“I see. Yes. Of course.”
“Now, it’s my job as the president to decide how much money that should be. On hand, that is, on any given day. With the help of the board, of course.” He pulled a monogrammed handkerchief from his breast pocket and wiped the spittle that had accumulated in the deep corners of his mouth.
“I’m a conservative man, Mrs. Barre—our history makes us pessimists—but there isn’t a banker in this city, or this nation for that matter, who is conservative enough to survive a run on his bank. No one keeps that kind of cash on hand. Couldn’t stay in business if you did.”
He stamped out his cigarette. “Would you mind taking a walk with me, Mrs. Barre?”
He rose and took his hat and coat from a rack in the corner, and they exited the office through a back door that opened onto a narrow alley between the bank and the next building. When they reached Texas Avenue, Cargie put a hand above her eyes to shield them from the glaring winter sun. They turned right and strolled toward the Calanthean Temple, where she and Thomas occasionally used to go to listen to music on the rooftop.
Mr. Reynolds said, “All the businesses on the Avenue—the people who work in them and the people who use their services—depend on one another.” He glanced sideways at Cargie. “Have you ever seen anybody stack cards, Mrs. Barre?”
“No sir.”
“It’s a sight to behold. Two cards are balanced against each other.” He angled his pudgy hands, fingertips to fingertips. “Then two more and a card is placed across the top, like a sawhorse. They make a bottom row like that, then another on top of it, and so on and so forth. The whole affair is delicately balanced, and the taller it is, the less it takes to bring it down.” Mr. Reynolds stopped walking. They were across the street from the Antioch Baptist Church. They stood in silence a moment, admiring the red brick, the white trim, and the bell tower.
“Confidence is what holds an economy up,” Mr. Reynolds said. “You can’t see it, but it’s there, as real as the air we breathe. When that confidence shifts toward fear, it can bring an economy down as suddenly as a puff of air brings down a house of cards. That’s what’s happening in our country right now. Shall we walk back, Mrs. Barre?”
“Yes sir.”
They retraced their steps toward the bank. Their long shadows slid ahead of them, appearing much more similar than their persons. “The U.S. economy may continue downward,” the banker said. “So a group of us who have a stake in the continued prosperity of the businesses on the Avenue have been strategizing how best to meet the . . . well . . . the threat.”
“How long do you expect this to go on?”
Mr. Reynolds shrugged. “There’s no way to know. We are in uncharted waters. Do you know what insurance is, Mrs. Barre?”
“I’ve heard of it. Don’t have any myself.”
“You might be surprised to find you do. Insurance can take many forms.” He stopped and pointed to a vacant storefront. “A new oil and gas company is moving in there. Caddo Parish sits on one of the biggest oil fields in the country and folks will use oil and gas, no matter how bad times get. The bank holds that building, and we are working with the company’s founders to ensure their success. It’s one of the Avenue’s insurance policies, a very important one.”
He motioned for them to continue walking. “Another important insurance policy we have is people like you.” They turned into the alley leading to Mr. Reynolds office. He opened the door. “After you, Mrs. Barre,” he said.
When they were inside, he shrugged off his coat and hung it and his hat on the rack. “Please, have a seat.” Mr. Reynolds waited for Cargie to sit and then settled in his chair and leaned back. “Do you know how many individuals make a deposit the size of yours every week, week in and week out?”
“No sir.”
“A handful. Do you know how many of them are women?” He held up his index finger. “Only one. You.” He lit another cigarette and dropped the match in the ashtray. “Do you think there is one employee out there who hasn’t noticed you, Mrs. Barre?”
Cargie flushed. “I don’t know about that.”
“Let me assure you, there is not. There isn’t a single person in this bank who wouldn’t notice if you closed your account this afternoon and carried your money out the door. Not one.”
“Well—”
“Every single employee would think you know something he doesn’t. Every one of them would spread the word that Cargie Barre, who has made a deposit every week, for years, has taken it all out. And every one of them would believe that he should be the next in line.” Mr. Reynolds paused. “Then every last one of them would spread the word to his friends and neighbors as fast as he could.”
