Slap Your Sides

by M. E. Kerr

  “Not every day.” It had been Mom’s idea that the female customers might not want males waiting on them when they purchased certain things. I think Mom also thought some of the old customers would come back because of her.

  It was too soon to tell.

  My father wished she would not be there any day.

  He never came right out and said so. He never came right out and said anything anymore.

  “I miss riding Quinn,” Daria said. She smelled like summer flowers, and I wondered if she was wearing the Evening in Paris I’d given her.

  “Quinn’s owner is taking him back tomorrow.” I said.

  “He can’t!”

  “Quinn is his. The Army’s discharged him and he’s back on his farm, in bad shape. He can’t wait to see Quinn.”

  “I wish I could have one more ride. I wish we could go out together.”

  “Tomorrow’s Saturday. I won’t trailer him until around three.”

  “You don’t know how badly I want to do it, Jubal.”

  “Then do it.”

  “And break a promise to my dad?”

  “I’m not going to get into that. You have to make up your own mind.”

  “I’m afraid of Luke. He’s gotten friendly with Dad. He drops off hamburgers, doughnuts, at the station, looking for me, I think. Someone at WBEA had to tell him my songs were recorded.”

  “That creep!”

  “I’m afraid he’d tell Dad I was with you, just to get in good with him.”

  “You could see Quinn now. I don’t think he’s on much of a ride. Mr. Hart only takes him for about twenty minutes.”

  “I better not. Daddy gets upset when I don’t come right home.”

  Tyke was nudging my neck.

  “Look how he loves you, Jubal.”

  “I know.”

  “I almost love you myself sometimes,” she teased. “Did you know that?”

  “‘All or nothing at all.’” I sang the opening of Sinatra’s big hit.

  She joined in: “‘Half a love nev-ver appealed to me.’”

  She smiled. “Say good-bye to Quinn for me, Jubal. I can’t make it. I’m sorry.”

  “So am I. For you.”

  “I didn’t mean I just wanted to ride Quinn a last time.”

  “That’s how it sounded.”

  “But that isn’t what I meant…. I miss you an awful lot, Jubal.”

  I had to look away and get control. Just her saying that made me want to bawl, made me want to cry out, Me, too! and grab her. But there we stood with the huge sentinel crows cawing above us on the gnarled limbs of the buttonwoods. There we stood.

  “Yeah, I miss you, too,” I finally managed.

  “Sometimes I think it wasn’t right for me to scold you about Bud. Or about your own feelings. You have a right to your opinions.”

  “That isn’t the way I remember you, anyway.”

  “In his letters Daniel sometimes sounds more like you than you do.”

  We stood there a silent moment before she asked, “How do you remember me?”

  “I remember how you used to suddenly sing something from a song…or an opera. The way we just sang out a second ago.”

  “I can’t do it on command,” she said.

  “I’m not commanding you.”

  “I know that…. Do you listen to Daddy?”

  “Sometimes.” I don’t know why I didn’t just say Almost every night.

  “He’s got this new theme song. He’s using the old one too, but I recorded a new one for him to play. And guess what—I wrote it.”

  “So now you’re a writer, too.”

  “No, I did it for the girls at Wride’s. It just came to me.”

  “Uh-huh. Good.”

  “So you can hear that if you ever catch the program.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, Jubal.”

  “What?”

  “Just get back up on Tyke, hmmm? Just ride away.”

  “If that’s what you want.”

  She didn’t say it was or it wasn’t. She turned in the other direction and walked away.

  “I love her,” I told Tyke on the way back to the stables.

  His ears were pricked forward. He’d been acting strange lately, bolting his feed, pacing in his stall. I thought he sensed Quinn was leaving. Luke said that was what it was. Luke said horses felt plenty that we didn’t know about.

  “They’re not that different from us,” he said. “They intuit things.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  Both Tommy and I took the day off to drive Quinn up past Lancaster. Mom would be at the store helping Dad.

