The Blue Star

by Tony Earley

  “I think we ought to invade South Carolina,” Uncle Coran said. “I never did like it down there. The people are peculiar.”

  “But Roosevelt said he was going to keep us out of the war,” said Jim.

  “Yeah, I know what he said, but cotton prices have started up,” Uncle Zeno said.

  “Cotton prices? I don’t understand. Isn’t cotton going up a good thing?”

  “Not necessarily, Doc. You’ve got to wonder why now, all of a sudden.”

  Jim thought. “Uniforms?”

  “Uniforms. Tents. Somebody somewhere has already decided to do something they ain’t told us about yet.”

  “Puttees,” said Uncle Coran. “Don’t forget about puttees.”

  “Puttees,” said Uncle Al. “I hate puttees. Daggummit.”

  As it grew too dark to shoot, Jim left the uncles sitting glumly in the loft — before they could ask him to pick up the rats — and headed back to town. It was almost suppertime. On this trip he drove so slowly that he could hear the songs of solitary crickets rising along the shoulder of the highway as he approached, and falling away as he passed. The road and the surrounding fields lay in cool shadow but the top half of Lynn’s Mountain still warmed itself in the sun. Jim pulled off the road for a minute and watched the evening advance toward the ridgetop. The air was so clear, the light so fine, that the shapes of the individual trees blanketing the upper slopes separated themselves from their brothers and stepped forward for Jim to count or admire. He picked out a tree and watched until the shadow line climbed past it. The great love for Chrissie Steppe he had discovered on the drive out had already been tempered by the uncles’ war talk, and by the knowledge that he might be forced to leave her behind, maybe before he could tell her how he felt. He didn’t know for sure where she lived — he thought it was somewhere near the Bucklaws — and even if he turned around and drove as fast as he could, it would be dark long before he got there.

  When Jim reached town he parked the Major underneath the shed and walked slowly down Depot Street, beneath the blank windows of the school, toward home. Tomorrow morning he would stand on the landing with his friends, and Chrissie would step off the bus from the mountain. It wasn’t much, but it was something. It was a start. He wiped his feet carefully on the back porch, dropped his books on the bench by the door, and stepped into the kitchen. After the cool of the evening, the room seemed almost unbearably hot from Mama’s cooking. A big pot of pintos simmered on top of the stove; he opened the warming cabinet and found two pones of corn bread and a peach cobbler. Jim swallowed hungrily. He was very fond of pinto beans and corn bread, particularly with chopped onion and a big glass of buttermilk.

  He found Mama in her bedroom. She had laid the quilt that she and Norma were making on top of her bed and was studying it critically.

  “Decided it was finally safe to come home, did you?” she asked.

  “That’s about right,” said Jim.

  “We finished piecing the top today. What do you think?”

  “I like it,” he said, which was the truth.

  The pattern of the quilt was called “Schoolhouse,” although Jim thought the buildings Mama and Norma had pieced together looked more like houses or cabins than they did schoolhouses. They were cut so that they seemed viewed from an angle; one long side and one gable end of each were visible; each house had two doors on the long side and a yellow window in the gable; each roof had two red chimneys. The walls and roofs of each house were cut from different fabrics, mostly from printed flour sacks that Mama and Norma had collected or traded other flour sacks for, although here and there Jim recognized a piece of cloth from a dress that Mama used to wear, or one of his old shirts. The few pieces he didn’t recognize had come from Norma’s family. The houses were set onto squares of dark blue; the squares, separated by rich, red sashing, were arranged in five rows of four squares each.

  Mama reached into her apron pocket and pulled out her pair of good scissors. When she sewed she wore small gold glasses on the end of her nose that made her look older than she was. She leaned over the quilt and snipped off a stray piece of thread that Jim never would have noticed.

  “It looks like a town,” Jim said, tracing a path along the background in between the squares. “The red looks like streets.”

  “I think so, too,” said Mama. “That’s what I like about it.”

  “Why are all the windows yellow?”

  “That shows that somebody’s home. They look too lonesome without a light on inside.”

