January Dawn (14 page)

“Can I help you with something, gentlemen?” Junior asked, walking out of the stall, buttoning his jeans. The cute blonde girl was behind him, her hair and clothes a mess.

The front man grabbed Junior by his shirt, slammed him against the wall, and held him by his throat.

“Jarred, please! Don’t hurt him.” The blond girl barged out of the stall, but one of the other men held her back.

“You think you can come in here and steal my girl, grunt?” The tattooed sailor asked.

“I didn’t steal her. She came to me,” he choked. “Obviously your little pecker’s not big enough to satisfy her.”

The sailor delivered two charged punches to his stomach and then kneed him in the groin. Junior tumbled to the ground in pain.

I stepped forward to help, but one of the other sailors placed himself in front of me. He was a big, bulging man with a bald head and arms thicker than my legs.

“Leave,” he barked, shoving me away with his stubby hand.

“That’s my friend there.”

“You can have him back when were done.”

The tattooed sailor picked Junior off the ground and set him back on his feet. Junior had a smile on his face.

“It’s alright, Tennpenny. I’m just having a friendly conversation with my new squid pals here,” he said, drunkenly slurring.

Jarred the sailor sent two right hooks into Junior’s jaw, causing a trickle of blood to run down his chin. He failed to wipe the smile from his face.

“Jarred, stop!” The girl cried, before Jarred slapped her hard in the face with an open backhand.

“Shut up, bitch. I’ll deal with you later” he said at the girl, now sprawled on the floor sobbing.

“That’s enough.” I took another step forward, but I couldn’t get past the bald man.

“What now? Are you friends with the whore too? Get lost,” Jarred said to me. “Sanchez, get rid of this doggie.”

The bald man twisted me around by my arm, put his boot to my back and sent me face first out the restroom door.

I landed with a thud among the legs of a few strangers. A couple hands kindly lifted me up off the floor. I shook myself loose and the liquid courage inside me sent me back for more. Junior might have been an asshole and the girl might have been a whore, but I’d be damned if I was going to let a few navy squids win this battle of interservice rivalry.

Before my sense of logic could kick in, I found myself barging back into the men’s restroom ready to confront all four men by myself.

“Hey squid,” I said, landing a right hook against the bald man’s face, almost losing my footing in the process. The room instantly exploded in a swirl of smoke and debris. I found myself on the floor choking on dust with chunks of drywall and concrete bouncing all around me. All I could hear was a high-pitched whine that pulsed with the pressure in my head.

My first thought was that I didn’t know my own strength, but as my hearing gradually recovered, I could hear a litany of screams and earth-shaking booms that sobered up my rattled brain almost immediately.

I sat up, dusted the debris off and tried to orient myself. The far wall was gone. Now it was a pile of rubble, a couple busted water pipes, and a clear view of the river. The lump of debris next to me on the floor shuffled. I threw aside a couple ceilings panels and helped the bald man up. He had a gash on his forehead.

“Can you walk?” A nod. “Get out of here.” As he left, someone else came in.

“Colton, are you okay?” It was Alex.

“Yeah, help me get them out of here,” I said, pointing to the five other bodies buried in debris. With Alex’s help, I got everyone out. Beyond bumps and bruises there were no serious injuries.

Stepping over the rubble and into the small crater outside on the riverside sidewalk, I could hear more explosions and screams amidst a couple dozen car alarms and emergency sirens.

“What’s happening?”

“Listen,” Alex said. We could hear what sounded like freight trains passing overhead, followed by rumbling and thunderous explosions. “They’re shelling us.”

“Who?”

“The U.S. Navy.”

The Talmadge Bridge was just barely visible to the north of us. It was silhouetted by a blazing orange glow that emanated from the Navy base.

“Are they invading?” I asked, remembering Gammon mentioning this as a possibility.

“I don’t know. Let’s go home. We’ll be safer there.”

The shrill whistling of the shells dissipated into a low, hollow swooshing as the shelling shifted south. We took the chance to run back to the car.

The drive back to the Redman Plantation was nerve wrecking. Emergency and military vehicles sped through downtown streets at breakneck speeds, heading in the direction of the explosions. There wasn’t a single civilian outside. They must have all ducked at the sound of the first explosion.

