the house. “Tell her I’m coming,” she hollered back. She waited a moment before facing Mack. “Well, Boyd MacKay, now you know. And I guess that’s that.” She stuck her thumb out and jabbed it toward the porch. “I’ll be going on back in the house now.”
But Mack caught her hands. “Tell you what let’s do, Alice-Ann. You mean the world to me, you know that, right?”
Alice-Ann nodded, wondering where his words might be heading.
“I can’t promise you anything. Not now. Not with us at war and me leaving soon.” He grinned at her. “If it weren’t for the Japs and Hitler and all the rest, I’d be staying right here in Bynum and —if you’d told me how you felt, maybe . . . well, maybe we’d go out as friends and —”
“As friends? Mack, I don’t want to —”
“Hey, now. I’m the guy, remember? Let me drive the tractor, okay?”
Alice-Ann felt a blush all the way down to her toes.
“Write me? Like I asked earlier?”
Write him? Of course she’d write him. But she wanted more. So much more. She wanted to marry him. “Yes,” she said. “If you’ll write me back.” And even if he didn’t . . .
“I can absolutely promise you that.”
A thought came to her. “Oh. Maybe you’d better not —maybe you’d better write me at Maeve’s address instead of here.”
“Why’s that?”
“If Papa or Aunt Bess or, Lord forbid, Nelson ever got ahold of how I feel . . .” How she hoped he would feel one day too. “It’s just best.”
“What about Irene?”
Alice-Ann shrugged. “She’s all right.”
Mack nodded. “Yes. Yes, she is. Okay, then. I’ll write to you at Maeve’s.” He dipped his head playfully. “It’ll kind of be like we’re spies, huh? War spies?”
Alice-Ann giggled. “Yeah. Espionage agents.” She liked the idea of it. Very much so. The whole idea gave their new relationship —if it could be called that —a mysterious hint of intrigue.
Mack kissed the top of her head, near the rim of her cap, close to her forehead. His lips were cold and moist.
And perfect.
“Go on inside,” he said. “I’ll see you Christmas Day for sure.”
Her hands fell from his and she shoved them back into her pockets. “All right.” She walked backward, watching as he climbed into his truck and started the engine. The front lights illuminated everything around her. She turned, holding her breath to keep from running inside like a child who’d just been given a lollipop.
Determined instead to walk like the young woman she was now. Straight and tall.
And filled with hope.