Last Dance at Jitterbug Lounge

by Pamela Morsi

  But the fall was a long way off. There were so many busy days ahead. J.D. went to Boys State. He was a finalist for a public speaking award for Rural Electric Cooperatives and he and Melinda were definitely the cutest couple ever destined for a senior prom.

  The rigidity of the new Baptist preacher, Brother Kelvan, kept the traditional dance out of the school gym that year. He didn’t approve and so the rest of the community had to suffer. It made me mad. God and I weren’t exactly on speaking terms, but I respected Him. What I didn’t respect were those who could, with such self-righteous certainty, speak for Him. It didn’t help my opinion that Kelvan put a big “My country right or wrong!” bumper sticker on his church bus. The man had spent the entire war on a base up in Minnesota. I suppose he was protecting us from the Canadians. He was one of the two biggest War Hawks in town. The other was Piggy Masterson, former draft dodger who now was with some carefully placed cash donations and draped in the American flag, a leader at Kelvan’s church. More proof, if I needed it, that with money on the line, even people in small towns can have short memories.

  I hadn’t much cared for my senior prom. But nobody had said I couldn’t have one. And my J.D. would never be a senior again, so a couple of days after the announcement, I went up to talk to Tom McKiever who was running the Jitterbug and we worked out a deal. He would close up the bar and he and his customers would steer clear. We, the parents, would rent the place, decorate it and serve nonalcoholic punch and cookies. We had no affiliation with the school whatsoever. We were a group of parents giving a private party and all the seniors and their dates were invited to attend.

  Geri and her sisters did the decorating. They decided on a Dutch theme and the entire crew sat around our front porch every night for a week making tulips out of crepe paper. I got J.D. to help me put together a miniature windmill. We used an electric fan motor to turn the blades, though it took us a fair amount of engineering to get them to turn safely and slowly enough.

  The night of the big dance, Geri and I put on our best clothes and went up to chaperone. Melinda was gorgeous in a bright pink gown, her hair piled high on her head in fat curls, like a stack of blond sausages. And J.D. looked perfect beside her in his white sport coat and pink carnation.

  Geri and I watched from the wings as the kids danced the Jerk and the Watusi. When the band finally tried a slow number I took her in my arms and we danced as we had so very long ago on that very floor.

  “You don’t look grown up enough to have a son graduating from high school,” I told her.

  She raised her chin at me, feigning defiance. “I most certainly am,” she insisted. “You’ve been the only fellow for me since I was five years old.”

  I leaned down and kissed her on the nose. She giggled.

  “Hey, you two,” J.D. said, easing his partner over in our direction. “No PDA on the dance floor.”

  PDA—public display of affection—was one of the high school’s most vigorously enforced prohibitions.

  “It’s all right, mister,” I teased back. “She and I, we’re married.”

  “Yeah, all you kids say that,” he answered.

  We had a great time at the dance. And we weren’t the only ones. As the evening wore on, more and more of the couples were sneaking into the shadows for a moment of privacy, and who could blame them? They were young and full of life.

  I even caught J.D. and Melinda when I went into the back room to fetch a canister of CO2 for the soda fountain. My son was leaned up against a wall, and Melinda was plastered against him like a cheap summer suit.

  “Don’t mind me,” I announced as I walked by them. And I got what I needed and made my way out of there without looking in their direction again.

  I was happy for them. Happy for him. I trusted him to enjoy himself without getting into any trouble. Maybe it wasn’t typical of what a father feels for a teenage son, but Crabtree boys grow up fast, I decided. My son was a man already and I was ready to accept him as that.

  But the beauty of that spring faded too quickly. It was the last week of school, just a few days after the prom, with graduation coming up on the weekend, that I picked up the mail at the mailbox and saw the letter from the Academy.

  I was excited and jumpy and hurried home to show it to Geri.

  “We could call him at school,” I suggested. “And he could come home and read it.”

