“Everyone is up. Get into that tub, dear; we’ll wait for you.”
Fifteen minutes later I went downstairs. I suppose my eyes were red but I was smiling and no longer stunk and I was dressed in Sunday best. I hurried to him and offered my hand. “Mr. Bronson! We are all so proud of you!”
I don’t remember details of the next hour or two hours or whatever. I sat there in a golden haze of bittersweet happiness. My country was at war, my husband was off to war, but at least I knew the deeper meaning of “better death than dishonor”—I knew now why Roman matrons said, “With your shield or on it.” Those hours of believing that my beloved Theodore was not what I had believed him to be but a coward who would refuse to defend his country—those hours had been the longest, most hateful hours of my life.
I had not really believed that there were such subhuman creatures. I had never known one. Then to have it turn out simply to be a bad dream, the result of a misunderstanding over words—I’ve read somewhere that pleasure is relief from pain. Psychologists are a silly lot, mostly, but that night I enjoyed that sort of ecstatic pleasure. Even my fires of libido were banked and, for the time, I did not worry about Briney, so joyed was I that Theodore was indeed what a man to be loved must be: a hero, a warrior.
My big girls did their best to stuff him full and Carol made him a sandwich and wrapped it to take with him. Father was full of man-to-man advice, old soldier to new recruit; my big boys were falling over each other to try to do things for him, and even Woodrow was almost well-behaved. At last they all lined up to kiss him good-bye, even Brian Junior, who had given up kissing save for an occasional peck on his mother’s cheekbone.
They all went to bed but Father…and it was my turn.
I have always been of such rugged health that winning Testaments for perfect attendance at Sunday School was never any trouble to me—so wasn’t it nice that I had two Testaments when I needed them? I did not even need to think up a new inscription; what I had written for my husband was right for any Lucasta to any warrior off to the wars:
To Private Theodore Bronson
Be true to self and country.
Maureen J. Smith
April 6, 1917
I gave it to him, saw him read it, then I said, “Father?” He knew what I wanted, a decent amount of privacy.
“No.” (Damn him! Did he really think that I would drag Theodore down on the rug? With the children awake and only a flight of stairs away?)
(Well, perhaps I would.) “Then turn your back.”
I put my arms up and kissed Theodore, firmly but chastely…then knew that a chaste kiss was not enough to say farewell to a warrior. I let my body grow soft and my lips come open. My tongue met his and I promised him wordlessly that whatever I had was his. “Theodore…take care of yourself. Come back to me.”
CHAPTER
THIRTEEN
“Over There!”
My father, having been refused a return to active duty in the Army Medical Corps, was then turned down again when he tried to enlist as an infantry private (he made the mistake of showing his separation papers…which showed his 1852 date of birth), and then tried to enlist in St. Louis with a claimed date of birth of 1872 but was tripped up somehow—and finally did manage to enlist in the Seventh Missouri, an infantry militia regiment formed to replace Kansas City’s Third Missouri, which was now the 110th Combat Engineers training at Camp Funston and about to go “Over There.”
This new home guard, made up of the too young, too old, too many dependents, too halt, or too lame, was not fussy about Father’s age (sixty-five) in view of his willingness to accept a dull job as supply sergeant and the fact that he needed no training.
I greatly appreciated Father’s decision to live with us for the duration. For the first time in my life I had to be the head of the family, and it’s really not Maureen’s style. I like to work hard and do my best while the key decisions are left up to someone bigger, stronger, and older than I, and with a warm male odor to him. Oh, I’ll be a pioneer mother if I must. My great-great-grandmother Kitchin killed three hostiles with her husband’s musket after he was wounded—and Father did teach me to shoot.
But I would rather be a womanly woman to a manly man.
Brian was emphatic that I must not let Father dominate me, that I must make the decisions—that I was head of the family. “Use Ira to back you up—fine! But you are boss. Don’t let him forget it, don’t let our children forget it, and don’t you forget it.”
I sighed internally and said, “Yes, sir.”
