The Blue Star

by Tony Earley

  “Didn’t you worry about him, though?”

  “Nah, although, looking back at it now, I obviously should have. As far as I was concerned, he was just some hothead Cherokee buck who didn’t have two dimes to rub together. And I trusted Nancy. I never would have thought of Injun Joe as a rival in a million years. What put him over the top on me, though, was the war. The war was going hot and heavy then, and all you heard were people jawing back and forth about whether or not we were going to get in it, or whether or not we should get in it, or whose side we ought to get in it on, and then, in ’seventeen, of course, we got in it, and Wilson started up the draft. I registered, but they never called my number. And I didn’t join. I thought about it and prayed about it and studied about it, and I just couldn’t figure how I had a dog in that fight. I couldn’t see how the king and his bunch and the French and their bunch were any better than the kaiser and his crowd. It seemed to me that everybody had just got bowed up for no good reason and were going to get into it no matter what. I just couldn’t see how any of that mess had anything to do with me or mine. I had too much work to do here. So I didn’t join.

  “Of course boys from New Carpenter and Aliceville and up on the mountain did join, by the trainload, they just lined up to get in. Once we got in the war, you’d read in the papers how the Germans were raping nuns and hanging them from the church steeples, and you’d read how they were marching down the road with babies stuck on their bayonets, but it didn’t seem to me like much of it could be true. A lot of people did think it was true, though, and it wasn’t long before most of the fighting-age boys around here had either gotten drafted or joined up and gone off to France. When I didn’t go, and didn’t go, people started to talk. And when boys from here started getting killed, they started getting mad.”

  “At you?”

  “At me. At Nancy. At Corrie and Allie and Mama and Daddy. Your mama. All of us. Homer Ruppe was the first one from here to get killed. He got his foot hung in a ladder on the troopship going over and fell and managed to break his neck before he even got to France. It wasn’t but a day or two after his folks got notified that somebody wrung a chicken’s neck and threw it up on our porch. It seemed like people just got mean all of a sudden. Most of the time you can live your whole life and the crowd won’t even notice you, but once it singles you out, you can’t get away from it. People are like a pack of dogs that way. They threw chickens up in the yard, we had a hound or two disappear, they put manure in the mailbox and threw a dead snake in the well, and somebody even painted a bad word on the side of the barn and we had to take off from work and paint over it. And it’s all because I didn’t join the army.”

  “You weren’t a conscientious objector, were you?”

  “No, sir. I was not. I was somebody who didn’t get drafted. And not joining the service when I wasn’t drafted was my Constitutional right. Injun Joe saw which way the wind was blowing, though, and he started to run me down bigger than any of them. Never to my face, I guess I would’ve had to fight him over that, but you’d hear tell down here how he was up on the mountain, flapping his jaws. Sometime along the way, he started running me down to Nancy, telling her how I was a coward, how I didn’t care about my country, how I was going to let the kaiser march up the mountain and rape all the girls before I decided to do anything. I still rode up the mountain on Sundays to see Nancy, but I noticed that people up there stopped speaking to me after church and saying howdy when I passed them on the road, and I’d see them whispering when I went by. And it was hard on Nancy, I know it was. If I was the coward, then she was the coward’s girl. She started asking me, wasn’t I going to join the army, wasn’t I going to join the army, was I afraid of the Germans, and this or that, and it finally got to be a hard place between us. We’d gotten engaged Christmas in nineteen seventeen, and the next March she broke up with me. Injun Joe joined up sometime in there, and with me out of the way he somehow talked Nancy into marrying him before he shipped out. One Sunday afternoon, they just walked down to the preacher’s house. To this day I don’t know how in the world he managed it.

  “Then things just went from bad to worse. Coran and Al got tired of people running us down and throwing dead chickens in the yard, and as soon as they turned eighteen, they run off and joined the army without telling anybody they were going.”

  “I never knew Uncle Coran and Uncle Al were in the army.”

