The Writing on the Wall: A Novel (18 page)

Hide him. I had to hide him. I lost my first son and there’s nothing worse a mother can say and my instincts were shriveled up for a long time after that but the pressure over Andy was good for them they had healed during the night or started to heal. I needed to trust how I felt needed to make sure the bastards wouldn’t get him and if they did it would be over my dead body and so sure was I of this so certain that it didn’t seem like an exaggeration but the literal truth.

OVER MY DEAD BODY I told myself. It was amazing how calm this made me feel.

Something else was working on me. I’d messed up the marriage business and been a failure with Danny and never accomplished very much outside work but here life was offering me one more test and I couldn’t fail again.

“So,” I said when he came downstairs for breakfast. “Still don’t feel like killing anybody?”

He stirred his eggs around with his fork. “Not really in the mood.”

“Then finish eating and follow me.”

His bedroom has a closet under the eaves which runs all the way along the top floor of the house so it must be thirty feet long. Only the first six feet looks like a closet but if you push aside the rack of clothes and box of shoes it keeps going like a tunnel. Danny and Andy loved hiding in there as kids. The slanting wall of the closet stops a foot short of the outside wall of the house. There’s a gap and if you push the insulation aside and crawl through you come out onto the rafters over the mudroom.

“Get some plywood from the barn,” I told Andy. “We’ll make a platform just big enough for you to stretch out on.”

He hadn’t been so enthusiastic about anything since he’d been home and before the morning was over we had the hiding place swept out and organized so it was like making a tree house or cave. We stocked it too. Flashlight flyswatter canteen blankets pillows cupcakes chips. Andy was disappointed he couldn’t drag the TV in but other than that he seemed pleased. Good thing too because no sooner had we finished than somebody began knocking on the door downstairs.

It was a Western Union telegram boy or that’s what he pretended to be. He looked about sixty and between that and my never having gotten a telegram in my life I was immediately suspicious.

“Telegram for Andrew Peach,” he said. I still had my robe on and I saw him blushing but it wasn’t my breasts that were doing it to him but the shame and embarrassment of having to lie.

“Telegram?” I said all innocent. “Well you’ve come to the wrong place, sonny. He’s down in Diseaseville in the army.”

The next day a UPS man knocked on the door claiming he had a package for Andy and I told him the same thing. These were like fire drills and Andy learned to scoot into the hiding place pretty quick. August came that afternoon on her weekly visit and it was hard for me since she was so open and loving and yet I couldn’t even begin to tell her what was happening or how I felt. I kept her outside mostly but then we went into the kitchen and I made her some whoopie pies to take back to the Shoe. She was excited because they had traded for their first heifer and by winter hoped to have a bull if they could find a farmer willing to let one go. She ate her pies and I thought maybe her expression was a little more curious and questioning than usual but that was probably just me.

The state police came on Tuesday. I had called in sick for two days but couldn’t do that anymore and I’d left a note for Andy and was on my way out to the car when three cruisers pulled up to the house. I knew all of them either because they lived in town or because I saw them at the hospital when they brought victims in after car wrecks.

“Mrs. Peach?” Robbie Silver said acting formal and stiff. I’ve known him since he was seven. “We have a warrant to search for your son.”

They could have found him if they really wanted to but they not only knew me from way back when they knew Andy from way back when and if you knew Andy it was impossible to believe he could do anything so energetic as deserting. I was smart enough to ask if they wanted coffee and when I went into the kitchen I slipped the note I’d left Andy into the trash. Gus Lombardo rummaged through the bedroom closet but only got as far as the box of shoes and came back out holding his nose.

At least Robbie had the decency to act ashamed. “I’m sorry about this, Dottie.”

“It’s a funny thing,” I said.

“Funny?”

“I never figured you for Gestapo.”

Once they left I waited to make sure they wouldn’t double right back. “Andy?” I called into the closet. After a few seconds seemingly a hundred miles away he called back. “I’m happy, Mom.”

“Well come on out, they’re gone now.”

