Nine
Back in La Junta, we found a Woolworth’s with a section for sewing, including a row of fabric bolts lined up along the back wall. First, we searched through a pattern book until we found a maternity dress we all approved of and decided would suit me. Then we looked at fabric.
As she ran her hand along the bolts, Rose said, “All of the jackets my father made were lined with the finest silks.”
Lorelei said, “We did all the finish work by hand, with tiny stitches our grandmother taught us to make. You couldn’t see them from the finished side.”
I selected jersey fabric of navy blue with tiny white polka dots, a package of pearly buttons, and needed notions. Then we took turns trying on wide-brimmed straw hats. Already my face was checkered with big freckles darker than my birthmark. Rose, Lorelei, and I chose for each other the most flattering hats to save our faces from the endless prairie sun. Then we flipped through dime novels and picked one to buy, pass between us and read, and then later discuss.
All during the time we spent in the store, I had the same feeling of disbelief that had sheltered me during the months since Mother’s funeral. I moved and spoke just as before, in a manner that looked so normal. No one would know that the center of me had been hollowed out with a shovel. But on our way back to the truck, we passed by a soldier in uniform, and my own feelings of reproach welled so powerfully within me that I lost my step. Lorelei fell a step behind, too, but for an entirely different reason. She turned around and swooned over the soldier as he walked behind her and down the street.
“What did I tell you?” whispered Rose. “She’s boy-crazy.”
As we drove back, we followed truckloads of other Japanese interns traveling back from the fields. Farther north, we came upon a truckload of German POWs sitting on the flatbed of a truck similar to Ray’s. The truck was pulling onto the highway and coming our way. I knew they had to be POWs because, although they wore regular clothes and looked average enough, they were accompanied by three armed MPs.
I sat up in the seat. I had known the Axis POWs were near, but had never seen any of them before. Ray had told me that while they were working the area, they stayed in barracks set up at the Rocky Ford fairgrounds. He’d even had some help from them earlier in the summer when he was harvesting the cash crops.
Germans, possibly Nazis, right here in our country, as faces on human beings. Amazingly, I had heard nothing but good reports about the German and Italian POWs. Some of those from Camp Trinidad were so likable and trustworthy they had earned the friendship of the people in the bordering community. Teachers and other civilians were even volunteering to go into the camps to teach classes in English, one of many educational opportunities offered to the prisoners and the subject most requested by them. On the radio, once I heard that one group of women who baked and cooked for the POWs found themselves so carried away in adoration, the sheriff of the county had cautioned them to stop, reminding them we were still at war.
I eased off the accelerator. I wondered how the Germans would appear in person, without the flattening effect of the newspaper pictures and impersonal newsreels. The truck went by me so fast, however, that I saw only a blur of many faces turned toward the road and not enough to form an impression.
Rose, who sat closest to me, must have been reading my thoughts. “Some of them are nice enough.”
“Have you met?” I asked her
“Often we work the same farms.”
Remembering the reports I’d recently read, I asked, “Are the POWs still Nazis?”
Rose lifted her shoulders and sighed. “I suppose some of them are. But most of them are just beginning to learn English, so we can’t talk in much depth. And when we do talk, we don’t usually discuss politics.”
As I accelerated again, I asked, “Have you read anything about the death camps?”
“Yes,” Rose answered.
“Do you believe the numbers of murders that are being reported?”
Rose frowned. “I’m beginning to. Yes.”
I had to make myself concentrate on driving. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it, either. Those eight hundred thousand pairs of shoes. At Majdanek alone. “Do you think the average German soldier knew?”
“If they did, they probably wouldn’t admit it. And regardless, they would probably disavow any connection to it. Just as we want to claim no part of the war conducted by Japan.”
Lorelei peered around her sister. “Do you want to know what song is their favorite?” She waited for my nod, then said, “ ‘Don’t Fence Me In.’ Isn’t that funny?”
But I found it all too awful to be funny.
In Wilson, I pulled over and gathered out all the coins I could find in my change purse. Inside the booth, first I dialed Abby, who didn’t answer. When I tried Bea, however, she answered on the first ring.
She sounded so young. “Livvy, I can’t believe it’s really you. We’ve missed you so badly. How are you?”
“Fine.”
“Oh, my dear, it’s been so gruesome here without you. Are you well? When can you come to visit?”
When I didn’t answer, she went on. “Father has had the influenza, but he’s fine, really fine now. And you don’t know the news about Abby and Kent. He’s being shipped off, away from Fitzsimons, assigned to go overseas.” Bea paused. “But Abby is acting so brave, wouldn’t you know it? Always the strong supporter. Saying they need him on the front lines more than she does, especially now more than ever, with the end so near.”
Finally I found my voice. “If only it would end before he has to go. Tell Abby I’ll pray for Kent every night.”
“Of course I will.” Bea waited, then her voice deepened. “Oh, how is it really, Livvy? Is he good to you? Because if he isn‘t, remember what Abby advised. You always have options.”
Options? I could remember once having options. “I can’t think about that now.”
