Carry Me Home (10 page)

I stand up, ’cause I don’t know what else to do. “I was just looking around.”

Ma is all the way up now. She puts her fingers on a box of old junk so she don’t trip. Like the idiot I am, I let my arm fall down and that light spills out right over the lacy junk that’s still heaped on the floor.

Ma hurries to me and she yanks the flashlight outta my hand. She wobbles the light over the mess I made and I know I’m in big trouble. “What are you doing, digging around up here?”

“Just playing, Ma,” I say.

She leans over and picks up the stack of lacy stuff and she brushes it off, then hugs it to her like it’s a baby that’s falled and needs some holding before it can stop crying.

She’s already got the nerves tonight, and now she’s pissed too, so I know I should just shut my mouth and take Lucky downstairs real fast, but I don’t. Instead, I reach down and dig in that old-timey box until I feel them pictures, and I pull a couple of ’em out. “There’s a man in these pictures that looks just like Jimmy,” I say, holding them out. “You’re kissing on him in one of ’em.” Ma snatches ’em right out of my hand and clunks me right on the side of my head and tells me I ain’t got no business snooping in other people’s things. She tells me to get downstairs, right now.

I scoop up Lucky and carry him down the stairs, ’cause he don’t know how to climb stairs that are more like ladders than steps. I hurry back to my room. My hat is in the attic, but I’m still wearing my wood sword, so I take that off and shove it back in the closet. Then I sit on my bed and wait for Ma and the good harping I know I’m gonna get when she comes down.

I wait a long time. A good long time. Finally I hear the creak and the thud that means she’s putting the stairs back up. I hear her footsteps coming, but they don’t stop at my door. They go right past, and down the stairs.

I stay upstairs until me and Lucky gotta piss so bad we can taste it, then I go down quiet-like. I don’t go to the bathroom, ’cause that’s too close to Ma’s room, where she is with the door closed, so I slip outside with Lucky and we both take a leak by the tree.

Ma don’t say nothing to me the next morning. She puts my bowl of oatmeal on the table, then starts telling me all the things we gotta get done in the store today. I mind my Ps and Qs all day, and I wait ’til after supper before I go to Eddie’s, them two letters in my jacket pocket.

Mrs. McCarty lets me in and she tells me Eddie’s up in his room. She asks me how my dad’s job is coming.

“His job’s coming real good. He says them ladies work as good as any man. He says they do everything from heavy machining operations to forging. I don’t know what that exactly means, but that’s what Dad says they do. He says they is all Rosie the Riveters, but that ain’t what he calls ’em. He calls ’em ‘Wings,’ ’cause they got wings on their uniforms even if they ain’t pilots.”

“It’s a shame he couldn’t get a foreman’s job right here in town, but I suppose they had their help already. I’m sure your mom would rather he was home, her worrying so much about your brother. And I’m sure your dad would rather be sleeping in his own bed at night too. People never seem to rest as well when they have to sleep in strange beds. I know I don’t,” Mrs. McCarty says.

“Well, Dad can’t sleep in a bed no more,” I tell her. “His back’s been bothering him for a long time now, so he sleeps on the couch.”

“Oh?” Mrs. McCarty is looking at me funny as I start up the stairs, so I stop and lift up my feet to check the bottom of my shoes, thinking maybe I brought a gob of dog crap in on ’em, but I didn’t.

“Hey, Earwig,” Eddie says.

“Hey, Eddie.”

I pick up a piece of paper that’s on his bed and sit down. Eddie’s got words printed in neat rows down that paper. “You write real good, Eddie,” I tell him. He tells me he’s making a list of things he wants for his birthday, which ain’t coming up anytime soon.

“You want to go fishing tomorrow, Earwig? Dad says the crappies are biting real good at Spring Lake.”

“Nah, I can’t fish tomorrow,” I tell Eddie. “I gotta work in the store in the morning, then I gotta go weed our garden over at Mrs. Lark’s when I’m done.”

“That stinks,” Eddie says, and I remind him that it was him that talked Ma into buying them damn seeds in the first place.

