MAY COCKER
COCKER BROTHERS BOOK 24
FALEENA HOPKINS
CONTENTS
Introduction
1. JERALD
2. MAY
3. JERALD
4. JERALD
5. MAY
6. JERALD
7. MAY
8. MAY
9. JERALD
10. MAY
11. JERALD
12. MAY
13. JERALD
14. MAY
15. JERALD
16. MAY
17. JERALD
18. MAY
19. JERALD
20. JERALD
21. JERALD
22. MAY
23. JERALD
24. MAY
25. JERALD
26. MAY
27. MAY
28. MAY
29. MAY
30. MAY
31. JERALD
32. MAY
33. MAY
34. JERALD
35. MAY
36. MAY
37. JERALD
38. MAY
39. JERALD
40. JERALD
41. MAY
42. MAY
43. JERALD
44. MAY
45. MAY
46. JERALD
47. JERALD
48. JERALD
49. JERALD
50. MAY
51. JERALD
52. MAY
53. MAY
Glossary
Note From Me
Cocker Brothers Series Links
Acknowledgments
INTRODUCTION
WHERE TRUE LOVE BEGAN…
THIS NOVEL COMES WITH A GLOSSARY OF 1940’S SLANG WORDS FOR THE FUN OF IT.
Confidence... thrives on honesty, on honor, on the sacredness of obligations, on faithful protection and on unselfish performance. Without them it cannot live.”
FRANKLIN D. ROOSEVELT
JERALD
SEPTEMBER 1944
“T hanks just the same, Hank, but I’m not in the mood.” Turning the page of Crime and Punishment, I straighten my left knee on my bed, wide pant leg bunching around the calf, foot bare.
My brother had poked his head into my room but now his whole body is in. “You’re back on duty in a few days! On a submarine! With no women! You mean to say you’d rather read that bloated yawnville over filling the dance cards of dozens of girls who believe you’re a legend!”
A smile tugs at my lips. “Legend?”
He gestures to the window as if khaki-wacky dames were at this very moment swooning on our family’s front lawn. “Jerald, a Congressman’s son protecting our great nation from within the depths of oceans all around the world! Think about it! You can pick any doll you want!”
“Hank, you’re a devilish good salesman.”
He shuts the door to whisper, “We’ve got gin.”
“Sure you have. But I want to stay home and read. You go on now. Have your fun. I’m too old for high school girls.”
I’m back in my book, but as the minutes tick by — minutes, not seconds — it occurs to me that I haven’t heard Hank leave. Glancing over, I see my kid brother staring at the rug Ma brought back from India when she and Pop were newly married. It’s had some wear and tear since then but she won’t hear of getting rid of it, and it’s been mine since I was a boy. This room is kept exactly as I left it when I joined the Navy right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. It’s a few months shy of three years now.
Hank is staring at the palest section of my rug, kicking it with his wing tip shoe while gnawing his cheek, hands shoved in the pockets of his best pin-striped suit since the dance starts in under an hour.
I set the novel on the warm cotton of my white under-shirt. “Say, what gives? You alright?”
I’m the somber one between the two of us. He’s the joker. But there’s no smile this time. Hank’s voice is different now. “Jer, here’s how I see it. Now hear me out. Pops’ ticker is on the mend. But we had a scare, see? He almost didn’t make it. And I was just thinking, now hear me out…what if this time you don’t come back, Jer? I may not have lost a Father, but what if I lose a…”
I sit up straighter, grabbing the book before it topples. “Look here, if you want me to come tonight because…”
We stare at each other, the unsaid heavy between us. A lot of guys don’t come back from service. Too many of my friends are gone for good, a fact I try to forget. Now it’s looking at me through the eyes of my seventeen-year-old brother.
Jumping off the bed I cross to my closet, muttering, “Well, why didn’t you say so?”
Hank pulls his hands free, taking a step. “Then you’ll come?”
“Sure, why not. I can read when I’m back on the sub, can’t I? Loads of time there.”
“Ah Jer, I knew I could count on you!” Hank disappears into the hall, shouting downstairs, “Hey Ma! He’s changed his mind! He’s joining me after all! We’re gonna need Pops’ car!”
“Fine but no gin!”
“What makes you think we’d have gin?”
I glance toward my door, frowning.
My brother has been hoping for the draft now that he’s a senior and turns eighteen mid-February. Our parents won’t let him enlist until after graduation. For him that’s too long, but I disagree.
He wants to become a pilot for the Navy, since that’s the branch I joined. But he’s not a seaman, prefers air. A ‘sailor with wings’ they call his future position, patrolling the ocean in which I live day in and day out. He’ll keep it safe for subs and battleships, fly back to tell us when he spots the enemy.
The thought is sobering.
To me he’s still a kid and his display just now, didn’t change my opinion. He’s gonna need tougher skin to make it in this war.
Ah damn.
Looks like I gotta wear a suit. Doesn’t feel right not wearing my uniform but Ma took my dress-blues for washing.
Can’t be helped.
