War Stories

1984

"He was the cream of the crop, Row," Lewis says, walking up beside me, his eyes red from tears and insomnia. His army regalia adorns his tall, lean body.

I face Bud's corpse again. Had he been at one time? The cream of the crop, I mean. The years erase so much.

"He still looks good in uniform," I say, touching the fabric. "But he'd hate all this."

Lewis offers a crooked grin. “He won't ever know, will he?"

I lean against his casket, thinking it's the things you don't know that hurt the most. And what you do when someone dies is remember.

1940

Summer was the hottest. I waved Mama's cardboard church fan to cool my face and underarms. Every window open, not one breeze entered. I leaned into the mirror to pencil in recently tweezed brows, humming to Fools Rush In.

Downstairs, Mama's angry words cut through the heat. Again. Ever since she caught Daddy and Widow Wilkins in the back of Wilkins' Drugstore, humping on the desk where she calculated our monthly bill, Mama relived it every day. Everyone in Blanton knew, and Widow Wilkins was quite proud that she could make my daddy go astray and become a repenting elder at First Baptist Church. But Mama never forgave him. And on Sundays, she played the church organ with new fury.

One last glance at my black slacks and freshly starched blouse tucked neatly into the waistline, I bounded down the stairs, tying my silk scarf around my head, shouting. "See y'all later."

On the stoop, I slipped on my rhinestone shades, trying to ignore Mrs. Ragsdale's disapproving glare. She was such a busybody. The only person she ever liked was Jesus. Not because he died for her. But because his friends left him in his time of need. If Jesus Christ couldn't trust anybody, why should she?

Mr. Simpson was pruning his roses, and I smiled. "Those red roses look divine."

"Why, thank you, Rowena."

I heard the bus before I saw it and hurried to the stop. I had told Mary Lynn that if Bud didn't ask me out today, I was done. Patsy Olson had a ring on her finger, and last Monday, Maggie ran away to Chicago with Gregory Weeks. I wasn’t about to be left in Blanton, Mississippi, with Mama and Daddy clawing at each other.

The bus door swished open, and I stepped out in my sunglasses like a movie star just arriving in a rinky-dink town. I saw Bud sweeping the scarred wooden steps of Lauren's Hardware, where he worked part-time. His arm muscles flexed with each movement, and he whistled a tune I didn't know. He looked younger than his seventeen years.

"Hi, Bud." I strolled up, shoulders back, stride slow and precise, planning each step.

"Hey."

The heat was fierce, and I was starting to "perspire," because, as Mama said, "ladies should never sweat." I imagined ugly yellow stains on my new blouse. If Bud was going to ask me out, he'd best get on with it. He dragged his scuffed shoes across the sidewalk but didn't say a word.

I turned to leave when I heard him say, "You …you …want to go to a movie?"

I grinned and started jumping in an old chalked hopscotch square. "When?"

"Friday? At The Crown."

"What's playing?"

"Road to Sing Sing …something like that."

"Road to Singapore," I said, giggling.

His face turned as red as Mr. Simpson's roses. "We can grab something to eat after—if you want."

Down the street, Mary Lynn's daddy was dropping her off at Woolworths. I waved.

"Six o'clock sharp," I said, poking Bud's chest. "Don't be late."

He wasn't.

Every day after work, Bud drove to my house, his flatbed truck sputtering, smelling up the air, giving the town of Blanton something else to gossip about. I met him on the front steps and kissed him hard on the lips. Knowing Mrs. Ragsdale was watching us, I made him gun the engine before we squealed off.

"Why you wanna make that old lady simmer like that?" he asked.

"Without us Fairchilds, she wouldn't have any fun."

We hightailed it to Barren's Creek, where there were enough dirt roads for everybody. There, I pulled out Bud's shyness.

"Row, come on now," he said, pulling my hands away from his belt. "What if someone walks up?"

"What if they do?" I laughed, fussing with his belt until it was out of the buckle.

"I'm gonna whip you good if you don't stop."

"Promise?" I asked.

Finally, he grabbed both of my hands and flipped us over. He held my arms behind my head.

"I need to teach you how to behave," he said, grabbing both wrists with one hand and tickling me with the other, until I promised to be a good girl.

"But not too good," he said, kissing my nose.

