by M. E. Kerr
I said, “But you believe he really didn’t, don’t you, Tommy?”
“You’re tight, Jubal. Let’s talk about it tomorrow.”
“Tight.” I scoffed at the idea. “On one teensy tiny glass of the bubbly?” We walked out.
There was a woman photographer going from table to table, wanting to sell pictures she’d take of guests.
“Over here!” Mike shouted at her. He behaved like a big shot, tipping her five dollars, ordering copies for everyone at the table.
I was missing Daria. I couldn’t wait to ask her if she knew that Edna St. Vincent Millay had written a poem called “Conscientious Objector.” If she didn’t, I doubted that I’d tell her it wasn’t about this war.
I wished she could just meet Bud. Maybe she’d be able to understand why he chose to be a CO. He looked so happy that night, grinning, his blue eyes flashing. I think he was glad to be with family, despite all our differences: We were family, and we were together having a good time.
Bud nudged me and said, “If you’re not going to eat the rest of your cake, I’ll eat it.”
“Okay. Pour me a little champagne, please.”
“Don’t get me in trouble, little brother. You’ve had enough.”
“What I’ve had enough of is being called little brother.”
Bud laughed as he reached for my plate. “Good boy! Speak up for yourself, Jubal! Always! I thought it was an affectionate moniker. I didn’t know you didn’t like it.” He slung his arm around my shoulder. “Jubal, I won’t call you that ever again.”
“Hear that, Mom?” I said. “Bud’s never going to call me little brother ever again.”
There was a hush in the restaurant as a woman in a red gown stood and sang. Bud said her name, and said she was a famous opera star.
She was singing “Un Bel Di” from Madama Butterfly. Daria sometimes sang it. She said she was singing “someday he’ll come.”
I decided to whisper what I’d tried to tell Mom. “Hey, Mom, Bud’s never going to call me little—” Then I looked at her, and I couldn’t finish the sentence.
Mom was sitting there with tears streaming down her face, like the man I’d seen at the soup kitchen that afternoon.
I remembered Bud saying some people had a sadness, and I wondered if Mom’s was about Dad.
FIFTEEN
I tried to explain to Daria what a Broadway musical was like, but there was no way I could do the experience justice. Even Hope jumped to her feet with most everyone in the audience, to applaud at the end of Oklahoma!
It was Aunt Lizzie’s treat. She’d purposely picked out something that didn’t have anything in it about the war, or the Jews, or anything remotely controversial. Hope had come up from Virginia. She and Bud stayed down at the Dorothy Day shelter.
“In the same room?” Daria asked.
“Probably. They’re practically married.”
“But they’re not.”
“No, they’re not.”
“Why not?” Daria said.
I told her what Bud had told Tommy and me: that there was no way to know how long the war would last, and that if Hope ever wanted to get another job, it would make it harder for her if she was married to a CO. And even if they ignored that and got married anyway, it wouldn’t be easy to find a place to live together. Nearly all tourist homes near CPS camps didn’t welcome guests who had anything to do with the camps. Some even put up signs saying so. It was the same with landlords who had apartments or rooms to rent, not that Bud and Hope could afford either thing.
“Why didn’t you send me a card?” Daria teased. If she hadn’t said that, I might never have told her I had one for her, with me.
I pulled it out of the inside pocket of my jacket and handed it to her.
She studied it awhile, then grinned and said, “Oh, Jubal! Did you go to Edna St. Vincent Millay’s house?”
“Sure. My cousin took us,” I said. “Did you know Millay wrote a poem called ‘Conscientious Objector’? It’s against war.”
“That’s not about this war!” Daria said the same thing Natalia had said. “This war is different!” She took the card from me and said, “I’ll put this in my Bible. I’ll always save it. Those lines are from one of my favorite Millay sonnets! I’ll bet you didn’t send it because those two lines were on it, and they were too sentimental.”
She’d made my ears red. I could feel how hot they were. I mumbled something about not wanting to spend the penny for postage.
