Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause

by Mignon F. Ballard

  Leaving Annie to face the disapproval of Emmaline Brumlow, Dimple Kilpatrick opened her umbrella to ward off the sun and continued on her way. The umbrella was large enough for three and had once been purple, in keeping with most of her wardrobe, and, in addition to shielding her from the elements, was used to spear and dispose of unsightly litter along the way.

  In time, she hoped, Phoebe Chadwick would come to terms with her nephew’s military duty, as had so many others. Several young men she had taught and loved as children had lost their lives in defense of freedom, and others were in danger of doing the same. Newsreels, radio, and newspapers brought the fighting close to hand, and learning of death and defeat was constant and unavoidable. It gnawed away at her heart, but Dimple Kilpatrick had not one doubt that her country would be victorious.

  * * *

  “Well … perhaps now we can get started,” Emmaline Brumlow announced as Reynolds Murphy quietly took his seat and Annie slid into a place next to Charlie. Charlie Carr sensed her friend tensing beside her. How in the world, she wondered, could Emmaline remain calm and collected in a wool suit when it had to be close to ninety degrees in the room? What a witch the woman could be! And as if she could read her thoughts, Annie Gardner whispered aside to her, “Eye of newt and toe of frog…”

  Seated at her desk in the background, Virginia Balliew longed to become invisible, but because she was heading up the War Bond Rally and was a member in good standing of the Elderberry Woman’s Club, Emmaline expected her to take part in the meeting. Her first announcement, however, came as a shocking revelation.

  “Most of you are aware that Virginia Balliew, our capable librarian, has agreed to be in charge of the rally…” She paused for modest applause. “Because of her many duties here at the library, Virginia has enlisted the help of my nephew, Buddy Oglesby, to assist her in this cause.” (Only two people applauded this time, she noticed: Delia and the new chorus director, who didn’t know any better.)

  “Buddy has several ideas for promoting our rally,” Emmaline continued, “and I expect him to arrive shortly to share them with you.”

  Virginia bit her lip until it hurt. Strange, but she didn’t remember asking Buddy Oglesby’s help with the rally. She wanted to leap to her feet and make that known to all, but her small salary as librarian was paid by the local Woman’s Club, and Emmaline Brumlow reigned as the current president of that group. The extra income, although slight, supplemented the meager pension she received as the widow of a Methodist minister.

  Charlie kept an eye on her sleeping nephew as the meeting progressed and hoped it wouldn’t go on too long. Naturally, she wanted to be a part of helping to ensure that the rally was a success, and had convinced her sister to attend, hoping she might contribute as well. With her young husband serving in Italy and most of her friends away at school, Delia seemed unsure of her place in an unsettled world. Maybe, Charlie thought, if she just helped a little more with the housework … and then she felt ashamed of herself. She knew the fear that consumed her sister whenever she saw the boy on the black bicycle who delivered telegrams, some of which contained tragic news from the War Department. Her mother had received such a telegram about their brother, Fain, the year before, and the memory of that day was still so painful she flinched to think of it. Deeply regret to inform you … it began.

  Her brother was missing in action with General Patton’s army somewhere in Algeria, a blue area on the map of North Africa, rich in petroleum and iron, that her third graders had studied in geography. He was injured over there, possibly dead, and the army didn’t know where he was. It might as well have been a million miles away, and they couldn’t do one thing to help him. It had been almost unbearable to see her mother suffer, but Josephine Carr was a strong woman. She cried her share of tears, and then threw herself into the war effort with even more purpose with her work at the munitions plant in Milledgeville.

  The letter arrived in January.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The earth was black with burning and smoke hung like a dark veil in the air. The new ground would be ready to plant in the spring. Soybeans the first year, then cotton, robust and green in the rich bottomland. And then the waters came …

  * * *

  “… most people seem to enjoy a womanless wedding, and it should be easy and inexpensive to put on.”

  Charlie was jolted to the present to see that Annie had the floor and everyone’s attention as well. Reynolds Murphy squirmed in his seat.

