Comfort Read online

  “Well…thanks a heap.”

  “Like I said, didn’t cost me a dime.”

  Before I knew it, Junior was halfway across the yard and I was alone on the back porch. Thinking how Momma and Daddy had each other on the front porch and how I should just leave them be. Ida and Ellie too—they and their paper dolls didn’t need me hanging around.

  I leaned against the porch post and imagined I was in the Hickory polio hospital. In the contagious ward. I remembered how my daddy come to me in my fever, walking on water and holding me so I felt safe.

  But that was all in my head. He was actually on the other side of the world, fighting in the war.

  I thought about the hard cramping I had in my legs and my arm. And the feel of the hot blankets the nurses wrapped around my muscles to make them relax. How it felt like they was burning my skin off. And how Imogene was right there in the bed beside mine. “It mostly hurts at first,” she said real soft when I hollered out. “After a while it starts to feel better.”

  I could still hear the sound of her voice, playing like a radio show in my head.

  As bad as it felt at the time, there was something about that contagious ward that I missed. Something about just resting and letting someone else take care of me…

  That first day in the ward was like a dividing line in my life. Kind of like the ditch my daddy dug once between his garden and the wisteria vine that was trying to take it over.

  It was a line between being strong one minute and weak the next. It was the beginning of a new kind of fear. Was I going to spend the rest of my life in a bed? Or even die? Those things didn’t happen, but now that I was home from the hospital I was learning one thing. I would never fit in again. I was different from everyone I knew.

  Except Imogene. But she wasn’t around, and I didn’t have any way to get to her either.

  So I decided to go inside and write her a letter. I set the radio on the porch floor. Daddy could carry it in later.

  But I tell you what’s the truth—if I’d only known how it would bring the war into the middle of my family, I would’ve told Junior to give the stupid thing to someone else. Maybe they could’ve handled the news it brought better than my daddy did.

  3

  The Bomb

  August 1945

  I had loved July because it felt so good to be home from the hospital and having Daddy home too. But going into August was like running into a sticky spiderweb. I kept feeling like some furry critter was crawling on me, but I couldn’t see it to brush it off.

  School was about to start, and I didn’t want to go back. I dreaded how other students would stare at my skinny leg and ugly metal brace. And I hated that my best friend, Peggy Sue Rhinehart, would be going to ninth grade without me.

  Mountain View School has all twelve grades in one building, so she’d only be one room away. But we wouldn’t be able to sit together or meet at the pencil sharpener. And when I saw her at lunch she’d be with her new best friend, Melinda somebody, who moved here from Cherryville while I was in the hospital.

  Every day I picked up my crutches and hobbled to the mailbox. And every day Imogene did not write to me. On the way back to the house, the clicking sound of my braces would mock me. She forgot all about you. She forgot all about you. She forgot… How could a couple of pieces of metal sound so much like a real person talking?

  On top of everything else, Daddy was starting to wear on Momma’s nerves. Seemed like no matter how she pushed, he wasn’t going to look for a job. He’d been to the American Legion to establish his veteran’s benefits. But now that his war wound was healing, Momma wasn’t satisfied for him to collect government money.

  She had wanted so much for him to come home from the war. But it was starting to feel like now she wanted to push him out of the house.

  It wasn’t that Daddy was lazy. If Momma asked him to pick tomatoes, he’d head straight for the garden. If she needed him to draw water for doing the wash, he’d be happy to oblige. He just didn’t seem to have any get-up-and-go.

  Still, on the first Monday in August, he promised Momma he’d go to the manpower office right after dinner. It was a damp gray day.

  She fried some squash and I set out light bread, mayonnaise, and tomatoes for making sandwiches. We all sat around the table and held hands—pretty as a picture. Daddy said the blessing and I stared at him the whole time.

  I watched the little bone in his cheek moving while he talked in his soft voice, telling God how thankful he was to be home again and how delicious Momma’s cooking tasted and how he wished everyone in the world could have the same good things.

