Sons (16 page)

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Authors: Evan Hunter

BOOK: Sons
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I knelt by the coffin, and I looked into her face.
And her eyes closed gently by some undertaker’s thumbs were sightless, and I noticed white strands in her golden hair, and I remembered in a painful rush that brought fresh tears to my eyes this gentle woman I had loved so dearly, this humorless country girl who could explode into sudden laughter, this comforting, guiding, devoted woman who had been my mother. I reached out to touch her cold and lifeless hand folded across her bosom, and sobbed my grief against the padded altar railing before the coffin and could think of no prayer to send her out of my heart and out of my mind.
I felt my father’s hand on my shoulder.
He said something to me, and I nodded and turned to him, and held him close as though fearful I would lose him too in the very next moment, held him fiercely and tightly while the voices whispered in the other rooms.
We buried her on Wednesday morning.
I went directly from the cemetery to the Northwestern station on Canal and Madison, and from there by train to the Orchard Place Airport where I hitched a ride on a C-54 going to Montgomery. We developed engine trouble on the way down, and landed for repairs at a small airport someplace in Tennessee. The pilot told us we would not be ready to take off again until eleven that night, and were free to leave the airport if we wanted to. I checked my duffle bag and took a bus into the nearest town.
There was a sense of anonymity in those wartime streets. The sidewalks were sticky with a gelatinous khaki-colored mass that seeped in and out of bars and shops, arcades and luncheonettes, an eyeless seeking protoplasmic ooze that sucked from every Army town in the country whatever juices it possessed. Souvenir shops and shooting galleries, hot-dog stands and honky-tonks, movie theaters and greasy spoons boomed with the coming of the GI dollar, fifty dollars a day once a month for the lowliest buck private, ten million men in khaki searching for pleasure on their hours away from camp. I was grateful for the loss of identity, and resentful when two farmer-type MPs singled me out to ask for my furlough papers. There was nothing in them to indicate that my mother had died. The MPs studied them leisurely, noting when I had left Montgomery and when I was due back, and then the tallest of the pair said, “Okay, soldier,” and I put the folded papers back into the pocket of my blouse, and continued walking up the street.
There were the sounds of approaching night, a tenor saxophone and trumpet in B-flat harmony, a woman’s laughter, wire brushes on a snare drum’s head, a soldier swearing, a bass fiddle pulsing like an exposed heart in a laboratory jar, a piano tinkling with a whorehouse beat, New Orleans twice removed, automobile horns and the clatter of high-heeled pumps ankle-strapped, the shuffle of GI boots along streets already cooling, the amplified blare from a record shop, “It seems to me I’ve heard that song before, It’s from an old, familiar score,” and across the way a sidewalk hawker shouting out the starting time for
Stage Door Canteen,
which was supposed to be a good movie and which I had not seen. I walked past him resplendent in his blue uniform and gold braid (wondering why he wasn’t in a
real
uniform) and studied the glossy black-and-white stills in the display cases, and then stood decisionless near the box office, and finally moved on again, merging with the sidewalk soldiers.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do.
Whiskey was scarce as hell, but by asking around, I managed to get onto a GI who had brought a case back with him from a weekend home, and who was selling the stuff at premium prices. I tucked the bottle into the waistband of my trousers, under my blouse, and walked into a little park on the edge of town where a Civil War general spread his quivering buttocks astride a rearing stallion, his sword pointed toward Washington, D.C., no doubt. I found a bench far from the sidewalk noises, uncorked the bottle, and began to drink. I drank steadily and deliberately. In a little while, I began crying.
The girl came lurching out of the darkness, as drunk as I was, as black as the darkness, black skin and black eyes, black chiffon dress tight across small high breasts, stumbled clickingly out of the darkness on high-heeled patent leather pumps, black, as sudden and as shocking as death itself, and stopped before me and put her hands on her hips and squinted me into focus and whispered, “What’s the matter, so’jer?”
“Nothing,” I said.
She stood above me with the professional tilt of a sidewalk whore, pelvis angled toward me, black dress clinging to a certain nakedness beneath, the promise of a tangle of black pubic hair, a pink nigger twat as ripe as the thick lips smiling at me now in open invitation. There was a small knife scar on her right temple. She smelled of perfume and perspiration.
“Why you cryin’ then?” she asked.
“My mother’s dead,” I answered.
“Tha’s too bad,” she said, and sat beside me with some difficulty, and put one plump widespread hand on my thigh. “Give me a drink, so’jer,” she said.