  “I’ve canvased several merchants,” Annie continued, “and most of them have agreed to take part—especially for the cause.” Now she directed her gaze at Reynolds, who gazed longingly out the window while mopping his brow. “I think Mr. Murphy would make an absolutely beautiful bridesmaid, don’t you?”

  Of course everyone laughed, including Reynolds, when Virginia offered a hand-me-down gown once belonging to her late cousin Ethel.

  The poor man blushed. “I’m afraid I’d be much too large for that,” he said.

  “Oh, but you didn’t know Ethel,” Virginia countered.

  And so it was decided that Reynolds would be in charge of getting the wedding group together. Charlie suggested they ask the various clubs in the area to contribute ideas for the pageant and schedule a joint meeting at the high school auditorium the following week. Emmaline had brought along a book of short, humorous skits they might choose from that she turned over to Delia, and Buddy Oglesby finally arrived, looking flushed and sheepish, with several designs for posters and banners that Charlie found surprisingly clever.

  Many of the others agreed, and Buddy blushed as he received their praise over Lou’s peach ice cream after the meeting. “I thought I’d have to get down on my knees and beg Amos Schuler for the extra cream,” Lou told them, and most nodded in understanding. Just about everyone was familiar with the milkman’s curdled disposition, but Charlie was surprised he would deliver to her aunt at all after her outrageous stunt the year before.*

  “Aren’t you going to stay for ice cream, Reynolds?” Lou asked as he prepared to leave.

  Reynolds shook his head and smiled. “Looks tempting, Lou, but I overindulged as a child and haven’t been able to enjoy ice cream since.”

  “I can’t say that I’m sorry,” Annie told him. “That just means there’s more for me!”

  * * *

  “I think Buddy’s been hiding his light under a bushel,” Charlie told Annie as the two walked home together after the meeting. Delia had stopped by their aunt Lou’s with the baby to visit the new coach and his wife, who had recently established themselves in the garage apartment.

  Buddy Oglesby had revealed plans for a large banner showing a clock with hands pointing to the scheduled time of the rally. In bold letters it read: Time to unite and win the fight! Charlie had agreed to make several posters using Buddy’s suggested slogan: Help boost the tally! Come to the rally!

  “We should’ve started on this sooner,” Annie said as they waited to cross the street. “We have less than three weeks to get this thing together.”

  The parade was scheduled to begin at four in the afternoon on the first Saturday in October, to be followed by the War Bond Rally on the courthouse lawn and a pageant that same night, with proceeds going to the war effort.

  “Thank goodness this has given Delia something to look forward to!” Charlie said. “She hasn’t heard from Ned in a while and she lives for the mail to come.”

  “Don’t we all?” Annie’s voice was somber. “Heard anything from Will?”

  “Just a short letter yesterday. How about Frazier?”

  “Still helping train recruits at Fort Benning, but he’s dying to get into the fight.” Annie shook her head. “Crazy, isn’t it? Frankly, I wish they’d keep him there for the duration of the war, but I hate to see him so unhappy.”

  “At least you get to see him once in a while,” Charlie said. The two had gone to Brenau College with a girl from Columbus, Georgia, where the fort was located, and Annie had arr
anged to stay with her friend a couple of weekends during the summer in order to spend time with her young lieutenant. She had met Frazier Duncan the year before when the people of Elderberry entertained the recruits on his troop train with an early Thanksgiving dinner, and since that time, Annie Gardner hadn’t had eyes for anyone else.

  “I have enough on my mind with Joel up there zooming around the ‘wild blue yonder,’” Annie added, speaking of her brother. “Do you realize it won’t be long before he and Will move on to advanced flight training at Craig Field? And then they’ll be off to who knows where!”

  “That is why they signed up,” Charlie reminded her. “Can you imagine them anywhere else?” Of course she was concerned for the two men as well, but they were doing what made them happy, and all those in combat risked their lives every day, no matter where they fought.

