Carry Me Home (8 page)

“Luke won’t like it,” Eva Leigh adds as she swats at LJ’s hand ’cause he’s leaning over and reaching for stuff. “But what am I supposed to do? Luke’s only making nineteen dollars a month in the army. I can’t make it on that. I figure if the President himself signed papers opening up jobs to women and coloreds, then I’m just doing my duty by getting a job. I just won’t write Luke about me working, and I hope my mother-in-law won’t either. He’ll be fit to be tied when he comes home and finds out, but I can’t worry about that now. I’ve got to think of LJ.”

Eva Leigh ain’t ever talked so much to me in her whole life. She’s just chattering away like a squirrel on a branch, but I like it. She’s got a real pretty voice.

“Maybe ol’ Luke will get shot dead by one of them Nazis and won’t come home anyway,” I say. “Then you don’t ever have to tell him and get cuffed for lying.” The minute I say it, I’m goddamn sorry, ’cause Eva Leigh is looking at me like I’m one of them monsters up there on the picture-show screen. And worse yet, Ma comes out of the kitchen, her scarf still tied under her chin, her cheeks still pink from the cold, and she’s looking at me like she wants to swat me with her purse.

“Earl Hedwig Gunderman!” she shouts. “That was a rude, insensitive comment. Apologize to Mrs. Leigh this minute!”

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Leigh.” I turn to Ma. “Ain’t like I want Luke to get killed. I don’t, even if he’s rotten-apple mean. I was just telling Eva Leigh the God’s honest truth. If Luke gets killed, then he ain’t coming home, and she ain’t never gotta tell him.” Ma tells me to shut up and then she apologizes to Eva Leigh. She tells me to go finish pricing the bags of split peas.

Eva Leigh don’t stay rattled long. She starts telling Ma all about her new job and how she’s gonna exchange baby-sitting with some other lady so she don’t have to pay a sitter, since the other lady works days at the Knox Lumber Factory now, and she’ll be working nights. “Well, if you have to work, then a sitter is the way to go. Those day-care centers they’re putting up now are nothing more than orphanages.”

While Eva Leigh’s telling Ma this stuff, I see her take a jar of Ovaltine off the shelf and bring it to the counter. “Mrs. Leigh?” I call out. “You think after that Ovaltine there is drunked up, you could save me the label and the foil under the cap, please? There’s premium points there, and me and Eddie are—”

“Earl!” Mom snaps. “Will you
please
mind your manners!”

“I said please, Ma. I’m sure I did!”

Eva Leigh smiles and tells Ma it’s okay, then she tells me she’ll be glad to save me the premium points.

“Eva, about this job. I realize you have to do something, but couldn’t you find another place to work? I hate to see you working in an establishment that sells liquor. It’s just not good for a girl’s reputation.”

Eva Leigh turns away and starts looking on the shelves. She don’t say nothing.

Outside, Lucky is barking, like he always is when he’s tied. Ma is pulling the charge book out from under the counter. She slams it on the counter. “Earl, can’t you teach that miserable dog not to bark like that when he’s tied?”

“No, ma’am,” I say, “I sure can’t. That dog can’t learn nothing.”

Ma sighs, hard. “Earl, go run the carpet sweeper in the living room.” As I leave, Ma is telling Eva Leigh that if the worry over Jimmy don’t kill her, her frayed nerves from dealing with me will.

While sweeping the big rag rug in the living room, I get the notion that maybe I’d better have myself one of them air-raid drills since I don’t get those drills at school. So I just whistle as I sweep, like I don’t even know it’s coming. Then I make a loud honking noise like a horn. Real quick-like, I drop the handle of that carpet sweeper and make a beeline dive for the kitchen table. I don’t duck quick enough, though, and I catch my forehead right on the goddamn edge of the table. I get whacked so hard, I yell like I’m getting killed and kick my legs out, knocking a chair with my foot.
Kapow!
Down goes the chair.

Ma comes running into the kitchen, yelling, “What on earth are you doing in here, Earl?” I start telling her I was having a air-raid drill since I don’t get ’em at school, but she just snaps at me to shut up. “Get your jacket on and help Mrs. Leigh out with her groceries.” As I fetch my jacket, I decide I better practice them air drills more often, ’cause if them bombers come over Willowridge, I’m gonna kill myself whacking my head before that big-ass bomb even reaches the goddamn ground. Before I even get my jacket zipped up, Ma, she starts bawling. “Earl, when are you going to grow up? I can’t take much more of this!” And I don’t know how to answer that one, ’cause I don’t know when I’m gonna grow up.