After I change, I walk out of our bathroom and hear Hank downstairs with laughter in his voice. “Sure, he’s coming! I said I was worried about losing him to the war. You know he believed me? I should be in pictures!”
I pause, surprised.
He pulled a fast one on me!
And I fell for it.
Hank, you dog, I’ll get you back for this!
Our father’s weak chuckle makes it upstairs.
Well good, his ticker needs a laugh.
With a frown I go brush my teeth.
Hank deserves my desertion after the stunt he just pulled. I’ll stay five minutes and ditch him when he finds a girl.
A high school dance at my age. What’d I get myself roped into?
MAY
I groan, “Why must you be so stubborn?”
Ignoring me, Mother sews a new button onto Father’s best shirt, her back straight in a chair made for posture, not comfort. I pull back the curtain, aghast to find twilight looming.
I’ve no time to waste!
I fall at her feet, grabbing a stockinged leg. “Please let me go to the dance! I simply must go. If I don’t, I’ll die!”
Children run through our living room as she reminds me, “I said no and no it stands. You’re too young!”
The needle stretches long before diving down. I stare at it, and clutch her knees, “But I’m eighteen!”
“May Eloise, the way you carry on! You’ve only just last month turned seventeen, a fact I know better than anyone.”
I lay my head on her lap. “I despise how a silly number confines me.”
“Yes, well, welcome to womanhood.”
I close my eyes, knowing all too well this particular gripe.
I’m doomed.
World War II has left a mark on everyone. But her mark is of a different sort.
Millions of able-bodied men have enlisted or been drafted, and they left good jobs behind, opportunities wholly unavailable to women before now. For the first time wives are earning paychecks while their husbands serve.
Women have been secretaries, telephone operators, and the like, before. But factory jobs are the manly-labor type. They’re better paying and more fulfilling for a change.
The trouble is that my father is 4F — unable to enlist on account of his bad left leg. He was born with the affliction and hadn’t paid it much mind until it kept him out of duty. That broke his proud heart.
Mother and her friends say — whenever he’s not around — that many husbands don’t want their wives to earn the money in the house. That’s a man’s job.
She so wants to get her hands dirty in a new way. It sounds exciting to her, and I agree. She implored him to relent, but he wouldn’t budge. Not her friends, not the government, not even Rosie the Riveter could convince him to let her have a factory job like he has.
Instead, she cooks more meals and does more housework, watching the children of neighborhood women who drive far distances to work at Moody Air Force Base in Valdosta, Georgia, where they rivet patches of aluminum over bullet holes, on real airplanes! That’s awfully exciting.
However, the distance is long — a whole eighty-eight miles from Albany — so they need Mother’s help while they stay overnight on cots set up in local shops, rather than make the trek there and back. Nearly six hours a day is too much for anyone in the back of a pickup piled high with tired ladies.
Realizing this might be my shot, I try another tactic, “You know how it feels, don’t you? To be stuck home while your friends have all the fun?!”
Tired blue eyes narrow with thought.
Have I gotten through?
I boldly press on.
“There will be boys at this dance, May, and I do remember life at your age, thank you very much!”
“And chaperones! The nuns would never let anything happen to me. I won’t be alone. I’ll have my friends and all of the Sisters present. They’ll watch over me! I’ve done all of my chores. The stew doesn’t need to be watched. I’ve even sliced all the bread and covered it so it won’t stale.”
We look over as two more children scream past us.
“Constance! Julian! No running in the house!” Neither pays her any mind, so Mother focuses her strictness back on me. “Nuns or no, boys your age cannot be trusted!”
I pull myself up and trudge to the wallpaper, picking at the charming peach and green pattern with a fervor while it grows darker outside, my doom cemented.
“May Eloise, was that you who made holes in the kitchen wallpaper? I thought it was the children!”
I drop my hand, innocently shaking my head, which could mean either one, depending on your interpretation — it wasn’t me or it wasn’t them.
I didn’t mean to tear the walls up. I just get so fidgety being cooped up like some caged cockatiel.
Father enters with soil on his coveralls, feet in socks darned more than twice. He sheepishly grins and crosses the room to kiss her forehead. “I’ve done it again, haven’t I, Dottie? I’m sorry I’m late.”
“Change before supper and I’ll forgive you.” Glancing to the ground, Mother adds, “You remembered to take your boots off before you walked in!”
“I do remember some of the things you tell me,” he teases before asking, “Now May, why the long face?”
I glance to suspended needle and thread. “Just feeling a little blue, I guess.”
He walks on by. “Dinner will change that. I’ll be down in a jiffy.”
Mother calls after him, “Fred, it won’t be ready for another hour!”
His calloused hand grabs the staircase rail, socked foot paused on the first step. “That so?” Thoughts play as he arrives at a new idea. “My pickup was giving me trouble. Think I’ll have a look before washing.”
“If you walk into that garage now I’m afraid you’ll never return!”
“I’ll always return to you, Dot, you know that.” He whistles by us, into the kitchen, where he calls back from the garage door, “If there’s food on the table!”
