Copyright © 2016 by Jim Shaffer
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This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintended.
James Shaffer
James Shaffer was born and raised in Western Pennsylvania and went to college in New York. He once took a Greyhound bus across the USA from New York to San Francisco where he managed cinemas for six years. After, he moved to France and stayed for ten years. He now resides in the UK. He’s had some thirty short stories published in on line magazines. This is his first novella.
Dedications
This story is dedicated to my good friends from my San Francisco days:
Don, Roger, Dale and Lara. Thanks guys for the movies.
Prologue
I landed on this earth on April 24, 1950. “Landed” was the way my mother, Jenny Lee Piper, described it. She laughed every time she told the story. I’d heard it many times.
“It happened right outside Amarillo. Yesiree. Hard to believe, I know, ‘cause nothin’ much ever happens inside Amarillo, but that’s the way it was. I was there.
“We was livin’ in what they call a tarpaper house off a flat piece of dirt road in the middle of some fields in the middle of nowhere. We had running water ‘cause we had a well, but if the windmill wasn’t turning, we didn’t have much pressure. Electricity didn’t run out as far as we were from town, so we had a gasoline generator that worked half the time. The other half, old kerosene lamps did the trick. I wouldn’t call it hard times, just our times, the times we were livin’ in.
“Tom was already in the Army, and he’d be off fighting the Commies in Korea later, in the summer. He wasn’t around to watch his son gettin’ born. But I was there.
“The local midwife was Helen Pearl. There was no ambulance out where we were. You did for yourself back then. Helen knew what she was doin’ anyway. Hell, she’d delivered lots of babies. It was my first, but I weren’t scared. It sure hurt though. People try to tell you ‘bout the pain, but it don’t do no good. Talkin’s one thing. Doin’s another.
“Anyway, we boiled water and spread out clean sheets on the bed. Helen brought in her supplies of linen cloths and birth utensils. She thought she had everything she needed. I did too when she brought in her bags, rattling and clanging worse than a tinker’s wagon.
“I climbed on the bed when the contraction pain started coming fast and furious. I thought, Let’s get this done. I laid back, pulled up my legs and placed my feet flat on the bed. When I spread my legs open, they looked like butterfly wings. I knew I wasn’t going to fly away anywhere for a while yet, but in the grip of some of them spasms, I wished I could.
“Helen kept watch and timed the contractions. I started working on pushing. This went on for some time until Helen said, ‘I can see the head, Jenny!’
“Damn! ’bout time!” I yelled. The contractions were coming. I couldn’t stop pushing. ‘One more push,’ Helen said. She had her hand under the baby’s head. With my arms spread, I grabbed hold of the spindles in the old headboard up behind me. I got a good grip and bore down for the final push. At the last moment, my feet slipped. I kicked the footboard hard, and it flew away from the foot of the bed. With no support, the foot of the bed thudded right down to the floor.
“Helen toppled off the canted mattress. She hit the floor and banged her head on a leg of the footboard. With the bed at that angle, my first–born child slid right out of my body onto Helen’s white linen cloths. I grabbed his foot so he wouldn’t end up on the floor with Helen.
“When I jerked his leg to pull him up on my tummy, he let out a wail I was sure could be heard all the way to Amarillo. I tell you. That cry stirred Helen, who’d been out cold. She sat up. ‘It’s a boy!’ I laughed, beaming.
“She stood up beside me. ‘You OK, Jenny?’ Helen took her job seriously.
I laughed. ’Twas a smooth landing.’ I laughed again. ‘Lord, Helen! Cut this baby free,’ I cried. ‘He’s landed on earth!’ I just couldn’t stop laughing.”
Chapter One
I was christened John Rae Piper. “Christened” is probably not the right word, because it was never made official in any church. Mama and Daddy had decided on the name before I was born. My daddy said you have to decide these things in advance. He’d never been much of a planner, but with the trouble in Korea and being in the Army, it put a whole new perspective on things. The thought of not coming back was always there.
My mama, Jenny, chose my name from the Bible. John the Baptist was one of her favorite characters. “He was wild and unpredictable,” she’d said, “not afraid of anything.” He was a “voice crying in the wilderness.” God knows, with my daddy away fighting a war, and a new–born to tend to, she was sure lost in a wilderness of her own out on the empty plains in the Texas Panhandle.
I wouldn’t call her religious, but she was spiritual. She understood things on a plane beyond the practical. To her, life was not all about what you could prove but also, and maybe more, about what remained a mystery.
She and I used to hang a blanket over the clothesline in the back yard and “camp out.” I was only two or three at the time. At that age, I don’t remember the details, but the impressions those nights left on my mind and soul are like a permanent tattoo.
Though we didn’t eat locusts and wild honey like her hero John the Baptist, we did munch on her homemade biscuits and, like him, predicted the future and set a true path in motion toward it in our little V–shaped corner of the world in our backyard.