  “They weren’t in it long. The war ended, thank the Lord, before they finished their training, but before they could get mustered out, most of the boys in their camp came down with the flu and they got quarantined. When they finally got out of quarantine, they started on home, but the flu beat them here. As you know, that’s how Mama and Daddy died. The flu killed fourteen people in Aliceville that year. Later on, everybody said that Coran and Al were the ones who brought it here, but that was a bald-faced lie. Mama and Daddy were already on their deathbeds before their train even got here, and it’s all wrote down in the Bible if anybody wants to see it. Of course, after all the funerals and the flu talk, Coran and Al couldn’t even get a girl to look at them. Between that and me not going to the war and Mama and Daddy dying and us trying to figure out how to run things on our own, I guess that’s how we all got set in our ways and ended up bachelors.”

  “Y’all could still get married,” Jim said.

  “Oh, it’s nice to think so, I guess, but I figure that ship sailed off to France or somewhere a long time ago. Nancy McAbee was the only girl I ever came close to marrying.”

  “What did Chrissie mean when she told me she didn’t know where her daddy was?”

  “If I tell you, you have to promise you won’t mention it to a soul.”

  “I promise.”

  “Because if this got out, it would bring hardship down on Nancy and that girl, and they don’t need any more of that.”

  “I swear I won’t tell anybody. What did he do?”

  “He robbed a bank, and he shot a policeman. The law can’t find him. That’s why Nancy and Chrissie came home.”

  In New Carpenter, Jim sat in Uncle Zeno’s truck and stared at the window of the hardware store. Most of what he could see in the glass was the reflection of the world behind him: the line of farm trucks sniffing out parking places; people scurrying between the awnings of the stores across the street as though it were still raining; the lettering on the store windows backward and foreign-looking. All he could see inside the hardware store were a display of canning jars and the occasional passing shadow of a clerk or customer. Uncle Zeno was in there somewhere, but Jim didn’t know where. He had elected to wait in the truck rather than going in to gawk at the fishing plugs and the pocketknives and the dark, glamorous pistols. He thought he was getting a little old for that.

  It seemed as though there were good reasons to be mad at all of the people in Uncle Zeno’s story and — save Injun Joe and the people who ran down Jim’s family — an equal number of good reasons not to be. He was disappointed in Uncle Zeno for not joining the army but simultaneously proud of him for continuing to ride that white mule up the mountain, even though the world had turned against him. It was easy for him to work up a satisfying case of contempt for Chrissie’s mother but equally easy to feel sorry for her when he considered how hard her life had turned out. She had obviously picked the wrong man. And while her choosing Injun Joe had somehow locked Uncle Zeno into a permanent bachelorhood, it had also eventually led to Jim watching Chrissie walk around the front of the bus on the first day of school. If Uncle Zeno had married Nancy, Chrissie — if she had been born at all — would have been his cousin. He didn’t know what to think about her lying to him about Injun Joe. He knew that if word got out, she would probably be hounded out of school, but he also wondered, now that she had proved she was capable of it, if she was lying to him about anything else. Maybe she really did love Bucky; maybe she just wanted to string Jim along for fun, or as a spare. No matter how Jim tried to follow the story in his mind, it never led to a satisf
actory destination, only to a new place to begin thinking about it. Eventually the door of the store swung open and Uncle Zeno appeared with a logging chain looped over one shoulder. He threw the chain heavily into the bed of the truck before climbing into the cab.

  “What’s wrong with the chain you got back at the house?” Jim asked.

  “Nothing, I don’t guess. I just thought it might be handy to have a longer one.”

  “Do you still love her?”

  Uncle Zeno reached for the starter, but paused. “Nah,” he eventually said. “Let’s go home.”

