by Stuart Woods
Willie was worried. He was nearly two hours late being at city hall, and he didn’t want to get the Chief into any trouble. “Mama, he quiet now. I got to git to town.”
Nellie spun around. “No! No suh! You gon’ stay here where you needed!” She seemed half delirious herself.
“But mama—” They heard car doors slam outside. “They done come to git me, now. They gon’ put me under the jail.”
“Willie!” It was the Chief’s voice.
Nellie started for the door. “You stay here an’ wash you’ daddy’s face. I’m gon’ tell him you ain’t goin’ noplace!” She walked out onto the front porch. The Chief and the city manager stood at the bottom of the steps.
“Morning, Nellie,” said Will Henry, as pleasantly as he could. “I’ve come to get Willie. He has to go to work.”
Nellie was trembling with anger. “You ain’t gon’ take him. I needs him here. His daddy sick.”
“I’m sorry about that, Nellie. I’ll send Dr. Frank out here this afternoon. But Willie has to come with me, or he’ll be in a lot of trouble. You know that.”
Foxy worked his way through the brush in the empty lot until he had a clear view of things. Lee and Greer were standing at the bottom of the steps to the house, talking to a nigger woman. Foxy wondered if the Chief had told Willis Greer anything. Probably not. Lee was talking to the woman about taking her boy away. That’s what Greer was doing here. He dropped to one knee and brought the rifle to his shoulder. He’d have to kill all three of them.
“No!” Nellie screamed at the top of her lungs. Inside, Jesse sat bolt upright in bed. “No! You ain’t gon’ take him. You jes’ like the rest of ‘em! You ain’t no better than Hoss Spence!” Jesse pushed Willie aside and started for the door.
Foxy raised his rifle and drew a fine bead on Will Henry’s right temple. The Chief was standing stock still with his hands on his hips. It was an easy shot for somebody as good as Foxy. He took a deep breath and started to squeeze down on the trigger.
Jesse burst from the house, wearing only a pair of overalls, his eyes wild, a shotgun in his hands. Will Henry turned to look at him, his hands still resting on his hips. He opened his mouth to speak to Jesse, who ran across the porch and pushed Nellie out of the way. “Now, Jesse, you put—”
The shotgun roared.
Foxy watched in disbelief as Will Henry left his feet and flew backwards through the air. The black man dropped the shotgun and ran, jumped off the end of the porch, and headed for the woods behind the house. A black boy ran out the door after him. The woman was screaming something.
Before he heard the noise of the shotgun, Will Henry felt himself being slammed backwards by something heavy against his chest, then everything slowed down. He left his feet and floated briefly through space, then struck the earth with his shoulders. He seemed to slide a long way, bits of gravel and dirt scraping against his shoulders as he landed. As he came to rest, the roar of the shotgun filled his head, then he was looking up at the sky, and the sky was filled with Willis Greer’s face. He struggled for what seemed like a long time to fill his lungs, which had been emptied by whatever had hit him.
Foxy changed his position, swung the rifle toward the running black man, took careful aim between the shoulder blades, then stopped himself. He had no reason to be here with a rifle. Besides, he had to find out if Greer knew. He started back toward the pickup truck, running low through the brush. The black woman was still screaming.
Willis Greer was on his hands and knees, bending over Will Henry. The center of the Chief’s chest was a mass of blood and pulp, an expression of astonishment was on his face. He drew a long, gasping breath and heaved it out. Bloody bubbles popped through the wreckage of his chest, and he sucked in air again. Greer seemed in shock, didn’t know what to do. Foxy stopped his truck in front of the house and ran to them, pushing Greer out of the way. He bent over Will Henry, a strange expression on his face. “Can you talk, Lee? Can you speak to me?” Foxy’s voice was a soft purr.
Then the pain hit Will Henry, and he fainted.
In the woods Jesse stopped next to a small creek to catch his breath, and Willie caught up to him. He grabbed Willie by the shoulders, gasping for breath. When he could speak he said, “Listen, boy, we cain’t stay together.”