We were on the one-thirty bus to Doylestown. Daria was wearing a green sweater that matched her eyes. I loved her hands with the long fingers she kept manicured but didn’t color. The only makeup I didn’t like girls wearing was nail polish. Mom never wore makeup or jewelry and used to shake her head at anyone who did. She’d softened some the past few years. She wasn’t as strict. Last Christmas I’d heard her tell Lizzie she could get used to Lizzie wearing the bright-red lipstick, but not the mascara and eyeliner, and not the nail polish.
Daria opened her pocketbook and took out a letter.
“Since you thought of me while you were in New York, I’ll show you something that made me think of you.”
It was V-mail, with an APO return address and the name Sgt. Daniel Daniel Jr.
She said, “Before you read it, I want you to know my father thinks it’s because of battle fatigue, and I think so, too.”
“Okay…can I read it now?”
She nodded.
It was written on onion-skin airmail paper.
I wish now that I hadn’t nagged at Dean to join up. My best buddy was killed yesterday, lying off the path on his back, arms outstretched, this look of horror frozen in his eyes. We’re all getting killed before we’ve even lived as adults, and what for? Just to kill Japs. Make fodder of them or end up fodder. Here’s a poem going around:
To kill is our business, and that’s what we do.
It’s the main job of war for me and for you.
And the more Japs we rub out,
the sooner we’re through.
How naive I was to think this had any glory in it! The more I kill, the farther away Sweet Creek gets. There isn’t anything I can recommend about war. At times I think I’m going to die here in this damn jungle.
I handed it back to her.
“Do you think it sounds like battle fatigue?” she asked me.
“I think it sounds like the truth,” I said.
“You would say that…. It’s strange, because Dean complained about the saltwater showers he took aboard ship and then about the wormy rice and Spam wherever he is now, but it’s ordinary griping, you know? He loves being a Marine!”
“He hasn’t been one as long as Danny has.”
“That’s what Daddy said. Danny has battle fatigue.”
“Why couldn’t it just be that he hates it, that’s it’s horrible?”
“Jubal, you know Danny. He wouldn’t complain like that if there wasn’t something wrong. He’s a real Marine!”
“The something that’s wrong is the killing, Daria. He makes that clear enough.”
“I knew I shouldn’t show it to you.”
“I’m not going to say any more about it. Okay?”
“Don’t tell anyone either. Please?”
“I won’t.”
“My father didn’t even want it to leave our house!”
She put the postcard and the V-mail back into her pocketbook.
“Thanks for showing it to me,” I said.
“Do you know why I did?” She didn’t wait for my answer. “I showed it to you because the one thing I don’t like about you is the way you defend Bud.”
I looked at her, amazed. “Did you think that letter would change my mind?”
“I think it’s not fair for Danny to have to go through that when certain others get out of it…when certain others won’t even volunteer to be medics!”
“We’ve talked about this before. I’m not going to argue with you.”
I could have. Som
ething had been happening to me since I’d been to New York. Maybe seeing how Bud chose to live his life made me want mine to count for something. I’d also been reading back copies of The Catholic Worker, a pacifist newspaper published by Dorothy Day, and some pamphlets Bud had given me. I knew for sure now that when it came my turn, I wanted to witness. Bud had said not to choose 4E just because he had. Either I wouldn’t stick with it, or else I’d be miserable. But I’d begun to believe it was the only way I could register for the draft and have any respect for myself. The more I prayed about it, the surer I was.
On the train ride home from New York I kept thinking how excited Bud was about his work at Shenandoah. It didn’t even seem to bother him that although he received a salary as a hospital attendant, it was automatically forwarded to the federal government. He didn’t see a nickel of it. That would bother me. But Bud was full of praise for the new superintendent. There were plans afoot for a front-yard sign that said “Hospital,” not “Asylum.” This new man wanted all the attendants to call patients Mr. or Mrs. or Miss as a start to restoring their dignity. No more meals on the floor with drinks from the hose.