“I can’t do nothing fun right now ’cause I ain’t mopped the floor in the store yet either. I just come by real quick so you could read something for me.” Then I take them two letters out of my pocket and I show him.

Eddie takes one and looks at the writing on the envelope. “Where’d you get these?”

“I found ’em.”

“They’re addressed to a Miss E. J. Lasky. Who’s that, Earwig?”

“I don’t know. Just hurry up and read ’em, Eddie. I got Lucky tied to your fence and, ’case you ain’t noticed, he’s barking like his nuts are caught in a bear trap.”

“It’s from a guy in the Army Air Corps. Hey, Earwig, look, that’s your name—Gunderman. William Gunderman, it says, and this here, this is his rank and stuff.”

“Get to the goddamn letter, Eddie,” I tell him.

Eddie unfolds the page and it is thin like onion skins.
“My dearest,”
Eddie reads, then he stops and giggles. “Hey, this is a love letter!” he says, and I gotta tell him again to just read the goddamn letter.

“Not much time to write. Just got back from the front, north of . . .”
Eddie pauses and scrinches up his eyes ’til they ain’t nothing but two skinny black lines. “Must be like our letters now, how they cut out names and stuff in case the enemy gets ahold of them.” Then he starts reading again.
“We saw little action, so don’t fret. We were there mainly for pilot practice.”
Eddie stops again. “Man, oh, man, he was a pilot, Earwig! A real flying ace like Cap!”

“Just read the goddamn letter, Eddie.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Jeez, Earwig. What crawled up your hind end to make you so crabby?”

“Just read the letter, Eddie. I ain’t got all day.” Eddie sighs, then he starts reading again.

“Rumor has it we’ll be reassigned tomorrow. My plane is running smooth as a shooting star as it is and will run even smoother as soon as it gets overhauled with a Liberty engine. Sorry, I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Writing about things a girl finds dull. Know, though, my darling, that as much as I love flying, that love doesn’t compare to my love for you. Memory of your sweet kisses sends me higher than any plane could.”
Eddie stops reading so he can giggle, but I ain’t giggling ’cause I know who them words was writ by and I know who they was writ for.

“I await each of your letters, and read them over and over. I can’t wait until this bloody war is over and I can come home to you. We’ll be married then, honey. The same day, if possible. That is my only regret. That we didn’t have time to marry before I left. I hope that is your only regret too. Give my regards to my family and yours, my dearest. If you have any word on my brother, please let me know, as I have not heard from him after his training and Ma didn’t mention him in her last letter. With endless love, Your Number One Ace, Willie.”

I snatch the letter out of Eddie’s hands and fold it up real quick. “Wow, Earwig, a real flying ace from World War One. Can you believe it?”

Eddie goes to grab the other letter, but I lift my hand up high so he can’t reach it. I don’t wanna know what it says no more. “I gotta go, Eddie, before Lucky pukes from barking so hard.”

“You want to go down to the crick one of these days or something, Earwig? See if that beaver’s got his dam finished?”

“Maybe.”

“What you going to do with them letters?” he asks.

“Put ’em back where I found ’em,” I tell him. Eddie asks where that is and I say, “In the queen’s treasure box,” and then I go home.

Chapter 13

W
hen you figure out something that nobody told you, that means you put two and two together. I ain’t good at numbers, but I still can put two and two together, I guess, ’cause that’s what I do after I see the photographs and Eddie reads that letter. I put two and two together, and now I know that my ma and my uncle Willie was sweethearts once upon a time. I know something else too. I figure it out when I see them dogs at Mrs. Lark’s, when I go to weed our plot over in the Victory Garden.

There them dogs is, and I know which one is Lucky’s ma ’cause figuring out which dog is the ma is easy. She’s the one that got them pink titties hanging down, and them would be for feeding her pups. The other two dogs, they got peckers plain as day, so they is the boys.

