Fireworks Over Toccoa (17 page)

As much as Lily wanted to stay in the forest or run off with Jake, the duty of which her father spoke became clearer in her mind with the rising sun. She was leaving the wood and its fantasies, not unlike the many times she had run home from here as a girl, and in moments she would have to make a choice about this man beside her, this beautiful man, and that choice was becoming clear. Toccoa was her home, she told herself, and she had more than just a life here, more than what she had told him about during their dinner in the field, more than what she had told herself—she had a duty, to which she had committed herself.

Feeling the fog, bodiless and thick, on her face, Jake’s hand in hers, as she walked out of the woods she closed her eyes and let his love pour into her. Could that be enough? Could she keep it close, let it feed her spirit and not pull her down when he was gone?

She thought she could. Yes, she thought she could do what she
had
to do, what she knew she had to do.

They approached the Packard parked on the side of the road. When they got there, Lily turned to Jake, grabbed both his hands, and lifted her chin as bravely as she could.

“Listen to me,” she said more intensely than he had ever heard her. “I want you to find someone. Do you hear me? I want you to take that passion of yours and find someone wonderful and give it to her. Give it all to her. Do you hear me?!”

Jake just stared at her, his heart breaking. He knew she was right for going. If there was one thing he understood, it was the calling of duty. And her strength only made him love her more.

“Will you do that for me?” she pleaded.

He did not respond. He could not respond.

“Jake, listen to me.” She put her hands on his face and held him tightly. “Just because the sky is already filled with stars, it doesn’t mean you can’t make your own.”

And she kissed him, deep and quick, and she turned and got in her car. She started the engine, put it in gear, pulled onto the road, and drove off.

She watched him in the rearview mirror, standing in the rain, getting smaller and fading away, tears falling down her face.
I will never see him again
, she thought to herself, she would never see him again, and it was no longer an idea in the distance, it was real and it was happening, right before her, he was fading away and disappearing right before her eyes and so was his love and all that they had shared and ever could have shared, it was getting smaller and she could feel it going and it was breaking her into tiny countless immeasurable pieces inside, and as hard as she had known it was going to be, this was worse, unfathomably worse.

He just stood there on the side of the road, oblivious to everything but her driving away. The emotionless veil falling on him again, the deadness beginning to set his heart to stone once again, and inside he fought it, telling himself not to lose what they had, not to let go what she had kindled in him.

Suddenly she stopped the car.

Red brake lights shone brightly through the mist.

She threw the door open and jumped out of the Packard. She ran toward him. He started walking toward her and then broke into a run.

They met and embraced in the middle of the road, the rain still falling around them.

“I can’t give you up! I can’t!” she said, sobbing.

“Then don’t.”

They kissed. And in an instant the entire world came alive once more.

“Take me with you,” Lily said.

“Anywhere you want.”

Committing herself to leaving Jake for even those few moments, watching him fade away behind her—the
reality
of it—hit Lily with the recognition that as important as her duty was to Paul Woodward, her obligation to fulfill her commitment to serve as his wife, there was an even greater calling, and Paul Woodward would survive her response to it, maybe even better with someone more suited for him, surely, even better, someone who did not carry what she carried when she looked in that rearview mirror, and that, someday, she began to believe, might heal the damage that this would do.

“I’ll tell him when he comes home,” she said, feeling both elated and scared but also determined. “I’ll meet you in the field as soon as I can get away and I’ll leave with you after the show tomorrow.” She kissed him again. “Nothing is going to keep me from you. Nothing.”

Lily jogged back to the Packard. Again, Jake stood there and watched her drive off, this time until she had finally disappeared down the road.

Toccoa, July 3, 1945

Early in the morning, Lily Davis Woodward, twenty years old, her entire life before her, pulled up to her big house with the wraparound porch on the northern edge of Toccoa prepared to make her fate.

She parked the Packard, got out, slammed the door behind her, and as she began to approach that porch…

A cell phone rang.

Toccoa, 2007

Captain Stokes was so captivated with eighty-two-year-old Lily’s story that she didn’t even notice Colleen’s cell phone ringing in the Stephens County Historical Society office. Colleen finally answered it.

“I’m sorry,” Colleen said into the phone. “No. I won’t be there. I’ll call you later. I…I can’t explain right now. I will call you later.”

Lily knew that her granddaughter was talking to her fiancé, who was none too pleased with her right now. But Colleen, for once, didn’t seem to care.

Colleen stood, walked away from the table, and continued the conversation in private across the room. Clearly, her fiancé was upset that she was still here and not meeting him, but she was taking a stand. Lily just watched, the haze of emotion from her story still hanging over her as she rested her voice for a few moments.

Stokes got up and turned on some lights in the office, as it was getting late and the sunlight was fading.

After a few moments, Colleen hung up, turned off her phone, and put it away. She walked back over to the table and sat, exchanging a long silent look with Lily.

“What did you do, Grandma?” Colleen finally said, much more interested in Lily’s life right now than her own.