Lewis Moulds was the only person who pulled Bud’s attention away from me. Best friends since either could walk, Lewis was the best man at our wedding, as was Bud at his. They even joined the army together.

I was finally getting out of Blanton.

Bud and I rented a small efficiency at Fort Benning, Georgia, where Bud trained. I filled our first home with used furniture: an old iron bed I painted white, an oak dresser with a few cigarette burns on top, and an orange couch too short for Bud to lie on. When the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, America went to war. Eight months later, Bud shipped out to Guadalcanal, leaving me alone except for the baby growing in my belly. We were barely 19.

Our eight-pound, ten-ounce baby girl was born on Labor Day, 1942. I named her Amelia after Amelia Earhart.

"It's a good, strong name," Bud wrote back, having admired the female pilot who flew across the ocean only to disappear. We wanted to believe she was alive, living on some deserted island. I came to realize that dead things cannot be resurrected.

I mailed Bud a picture of Amelia, writing, She has your eyes and coos like you when I hold her. He sent a picture of himself, Lewis and Milton in front of coconut trees. Their tattoos peeked out from under their sleeves. They looked like boys with mischief on their minds.

I waited weeks for Bud’s next letter. When it finally came, I tore it open.

They blew Milton to smithereens.

That's all it said.

1984

"The rest of the guys are here, Row," Lewis says. His wiry hair is white now. Across the parlor, they stand, what’s left of the 29th Infantry, as gray and aged as Lewis and Bud. Mack from Brunswick, Tennessee; Andy from Brookport, Kentucky; Scott from Villa Rica, Georgia; and, of course, Lewis from here in Blanton, Mississippi. They are still Bud's battle buddies, owning his memories from places where coffee was battery acid, jail was a crowbar hotel, and the crumb hunt was a kitchen inspection.

Lewis says, "How about a cup of coffee?"

"Coffee sounds good," I say. I consider cracking a bad joke about battery acid, but I never belonged in that world.

In the lounge, the guys grabbed a seat at the table and started reminiscing.

"Remember Hurtgen?" Mack says.

"Rained and sleeted non-stop," Lewis says. "We went without sleep for –"

"Four, five days," Andy says. "Boy, did Bud have the shits. We all did."

"Watch your mouth," Lewis says. "There's a lady present."

"Sorry, Rowena."

That’s how little they know me. I’ve never been a damn lady.

1942

Defeats at the Bataan Peninsula in the Philippines in April and at Corregidor in Manila Bay in May, victories at the Coral Sea and Midway, everyone's emotions swung up and down like yo-yos. We donated our nylons for parachutes, towropes, and powder bags. In assembly lines, we packed gum, Lucky Strikes, oranges, and apples into GI baskets.

I traded in our '38 Chevy coupe for a bicycle. Gas, shoes, canned goods, cheese, meat, and fat were rationed. Metal was more precious than diamonds because one shovelhead made four grenades. Victory gardens popped up on every street corner, and family time, minus the daddy, and sometimes even the mama, was spent hoeing and picking peas, carrots, melons, anything that would grow. I quit smoking and cultivated a taste for unsweetened tea because sugar was also rationed.

After I put Amelia down for the night, Bridgett, my next-door neighbor, and I canned vegetables while listening to Burns and Allen.

"She gives women a bad name," I said to Bridgett.

"It's just comedy, Rowena," Bridgett said. "To lighten things up a bit."

What would I have done without Bridgett? She smiled when I cried, spoke in my silence. Bridgett was single because most eligible men thought her too tall and skinny. But Vince Whitaker thought she was terrific—at least that's what he said in his letters to her. I told her he was right.

Bridgett and I decorated our Christmas trees, bought a few presents for Amelia, ate Christmas dinner together, and sang White Christmas through sour notes and tears. Amelia clung to Bridgett's cheery attitude and bawled whenever she left to go home. Everything revolved around the war: songs, signs, movies, radio shows, everything. I tried being like Bridgett, lighthearted yet hardworking and patriotic, but some of my parts seemed to be missing, like those soldiers coming home missing a leg or an arm.

Bridgett married Vince when he returned home early with a lifelong limp from the Kamikaze attack at Leyte Gulf. They moved to Seattle, and, through no fault of Bridgett's, I never saw nor spoke to her again.

When the war ended in 1945, celebrations eclipsed the streets. Amelia squealed with delight even though she didn’t know what was happening.