Mrs. Lark shows me the new pups that is curled up on hay in the barn. Them new pups are still scrawny and their eyes ain’t even open yet. Their fur still looks more like stains on their skin than fur. Still, you can see what color that fur is gonna be. The ma dog, she is yellow, and one of them pups is yellow just like her. Three more got white and gray patches like Lucky, and two more is all blotched up with black and brown and white spots. Them two boy dogs sniff around as we look at the pups, and I ask Mrs. Lark which one of them dogs is the daddy. She points to the one that looks like Lucky, ’cept he’s got two pointy-up ears, not one. “Well, that mutt there is the father of these two pups at least. That other dog there, the beagle, he’s the daddy of these two spotted ones. I don’t know who fathered the yellow one; could be either, I suppose.”

“You mean to say, ma’am, that pups can have two different daddies?”

“Yep, they sure can, Earl. Just like two kids in one family can have two different daddies.”

Her words about make my teeth fall out. “Well, how can that be, Mrs. Lark, if that ma and dad is married?”

Mrs. Lark laughs a bit. “Earl, I think somebody should talk to you about the birds and the bees.”

“I know about the birds and the bees, Mrs. Lark. What I’m asking about is people.”

Mrs. Lark scratches her chin, and there is dirt rimmed around her fingernails. “Earl, you know about mating, don’t you? The kind of mating that animals do? Well, people do that sort of mating too. It doesn’t matter if they’re married or not. If they do the mating, they can have a baby, and if they mate with more than one, the babies they end up with can have different daddies.” She gets up then and brushes off her dirty knees.

My head, it’s swirling like there’s a tornado inside it, and I ain’t liking none of them thoughts that’s swirling in there. I don’t get to say nothing else to Mrs. Lark then, ’cause she is leaving the barn, but the next time I go weed the garden, I ask her to come by the pups with me. I point with one hand at the white and gray pups and with the other hand at the blotched pups, and I ask her, “These pups, is they still brothers if they got different daddies?” and Mrs. Lark, she says, “Well, they are half brothers, not whole brothers.” It feels like my heart falls right down into my work boots when she says that, ’cause now I think I know. Me and Jimmy might got the same ma, but we probably ain’t got the same daddy. I look like Dad in some ways, but Jimmy, he don’t look nothing like Dad. He looks just like that uncle in them pictures. I think now we ain’t whole brothers, only half brothers, and even an idiot knows that half a something ain’t as much as a whole of something.

It’s a knowing that won’t leave me, even after I sneak back into the attic while Ma’s at the rationing board turning in coupons and I put them letters back. For days and days, I think about what I know, and I can’t get it outta my head. I wonder if this ain’t one of them things that everybody knows except me. Back when I still thought there was a fat guy with a beard who brought presents on Christmas, Ma, Dad, and Jimmy, they all knowed there wasn’t, but they didn’t tell me. Just like I don’t tell Eddie. I wonder if this ain’t like a Santa thing too, and maybe they all know about Uncle Willie being Jimmy’s real dad, but nobody told me.

Funny how knowing something that’s big and sad makes a person feel different. It takes the happy right out of you, and that makes you feel old. Old as a grandpa.

When Eddie comes over to play, I tell him I don’t want to, and I don’t. When Ma sees that I ain’t playing, not with Eddie, not with Lucky, not with my Captain Midnight plane, she says I am finally growing up. Her saying that makes me wonder if that’s what growing up is—feeling too sad to play anymore. I decide if it is, then I hope to hell Eddie never grows up.

Weekends, when Dad’s home, we listen to the radio, and on the news they talk about what’s going on in the war. I don’t know what to hell’s going on with the war no more. Not when I listen to the radio, or when I listen to Dad and Mr. Larson talk when Dad and me go to the garage to check up on things. There’s so many goddamn battles, in so many goddamn places, how’s a guy suppose to keep it straight? I don’t care anyway. Unless they got something to say about MacArthur going back to that Pacific place to look for Jimmy and Floyd and the rest of them guys, I don’t wanna hear nothing they got to say.

I watch Dad on weekends, and I watch Ma too. Dad’s back is better and he’s sleeping in his own bed by Ma now, but something still ain’t right, ’cause even when they is sitting in the same room, their chairs almost touching, they look like they is sitting miles apart.

