by Tom Powers
Just as we was about to start, Sir Gerald barked once, and then says, “You’ve got me to thank, Roddy, for this. They were thinking of giving her to the tigers.”
Well, that sure gave me a start.
“But I wouldn’t hear of it,” he barked on. “No, I said this is a job for the British lion, I said, so I got the job for you.”
Roddy laughed and says, “Don’t let anyone know, sir, when we’re taking off or those damned tigers may come dashing out of China and hijack her from me in mid-ocean—or is it hijohn? I forget.”
I guessed they were joking about the tigers, but after that bloody lion and camels and elephants, I couldn’t be just sure.
“Shut up, both of you,” says Aunt Mary, laughing, “you’ll scare the child to death.” Then she turned to me. “The tigers, my dear,” she says, “are the greatest American heroes of this war, to date. Colonel Chennault and those boys of his in China,” she says, “are tops. And any girl that wouldn’t jump at the chance to be hijacked—not johned, Roddy, my lad—by those boys,” she says, “well, all I can say is, she doesn’t deserve any such good luck.”
“Very true, indeed,” says Roddy, and we started saying goodbye.
“Well, cheerio, sir,” says Roddy.
“Cheerio,” says Sir Gerald.
“Cheerio, Lady Burroughs.”
“Cheerio.”
And then they all said cheerio two or three more times.
“Goodbye,” says Aunt Mary, and we got in, and I says hello to all the boys, some Cockneys and some like Roddy, but all nice and making a few cracks, but nice, too.
Just before we started, a soldier ran up and gave something to Sir Gerald. He gave it to Aunt Mary, and she opened the envelope and there was another one inside of that one, and “Hey,” she says, “you’re always getting letters just before you take off.”
“Me?” I says, and I couldn’t breathe hardly.
“You,” she says, and she gave it to Boggs—that was the sergeant with the wings. That looks funny when you write it, a sergeant with wings, but when I think of Boggs now—and I could never forget his funny crooked little face—a sergeant with wings is exactly the way to tell what he really was like.
I couldn’t understand hardly a word Boggs said till I got to know him better, but that first morning, I sure loved him when he handed me that envelope that had come halfway around the world from I could guess who.
So I don’t remember the goodbyes, or the takeoff or anything much, but that suddenly we were in the air and I was sitting quietly so my goose pimples would smoothe out before I opened my letter that was surely from Jeff.
Millie says to me once, “You’re a funny one,” she says. “Here I am always honing for Saint Louis where I was born at, and you just go along and home is wherever you hang your slip up.”
Well, I did always try to act like it was, and I guess I made it seem like it was that way with me, even when it wasn’t, because what’s the use of squawking all the time.
But now I thought about Jeff, and how I hadn’t really thought of him much, just that he was big and nice looking with a smiling kind of face—like a nice horse, but kind, that was what I first saw in Jeff. He had big feet and his beard grew fast—he was always smooth when he came to work every night, but by morning I could see a stubble, like the sun on a cut wheatfield, while we sat, having coffee together at the Greek’s. And how I never thought much about him till that night, or maybe I did and didn’t know I did. But anyway, I sure had thought a lot about the way his arms felt around me in the sunrise at the airport. And I knew all of a sudden that Jeff was what I wanted, that with Jeff everything I hadn’t wanted with anybody else would be different and here I was, at last, headed for home. And a letter from Jeff in my hands, and what a fool I was to be sitting thinking when I might be reading it. So I opened it fast, and here it is, what I remember of it.
“For the love of Davy Crockett where are you at?” That’s how it started.
That Swift feller seems to know, so I am sending this to him. I could ring his neck for knowing and me not knowing. I could if he hadn’t gone to see your pop when he was so sick and got him into the hospital in Mattoon, and it ain’t costing your pop a dime. Being as I am in this man’s army, now, I can’t go like I did before. I will try to see him before I leave Wednesday. Hope my last letter found you as it left me, well and so full of love and crazy about you, and thinking about you getting back soon, and about you and me.