  Back in Aliceville, Uncle Zeno parked the truck in the yard. Jim got out and walked backward toward the porch. The sky had cleared slightly, and on top of the hill the rides spun in a thin sunlight that neither looked nor felt quite warm. A breeze had freshened in the north, and on it rode the manufactured screams of people pretending to be scared, the crazed hooting of the calliope, and the good carnival smells of sawdust and popcorn and engine exhaust and burned sugar. Jim closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, but just once, then turned his back on Big Day and strode into the house. Mama’s door was closed. Uncle Zeno tiptoed down the hallway and out the back door. Jim thought about going squirrel hunting, but the woods seemed too far away and he dreaded the prospect of cleaning whatever he shot. He retreated into his room and lay down on the bed and tried reading the Zane Grey novel that had come in the mail that week, but he put the book down as soon as the penniless cowboy protagonist fell in love with the raven-haired daughter of the ranch owner. That happened in all the books. He crossed his hands on his chest and decided to think about baseball. When he opened his eyes it was dusk outside and the uncles were talking around the kitchen table and Mama was calling him to supper.

  Dance Lessons

  JIM WALKED up the hill toward the school with Dennis Deane. The breeze that had come up during the afternoon had blown the clouds off to the south before falling quiet at sunset, leaving the air chilled but pleasant, the stars close overhead. Up ahead the school building was dark, except for the tall gymnasium windows which threw light across the broad, sloping backs of the cars parked in the schoolyard. In the distance Jim could hear the furious sawing of a fiddle, the doom-Doom, doom-Doom, doom-Doom of a bass, and the rumbling choonk-Choonk choonka-choonk, choonk-Choonk choonka-choonk of clogging square dancers. The band was a good one — Joe Doug Revis and the Cherry Bounce Boys, all the way from Whittier — but Jim had already decided that he wasn’t going to dance with anybody, no matter what. Not pretty, rich girls from New Carpenter, nor wild mill-hill girls from the towns on the other side of the river, not even if they grabbed his hand and pleaded and tried to drag him onto the floor. The only reason he was going was so that everybody could see how miserable he was. And if nobody told Chrissie how miserable he was, the evening would be a waste of time.

  Maybe, he thought, he should just forget about the dance altogether and go coon hunting. It wasn’t too cold, the woods would be wet from the rain earlier in the day, and the dogs would be able to trail easily. He would have a hard time, however, dragging the uncles out of the gym and getting them to go with him. They didn’t dance much, but they loved listening to a string band. And they hardly ever went coon hunting on Saturday night. They said it made them too sleepy during church the next day.

  What Jim really wished was that he was going to the dance with Chrissie. They would dance for a while — only with each other — and when Mama and the uncles went home, he would drive her through the fields down to the river. On the way she would scoot up close beside him and he would hold her hand — except when he had to change gears. (Maybe, though, he could put his arm around her and work the clutch and she could change the gears.) At the river they would cuddle up in the rumble seat beneath a blanket and listen to the water and look at the stars. Chrissie’s nose would be cold and he would feel it on his cheek when he kissed her.

  Of course, Jim had never actually cuddled up with a girl in the rumble seat of the Major, and his prospects didn’t seem to be getting any better. Norma had steadfastly refused, and there was fat chance of getting Chrissie anywhere near his car. If he welded the rumble seat shut it wouldn’t make any difference. He might as well sell the daggum car for all the good it was doing him. He looked over at Dennis Deane and disgustedly jammed his hands into the pockets of his jacket. Going to square dances with Dennis Deane was not how he had imagined spending his senior year.

  “Tell me something,” Dennis Deane said. “Why are we walking up this hill when you have a car?”

  “Because the school is only three hundred yards from my house.”

  “But, Jim, it’s a steep hill.”

  “Stop whining, Dennis Deane. I’m taking you home after the dance. Isn’t that good enough for you?”

  “Does that mean we’re going steady?”

  “Not hardly.”

  “Well, then I just might catch a ride home with somebody else.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know yet. I’ve cooked up a new secret saying to make girls fall in love with me, and I’m turning it loose tonight.”

  Jim waited.

  “You wanna hear it?” asked Dennis Deane.

