Caleb's Wars (17 page)

For the first time, I was panicky with worry. Nights were worst, when I had nothing else to think about. I'd look at Randall's empty bed and wonder what he was doing—still sleeping, probably, since Italy was six or seven hours ahead of us. Had he marched that day, or fought, or just sat somewhere waiting for something to happen? Had he met any Germans? Had he killed any?

Randall's letters came less and less often, and by the end of July, there were none.

Then at last we had something to celebrate. The power lines were all strung, and the electricity was finally turned on. Pop had been saving his money, and he had our place wired. One outlet in each room, and one light bulb hanging from each ceiling. So we were ready. Ma had bought a floor lamp for the sitting room, and that first night, we pulled our chairs around it and read. Pop had his new issue of
Life,
Ma her Bible, and I was paging through the funny papers of the Sunday paper.

"I never thought I'd see this day," Ma declared. "Some folks in Toad Hop can't afford electricity, and others that can won't go to the trouble."

"We been livin' in the dark ages way too long," Pop agreed.

"And just think! That iron we ordered from Sears and Roebuck will be here any day. I can't wait to throw out those heavy old flatirons."

"I got something else for you," Pop said. "Wait a minute." He left the room and came back with a box wrapped in pretty paper.

Ma opened it carefully. "A radio! How sweet. Plug it in."

"We got to unplug the lamp, then."

The radio began to glow as it warmed up. Then there was static, but as Pop fiddled with the tuning knob, suddenly there was music. In a moment, it sounded like Louis Armstrong and his orchestra were right in the room.

"Oh, Frank! What a wonderful present."

"Care to dance, Mrs. Brown?"

"I'd be delighted, Mr. Brown."

Pop took Ma in his arms and began dancing her around the room. After that, Ma made coffee and served us some peach pie. For that moment, my life was good. I had a full belly, a roof over my head, music on the radio, and folks who loved each other and weren't ragging on me.

But the worries came back. Not too far away, Andreas was in his barracks, maybe wondering when the next attack would come. And Randall—where was he tonight, and how was he? Asleep in a foxhole, cold, tired, under fire? Was it right that Pop and Ma were dancing, that we were eating pie and laughing together, when so many others were lonely or in danger?

D
INNER WAS EXTRA
BUSY the next day, and things began to go wrong. Betty Jean dropped a platter of sliced tomatoes, and Voncille snapped at her for being so clumsy. Then a table for ten came in, businessmen passing through on their way to Augusta, saying they were in a hurry and needed especially fast service. While we were scrambling to fill ten orders at once, Voncille brought back a plate of food from a regular customer, who had complained that the beans were too salty, the gravy cold, and the biscuits too brown.

Andreas and I rushed to keep the clean dishes coming. At last Aunt Lou and Uncle Hiram had the businessmen's plates all ready. Voncille stacked her serving tray, picked it up, and started for the dining room. Then she noticed her apron was untied in the back.

"Somebody help me here!" she called. "I can't go out there like this."

I dried my hands and went to help her. But Voncille stopped me. "Not
you.
Andreas, come tie this apron."

For a second, he just looked at her.

"Come
on!
" she cried. "This food ain't gettin' any hotter."

He looked at me, then went over to her, fumbled with the strings of the apron, and managed to tie a clumsy bow.

"Thanks," she said, and walked out without even turning around.

Andreas went back to the sink, but I stayed where I was.

"Caleb?" Aunt Lou called. "What is it?"

Uncle Hiram looked up from the potatoes he was mashing.

"Sugar, what'sa matter?" Aunt Lou asked.

Voncille hurried back in. "Hiram, you got more sweet tea ready?" Then she noticed me. "What are you standing there for?"

Fear and anger had been going after each other inside me like two starved dogs fighting over a bone. Anger won. Voncille had treated me like dirt long enough, and I wasn't going to let it pass—not anymore. "Why wouldn't you let me tie your apron?"

"What?"

"Why wouldn't you let me tie your apron?"

It had gotten very quiet in the kitchen.

"Don't you speak to me that way!"

"You didn't want
me
to tie your apron."

"Get back to your work and let me get back to mine."

"You hate Andreas, but you'd rather let him near you than someone like me."