The only damage we saw was when we drove by the Port Authority building down the street from the bar. Half of the structure was caved in and the rest had flames towering out of its shattered windows. The missile that struck outside the bar must have been a stray from the salvo that was meant for the Port Authority building.

We made it back in reckless time. Alex swerved the truck to a stop. The house was dark. The only light was the auburn glow above the trees in the direction of town. We bounded the steps with one leap. At the front door we were met with the slick metal barrel of twelve-gauge shotgun.

“Dad,” Alex said.

“Boys, get in here.” Mr. Redman scanned the area outside the front door, shut it and locked it. “Downstairs.” He ushered us to a door underneath the staircase.

In the dark basement, we found the rest of the family huddled on a mattress in their nightclothes and wrapped in blankets. Mr. Redman must have grabbed them straight out of bed.

“Alex!” Mrs. Redman said. “You’re okay. You had me worried sick.”

“Yeah, I’m okay, Ma.” Alex embraced his mother.

“What’s going on out there?” Mr. Redman whispered to me at the base of the steps.

“They’re shelling the city, sir.”

“Did you see any troops? Us or them?”

“No, sir. Do you think it’s an invasion?”

“No, not yet. It’s a preliminary bombardment. They wouldn’t risk invading a city without softening it up first.”

Mr. Redman went over to a cabinet and pulled out a shotgun and a box of shells and handed them to me. “I’m going back upstairs to keep a look out. Stay here and watch over them for me.”

Mr. Redman disappeared into the darkness at the top of the steps. I slid my back down the wall, sat down on the cold concrete floor, loaded six shells into the loading port of the shotgun and laid it across my lap.

The adrenaline in my body had begun to run out and the musty air of the basement mixed terribly with the alcohol in my stomach. I felt nauseous.
I was twenty feet from being killed. If that shell had landed a little closer I could be dead right now.

The roaring hum of another salvo of missiles passing overhead rattled the house to its core. It made my stomach churn. Alex huddled his family together and held them close. I could see their bodies trembling with fright, even in the murky darkness of the basement.

Tess held Lucas in her arms and whispered in his ear trying to soothe his whimpering. She found my eyes in the dark. Tears ran down her cheeks. I wanted to tell her it would be okay. I wanted to hold her hand in mine. I wanted to take her far away from all this. Living in fear is no way to live, I knew that better than anyone.

They don’t deserve this.

I checked my watch. It was six minutes after midnight.

*

The shelling stopped around twelve thirty, but we erred on the side of caution and stayed in the basement until one, when Mr. Redman gave us the all clear to go back to our bedrooms. There was no sign of any invasion tonight.

The kids sleepily moseyed their way upstairs to their bedrooms. Tess asked my help with little Lucas, who was sound asleep on the mattress. I scooped him up in my arms. He wrapped his tiny arms around my neck and rested his head on my shoulder. With Tess leading the way by candle light, I carried him to his room. I could feel his little heart pounding on my chest in rhythm with mine.

I gently placed him in his bed. Tess tucked him in and as she left, she placed her hand on my arm and whispered thank you.

On account of the night’s happenings, I decided maybe it would be a good idea to stay in Lucas’s room that night. If the Yankees decided to shell the city again, I could grab Lucas and head downstairs. Besides, I didn’t want to be alone and I wouldn’t have been able to sleep anyway.

The bombardment had knocked out all of the electricity. There were no fans or air conditioning to cool the house. Only Lucas’s sleepy breaths churned the stagnant air.

I opened the window to let in a cool breeze. The faint sound of sirens was barely audible in the distance.

The candle light on the dresser cast grotesque shadows on the wall. One shadow sparkled upon the wall like a thousand crystals as the candle spread its light through a glass of water sitting next to it. Underneath that shadow was a bookcase, only three shelves high. Easy enough for a child to reach.

There was a heap of books on the bottom shelf, some thick, some thin, the spines printed in all colors.
Why not?

I grabbed an easy-to-read looking book that jutted out of the pile and sat on the floor with my back to the wall.

The cover was bright red, with yellow lettering hovering over a stuffed bear in green overalls. The bear was reaching down to pick up a button that had popped off his clothes. I turned the cover to the first page of the story and I was instantly engrossed. Not so much the words, no, there were way too many and far too big for me to even attempt to read. It was the pictures I liked. They told the whole story.