Chapter 11

A
t first, sugar is the only thing we can’t hog up, but before long, it’s a whole buncha things. We have to close the store down for pert’ near a whole week, and we gotta count every goddamn thing we got in there so we can tell the rationing board. We got to do that in our kitchen too, and so does everybody else. Them ladies sure get in a uproar about that. Mrs. Pritchard says it ain’t fair ’cause you lose eight points if you canned a jar of snap beans, but beans that week might only take three or four ration points, so look how many points you lose. Ma agrees that it ain’t fair, but says we gotta do what we can for the war effort.

Ma don’t seem to give a shit about doing what we can for the war effort when them ration stamps come out, though. There is red stamps for meat and butter and cheese and margarine and canned fish, and there is red and green stamps for vegetables and fruits. Fruit costs so goddamn many stamps that two bites of canned peaches could practically hog up your whole book.

Everything we sell in the store now is got a price on it for money and a price on it for ration points, and like Ma says, you can’t memorize the price of nothing ’cause them ration points change on a dime. If a lady buys a can of sugar peas for six ration points, she ain’t got no coupons to use but for them ten-point ones. She don’t get no change ’cause there ain’t no ration change, so that customer, she gets miffed enough to dig through the whole store looking for something worth three points. Them ladies make a goddamn mess of them shelves, and I’m the poor sucker who’s got to straighten ’em up.

It’s a goddamn pain in the neck, this rationing, and Dad thinks so too, ’cause he’s got his own rationing mess down at the Skelly.

First they ration the tires, and people gotta count how many tires they got on every one of their cars. Then they gotta count the tires they got laying around and turn in the ones they don’t need.

Then comes the gas rationing, which Dad says is happening ’cause people ain’t doing so good on the tire rationing. When that starts, Dad goes into a whizzy-tizz. “Crissakes, just look at this mess,” he says as he’s staring down at the papers he’s got spread out on the counter. “Everyone’s gotta fill out these forms now, telling how many miles they drive back and forth to work. The ones who drive farthest will get a C sticker to put on their windshields, and those who don’t drive far will get an A stamp, and I’ve gotta keep track of it all. Crissakes, how are people with the A stamp going to even get by on this little bit of gas, and how in the hell am I supposed to keep my business afloat?

“It’s a goddamn pain in the ass,” Dad tells Delbert Larson one day while we is standing in the Skelly parking lot. “Ben Olson was in here yesterday. His tire had a big ol’ slice in it. He had to go all the way down to the goddamn ration board, pick up a paper that me and the guy at Texaco across town had to sign saying his tire couldn’t be fixed, then he had to bring our signatures back to the board to get a ration coupon to buy a new one. Now he’s got to look all over kingdom come for somebody with a tire to sell him. I sure as hell didn’t have one the size he needed. Shit, I don’t hardly have any tires left, period. Soon folks won’t be fixing their cars either, if they can’t drive them anyway. Things keep up like this too long, and I’m gonna go belly-up.”

“Did the Texaco have it?” Delbert asks.

“Hell no. And now what’s he suppose to do? He can’t drive over to Ripley if he don’t have enough gas coupons to even get himself there and back.”

Dad gets so crabby, he don’t even sit still and listen when
Fibber McGee and Molly
comes on. Before things went to shit at the station, Dad sat in his chair and laughed his ass off whenever Fibber came up with some harebrained fib to get hisself outta work or a hitch. And Dad used to about piss his pants when Fibber got to talking to that little girl, Teeny, the two of them getting their words so balled up that neither of ’em knew what the other one was talking about. But Dad, he don’t hardly even crack a smile no more. Then one night at suppertime, while Ma is dishing up raisin pie for dessert, he tells us some news that about makes Ma’s jaw drop off its hinges.

“The Oldsmobile plant in Janesville, they rolled their last car off the line last week and turned their whole production over to making shells. With most of the young men gone now, and women taking over the assembly lines, they’re looking for a few men to fill the foreman positions. I contacted them last week, Eileen. I start on Monday.”

“Without even discussing it with me first?”

“I’m sorry, Eileen, I knew you’d be upset, but I don’t have a choice, honey. The garage is barely making overhead costs. I’m hiring Delbert Larson to run the station, at least so people can get their piddling-ass drops of gas to get to work and back. He’ll work for forty-three cents an hour.”

“But the drive, how can you make that drive now with—”

“I won’t be driving it every day. That wouldn’t work. I’ll put myself up in a boardinghouse during the week and come home Friday nights.”

Ma drops her fork onto her plate. “You’re leaving me here by myself, Hank? At a time like this?”

“You won’t be alone,” Dad says. He wags his fork toward me. “You have Earl here. He’s almost eighteen now. He’s good company, and he’s a good helper. You’ll take care of your ma, won’t you, Earl?” I nod.