Brian Junior did nobly when he suddenly found himself in his father’s shoes—but twelve is young for that job; it was well that his grandfather had agreed to stay with us. Brian Junior and his brother George kept on with their jobs, delivering the Journal and lighting street lamps, and still brought home straight A’s. When the summer ended and the weather turned cold, I started getting up at four-thirty A.M. as they did, and served them hot cocoa before they started out. They enjoyed it and it made me feel better as I watched them start off to work before daylight. The winter of 1917-18 was bitter; they had to bundle up like Esquimaux.
I wrote to Betty Lou every week, and also to Nelson. My beastly, lovable cousin Nelson came home on the Monday following the declaration of war and told Betty Lou, “Hon, I’ve found a wonderful way to avoid going into the Army.”
“How? Castration? Isn’t that rather drastic?”
“Somewhat. At least I think so. Guess again.”
“I know! You’re going to jail.”
“Even better than jail. I’ve joined the Marines.”
So Betty Lou was managing our mine. I had no doubt that she could do it; she had been in on every detail from the day we acquired majority ownership. She was not a mining engineer but neither was Nelson. The minority owner was our mining superintendent—not a graduate engineer either but with over twenty-five years of white-metals experience.
It seemed to me that it would work. It would have to work. It was “Root, hog, or die.”
During those war years people all over our beloved country were doing things they had never done before—doing them well or doing them badly, but trying. Women who had never driven even a team of horses were driving tractors, because their husbands had gone to “Hang the kaiser!” Student nurses were supervising whole wards because graduate nurses were in uniform. Ten-year-old boys such as my George were knitting squares for blankets for British Tommies and buying Baby Bonds with money earned from newspaper routes. There were dollar-a-year men, and four-minute speakers, and Salvation Army lassies (loved by every serviceman), and volunteers for every sort of special war work, from rolling bandages to collecting walnut shells and peach pits for gas masks.
Meanwhile what did Maureen do? Nothing much, I suppose. I cooked and kept house for a family of ten, with much help from my four oldest and even some from my eight-year-old, Marie. I never missed a Red Cross bandage rolling. I saw to it that my family observed all meatless, wheatless, sweetless days and other economies of scarce foods decreed by Mr. Herbert Hoover…while learning how to make candies and cookies and cakes with sorghum and corn syrup and honey (all unrationed) in place of sugar (rationed) as Corporal Bronson’s buddies appeared to be capable of eating a whole bakeshop of such things.
Shortly Carol took over this attempt to fill hollow legs; she considered Corporal Bronson “her soldier.” We all wrote to him, in rotation—and he wrote back, to all of us but especially to Father.
There arose a church-sponsored movement for families to “adopt” lonely servicemen. Carol wanted us to adopt Corporal Bronson—so we did, subject to Brian’s approval, which came by return mail.
I wrote to my husband every day—and would tear up a letter and start again if, on rereading, I found in it bad news or a flavor of self-pity…which meant that I tore up letters again and again and again until I learned how to write a proper Lucasta letter, one to lift a warrior’s morale, not drag him down.
That early in the w
ar Brian was not far away, at Camp Funston, adjacent to Manhattan, Kansas, about a hundred miles west of Kansas City. After three months of not coming home at all Briney started coming home about once a month for short weekends—Saturday afternoons to Sunday evenings—when and if he could arrange to ride with another officer. It was a practical distance for a forty-four-hour pass (noon Saturday to eight A.M. Monday) by automobile, but not for travel by train.
In those days trains were ordinarily much faster than automobiles, as there were so few paved roads—none in Kansas that I can remember. There was a direct rail line, the Union Pacific. But on all railroads troop trains had first priority, freight trains headed east had second priority, other freight trains had third priority…and passenger trains could use the rails only when nobody else wanted them. Wartime precedence—Mr. McAdoo was strict about it. So Brian’s trips home were infrequent as they depended on duty schedules of brother officers with automobiles.