After Daria’s voice lesson I rode Baby Boy and she rode Quinn. We went up into the Chester Hills. It was a warm May afternoon with the sun shining down on us.
When we reached Chester Park, the highest point, we got off our horses to take in the view.
“I don’t mean to be hard on you, Jubal,” she said. “I shouldn’t hold you responsible for what Bud does.”
“It’s all right,” I said. “I’m proud of what he’s doing.”
She let that go by. “I never had a knack for making friends. I was always with Danny or Dean. By the time they went off to war, it was too late.” She turned and smiled. “You’re my best friend.”
“I guess you’re my best friend, too.”
“You guess? Do you have a lot of friends at school?”
“I think of you sometimes as more than a friend.”
Hot face again; I wished I could quit that!
Daria didn’t say anything, so I said, “Don’t worry, I’m not planning to spoil things with a big pronouncement of any kind.”
She gave me one of her slanted smiles. “If you want to kiss me, come to the Catholic Armed Forces Day next Saturday. I’m in the Kissing Booth. Ten cents a kiss, Jubal.”
“No thanks.”
“Because the money goes to the war?”
“Not only that. When I kiss someone, I want her to want it as much as I do.”
She smiled up at me. “‘Come slowly—Eden!’”
“What does that mean?”
“‘Come slowly—Eden!…As the fainting bee—Reaching late his flower, Round her chamber hums.’ It was written by this old maid who wrote poetry I could swoon over. She was a recluse who never left her family home in Amherst, Massachusetts. I guess she took life too slowly.”
“What poet is that?”
“Emily Dickinson,” said Daria.
“I don’t read a lot of poetry,” I said.
“You don’t read any.” She gave my sleeve a tug. “You should, too. Don’t you want to be civilized?”
“Who do I start with? Are there any good male poets?”
She hit her forehead with her palm and groaned. She said, “Did you ever hear of William Shakespeare?”
“To be or not to be,” I said. “That is the quest tee own.”
She continued, “William Butler Yeats? William Wordsworth? Robert Browning, John Greenleaf—”
“I know! I know! I was just kidding!”
“You weren’t kidding.” She walked back to Quinn chuckling and muttering to herself, “Are there any good male poets!”
We headed back down the hill. In the shallows, where the cattails grew, a red-winged blackbird flashed by. We came to the stretch of newly plowed, rich, red-brown fields that ran for miles before we’d reach the paddock. She let Quinn go. I saw her long brown hair blowing in the wind. I couldn’t catch them. That seemed to be the problem: I couldn’t catch her.
SIXTEEN
That summer Daria worked on the New Jersey shore as a junior counselor at a camp for kids with polio. It was a summer that seemed never to end. I was working alongside Luke Casper, whose wife had written a Dear John one day and run off with a sailor. He would try to joke about it, say he didn’t mind the fact she’d dumped him, but she’d taken the sugar ration book with her. He kept telling me that Daria looked like her, that I shouldn’t let Daria get away. It did no good to tell him I’d never had a claim on her in the first place.
I sent Daria a long letter all about the horses and certain songs I liked: “You’ll Never Know,” and “Taking a Chance on Love.” I asked her what she was listening to that she liked. I told her it was lonely without her.
I got a postcard back saying she was having the best summer of her life. As for songs, she liked “Brazil,” and “Pistol Packin’ Mama.” From then on I wrote only postcards, six, and she sent me two more.
I listened every night, at eleven, to WBEA’s rebroadcast of Radio Dan. I knew he talked about his family from time to time, and I didn’t want to miss anything he might say about Daria. He called her Darie. There were several versions of his theme song, “Slap Your Sides,” at the end. She sang them all. One night he had this very confiding tone, as though he was telling you something he’d been mulling over. “You know,” he crooned, “I can’t help hoping that one of our servicemen, one who’s fought the good fight and is ready now to come home and settle down…well, I hope this fellow will connect with my Darie someday. I can tell you right now I don’t want a son-in-law who hasn’t been part of this…and I don’t mean sitting at a desk, or driving an ambulance over a battlefield after the battle’s over…. Call me narrow-minded, but I tell Darie these drugstore cowboys who aren’t in the service, for whatever excuse, aren’t fit to ring our front doorbell. You think you’re going to take my little girl out? In a pig’s eye, buster!”