I don’t like to ask young Swift about you as he says things like: “never was such a girl,” and like that. I never thought I was jealous, except for once of a man in Texas that my pony Rowdy would walk right off from me to follow. But I guess I was wrong about myself, so you better get used to the idea.
About you and me, I was all right until one morning about sunup, we were having a cup of Java at the Greek’s and I stood up over you and I smelled your hair, and it didn’t smell like perfume, but like the puppy I was crazy about when I was a kid and I kept washing her all the time with the most expensive and pretty-smelling soap I could find. So then I knew my goose was cooked.
I will add a postscript onto this after I see Pop Wednesday or maybe Tuesday, as I don’t know which at this writing, so I will stop now and say goodbye. But, oh, if I ever get you back again, I will sure hold on to you and smell that good clean smell of your hair, close, and it will be a damn good thing you don’t wear lipstick to get smeared around all over both of our two faces, and I won’t stop but just keep on forever and ever, amen.
Your friend and well-wisher, Jefferson Davis Wade.
P.S. Wednesday. I couldn’t see Pop but here’s a letter he wrote and with it is one long kiss from me.
Jeff
More P.S. Did I say I got orders? They say I got to go away—where I don’t know till tomorrow, if then, and couldn’t say if I did or do. But will keep in touch with Pop and he can tell you where I am at, if I know.
If it is China or Alaska or the Dutch Indies, I’ll try to get Swift to stop you so you can stay there until I can get there, as you seem to get to everywhere. But wherever it is, I’ll be loving you and missing you always. Hoping you are the same.
Your friend and well-wisher, Jeff
The letter from Pop smelled like his old corncob pipe, and I had to read it slow, because I was getting to be a crybaby and I couldn’t see half of the time.
Dear Podner, Jeff was headed this way, but a strong military wind blew him off of his course. However Ted Swift says he will give this to Jeff to send it with his letter, as he will see Jeff tonight.
Ted Swift gave me the money again that you sent, but where you got so much I don’t like to think, because surely I didn’t bring you up to rob banks.
Aunt Helga looked at your mystery-woman pictures in the papers, and so did everybody else who wasn’t blind, and all she said was: “what is it about our family that gets us always in the papers?” And it sure is true.
I didn’t mind, you looked prettier than Lillian Russell to me, and that lady with you looks alright for a chaperone.
I am alright now or soon will be, I hope, just took on a job that was too stout for me, getting gravel and filling in that low place in the south corner that keeps washing in. I thought it was a good idea, there’s so little I can do for Aunt Helga. But don’t ever say anything even to me about it. I thought by saying this to you I’d let you know I knew, because we are and have always been podners, haven’t we?
Don’t you worry about anything as I am not worried about you. But if you ever get around to it you better take a good look at Jeff—or maybe you have.
So long, Pop
PS. Got a letter around first of the year from the place up on the hill. It says your ma’s just the same and a note on the bottom from Dr. Morrison says she seems contented.
Well, that gave me enough to think about all the way to Australia and back, if I had of rode the whole journey on a lame Kangaroo. But I had to stop thinking for awhile—or anyway to put it o
ff till another time—for there was Sergeant Boggs saying, “Got some letters, huh?”
“From my Pop,” I says.
“Everything all right?” he says.
“Sure,” I says.
“You flown before?” he says.
“A little,” I says.
“How much,” he says, without the “h.”
“Well,” I says, “Chicago to Mexico City, to Rio, to Natal, to Liberia, to Khartoum, to India, and now this,” I says.
“Gawd,” he says.
“Why do you ask?” I says.
“I just wanted to know whether to bring you a cup of tea or a paper bag,” he says.
“Tea,” I says, and he brought it. So, after he took the cup away and before he could get back, another boy sidled in beside me. He was the other passenger to Australia. He had a uniform and wings and ribbons and a kind of a cowboy face.
“I’m Cecil Dillon,” he says, and he was like a mixture of the kind of an Englishman that Roddy was and the kind of a Cockney that Boggs was, but better educated than one and maybe not quite as much as the other.