"You can think whatever you damn well please. I'm tired o' tryin' to guess what crazy stuff goes on inside a nigger's head." She slammed through the door and came back in a moment with Lee Davis.

"What's goin' on in here?" he demanded. "Don't y'all see we got a full house today? This ain't no time for y'all to be squabbling."

"I won't work in a place where the nigger help can talk back to me," Voncille said. "You get rid of him, or I'm leavin'."

"Caleb, what'd you say to Miss Voncille?"

I could feel every eye on me. "I asked why she'd let Andreas tie her apron but not me."

"That's
it?
That's what all this is about?"

"He sassed me, Mr. Lee!" Voncille said. "I don't have to put up with that."

Davis looked at me. "Caleb, if you want your job, you apologize to Miss Voncille. If you won't, then you can consider yourself fired."

"If
he
go, Hiram and me go with him!" Aunt Lou announced.

I wanted to walk out and not look back. But then I'd have to explain things to Pop. Maybe Davis would come by the house and tell him how I'd mouthed off to a white woman; then there'd be hell to pay.

I had to think about Aunt Lou and Uncle Hiram, too. They didn't like working at the Dixie Belle, and Aunt Lou said lots of times she wished she could go back to Lee Davis's kitchen, but if she quit the restaurant, maybe he wouldn't take her back.

"Caleb?" Davis said, and I realized I'd been deep in my thoughts.

"I mean it about quittin'," Aunt Lou went on. "All Caleb axed for was a explanation."

"I don't owe that boy a thing," Voncille declared.

"'Specially not an explanation. Everybody understands how things work. A white woman doesn't have to put up with"—she eyed me coldly—"a
colored
boy touching her. It's never been that way, and it ain't going to start being that way now."

The way she said
colored
made the word sound worse than the other one.

Everyone was still looking at me. I was sweating, and not because it was hot in the kitchen.

"Well?" Lee Davis asked. "We ain't got all day."

"Just fire him, Mr. Lee," Voncille urged. "He been nothin' but trouble since day one."

"That's not true!" I protested before I could stop myself.

"You hush, Caleb!" Davis ordered. "The only thing I want to hear from your mouth is an apology, and I want to hear it now."

"If he don't, I'm through here," Voncille declared.

"Where else you gonna find a job," Aunt Lou asked,

"seein' as how you can't do nothin' 'cept pick up plates and pour sweet tea?"

"Y'all stop!" Davis cried. "Caleb, this is your last chance. You gonna apologize or not?"

The thought of apologizing made me sick, but I realized I was going to do it anyway. I wanted to believe it was to save Aunt Lou's and Uncle Hiram's jobs, but it wasn't. I'd been angry just a moment ago, but now I was plain scared—of Pop, of Davis, of what might happen if I refused. Knowing
that
made me want to run into the alley and cry.

I could only hope my words sounded sincere. "Miss Voncille, I'm sorry for what I said."

She just glared at me.

"There, you see?" Davis told her. "He apologized. You satisfied?"

Of course she wasn't—only getting rid of me could do that. But now
she
was under the gun. She'd told Betty Jean how much she needed her job.

"I reckon," she said. "But you tell him not to speak to me again."

"All right. You understand, Caleb?"

"Yes, sir."

"That's bein' sensible. Now can y'all
please
go back to work?" With that, he went through the door. And the machine known as the kitchen of the Dixie Belle Café started back up. After all, the folks in the dining room needed their sweet tea and their banana pudding.

J
UST BEFORE CLOSING TIME
, Joe Peters, Lee Davis's handyman, knocked on the back door and asked for Aunt Lou. She talked to him a minute and then gestured for me to come.

"Miz Katie sent Joe over with this—for you." She handed me a sealed envelope. I wiped my hands, opened it, and read aloud, "'Caleb, please come by The Cedars today after work. There is something I need to discuss with you. Mrs. Katie Davis.'"

After what had happened earlier, the note worried me. "Am I in trouble?"

"Can't say, sugar," Aunt Lou said. "You done anything might make her mad?"

"No. I've never even talked to her."

"Maybe she got some extra work for you to do 'round her place. That's what white folks usually want."

"I don't want to go."

"Can't say I blame you. But you better. You already been in enough hot water for one day."

"Yes, ma'am. I know."

"That Voncille is one snippy bitch! I reckon it was right hard to apologize, warn't it?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"You didn't mean it."