For us — for her, for me — the canopy of stars overhead held a vast understanding, a mystery waiting to be revealed. “Watch and pray,” my mama said. It was a mandate I never forgot.
***
My daddy, Tom Piper, was wounded in the war. He returned in 1953 but spent some time in a veterans’ hospital in Virginia. The Army checks he sent us came from there. We didn’t have enough money to go see him, but we wrote him every week.
I felt as I got older, and as Mama read his letters, he didn’t want us to go see him. He’d find us again in his own time was what Mama said. I got the feeling that he was not and maybe never would be the same man who’d left in 1950. I think Mama felt the same way. She could wait. She was in no hurry.
But, in 1955, he suddenly appeared. He even knocked on the front door. I opened it to a man who was holding a duffel bag over his shoulder. One side of his face was puckered with scars as if he’d been burned or dragged on a hard road. I didn’t know him but, strangely, I wasn’t afraid.
He peered down at me. “Johnnie?” His voice rose at the end. It was a question.
“John Rae Piper,” I said with childlike confidence.
His smile was crooked. The side with the puckered skin didn’t move, as if only half his face was alive. “Your mama home, boy?”
I left the door open and ran to the back of the house where my mama was hanging clothes on the line in the backyard. On the way I sensed the connection. I cried out in the wilderness from the back door. “Mama! Mama! Daddy’s home!”
She looked my way then clicked the last clothespin on a white sheet that snapped at her in the cool bre
eze. Her eyes, wide and bright against her suntanned face, looked like stars or suns bursting with light.
My daddy had crossed the space from the front door to the back and was standing behind me. Mama looked above and beyond me. I turned and looked up at the man standing there and moved in close to him. His trousers smelled fresh like sun and sand, like a long, dusty road that stretched cleanly through empty flatlands. He ruffled my hair and pulled me close. “Good to see you, Johnnie.” He spoke with a clear West Texas cadence. Mama fainted before she got to the back door.
Chapter Two
It wasn’t planned, but nature took its course, the way the slow, patient flow of a river gouges out a canyon. It twists and turns through valleys and flatlands following a path of least resistance, circling round mammoth boulders, dropping off the edges of glistening, flat rocks, seeking another level, another empty space to fill, flowing onward to the sea, its final destination.
During my growing–up years, my daddy hired himself out to local ranchers and farmers. It was hard work, and he hated it. Whether he returned from the war a different man, I don’t know, but I remember during those years, his outlook was grim. He suffered inside.
Maybe it was the war or his wounds, but self–loathing consumed him, punished him in some way for the things done to him by someone else. He could have lashed out. He could have taken it out on my mama and me, but he didn’t. Instead, he protected us from who he was or what he’d become. So I think he loved us in his own way. He just didn’t love himself.
He turned inward and drank heavily. When he finally had enough alcohol to forget, he gambled away almost every penny. It was his gambling and owing the bookies that eventually got us into trouble. It was his pattern, skirting boulders, like the river, except he had no sea at the end to empty into, no destination — no hope.
No matter what he did, my mama never spoke ill of my daddy. Like our nights under a simple backyard tent, she made the most of what she had in her world, and she was grateful for what was given her, however little. She was thankful that Tom had returned alive from the war. That he’d been wounded hurt her deeply. That he felt wounded inside hurt her even more.
While he worked at tearing everything apart, she tried to help him and us by keeping everything together. That was her contribution to our family. She was hopeful and, when she quoted from the Bible, she said, “Hope is not a shameful thing.” She admonished me. “No matter what you do in life, remember that Johnnie.”
“Yes ma’am,” was all I could say.
Mama couldn’t grab every paycheck Daddy got before he spent it all or gambled it all away. She knew that. She also knew that we had to eat. When I was little and Daddy was far away, she took on jobs she could do at home.
From her schooldays she’d had some accounting classes so she started doing a few people’s tax returns and kept the books for some of the ranchers. Being resourceful, what she didn’t know about, she read up on. But when Daddy returned, she needed to find something that took her away from the house, something that got her out.
Helen Pearl was still tending to the midwife business, and my mama worked her way into being her assistant. Then, under Helen’s tutelage for the practical, Mama took a correspondence course and became a qualified midwife herself. It was more than a job to her. It was a calling.
“Ain’t no greater thing than to help bring a life into the world,” she exclaimed. Though she treated it as a calling, she didn’t see herself as God’s assistant, as some might. “God moves in mysterious ways,” she said, “ways no one can tell. I ain’t pretendin’ I know anything.” If she’d been asked, she would have said she was only a servant, “If you’re gonna be used in this life, better be used by God.”
I spent my formative years accompanying my mama on her birthing sessions. She’d plant me somewhere in the house she was visiting, usually in the hallway on a chair with a book. “Johnnie. You sit there till I come for you. Read that book. Learn something,” she instructed.