It was the summer Sicily was invaded and Rome was bombed. Lizzie would call Mom, and after they’d talked awhile, she’d ask for Tommy and me. She’d say things like “The entire Warsaw ghetto is rubble now. Fifteen thousand Jews died, and another fifty thousand were shipped off to death camps.”…She’d say, “Can you hear me, boys? Do you realize what’s going on in Europe?”
Tommy had broken up with Lillie Light because he wanted to join the Army. She and her whole family were the sort of strict Mennonites who maybe didn’t travel by wagon but did paint the chrome on their cars black so they didn’t look flashy. They were sternly opposed to the war, even to someone serving as a noncombatant.
Tommy registered for the draft, but when he took his physical, he was classified 4F because of a perforated eardrum.
He couldn’t believe it. He said lucky thing the war was probably going to be over before I had to make my decision, because one of us should serve.
“I won’t,” I said. That was the first time I’d really made it clear, and I was a little surprised when the words came out of my mouth. But I was proud of myself, too.
“You won’t have to worry about it anyway, Jube.”
“Bud says it could go on for years.”
“How would Bud know?” Tommy said. “And Aunt Lizzie’s right about the Jews, too! Hitler’s killing all the Jews! If Hitler has his way, no one’s going to be safe.”
“And when Hitler’s defeated, there’ll be other dictators to come along,” I said. “There’ll be other races to destroy. The only way to stop war is for ordinary citizens to start saying No! I’m not going!”
“I know all the pacifist arguments, Jube. I went to SCFS, too, remember. But this war is different!”
Even though the Warner sisters were over sixty, they left Shoemaker’s for higher-paying jobs at Wride Foods. So after school Tommy worked for Dad, and Mom went in too, sometimes.
Wrides was Sweet Creek’s only “essential industry.” A lot of females got jobs there. Tommy was dating one named Rose G
arten. She had graduated from Sweet Creek High the year before and was one year older than Tommy. Her family were Catholics who lived in Blooming Glen. Tommy complained that she smelled of onions, but her graph had gone from 50 to 80 in a few weeks.
The last Saturday in August Tommy let Dad run the store by himself, so he could transport Baby Boy and Heavenly. They’d been sold to Orland Gish, a rich Mennonite with a farm in Lancaster.
A week later Luke Casper found a new horse who came with the name “Ike” after General Eisenhower. Mr. Hart wasn’t a fan of the military, so he renamed him Tyke, because he was smaller than most horses. The horse was restless, too; he didn’t like to mind.
He acted so wild, I had to keep him out in the paddock.
That was when Daria came back. After her music lesson, just as I’d finished mucking out the stalls, she came by the Harts’ and we went for a ride. I was on Tyke, who was trying to go where he wanted to go, not where we wanted to.
All the things I’d stored up to say to Daria, about my feelings for her, went unsaid. She was suddenly beautiful, tan, and happy-looking. Whatever made me think she’d give a damn what I thought of her? She kept talking about what a glorious summer she’d had: that helping people was what she planned to do with her life.
“Maybe you should be a nurse,” I said.
She pushed back her long hair and eyed me. “I’d rather be a doctor.”
“What kind?”
“Maybe a psychiatrist,” she said.
I told her about Abel Hart being sent to a psychiatric prison up north, after he was beaten up again. Mr. Hart went to see him and he said he hardly recognized Abel, and Abel didn’t know who he was. He had bruises on his face and arms from the beatings he’d received. His red hair had turned white, and his teeth chattered when he spoke, as though he was freezing. He’d told Mr. Hart he didn’t have to sleep anymore. He said he’d found the secret of eternal life.
“The Army ought to discharge him,” Daria said.
“He’s not in the Army, remember?”