"No, ma' am."

"I wouldn't have, either." Aunt Lou sighed. "Look like we colored folks spend way too much time sayin' things to white folks that we don't really mean."

"You always tell Lee Davis what you think! I've heard you."

She frowned, like she was thinking hard. "Sometimes. But it don't come easy."

"I think you're brave."

Aunt Lou patted my arm. "I 'preciate that, sugar, but I ain't nowhere near as brave as I'd like to be. I hopes to see the day we can say what we want without havin' to
be
brave."

I tried to imagine a world like that.

"Listen to me runnin' on!" Aunt Lou exclaimed. "You git, now. Find out what Miz Katie want with you. We can take care o' things here."

***

The Cedars, a big white house with columns, stood a mile on the far side of Davisville, just off the main road up toward Waynesboro and Augusta. Aunt Minnie, who cooked for the Davises now that Aunt Lou was at the Dixie Belle, answered the kitchen door. She'd been expecting me and had angel food cake with peaches and cold milk ready.

While I ate, Aunt Minnie went to tell Miss Katie I was there and then came back and said for me to follow her.

This was my first time inside The Cedars, and now I understood why folks said it was like a king's palace. Big pieces of carved furniture stood against the walls, which were papered in fancy designs. Portraits of people in old-fashioned clothes hung among paintings of racehorses. Thick rugs with bright patterns covered the shiny wood floors, and there were sparkly electric lights hanging from the ceilings.

In the front parlor, Miss Katie waited for me next to an old lady in a bathrobe, slumped in a wheelchair. Her head drooped on her chest, and she looked to be asleep.

"Thank you, Minnie," Miss Katie said. "I'll ring when we're done."

My heart was beating fast, and I wished I was somewhere else. Aunt Lou had made me wash up, but my pants were stained with food, and my shirt was wet under the arms.

"Thank you for coming," she said.

I kept my eyes down. "Yes, ma'am."

"This is Miss Evelyn, Mr. Lee's mother. She's been staying with us for a while now."

"Yes, ma'am. I done heard that."

"And perhaps you've heard that Miss Evelyn's mind is ... no longer clear."

"I done heard that, too, ma'am, and I mighty sorry 'bout it."

"Thank you. You probably wonder why I've asked you here this afternoon."

I nodded. "I shore do hope I ain't ... in no trouble."

"Oh, no, it's nothing like that. Did my message worry you?"

"Maybe a little bit, ma'am."

"I'm so sorry. Let me explain. I heard from Minnie that Uncle Hiram's been telling her how you prayed for his hands to be healed, and they were. Is that correct?"

So he hadn't been able to keep our secret! That bothered me, but it was too late to do anything about it now. "That right, Miz Katie. I prayed for him, and the Lord done the rest."

"I believe you. I've seen Uncle Hiram's hands. Remarkable! And that was your first experience with ... praying for someone? You never did anything like that before?"

"No, ma'am."

"You didn't use anything like voodoo, or use a spell, or anything with magic?"

Ignorant! You never knew what some white people thought about Negroes. "Oh, no, ma'am! I prayed to God—the true God, like we do in church."

"I see. That's all right, then."

Would she get to the point? I hated standing before her, sweating in that hot, stuffy room. The old lady started to snore.

"Please excuse Miss Evelyn. She nods off all the time these days."

I waited: there was nothing else to do.

"Well, let me tell you what I need. My mind's so distracted these days, I can hardly think straight. Caleb, I want you to pray for my mother-in-law, ask God to restore her mind. She's lost, like a frightened child. When she's awake, she becomes agitated, cries, says hurtful things. My husband isn't home all day to deal with her, and I'm beside myself!"

I felt sorry for Miss Katie. But I still wished I was somewhere else. Praying for Uncle Hiram was one thing. But to pray for a white person? For Lee Davis's mama?

Miss Evelyn's mouth had gone slack. A dribble of spit ran down her chin, and Miss Katie wiped it away with a lacy white handkerchief. "You see how it is. It's ever so much worse when she's awake. Will you at least try?"

We both knew there was only one answer to her question. "Yes, ma'am. I be glad to. Anything to help y'all." I was a fool to agree and a liar to say I was happy about it. But Miss Katie was satisfied.