“But, Daddy, you sick, you cain’t—”
“No! You listen. You go to yo’ Uncle Tuck in Columbus. He live at sixteen Camp Street. Say that to me.”
“Sixteen Camp Street.”
“He take care of you. I done kilt Mist’ Hoss, and they gon’ have the dogs after me fo’ long.”
“But, Daddy, it wudn’t Mist’—”
“Don’t talk no mo’. Ain’t got no time. Now you run up that creek, right up the middle, ‘til you get to the top of the mountain, an’ then you git to Columbus. Don’t take no rides from no white folks. You walk if you got to, and you go to yo’ Uncle Tuck. He know what to do.”
Willie nodded. “Yassuh.” Jesse held him at arm’s length for a moment, then crushed him in his arms. Willie hugged his daddy. Then Jesse was gone, running across the little stream in his bare feet and out of sight into the woods.
Willie watched him until he was out of sight, then turned and started running up the middle of the creek, up the mountain, away from Braytown and Delano, away, away.
Will Henry dove into the water, clean and straight. He opened his eyes and swam downward. Underneath him the thick weeds moved as if in the wind, and minnows darted here and there. He swam and swam, the cold water delicious against his naked skin, streaming over his shoulders and buttocks, stroking his penis, shriveling his scrotum. His lungs began to ache for new air, and still he swam. He stopped and looked around. Behind him the dog, Fred, was swimming, his four legs running through the water, churning it into bubbles. Will Henry laughed out loud, underwater, at the sight, expelling the air from his lungs. His feet found the weeded bottom, and he pushed upward, aiming at a point in front of the swimming dog. He broke the surface to his waist, gulping air, reaching for Fred.
He sucked in air and opened his eyes. Carrie’s fingers were in his hair, Frank Mudter was sponging at his chest, Willis Greer, hat in hand, looked on, wide-eyed, and Foxy stood at the foot of the examination table, tense, his jaw working, sweat pouring down his face.
Carrie was weeping, trying to do it quietly. It was all clear to him, every sound, every sob, every movement, every drop of sweat on Foxy’s face. He was numb, but when he inhaled the pain came in his chest. He tried to speak, but it got worse.
Frank Mudter drew back and looked at him, followed Will Henry’s gaze to Foxy, looked back at him with curiosity. He was still trying to speak. The doctor leaned forward and looked into Will Henry’s face. “Can you speak, Will Henry? You haven’t got long, old fellow, I can’t do anything for you.”
Will Henry’s lips formed a word, but no sound came out. He sucked in another painful breath and tried again, his eyes still riveted to Foxy, seeming to ignore Carrie, who held his head up in her hands. “Again—” he managed to whisper, still staring at Foxy. He bit at another breath, but it rattled from him in a long sigh.
Darkness came slowly. He closed his eyes. He could feel Carrie’s cheek against his, her tears on his skin, her lips at his ear; she loved him, she was saying.
He knew it, and he was glad.
Book Two
Sonny Butts
1
BILLY LEE, or more formally, Lieutenant Colonel William Henry Lee III, Army Air Corps, was in a daze, a mixture of simple relief, intense happiness, and equally intense fear. He was relieved that the Germans would no longer be trying to kill him, having surrendered just that day; he was very happy to be in the company of the girl he could just see disappearing toward the ladies’ room of the crowded London pub; and he was terribly afraid that when she came back she would not agree to marry him.
Billy had had what he would later come to think of as a good war. He had already earned a junior partnership in a large Atlan
ta law firm when the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor came, but he had unhesitatingly enlisted in the army, using Hugh Holmes’s influence with the Roosevelt administration to keep him out of the judge advocate’s clutches and get him into flight school. His age had kept him out of fighters, where he really wanted to be, but bombers were the next best thing, and his maturity had helped him earn responsibility when, after suffering a shrapnel wound in the seat of the pants on his thirty-eighth mission, he was able to return to his squadron as its executive officer. By assigning himself to fly whenever his commanding officer would look the other way, he had completed his fiftieth mission two days before the European war ended.
