Alma gives me a wide berth most of the time. Mostly I try to stay out of the way except at suppertime.
Cole flipped through a dozen or so pages of short, sometimes incoherent, entries. One particularly disturbing entry came at the end of September.
Setpemer 82, 1999
I spoke with Ariel again tonight. She has blankets tall and full of sound. I will join her angel band soon to sing the songs of Zion. I puke up steel and sparks so I know the time is soon. If I can stop the beetles from eating my door I will find the soft comfort of rotten wood so I can sail away with her.
Hallelujah, the King of the Winter shall follow the rain.
I must send away for my mother’s things, she is alone in her chair. She will not answer me though I talk slowly. Tie, tie, tie the World’s Fair.
October 22, 1941
I broke my wrist today. I took a fall from a scaffold before lunch. The company doctor set it and put it in a cast. He says six weeks before I can work again. I can draw from the accident fund until then. It’s not much but it will pay the rent. The girls said they will pay for food until I can work again so long as I stay sober.
I have been on the wagon nineteen days this time. I think I can do it. The doctor at the hospital said I had better. They say my liver is enlarged and blood I threw up means my stomach is bleeding. I have been living on milk and bread sopped in it. My dreams have stopped.
Cole looked up from his reading at the sound of tires on gravel outside. He checked his watch; she was early, forty-five minutes early. The interruption was a welcome distraction though. His reading had taken an uneasy turn. Cole stacked the notebooks and went to the door.
Dory Cochran stood at the bottom of the steps peering up at the roof. She wore large, white sunglasses, and a navy blue sun dress with white polka dots the size of golf balls. Cole watched as she took in the front of the house. He smiled as she extended one leg and lodged the tip of her long stiletto heel in the dirt, gently swaying her toes from side to side.
“So what do you think?” Cole asked in a cheerful tone from behind the screen.
“Oh!” the realtor exclaimed. “I didn’t see you.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”
“Not a very good first impression I guess.” Dory frowned.
“How so?”
“Well, who wants a scaredy cat for a real estate agent?” She started up the step toward Cole. “Hi, I’m Dory. Mr. Sage?” She extended her hand.
“That’s me,” Cole said, opening the screen door. He shook her hand.
“Cute place. Paint looks new.”
“Inside and out.” Cole motioned her inside.
“Oh yes, this is very nice.”
They went through the living room and office. Dory took notes and made an occasional comment. They went upstairs and Dory opened every door and looked out every window.
“I must say you have a real knack for decorating and color.”
“I had help,” Cole offered.
Dory went into the upstairs bathroom. She looked behind the shower curtain and ran the water in the sink. On the way downstairs she ran her hand gently along the banister. When she didn’t think Cole was looking she took a quick peek at her fingers for dust. A faint downturn of her lips gave away her surprise in not finding any.
“Can we see the kitchen?”
“Right this way,” Cole said, at the bottom of the stairs.
Dory stood at the kitchen door and made several notes. “Charming,” she said, as she walked through the kitchen, out the back porch and across part of the backyard. “How many acres?”
“Five.”
She wrote a few more notes and then turned to Cole. “I think we could move this property for you. Might take a while. Orvin is not what you might call a boom town, but somebody would do well to pick this up as a starter home or even a way to get out in the country. It is lovely and would show beautifully. Let me do some comparison stats and I’ll get back to you about a listing price.”
“Sounds good.”
Without another word she was on her way to her car and gone.
“Not exactly what I had in mind,” Cole said to himself, as he went up the steps into the house. He decided he would call another realtor.
Cole took a drink from his soda. It got warm setting on the table. He got a bag of cookies out of the drawer under the counter and picked up the notebooks. Once again he found himself on the front porch, the hot wind blowing across his face, a notebook in hand.
November 18, 1941
Today was Georgie’s tenth birthday. I bought him a bicycle and a baseball glove. He is turning into a fine young man. I had feared for a long time that he would be somehow bruised inside living in a house with parents who hate each other. All in all, he seems pretty well rounded. His grades are good and he has many friends.
Alma cooked chicken fried steak and fried potatoes for his birthday. It is his favorite meal. The girls bought a birthday cake from the little bakery next to the drug store. We all sang happy birthday and had a fine time. I am still on the wagon and feeling much better.
December 7, 1941
The craziest thing happened today. The Japanese bombed Hawaii. The radio says they killed a couple thousand of our Navy men and sunk a bunch of ships. There will be hell to pay for that stunt!
Everyone on the street was talking about war with the Japs. I guess it’s lucky I’m getting old, because I sure don’t want to fight in a war. Georgie said he would go fight. I told him we aren’t going to die for what politicians start. He looked disappointed. Thankfully he’s only ten.
December 12, 1941
A man from the government came to work today and spoke to all the workers. He said the Jap attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii pretty much wiped out our Navy. From now on we will be building ships for the USA and he asked that we work as fast and hard as we can.