Stokes expectantly sat back down as well.

“I walked up the steps to my house,” eighty-two-year-old Lily continued, sadness now filling her eyes. “Ready to tell Paul everything. It had been three years. It would hurt him, of that I was fairly certain. But three years. I was a child when we married. I truly felt he would understand that I had changed. And after all, was it really my responsibility to stay married to Paul when I felt what I did for Jake? Was there really a duty greater than what I felt in my soul? Turns out, there was.”

As twenty-year-old Lily approached her porch, Walter Davis opened the front door of Lily’s house. In the light of the new day, he looked tired and weathered as he walked out onto the porch. Lily froze on her walkway for a moment when she saw him standing there. She took a deep breath and then marched up the steps with her head up. As she reached the porch and approached her father, just as she was about to start speaking, he spoke first.

“Lily, there’s been an accident,” Walter Davis said.

She stopped in her tracks.

As she stood there on the porch trying to process what this meant, Honey burst out of the front door, hysterical, and threw her arms around Lily.

Stokes and Colleen just gazed at the old woman who spoke to them in the office.

“There were eighteen souls on board the C-54,” Lily explained evenly to them. “All of them perished on the treeless plains of Nova Scotia. They said the plane missed its flight window and encountered an unanticipated storm, the far northern edge of the same system that came through Toccoa that night. The plane charted a quick course around it, but the storm was bigger and more violent than expected. It’s funny how things work out. Sixty million people died during the war, half a million Americans. Paul Woodward survived all that but perished just a few hundred miles from home because his plane simply ran out of gas. You see, as it turns out, that path you choose might never take you in the direction you had thought. Jake was right. We make our plans, but the difference between life and death is a breath, a heartbeat, the direction we choose to go. So in the end, there actually was something that could keep me from Jake Russo. Not the responsibility of being someone else’s wife. But the duty of being a widow.”

Nearly every moment on that terrible day in 1945, Lily’s house was filled with a constant stream of people. They surrounded her. She looked dazed, a reaction most fully expected, but those who got near her could see that it was deeper, trancelike, to those who got very close, frighteningly so.

She had found love, been ready to give it up, then decided to throw everything away for it no matter what, and then to be hit with this…this entirely unexpected act of nature…it was more than she ever could have imagined. If anything, what did it all mean?

On the outside, limply, she found herself going through the actions of accepting expressions of grief, while inside hair-trigger actions that had profound repercussions on not just her life but the lives of everyone she’d ever loved and known and probably ever would love or know raveled through her head like writing on biblical scrolls, and a state of shock seized her.

“All day and all evening, they came and went, as they had in so many houses in so many American towns. This was an especially all too common scene in Toccoa during those years. And the town was prepared to turn out comfort at a moment’s notice. They came from all over North Georgia. The Piedmont Driving Club ladies. The Commerce Club gentlemen. The mayor of Gainesville came to my house and held my hand. Many of the company folk even came up from Atlanta. I hear that Robert W. Woodruff himself paid a call late in the day, but I did not see him. It didn’t matter that Paul’s plane did not go down in combat, it didn’t matter that technically he was not under arms for the military. We were given the same respect and gratitude and condolences as any other beloved members of the community who had lost someone making the greatest sacrifice for his country and his family.”

That night, her house bustling with friends and neighbors, business leaders and area dignitaries, Lily stood alone on her porch and looked out over the dark sky. It seemed even darker than usual.

She thought about disappearing into the night. She thought about running off. But before she acted on those thoughts, her father came out and joined her. He put his arm around her and stood by her, silently.

Honey stepped out on the porch, visibly moved by the image of her husband and daughter standing together. She stood near them and, again, broke down with grief. Honey was in-consolable, but Walter tried to soothe her as best he could. Facing Lily, he wrapped his arms around Honey, who cried on Walter’s shoulder. Lily just watched her mother grieve openly, which only drove Lily’s pain deeper and further into her. More than anyone, Walter saw Lily’s internal anguish. More than anyone, he understood it precisely.

While stroking the back of his wife’s head, Walter Davis looked intently at his daughter. “Time. Give it time,” he said.

Comforted, Honey nodded into her husband’s shoulder. But more than words of comfort, more than wise counsel, it was a request, perhaps even a plea.

Lily nodded to her father, knowing that he was talking not to Honey but to
her
. Pacing the porch, considering the dark night, Lily ran it over in her mind.
Time, give it time.

“On July 4, 1945, after spending much of a painful night with Mr. and Mrs. Woodward going through Paul’s things, with an ever-increasing stream of people again pouring into my house with flowers and casseroles of every imaginable variety, the funeral arrangements were quickly set and finalized. Paul’s mother’s father had been an Army officer who served and died honorably in the First World War and was granted burial rights at Arlington. With a little help from the company, those rights were also granted to Paul. But we all had to leave for Washington immediately. So late in the day on the Fourth we went to the train depot. Platform Five, it was.”