It all took place in what looked to be a toy store. This teddy bear was the last toy on the shelves. The poor bear figured out that nobody wanted to buy him because he was missing a button. He went in search for it. Making his way upstairs, he…

The door to Lucas’s bedroom creaked open.

“Hey,” Tess said.

“Can’t sleep?”

She shook her head. “I’m too scared. Can I sit with you?”

I moved one of Lucas’s stuffed animals to make room for her next me. She snuggled up close and pulled at the blanket that was around her shoulders.

“Aww, Corduroy,” she said, noticing the book in my hand. “That used to be one of my favorite books. Can you read it to me?”

Why would she ask me that? She already knew I couldn’t read
.

“I was just looking at the pictures.” I felt embarrassed. I couldn’t even read a simple children’s book.

“Well, tell me what the pictures are saying to you,” she said, resting her head cozily on my shoulder.

Time seemed to freeze, and in that moment of arresting silence when the entire world shrunk to the size of one little boy’s bedroom, my affection for her grew tenfold. Her presence and touch filled me with a swirling sensation of anxiousness and bliss. I had never felt anything so real in my life. With her, I didn’t feel alone, or scared of my past, or embarrassed of my inabilities.

The blessing of such jubilation was something entirely new to me. Tess was more than just a warm body nestled up against me. She represented the reverse of all the abuse and neglect in my life up to then. I was like this Corduroy. I may be missing a button or two, but it wasn’t stopping this girl from accepting me.

The nightly naval bombardments continued to wreak havoc on the city of Savannah. Every night for almost an hour, the U.S. Navy would shell the city, targeting mostly government buildings and military installations. In three days, seven hundred people had been killed, half of those being civilians, whose lives were involuntarily uprooted by the deadly artillery. Emergency crews, as well as search and rescue teams from the Army, worked day and night to find the bloodied corpses in the piles of rubble that pockmarked the city.

Because of the increased likelihood of invasion, Savannah was placed under martial law. The once prosperous and culturally extravagant city began to shut down. Nobody was allowed out on the streets after dark. That curfew was strictly enforced by military police.

However difficult these extraordinary turn of events were, the people of Savannah took them in stride. They continued to live their days like normal as best they could. Schools, mail service, movie theaters, banks, everything was operating normally, until they were forced to close an hour before sunset.

When the sun went down, the city was still. Not a soul, not a stray cat, not even a mouse could be found outside after dark.

By midnight, the city would burn with the orange glow of hundreds of new fires. By noon the next day, the city would be overcast with tall pillars of sinister smoke and pale, smoldering ashes.

The artillery never fell anywhere near the Redman Plantation. We were far away from the city. In actuality, we might have been closer to the U.S. Navy than the city they were shelling.

I would sit out on the porch with Alex and Mr. Redman watching the shimmering light of the burning city above the tree line. We brooded in silence with heavy hearts. There was nothing we could do. At least, not yet. Alex and I would be shipping off at the end of the week.
Put a rifle in my hands and I’ll make the Yankees pay for all this careless destruction
.

It was a gloomy Wednesday morning. I woke up before the sun rose and the predawn showers ended. Mr. Redman would be down a few minutes after me. He’d make us coffee and I’d help him with whatever project he wanted to work on. This time it was the pasture fence. It was in shambles and several of the posts needed replacing, along with a number of rotten boards.

Alex came out with tired eyes and chastised us for hammering so loudly that early in the morning. I handed him a bucket of nails and he joined our morning work crew.

“Lift up that end a little, Colton. It’s sitting cattywampus,” Mr. Redman said. I lifted the board up a few inches and Alex hammered in the nails. “There. That looks good.”

“Here comes Tess,” Alex said, wiping a bead of sweat from his forehead. “How much you want to bet that she missed the bus to school?”

“Look at these three handsome men out working so early,” she said.

“Spit it out,” Mr. Redman said.

“Spit what out?”

“You missed the bus, didn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Sam didn’t wake you?”

“No sir.”

“I swear, sometimes that boy doesn’t make any sense.” Mr. Redman stuck the posthole diggers he had been holding into the moist ground. “Alright, let me go find my keys and I’ll drive you.”