“Hello,” I says.
“Got letters from home?”
“Yes,” I says.
“I’m going to Sydney,” he says.
“Who’s that?” I says, and he laughed and told me that was the name of a town in Australia, only he called it just Strylia. He showed me what he called the wife and the kids, and they sure looked sweet. Cecil, the boy, took after him, and Nell, the girl, after her.
He had to pick up his family at his mother’s place in another town (that I forgot as soon as he told me) where they were waiting for him, and they would all go back to Sydney for his leave.
He had been flying out of England over the channel for ten months now, and he said there wasn’t much danger of any sort of a show on this jaunt we was taking. But he was jumpy, I guess it was from what he called channel-hopping, and kept on looking out of the plane, like something might be following us.
Cecil had long legs and big hands like Jeff. He said his father was in sheep, and showed me a picture of a lady that was called the mater, and she had three plumes in her hair and a very old-fashioned satin dress and long gloves. He said she had had to go to court and that the picture was taken before she came out, but I didn’t like to ask what any of it meant. I was glad for him to talk because once he got started that’s what it seemed like he had been busting to do.
After he talked I don’t know how long, just suddenly in the middle of a word he was asleep and all the tightness and braveness had gone out of him. His head slid over onto my shoulder, and I kept real still so he could rest. And I’m so glad now I did, especially when I think of that little folder with the pictures floating on the water where I couldn’t reach it with the piece of propeller.
So now at last I had a minute to think about Jeff’s letter and Pop’s.
I knew how slim my chances were of getting to the place Jeff was coming to. And Pop’s letter—saying that he was in the hospital and was sick, which he had always been but must be worse now because he’d graveled-in the low place on the south side of Aunt Helga’s yard.
I could see me and Willie sitting there when it was damp, like it always was there. Aunt Helga said it was nice because things grew in that spot that she couldn’t get to grow anywhere else on the place. But I took Willie there to try and teach him about the toadstools that would pop up after a rain, that they were poison and he shouldn’t touch them and then put his thumb in his mouth.
That was when he was little and we’d go to see Aunt Helga on Sunday before our house burned up. And Pop, what a one he was to know things, and me thinking I was the only one that knew it. But he must have known it all the time, or he would never have said that about filling it in with gravel to let me know he knew, and Aunt Helga saying our family was always in the paper and she sure was right.
I could see Aunt Helga now, at Uncle Ulrich’s inquest, sitting there as placid as Saint Ann in the picture, answering questions. Then this city doctor asked if he could ask the widow a few questions.
And the coroner said, “Certainly I am sure the widow will not mind. Go ahead, doctor.”
So then this young doctor, he asked all over again everything the coroner had asked. He would have heard it before if he hadn’t been so late. He asked what they had for supper. Bean soup and coffee, whole wheat muffins, cabbage with vinegar, some of the beans strained out of the soup and the steak.
“That was all?”
“That was all.”
“Was there butter with the bread?”
“Well, yes, I forgot that.”
“Any preserves?”
“They was there, but nobody ate any.”
“Any sauces for the steak?”
“No, sir, he never liked those bottled sauces.”
“Any pickles?”
“No, sir, I hadn’t opened any.”
“Just the steak, plain.”
“Just the steak, plain, with the mushrooms.”
At that the doctor sat up in his chair. He wanted to know how the sauce was made. But it wasn’t exactly a sauce. It was more like just mushrooms, fried in butter in a pan.
No, Uncle Ulrich never liked to carve, he got so tired cutting meat in the shop, so she always put it on the plates in the kitchen and brought it in.
He wanted to know where she had gotten the mushrooms.
She said Uncle Ulrich had brought them home with the steak.
That would do, ma’am, he said, and he thanked her very much.
