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For the first time since Granddaddy arrived, all three of us were excited about the very same thing.

On Thanksgiving morning Granddaddy was sitting on the porch waiting for Uncle Tag. He climbed into the front seat and told Tag how fast to drive and where to turn toward Brookford.

The aunts' two white houses were like twins standing side by side, practically up against the street. Stepping-stones curved from the driveways to their porches. But Granddaddy didn't take either one of those paths. He trotted between their houses and stood there looking in one direction and then the other like he couldn't decide which back door to sneak up on. Aunt Lucille's front
door opened and she popped her head out just as Uncle Tag backed out the driveway.

I got a chuckle out of that. So did Momma, who had moved up to the front seat. “Lucille, honey,” she said, “you don't know what just hit you.”

By nine-thirty we were in China Grove. The two-story house where my grandparents lived had ivy growing up the walls. Somebody kept it trimmed back real neat around the windows. There was a porch that went around three sides of the house. I remembered speeding on a big tricycle from one end of that porch to the other. When we drove up, two little cousins I didn't recognize were using the trike, one of them standing on the back. “That's Vinnie doing the pedaling,” said Uncle Tag. “And his sister Rita behind him.”

Uncle Tag's wife, Evalona, grabbed me and kissed both of my cheeks. “Bless your heart, Bessie,” she said. “The boy's all grown up. Next thing, he'll be out gallivanting. Better keep your eye on him.”

“No,” said Momma. “Junior never gives me a minute's trouble.”

We sat down to the grandest feast I'd ever seen. I figured President Roosevelt had a bigger turkey, but I bet his pies weren't as good as ours. And how could he have a family that was as warm and loving as Momma's? Gramps told stories from the Great War, and Uncle Tag said how Momma used to feed him mud pies with blackberries—back when she was five and he was four.

It felt strange to be sitting there like that, stuffing myself with food and good feelings. Never once had I sat at a table with Pop's family and listened to stories about him growing up.

It was a warm day, so after dinner the grown-ups, who were feeling fat and lazy, sat around on the front porch watching the children do somersaults and spin themselves in circles. Little Vinnie spun himself dizzy and staggered around the yard—just being goofy. “Look at me,” he said. “I'm drunk. I'm Axel Bledsoe.”

“You hush, Vinnie,” said Uncle Tag.

But it was too late. I'd already heard it and Momma did too. Silence fell across that porch full of relatives. Somebody had some explaining to do; because that young'un never even knew my pop.

“How would he know to say a thing like that?” asked Momma.

“Um, uh.” Gramps stuttered around, trying to come up with something to smooth things over.

Finally Uncle Tag spoke up. “Vinnie must have overheard the story about Axel getting intoxicated a few years back. At Junior's birthday dinner.”

“And I wonder who passed that story down the line?” said Momma. “Since Vinnie was just a baby when that happened. Apparently this isn't the first time you've been entertained at the expense of my husband's reputation. Have you no respect?”

I knew what Momma was saying because I had that
feeling too. That if we hadn't been there, everybody would've thought little Vinnie was real cute.

“Maybe we won't stay overnight after all,” said Momma. “Tag, would you please take us home?”

So much for getting two days away. So much for having a good time with Momma's family. So much for having any family at all. It seemed like one way or another Pop was always getting in the way of me and family.

Granny and Gramps tried to put their arms around Momma and tell her how sorry they were and how nobody meant her any harm. But she wouldn't listen to them. I didn't know when I'd seen Momma so mad. Not even Granddaddy could rile her up the way her own family could.

I don't think she said another word to any one of them until we were in the car with Uncle Tag. “You people never did like Axel,” she said.

“We liked him fine,” said Uncle Tag. “When he wasn't drinking. Maybe you should've left him and come back home to live. Now that he's gone, there's nothing to keep you in Hickory. Why not move to China Grove?”

Nothing to keep us in Hickory? What did he think? That we could walk away from our life there? Our neighbors? And the house we lived in with Pop?