I’m busy staring at my pie. I don’t like raisin pie, and seems it’s the only dessert we get anymore since the sugar rationing. Don’t that just figure, I think every time Ma cuts me a slice of that pie that looks like it’s made with rabbit turds and snot, that goddamn raisin pie is the only kind of pie that don’t need sugar. I scrape the innards out and eat the crust. When I’m done, Dad tells me to take the supper scraps outside to Lucky.

Ma scrapes the leftovers onto my plate, her fork moving all jerkity-jerk, then she hands the plate to me. Lucky gulps them scraps up like a pig, raisin filling and all. I scratch him behind his pokey-up ear as he eats, and when he’s done, he starts to licking me.

It’s almost dark now, so I untie Lucky to bring him inside. Ma and Dad are in the living room arguing, so I scoop up Lucky and take him quick up the stairs.

Used to be back when Jimmy was home, Ma and Dad, they hardly ever had one of them arguments. Now it seems that’s about all they do.

I don’t like hearing Ma and Dad fight, yet I can’t make my ears not listen. It’s like them times when somebody comes into the store and starts telling Ma about so-and-so who got hurt bad or killed bad on the farm or in the woods while they was working. You want your ears to close up, ’cause you don’t wanna hear how somebody got their hand caught in their corn chopper and how that machine chewed their arm clear up to the shoulder, or how they got clobbered over the head by a falled tree and their head cracked open like a egg. You don’t wanna hear it, yet you just can’t get your ears to stop listening. Worse yet, you even find yourself moving closer to the counter so you can hear every goddamn bloody word they say. It’s like that when Ma and Dad fight. I don’t wanna hear what they’re saying, yet I go straight to that vent and lean over so I can hear every goddamn word.

“You can’t stand the sight of me anymore, Hank. That’s the real reason you’re leaving,” Ma says.

“What on earth are you talking about, Eileen? I’ve got to work, for crissakes.”

Ma starts crying. Seems that’s about all she does since Jimmy left. Cry and yell and work. Cry and yell and work. “You’re leaving home to punish me,” she says.

Dad scratches his head, right on that bald spot that is shiny and a bit bumpity. “For crissakes, Eileen, what is with you, anyway? I’ve been as good of a husband to you as I can possibly be for twenty years, but it’s never enough. No matter what I do, the second things get tough, you accuse me of holding the past against you.”

“Oh, Hank,” Ma says, shaking her head in quick, skittery jerks. “Don’t tell me that every time you look at Jimmy you aren’t reminded.”

Dad sounds like he’s all tuckered out when he answers. “Maybe
you’re
the one who can’t let the past go, Eileen. Maybe
you’re
the one who remembers every time you look at Jimmy.”

That room down there gets cold then. So cold it feels like Old Man Winter is sending ice farts up the vent. I don’t know what they are talking about, but I know it ain’t something good, ’cause I feel it in my guts.

I hear the back door open and close, and it don’t open again until pert’ near two o’clock in the morning.

Three days later, Dad leaves for Janesville. Ma has his suitcase packed, and she’s bagged him a couple sandwiches to take along, but she ain’t hardly talking to him at all. Dad pretends like nothing’s wrong. He sneaks breakfast scraps from the table to Lucky and he asks to look at my MJC-10 plane spotter. “Well, look at that,” he says. “It’s just like the aircraft recognition silhouettes the Civilian Defense plane spotters use.” I run upstairs and get my code-o-graph to show him, and Dad thinks that’s real swell too.

An hour later, Dad is putting his suitcase in the trunk and tapping his pocket to make sure his wallet is there. Ma waits on the back porch, her hands holded together. She don’t even harp at him to be sure and change his socks every day so he don’t get itchy feet.

My stomach feels sick over Dad leaving. “Now I can’t bring you lunch no more.” Dad reaches up and rubs the top of my head, just like Jimmy used to do. “I’m gonna miss that too, son,” he says. Then he tells me this won’t be forever, ’cause the war can’t last forever, even though it seems it already has.

Dad puts his arm up around my shoulder and gives the top of my arm a squeeze. Then he looks like he’s gonna go to the porch to give Ma a kiss like he does every morning when he leaves to go to the Skelly, but he don’t. Instead, he lifts his hand, just a little, and that’s suppose to be a wave. Ma does the same. “I’ll see you two Friday night,” he says, then he drives away.

When I can’t see Dad’s car no more, I turn and look at Ma. Jimmy’s gone. Dad’s gone. Louie’s gone. Floyd’s gone. John’s gone. Now there ain’t no one left but me and Ma and Lucky. And that don’t make me feel so lucky.