  “Where do you live?” Jim asked.

  Mama studied Jim for a moment before pointing to the third house in the second row. It had light blue walls of faded chambray. “Right there,” she said, flushing slightly. “Do you know where that cloth came from?”

  Jim knew but didn’t say anything.

  “From one of your father’s shirts,” she said.

  She ran a finger over the fabric before suddenly smacking Jim three times on the arm, not quite playfully.

  “Oh, daggum your fickle hide, Jim Glass. That’s the last piece of that shirt I had.”

  “Ow,” Jim said. “Nobody told you to put that cloth in Norma’s quilt, now, did they?”

  “I just feel like beating you half to death right now.”

  “Did they? Tell the truth.”

  Mama put her hands on her hips. “No,” she said. “Nobody told me to use the last piece of your dead father’s shirt in this quilt. Let’s just say that because of the actions and words of a certain young man last winter regarding a certain young lady, I felt safe in making certain assumptions.”

  “Well, you know what they say about assuming, don’t you?”

  “Humph,” Mama said. “There’s only one A-S-S in this room right now, young man, and it’s not me.”

  Jim laughed. “Where do I live?”

  “I’m not sure you’re still welcome in this town.”

  “Well, where was I going to live, before you ran me off?”

  Mama pointed at a house in the third row, across the street from her own.

  “Was Norma going to live there, too?”

  Mama shook her head briskly and snipped at Jim with her scissors.

  “You’re trying my patience, mister,” she said. “I’m warning you.”

  “You could always stop working on the quilt.”

  Mama rolled her eyes at the ceiling. “You don’t have any idea why I’m doing this, do you?”

  “No, ma’am,” Jim said. “I don’t have any idea.”

  “What I’m trying to do is let that poor girl escape this whole fiasco with a little dignity intact. But you probably can’t understand that.”

  “I guess I can understand that,” Jim said.

  For a moment he felt a little bad about making Norma wait underneath the tree until all the school buses had passed. He resolved to do better. Maybe on Tuesdays and Thursdays he could hurry and get Norma down the hill before the buses finished loading.

  The uncles clomped onto the back porch and stomped their feet on the mat.

  “What were they all doing out at the mill?” Mama asked.

  “Shooting rats,” Jim said.

  Mama frowned. “How come?”

  “I think they were upset about that troop train this morning. They think we’re about to get in the war.”

  “The president’s going to keep us out of the war.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” Jim asked.

  “That’s easy,” Mama said. “I won’t let you go.”

  BOOK II

  The Secrets of Women

  Call to Glory

  THE WEATHER was still warm — the days mild, the first frost still days or weeks away — but the world seemed bent on practicing for the coming winter. This morning the clouds resembled snow clouds, but instead of snow they produced a steady gray mist that absorbed sound and discouraged ambition. People all over Aliceville rose, stared out at the day, and lit fires they did not need.

  Among the loafers s
moking in the store, Uncle Coran tried to incite a disagreement about whether the precipitation falling outside was a heavy fog or a light drizzle, but he found no takers. Mama grew sleepy after the midday meal and left the dishes soaking in the sink. Uncle Zeno drove slowly toward New Carpenter with the idea of buying a new logging chain but, because he didn’t really need a new logging chain, thought better of it, circled the courthouse, and drove slowly home. Uncle Al found himself sitting on a crate, staring out the wide door of the mule barn. He had no idea how long he had been there. He stood up and dusted off the legs of his overalls, even though he had put them on clean that morning and had done no real work to speak of.

  Jim spent the day staring distractedly into the gloom. He paid little attention to anything that was said in his classes. When the bell rang ending each period, he moved on to the next classroom, took his seat, and stared again out the window. Each new window changed the perspective from which he viewed the world but did nothing to improve it. The mist had reduced the woods on the far side of the bottoms into mere suggestion. The trees were discernible only sporadically, like the memory of something pleasant that happened a long time ago.