So then we all had a cup of coffee and waited for the verdict. It came back accidental poisoning, and we all got apologized to. They said it couldn’t have been helped, because there must have been a bad mushroom or maybe a toadstool on the steak. But whatever it was, it must have been just one and it got onto Uncle Ulrich’s plate, and that’s why nobody else had been poisoned to death like Uncle Ulrich had. And it was sure a regrettable tragedy, him just about to become an alderman, and they were sure sorry to disturb a lady at such a time, but the funeral could be the next day and we had their deepest sympathy.
Aunt Helga was right, our family does get in the papers, but sometimes we don’t when we might, and those are the times when it’s a darn good thing we don’t, and that time was sure one of ’em.
Roddy got relieved from his piloting and came and sat with me, after Cecil woke up.
Roddy acted a little smartalecky again, but nice too, and funny, talking like I had learned to expect from his kind of English by referring to big things as if they were little, calling Lady B. The Perfect Picture of the British Unicorn, which I sure had to write down not to forget it. He said this was a picnic that he had taken a few times but never with such dainty supplies.
The others heard this, like he meant them to, so they called out jokes about him not overstaying his leave from the controls while he was inspecting the cargo. But they were nice, and we all had sandwiches that were sure good. By now there was nothing to see but sky up there and water down there and us. And then for a long time just clouds and no sky and no ocean—just us.
So we stopped at places and I got so I could understand Cockney just like a native, except when it was too Cockney. But I’d say, “Hey, Boggs, remember I ain’t educated in English,” and he’d laugh and talk slow like to an idiot. And it was like a game, whether I could or couldn’t understand.
He said Cockneys are called Tommies—all of ’em that are not N.C.O.’s, I didn’t know what that meant, but didn’t want to be always asking him.
Wherever we stopped was English, at least there were a lot of Tommies, and did they open their eyes when a regular big army plane came down and landed and then I stepped out of it. I was glad I was dressed in the same color as them. So they thought at first that it was a uniform, but when they found out it wasn’t, they thought I was what they called a Musical Gel and they wanted me to sing or dance.
Roddy was a wonderful boy. He tended to everything. He was friend
ly with the men, as he called ’em, and was what the English call cheeky to the senior officers and red hats.
Singapore was a fort, like on an island, and absolutely safe so they didn’t have to worry about the war.
So I told Roddy what Lady B. had said that day to Mr. Bosco about Singapore singing about the wave and forgetting about the sky. And he looked at me hard, and “Don’t tell that to these red hats,” he says, “or we’ll get court martialled.” Then he drank his Scotch, which he could sure store away and never fall down flat. And he grinned, slow, and he says, “That old tea cosy,” meaning Lady B., “knows nearly as much about British weakness, my pet, as the Japanese army does.”
And he gulped down the last drop, and we went out and climbed in, and off we went.
The equator is not like they taught us it was at all. I remember my teacher saying “The equator is an imaginary line around the center of the earth that divides the northern hemisphere from the southern hemisphere.”
Well, that’s a lie. For I looked and we all looked when we crossed it and no imaginary line could any of us see, even with opera glasses.
I liked Boggs, he was my friend. He had lost everybody he’d ever had, his wife and his father and three kids—all except one brother that was in prison when the Germans laid eggs on the East End, as he called London. When he found out I had a brother that had been like his, he quit thinking I was a society toff, as he called ’em, and we was good friends, and I won’t never forget him. And certainly I won’t never forget that stocky little man standing there on one leg on the top of that wing of our plane that was sinking fast and looking back at Roddy and me through the fog. Roddy, far gone as he was, guessed what Boggs was going to do, and yelled all the English cuss words for him to please come back and let us all take our chances together.
But Boggs looked at us and grinned, and “Ow far is it to Margate?” he called, and stepped off of the wing into the water. He came up and waved his hand once and then swam out, rising up on top of a wave as big as an Indiana hill and going over behind it, till we couldn’t see him for a long time. Then I saw him up on top of another. I yelled at him to come back but Roddy quit yelling because he saw it was no use. I saw him once more, and I knew he couldn’t go on with his leg shot full of bullets like it was. And then I didn’t see him anymore, and that was all. Just Roddy and me in the fog, watching the plane sink.