With love and exasperation mingling in her eyes, a smile peeks out. “That man!” She stands up, and puts her sewing away. “You didn’t tell your Father about the dance.”
“No.”
“Nor that I forbade you to go.”
“That was between you and I.”
“That was a mature thing to do.”
I frown, “Thank you,” and absently smooth the side hem of my shirtwaist dress where it bunches by the belt no matter how I tame it.
Mother sighs at my burden. “You can’t wear that old thing to a dance. Why don’t you put on your blue taffeta? It brings out your eyes and it’s not that out of fashion. What with fabric rations, no one can fault you for not having a more current party dress, can they?” Under her breath she adds to herself, “I didn’t have time to make one better but it’s too late to worry about that now.” Raising her voice again, she adds, “You can wear my stockings since yours have runs.”
I rush to throw my arms around her soft figure. “Oh Mother! Can I go, really?”
She laughs, hugging me, “Yes, but stay close to Sable. That’s a girl with a good head on her shoulders. Lily on the other hand…” Mother trails off and I kiss her cheek.
“You changed my life!”
I bound up our stairs and she calls after, “It’s merely a dance, May Eloise! Not a ticket to France.” As I clear the final step I hear her worry, “I do hope I made the right decision!”
JERALD
I ’m introduced to Hank’s friends, and they’re all good sorts for being kids and all.
“Peter Tuck, nice to meet you! Heard a lot about you, Jerald! Yes sir! Hank’s heroic brother!” He’s a good-looking fellow who can cut a rug with the best of them. He was with some gal doing the mambo when we got here, a circle formed to watch the show.
I didn’t get Darren’s last name, or a chance to shake his hand. He waved from the floor when Hank shouted who I was. “Howdie, Jerald!” Since we’ve been here he’s changed dance partners after every song in an effort to find one who suits him.
Now Marvin Smith, on the other hand, I greet with an easy smile, “Marv, yes, I remember you.”
“Good to see you, Jerald.”
Friends since my brother was in kindergarten, Marvin’s a square who means well and doesn’t take up much space. You hardly remember he’s here until he pipes up with the rare offering.
Standing with them is more comfortable than I expected it would be. They act as if I’m one of them.
As soon as Hank gets a dance partner, I’m shoving off. I’ll have the last laugh when he looks around and Marvin tells him I’m gone.
Peter tilts his fedora and throws a shiny shoe on a chair. “Say, that doll Darren is jitterbugging with, her dress is in danger of a tap-out, wouldn’t you say?”
Hank, Marvin and I watch for a bit, and look around for the nuns. They’re sure to notice a hem bouncing above her knee like that one is. Because she’s so pretty, we continue watching Darren and his dance partner until Peter cups his hands and shouts, “Been taking lessons, Darren?”
We all laugh.
He ignores us, but she casts a sideways glance, then leans in with a smile to ask him a question. The way his eyes light up makes my brother turn to me. “Hey Jer, what do you think she asked him?”
I’m just shy of twenty-two, and a sailor, so Peter and Marvin lean in, awaiting my answer. They’re hoping it’s something dirty, and that I might just educate them.
I smirk, “She’s wondering how he ended up with such good looking friends.”
The guys laugh and I glance away. Peter says something, but I don’t hear him becau
se off to my left stands a pretty blonde with eyes of a clear summer’s day.
Somethin’ special about her.
And she’s watching me.
It dawns on her that I’m staring back.
Hank taps my arm. “Jer!”
“What?”
“Gin.”
My distracted gaze drops to the spiked punch, and I push it away. “You go ahead. I think I might have a dance.”
Hank slyly leans past me, hoping he can predict which one without letting on that we’re talking about them. “The doll in pink?”
“Blue.”
“Oh yeah? Hey Pete, it’s one of Lily’s friends.”
“Which one?” Peter asks, playing it cool and not looking.
“The cute blonde. The quiet one.”
“There are two quiet ones. And neither is Sable.”
“Which one is that?”
“Glasses and a big mouth.”
Marvin pipes up, “Don’t say anything bad about Sable!” making all three of us look at him. Then look away after two seconds.
Hank starts up again, “No, I said the cute blonde, quiet one. Why don’t you just look!”
“Don’t want Lily to see me. She’s wondering why I haven’t asked her to dance. I have every intention of asking when she least expects it. The cute blonde is a good egg. So’s the quiet brunette.”
I ask Peter, “What’s the name of the blonde?”
“Dunno.”
“I’m going to find out.”
As I walk across the gymnasium to say hello, we’re staring at each other, Ella Fitzgerald crooning in the background.
Pretty little thing. Can’t be taller than five-two.
That’s a whole foot and change shorter than I am.
Cute nose. And those parted lips.
They’re something else.
But nothing compares to those eyes, and that blue dress really makes them shine. The way she's staring at me as I stroll up disappears the entire room, her friends with it.
I start to smile, say hello.
She sways toward me.
May Cocker (Cocker Brothers Book 24) Page 1