“Sure,” I said, and handed her the bottle.
She wiped the lip of the bottle before drinking from it, and then tilted it to her mouth and took a long burning swallow, and gagged, and wiped the lip again and handed the bottle back to me.
“Where you get that stuff?” she asked. “Taste jus’ like piss.”
“Bought it,” I said.
“Taste jus’ like piss,” she said again. “Give me some more of that stuff,” she said, and reached for the bottle. She drank
again, said, “Whoo, man, that’s jus’ awful,” and then said, “What’s yo’ name?”
“Will.”
“I’m Daisy. How’s that?”
“That’s fine,” I said.
“No, it ain’t, it’s dumb. Dumb ole nigger name.”
“No, it’s fine,” I said.
“Listen, I’m sorry ’bout your mother,” she said.
“That’s okay.”
“I got two li’l kids my own,” she said, “I know wha’s like to be a mother. I’m real sorry, man.”
“That’s okay,” I said.
“Sorry,” she said, and shook her head. “Listen, Bill,” she said, “there one thing...”
“Will,” I said.
“Will,” she said, “one thing Daisy know how to do, it’s take the miseries out a man, you hear?”
“I hear,” I said.
“You want me to?”
“Got no money. Spent it all on this piss here.”
“I know you got money, Bill.”
“No, cross my heart.”
“How you ’spect to get a fancy lady ’thout money, Bill?”
“Got none though.”
“Show you a real fine time, Bill.”
“Got no money though.”
“Listen, Bill, tell me the truth.”
“That’s the truth.”
“You got money, Bill?”
“No money.”
“Pore Bill,” she said. “Mammy gone, money gone, whiskey ’most all gone. Give me some of that whiskey there, Bill.” She took the bottle again and, without wiping the lip this time, tilted it to her mouth and drank. “Oh, man,” she said, “like to burn a hole clear thu me.”
She handed the bottle back to me. We sat silently on the bench.
“Well, Bill,” she said at last, “what we goan do ’bout you?”
“Nothing,” I said.
“You wanna go back there in the bushes?”
“Got no money,” I said.
She rose unsteadily and stood swaying before the bench, her head tilted, her eyes squinted, a single gold earring dangling from her left ear, the other doubtless lost in some GIs undershorts. She held out her hand to me then, the white-pink palm suddenly revealed, and said, “Come on, Bill, we goan to church.”
She led me stumbling drunkenly off the path to the spreading cover of an oleander, and then she guided me gently to the ground and pulled the black dress up over her long brown legs and put my hand between them. “You got a rubber, man?” she asked, and I said, “Mmm, yes,” and she said, “Doan you come inside me ’thout one,” and I thought, Minister’s daughter or whore, all anybody thinks about these days is getting pregnant. What would be so wrong about getting pregnant, Daisy-girl, what would be so wrong about shooting some hot white seed into you? You want to be a whore with a twat of gold? Okay, make a baby for me, Daisy, make a baby girl with long blond hair and honey molasses skin to take the place of the one we laid deep in the ground today. “You goan be able to get this up, Bill?” she asked, and I said, “Take it in your mouth, honey,” and she said, “How I know where you had it last?” but she put her head into my lap and her lips gently parted over me, soft and wet and thick, and she sucked deep dizzying draughts and then abruptly moved her head away and whispered soberly, “Where’s the rubber, man?” I rolled onto my side, her hand dropping to cover me and coax me while I fumbled with my wallet and extracted from it the Trojan the United States Army Air Force had so thoughtfully provided. She smoothed it onto me with professional agility, and said, “You goan put that thing real deep inside me, Bill, you goan fuck this mother clear out of your head,” and I thought she had somehow got the sentence wrong, and then she was on her back again, her legs bent and spread, holding me in both deft guiding hands as she pulled me into her. “Now give it to me, Bill,” she said, and I thought, Honey, it’s
Will,
can’t you get that straight, and she said, “Tha’s right, baby, give it to me, fuck me out of my head, baby, give it to me, Bill,
give
it to me,” repeating a litany she had probably learned in the cradle, changing nothing but the name, and even
that
was wrong.
All
of it’s wrong, I thought, I’m choosing the wrong memory,
this
is what I’ll remember for September 15, 1943, and not an open grave receiving my mother’s body! I tried desperately to recall what my father had said to me as I knelt beside the coffin because it seemed to me all at once that my mother was in danger of being instantly forgotten, of disappearing forever into an urgent brown void beneath a spreading oleander in a Tennessee park. I could remember my father’s presence suddenly behind me, could remember the weight of his hand on my shoulder, and then, at last, his words came back to me, and I repeated them in my head as Daisy wrapped her legs tight around me and pulled my orgasm into her slippery vault, not knowing what all the words meant, but taking solace from them anyway.
