Slap Your Sides (8 page)

T
hat summer Daria worked on the New Jersey shore as a junior counselor at a camp for kids with polio. It was a summer that seemed never to end. I was working alongside Luke Casper, whose wife had written a Dear John one day and run off with a sailor. He would try to joke about it, say he didn't mind the fact she'd dumped him, but she'd taken the sugar ration book with her. He kept telling me that Daria looked like her, that I shouldn't let Daria get away. It did no good to tell him I'd never had a claim on her in the first place.

I sent Daria a long letter all about the horses and certain songs I liked: “You'll Never Know,” and “Taking a Chance on Love.” I asked her what she was listening to that she liked. I told her it was lonely without her.

I got a postcard back saying she was having the best summer of her life. As for songs, she liked “Brazil,” and “Pistol Packin' Mama.” From then on I wrote only postcards, six, and she sent me two more.

I listened every night, at eleven, to WBEA's rebroadcast of Radio Dan. I knew he talked about his family from time to time, and I didn't want to miss anything he might say about Daria. He called her Darie. There were several versions of his theme song, “Slap Your Sides,” at
the end. She sang them all. One night he had this very confiding tone, as though he was telling you something he'd been mulling over. “You know,” he crooned, “I can't help hoping that one of our servicemen, one who's fought the good fight and is ready now to come home and settle down…well, I hope this fellow will connect with my Darie someday. I can tell you right now I don't want a son-in-law who hasn't been part of this…and I don't mean sitting at a desk, or driving an ambulance over a battlefield
after
the battle's over…. Call me narrow-minded, but I tell Darie these drugstore cowboys who aren't in the service, for whatever excuse, aren't fit to ring our front doorbell. You think you're going to take
my
little girl out? In a pig's eye, buster!”

 

It was the summer Sicily was invaded and Rome was bombed. Lizzie would call Mom, and after they'd talked awhile, she'd ask for Tommy and me. She'd say things like “The entire Warsaw ghetto is rubble now. Fifteen thousand Jews died, and another fifty thousand were shipped off to death camps.”…She'd say, “Can you hear me, boys? Do you realize what's going on in Europe?”

Tommy had broken up with Lillie Light because he wanted to join the Army. She and her whole family were the sort of strict Mennonites who maybe didn't travel by wagon but did paint the chrome on their cars black so they didn't look flashy. They were sternly opposed to the war, even to someone serving as a noncombatant.

Tommy registered for the draft, but when he took
his physical, he was classified 4F because of a perforated eardrum.

He couldn't believe it. He said lucky thing the war was probably going to be over before I had to make my decision, because one of us should serve.

“I
won't
,” I said. That was the first time I'd really made it clear, and I was a little surprised when the words came out of my mouth. But I was proud of myself, too.

“You won't have to worry about it anyway, Jube.”

“Bud says it could go on for years.”

“How would Bud know?” Tommy said. “And Aunt Lizzie's right about the Jews, too! Hitler's killing all the Jews! If Hitler has his way, no one's going to be safe.”

“And when Hitler's defeated, there'll be other dictators to come along,” I said. “There'll be other races to destroy. The only way to stop war is for ordinary citizens to start saying No! I'm not going!”

“I know all the pacifist arguments, Jube. I went to SCFS, too, remember. But this war
is
different!”

 

Even though the Warner sisters were over sixty, they left Shoemaker's for higher-paying jobs at Wride Foods. So after school Tommy worked for Dad, and Mom went in too, sometimes.

Wrides was Sweet Creek's only “essential industry.” A lot of females got jobs there. Tommy was dating one named Rose Garten. She had graduated from Sweet Creek High the year before and was one year older than Tommy. Her family were Catholics who lived in
Blooming Glen. Tommy complained that she smelled of onions, but her graph had gone from 50 to 80 in a few weeks.

The last Saturday in August Tommy let Dad run the store by himself, so he could transport Baby Boy and Heavenly. They'd been sold to Orland Gish, a rich Mennonite with a farm in Lancaster.

A week later Luke Casper found a new horse who came with the name “Ike” after General Eisenhower. Mr. Hart wasn't a fan of the military, so he renamed him Tyke, because he was smaller than most horses. The horse was restless, too; he didn't like to mind.

He acted so wild, I had to keep him out in the paddock.

That was when Daria came back. After her music lesson, just as I'd finished mucking out the stalls, she came by the Harts' and we went for a ride. I was on Tyke, who was trying to go where he wanted to go, not where we wanted to.

All the things I'd stored up to say to Daria, about my feelings for her, went unsaid. She was suddenly beautiful, tan, and happy-looking. Whatever made me think she'd give a damn what
I
thought of her? She kept talking about what a glorious summer she'd had: that helping people was what she planned to do with her life.

“Maybe you should be a nurse,” I said.

She pushed back her long hair and eyed me. “I'd rather be a doctor.”

“What kind?”

“Maybe a psychiatrist,” she said.

I told her about Abel Hart being sent to a psychiatric prison up north, after he was beaten up again. Mr. Hart went to see him and he said he hardly recognized Abel, and Abel didn't know who he was. He had bruises on his face and arms from the beatings he'd received. His red hair had turned white, and his teeth chattered when he spoke, as though he was freezing. He'd told Mr. Hart he didn't have to sleep anymore. He said he'd found the secret of eternal life.

“The Army ought to discharge him,” Daria said.

“He's not in the Army, remember?”

“I keep forgetting.” She was riding Quinn, who was delighted she'd come back and was stepping high because of it.

“Daddy told me Tommy actually registered for the draft,” she said.

When Tommy told Mom and Dad the Army wouldn't take him, Dad had looked at Mom and said, “I bet thee are glad, Mother, hah?” It was meant as sarcasm. He'd begun speaking the plain language to her in this snide way, accompanied by a tiny, mean smile.

