CHAPTER 9

FOUR MONTHS LATER

APRIL 1944

“Somebody want to tell me how I’m supposed to run this farm without workers?” Papa’s voice carried up the stairs, and Alice-Ann’s shoulders hunched against the anger, even though not directed at her.

“Pop,” Nelson’s voice followed. “You are not running this farm without workers. We are not running this farm without workers. Not entirely anyway. Didn’t Harry Thorpe organize some of his high school boys to come out and work with the farmers one day a week?”

He surely had. Nancy had told Alice-Ann all about it. And, she said, while the boys worked the fields, the girls in home ec learned to knit warm socks and scarves for the soldiers.

Papa’s footsteps were heavy against the rugs and hardwood floor as Alice-Ann crept to her bedroom door, opening it enough to hear more clearly but without causing it to creak and give her eavesdropping away.

“A day a week is a help but it’s not always enough. Even migrant labor is getting more difficult to find. And half the women in this town —women I’m sure I could put on a tractor and show them how to drive it and how to harvest —they’re off working in factories.”

“Pop, come on, now. The women are only trying to make up for the lack of men on all fronts. Good men who are off fighting for us. Besides, Alice-Ann and Aunt Bess have been pitching in.”

That they had. Growing up on a farm —as both she and Aunt Bess had and both right here in this house —meant knowing how to harvest vegetables by hand, walking row by row in the early mornings of summer, trying to get it done before the sun blistered. Before “the bear,” as her father called it, got you. That moment when all the life nearly drained out and a person could no longer see or think straight. It also meant knowing how to pick worms off the tobacco and learning —even at an early age —how to drive a tractor (if you were blessed enough to own one) while your daddy yelled out orders, his work boots covered in caked dirt and dusted with sand. And at the end of the day, it meant knowing how to can and freeze and dry and, when all was said and done, thank the good Lord for his provisions.

“There’s crops out there that’ll need harvesting soon, Nelson,” Papa now bellowed, drawing Alice-Ann one step back into the room, though she kept the door ajar. “What do you suppose we do about that? Not to mention we got a full moon coming up soon. Gotta plant by the full moon and we’ve got to get it done right then.”

“We’ve got some workers. Why are you acting like we don’t? Every morning I go and pick up day labor and not a single one of ’em minds walking behind a plow and a mule. What more do you want, Pop?”

Alice-Ann pictured her brother standing with his arms stretched out, palms up. His usual pleasant expression soured by the stress their father had increasingly put on him since the war. She closed her eyes and shook her head at the moment. When she heard the door across the hall ease open, Alice-Ann looked up to see Irene peek out, her eyes filled with a mixture of stress and sadness. A jazzy Duke Ellington tune wafted out past her, and Alice-Ann waved her hand in warning. “Turn it down,” she mouthed.

Irene closed the door as quietly as she’d opened it. A moment later, it reopened, this time surrounded by silence. Irene’s lips were pressed together and her hand covered the rounding of her stomach as though she were trying to keep her baby from hearing the argument.

“And I guess you know,” Papa continued, followed by a creaking that told Alice-Ann he’d made his way to his chair. A relief, somehow. Sitting, Papa tended to exert less anger. He might not have lost his fury and it might not have quelled one iota, but at least he doled it out in easier-to-digest doses.

“Know what?” Nelson finally asked, his voice also a tad less anxious.

“About George James’s boy.”

Alice-Ann exchanged a glance with Irene, who shrugged her shoulders.

“No, sir. What about ’im?”

“Now they’ve both signed up. Both had deferment and they know the labor’s hard to come by, but Pete’s followed his brother, thinking war is so much easier than working the land. What kind of son leaves his daddy and mama to try to go it alone in times like these?”

Alice-Ann shook her head. Even as far back as December 1941 she knew George would go —he seemed the type. But Pete? Pete loved the land. Always had. And for a boy with such big ears, he ought to be grateful for what offered him a good living, although hard-earned. If nothing else, he could say to some half-blind girl someday, “Look here . . . I got five hundred acres of God’s best dirt . . . Lucky, too, out here. We got electricity and a phone. Farm next to ours? The Branches’? They got electricity but no phone. And we both have indoor plumbing. My daddy and Mr. Branch saw to that when Nelson married that uppity Irene . . .”

She shook her head again, wondering how it was her brain sometimes went off in such directions.

“Maybe he just —”

“That ain’t all. Butterwick’s boys have done the same.” Papa’s sigh traveled up the staircase.

“I’m sure they’ll work it out, Pop. All of ’em.”

“If we lived closer to Camp Stewart, we’d have the POWs. Of course, the farmers out west have the Japanese from the internment camps to help in the fields. Don’t know why we don’t rate high enough.” He paused and Alice-Ann waited for her brother to comment. She supposed Papa waited too, but when he didn’t, Papa added, “I’ve heard tell there’s a POW camp coming soon to Bulloch County.”