“I think I’ll stay in here for a while.”

“Come on out, Andy. There’s nothing to worry about.”

The curtain made by his old baseball shirt and Boy Scout uniform parted and there he was stooping under the rod acting embarrassed trying to hide something around behind him and it was a few seconds before I realized what he was hiding was a dark stain on the seat of his pants.

I’d felt protective before this but it was nothing compared to what I felt now. “It’s hot in there, you go and take a shower and I’ll get lunch ready,” I said trying to keep my voice calm. Never in my life had I felt pity like that or determination. All that talk about war with Russia made Perry stock the house with guns and while I got rid of most of them after he left there was a shotgun I saved to scare crows off my garden and what’s more I knew how to use it. While Andy showered I went and found it and put it under my bed. Guns had taken my first son they could damn well protect my second.

There was a lull of three or four days where no one bothered us. I pulled Andy away from the TV long enough to discuss his plans though that was a joke because neither of us could come up with any. What I wanted was for the war to end and everybody be forgiven but one glance at the news at night threw cold water on that. I knew draft dodgers were safe if they got to Canada and I was guessing that meant deserters too but even though the border was just ten miles away it didn’t seem like a real possibility.

Canada could have been Poland or Africa for all we knew about it. The high school basketball team sometimes went up there for games and there were plenty of Frenchies in town and people with bad teeth drove there for cheap dentists but except for bootleggers in the old days and drug smuggling now it was hard to think of any connections with Canada at all. There was only one road leading up there only one border crossing and it was sure to be watched. You could bushwhack through the woods and swamps but Andy was never what you would call outdoorsy and sent on his own he would probably lose his way and starve.

On Saturday we felt confident enough that he came outside and helped me work in the garden through a perfect August afternoon. We talked about taking a swim in the stream to cool off but then suddenly a hoarse gritty stirring in the air caught my attention and my sixth sense kicked in and putting my finger to my lips I shooed him inside.

I went around to the porch and for the third time that summer had a Greyhound bus squeal to a stop in front of my house.

The driver got out a different one than last time but just as polite and put down his stool with a little flourish and even whisked it off. The passenger who climbed down bowed and slapped him on the back so it was obvious that in the course of the bus ride they had become great pals.

There’s no use pretending. What struck me first about the passenger was his blackness and his blackness almost knocked me down. In two hundred years probably not a single Negro had ever set foot in town since we never had slaves and there are no cities nearby and we don’t get tourists even white ones. And his blackness was black there was no brown. Between that and his being so well dressed in a sports jacket that was a little tight on him and a skinny white tie and a straw fedora with a madras band my first reaction was that this was one of those civil rights campaigners come to integrate us.

Big mistake. No civil rights worker had a waist like his which was small as a ballerina’s or shoulders which were like a lumberjack’s or held that ramrod posture and made it seem perfectly natural and at ease.

He carried no bag and the bus drove off without the driver tossing one down. He looked at the hills just like August had and like August seemed stunned by their beauty. He finally saw me and stared for a long time and I don’t want to say he mentally stripped off my clothes because that’s going to make it seem like all I think black men do is go around lusting after white women’s bodies but that’s what he did he mentally stripped me and then was polite enough to soften his expression and let me get dressed.

First words out of his mouth. “Any bears up here? Looks like evil bear country to me.”

“Oh, they’re out there all right,” I said. “They like to raid corn fields at night.”

“Yeah? I want to get a postcard of a bear. Maybe you’ll tell me where I can obtain one?”

He was my age in his forties. His nose was the snub kind you see on little girls which was laughable in a face so manly. Wrinkles or scars slanted up from the corners of his eyes like wings or horns more burgundy colored than black. Like I said his jacket was tight on him and where the sleeves shrank back I could see the veins on his arms which throbbed outwards almost to the bursting point and would have been easy to poke an IV into. Don’t ask me why but it was those veins that made me guess.

“You’re army.”

He beamed. “Twenty-three years!”

“You’re a lieutenant. No, a sergeant.”