Cargie frowned. “Excuse me, Mr. Reynolds, but it’s my money.”
“Yes, it is. And you are perfectly within your rights to withdraw it, no questions asked.” Mr. Reynolds stamped out his unfinished cigarette and leaned forward, folding his short fat arms on the desk. A gold nugget ring adorned his pinky. “But perhaps there’s more at stake than your money. You seem to be a thoughtful woman, Mrs. Barre. Think about the impact of your actions this afternoon.”
Cargie tucked her chin. The idea that anyone would pay the least bit of attention to anything she did or did not do was not only ridiculous, it was troubling. “I see your point, Mr. Reynolds,” she said. “But I still have concerns.”
“Welcome to the club, Mrs. Barre. We are all worried.”
Cargie stood, and Mr. Reynolds scrambled to his feet.
“Good day to you, sir,” she said.
“Good day, Mrs. Barre. It was a pleasure meeting you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Cargie hurried home to tell Thomas about her meeting with the banker. “If you’d seen the look on Mr. Reynolds’s face when he thought I might pull that money out,” she said. “I tell you, Thomas, it was bone-chilling. All this stock market business, it touches everything. Everything, Thomas! It’s a lot worse than we thought. I can tell you that right now.”
“Steady, Carge.” Thomas put his arm around her as they sat side by side on the couch in the living room, a location Cargie had chosen because of the gravity of her news.
Cargie pulled at her fingers, cracking her knuckles, a habit she had broken except in her most agitated moments. “Mr. Reynolds said folks are watching me, Thomas. And if I take my money out, they’ll do the same. He said I could bring the whole bank down! Me! Why, that’s the most disturbing thing of all.”
“This isn’t like you,” Thomas said.
“I’m scared! I feel like the world could come crashing down around our ears. Bad things can happen suddenly, when it seems like life is going along fine and will keep going along as it always has. I shudder to think about an uncertain future for Becca.” Cargie patted her belly. “For this next little one too.”
How could she tell Thomas about the terrible things she’d read in Mr. Cole’s diary? Starvation. Disease. Dead fathers and mothers and children. Ruined farms and villages. Plundered businesses. Horrors that befell regular folks who were minding their own business and trying to get along.
Thomas took her hands in his and held them tightly. “Cargie, listen to me. I’m not going to say things won’t get hard. I’ve been listening to the radio. It’s serious. But getting all worked up, fretting and worrying, it won’t help. Let’s try and put a handle on it. Make some plans for the what-ifs.”
Cargie would feel better if they could answer a few what-ifs. What if Mr. Cole lost his business or had to let her go? What if the bank went under, and everything they had saved was lost? What if food got scarce? “I’m still thinking about drawing out the money,” she said, “or at least part of it. We have to think about the future of these babies.”
“Come here. I wanna show you something.”
Thomas led her into the bedroom. He knelt beside the bed, reached up under the mattress and lifted it. Stacks of cash were arranged in neat rows on the bed’s muslin-covered slat-board frame. Some
of the banknotes were the new small type, and others were the larger currency Cargie used to bring home. She knelt beside Thomas and picked up a stack. It was money she had put in the dresser drawer every week. Money that was intended to be used to run the household.
Thomas let the mattress down and sat on the bed, and Cargie sat beside him.
“You know how I work things,” he said. “I can get more out of a dollar than anybody. Or get by without it altogether. I like living that way. I guess it’s a challenge. I used some of the money you brought home, but this was extra. I’m not saying we won’t need it, but we haven’t needed it yet.”
“How much is it?”
“I dunno. Haven’t counted it.”
“It’s insurance,” Cargie said.
“Yes’m. I reckon you could call it insurance.”
“I left Mr. Reynolds feeling like we needed some insurance, and here it is.” She patted the bed. “Been rolling around on it every night.” She bumped shoulders with her husband.