  Annie’s brother Joel and his friend Will Sinclair would soon complete their basic flight training at Courtland Airfield in Alabama, and their letters were filled with enthusiastic accounts of their time in the air. The two cadets had been guests of Charlie and her family for a few days the Thanksgiving before, and because she thought her friend was interested in him, Charlie had tried to suppress her attraction to Will Sinclair. Drawn irresistibly to his clean-cut looks, intelligence, and keen sense of humor, she had attempted to put as much distance as possible between them, but on the day after Thanksgiving the foursome stopped for lunch at a rustic drive-in and found they had the dance floor and the jukebox to themselves. While Annie danced with her brother to “The Pennsylvania Polka,” Charlie had no choice but to accept Will’s offer and follow them onto the floor. “Just one more,” Will had insisted when Glenn Miller’s “At Last” began to play, and Charlie Carr found herself between heaven and, if not hell, some place that was equally agonizing. With the closeness of his arms around her, his lips inches away, she had never felt so right, and yet so wrong.

  Later, when Will confessed he felt the same way, he had trouble convincing her that he and Annie were good friends and nothing more, until, reluctantly, she abandoned herself to his kisses. It was soon after that that Charlie’s brother, Fain, had gone missing, and Charlie felt she was being punished for being disloyal to her best friend. Annie, thank goodness, put an end to that! “Of course I’m fond of Will, silly,” she assured her, “but I thought you knew from the beginning how I felt about Frazier!”

  That had been almost a year ago, and much had happened since. They walked past the post office on the corner with the recruiting poster out front: Uncle Sam Wants YOU! The wicker baby carriage that had once held Charlie as well and Fain and Delia was parked by the front steps of their aunt Lou’s Gothic Victorian cottage with its gabled roof and wide, welcoming porch. Across the street at the gray stone Baptist church, evening bells rang in familiar cadence as they had for as long as Charlie Carr could remember. Would her brother ever hear them again?

  Parting with Annie at the corner, she strolled down Katherine Street for home. She had been just across the street the day she saw the boy from the telegraph office on the dreaded black bicycle turn into their driveway to deliver the news about Fain, and Charlie wasn’t sure she would ever see her brother alive. But there were no such doubts for her mother, Jo. Her son was alive, and she wouldn’t allow herself to believe otherwise.

  Charlie would never forget the January day the letter arrived. The telephone was ringing when she reached home after school that gray winter afternoon, and she snatched the day’s mail from the box on the porch and hurried inside to answer it. Her mother was calling to let Charlie know she had stopped by Aunt Lou’s after their shift at the ordnance plant where the two sisters worked three days a week and to ask if she needed anything from the store. Charlie said she thought they could make do with leftover Spam and potatoes for supper, tossed the mail on the hall table, and lit a coal fire in the sitting room grate. It wasn’t until she started to the kitchen a few minutes later that she picked up the mail and recognized her brother’s familiar handwriting on the envelope.

  She didn’t remember running all the way to her aunt’s, but the Baptist minister, who happened to be on his way to visit a sick member at the time, said Charlie never even paused for the traffic light on the corner and sprinted past him so quickly her feet hardly touched the ground.

  The letter, while brief, was written in mid-December by Fain himself from a British hospital ship as he was being evacuated to the United Kingdom, and Josephine Carr almost ripped the paper in her haste to read the message.

  Dear Mama,

  Just want to let you know I’m ok, so don’t worry! Am unable to walk because of leg injury and will probably need some surgery on shoulder, but nothing that can’t be fixed and the doctors are taking good care of that. Am told dog tags were lost or destroyed but I’m here and should be as good as new in time.

  My love to all of you,

  Fain

  A few days later a telegram arrived from the government confirming Fain’s report, and by the end of March he was able to rejoin his regiment in Tunisia.

  * * *

  By the time Charlie reached home that afternoon her green cotton shirtwaist dress was sticking to her, and once inside she quickly traded it for shorts and an old shirt of Fain’s. The local school board frowned on its teachers sporting such scanty attire in public, but what they chose to wear in the privacy of their own homes was their own business, and Charlie, along with most of the younger members of the faculty, had even purchased overalls at Murphy’s Five and Ten for the scheduled day in farmer Emmett Hutchinson’s cotton patch.