  The weather matched Jim’s mood perfectly. He found it a good day to labor under the almost public burden of a not-quite-secret unrequited love. His friends, both the guys on the steps and the girls who pretended to be offended by their existence, had begun to tease him about Christine Steppe — which genuinely puzzled Jim because he had spoken of his feelings about Chrissie to no one, and certainly not to Dennis Deane, who these days, when the bus from Lynn’s Mountain pulled up in front of the school, launched into a ridiculous, mincing recitation of “Jim and Chrissie sitting in a tree” that even Jim had to admit was funny. The only person with anything resembling direct knowledge about Jim’s great “secret” was Norma Harris, and Jim knew that Norma was unlikely to have tattled. Complaining about Chrissie would have made Norma look bad, and besides, Norma was nothing if not discreet. (Had she been the kind of girl who worried less about public appearance and was occasionally indiscreet, Jim might not have broken up with her in the first place.) He didn’t bother denying the accusations about Chrissie when they arose, because in each instance he secretly hoped that his lack of a denial would twist itself into a declaration by the time she heard about it.

  And he counted on her hearing about it.

  Because Chrissie had a boyfriend (even an absent one he neither liked nor respected), Jim believed he had to wait for Chrissie to confront him about the rumors before he could honorably tell her how he felt. He had no respect for guys who snaked away other guys’ girlfriends, or attempted to, although he now longed for a loophole — such as Chrissie calling him out — that would allow him to become a snake without appearing to be. For her part, however, Chrissie showed little inclination to talk to him at all, let alone raise the question of whether or not he loved her.

  When Chrissie didn’t show up for Miss Brown’s class, Jim sat up alertly for the first time all day. He scooted his desk away from hers, put his feet on the back rung of her chair, and stared at the door until he was sure she wasn’t coming through it. He had seen Chrissie periodically throughout the day — in addition to history they had two other classes together, although their desks weren’t close by in those classes — but now she had stepped out of the familiar track in which they all marched through the days. Jim knew that, not being outgoing and popular (like Norma), she wasn’t the kind of girl who one of the teachers would have held out of class to paint posters or carry notes here or there, and he couldn’t think of anywhere else she could be. He looked around the room when Miss Brown called Chrissie’s name from the roll, but no one else seemed to be wondering where Chrissie had gotten to, nor care about the fact that he was wondering.

  When Miss Brown told the class to open their books, Norma glanced up at him, tilted her head to one side, and sighed in commiseration at . . . what? The long day, the bleak weather, the heavy volume of English homework? Jim didn’t know. But when she blushed and looked down quickly at her book, he knew that he had somehow responded to her friendly look with what had appeared to be a hostile one of his own. That had not been his intent. He had only been concerned about Chrissie, and facing an hour of Miss Brown’s rambling without Chrissie at the desk in front of his, without her hair falling onto his history book, he would have welcomed any friendly gesture, even one that he might have regretted responding to later. He stared at Norma for a while, hoping to make up, but she did not look at him again. The weather naturally caused Miss Brown to forget about taxation without representation and drone on instead about the moors of England, which to Jim sounded more like a disagreeable family than a disagreeable place. In his notebook he wrote, “BEWARE THE MOORES OF ENGLAND!”

  When the bell rang ending the day, he stood on the landing at the top of the steps and watched for Chrissie. But she did not appear among the stream of students who drained out the school and filled up the buses. When the Lynn’s Mountain bus shut its doors and pulled forward through the mist, Jim felt a worry roll itself into a ball inside his chest. He knew that Chrissie had no other way up the mountain. As the bus passed his place on the steps and started down the drive, Ellie Something leaned out a window and yelled, “She’s sick. She needs a ride home.” Jim nodded and waved in response. Because of the nature of Ellie Something’s news, he was only mildly irritated that even the freshmen of Aliceville School now seemed to know his business. He turned, and, without thinking, pulled open the door and strode into the building.

  When Jim walked into the office, Mr. Dunlap, the principal, and Mrs. Murray, the secretary, were laughing about something, but they stopped when they saw him.

  “Yes, Mr. Glass?” Mr. Dunlap said.

  “I heard that Christine Steppe was sick.”

  “Yes?”