“No, you don’t have to. Colton can take me,” she said matter-of-factly.

Alex and Mr. Redman looked at me, bewildered and amazed. There was a moment of awkward silence as I stood there as if I was on trial. Alex knew that Tess and I had been spending a lot of time together, because he had been teasing me about it, but Mr. Redman suspected nothing. At least, I hoped he didn’t.

“You heard the lady,” Alex spoke up finally, giving me a subtle wink.

I handed my hammer to Alex and hurdled over the fence.

“What was that about?” I heard Mr. Redman ask Alex, as Tess and I walked back to the house.

Tess grabbed her father’s keys off the foyer table and we drove off in her dad’s truck. Her school was only a few miles down the road, so it was an easy drive for me. Mr. Jeffries taught me how to drive the tractor when I was ten. Driving a truck wasn’t that much different. Whenever Alex and I would go out, I’d watch what he did when he drove. He gave me a few cracks at the wheel. It wasn’t so hard. I was a fast learner.

With Tess navigating me, I got her to school on time. The school was a two story, brick structure with a covered walkway leading to the front door.

I pulled up to the curb in front of the main building. There were clusters of students lounging around talking, waiting for class. Most of them were female, I noticed. The few males I did see were very young. Then I remembered what Alex said about Army recruiters taking kids right out of school.

Tess waved to a group of her friends and then unclipped her seatbelt. “Thanks for driving me.”

“Anytime.”

“You don’t like to talk much do you?” she asked.

“Not really, no.”

She giggled and said, “A man of few words,” as she got out of the truck. She grabbed her book bag from the bed of the truck and reappeared. “I have a volleyball match after school today if you want to come. Momma said she couldn’t go and Dad’s always busy doing something. It’d be nice to have someone there to cheer for me.”

“I’d love to.”

“Great. The game’s at four.” She shut the door as the school bell rang and gaily trotted to her friends. They circled around her, barraging her with questions about the strange boy driving her to school. I could see them all giggling when they took their turns peeking back at me as they walked to class.

I geared the truck into drive and followed my memory back home.

*

I worked with Alex and Mr. Redman the majority of the day. We quickly discovered that fixing the fence would be a multi-day project.

A little after three o’clock I took a shower and put on fresh clothes. I already had asked Mr. Redman if I could borrow the truck to go see Tess’s game. He said yes.

I went back into the bathroom to grab my watch that I left on the sink. When I came back into the bedroom, Lucas was there waiting.

“Hey buddy,” I said, sliding on a belt.

“Where you going?”

“I’m going to watch Tess’s volleyball game.”

Lucas rubbed the sleep from his eyes with his fist. He had just woken up from his customary after-school nap.

“Can I come?”

“You got to ask your parents.”

I followed him downstairs, his little legs moving almost as fast as his mouth saying “momma” over and over again.

“What honey?” Mrs. Redman was washing dishes in the sink.

“Can I go to Tess’s volleyball game with Colton?” He asked, tugging at her pant leg.

Mrs. Redman wiped her hands off on a dish towel and looked up at me.

“No, baby. You have homework to do.”

“But Momma, it’s so easy. I can do it later.”

“I said no, Luke.” She looked at me again with scornful eyes. I felt like she was really saying no to me.

“Let him go, Beth.” Mr. Redman’s voice came from the library across the hall.

“Silas,” she huffed as he came into the kitchen.

“It’d be good for him. Those boys spend half their day at school and the rest cooped up in this house. Let him go. He can take Ben too.”

Mrs. Redman turned red in the face and said, “Silas, this is the safest place for them.”

“They’ll be fine Bethany. Colton will bring them home well before dark, won’t you, Colton?”

I nodded and suffered through Mrs. Redman’s fiery glare.

“Yeah Mom, Colton will take care of me. He’s an army man like Daddy and Alex,” Lucas said.

“I want him back by five o’clock. Not a minute later.” And with that we were gone. I didn’t need to experience Mrs. Redman’s wrath any longer than I had to.

The volleyball game was in a musty gymnasium at Tess’s school. The walls were a whitish-blue, with dark blue bleachers and a shiny, polished court. There were maybe thirty other people that came to watch the game. We sat in the third row and clapped loudly when Tess’s team came out of the locker room. She smiled and waved at us as she jogged by in her team outfit, a green jersey with the number seven on it, short black shorts with matching knee pads and shoes.