December 25, 1941
As I sit alone to write this I am flooded with memories. I am filled with the recollections of a Christmas during the Great War. Mama, Papa and Effie were all still alive. I thought of the prayer Papa prayed over Christmas dinner. I don’t know why but I remember like it was yesterday.
“Heavenly Father,
We come to you with hearts that are mixed with emotion. We thank you for the bounty of our table and our family gathered together. We are filled with joy when we think of the Savior whose birth we celebrate today. But we are greatly saddened when we think how far your children have strayed from your wish for Peace on Earth and good will toward men.
We pray for our boys in uniform and ask that you bring a speedy end to this war. If it is a war to end all wars, then end it now, Lord.
In Jesus name we pray,
Amen.”
We could have just as easily prayed that prayer today. I am ashamed to say we did not pray at all.
There were two more small entries and Cole reached the end of the notebook. He picked up the last notebook and checked the date. July 1943 was printed on the cover. He went back to the living room and checked the shelf. He hadn’t noticed before, but by the dates, at least two books were missing. Eighteen months of entries and the first half of the war. The gaps in time were always frustrating to Cole but the war years were of special interest to him. A firsthand account of rationing, blackouts and day to day life during the war would have been a fascinating window into his father’s childhood.
The leather of the couch was cool as Cole laid down to begin the first of the final three notebooks. Oddly, the first page was a list of names. There were no addresses or phone numbers, and they were in no particular order. The second page was a list of cities and towns, some of which Cole never heard of. He read several entries. The tone was somber and the reports of the day’s work and daily activities were uneventful and were almost mechanical in their wording. Cole turned a page and a yellowed piece of paper fell onto his chest. He stared at the page edged in black.
July 24, 1943
When I returned
home from work today the house was unusually quiet. Alma came from the kitchen. Her face was ashen and her eyes were red. She did not say a word to me, just handed me a telegram. The telegram was short. For more than six months I have lived with a knot in my stomach the size of an apple. Ever since the day that Connie came to us and said she was going to join the WAC and be a nurse I have lived with a grey cloud of fear over my head.
Today that cloud turned to black. Connie was killed during a bombing somewhere in Italy.
For the first time in I don’t know how long Alma and I hugged. Our grief is far greater than our hard feelings for each other.
Cole sat up and unfolded the yellowed sheet of paper that fell from the notebook. He glanced down at the simple message:
“We regret to inform you that Corporal Connie Marie Sage was killed in action on July 18, 1943. The President and the Secretary of War sends their heartfelt condolences...”
He refolded the telegram and slipped it back into the notebook. On the back of the page edged in black was a photograph of a young woman in a nurse’s uniform standing in front of a tent with a large cross, smiling and pointing at something out of the frame. This was Connie. Cole had never seen a photo of her before.
She was just a girl. Not pretty, not plain, just a girl in a nurse’s uniform, a cape draped over her shoulders. Cole was struck by her smile. It reminded him of his father’s one-sided grin. One dimple showing, her head cocked slightly to the right, Corporal Connie Sage, age twenty died in the service of her country. His father had never mentioned her.
July 25, 1943
Shortly after Sunday dinner today a man and woman paid us a visit. They were part of the Army’s visitation unit. They brought us a small box with what little was found of Connie’s possessions. Alma sat silently as the young soldier presented me with Connie’s Purple Heart. I opened the box and showed it to Alma. All she said was “It isn’t worth my Connie.” and left the room.
The young woman in a WAC’s uniform said not to worry about them, thinking I actually cared if they were offended. She said it was a difficult time and people often say things they don’t mean. I didn’t tell her that it was exactly what Alma meant and exactly the way I feel.
I let the visitation team out the door. I went to the kitchen table and looked in the box of Connie’s things and found the picture I pasted on the opposite page. She was a fine girl and should not have died.
Hang me for a traitor but Connie’s life was worth far more than Roosevelt, Hitler, Tojo or any of the other bastards that got us in this war. This country is not worth living in, let alone dying for. It has never done anything for me or mine.
It was hard for Cole to read the hatred his grandfather held for America. He tried to rationalize that it was the anger at losing a daughter. But Cole knew that those words ran far deeper than the loss of a child. It was a hatred that ran to the very marrow of George Sage’s being. He was a man who lost everything he loved and was convinced that anything still left would surely be taken.
Today George would have gone to rehab, received psychiatric counseling, and probably a prescription for Prozac. The slender thread that his sanity dangled by year after year, grew steadily more brittle and unraveled. Cole pondered what this man’s life would have been like with the education he so badly wanted and without the racial bigotry that kept him from the one he loved. How much advanced medicine would have helped to save those he loved. It was so easy to see the depression George lived with, how he self-medicated with the alcohol that would eventually kill him. How different it would have been for him had he lived today, or would it? Cole thought of the depression he himself had lived with. He chose less destructive avenues for surviving. His dark dogs that nipped constantly at him for so many years were never diagnosed. He thanked God, and the stories of his grandfather, for keeping him away from chemical solutions to his depression.