“Master sergeant!”

“You’re Sergeant Cobb.”

He smiled even broader. “So he talks about me!”

Already the trap.

“He writes about you in his letters.”

“A fine soldier! Makes us all proud!”

“You came all the way up here to tell me that?”

I thought it was smart to call his bluff right away but he ignored me and waved his arm toward the hills.

“He’s always explicating how great it is up here, raving on about how pretty the beaches are and how the girls are so elegant and about the bars and restaurants and clubs. Makes it sound like paradise on earth so I always wanted to peruse it for myself. Yes, ma’am. His eyes would light up just telling me about it all. And now I can see why.”

Beaches? Blondes? Nightclubs? He might as well have added on roulette wheels and roller coasters. And the funny thing is Cobb looked around like that’s exactly what he saw.

“A fine soldier, always volunteering, always ready with a quip. Out on a route march we came to a river and I required someone to swim to the other side. You think any of those other effeminate no-account spoiled mamma boys would volunteer? Chop chop your boy’s hand shoots right up. ‘Master Sergeant Cobb,’ he says like a real man. ‘I know the river is full of evil cottonmouths and water snakes and crocodiles and leeches and my chances of getting unscathed to the other side are approximately zero but if it’s for the good of the unit I’ll gladly give it my all.’”

I looked him right in the eye. “Sounds like Andy all right.”

“You know that song by King Cole they’re always playing on the radio.” He started singing. “Bring out those lazy hazy days of summer! I think old Nat must be thinking about life right here.”

It’s hard to describe his voice because it changed nearly every sentence but imagine a flat Midwestern accent combined with sounding like an Englishman in a war movie adding in a drawl like Amos and Andy or a Baptist preacher. Either he was trying to confuse people with it or he was pretty confused himself.

But right from the start I was storing up things about him I could use to fight back. He considered himself a ladies’ man. He liked to talk a lot with big words thrown in. He enjoyed playing games. I knew when he left off bullshitting he’d be dangerous and the trick was to know when the bullshitting stopped.

“You must be tired after your bus ride, Sergeant Cobb. Luckily, I have some beers in the ice box.”

He switched to Amos and Andy now even rolled his eyes. “Thank you kindly, ma’am!”

I sat him down on the porch while I went inside. I knew Andy was in his hiding place by now so what I mostly worried about was blurting out something that would give him away. The mosquitoes were bad so I lit a citronella candle and brought it back out with me even though it wasn’t yet dark. Cobb wrinkled his nose at the smell and I thought well here’s one more bug I have to get rid of but all he did was sit back on the rocker and put his feet up on the rail.

“Bottle okay?” I handed him two.

“You dwell alone here?” he asked tilting one back. “No husband around?”

“No husband around.”

“No gentleman friend? Must get lonesome at night. Big place for a lady on her own. Does it get lonesome?”

“Nothing I can’t handle.”

He smiled like I was doing better now and he was really enjoying our little duel.

“So, how is Andy?” I said.

“Andy?” He looked puzzled like the name was new to him.

“It’s been a long time since I had any letters. I understand you’re shipping out.”

He wiped the suds off his lip. “Fine soldier, makes us all proud.”

“You’re not going to Vietnam with them?” I handed him another beer.

“That’s a lachrymose story. Been there twice. Two tours and the second was even better than the first. Got this minor wound in my shoulder here, those VC insurgents shot straight for a change, so they deployed me over to Louisiana to instruct all the youngsters and it breaks my heart not to go over with them and show them the sights.”

I handed him his fourth beer. The longer he talked the louder his voice grew so it seemed like he knew Andy was hiding in the house somewhere and wanted to make sure he heard every word. It was all about Vietnam and how much fun it was. The weather was perfect the accommodations were luxurious anytime you were at all concerned about anything all you had to do was pick up the phone and call in an air strike and go back to bed. The officers were handpicked for their leadership abilities all they cared about was the welfare of their men and the local people really appreciated them couldn’t do enough to make them feel at home.