“No,” said Momma. “I couldn't. I have Axel's father to care for.” But she wasn't fooling anybody.

It was like her family had just fired a shot at us. And
if they wanted a fight, she would let them have it.

I had felt so thankful at dinner, surrounded by relatives who didn't fight. But it looked like I was wrong about Momma's family. Maybe they weren't all that different from the Bledsoes. I felt confused. I wanted Momma's family, but right that minute, if God was to give me a choice between the two, I'd ask for Pop back—in a heartbeat.

Momma kept her eyes straight ahead and her shoulders stiff as laundry frozen on the wash line. Uncle Tag gave up talking and started fiddling with the knob on his radio. The radio was saying that President Roosevelt did not have turkey and dressing with polio sufferers in Warm Springs, Georgia, like he usually did. Instead he was in Washington trying to keep us from going to war with the Japanese.

There were lights on in the house when Uncle Tag dropped us off. And Granddaddy was in the kitchen with a plateful of leftovers. It looked like when he took a notion, he could heat food for himself.

Momma just stared at him, and I could see tears spilling out of her eyes. After what she'd been through that day, Granddaddy was the straw that was fixing to break the camel's back. “I thought you were in Brookford,” she said.

“Hee hee,” said Granddaddy. “I reckon I wore out my welcome.”

That figured. Granddaddy had made his own
young'uns so miserable they didn't last a day with him. So what did they do? Dumped him back on us. And we would just stand by and take it. What else
could
we do? Turn him out in the cold?

Nothing made sense to me anymore. Especially not family. Not Pop's family, not Momma's either. Why couldn't people just get along in this world? That's what I wanted to know.

December 1941

“Dadgummit,” I said. “What does diagramming sentences have to do with life?” The world could be coming to an end and Miss Hinkle still expected me to spend Sunday afternoon figuring out this nonsense. Maybe Pop was right about book learning. But Pop's opinion didn't count much anymore, since he was dead.

Now,
there
was a sentence I could diagram.
My pop is dead
. But what was the point of breaking something like that apart and putting the words on crazy lines going this way and that? It sure didn't help me feel better, and it didn't bring him back either. Still, for some reason I wrote that sentence down. Maybe if I put
that
in a diagram Miss Hinkle would see how useless this assignment was.

I started drawing lines. I knew
pop
was the subject and I knew
my
described Pop, so that meant it was an adjective. I knew
is
was the predicate. But what was
dead?
Where did it belong in that stupid diagram?

Right in the middle of me trying to figure that out, Granddaddy let out a big whoop on the other side of the
bedroom door. And just like that he flung the door open and yelled, “War! The Japs started it. I knew they would. I told you so. Finally we're going to war.”

He was so excited you'd think the president himself had announced it. But I knew that Granddaddy declaring war didn't mean it was so.

“Git in here!” Granddaddy waved me toward him. I pulled a kitchen chair close to the door and sat just outside the room. Momma, who'd been napping in her bedroom, heard all the commotion and pulled up another chair. The radio announcer said that Pearl Harbor had been bombed.

“What's Pearl Harbor?” asked Momma.

“Naval base. Hi-wah-ee.” Granddaddy turned the volume as high as he could. The radio announcer's voice was deep, and every line of it sounded like a worse threat than the one before. “
A Japanese attack upon Pearl Harbor
naturally
would mean war. Such an attack would
naturally
bring a counter attack. And hostilities of this kind would
naturally
mean that the president would ask Congress for a declaration of war.”

I was used to Granddaddy announcing war. But hearing that man's serious-sounding voice, piling one argument on top of another, was a whole different story. All of a sudden it felt like the bombs could start dropping right here in the United States.

And if they did, where in the world would we go? It wasn't like we had a basement to hide in.

“Lord, have mercy.” Momma sank back in her chair. Then she grabbed my arm. “Thank God you're too young to fight.”