Becca, who had been talking gibberish to herself in the other room, began to cry for someone to fetch her out of the crib.
“What do you want to do with it?” Thomas asked.
Cargie stood. “Let’s keep it right here close.”
“I’ve been talking to them down at the lumberyard. It’ll take some money to get going on your mama’s house.”
“Maybe I’ll take a little out of the bank for that. I can talk it up that you’re building a house.” Cargie realized at that moment that she had decided to leave her money in the bank. She had more peace about leaving it than taking it. Pastor Euell said if you don’t know what to do, follow your peace. “You sure we’re doing the right thing, talking Mama into moving over here?” she asked.
“I reckon it’s her decision.”
“I love my mama, but having her in the backyard . . . I don’t know, Thomas . . .”
Thomas pulled Cargie close, his knees on either side of her. He put his arms around her waist. “How’re we gonna raise a passel of babies without some help?” he said.
Cargie pulled back. “A passel? Go on now. Don’t start.”
He stood and hugged her tightly.
“I love you, Thomas Barre.”
“I love you, too, honey. We’re gonna be fine. I got a good feeling about us.”
“You’re always looking on the bright side.”
“Yes’m. You know who brightened up when I mentioned your mama was coming back to stay?”
“Lydie Murphy?”
“Oh, Lord, no! Pastor Euell.”
Cargie thought about it. “I can see that.” Maybe Mama wouldn’t be in the backyard after all, at least not for long.
The next morning Cargie told Mr. Cole she had decided to deposit fifteen dollars a week in the First City Bank and leave the rest of it going to her own bank, if Mr. Addington was agreeable.
“I’m sure that’ll be no trouble at all,” Mr. Cole said. “I’ll talk to him.”
While Mr. Cole was busy with customers, Cargie took his diary from the back of the drawer, where she had kept it all this time. She had planned to return it to him and feign just having discovered it, but that had not happened. Instead she read the diary a second time, cover to cover, amazed at what she’d missed the first go-around.
It seemed that every day Cargie found herself desiring to read again a certain passage that came to mind. Even though she knew every word by heart, she told herself she needed to read exactly what Private Cole had written about something a French waiter said in the café. Or how he had described some tanks—a whole line of them—rolling into a village. Or the thing he’d said about the smell of No Man’s Land. Cargie could not give up the diary. She could not let go of France, the soldiers, the war, maybe never to see them again. So she kept them all close at hand and prayed her betrayal would not be discovered. She opened the book and read the entry that was on her mind.
12 October 1918, Outskirts of R-
We spent all day getting to our positions for the big advance tomorrow. The 125th is support again, but most of the guys take it in stride. Seems like no matter where they tell us to start, we end up in front, mixing it up. It’s getting cold, and I dread winter, wondering if I’ll survive it. I don’t have the thick blood of the Wisconsin boys.
Wally tells me not to sweat it. He says I have intuition, and a man can get everything else he needs with intuition. Wally and my Wisconsin buddies all call me the Cajun. I suppose they think everybody from Louisiana is a Cajun. They’ve never met a real one. They all think I have some kind of sixth sense about things. I reckon it’s Mama and Daddy praying more than anything that’s helping me find my way.
Today, a little after 1300, about a dozen of us doughboys, two officers, the chaplain, and a few Frenchmen were taking a break against a stone wall that was still standing from a bombed-out barn. We heard an aeroplane coming from the north behind us, and we jumped to our feet, at the ready. Pretty soon a scout plane crested the hill. He was flying low, intending to strafe us. The French guys who were with us scrambled to set up their machine gun.
The plane’s gunner didn’t hit anything except the stone wall on his first pass, but they swung around and came at us again from the south. We took cover, everybody except a big Greek from Detroit we call Crazy Connie—short for Constantine. Crazy Connie stepped out from behind the wall and started firing with his Springfield.
That pilot didn’t account for American bravery! Ho! Connie’s rounds hit the propeller, and the engine gave about three hard knocks and seized up. That was it for Fritz! The plane came down like a brick, and we ran toward the crash.