But if that would seem like a “good” war later, all that mattered to him now was that it was over and that he was alive and that, somehow, he might talk this girl into marrying him. He made an effort to stop rehearsing proposals and looked around for distraction; he would do better if he had to improvise. It had always been that way in court. A young infantry captain was slouched beside him, staring glumly into a pint of warm beer. A cane was hooked over the bar at his elbow.
“Where you from, Captain?” The young officer looked up. Billy thought he was probably a little drunk, but then so was he.
“Elmira, New York, sir.”
“I guess you’ll be going home pretty soon now.”
“Yes, sir.” He tapped the cane. “This’ll keep me out of the Pacific. Nothing permanent, though. I was lucky.”
“You don’t look too happy about it. Aren’t you ready to get back?”
“Oh, sure, I’ve got a wife and a kid I’ve only seen once. I’ll find it real easy to be a civilian again—even one with a limp. I was just thinking, though, there’ll be some guys who’ll be sorry it’s over.”
“Sorry not to get shot at any more?”
The captain looked up from his beer at Billy. “You’re a pilot?”
“B-17’s.”
“You’ve killed some people in this war, then.”
“Not much doubt about that.”
“Did you like it?”
“Flying bombers?”
“Killing people.”
“I try not to think about it. Dresden, especially. I have a hard time not thinking about that.”
“There are men who like it.”
“Killing people?”
The captain shifted his weight painfully on his barstool and continued in the careful way of speaking of a man who knows he’s drunk, but wants to be understood. “There was a man in my company, a kid, really, a sergeant.” He paused and took a deep breath. “I promoted him to sergeant. In the worst of it during the Bulge he led a platoon when his lieutenant bought it. He loved it.”
“Leading the platoon?”
“Killing. He loved making other men die. I think it made him feel—” His words trailed off.
Billy started to say something, to change the subject, but the captain continued.
“I found him… there was this big shell hole, and he had these German soldiers, really young kids and a couple of old men … we saw a lot of that, it was all they had at the end. There were eight of them in the hole, and I came up on him; I heard his Thompson firing and thought he needed help. I saw him shoot the last one. He was at least sixty.”
“Well, one man against eight, he had to defend himself. They were armed, weren’t they?”
“The one I saw him shoot, the last one, he was armed with a rifle with a fixed bayonet, and there was a handkerChief, a white flag tied to the bayonet. He didn’t see me at first. He waited a minute; the man was begging. And then he shot him. He was grinning while he did it. He loved it. All eight of them.”
“It’s hard to know what a man thinks or feels at a time like that. It might have been different than you think.”
“I know what he was feeling. His fatigues were wet. His pants. He came in his pants. It was all just a big wet dream to him.”
Billy winced. “Did you… was he charged with anything?”
“Before I could do anything at all a mortar shell went off somewhere behind me. I woke up in a field hospital. I was in England the next day. I don’t know if he’s dead or alive, but I hope he’s dead. At home they’re not going to know what to do with somebody like that. He’d go back as a hero. He was the most decorated man in the regiment, and it was all because he loved his work. He’d been trained to kill people, and he learned to like it. I think I suspected it, but I couldn’t relieve him; I needed him. All I could do in the end was to write to the new CO from the hospital, and I don’t even know if he got the letter.”
Billy looked up and saw her picking her way back through the crowd. “I hope he got the letter, Captain, and I guess that’s all you can do, too. I hope you’ll have an easier time forgetting it than I’ve had forgetting Dresden, and I wish you luck. Excuse me.” He struggled toward her and took her hand. “Let’s get some air, okay?” They headed for the door.
There was a bench in the mews, at the bottom of the pub’s steps. They sat on the bench with their drinks; she pulled her knees onto the seat and faced him. Her name was Patricia WorthNewenam, and she was Anglo-Irish. He had met her at a general’s dinner party at the Connaught and had shamelessly wooed her under the general’s nose. She was a WREN attached to Allied headquarters in London, and they had spent every possible free moment together since then. They had slept in each other’s arms in her London flat and in country inns, but she would not make love to him. There was an old boyfriend in the Royal Marines, a childhood sweetheart, and he thought that must be the reason. He tried not to think about the marine.