“Of course you can’t. Just take a rest out there, and after the baby comes, things will look clearer. Now. Do you think you’ll be able to come home for the holidays?” When I couldn’t keep up with her, Bea filled the dead space. “It’s going to be so terribly sad without Mother for the first time. We can’t possibly manage without you, too. You’ll just have to come. We simply won’t take no for an answer.”
Bea went on in this manner for quite some time, almost carrying on a conversation with herself. But her voice sounded so good to me that I let her go on and on. I added more coins as the operator asked for them, until I had completely run out of change, and Bea and I were forced to say a rushed goodbye.
As I hung up the receiver and looked outside the telephone booth, I realized that for just the briefest moment, I had escaped. Bea’s voice had picked me up and plunked me back in the home where I had once belonged. Although Rose and Lorelei waited for me in the truck, it took me a while before I was able to move toward them.
Options, Bea had said. Back in Denver and before I left, we had discussed those options. With no place to go and no personal means, I couldn’t disappear on my own, but staying in Denver was impossible, too. Having a baby without a husband ruined a girl’s life forever. Abby’s suggestion had been to marry as Father insisted, give the child a name, then divorce and return with the baby to Denver. Our mother had always taught us that divorce was a distasteful thing reserved for the lower classes and for movie stars, but our generation was more enlightened. We were fighting the worst war in history, and if humanity survived it, we wouldn’t sacrifice everything in our lives, ever again. Already the divorce rate was soaring, probably due to the large number of hasty wartime marriages. Of course, Mother had also taught her daughters to stay virgins until after marriage, something Abby and Bea had managed to do.
I slipped back into the driver’s seat and turned over the ignition. Earlier that morning, I had met Rose and Lorelei at the pay telephone in town, as they had assured me they could walk that far. But now they directed me to a large horse barn outside of Wilson where man
y of the farmworkers lucky enough to participate in the Agricultural Leave Program spent their nights. Draped by lanterns, the open doors revealed beds of hay inside, personal belongings and clothing stacked on hay bales and on overturned crates, workers milling about as if in preparation for the night to come.
I tried to remember the first time I had heard of Congress’s plans for Japanese American internment. I recalled that my first impression had been one of approval, that certainly we couldn’t chance domestic disloyalty in the face of this terrible world war. But now, as I sat beside Rose and Lorelei and gazed out at this barn—this farm camp, as they called it—I wavered. Certainly these two girls posed no threat to our country. In fact, all the farmworkers seemed to be the most peaceful of people. They had volunteered to help with the harvest, tough physical labor at best, to leave the camp and stay here in conditions little better than those provided for our livestock, all to earn a measly nineteen dollars a month.
This was temporary, I kept telling myself. At war’s end, they could return to the homes, businesses, and places in society where they had lived before. I found myself wishing I’d never seen this camp.
Perhaps someday, we could all make it back to the places where we started.
I didn’t believe it, but I tried to.
Ten
By the time I reached home, it was after sunset. On moonless nights, black sky and prairie horizon blended into one dark veil. But with no blackout curtains required here in the middle of the countryside, I could see stark white light coming from the kitchen window, letting me know that Ray was inside. I climbed the steps and found him sitting at the table eating heated-up leftover chicken.
“Sorry about that,” I said.
He set down his fork. “I got by on my own for years before.”
I slid down onto the chair next to him and checked the pot. Perhaps I’d try some myself.
Ray said, “We’re thinking on trying winter wheat this year.” He picked up his fork and started to eat again. “We plant it in the fall and let it grow for a couple of weeks until the cold makes it go dormant. If winter’s not too bad, then in spring, the wheat’ll come alive again.”
But I’d long lost my initial curiosity about farming. Now I had to pretend to be interested. “How will you know?”
“If we get a lot of snow, it protects the plants like a blanket. But if winter’s cold and dry,” he said, shaking his head, “they’re lost.”
I grabbed a plate and picked out a chicken breast. “Is it worth the risk?”
He looked surprised. “Of course it is. That wheat could feed a lot of folks.”
I found myself staring at the oily indentation across his forehead caused by wearing that old hat of his all day long.
He finished eating, then leaned back in the chair. “Where were you today?”
It wasn’t a demand. I took one bite. “Sightseeing,” I answered.
He rocked forward. “The truck’s not for sightseeing. We get gasoline to move workers and do our business.”
Of course, he was right. Because of gasoline shortages and war needs, most everyone frowned on pleasure driving, and at one time, the government had banned it altogether. In January of 1943, the government had tried making pleasure driving a punishable of- fense, but with enforcement nearly impossible, they lifted the ban later that same year, in September.
I said, “Then that’s what I did.”
Ray started on his dessert, stale cake from Mrs. Pratt. “It’s not just the gasoline, but the tires, too. I’m using a tractor with steel wheels ‘cause you can’t get tires nowadays. And every fall after harvest, I have to take the tires off that old wagon hitched behind the barn and put them on the truck. Otherwise, the truck tires would be worn out, and all I could buy is reclaimed ones that don’t last a hundred miles.”
“That’s illegal, isn’t it?”
Ray gulped.
“Switching out tires? Keeping more than one set?”
“I do it ‘cause I need to.”
“Well, I needed to transport farmworkers.”
“Who’d that be?”