  As capable a man as Luke was with horses when he was sober, he wasn’t ever the right one to trailer them. He didn’t have the patience to load them. They sensed he didn’t, and horses never help you when they find you out. Luke also drove too fast, always. A horse would be back there in the trailer trying to keep its balance.

  I’d bathed and groomed Quinn on the day we were taking him. Across the stable Tyke had begun the pacing again, plus giving an occasional snort and neigh.

  I was glad to get on the road earlier than we’d planned.

  “I think Tyke knew Quinn was leaving. He’s been so nervous.”

  “Maybe Tyke doesn’t like being alone with Luke,” said Tommy. “Would you? He stinks from booze, and it’s only eleven thirty.”

  “Tyke’s almost the way he used to be when he first came to us. Back when he was Ike.”

  “Mr. Hart’s not too happy about the horse business,” Tommy said. He’d had coffee with him while I was getting Quinn ready.

  “Mr. Hart’s not too happy period,” I said.

  “What’s he got to be happy about? You’ve never been sympathetic toward Abel, have you?”

  “I can’t call myself a fan of his, no. But I wasn’t even thinking about Abel. I just hope Mr. Hart doesn’t give up the horses.”

  “Not you, too,” Tommy said. “First we had Bud mad about Quinn. Now we’ve got you crazy about Tyke.”

  Quinn returned to a thirty-acre farm with an immaculate stable and large pastures, trails, and paddocks. His owner was on crutches, in mufti except for an Army cap, a big smile on his face. He was waiting for us in the driveway. After we backed Quinn out, and Quinn saw where he was and who was there to greet him, Quinn showed off. We’d never seen him prance around the way he did, high-stepping and nickering.

  On the way back Tommy said, “Bud will be relieved when we tell him about taking Quinn home.”

  “I don’t know. Do we want Bud to know Quinn’s that happy without him?”

  We had the radio playing loud, the way we both liked it. We listened to Sinatra and Harry James and Dinah Shore.

  “Do you think Mom and Dad are ever going to be the way they used to be?” I asked Tommy.

  “I have no idea. Neither one will talk about it.”

  Tommy had this new celluloid black eyeshade he liked to wear. He was wearing the black jodhpurs and one of the white shirts Mom ironed for him every day. The black boots. He looked like a combination card shark and plantation owner.

  “We’re not a family that talks much about things,” I said.

  “We talk about things,” he said. “Don’t we?”

  “Sometimes…but I had to sneak a look at Bud’s letter to get you to talk about that. Remember?”

  “I remember. And you sneak peeks at my graphs.”

  “Because you don’t talk about it.”

  “What if I did?” Tommy said.

  “Okey-dokey, go right ahead,” I said.

  “Things aren’t so okey-dokey, Jubal.”

  “You mean with Rose?”

  “That’s what I mean. Oh, gawd!” he groaned.

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She’s got herself in trouble,” he said.

  “How?”

  “She’s got herself pregnant,” he said.

  “You mean you did. What are you going to do?”

  “I wish she coul
d get rid of it.”

  “She can’t get rid of it, Tommy!”

  “I’m not saying she can. I’m saying I wish she could.”

  “Even if there was someplace to take her, and even if there was some way to afford it, she’s Catholic.”

  “Don’t you remind me. She reminds me enough.”

  “You’re going to have to marry her,” I said.

  “I don’t love her,” Tommy said. That was our only subject on the way back to Doylestown.

  “If I marry Rose, it will ruin my life,” Tommy said.

  “What about hers?”

  “I know. It would ruin hers also, but she’d have the baby, anyway.”

  “You’d have the baby too!”

  “I don’t want the baby! What do you think I’m talking about?”

  “I feel sorry for her, Tommy. She’s crazy about you.”

  “Girls love being mothers. She’d have the baby. I’d have the bills. I’d have her old man showing me his bowling trophies…. I’d never go on a date again. That part of my life would be over—pffft!”

  “Did you ever love her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you say you loved her?”

  “You say it. You always say it. If you don’t say it, they won’t do it.”