  Before the war, Daddy hadn’t been anywhere much except down in Georgia where he was brought up. And here in North Carolina where he and Momma moved when they got married.

  Then he went off to fight Hitler and got attached to other parts of the world. And to the people over there. Sometimes when he sat on the porch the pace of his rocking would slow down and pretty soon it would stop altogether. Daddy would always be staring at something then—a clump of grass in the yard or maybe a mud puddle. But I could tell he wasn’t actually noticing them things. He was seeing a field in France or a muddy road in Germany.

  And he wouldn’t hear us when we talked to him. He was hearing people speaking languages he couldn’t understand. He’d told us how they cheered when the American soldiers liberated them from Hitler. “You know what?” he said. “Cheering is the same all over the world.”

  One day when Ida crawled up on his lap he said, “When I was in Berlin I met a snaggle-toothed girl like you. She held on to my leg and wouldn’t let go. So I picked her up and gave her a piece of chewing gum.” His voice got real soft and worried then. “Those children didn’t need gum. They needed houses. And for their daddies to come home. Alive. All in one piece.”

  One thing my daddy prayed for at every meal was the end of the war. Listening to him ask for it—so soft and sincere—always made me feel like it would happen. And soon.

  Well, when I sat down to dinner that day in August, I just didn’t know how soon.

  Quick as Daddy got done praying, Ellie jumped up and switched on the radio.

  At first after Junior give us that radio we mostly listened in the evenings, in the living room. Sometimes me and Momma would fold the wash, and Ida and Ellie would match up the socks. And Daddy would carve little animal shapes out of wood.

  But that was before a foggy July morning in New York City when an American army bomber accidentally crashed into the Empire State Building. Eleven floors caught fire and fourteen people died. It was such big news that Daddy turned on the radio in the middle of the day. And left it on all afternoon.

  After that, the rules about listening to the radio didn’t apply. Daddy moved it into the kitchen so we could hear it while we canned beans.

  So this time, when Ellie switched it on, Daddy didn’t tell her not to. He just said, “Ellie, did you ask to get up from the ta—?” He never even finished the question on account of he realized that the regular program had been interrupted for a special announcement from President Truman. In the middle of the day!

  The president’s spokesman said that the United States had dropped a bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima.

  Our boys had been dropping bombs on Japan for weeks. But according to the radio, this wasn’t any ordinary regular old bomb—it was an atomic bomb with more than two thousand times the power of the British “Grand Slam.”

  I could see right off that my Daddy knew what a Grand Slam was and that it made him real worried about this new bomb. He had just picked up his knife and was fixing to spread a glob of mayonnaise on his light bread. But when he heard that, his knife clattered to his plate, his face went tight and then slack, and I saw the light go out of his eyes. And all of a sudden I got a real bad feeling, like it was my daddy who had got hit with that bomb.

  The man on the radio told us that the Japanese would not be able to withstand another such assault and that the war wo
uld likely be over real soon.

  Well, Ellie for sure didn’t ask could she get up from the table this time. And Ida didn’t either. The two of them jumped up and took each other by the hands and danced around the kitchen like that. They were a-whooping and ahollering and I felt like doing the same thing—at least until I saw my daddy’s face.

  Then I was confused. If the war was ending, shouldn’t I be on my feet—on my crutches, I mean—dancing and singing? But if I was to go by Daddy’s reaction, there wasn’t nothing to celebrate.

  Momma reached over and put her hand on Daddy’s and said real quiet, “Leroy, this is good news—the war is nearly over. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Daddy didn’t say a word. He just stared at the glob of mayonnaise on his light bread. I noticed it quivering ever so slightly. But Daddy was so still, I wasn’t even sure he was breathing.