“I almost lost her years ago,” he said. “We were lucky,” he said. “I loved her, Will. I won’t know how to live without her.”
October
My darling Bert,
How are you, my dearest? I’ve just received four of your letters in today’s mail, dated September 16, September 17, September 20, and September 21. It certainly docs take long for them to get here, doesn’t it? I think maybe there are German spies at work. Have you been getting mine?
I took them all up to my room and read them one at a time with Clara making a big fuss trying to get in the door. She sometimes behaves like nine instead of nineteen! This time, she claimed I had hidden her
Vanity Fair,
which I hadn’t even
seen!
All she wanted to do, of course, was read your letters. You
do
seem to have got pretty passionate over there in France, my dear. I sometimes blush myself when I read them. (Maybe you ought to go see the chaplain, if there is one.)
Bert, do you wear your gas mask around your neck at all times? I read a story in the Record that said too many of our boys over there have been throwing away their respirators or whatever you call them, and then when the Germans shoot their gas, it’s quite unfortunate. Be sure to keep yours and not throw it away. Did you get the socks I sent you? I think it’s terrible that your feet are always wet. Don’t they ever give you any time at all to dry them off? Don’t you have two pairs of boots?
Bert, I miss you very much.
Things are about the same here in Eau Fraiche, except that you aren’t here, and of course most of the other boys are gone, too. It’s very quiet and strange. The Chenemeke was playing
Lest We Forget
with Rita Jolivet this week, and I took Meg to see it. She is quite a little pest, even though she’s my sister. Whenever a love part comes on, she starts squirming and fidgeting, which I think odd for a girl going on fifteen, don’t you? I hope you are not making goo-goo eyes at any of those mademoiselles, by the way. I hear they are really something, those French girls. You be careful, Bert, because I love you very much, and am of course being true to you.
Clara is right this minute making a terrible racket on the Pianola in the parlor because she knows I’m up here writing to you, and she can’t let anyone live in peace, naturally. Bert, I worry about you day and night, please be careful.
I shall have to end this before I start crying.
All my constant love,
Nancy
October 3, 1918
Dearest Bert,
We have had our first four cases of the Spanish influenza, which I think is a pretty romantic name for a
disease,
don’t you? Do you know about it? Has it reached there yet? The Record says it has gone into the trenches because infected boys going over there have taken it with them. I pray to God it does not come to where you are.
It has been terrible here in the States. We were very lucky up to now in Eau Fraiche. It’s like a regular plague, Bert, nobody can understand it. Apparently, you get sick all at once, with pains in your eyes and ears (all over your head in fact) and your back and belly, and with a very high fever of 101 or 102 that can last for up to a week or so. A lot of people have been dying from it. Bert, they turn bluer than a whetstone when they die! It’s really ghastly! Nobody seems to know whether they die from the flu itself (that’s another word for it) or from pneumonia, which can be one of the complications.
Anyway, the Record had a headline in this morning’s paper, and also a story about the four bona fide cases that were discovered in town yesterday. I don’t know any of the people who were stricken. Two of them live over on Mechanic Street, and one is over on Beaufleuve near the furniture factory, and the last one (the name sounds familiar, do you know anybody named Victor Meining?) is out toward the peninsula (but nowhere near your house, Bert). I guess they must have had some wind of this as early ago as last week, because that was when Mr. Humphries, the county health officer, ordered all the theaters and saloons shut down. (Quite unfortunate, too, because the Dolly Sisters were supposed to be coming to The Wisconsin.) Apparently crowds are very dangerous, and enclosed places are to be avoided, though I can’t understand how this fits with what the Record said we should do, namely Stay Home And Close All The Windows. There’s a poem we were reciting here in Eau Fraiche even before these four cases were reported, and it goes like this, Bert—
I had a little bird
Its name was Enza
I opened the window
And in flew Enza.
(Do you get it? It’s influenza.)
I do hope this docs not become an epidemic like in other parts of the country. But most of all, I hope it does not reach
you,
my darling, because you have enough on your mind, and you must stay strong and well and come back home to me when this terrible war is over.
You are of more value to me than many sparrows, so please be careful.
Your Nancy

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