  “And that she needed a ride home.”

  “You heard correctly, I suppose,” said the principal. “Are you volunteering for the job?”

  “Yes, sir,” Jim said. “I have a car.”

  Mr. Dunlap and Mrs. Murray looked at each other. Mr. Dunlap winked and Mrs. Murray not very successfully stifled a smile. Jim felt his ears go red.

  “Okay, Jim,” Mr. Dunlap said. “Provided Miss Steppe is agreeable. I frankly didn’t know how we were going to get her up the mountain.” He pointed across the hall at the nurse’s office. “She’s resting in there.”

  Because Aliceville School didn’t have a nurse on staff, the nurse’s office was used infrequently — most often when the severe-looking woman from the county office showed up to check the heads of the poor kids for lice. The room held an ancient hospital bed, a beat-up steel cabinet, and a single, punitive-looking chair; in the corner lurked the rusting metal wastebasket that Mrs. Murray or one of the teachers unceremoniously thrust at sick children during moments of crisis. The only picture on the walls was a print called Call to Glory, torn from a magazine during the Great War, in which a nurse held the hand of a comatose doughboy while above them the soldier’s spirit marched triumphantly up a sunbeam toward George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, who waited to greet him knee-deep in a radiant cloud. The nurse’s office was — according to the story older students told to frighten first-graders — haunted by the ghost of a little boy who stuck a marble up his nose and accidentally sucked it down his windpipe.

  Jim found the door slightly ajar. He tapped on it twice and slowly pushed it open. Chrissie lay curled up on the bed, facing the wall, her knees clutched to her stomach. He heard her moan softly.

  “Christine?” he said. He was surprised at how soft his voice sounded.

  Chrissie raised her head and looked at him over her shoulder. Jim saw her pupils widen.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Get out of here.”

  “Chrissie?”

  “Right now.”

  “I’ve come to give you a ride home.”

  She moaned again. “You’ve what?”

  “Come to give you a ride hom
e.”

  “Have you gone completely insane?”

  “No,” Jim said. “I’ve got a car.”

  She didn’t respond.

  Jim eased farther into the room. “The bus just left,” he said. “How else are you going to get up the mountain?”

  She didn’t respond.

  He drew the uncomfortable-looking chair away from the wall and placed it beside the bed. Sad gray light settled on the bed from the single window high up on the wall. Chrissie’s hair lay spread in disarray on the white sheet. Jim hoped it wouldn’t get tangled.

  “Don’t sit down,” Chrissie said.

  “Okay. I won’t.”

  “Put the chair back.”

  “Okay,” he said. “It’s back.”

  “Is your car here?”

  “No. It’s down at the store.”

  “Go get it,” Chrissie said.

  Jim first jogged to the store and from the doorway told Uncle Coran that Mr. Dunlap had asked him to give a ride home to a sick kid. (As he told the story, Jim hoped it was close enough to the truth to keep him out of trouble. The loafers at the store — as Jim had hoped — kept Uncle Coran from quizzing him too closely; Mama would have demanded a fuller explanation and perhaps forbidden him to go.) When he stopped the Major in front of the school, one of the red doors swung open and Chrissie stepped out. Her skin looked unnaturally pale, and Jim thought that, were the nurse’s office really haunted, that’s what the ghost would look like. She walked down the stairs with the exaggerated care of someone navigating an icy sidewalk. Jim leaned over and pushed open the passenger-side door. Chrissie placed her books on the seat between them. Once she closed the door, she wrapped her arms around her abdomen, closed her eyes, and leaned against the window.

  “Don’t talk to me,” she said. “I’m about to throw up.”

  “Okay, then,” Jim said.

  Not talking, however, was the last thing Jim wanted to do. Speaking privately to Chrissie at school was out of the question, of course, and running into her around town was unlikely because she lived on Lynn’s Mountain. By Jim’s reckoning, this might be his only opportunity to talk to her alone, ever. He could feel thousands of words, everything that he wanted to say to her, piled up behind his teeth, waiting for him to open his mouth so they could storm into the light.