  “Nope.”

  “Oh, come on.”

  “If I let you tell me, will you shut up?”

  “I promise I’ll never speak to you again as long as I live.”

  “Then you’ve got a deal,” Jim said.

  “Okay. You be the girl.”

  “I don’t want to be the girl.”

  “Well, you can’t be me, because you don’t know the secret saying.”

  “I don’t want to be you, either.”

  “Everybody wants to be me.”

  “No, they don’t.”

  “Damn it, Jim, will you shut up for just one minute and listen to my secret saying? I need to practice it before the shooting starts.”

  Jim huffed but didn’t say anything.

  “That’s better,” Dennis Deane said. “You’re a girl.”

  “I’m a girl.”

  “I walk up to you and I say, ‘Hey there, Red Riding Hood, I’m the big, bad wolf.’”

  Jim stopped in the road and stared at Dennis Deane. “That’s it?”

  “Of course not. Then I say, ‘Do you want to see my long, bushy tail?’”

  Jim shook his head and started again up the hill. “That’s about the stupidest thing I ever heard,” he said.

  “Then how about, ‘I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll pull your drawers down’?”

  “That’s even worse. Now you’ve got stuff from two different stories. It’s not even the same wolf.”

  “Well, if you’re so smart, let’s hear your secret saying to make girls fall in love with you.”

  “Have a nice trip,” Jim said.

  “I don’t get it.”

  “That’s because there’s nothing to get. If I had a secret saying to make girls fall in love with me, I wouldn’t be walking up this daggum hill with you, now, would I?”

  Dennis Deane was quiet for a few steps. “You just need to forget about Pocahontas,” he said.

  “I’ve asked you to not call her names,” said Jim.

  “She’s Bucky Bucklaw’s girlfriend, for God’s sake. Don’t you even wonder what kind of girl would go out with an idiot like that in the first place?”

  “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “And you keep saying that. Meantime, there’s a whole gym full of available girls right up there, Jim, just raring to go. All you have to do is pick one out.”

  “Just raring to go, are they, Dennis Deane?”

  “You know they are. Nothing makes a girl go crazy like square dancing. That’s a scientific fact.”

  “I must’ve slept through that class.”

  “But it’s true,” Dennis Deane said. “All that clogging gets everything bouncing up and down and makes it all loosey-goosey and lovey-dovey.”

  “You belong in Broughton with the rest of the nu
ts.”

  “Just try it out, if you don’t believe me. Ask somebody to dance. I dare you. You can even use my secret saying.”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  When they reached the schoolyard, Jim threaded his way through the haphazardly parked cars and trucks with Dennis Deane close on his heels. The gymnasium windows were so brightly lit that the glare made it difficult for him to see where he was going.

  “I can’t see too good,” Dennis Deane said.

  “That ain’t exactly news.”

  “What if we run up on Injun Joe out here in the dark?”

  “We ain’t gonna run up on Injun Joe.”

  “How do you know? I heard he might be anywhere.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Injun Joe?” Dennis Deane whispered. “Hello? Chief? You out here?”

  “Cut it out,” Jim said. “You’re not funny.”

  He spotted a small group of grown men smoking up ahead and circled around to avoid them. Anybody hanging around the schoolyard during the dance was probably drinking, and anybody drinking would sooner or later be looking for a fight.

  “You ought to be more worried about lintheads, anyway.”

  “I ain’t worried about nobody,” said Dennis Deane. “Lintheads. Injuns. Tall girls. Bring ’em on.”

  When they finally reached the front steps, it felt like home base in some not particularly fun playground game against much older boys. From the landing he turned and looked back across the schoolyard. With the light now at his back, it didn’t look scary at all.

  Dennis Deane suddenly punched him on the arm.

  “Ow. What was that for?”

  “Daggummit, Jim. This is our last Big Day before we graduate.”

  “So?”

  “So just forget about her. Have some fun for once in your life.”

  “Go show somebody your bushy tail.”