But I wasn't too young to fight. Gideon Bledsoe was staring at me from across the room. Wasn't he close to my age when he fought in the Civil War? And hadn't Pop taught me how to aim? I didn't say any of that to Momma, though.

We spent most of that Sunday listening to the commentators predicting that we'd automatically be at war with Japan's allies—Germany and Italy.

After a while I couldn't take the worry anymore, so I went outside. The cold air smelled of wood smoke from people's chimneys. The colored church was having a meeting and I heard them singing.
“Nobody knows the trouble I've seen.”

That was for sure.

I went to the barn. “Come on, Grover,” I said. “Let's go for a ride.” I turned him toward Bakers Mountain. I wondered where Frank Jenkins was by now. It appeared he'd soon be fighting. It felt good knowing I had boosted his morale with that BB gun Pop gave me.

I never did finish my homework. I turned in that one sentence and Miss Hinkle frowned and handed it back to me. “What happened, Junior?”

“The war,” I said. “I couldn't think.”

“There is no war,” said Miss Hinkle. But her voice
wobbled a tiny bit, and I was pretty sure she didn't believe her own self.

The principal, Mr. Hollar, came on the loudspeaker. “Teachers, I want you to bring your students to the auditorium for a special announcement from the president of the United States. You have fifteen minutes to assemble.”

Never mind that Miss Hinkle was the strictest teacher in the school. Never mind that she was clapping her hands to get our attention. Seemed like everybody in the room was talking out loud, some of us to ourselves and some to the person beside us. Janie Aderholt dropped her head into her arms. I heard Marilyn Overcash say, “Oh dear God, we're going to war. And my uncle just got drafted. Dear God, no!”

Miss Hinkle clapped her hands again. “Class! Be quiet!”

But we didn't settle down, so she grabbed the yardstick out of the chalk tray under the blackboard. And slammed it hard across her desk.

Janie yelped and leaped out of her chair. And everyone else went dead silent. Janie looked around and then, realizing that everyone was staring at her, sat down. Fast. Her shoulders were heaving, and I heard her trying to catch her breath.

“You may put down your pencils and papers,” said Miss Hinkle—as if any of us were actually practicing
the handwriting exercise for the day. She pointed to the sentence on the board—
Union of interests brings union of minds
.

“The bombing of Pearl Harbor is something that unites us with other countries that have also been senselessly attacked. Now you may go single file to the auditorium to hear what the president has to say about this. No talking, please.”

No talking? That was impossible. We all poured into the auditorium, and the only ones not talking were the ones who were too scared to open their mouths. But when President Roosevelt came on the radio every sound in the room just dribbled away. First there was a crackling noise, and then the president's voice came at us from the big brown speaker boxes at both sides of the stage.
“Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan.”

The president told how Japan was pretending to hold peace talks with the United States, but obviously they'd been planning this attack all along. “
I regret to tell you that very many American lives have been lost.”

He named all the other places that Japan had attacked. Malaya. Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippine Islands. Wake Island and Midway Island. They'd bombed seven places in one day. Seven places that were minding their own business, trying to live in peace.

President Roosevelt said he was asking Congress to declare war with the Japanese Empire. Then his voice went away, and all I heard was wooden auditorium chairs creaking, shoes scuffling against the floor, and here and there somebody crying.

Mr. Hollar stood up. “Yes,” he said, “America is in danger, but we must keep our wits about us. We will all be needed in one way or another to help our country's struggle for freedom.”

Beside me, Janie was chewing her fingernails. And I heard somebody cracking their knuckles. I looked down at my hands and realized that while the president was talking, I had crumpled my homework paper into a wrinkled wad. I didn't even remember carrying it into the auditorium.

…

On Tuesday night President Roosevelt addressed the nation again. Right before he came on, there was a knock at the back door. When I opened it, Leroy and Ann Fay were standing there.

“We came to hear the president,” said Ann Fay.

Leroy put his hand on her shoulder. “If your grandfather doesn't mind.”