TWENTY-THREE
Saturday Cole stood at the bookcase looking down at the last two notebooks. The night before he finished the war years and was more than a little disappointed at the total disconnect George had with the war and life in general. After Connie’s death, there was almost no mention of the war at all. The entries took on a third person, impersonal way of reporting what was going on. George had gone to a weekly entry for several months, then to a monthly entry for more than nearly two years.
The journal of his life had obviously become a burden. Still, it was a habit, an addiction, something he was compelled to do. Even in its weekly and monthly format it was methodical. The weekly entries were done on payday. Every Friday there was a brief telling of the week’s events. The monthly entries were usually one page long, written on the first, rent day, and lacked any color or life at all, just a mechanical report of a life of quiet tedium.
Opening the notebook dated 1949–53, Cole was pleased to see the first page had three entries all done on consecutive days. It was a little past ten o’clock and Cole promised Ernie he would be at the sandwich shop at noon for the Grand Opening. He carried the last two notebooks to the kitchen and tossed them on the table. The loud thuds they made seemed to echo in the silent house. Although he was eager to finish the reading, there was a ball in the pit of Cole stomach as he approached the task.
In a week he would go home, sell this old house, and go back to his life in San Francisco. Back to Erin and Ben, back to Jenny and watching her grow, and back to Kelly and a new chapter in their relationship. The old twice a week dinner, walks on the docks, drives into the city for a play or movie was nice, but since her trip to Orvin, Cole realized that maybe there needed to be something more.
The three weeks spent cleaning up the farm, reading the notebooks and trying to put the story of George Sage into the context of his own life energized Cole. He scratched out two yellow pads of notes for turning the notebooks into a novel. He discovered family he never knew existed. Tomorrow he would stand face to face with an aunt, his own flesh and blood, and a cousin he never knew existed.
The last two years brought about such head spinning changes that Cole couldn’t help wondering what the meaning of it all was. Was there some master plan to life that if you lived long enough would somehow mystically unfold itself? Cole thought of Erin. He missed her entire childhood and teen years, yet they were as close as any father and daughter could be. Now once again two people, maybe more, were thrown into his life. Was it just by chance?
Was there a thing called coincidence? After all, the trunk sat in this house for nearly Cole’s entire life. The story, the people, the family connection estranged by his father, all setting in an attic with an inch of dust on it.
Then there was Lottie, a woman who, fate and the cruelty of human nature, cast aside. Now nearing the end of her life, with a daughter who no doubt had her own story, she would, for good or bad, become part of Cole’s life tomorrow. He told himself over and over that meeting Lottie and Georgia meant nothing. If it was unpleasant or disagreeable, he need never contact them again, like they didn’t exist. But Cole knew that wasn’t true. They were part of his gene pool, if nothing else, and he would remember that. He would remember the little girl given away during the Depression. He would remember the love that was forbidden by society, denied her the father she would never know. Oddly, he felt a connection to a person he only spoke to on the phone. He anxiously awaited for tomorrow.
Even before he turned into the shopping center, the multi-colored triangle flags streaming from the ERNIE THE GREEK’S SANDWICHES AND STUFF sign caught Cole’s eye. The giant blow-up balloon sandwich on the roof was the size of a submarine! It not only covered the width of the sandwich shop but the two businesses on either side of it. Ernie showed a knack for self-promotion second only to P.T. Barnum!
Pulling into a parking space where he could observe, but not be seen, Cole rolled down the windows and turned off the engine. The shopping center didn’t have a lot of traffic. It was a little past eleven thirty. The radio was playing softly. Cole watched several people walk pa
st Ernie’s door and look it over but no one went in. His plan was to wait until there was a customer. Then, move his car to a parking space right in front of the shop. The idea was to make it look busy. The last thing he wanted was to go in when no one was there.
Cole reached over and turned up the radio when he heard “I’m into Something Good” by Herman’s Hermits. A light breeze came through the car and soon replaced the air-conditioned air with the warmth of the late morning air. Cars came and went in the shopping center. As they drove past the sandwich shop passengers and drivers alike turned, sometimes slowed, to see what all the banners were about, but drove on.
As he tapped the steering wheel to the beat of the radio Cole noticed a pale green city truck pull up in front of the shop. Two men in dark green work clothes got out and went in the shop. A few moments later a beat up pickup truck with a pipe rack on the back pulled up. A wondrously obese man in a way too small white t-shirt and faded bib overalls laboriously struggled to remove the truck from around him and slowly made his way into the shop. Cole was so busy happily watching Ernie get customers that he didn’t notice the woman approaching his door from the rear.
“Excuse me,” she said, her face nearly in the car window.
Cole jumped, startled at the voice and presence inches from his face. “What?’ he blurted out, more a question to what was happening than her statement.
“I am trying to get to see my sister in Dallas who is dying of kidney failure and my water pump has gone out. I could sure use some help. Could you spare a few dollars to get me on my way?”
He was very uncomfortable with the close proximity to the creature staring him in the face. “Suppose you could back up a bit.” It was more of a demand than a question.
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