Love and Lament Page 36

  That night Leon learned that the American soldier was hit in the arm and was fine. He wrote to Mary Bet:

  I don’t have time for a full letter, just a quick note to say I am thinking of you, and I hope you are well and happy. Army life has its high and low points, that’s for sure. One of the low points is the bellyaching some of the men do about the food, and how much better it is at home. I’ll be home soon, because we’re making good progress, and I don’t mind if I never have to see another can of corned beef again. I won’t stop here, because the mail doesn’t go out for some time, but for now, I wish you the sweetest of dreams.

  Love,

  LST

  He lay there for a while, seeing the face of the German boy. He knew he would never forget it; he wondered how many nights he would see the face, the vivid blue eyes.

  CHAPTER 31

  1919

  LEON’S FINAL LETTER came from the forwarding camp in Le Mans, dated February 13, 1919:

  Dear Miss Mary Bet,

  Now at last I can write to you and catch you up with everything that has happened. Well, perhaps not everything, because I don’t know if I could put it all in one letter. I look forward to sitting down with you and having a good long talk. Shall we take a picnic down to Mt. Jordan Springs? I can see us now, with a checkered blanket spread out beneath the elms and the water trickling in the background. When I get home, the daffodils should be out, and I’ll pick you a bunch. I know I’m presuming a lot, saying that you’ll still be interested in riding out with me, but it helps me to get through this last ordeal.

  First, to go back to the war. I didn’t explain properly about how it ended on the morning of the Armistice. It seemed that just the day before, we were getting showered by those infernal propaganda leaflets from Hun aeroplanes. I saved one to bring home. It says, “WHAT BUSINESS IS THIS WAR IN EUROPE TO YOU ANYHOW? You don’t want to annex anything do you? You don’t want to give up your life for the abstract thing, humanity. If you believe in humanity, save your own life and dedicate it to your own country and the woman who deserves it of you. If you stay with the outfit, ten chances to one all you will get out of it will be a tombstone in France.” It was pure rubbish, I expect just as a last-ditch effort to stave off disaster.

  On the morning of the Armistice the order to cease firing came just as we were loading the lunch buckets for the trenches. My right-hand man Corn Koonce and me started on forward with the ration cart, because the men had to eat no matter what. We didn’t know what to believe because the firing was going on just like always, thundering and whistling and thumping. It turns out, the Boche were unloading everything they had, mostly mustard shells, and a few of our boys were gassed that morning, after the cease-fire orders had been handed down. Two in our regiment died. Well we got down past the first checkpoint and suddenly the guns stopped. It was the strangest thing after eleven weeks of unending noise, to hear nothing at all. And I mean nothing. It seemed like the world had stopped. Corn said something to me, and I couldn’t even hear what he said sitting right beside me, everything was so quiet.

  That night there was a celebration like I never expect to see again. Both sides were shooting off flares and star rockets, and there was no fear in them—just sapphires and emeralds bursting in the black sky. And we were singing and carrying on so, men getting illuminated on French wine stashed away for such an occasion. It’s hard to explain how jubilant everybody was. We wouldn’t have chosen to be anywhere else in the world.

  Then we were three weeks clearing out all the mines and debris. Our unit had to patrol an area half the size of Haw County. After that we were on the march to Luxemburg, and how it rained! I remember one clear day and everybody was scrambling to get a bath and shave and clean clothes. But mostly we were hiking along past muddy shell-torn fields, demolished walls, tangles of barbed wire, and rows of dead trees. There were whole towns burned because the citizens didn’t pay their levy to the Germans. We hiked so much and on such bad roads, it seemed like we went out of our way to cover every bad road in France. I’ll never forget the sight of one bedraggled woman passing our entire column, pushing a baby carriage loaded with a two-week bread ration from the relief commission. She said she was walking 15 miles.