For the months and years that followed, I think I read an entire library. Mama chose the books. One week was history, the next a novel. It continued that way for weeks on end. One week she handed me a short story in French along with a French grammar book and dictionary. I looked at the books, then at her. She knew what I was thinking. “Figure it out. This is going to be a long one, Johnnie; you’ve got plenty of time.”
We’d talk about the books I read. She didn’t test me, but she asked me lots of questions. I hoped my answers were good. She never said. I didn’t know it, but I was being home–schooled before it ever became popular. There were no regular schools in our neck of the woods, but my mama wanted me to have an education. So she taught me.
I spent those years with my nose in a book and my ears perked for the painful screams of birth. I learned the rhythm of birth from those screams, and the silence that followed, suddenly broken by the desperate wail of a newborn baby. It didn’t happen all the time; most of the time, but not all the time. When it didn’t, the silence was followed by sobs and cries and another type of wailing that comes only from profound grief.
My mama’s comforting voice was part of that grief. Sitting downstairs in my chair, I could still hear my mama’s voice from on high. I couldn’t make out the words, but sometimes it sounded, in a slow, careful cadence of comfort, like she was almost singing.
At those times, I remember seeing her come slowly down the stairs. She’d stop and stare at me; then she’d walk over, take my hand, pull me gently to my feet and hold me close. She’d whisper words over the top of my head as if they were meant just for me, but I knew they were meant for her, too. “There are some mysteries that have no answers.”
Chapter Three
I was nineteen when I finally got my GED. I was the proud owner of a bona fide high–school diploma. God knows I’d read and studied enough with Mama. It helped that I had aptitude. That’s what Mama called it. I called it hard work.
The day I got my diploma my mama was out on a job, but she’d made fried chicken, my favorite, and left some in the fridge. On top of the covered plate was a note, “Congratulations, boy. You did your mama proud. Remember. Hope. Love, Mama.”
Electricity had come out as far as our place back when I was just ten. It changed our lives. Mama’s job and her savings bought us a new fridge and a TV. The TV was a luxury. We’d lived so long on just getting by. What my daddy contributed helped, but it wasn’t enough until my mama started working her own job steadily.
Now that we could afford it, she’d explained, “Gotta have some pleasure with the pain. Helps you forget a little. Gotta have the roses with the thorns.” She’d raise her eyebrows and laugh at her own gems of wisdom.
***
At the end of 1969, the Selective Service System conducted a lottery to determine who would be called for military service during the Vietnam War. It took the place of the draft. On December 1, my mama and I watched my future unfold together on our black and white television. It was an evening my daddy didn’t come home. It was an event, so I figured he was watching it from whatever bar stool was propping him up that night.
There were 366 dates for each day of the year hidden inside capsules placed in a glass jar. They were drawn out one at a time. Every number represented a birth date. Low numbers were sure to be called for induction. My birth date, April 24, was drawn second. My number was 2. Without a word, Mama got up from her chair and mounted the stairs to her bedroom. I knew she went there to pray, to make an appeal on my behalf. Watch and pray.
I joined up the next day. I didn’t see any sense in waiting for a letter from Selective Service. I told Mama when I got home.
“Well, boy, you’ve rendered to Caesar,” she said, “Now you’re in God’s hands.” She’d raised me, educated me and cared for me almost on her own her whole life, my whole life. She saw my decision as a threat to both of us, a threat she could do nothing about.
“Hope, Mama,” I said, “Hope and pray. You taught me well. Time to see
what I’ve learned.”
The day I left to catch the bus for the induction center, we stood together in the kitchen, side by side, finishing up the dishes, prolonging the moment. I dried my hands on the dish towel and hung it on the rack to dry. “All finished,” I said.
“Finished but not over,” she answered. “I think I know a little about what Abraham felt when he placed his son Isaac on the altar,” she added.
“Don’t fret, Mama. I’ll be back.” We embraced one last time.
“I’ll pray for you, son.”
“I know. Watch and pray. I remember,” I answered. I headed for the hallway where my bag leaned against the wall. At that moment, my daddy strode through the door. I didn’t know if his timing was good or bad. Maybe he thought I’d already be gone.
“Getting ready to leave?” he asked.
“Just about out the door,” I answered. He extended his hand.
“Shoot straight, son.” I grabbed his hand, and our eyes met. For a moment I thought I saw a glimmer of something in his, but it quickly disappeared like all his feelings as he dropped my hand and walked on into the kitchen. Vietnam was my next stop.
Chapter Four
My mama, Jenny Piper, died at the end of my twelve–month tour of duty. She’d kept me out of the war as long as she could with my 2–S deferment while I studied for my GED. “No boy of mine is going off to fight a war in some far–off place without knowing what he’s fightin’ for,” she’d said — more than once. But knowing and doing were two different things. She knew that. I loved my mama. I’d surely miss her.
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