I sometimes wondered whether or not Brian regretted having sold “El Reo Grande.” But I did not say anything and neither did he. Count your blessings, Maureen! This is wartime and your husband is a soldier. Be glad he is able to come home occasionally and that he is not (yet) being shot at.
The carnage in Europe got worse and worse. In March 1917 the tsar was overthrown. In November 1917 the Communist Bolsheviki displaced President Kerensky’s government, and the Communists immediately surrendered to the Germans.
From then on we were in for it. The German veterans from the Eastern Front were moving by whole division to the Western Front at a time when we had landed only a few of our troops in France. The Allies were in bad trouble.
I did not know it. Certainly my children did not. I suspect that they reckoned their father as equal to at least two German divisions.
In May 1918 I was able to tell my husband that we had “rung the cash register” on his last weekend at home; I was two weeks overdue. Yes, I know that with many women this is not a sure sign—but it is with Maureen. I felt so euphoric about it that I avoided reading the newspapers and just enjoyed being me.
Brian went into Manhattan and telephoned me from there, for privacy. “Is this Myrtle, the Fertile Turtle?”
I answered, “Not so loud, Claude; you’ll wake my husband. No, I won’t be fertile again for another eight months.”
“Congratulations! I’ll plan on coming home for Christmas; you won’t need me sooner than that.”
“Now you listen to me, Roscoe; I’m not taking the veil, I’m merely having a baby. And I do have other offers.”
“From Sergeant Bronson, perhaps?”
I caught my breath and did not answer. Presently Brian said, “What’s the matter, love? Children where they can overhear you?”
“No, sir. I’ve taken the phone into our bedroom and there is no one else upstairs. Beloved, that man is as stubborn as my father. I have invited him here, Father has invited him here, and Carol invites him at least once a week. He thanks us…and then says that he doesn’t know when he’ll be granted any leave. He’s admitted that he is off duty alternate weekends but he says that the actual time on pass is not enough to go that far from camp.”
“That’s almost true. Since he doesn’t have a car. Since he left his car with Ira. Or with Brian Junior.”
“Pish and tosh. The Weston boy is home every other weekend and he’s only a private. I think I’m a woman scorned.”
“Nick Weston picks up his son in Junction City and you know why. But don’t fret, Mabel; the money’s on the table. I saw Carol’s favorite soldier just today.”
I reswallowed my heart. “Yes, Briney?”
“I find that I agree with Carol. And with mon beau-père. I already knew that Bronson is as fine a sergeant instructor as we have; I’ve checked his efficiency marks each week. As for Sergeant Bronson himself, he puts me in mind of Ira. As Ira must have looked at that age.”
“Sergeant Bronson and I look like twins.”
“So you do but on you it looks better.”
“Oh, fiddle! You have always said that I look my best with a pillow over my face.”
“I say that to keep you from becoming too conceited, beautiful. You are gorgeous and everybody knows it, and you look like Sergeant Bronson in spite of it. But he is most like Ira in his personality and in his Gung-Ho attitude. I fully understand your wish to trip him and beat him to the rug. If you still feel that way. Do you?”
I took a deep breath and sighed it out. “I do, sir. If our daughter Carol doesn’t crowd me out and beat me to it.”
“No, no! By seniority, please; this is wartime. Make her wait her turn.”
“Don’t tell Carol it’s okay unless you mean it, dear man—because she means it.”
“Well, somebody’s going to do it to Carol…and I think a lot better of Bronson than I do of that pimply young snot who broke in our Nancy. Don’t you?”
“Oh, heavens, yes! But the matter is academic; I have given up all hope of getting Sergeant Bronson to enter this house. Until the war is over, at least.”
“I told you not to fret. A little bird whispered in my ear that Bronson will soon receive a midweek pass.”
“Oh, Brian!” (I knew what a midweek pass meant: orders overseas.)
“Ira was right; Bronson is eager to go Over There, so I put him on the list, a special requisition from Pershing’s staff for sergeant instructors. Another little bird let me know that my own request was being acted on favorably. So I expect to be home about the same time. But—Listen closely. I think I can arrange it so that you will have a twenty-four-hour clear shot at him. Can you bring him down in that length of time?”