He had pulled some strings and managed to visit her family home near Kinsale, in County Cork, for a weekend. Her family were Protestants, farmers for generations, who lived in a huge run-down Georgian house set in two thousand acres of Irish countryside. Her father was a small, handsome man who was a splendid host, but wary of him. He had lost a son and heir in the war and had only a remaining son and Patricia. He did not intend to lose her to some passing American. Billy had told him flatly that he would ask her to marry him if he survived the war. “You’re a nice enough fellow,” WorthNewenam had replied, “and you’re not the first to speak to me, as you might imagine. Colin Cudmore has wanted her all her life, and if I have my way he’ll have her. She was brought up on a horse, and she loves this land. She’ll not be happy as an American lawyer’s wife.”
“Mr. WorthNewenam,” Billy had replied, looking him in the eye, “I know I’m a foreigner to you, and I can understand how you must want to keep her here, but I love her, and I can give her a good life. There’s land in Georgia, too, and I think that living in London has made her want more than just that. The thing that neither you nor I really knows is whether she wants me. If she decides she does, I hope you and Mrs. WorthNewenam will give us your blessing.”
“Since we love her, too, I don’t see how we can do anything else. I guess you’d better find out if she’ll have you.”
Now he was about to do that, and all he could think about was how unbearably painful it would be if she didn’t want him. The light from the pub’s windows shone on her auburn hair, and though her eyes were in shadow he knew they were the same color. He took a deep breath and improvised.
“Listen, Trish, I think I want to be the president of the United States. Do you want to be the first lady?” In the brief silence that followed he wished he could see her eyes. Nothing else was moving.
“Oh, sure,” she said, sounding oddly American, “but how will Mr. and Mrs. Truman feel about that?”
“I haven’t mentioned it to the Trumans yet, but Harry understands that any American boy can become president, so I don’t see how he can object.”
“Do they promote thirty-three-year-old lieutenant colonels directly to president in America?”
“There’s a waiting period, usually. I thought I might go into the Congress or maybe be governor of Georgia in the meantime.”
“Right.”
“I mean, with my
sterling war record and my wound and everything, how could they deny me?”
“Listen, buster, just because you got shot in the arse for Uncle Sam doesn’t mean anybody’s going to vote for you. Lots of other people got shot in the arse, too, you know.”
“I love it when you talk dirty.”
“Don’t change the subject.”
“What was the subject?”
“You were proposing to me.”
“Oh, yeah. Did you give me an answer?”
“Yes.”
“What was it?”
“That was it.”
His mouth fell open. She put a knuckle under his chin and closed it.
“You mean it?”
“There are conditions.”
“Your bargaining position will never be better. Name them.”
“First, you have to ask me properly.”
“Patricia WorthNewenam, I love you, I really do, and I want you to be my wife and the mother of my children and all that. Will you marry me?”
“That was very nice. Second condition: I can’t just be a politician’s wife all day long. You have to buy me a farm.”
“Anything to bring in the farm vote.”
“I mean it.”
“I mean it, too. The farm vote is crucial in Georgia.”
“Done, then.”
“No more conditions?”
“That’s it for now.”
“God, but I love you, Trish.”
“I love you, too, Billy Lee. Take me home, and I’ll prove it.”
As they walked up the mews to find a taxi, she asked about the captain in the pub. “War stories,” he replied. “He told me the worst war story I ever heard. You really going to marry me?”
“If you promise never to tell me war stories.”
“Conditions, always conditions.”
He put his arm around her, and they walked up the mews very close together.
2
TOP SERGEANT Homer Butts, known to all as Sonny, stood in the sunshine of an early spring day in 1946, at rigid attention, on the baseball diamond of Delano High School. Thirty-one other Delano natives, all in army, navy, or marine uniform, stood in ranks with him.