  Geri shook her head. “No, he’s got a calculus final this morning and European history in the afternoon. Just wait until he comes home for dinner.”

  So that evening after J.D. got off work, Geri sat the envelope on his plate while he washed up. He saw it as soon as he sat down and he glanced wide-eyed at us.

  “When did this come?”

  “This morning,” I told him.

  “Why didn’t you call me at school? You know how anxious I’ve been to get this letter.”

  “Your mother thought you should take your final exams without this distraction.”

  “Mom,” he said to her in a low-pitched tone that was heavy on long-suffering.

  Geri laughed.

  “You’re here now,” she said. “Go ahead and open it!”

  He picked it up like he would tear into it, but she admonished him to pry it open gently at the corners.

  “I guess she’s putting this in among her treasures,” he said to me.

  I shrugged. “Once a junk collector’s daughter, always a junk collector’s daughter.”

  Geri slapped my arm playfully.

  J.D. opened the envelope with a smile on his face. He read the words on the letter and then hesitated. As the moment lingered I glanced at Geri. The smile dropped from her face as quickly as from my own. Our son was a good student, a natural leader, he had excellent recommendations.

  “I didn’t get in,” he announced.

  “Why not?”

  “What does it say?”

  “It doesn’t really say anything,” J.D. answered. “They thanked me for applying and said that I’m allowed to reapply next year. That’s pretty much it.”

  He laid the paper down on the table. I picked it up, but I was too agitated to read it. I handed it to Geri instead.

  “It’s a blow,” I said.

  J.D. nodded. “I should have been more realistic about my chances,” he said. “Catawah is such a small school and the Academy is very competitive. I really shouldn’t have gotten my hopes so high.”

  “It’s good to have high hopes,” his mother said.

  I nodded. “We have to see this as an opportunity,” I told him. “You’re fortunate that this isn’t your only chance for college. We’ve still got that money from Grandpa Shertz. You can go to Oklahoma State and take ROTC. It’s the same four years and you’ll come out with the exact same rank.”

  “I want to think about it,” he said. “I just really need to think about what I need to do.”

  “And you don’t have to decide right away,” Geri assured him. “You certainly don’t have to decide tonight. I’ve fixed your favorite meat loaf and mashed potatoes.”

  He pushed his chair back from the table. “Sorry, Mom, I’m not really hungry.”

  As soon as he walked out the front door, I was on my feet and I was cussing and headed to the phone.

  “What are you doing?” Geri asked me.

  “I’m calling those lousy S.O.B.s and giving them a piece of my mind!”

  She decided to help me. Geri, who was normally too frugal to call her sister in Haskell because it was long distance, called Senator Monroney’s office in Washington, D.C.

  I was surprised to get a United States senator on the phone, I was surprised to be screaming at him, but I was more surprised at the words that came out of my mouth.

  “I served my country. I was a gunner on a B-24. I strafed as much ground, dropped as many bombs and killed as many Japanese as most men who went. I’ve got enough commendations and battle ribbons to choke a draft horse. Damn it! I was MIA alone on a raft for seven long days in the shark-infest
ed Solomon Sea. I did this because my country asked me to. Now I’m asking something back!”

  The big, important man never lost his temper. He took every angry phrase that I dished out and he promised he would do something. He was as good as his word.

  The next morning, before J.D. left for school an Air Force recruiter from Tulsa showed up at our door. He was stiff and straight with more spit and polish than any of us guys had had in the Pacific. He had a few ribbons on his chest, but he couldn’t hold a candle to the stack of pretty colors that I kept in an old shoe box.

  “Senator Monroney’s office called me,” he said. “I’d like to talk to you, J.D. And, of course, your parents are welcome, too.”

  He sat down with the three of us in the front room.

  “We want you in the Air Force,” he told J.D. “We can see that you’re smart, motivated and eager to serve. Are you familiar with the prep school?”

  “Prep school?”

  “As part of the Academy, the Air Force runs a prep school for young men who are good candidates for the Academy but need a little extra help to make the grade.”