The pilot and the gunner might’ve been able to land and run away if the wheels hadn’t caught in barbed wire the Germans themselves had laid down. That wicked stuff is everywhere. As it was, the plane cartwheeled. You could tell right away the gunner in front was crushed, but the pilot was alive and struggling to pull himself free of the wreckage.
A couple of guys wanted to put a bullet in his head right then and there, but the officers said to try and get him out so they could question him. We started cutting wires and pulling at him, him screaming, “Nein! Nein!”
Both of his legs were busted up, so we laid him on the grass. He was panting and repeating “Christian!” like he thought that would save him. Chaplain Davitt knelt on the ground and talked to him, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I thought old Fritz was losing too much blood, and the officers had better hurry if they wanted to ask him anything.
Some farmers had been pitching hay nearby, and they were standing there with us. The sight of that German uniform must’ve set one of them off because he jumped forward and pushed his pitchfork into the pilot’s gut so hard the prongs went right through him into the ground. The pilot screamed, and the farmer leaned on the pitchfork and yelled, “Mon Bayonet!“ He pulled a photograph out of his pocket and put it in the pilot’s face. “Mes fils! Mes fils!“
I asked one of the Frenchman what the farmer was saying and he said, “My sons! My sons!”
It was pandemonium. The farmer was red in the face, crying, spit flying, holding the photograph under the dying German’s nose. The officers were trying to pull him off, and the chaplain was trying to give Fritz last rites. I imagine the farmer’s photograph was the last thing that poor German saw in this world. I hope he really was a Christian. It was a grisly way to go.
The infantry guys don’t have much good to say about the pilots because they’re never down in the muck with us. The flyers put on airs too, no doubt about it. This one, though, he died like a doughboy.
Cargie closed the diary and held it to her breast, her heart thumping.
The war ended a month after the incident with the farmer, and eventually the army returned Private William Cole to Louisiana. Cargie opened the diary again and turned the pages until she reached the very last one. The final entry was years removed from the others, which had ended with Armistice.
11 February 1923, Shrevepo
rt
The war is over, but reconciliation is hard to come by.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Mae Compton’s beauty was a charm. Wherever she turned she prospered. When Mae was in full bloom, people compared her to the actress Claudette Colbert. Mae did not think it was vain to believe they were right. She could see the resemblance herself in her large eyes and high cheeks, and in the symmetry of her features. Mae’s fair complexion—she avoided the sun with vampirish dread—was framed by dark, natural curls. To heck with flat marcel waves. Buster liked her hair just fine.
Mae’s mother and father decided she could attend Centenary College in Shreveport, as she desired. Mae insisted on moving to Shreveport at the beginning of summer to help Uncle Bill at the dry cleaners and Aunt Vida with the house, even though it meant leaving Buster behind in Whitesboro. “I know Buster,” Mae said. “Once he gets a job, he’ll be working all the time anyway. Besides, it’s the least I can do in return for Uncle Bill and Aunt Vida putting me up.”
Mae was the only student of her graduating class of eleven who aspired to go away to college. Buster did not see any reason for Mae to leave Whitesboro. Gainesville—barely fifteen miles away—had elevated its academic standing by opening a junior college on the top floor of the high school. As far as Buster was concerned, Mae could go to school there. He nagged relentlessly and chidingly, saying she would regret moving to Shreveport.
“It’s pure foolishness,” Buster said.
“What’s foolish about it?” Mae asked.
“What’s not foolish about it?” Buster shot back. “It’s a big waste of money, for one thing. Your daddy could buy us a house with the kind of dough Centenary costs.”
“A house! What do we need with a house?”
She had him there. Graduation was days away, and Buster had not yet proposed. Mae knew he was waiting until he was sure he had work. Buster was like that—he liked to be sure about things. Just the same, she did not like everyone, especially him, assuming she would say yes. Even though she never imagined saying no.
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