“Rose and Lorelei.”
He looked baffled, and then a flash of recognition crossed his face. “The Japanese girls.”
“They’re American.”
He chewed with effort. I think the man hadn’t a clue what I meant. “Okay. The American girls who look Japanese.”
That chicken wasn’t such a good idea after all. I shoved my plate away. “Do you dislike them because of Pearl Harbor? Because of Daniel?”
He gave me a hard look. “I’m not as stupid as you think. I know they’re not the same people who bombed Pearl Harbor. And they’re great people, good workers. They’ve kept our harvest going over the past few years.”
I slumped back. “I never said you were stupid.”
Now Ray looked at his dessert instead of eating it. “And I never said I disliked them. I just said they were Japanese, is all.”
“And you keep your distance.”
“I have a lot to do around here.” Ray wiped his face with a napkin. “I got to keep this farm going pretty much on my own. I don’t go into the fields to socialize.”
Eating with him now was out of the question. I got up from the table and went outside to the porch without slamming the screen door. I sat in my chair and listened to the sounds made by crickets in the night while I tried to slow my breathing. He left me alone for close to an hour, then before he went to bed, he stepped outside.
The breeze that night came in from the direction of the creekbed, and although it ran dry, the ditch always held a pocket of cold air that chilled me each time I walked the bridge that crossed it. Ray’s looming, boxy shape blocked the moonlight but not the cold air coming up from the creekbed. A chill ran up my bare forearms, and I wished I had brought out a sweater.
“You should eat something,” he said.
But I couldn’t even look his way.
Eleven
The work of the harvest continued, the fields full of workers, the roads run up and down with piled-high trucks. One day as I was driving to La Junta to buy groceries, I saw some of the German POWs at work on one of the farms near us. The enlisted men were watched over by guards, Army MPs stationed at each end of the field and one in the middle. But other POWs weren’t guarded at all. Ray told me later it was because they were officers and could be trusted pretty much on their own.
During long days around the house, however, all was quiet. I had no visitors except for the bulk gasoline agent who drove out one day with a tanker truck to fill Ray’s storage tank. When I saw him, I wandered outside, yearning for conversation. But as he filled the tank, all we talked about was the war and both of his sons who were off fighting in Europe.
Everyone on all the surrounding farms and in the communities was busy; however, I still had few chores to make myself feel productive. Often I wondered how my itching feet had landed on such a stationary plot. I had already planted the bulbs in the front flower garden, cleaned the house numerous times, and thumbed through cookbooks so many times I thought I might memorize the recipes. I gathered eggs in the morning and separated the cream from the raw milk, and every couple of days I started taking eggs and cream into La Junta to sell for Ray. I read Susan Shelby Magoffin’s diary, Down the Santa Fe Trail and into Mexico, over the course of one long day.
One morning, I decided to go in search of the dugout. Even though Martha had warned me not to go alone, I couldn’t wait any longer. And if I took Franklin along with me, technically, I said to myself, I wouldn’t be going alone.
Outside it was warm, and the sun was a butterscotch disk on a blue paper sky. After making myself a sandwich, I headed out the front door toward the bridge, calling after Franklin to join me. He came shuffling up with tongue hanging out to one side. Following Martha’s directions, I went to the creek and carefully scrambled down one side of the bank until I found myself on the ditch bottom. The bed was sandy, flat, and easy to walk, the only imp
ediments occasional smooth stones. Franklin was sniffing up behind me.
We walked south. I saw one carved-out, semi-cave a few feet up on the bank about a hundred yards south. But it was too small. I continued walking down the creekbed until I arrived at a bend filled with tangled branches and debris that blocked my way. The creekbed dropped away at that point and began a rocky descent. I stood and thought. The indention I had seen earlier must have been the right place after all. Soon I had made my way back to it.
Looking up, I saw that the dugout was only about five feet deep and no more than ten feet across. None of the willows and reeds that had most likely been used to extend the roof and walls remained. Probably on one of the occasions when water ran high through this bed, it had all been swept away, or else the winds had taken it. I climbed up to the front of the cavelike opening, and leaning over, I went inside with Franklin on my heels. When I looked up and saw the earthen and stone roof at the back of the dugout still stained black with the smoke from fires, I knew I had discovered the right place. And for just a second, I thought I smelled something cooking.
Franklin went off to explore on his own while I sat on the cool dirt floor of a place that had once been a home. I pulled out my sandwich and bit in as I took in the same view that Ray’s ancestors must have studied, day after day of their lives. Opposite from me, the far bank cut a swath of blond color across the sky. A stunted tree along the rim became a woman dancing in a long, flowing skirt. Dark stones strewn about on the pale sand of the creekbed stood out like buttons on a white dress.
I closed my eyes. After a couple of B-25 trainers passed overhead, near silence returned. From far away came the call of a hawk, hunting. I could hear the scuff of critters in the underbrush below me and a sigh of wind sailing through nearby juniper trees. When I opened my eyes and took another bite, I wondered about those early pioneers’ lives. What had they thought about? What of their hopes and dreams? And how did they handle the solitude and not lose their minds?
The Magic of Ordinary Days Page 8