  I didn’t bother reaching for my crutches. I just hung on to the kitchen table and scooted back my chair and pulled myself to my feet. Then I locked my leg brace into place so I wouldn’t collapse on the floor. I grabbed onto Daddy. And I hung on like he was the bread and I was the mayonnaise and it had already been spread.

  Most times when I hug my Daddy he pulls me up against him and lets me feel his heart beat. But this time he just sat there with his arms resting on the dinner table. It was like he didn’t even notice that Momma had took his hand and I had wrapped my arms around the front of his shoulders.

  I could feel his Adam’s apple working up and down under my hand. And that scared me a little. So I put my head against his.

  He just sat there. He didn’t turn and hug me. He didn’t even squeeze Momma’s hand. Or move at all. Not on purpose, anyway. But then I felt him shaking. The day was so warm and humid we were both damp with sweat and I was practically sticking right to him, but still, he was shivering.

  I looked at Momma, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was staring at him, and I saw a kind of fear in her pretty brown eyes. They should have been crinkled shut with smiling on account of the war being almost over. But she was studying him so hard I could almost see the worry wrinkles being made.

  It scared me to see my parents like that. I didn’t know what to do, so I just left them be. I worked my way around the corner of the table and sat on my chair so I could pick up my crutches. Then I headed for the back porch.

  Ida and Ellie were still dancing and singing some stupid made-up song about the war is over. I couldn’t get to the door because of them jumping around.

  “Stop it!” I said. “That man did not say the war is over! This is not something to be whooping and hollering about!”

  I didn’t know why I said it, but I knew it was true.

  The man on the radio had said that we had more power than ever to destroy our enemy. He did not say that we were destroying ourselves in the process. But I was watching my daddy when he heard the announcement. Without saying a word or hardly moving a muscle, he had let me know that killing someone you hate isn’t the same as living in peace.

  4

  Nagasaki

  August 1945

  Three days after they dropped that horrible bomb on Hiroshima, someone come on the radio and said they dropped a worse one on a place called Nagasaki. When Daddy heard that, he dropped his head into his hands. Sometimes I still wonder how he knew to grieve about those bombs.

  At first, no one realized how many people they killed. Or how many thousands would die in the weeks afterwards. But my daddy seemed to know. It was like there was a voice inside him saying, This is much worse than anything you saw while you were fighting in Europe.

  And for some reason my daddy cared about that. He was supposed to hate the Japs, but it was like he just couldn’t do it. Like he had already done all the hating he could—which wasn’t much to begin with.

  When he heard that news about the second bomb, Daddy stared at the worn pattern in the green and white kitchen linoleum and listened for a minute or two more. Or maybe he didn’t listen. Maybe he just sat there with his heart in some other part of the world.

  The rest of us was hanging on to each other and wondering what to say. Daddy stood up and we stepped back to make room for him. He went onto the back porch and closed the screen door real soft and careful—as if letting it slam would set off something bad in the world. Then he went into the johnny house and stayed for a long time.

  Later that night, President Truman come on the radio. He said the reason they started dropping that new, awful kind of bomb was on account of the Japs bombing us at Pearl Harbor and how atrocious they treated our prisoners of war. He said our bomb would save thousands and thousands of American lives.

  I looked at my daddy when the president said that. I was thinking it might cheer him up. But I could see that it didn’t.

  The president went right on talking. He said the bomb had tragic significance but America should gladly bear that burden. “We thank God it has come to us,” he said, “instead of to our enemies; and we pray that He will guide us to use it in His ways and for His purposes.”

  You should have heard my daddy then. “God!” he shouted. I couldn’t tell if he was swearing or praying except he don’t usually cuss, so I figured it was a prayer. And he was looking up when he said it—like he wanted God to come down there and do something with our president.

  But God stayed right where He was and my daddy sure didn’t know what to do. So he yanked the cord out of the wall and picked up the radio and threw it at the kitchen window. The radio hit the screen so hard it popped out of place. I heard a clanking sound. And then a rustling noise when the radio landed—smack-dab in the middle of Momma’s blue hydrangeas.