“Oh, goodness, Briney!”
“Can you, or can’t you? I’ve known you to manage it in an hour with just a horse and buggy to work with; today you have at your disposal a guest bedroom with its own bath. What does it take? Cleopatra’s barge?”
“Brian, Father supplied that horse and buggy knowing what was up and actively cooperating. But this time he considers it his bounden duty to stand over me with a shotgun. Except that it is a loaded thirty-eight and he would not hesitate to use it.”
“Can’t have that; General Pershing wouldn’t like it—good sergeant instructors are scarce. So I had better brief Ira on the operation plan before I hang up—which I must soon; I am running out of nickels and dimes. Is Ira there?”
“I’ll get him.”
Sergeant Theodore did get that midweek pass, from just after Retreat on Monday to eight o’clock muster Thursday morning—and at last he did come to Kansas City. At that time the picture shows always included a comedy—John Bunty, Fatty Arbuckle, Charlie Chaplin, or the Keystone Kops. That week I managed to outdo both Fatty Arbuckle and the Keystone Kops in always stepping into a bucket or falling over my feet.
To begin with, that difficult man, Sergeant Theodore, did not show up at our house until late Tuesday afternoon…when Brian had told me that Sergeant Theodore’s pass should cause him to arrive at our house by midmorning at the latest.
“Where have you been? What took you so long?” No, I did not say anything of the sort. I may have felt like saying it…but I had learned the relative merits of honey and vinegar back when I was still a virgin—a long time ago indeed. Instead I took his hand, kissed his cheek, and said in my warmest voice, “Sergeant Theodore…it is so good to have you home.”
I played Cornelia and her Jewels before and during dinner—held my peace and smiled while all my children vied for his attention…including Father, who wanted to talk soldier talk with him. At the end of dinner Father suggested (by prearrangement with me) that Staff Sergeant Bronson take me for a spin, and then squelched attempts by the younger children to come along—especially Woodrow, who wanted both to play chess and to be taken to Electric Park.
So at last Sergeant Theodore and I headed south just at sundown. In 1918 there was very little south of Thirty-ninth Street on the east side of Kansas City even though the city line had been pushed clear south to Sev
enty-seventh Street in order to include Swope Park. Swope Park had many popular lovers’ lanes but I wanted a place much more private—and knew some, as Briney and I had searched all the back roads one time and another, looking for what Briney called “poontang pastures,” grassy places private enough to evade the buzzard eye of Mrs. Grundy.
All along the east side of Kansas City runs the Blue River. In 1918 it held many delightful spots—as well as thick bushes, deep mud, chiggers, mosquitoes, and poison ivy; one had to know where to go. If you went south but not too far south, and knew where to cross the tracks of the St. Looie and Frisco, you could work your way into a wooded, grassy dell as nice as anything in Swope Park but utterly private, as it was surrounded by river and railroad embankment save for one narrow lane leading into it.
I wanted that particular spot; I was sentimental about it. When in 1912 we had become footloose through Briney’s having purchased “El Reo Grande,” that was the first place Briney had taken me for outdoor loving. That delightful picnic (I had fetched along a lunch) was the occasion on which I became pregnant with Woodrow.
I wanted to receive my new love into me first on that very spot—and then tell my husband about it in every detail, giggling with him over it while we made love. Briney did so enjoy my trips over the fence and always wanted to hear about them before, during, or after our own lovemaking, or all three, as a sauce to encourage us in more and heartier lovemaking.
Brian always told me about his own adventures, but what he liked best was to hear about mine.
So I took Sergeant Theodore to the spot marked X.
Time was short; I had promised Father that I would stay out, at most, only long enough to tumble him, then wait another half or three-quarters of an hour for that wonderful, relaxed second go at it—call it ten-thirty or eleven. “So I should be home about the time you get back from the Armory, Father.”
Father agreed that my plans were reasonable…including our need for a second engagement if the first one went well.
To Sail Beyond the Sunset Page 22