  “You never should have said it.”

  “I never should have done it!”

  Tommy didn’t want to take the time to stop for lunch at a road stand. He wanted to go home and meet with the coach at Sweet Creek High School. He said that besides Bud, the coach was the only adult he trusted. He didn’t want to lay it on Bud. Bud had his own problems.

  Back at the Harts’, Tommy slammed the car door and said, “Don’t tell anyone what I just told you!”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Are you going to help me clean the trailer?”

  “Let Luke do it. Let him do something for a change.”

  “He’s probably too loaded by now.”

  “I want to ride Tyke.”

  “Go on then, but remember what I said. Don’t tell anyone!”

  “Who would I tell?”

  “Just zip the lip, Jubal!”

  I was walking up toward the stables, feeling sorry for myself. I was hungry, too, and angry. There was no way Tommy could get out of marrying Rose. Even forgetting the fact that her father was a carbon copy of Attila the Hun, any boy in Sweet Creek who got a girl in trouble had to have the proverbial shotgun wedding…. I was cussing to myself. It suddenly dawned on me that I would be the only child living at home. I would be the only person my mother would be able to talk to and the only person my father would be able to talk to. But I wouldn’t know how to really talk with either one of them. I’d always had Bud or Tommy.

  At first I thought the cry I heard was one of the stable cats in heat. Then I realized it was a girl crying. She was crying, “Help!”

  It was someone in trouble.

  I began to run. I thought of Luke, thought of him drunk, and then when the voice called, “Help me!” I knew the voice.

  “Daria! I’m coming!”

  Scare him off, I thought. “We’re coming!” I shouted, even though I’d looked behind me and didn’t see Tommy anywhere.

  I had never run so fast. I had never known I could run so fast. A powerful rush of rage and adrenaline drove me.

  Again she cried out, “Please, some—” and the rest of what she’d said was muffled by what? Luke’s hand across her mouth?

  I headed straight for the stable door.

  Just outside it I saw the pitchfork stuck in the block of hay.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  Hello, listeners. This is Radio Dan, your Home Front Man, bringing you the war…and tonight bringing you some thoughts about what’s happened here in Sweet Creek that’s put us on the map, sad to say not in a glowing light.

  And you all know, so I’m not going to pretend you don’t—you all know that my Darie is a part of this story…a very important part.

  I’ve never spent any time with this young man the tabloid journalists enjoy calling the Quaker Killer. His father and I have been colleagues and neighbors for some twenty years. And I know many of you have done your shopping in Shoemaker’s on Pilgrim Lane, and come to know Efram and Winnie.

  Many of you know they belong to Sweet Creek Friends. The fact that they are Quakers is no small part of this story. Many of you are aware, too, that their oldest boy, Bud, chose to be a conscientious objector. In 1942 Bud entered Civilian Public Service.

  Another, son, Thomas, attempted to join the Army and was rejected because of a perforated eardrum.

  Now we come to Jubal.

  I’m told by Darie that Jubal was planning to follow in Bud’s footsteps. Jubal, Darie told me, is a bona fide pacifist, a Quaker with strong convictions, a young man of fifteen who had already made up his mind that he was not going to participate in a war, in a fight of any kind, in violence.

  You know, we parents think our kids tell us most things. Sure, they keep some things to themselves. But if you had a daughter and she had a regular date with a fellow, to go riding up to Chester Park most Saturday afternoons, wouldn’t she tell her dad, or her mom, or someone?

  She did tell someone. Darie Daniel told two people, in fact: her twin brothers. And when Dean was killed, she kept right on describing to Daniel the happy times she spent on horseback with Jubal Shoemaker.

  The reason she couldn’t confide in her old man, yours truly, or her mother, was that we aren’t very sympathetic with Bud Shoemaker’s position on the war…and we wouldn’t have liked Jubal’s pacifism any better.