  5

  School

  August 1945

  About five days later President Truman announced the end of the war.

  It was all anyone could talk about after the church service the next Sunday. Except my daddy. He didn’t stand under the oak tree in the churchyard and smoke with the rest of the men. Evidently he went off by himself someplace while me and Momma and the girls visited with our friends.

  Like always, the young people met behind the church while the adults stood around out front. It was hot and sunny, so we sat in the grass, and of course Junior brought up the subject of that bomb. “Didn’t I tell you the war would be over any minute?” he said.

  I could see he thought the bombing was a good thing, and of course all the other young people thought so too. “Won’t be long until they show us a moving picture of it,” said Junior. He was talking about the newsreels they show at the movie theater.

  My friend Peggy Sue spoke up then. “Junior,” she said, “maybe you could go to the picture show with me and Ann Fay next week.”

  Well, I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. For years, Peggy Sue’s momma took just the two of us to the movies on Saturday afternoons. But this summer we hadn’t hardly gone at all. I guess it was too much to expect that we would pick up right where we left off before the polio epidemic. But still, I was hoping our friendship would get back to normal.

  We never let anyone tag along to the movies—not my twin sisters and not Junior Bledsoe either. I gave Peggy Sue’s foot a little kick and tried to give her a look that said, Don’t you dare. But she wasn’t looking at me for anything in the world. She had a plan. If there’s anybody I know who can get what she wants, it’s Peggy Sue Rhinehart.

  I’d understand if it was her new friend Melinda she wanted to take along. In fact, I was pretty sure she was already taking Melinda on the Saturdays she didn’t ask me. But why in the world would she want Junior to go along to the movies? That’s what I wanted to know.

  I got to wondering if she invited him just in case the two of us ran out of things to talk about. Me and Peggy Sue had been friends since before first grade. But all of a sudden she was thinking about movie stars, boys, and swing dancing. She’d tried dragging me along to a dance. I told her my daddy wouldn’t let me. Which was true. But what would I want to go to a dance
for? I just wanted to get from one place to the next without falling on my backside. Seemed like every move I made was something to calculate beforehand. Such as getting in the car.

  The next Saturday, when Mrs. Rhinehart came to take me to the movies, I rode in the front seat with her. It was easier than climbing in the back.

  I had my fingers crossed that she would drive right past Junior Bledsoe’s lane. But she turned in and drove up to his house. “I hope you don’t mind,” said Peggy Sue. I couldn’t see her from where I was sitting, but I could just imagine the determined look in her blue eyes.

  “Well, I’m not crazy about it,” I said. “Especially if he wants to see a James Cagney picture.”

  “Don’t worry about that. I told Junior we would see Lone Texas Ranger.”

  “A cowboy movie?” I’m pretty sure Peggy Sue heard the disgust in my voice. “How’d you let him talk you into that? You hate westerns as much as I do.”

  “Oh, they’re not all that bad,” said Peggy Sue.

  Then Mrs. Rhinehart spoke up. “Honey,” she said, “I was under the impression the three of you had agreed on this.”

  “Ann Fay, do you mind if we see a western just this once?” pleaded Peggy Sue. “Next time we’ll make Junior watch our show.”

  Next time? I saw Mrs. Rhinehart watching me, waiting for my answer. I thought how many times she’d took me to the movies and bought my ticket even. I sure didn’t want to start a squabble between her and Peggy Sue. “All right, then,” I said. “Just this once.”

  By that time Junior had come out of the house. Mrs. Rhinehart bent her seat forward so he could climb in the back with Peggy Sue. I didn’t say much on the way to the movies because I was a little bit mad. And I didn’t get any happier as the day went on.

  At the theater Peggy Sue sat between me and Junior. And all of a sudden she seemed especially interested in gunfights. I might as well have been home by myself. They talked so much I almost wondered if they was even watching the movie.