I wait ’til Dad and me is walking to the Skelly again and I ask Dad a couple a questions about Uncle Willie. Dad, his legs suddenly get stiff ’til he looks kinda like he’s a marching soldier. “What do you want to know, son?”

“Anything,” I say. “’Cause I don’t know nothing about him, ’cept that he was your brother.”

“I guess we don’t talk about Willie much, do we? He was a wonderful man, Earl. Everybody loved him. That guy could fix anything.”

“Like Jimmy,” I say, and Dad clears his throat, even though it don’t sound like there is any snot in there.

“I ever meet Uncle Willie?” I say.

“No. He died in the war, long before you were born. He was a pilot. One of the first in the Army Air Corps. The Germans shot his plane down over the Marne.”

“Did Ma know Uncle Willie?” I ask. I’m stiff as a soldier too while I’m walking, ’cause just asking these questions is making me feel like I’m gonna get the shits.

“Yes. She knew him. She knew him before she knew me.”

“That Uncle Willie. He ever get married?” I think I must be half crazy asking these questions, but I can’t stop myself.

“No. He never married. He was just a young guy when he died,” Dad says.

“He ever have any kids?”

Maybe it’s a good thing that Lucky takes off after a squirrel before Dad can answer, running between Sam’s Barber Shop and the dime store and not coming when I call him, so I gotta chase after him. Maybe it’s a good thing, ’cause when I get ahold of Lucky and get back to the sidewalk where Dad’s waiting, Dad looks all saggy and I’m sorry I even brought up Uncle Willie. After that, I try to push them thoughts I’m having right outta my head. I try not to think about Ma being one of them bad girls that give their milk away for free and what a goddamn pity it is that Dad’s only brother got killed in the war. I try not to think that my best brother in the whole world ain’t my whole brother, but how does a guy stop thinking about something like that?

When New Year’s Eve comes, Ma and Dad invite people to stop over, and the men drink beers and the ladies drink punch and all of ’em munch the itty-bitty treats Ma’s got on fancy plates stuck all over the place. All night long, they talk about the war, and about who beared sorrows this year. Ma, she even put up a sign she made, and it’s got the names of the soldiers in town whose blue stars turned to gold. Everyone thinks it’s real nice of Ma to do this. “Maybe ’43 will bring an end to this godforsaken war, and our boys will come home,” Ma says. Everyone nods and says things like “We can only hope.” Dad, he don’t hope right along with ’em. He says to Delbert Larson, real quiet-like, “Wish in one hand and shit in the other and see which fills up the quickest.”

Me, I just sit on the sofa trying not to look at Mrs. Pritchard’s legs, which ain’t looking so good in that brown makeup the ladies paint on their legs now ’cause they ain’t got real stockings no more. Them lines running down Edna Pritchard’s legs are all ziggity-zaggity over her lumpy skin. They look like a drunk man drawed ’em on. That brown makeup, it don’t take too well to axed parts, I can see, ’cause that scar is shiny and silvery as a smelt.

“This seat taken?”

I look up and it’s Eva Leigh standing there. She’s fixed up all pretty for New Year’s Eve. “No, there ain’t no one sitting here but me,” I tell her.

Eva Leigh sits down and holds her cup on the lap of her papery dress. “I was hoping to get a chance to talk to you, Earl.”

“What for?”

“Well, today we lost another pinsetter at the Ten Pin. Slim, that’s the guy who owns the place, he’s having a real hard time trying to keep pinsetters. About the time he breaks one in, that boy quits to join up or to run off to the city to work. Anyway, I told him I have someone in mind for the job. Someone who’s honest and a real hard worker.”

“Who’s that?” I ask. I don’t feel much like talking, but I’m trying to be polite.

Eva Leigh laughs and her teeth are almost as pretty as Molly’s. “You, silly!”

“Me?”

“Sure. Why not? The job is nights, Thursday through Sunday, so you’d still be able to help in the store. You’d get your own uniform shirt, and a check every two weeks.” Eva Leigh sighs, one of them happy kind of sighs like the one you get after you eat a really good supper and you’re so full you could puke. “Earl, I feel so grown up now that I got a job. A real job. Not just helping Luke’s ma stitch quilts, even though she paid me a little after she sold them. It keeps my mind off of things, you know? It keeps me busy and gives me something to feel good about. I think working there would be good for you too.”