With Colleen and Stokes leaning forward, enthralled, Lily pointed out the glass window of the office. “That one, right over there.”

“Didn’t you think about going to Jake? Or sending him a note?” Colleen was incredulous.

“You have to understand. To leave my husband was one thing. It would hurt Paul and embarrass my mother and anger my father. It would be a scandal, but, eventually, they would all get over it. People would come to understand that I married when I was a child and I met my true love years later and they would eventually forgive. But to leave my deceased husband was something very different. To run off with a man I’d just met, leaving my family and community instead of attending my husband’s funeral and grieving with his parents and my parents and being a dutiful widow…it would destroy everyone I ever cared about. It would forever tarnish Paul Woodward’s memory. My actions at his death would be the defining event of his life. I couldn’t do that to him. Partly because I felt responsible.

“Everyone I had ever known and ever heard about was grasping my hand and I couldn’t help but wonder at the strangeness of it all, I couldn’t help wondering if I had somehow caused Paul’s death, because I had wished for a way out—I had prayed for it. ‘Guilty’ is too simple of a word to describe how I felt, but I have no other to offer. Of course I thought about going to Jake, but my father’s words, his plea, kept coming back to me, kept rising above all else. Time. This was not the time to run off with someone. Time. To be a widow. Time to show respect for a husband’s life. Time for duty. And for penitence. Of course I thought about writing a note. While the whole world grasped at me, and I sorted through my husband’s possessions with my husband’s mother and my mother, and his body was recovered and shipped and prepared and the funeral set and we were ushered off to the train, the whole time instead of grieving I composed that note in my head.
Wait for me, my darling. My duty calls, but I will return. And I will find you. Just give our love some time.
But I did not send it. How would I? How could I?”

On Independence Day, 1945, in the early evening, the Davises and the Woodwards drove to the depot together in Walter’s 1942 Cadillac sedan. They drove down Highway 123 until it became Currahee Street, which took them into the center of town. They turned on Pond and then on Doyle, driving past Belk-Gallant and the Ritz and Keener’s Market.

Downtown Toccoa was festooned with red, white, and blue ribbons. The remnants of the storm had been swept away and the town was celebrating. A brass band was warming up on the square in front of the court house. People ate hot dogs and candy apples and ice-cream cones. Children carried sparklers through the streets. Teenagers held hands. Swing poured out of the Hi-De-Ho Club, and through its big front windows Lily could see the silhouettes of couples dancing. Numbly Lily stuck her head slightly out the open window of the car and just stared, unmoved, as though watching a world in which she was no longer an inhabitant.

The Cadillac took a left on Alexander Street and parked in front of the depot. Several porters were waiting and they rushed to the car. The Director of Operations for the depot was also waiting, and he made sure that the Davises and the Woodwards and their luggage were ushered as comfortably as possible to Platform Five and onto the Washington Vestibuled Limited, which came into the depot just minutes after their arrival.

The Toccoa rail yards were always among the busiest between Charlotte and Atlanta, and tonight was certainly no exception. Iron clanged and soldering sparks lit the night as a heavy black engine was repaired in the round house. A water pump screeched and coal clattered down a chute as a southbound train was readied on the tracks.

Northbound Platform Five at the Toccoa Train Depot was teeming with people. Flagmen and conductors, firemen and porters, all scurrying to and from their trains. Soldiers in uniform arriving for the homecoming the military had scheduled. Partygoers and revelers who had come in from all around North Georgia for the celebration. A radio blasted music and a crowd of young people danced and drank bourbon and celebrated life.

Looking exhausted beyond her years, Lily, along with the Woodwards and the Davises, said good-bye to friends and boarded the train.

At nightfall, the Washington Vestibuled Limited, a deluxe liner with well-appointed all-private sleeping cars, luxurious lounge and dining cars, left the Toccoa depot heading up the Atlantic seaboard. As the Davises and Woodwards settled into their staterooms, Lily stood on a platform between cars, looked out an open door, and watched as the train pulled away.

The events of the last five days had been unlike anything she had ever encountered, had ever considered. She had no reference point to calibrate her feelings, no compass to point her. As she looked out the train door, her town beginning to move under her and away, the sum of it all left her disoriented and numb.

When the train began to gain speed, suddenly a great quaking explosion sent a shock wave through the air and a rumbling through the ground. She looked out and saw dozens of silver threads of light shooting into the sky and then exploding in a grand and splendent synchronous display of color and light and sound.

She grasped the handrails on the platform, leaned out over the tracks, peered down the car, and saw faces, scores of faces, pressed up against the window glass, looking up.

It was Jake’s show, and it was magnificent, unlike anything that Lily or anyone else on that train had ever seen before.

“I thought about him alone in the shadows of the field that night, engraving the sky with his thoughts and emotions, this passionate, beautiful man, who had covered me with his body and blown on my knee and whispered to me about the secrets of his heart while he held my face and loved me. And suddenly I was alive again.”