  “I never heard of it,” J.D. admitted.

  “You’re an athlete, I understand,” the recruiter said.

  “I play basketball and baseball,” J.D. answered.

  “Oh, that’s great. The AF Prep Huskies have some great teams,” he said. “You go a year there, play some ball, bone up on your studies, it will make you a lot more competitive for an appointment to the Academy.”

  “It sounds great,” J.D. said.

  He glanced at me for agreement. It did sound great. A little bit too great. My experience didn’t include a lot of really great deals coming from the Air Force. Maybe things had changed.

  “Okay,” the recruiter said with a big smile. “Then let’s get you started. We’ll need to get you signed up for basic training and get you on the fast track. You sign up here for four years, but that’s just a formality. Once you enter the Academy you make an eight-year commitment, I’m sure you know that.”

  J.D. nodded.

  I guess with the sound of Air Force Academy still ringing in our ears, we didn’t really hear everything that was said. But before J.D. finally trotted off to school, he’d enlisted in the Air Force.

  We found out later, of course, that J.D. could have applied to the prep school without joining up. But we were assured that active duty would help him.

  In July, instead of driving his car to Colorado Springs, he went south to San Antonio, Texas.

  “I’ll write you every week,” his mother promised him.

  J.D. chuckled. “And I’ll phone in my replies,” he answered.

  We missed him when he was gone. But our life was full and busy. I was still working at the post office. Geri had hooked up with an odd assortment of people who were interested in resource conservation, which is apparently a fancy name for reusing junk. Using both her knowledge of the business and her contacts, she was very helpful to the group. Ultimately, she was named to the governing board of the Cannett County Friends of the Environment. I was proud of her, but she waved it off as though it were nothing.

  It was late summer before we saw J.D. again. He looked like a different person. It was not just that his hair was missing and that he’d bulked up by thirty pounds, at least. He just seemed to be a grown-up, self-confident man. We loved having him home and hearing all of his stories. And there were a lot of them. He had a way of making the ordinary seem entertaining.

  One night when he’d been home about a week he went in under the bed and brought out the shoe box with my war medals. He was looking through them inquisitively, as if he hadn’t seen them all a hundred times and knew them better than referee signals.

  “Do you know where I can get some nice wood?” he asked me.

  “You planning a project?”

  He gave a little smile. “I thought I’d make a box for Mama’s treasures, something that doesn’t look like it was dragged out of the garbage dump.”

  “Oh, your mother doesn’t believe in garbage dumps,” I said, with a teasing glance in Geri’s direction. “These days we want everything to go into ‘recycling.’”

  She glanced up from the notes she was making on a pamphlet about composting.

  “He’s makes fun of me now,” she said to J.D., feigning affront, “but he was pretty grateful when I rescued his worn-out soul from the trash heap of human existence.”

  I laughed. “And so, indeed, she did rescue me,” I told J.D. “And we both have cause to be grateful. Me, ’cause I’ve had a great life and you, because Stub Williams would have probably been your father.”

  “Stub Williams? I would never have given that knothead the time of day.”

  J.D. chuckled. “Perhaps I wouldn’t have been born at all. Thanks, Mom.”

  “I am the one you should thank,” she said. “If I left it up to your father, I surely would have been an old maid.”

  “So to get back to the treasure box for the almost old maid. I think I know where I can get my hands on some gorgeous walnut.”

  The conversation proceeded and we eventually made it around to the future.

  “Is it for sure that you’ll be heading up to that prep school in the fall?” I asked him.

  He gave a huff and shook his head. “No,” he said. “The school year actually starts there in July, so I missed it, being in basic training. The Sarge tells me that I can apply next year.”

  “You must be disappointed.” I said this, because it seemed natural that he would be, but he didn’t look or sound disappointed at all.

  “I’m rethinking all that,” he said. “The Academy would be great, but Officer Candidate School works just as well. I’m just…I’m reconsidering my options.”