  When we finally got to Belgium, it was like returning to civilization. There were nice, clean little villages that hadn’t been scarred by the war. I’ll wait until I get home to describe everything in Luxemburg, except to say that it was deluxe living after France. Lots of our boys made fools of themselves trying to talk with the local women in what little high school French and German they had. Despite the hard sledding with the language, there were temptations, but I and many in my outfit carried a picture in our minds if not our wallets of the women we loved. I didn’t need a photograph to remind me of your face and your sweet voice and the touch of your hand. There were other amusements to occupy us, and things to worry us as well. The worst thing was that Capt. Pugh, a boon companion and the best battery commander one could wish for, got pneumonia and died on Christmas day. You might already have heard of it.

  As I wrote earlier, we stayed until early January as part of the Army of Occupation. Then we were loaded into unheated boxcars, 60 men to a car, for a long and trying journey back into France. It took five days and nights, half the time on sidetracks waiting for French trains to pass. I tell you, it was hard not to be angry, many of us waved our fists at those trains and shouted “Is this the thanks we get?”

  Now we’re at Camp Mud as we call it, waiting for our transport home. The food supply is nothing to complain about, at least I haven’t heard any. The problem is the waiting and the sickness. So many have been stricken with intestinal problems, we’re worried some won’t befit to travel. But it’s the flu that is taking a toll. Already, 5 in our regiment have died just while we’ve sat here and waited, and another 60 or so are ill.

  Well it’s late now and I’m thinking of you and wishing you pleasant dreams. The other night I dreamed I was walking through the courthouse, looking for you. I opened every door and I couldn’t find you, and something told me, “She’s not in here, she’s outside waiting for you.” And I went out onto the grass behind the building and you were across the street, waving at me, with the afternoon sun behind you so it was hard to see you. There was a long line of cars, so I couldn’t get to you right away, but you were smiling and your hair was loose, like it was coming undone. We were both happy. And that’s when I woke up. Tell me what you think it means when I see you.

  Love always,

  LST

  On the second day of March, four days after she’d received Leon’s letter, Mary Bet had a premonition. Just as she was waking up, crossing the borderland from her dreams, she saw again the circuit rider in a sable suit. But this time he was riding away from her in the other direction, toward a scarred and rutted field with mist rising all about, and coming toward him on a big chestnut horse was Leon. He smiled in a contented way, but he galloped past, toward the other rider. She tried to shout and warn him away, but she could make no sound. Nor could she move. She awoke, aware that she’d been trying to yell. From downstairs rose the throp-throp-throp of Flora’s treadle, and she wondered what on earth Flora could be doing at her machine of a Sunday morning.

  Flora said she was only fixing a hem on a dress she wanted to wear that very morning and she saw no harm, since it was for church. By now they were nearly out the door, and Mary Bet said, “Flora, whether or not he comes home, I have no need to marry.”

  Flora stopped and adjusted her bonnet, which she preferred to a hat, not looking in the mirror, because she and Mary Bet thought it vain to primp overmuch before church. “Why, Mary, what has come over you?”

  “I’m happy living here with you. What do I want with a smelly old man and his needs?” She smiled in a coy way to try to stop herself from crying.

  “I’ve never said you did, but honestly I think something’s upset you. Have you heard anything since his letter?”

  “No, i
t’s just a feeling.”

  “Why don’t you go out and see his brothers this afternoon. It would do you good, give you some peace. They’ll have the latest news.”

  “You and I think alike,” Mary Bet told her friend. “I had the same notion as soon as I woke up.” She gave Flora a kiss on the cheek, which made her friend smile and blush both. Flora then offered to come with her on the ride, but Mary Bet said there was no need.

  She went out after church, the hour and a half in the buggy giving her a chance to collect her thoughts. Was he already gone and the news hadn’t spread around yet? They could’ve gotten word this very morning. When she pulled into the dirt-and-gravel driveway and parked up close to the old house that Leon’s father had built after the war, she wondered if the quietness of the place meant that there was a death in the family and they wouldn’t want to be disturbed. Who was she to break in on their Sunday peace, anyway? Leon had probably not even mentioned to them that he was going with a girl, a woman, who’d become the sheriff while he was away in training. They weren’t engaged. He may even have some other, closer woman friend for all she knew. She thought it best if she just kept going on around the drive and out the way she’d come.