  Would Miss Dimple follow suit? Charlie Carr smiled at the image. Most definitely not, she told herself. Besides, she was pretty sure overalls didn’t come in purple. As far as Charlie knew, Miss Dimple Kilpatrick had arrived in this world some sixty years before fully dressed in a long-sleeved purple print dress with a plain gold bar pin at her throat and a lace-trimmed hankie peeking from a pocket of the bodice. Her graying hair, gathered neatly in a bun in the back, was held in place by tortoise-shell combs. Heavens, no! Miss Dimple would never be caught dead in a pair of overalls!

  * * *

  Miss Dimple Kilpatrick stood in front of the mirror in her small bedroom in Phoebe Chadwick’s rooming house and adjusted the straps on the faded blue overalls once worn by her younger brother Henry. The straw hat, however, was new, recently purchased at Clyde Jefferies Feed and Seed, and at the risk of being immodest, she thought it rather becoming.

  The thought of picking cotton again didn’t distress her. She and Henry had done their share of that as children on their father’s farm, and she wasn’t afraid of hard work. She was afraid, however, of her irresponsible first-grade charges running off on their own and perhaps even getting into deep water in the creek that ran through the property. That was why she had invited several mothers to go along and help keep an eye on the group.

  The sun lay gently across the grass and small clouds drifted in a blue-washed sky as they boarded one of the borrowed buses that would take them to the farm. Dimple Kilpatrick inhaled the fresh, clean air and looked forward to the autumn days to come. She was fond of September, of course, because it brought a whole new bouquet of uncharted minds and fresh faces to her beloved classroom on the first floor of the old brick building with its dear, familiar bell. October, however, swept away the heat of summer with crisp, clear nights and patchwork days. It would be soon be time, she decided, to have her young charges begin memorizing “October’s Bright Blue Weather,” a favorite poem of hers by Helen Hunt Jackson.

  Buddy Oglesby, who had been commandeered, probably by his aunt Emmaline, to drive the bus, led the children in that silly new song, “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” that had become so popular that year, and of course the children found it hilarious and shouted it over and over during the six-mile ride to the Hutchinsons’ farm. Miss Dimple was glad when they arrived.

  Long tables, made by laying planks over sawhorses, waited in the shade of large oaks that border
ed the fields, and Emmett Hutchinson’s wife, Lucy, had made sure there was plenty of lemonade and cold well water for the thirsty workers. Watermelon was keeping cold in the spring for the children to enjoy that afternoon, she told them.

  A small area of the cotton field had been marked off for the first- and second-grade children, and Miss Dimple shouldered a burlap bag and ventured forth to oversee her energetic six-year-olds, who spread out into the rows, each equipped with a small bag of their own making.

  “Just lift the fluffy cotton out of its cup,” she told one overly enthusiastic picker who was snatching entire bolls and cramming them into his bag. Her father, she remembered, had referred to that as “lazy man’s picking.”

  “This way,” she continued, demonstrating to her class, “somebody won’t have to come behind you and separate the bolls before the cotton goes to the gin.”

  Distributing the children among four rows, she suggested a game to determine which row could be picked cleanest in the fastest time. The winners, she promised, would not only get to choose for an entire week the story that she read to them after their noon break but also to have an extra ten minutes to draw, paste, and color during what Miss Dimple referred to as creative time.

  In spite of this, scarcely fifteen minutes elapsed before two of her charges had to go to the bathroom, three were “just dying of thirst,” and a fourth cried from a scratch on her arm. While some of the mothers took care of those needs (the “bathroom” being a secluded spot screened from view by a tangle of honeysuckle and spindly pines), Dimple Kilpatrick blotted her moist brow with her ever-present handkerchief and concentrated on her own row, her fingers automatically snatching the cotton clean from its brittle brown husk and crossing over to shove it into the sack. Pull … cross … shove … pull … cross … shove … The motion seemed natural as the old rhythm came back to her and brought a satisfaction she had almost forgotten.