“Would you want that? The Germans and Italians working alongside us? So close to Alice-Ann and Aunt Bess? To Irene and the baby?”

“I reckon the only thing keeping you here is Irene and that baby coming.”

Again, eyes met from opposite sides of the hallway, in time for Alice-Ann to see Irene simmering with fury and hurt. Alice-Ann raised her hands and mouthed, “He doesn’t mean it.”

But Irene turned and closed the door. Loudly enough, this time, to be heard.

Alice-Ann took a step back, her hand gripping the cut-glass doorknob as she readied herself to close the door and dash to the bed. It’d be easy enough to pretend she’d been lying there all along, reading from one of the books she’d recently checked out from the library.

A pause from the first floor clued her in that both Papa and Nelson had heard Irene’s protest. She waited a breath without moving. Then, “No, sir,” her brother said, loudly enough and as though nothing had happened one floor up. “That’s not the only reason I’m here and you know it. We’re in this thing together, Pops. I may not be fighting a war over there like Mack and Carlton and the rest of ’em, but I’m surefire pulling my weight on our own soil, making sure everyone left over here’s got food in their gut and tobacco to roll. That stands for something too.”

The chair creaked again, but no footsteps followed. “Well, sir,” Papa added. “I did hear some good news today down at the feed and seed.”

“What’s that?” Nelson asked, his voice calmer.

“Heard tell John Deere has been working to get us some better tractors and the implements we’ve been needin’ all along. What we can’t find the manpower to do, we’ll get out of oil and grease. Come summer when the tobacco’s high, we’ll see what shakes out. ’Tween now and then, I reckon we’ll make do.”

As a springtime thunderstorm pelted the sidewalks of Bynum beneath a gray-blue sky, Alice-Ann stood at her teller’s window, counting her drawer, doing her best to concentrate —five, ten, fifteen, twenty. All the while, her mind pored over the letter she’d dropped into the mailbox outside the post office earlier in the day, making the otherwise-simple task difficult.

Truth is, Mack, I often wonder if Papa would be so cantankerous if Mama were still alive. Would he carry on so? I picture Mama soothing him, talking to him sweetly to bring down his feverish pitch.

And then she wondered, would Mack stop right there in his letter reading to consider that Alice-Ann might calm and soothe him one day, were he to come home from work, upset at something, stomping around their living room? Would he picture the two of them as she dreamed they’d be —him sitting in an easy chair much like Papa’s and her draped across his lap, her legs crossed over the extra padding of the armrest? He’d lay his head back, close his eyes, and she’d sing to him, planting kisses along his brow between the stanzas —

Fifty-five, sixty-five . . .

“Oh, dear.”

“What is it?” Nancy asked from beside her as she wrapped a thick band around a stack of bills.

Alice-Ann winced. “I got off in my counting.”

“Daydreaming, no doubt.”

If the heat in her cheeks wasn’t a giveaway, Alice-Ann didn’t know what would be. Nancy had guessed some time ago that Alice-Ann’s letter writing to Mack and her refusal to remove his bracelet meant more than pure friendship. Like Claudette and Maeve and —she hoped —Irene, Nancy was good for secret keeping.

“Just start over,” Nancy said. “And think about fives and not ones.”

Alice-Ann giggled, then looked across the room to make sure they hadn’t raised any suspicion in Miss Portia. But the older woman seemed immersed in her own end-of-the-day routine. “You mean like the one and only?” she asked Nancy, her voice whisper-soft.

“Exactly.” Nancy nodded toward the stack of bills. “Now, concentrate. If your drawer is off, it means we both have to stay and —”

The front door opened, the torrential rain increasing in volume.

“I’m sorry,” Miss Portia began, her voice no-nonsense as always. “We’re closed.” She stood, muttering, “I thought I’d locked —”

“Maeve?” Alice-Ann said, now recognizing her best friend, framed by the open door, silhouetted by the miserable exterior. She dropped her cash on the counter and came out from behind the windows, her heart pounding as rapidly as Maeve’s gulps for air. “Maeve?” she said again, this time running across the terrazzo floor, her black-and-white pumps tapping in rhythm.

Maeve’s hands cupped her mouth, her round eyes filled with tears that spilled over without restraint. Alice-Ann grabbed her shoulders where the drenched material of her dress clung. Her hair —always coiffed —plastered itself against her head as a puddle formed at her feet as though she’d had an accident of nature.

“Is it —?” Alice-Ann wanted to ask if something had happened to Mack, but before she could, Miss Portia, Mister Dooley, and Nancy had joined them.

“Here,” Miss Portia said, wrapping her own raincoat over Maeve’s shoulders and pulling her close. “Nancy, close the door and then run to the back and get some of the old towels Etta-Sue uses to clean.”

Nancy shut the door, turned the key, and then darted to the back.