  Then Leon’s middle brother, Sid, came up from the yard and rested his hands against his fat sides. “Hello, Miss Mary Bet,” he said. His beard was so thick she couldn’t see his mouth move. She was glad Leon didn’t have a beard that like; anyway it wouldn’t be fitting for a school superintendent to look like a hillbilly. She sometimes wondered how he had come out of this family, but they were so kind and gentle that she couldn’t hold it against him. The younger one, Bob, was practically mute in his shyness and she didn’t expect to see him, though he was probably off watching from somewhere. Sid was an incorrigible tease and jokester and he used foul language, but he wasn’t mean.

  Both brothers liked sweets and she had brought along half of a pound cake she had baked two days ago. “I brought you this,” she said. “I just decided to drive out today, or I’d’ve made something special.”

  Sid lifted the waxed paper she’d wrapped tightly around the plate. He brought the cake to his nose and inhaled deeply. “I could eat this right now. And dinner’s still in here.” He patted his belly, which hung over his trousers so that his suspenders seemed always stretched to the breaking point.

  Mary Bet asked after his brother and mother, and when Sid invited her in to see them, she said, “No, no. I only wanted to know if you’d had any word from Leon. He wrote me a nice long letter, but it’s dated more than two weeks ago.”

  Sid studied her as though he was just now putting something together. He shook his head. “No, we sure haven’t. We got a letter about the same time. It wasn’t but about a page. He said they was just waiting on a ship to take them home. Is there something he forgot to tell us, his own family?” He raised his eyebrows in a merry way.

  “What?” said Mary Bet. “Oh, no, no. ’Twasn’t anything. We’re just good friends, and I was concerned about him.”

  “Well don’t you worry. Old Leon can get himself out of a predicament better than anybody I know. If he has to talk the Frenchies out of a boat, he’ll do it. He one time got himself sent home for a week for speaking up to a teacher. He didn’t stay no week, though. He marched right back the next day and talked her into letting him back in. Here I’m telling a tale on him.” He laughed.

  Can he talk his way out of the flu? she wanted to say. Can he talk his way out of the accidents that happen whenever large groups of men get together for any length of time? Instead, she just smiled and nodded and said, “I’m sorry to bother you, Sid.” He assured her it was no bother at all, and seemed disappointed when she said she ought to be getting home. As she pulled the buggy around, she noticed a little patch of daffodils she hadn’t seen before, the first of the season. Surely that was a good sign. But a cool March wind whipped up just as she jounced onto the White Chapel Road, and she felt a shiver through her entire body. Why had she not brought the wool blanket instead of this thin old cotton thing?

  By the time she got home, the sun was low in a mackerel sky and the world felt too big. Her hands were stiff in their black riding gloves.

  FOR TWO WEEKS and two days she waited, going to work at the courthouse, coming home in the evenings to Flora, mending clothes, cooking supper, helping Flora clean. They employed only a houseboy and felt themselves very modern and very industrious, and in these postwar weeks of waiting Mary Bet felt the need to keep herself continuously occupied. She removed everything from the icebox shelves and cleaned out all the compartments; she scrubbed the top of the cast-iron cookstove; she even took a scrub brush to the laundry mangle, which Flora said was the same as washing soap with soap. Why she had to keep herself thus occupied was not something she cared to dwell on, though when on some evenings they went to listen to a neighbor’s Edison gramophone, her mind would drift with the scratchy music to a project left unfinished—the weekly sheets to be boiled for two hours and then ironed the way Essie used to, the walls that really could use washing—and she thought, “I must, I must be prepared.”