  Why, the only one my wife and yours truly could think of who had a worse attitude about this war was a man named Abel Hart. Abel Hart, draft resister, escaped convict, mental case…Yes, he is from our area, too. Or he was. From Doylestown.

  Here’s the thing, listeners; here’s the thing.

  My Darie believed she had a date to go riding with young Shoemaker, the pacifist. She went over to the Harts’ stable in Doylestown to meet him.

  Now, he wasn’t there. There’d been a misunderstanding. He was on his way there, but he wouldn’t arrive for a few minutes.

  Someone was there, however. He’d been there off and on for about a week. It is said that one of the horses, named after General Dwight D. Eisenhower, was upset over it. This horse, Ike, was pacing and bolting his feed because he knew someone was hiding there in the straw…hiding from the law, the war, himself…even though by all rights he did live there. It was his home there. He was Abel Hart…. Maybe he didn’t know who he was anymore, but he knew enough to find his way home and hide.

  My Darie didn’t recognize him. Nobody would have. I don’t think his own father would have. Abel’s hair had turned white and was down past his shoulders. He was in old, torn clothes reeking of filth. His hands had long nails and were all curled into claws. The ironic thing is I doubt that he meant Darie any harm. It was just that when she saw him, she began to scream, and he was afraid she would give him away. He put his hand over her mouth and muttered that he had the eyes of God now.

  Well…Oh, listeners, the world is filled with irony. It is filled with drama. Here is a young man, fifteen, a Quaker, and something else about him: He was besotted with my Daria. This shy young man, this well-meaning young man (forget his pacifist leanings) spent five dollars and change on perfume for my daughter at Christmas. Evening in Paris, it was called. She wasn’t even seeing that much of him anymore, but he couldn’t get her off of his mind.

  That fatal Saturday he heard her cry from outside the Hart stables. He believed that she was in danger—she may very well have been. Here was a crazy person who was telling her he saw with God’s eyes. Here was a crazy person saying that to my daughter, and putting his large hand over her mouth, this smelly lunatic! My Darie was terrified! My Darie, in the dark of the Hart stable, had never been so afraid.

  UNTIL.

  Until, listeners, the pacifist came through the door bearing
a pitchfork. The Quaker, the peacemaker, the shy, young fifteen-year-old member of Sweet Creek Friends School found something out about himself.

  He found out that he COULD kill.

  He found out that he WOULD kill.

  In the few minutes it took to sense that someone he loved could be threatened, years and years of pacifist propaganda went down the tubes.

  No one was going to hurt his girl!

  Whoever tried to hurt his girl, was—pfffft—slap your sides—slain!

  Food for thought, is it not listeners?

  Tonight I’ve given you something to think about…and Jubal Shoemaker has given me something to think about…. I still don’t want that boy anywhere near my Darie, but…I thank God for that boy. I pray to God that Jubal Shoemaker will not be punished too severely for being more of a man than he ever dreamed he was!

  Good night, my faithful listeners.

  And again tonight we’re going to go out with my Darie singing her tribute to the home-front girls—you know their names as well as I do.

  Rich gal, she wears the best perfume,

  Po’ gal, she’d like to do the same,

  Wride gal got an onion smell,

  And that’s why she’s my dame!

  Rich gal, she lives in a big white house,

  Po’ gal she lives in a frame,

  Wride gal got an onion smell

  And one room down the lane.

  Wride gal, you are swell,

  And you, gal, I adore,

  Wride gal, you pitched in

  To help us win this war!

  Wride gal, Wride gal,

  You helped us win this war!

  —Radio Dan broadcast, 1944

  TWENTY-FIVE

  “Daria?”

  “Jubal?”

  Penn Station, New York City, August 1945. One year and five months since I’d seen her.

  “Where are you going?” she said, as though she was surprised to see me out of Sweet Creek. Everyone knew I got a suspended sentence, providing I didn’t leave Sweet Creek for sixteen months.

  It was my first time away from home since March 1944.

  I had to do public service too, and another provision of my sentence was that I was to refrain from contact of any kind with Daria.