“Sit over here, child.” Mister Dooley motioned to one of the chairs that lined a half wall separating the main room from the offices. “I’ll get a glass of water.”

Miss Portia sat next to Maeve, and Alice-Ann knelt at her feet, wrapping her arms around Maeve’s legs to keep her shivering —from the cold or whatever news she bore, Alice-Ann couldn’t be sure —at a minimum. “Maeve, what is it?”

Maeve gasped. Once. Twice.

“Let her catch her breath,” Miss Portia said.

Mister Dooley returned with one of the crystal glasses from his wet bar, which Maeve took in her hands but did not drink from. Startled by movement, Alice-Ann glanced over her shoulder long enough to see Nancy drop several towels onto the polished terrazzo floor, then mop up the water with her foot.

“Maeve.” Alice-Ann said the name again. “Please. Tell me. What is it?”

“Carlton,” she finally breathed out.

Alice-Ann gasped. “No.” Dear God in heaven, how could it be? How could a young man so full of life, so vibrant and funny —?

“He’s not —he’s not —” She shook her head as she swallowed. “He’s been hurt bad, Alice-Ann. Blind, they say. Can’t walk.” The glass in her hand shook so, and water splashed onto the skirt of her already-soaked dress.

Alice-Ann rose up on her knees, the harsh reality of the floor pressing against them. “When?” she asked, taking the glass and handing it to Miss Portia, who in turn handed it back to Mister Dooley.

“I don’t know,” Maeve whispered. “We just got the telegram.” She looked out the front window as though she expected to see herself running from the five-and-dime to the bank. “I came here. Mama —Mama is screaming. Can’t be controlled. Threw me away from her. Daddy is crying —so, so hard —I’ve never seen him like this, Alice-Ann.” Her sobs broke through then, and her backside bounced on the hard surface of the chair as though someone had goosed her. “I don’t know what to do!”

Miss Portia stood. “Sit here, Alice-Ann.” She looked at Mister Dooley. “Come, Doo. Grab a couple of umbrellas and let’s go see what we can do.” Next she turned to Nancy. “Lock up behind us, you hear?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Don’t know how the door wasn’t locked in the first place, but I suppose the good Lord knew . . .” She paused. “No one leave until you’ve finished up, but don’t rush. When you can, bring this child home so she can get out of these wet clothes. If she’s not careful, she’ll catch her death . . .” The words trailed off as she reached for the umbrella Mister Dooley brought her.

As soon as the front door had closed behind them and Nancy had locked it, Alice-Ann pulled Maeve closer still and said, “Tell me exactly what you know.”

“I only know he was injured while filming, but I don’t know what. Hit in the head, the telegram said. Knocked off of something and fell. Fell far and hard.” Her breath shuddered, and she sighed. “I think it happened several weeks ago.”

“And you’re just now hearing about it?”

Maeve’s chin dropped to her chest. “I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Nancy put her hand on Alice-Ann’s shoulder. “I’m going to count your drawer and mine. You stay here.”

Alice-Ann nodded without looking up, wondering if Nancy’s thoughts had gone to her husband. To Harry, who’d returned after the Big One, leaving his ability to walk on some foreign soil. “Thank you, Nance.”

“I’m so sorry.” Maeve rested her head on Alice-Ann’s shoulder, the crown nuzzling into her neck. A shiver from the dampness passed through Alice-Ann and she inhaled against it. “I’m so sorry,” Maeve whispered, though about what Alice-Ann wasn’t sure.

“Don’t be. No. I’m the one who’s sorry, Maeve. I mean . . . Carlton. Blind and unable to walk.” She couldn’t imagine it.

“He’s been in the hospital in London, it said.”

“London.”

Her head nodded. “But they’re sending him home. He’ll be in another hospital for a while —I don’t know where —and then he’ll come home to recuperate further.”

Alice-Ann pulled back and Maeve sat straight. “Then he’ll be okay? Eventually, I mean? And he and Betty Jo can —”

“I don’t know, Alice-Ann. The telegram didn’t say.”

“If he’s coming home, then there must be hope.”

Maeve returned her head to Alice-Ann’s shoulder. She took in a deep breath and released it, one tiny puff of air at a time. “No,” she said. “If they’re sending him back to the States, then all hope must be lost.”

Alice-Ann hugged her friend closer. “Don’t say that, Maeve. Don’t think like that. We’ll pray for him. Every single day.” She turned her face toward the teller windows. “Won’t we, Nancy?”

“You bet we will,” Nancy said without looking up.

And every day, Alice-Ann thought, I’ll ask God to watch over Mack with a little more attention than usual.

Because if something like that happened to Mack . . .

Well, she’d love him anyway. Just as she was certain Betty Jo would look past Carlton’s injuries. Like Nancy had with Harry. The men they loved were more than eyes and legs, after all.

So much more.