  She thought: I have been the governor’s constable in Haw County. I have made a boy see the error of his ways and helped bring men to justice for operating illegal stills, and at least for a short time I have seen peace reign over my jurisdiction. I conserved food, grew a victory garden with Flora, gave up meat on Tuesdays and pork on Thursdays, and served my country the best I knew how. Why can I not now feel settled in my own home?

  After the fall election, Mary Bet had asked the new sheriff if he intended to keep her on as a clerk. He told her he had given the matter some thought and wondered if she would consider a new position—office manager. “All right,” she said, pleased and proud. The board voted on it and kept her salary the same as it had been as sheriff. “Of course,” Flora reminded her, “that’s not near what your cousin was making, nor the new sheriff either. But I guess it’s better than most women around here.”

  One day when Mary Bet came home at dinnertime, Flora told her that a boy had stopped by saying there was a telegram waiting for her down at the depot.

  “Why didn’t he bring it himself?” she asked.

  “He said Mr. Dalton had to give it to you in person.”

  Mary Bet shook her head. “I won’t go pick it up. I don’t want to see any telegram. I have work that needs attending to for the sheriff. I can’t go traipsing down to the station.” She stood in the little vestibule, undecided whether to go back into the eating room or run immediately down to pick up the telegram. She stepped into the parlor and sat on the sofa, her coat and hat still on, her handbag clutched in her lap, and stared at Flora’s sewing machine.

  “Let me get my coat,” Flora said. “I’ll come with you.”

  She didn’t remember the ride down around the courthouse and south to the station, only the sound of Flora’s voice, saying, “It’ll be all right. It’ll be all right.”

  When they got there, they saw a knot of people standing outside the office talking quietly, and one or two of them waved a greeting. Mary Bet caught bits of conversation. “It’s a shame, with the fighting over, and them just waiting to come home.” “Battery C.” “His family’ll take it hard.” “I believe it was pneumonia.” “I heard ’twas a bad heart, but maybe the pneumonia caused the bad heart.”

  Mary Bet looked down the platform as though searching for herself as a young girl at the Hartsoe City station, waiting for her father to come out of the office with the piece of paper saying her sister was dead. She tasted something like iron in her mouth and realized she’d been biting so on her lip that she had drawn blood. She felt Flora take her hand and guide her toward the little office, where she did not want to go. And then they were inside, and Mr. Dalton was standing with a woman Mary Bet knew vaguely—she lived out in the country and Mary Bet could not think of her name. The woman was crying without making a sound, her shoulders rising and falling, her breath coming in quick gulps, and Mr.
Dalton in his stationmaster cap and pea-green jacket had his arm around her, patting her shoulder.

  He sat the woman in a chair and went over to his desk and found the Western Union telegram bearing the name Mary Bet Hartsoe. He smiled gravely at her. But that was the way he always smiled, Mary Bet thought. He had a serious demeanor, had maybe never told a joke in his life. He moved quickly, like a little soldier, but he had not gone to war. Hooper had gone, Leon had gone—when neither of them had to. And here was a man, his pants too short for his shoes, who had stayed at home, just to keep a few trains running and deliver bad news.

  “Aren’t you going to read it?” Flora said.

  Mary Bet glanced at it, though she knew what it said. Her eyes were so full she could not make out the words and so she handed it over to Flora, who took it. “If all goes well,” Flora read, “regiment arriving in Raleigh Saturday, March 22. Then home. Love and fond regards, Leon Thomas”

  “What?” Mary Bet said. “What does it mean?”

  “It means they’re coming home,” Flora said.

  Mr. Dalton glanced at the woman sitting in the chair, her gray head bowed, her shoulders stiff, as though she were an animal trying to avoid detection. “Let’s go outside,” he said.

  Mary Bet went over to the woman and bent down. “I’m so sorry,” she said, resting a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.” The woman nodded and sniffed, and then Mary Bet went outside onto the platform where Mr. Dalton told them that there was to be a reception and parade in Raleigh. The telegrams had been coming in all morning; Sid Thomas had been in earlier to receive one nearly identical to Mary Bet’s.