The whistle blew to start the match.

It didn’t take me long to understand the concept of the game.

Tess’s team took the lead quickly, but soon was down fifteen to fourteen. I’d gone to get a couple hot dogs for the boys. When I returned, Tess’s team was up by one.

“What I miss?” I asked.

They didn’t answer me. They were too busy eating their hot dogs.

The other team tied up the game with a spike to center court. Tess’s coach called time out. Tess looked our way and smiled as she approached the bench and toweled the sweat off her face.

“Tess likes you,” Lucas said, chewing his hotdog with an open mouth.

“Why do you say that?” I asked.

“Cause she said so.”

“When?”

“I heard her and Alex talking last night.”
You sly little devil
. A whistle shrilled at the end of the timeout.

“Oh yeah?”

“And then she started crying and saying that she didn’t want you and Alex to leave.”

I hadn’t even thought about having to leave. I’d lived in the moment the entire week, nearly forgetting that I only had a few days left before I headed off to war. I didn’t want to leave. I loved living at the Redman’s.

Tess scored the next point for her team with a powerful spike over center court. The score was now twenty to twenty.

“Are you a good army man?” Lucas asked, his blue eyes peering up at me.

“I’d say so. What do you think?”

“You’re really nice. Daddy told Momma that they had to watch out for bad army men.”

“You don’t worry about those bad army men, okay? Alex and I are going to deal with them,” I said, rustling his tufty hair.

“Okay.” A little boy shouldn’t have to worry over such grown up things.

Lucas smeared a little mustard on his chin. I wiped it off with my napkin as he returned his focus back to his sister.

“Are you going to kill the Yankees?” Ben asked.

Ever since Basic, killing was on the back of my mind. We had only shot at paper targets. Hardly a substitute for the flesh and bone of a human body. Now that the war was right around the corner, the idea of killing another human being outright terrified me.

“I don’t know, Ben. I’ll do whatever I have to do to protect you guys.”

Tess’s team went up twenty-three to twenty-two.

“You’re coming back though, right?” Lucas asked, his little legs swinging off the edge of the seat.

“Yeah buddy, I’m coming back,” I said, not for one second believing otherwise.

“You promise?”

“I promise.”

The buzzer announced the end of the game and both teams lined up to shake hands.

The gym cleared out, but the three of us stayed and watched the maintenance guy re-polish the floor as we waited for Tess. She came out a few minutes later, her backpack flung over her shoulder and a frown on her face.

“Great game,” I said. She gave me a high five and then hugged Lucas and Ben.

“Yeah, but we lost.”

“But you didn’t give up.”

We pulled up to the house at four fifty-eight. Two minutes shy of Mrs. Redman skinning my hide.

*

Mrs. Redman cooked another scrumptious dinner for the family, all the while, refraining from any interaction with me. I don’t know what she was mad about, I brought her boys back before five. Either way, I stayed out of her way as best I could.
Perhaps I’m overstaying my welcome.

At dinner, Lucas couldn’t stop talking about the volleyball game. Tess picked a fight with Sam for not waking her up for school. Sarah was getting aggravated because Ben kept flinging food at her. And Alex and his father talked about the war, again. I sat there, enjoying the family chaos.
I wouldn’t have it any other way.

After dinner, I had a beer with Alex on the back porch and listened to the nightlife, all the crickets, owls, katydids and cicadas that give the night its familiarly soothing din of clicks, whistles and hoots.

Lucas allowed me to borrow his Corduroy book and every night I’d sit down with Alex and stammer out a few words. I was learning how to read. I mean actually read.

If we heard someone coming out of the house, Alex would sit on the book to hide it. He knew how embarrassed I felt about the matter.

After two beers and a slurry of mispronounced words, I told Alex goodnight and withdrew to my room. I liked a little me time at the end of the day.

With Corduroy in hand, I sat down on the edge of my bed and decided to give reading a try on my own.

Sudden…ly…he…felt…the…f-ffloor…move…moving…un…under…him. Qu…qui…quit…by…acts…actsdent…he…stepped…on…to…an…exlater…and…up…he…went.