“I could use something to keep my mind offa things,” I tell her. Eva Leigh grabs my hand then, and hers is small and Lux soft. She gives mine a little squeeze. “Good. Let’s go ask your folks.”

Eva Leigh, she rounds up Ma and Dad, and she tells ’em about the job. Ma starts putting up a fuss, saying she don’t know how I’d do without being prodded and Slim won’t have time to prod me, but Dad, he just asks, “Earl, you want this job?” I tell him I sure do and he says, “Then it’s settled. You’re a man now, and men make their own decisions. If Slim is willing to hire you, you can take the job.” I get so happy, I give Dad a hug.

The next day, I go to Eva Leigh’s house, like she said I should do, and me and her and LJ walk down to the bowling alley. The wind is whipping, so Eva Leigh asks me to pick LJ up so we can walk faster. I pick up LJ and he looks kinda scared, so I fly him in Charles A. Lindbergh’s plane. Soon he’s laughing and making the sound of the engine too.

Slim is in the bowling alley, even if it ain’t open. Slim is a little skinny man with gouges on his face ’cause he had infections in his pimples when he was young. He got a Lucky Strike hanging out of his lips, and his lips are fat and purple like somebody punched ’em. Eva Leigh introduces us (even though I see’d Slim lots of times when I came here with Jimmy and the guys, so he knows who I am), and Slim and me shake hands, just like two people who ain’t never met before. Eva Leigh tells Slim I want to set pins and Slim says we’ll give it a try.

I follow Slim down a little walking path alongside the shiny lanes to a door that would be the door to the little back room where the pinsetters work. It ain’t really a room, though. It ain’t nothing but a skinny hallway back there.

“Each pinsetter is responsible for two lanes,” Slim says. “You’d be responsible for lanes one and two here.” I’m glad that they is the first two lanes you come to, ’cause I know that will make remembering easier if I get the job.

Slim shows me how you peek through the little triangle window so you know when the ball is coming. He yells out to Eva Leigh and tells her to throw a ball down. Eva Leigh laughs something silly when she’s gotta throw three balls before she gets one to knock down any pins. I like the sound the ball makes when it rolls down the alley. It sounds like thunder. Then
crash
!

Some of them pins stay on the alley, and some, they drop down into the pit. Slim shows me how to rake away the falled-over pins to get ’em out of the way, and then after the second throw, he shows me how to put all the pins into them holder spaces, one for each pin. Then he pulls a lever, and up that holder thing comes, and that triangle of pins is all standing up, ready for another crack. He shows me, too, how to grab that bowling ball and fling it along this gouged place that looks like a long gutter. He shoots it along and it rolls right back to Eva Leigh.

Slim shows me first, then he tells me it’s my turn. Slim taps his foot a bit, then he says he’ll go make a few throws or we might be here all day waiting on Eva Leigh to give me a strike. I wait, peeking out that little window, hoping I don’t mess up so I get myself fired before I even get hired.

Slim is a real good bowler. He picks up that ball and cranks it back as he runs a few steps, then
whoosh
, it flies from his hand, spinning and rumbling down that lane like nobody’s business. I grab ahold of the bars on both sides of me, just like he showed me, and I hoist myself up, holding my legs up so my feet are out of the way.
Wham!
Them pins, every one of ’em, they get whacked, about scaring the shit outta me as they crash against each other and the back wall. I jump down quick as I can, and I start grabbing them pins that is shaped like fat beer bottles, and I drop ’em into the round spaces, lickety-split. Then I toss that ball back and peek out the window.

Slim puffs smoke out of his nostrils, his eyes squinting, and I wonder if he can see me too. He’s got the ball back, but he ain’t throwing it. He don’t even take his cigarette out of his mouth when he shouts down the lane, “You gotta pull the lever there, kid,” he says. I whack myself in the head for forgetting, then I pull the lever and them pins drop down all neat again.