  “Okay,” I agreed. “It’s always good to consider all the options.”

  J.D. looked up at me and gave me a big grin that looked like his mama’s. “Aren’t you dying of curiosity to ask me why?”

  I laughed. “Yes, but I guess you’ll tell me if you wanted me to know.”

  “That’s what I’ll never understand about men,” Geri piped in. “How they can beat around the bush and never ask the question. Why have you changed your mind? What’s happened?”

  “Those Shertz women—they’ve never had any patience and my crazy girl is the worst of them.”

  J.D. was still smiling a minute later when he answered her questions.

  “I met someone,” he said simply.

  Geri’s jaw fell open like a broken gate. I was equally confounded.

  “Who? Where? When?” The questions continued.

  I remember so distinctly the look on his face. There was a glow that came up from inside him as he talked about her. He didn’t use gushy terms or fancy phrasing, but it was clear to me that my son was in love.

  “Her name is Antoinette DeMoineaux, but everyone calls her Toni.”

  “What kind of name is that? French?”

  “It is French, but she’s not,” he said. “Just an ordinary Texas girl. I ran into her, literally ran into her, coming out of Joske’s Department Store. She had maybe ten bags of stuff she’d bought, and it was scattered all over the sidewalk, so I helped her pick it up and I carried it to her car and I asked her out to a movie.”

  “How could she resist you?” his mother asked.

  J.D. chuckled. “Pretty easily, I imagine. San Antonio is full to bursting with fresh-faced flyboys like me, and my understanding is that we all look alike.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said. “Anyway, I got my truck out of the garage and went to the address she gave me and it’s like a palace. I’m thinking I can’t date some girl who lives in a palace. But I guess she was watching out the window, ’cause before I had time to chicken out, she came trotting out to my truck and we were off.”

  “She didn’t invite you in to meet her parents?”

  “No, in fact, I still haven’t met them. They’re a little stuffy, Toni says. I t
hink they already had their eye on some guy they wanted her to marry.”

  “Marry?” I repeated the word, shocked. “You just met this girl, you’re not talking about marriage, surely.”

  J.D. shrugged. “We’re in love, Dad,” he said. “Of course we’re talking about getting married.”

  “There’s no rush,” I cautioned him.

  He didn’t seem to agree. “Sometimes the world moves fast,” he told me.”

  J.D. was very right about that. In the hospital the band was playing again. It sounded loud enough to be right out in the hallway. And it was a Duke Ellington mimic who sounded just like the man singing “Taking the ‘A’ Train.”

  Tuesday, June 14, 2:23 a.m.

  The clang of the telephone awakened Jack with an unfamiliar jolt. He glanced accusingly at his cell on the bedside table, but when it rang again, he recognized it as the landline in the living room. Claire sat up and threw the covers off, but he hurried out of the bed.

  “Let me get it,” he told her.

  Not bothering with light, he felt his way around the furniture and into the other room. He picked up on the third ring.

  “Hello.”

  “Mr. Crabtree?”

  “Yes.”

  “This is Lucy Fraiser. I’m your grandfather’s nurse.”

  “Yes, is he all right?”

  “He’s not doing so well,” she said. “He’s taken a real turn for the worse tonight. He’s not getting much renal output and his oxygenation has dropped quite a bit. I hate to wake you, but I’d hate it more if he didn’t make it through the night and I hadn’t called.”

  “Right,” Jack agreed. “Is somebody there? My aunts or my cousins?”

  “Yes, there are a couple of young kids here,” she said. “They’ve been playing cards in the room.”

  “Uh-huh,” he answered. “Well, I’ll be there as quickly as I can.”

  Jack hung up and turned to see Claire standing in a shaft of moonlight near the doorway.

  “He’s worse.”

  It was not so much a question as a statement. Jack nodded. He thought about telling Claire that she didn’t have to go. That he could handle it on his own. But he found the idea very unappealing.