Dad had stopped going to Rotary Tuesdays because there was always a hometown boy on leave or furlough, telling about his experiences in the war. Then there were the fellow Rotarians, who snubbed Dad or asked snide questions about Bud.
Don't tell me your boy still won't fight?

“Daddy said it took guts for Tommy to try and join
the Army,” Daria continued, “considering the example Bud set.”

“It takes guts to be 4E too.”

“I knew you'd say that,” said Daria.

“Then why bring it up?”

“I keep hoping you'll change your mind.”

In Bud's last letter he had written that a few more of the COs were changing their minds. They were giving in to pressure from their families, from the war news, and from their consciences, and they were asking for reclassification. They were being reassigned as 1AO, same as Tommy'd hoped to be: noncombatant servicemen.

I told Daria a little about Bud's work at the hospital, that he wrote describing the scorn institutions had for patients who were feeble, incontinent, angry, and most often all three.

“I want to help people, but I wouldn't want that job,” Daria said. “It's thankless, isn't it?”

“Bud says those patients haven't been given the chance to see what they can do. Places like that just give them custodial care.”

“If
that
, it sounds like…. Oh, there are things I admire about Bud. But I agree with something Daddy said.”

“What?”

“That Bud is putting out the fire in the house across the street when his own house is on fire.”

I didn't bother to try and answer that, but I wondered if people in Sweet Creek knew about Mom and Dad. At home Dad was either making snide remarks or acting like Mom wasn't there. Was he doing it in the store, too?

Last August, when my buddy Marty Allen and I had joined the volunteers painting the trim on SCFS, there had been a new sign behind glass at the front entrance.

 

I WILL LAY DOWN MY LIFE IF NEED BE, BUT I WILL NOT TAKE SOMEONE ELSE'S.

 

Kids had written in black crayon on the wall next to it:
WHAT ABOUT HITLER'S? MUSSOLINI'S? TOJO'S?

 

Daria and I rode along awhile. The land needed rain badly. Even the trees were dusty.

I announced I'd been reading some poetry.

“Really? I'm impressed!”

“And I like it.”

“Who're you reading?”

“His name is Walter Benton!”

“Oh
no
.”

“What's the matter?”

“You've been reading
This Is My Beloved
?”

“Yeah. I'm halfway through it.”

“That's tacky, Jubal.”

“It's not tacky.” It was a Natalia Granger recommendation: “Sexy as all get-out!” she'd written across a postcard. She was right.

“Why don't you read serious poets?” Daria asked me.

“Because I don't know what they're talking about.”

“But you know what Walter Benton is talking about!” she said.

“I wish I knew
more
.”

She laughed over her shoulder at me, then told Quinn to giddyap.

I had some trouble heading Tyke in the direction of the stable, and when we got there finally, Quinn was out in the paddock. Daria was waiting for Tyke and me.

“Now let's pay some attention to this little fellow,”
she said as I got off him. “I bet he belonged to someone. He looks like the kind of horse people get for their kids. Like a Morgan.”

Together we brushed and curried Tyke. We shampooed him and scrubbed his legs so his stockings turned golden, then shampooed his tail until it was blue-black.

All the while, Daria crooned to him. “I know what you want, Tyke…. I'm going to take good care of you, Tyke…. Do you hear me?”…I shut my eyes and thought of her saying some of that stuff to me. After, when we turned him out, he pranced and snorted. He sauntered by Quinn as though he were tipping his hat to him.

We were about to leave when Luke Casper ambled down from the office. Sometimes the way he looked at Daria from head to toe made me want to punch him. He told Daria she was going to “catch it” when she got home.

“What am I going to catch, Luke?” Daria laughed. “Am I going to catch the chicken pox?”

“Radio Dan's having a fit!”

“Why? He knows I take the horses out.”

“I'll bet he doesn't know you take them out with Jubal.”

“Did you tell him?”

“No.”

“You're a sweetheart, Luke!” Daria said.

“Yeah, thanks, Luke,” I said.

“I was doing
her
a favor. I wasn't doing you one, Jubal.”

We'd never been buddies. Religion was foreign to
him, particularly one like Friends. He didn't dare make cracks around Mr. Hart, but he'd bait me sometimes about the war. He'd say, “Did you see in the newspapers that your pal Adolf bombed London again?”

He was 4F because of a hernia.

There were times, too, when he'd try to get me to drink whiskey with him. Then he'd say, “Okay, don't drink anything. Just hang out while
I
drink.” I knew he was really lonely.

“Your daddy's called here twice,” he told Daria. “He's probably got fire coming out of his nose by now!”

“I
bet
he has,” Daria said to me as we walked away from Casper. “It's almost
five
, Jubal. How could I forget the time this way?”

“Don't call Luke ‘sweetheart,'” I said. “He'll take it the wrong way.”

“Oh, he's harmless. I think he looks like Jimmy Cagney. Did you see him in
Yankee Doodle Dandy
? I love that movie!”

“I saw him in
The Roaring Twenties
with Humphrey Bogart…. But don't kid with Luke,” I said. “You'll give him ideas. He says you look like his ex.”

“I
wish.
She was gorgeous! I like it that you're protective, Jubal.”

We headed toward the bus stop, through fields filled with Queen Anne's lace and ironweed. Barn swallows were swooping in the air, and the haze from the heat was blurring the sight of the Welsh Mountains.

She was walking ahead of me when she said, “My
times with you are the best times, Jubal.”

“Me, too.”

“We're lucky, Jubal…lucky lucky lucky.”

 

When I got home, Mom was mixing the white margarine with the yellow food coloring, to make it look like butter.