"Daddy’s coming home.” I whirled her round and round, dancing and singing, “Kiss me once, then kiss me twice, then kiss me once again. It's been a long, long time. I haven't felt like this, my dear, since I can't remember when. It's been a long, long time.”

1984

"Anyone for a refill?"

"I’ll get it," I say, needing to remove myself from those recollections.

"Aw, Row, you don't need to wait on us." Andy isn't as tall as he used to be, and his belly protrudes over his belt. Brown spots speckle his hands.

"Please," I say. "I want to."

“Hell, I ain’t gonna argue,” he says, handing me his cup.

The guys babble on, and I envision Bud among them, throwing in bits and pieces of the stories. But, thinking back, Bud had always been the listener.

"Amelia flying in tomorrow?" Lewis asks.

"In the morning. Eight o'clock flight."

Amelia and Bud's relationship had been so much closer than hers and mine. I tried to be happy about that.

But I was the only stranger at my husband's funeral.

1946

Bud returned a stranger, his hair graying along the sides. Muscles made him look strong, but his face told another story. He climbed into himself.

Our four-year-old looked up at her daddy, holding out her arms, but Bud always found other tasks needing attention: a broken fan belt, a hot radiator, an empty gas can. If he wasn’t working on his car with Lewis, Bud was at Lewis’s working on his. At night, when Amelia crawled onto his lap, he stiffened like he was afraid to get too close.

I started smoking again …gradually, bumming cigarettes from Bud, graduating to secretly purchased packs of Viceroy.

Lewis and Vera dropped by often. Vera and I cooked and drank. Lewis and Bud talked about the war, Lewis teasing Bud about being the "cutest little bubble dancer you ever did see," slurring from too much Jim Beam and not enough water. They spent every word on the war.

"We were like rats trying to find our way through those hedgerows," Lewis said—again.

They relived stories of the Cotentin Peninsula, soldiers rooting through leafy tunnels, hedgerow after hedgerow. Lewis explained that the hedges dated back to ancient Rome, when they were used as boundary markers and livestock pens.

"They'd wait until we crossed the hedge and then open fire," said Lewis, holding his arms like a gun. "Bam, bam, bam."

Bud often shrank from the conversations. Amelia's legs curled tighter around my hips as I returned to the kitchen to pretend to tidy up. I sat Amelia at the kitchen table in front of her Pets & Play coloring book. I lit another Viceroy. Fall was transforming the world into red, orange, and yellow colors while brittle brown leaves slapped against the windowpane.

"What's wrong, Mommy?"

I forced the same smile because it worked then. "Nothing, baby girl." I swooped her up into my arms, and we danced cheek to cheek.

After tucking Amelia in bed, I returned to the smoke-filled den. The war was over, but mine and Bud's had just begun.

1984

"What will I do without him?" Lewis asks.

I fill the coffee reservoir and slip the pot onto the burner.

"I don't know." I feel resentment creep back up, but Bud's time with Lewis isn't Lewis's fault.

"You've put up with me a long time," Lewis says, kissing my cheek, having no idea his lips were the first to touch me in a long time. "Bud saved my life, you know."

"And you saved his."

Lewis was talking about during the war. I was talking about after it.

1964

In the 60s, the two-fingered Victory salute Winston Churchill made famous in Bud's war became his call for peace in Vietnam. He got caught up in the Vietnam protests, and Amelia got into free love. I searched for myself in the Feminine Mystique and got a secretarial job at Smith and Breckenridge Attorneys at Law. In time, I'd build enough courage and save enough money to leave Bud.

Amelia dropped out of her Master's program in business and went to work at Psycho Boutique, going braless and rarely changing her embroidered bellbottoms that scraped the floor. Her waist-length hair, wrapped in one long braid, hung down her back like a second spine. Reeking of pot, her eyes drowned behind a persistent glaze, but it was the heavy stuff: dolls, LSD, that kept me pacing.

"Do something!" I pleaded with Bud.

"It's this war—"

"No! You're not pulling us into another fucking war. Do you hear me, Bud Cochran? You risked your life saving your buddies. By God, you're going to do that for your daughter. Get out, and don't come back until you do."

1984

"He couldn't let go, Row …of the war, I mean," Lewis says.

I don’t know how to react, what to say. I shake my head, "Don’t—”

“Please. Let me finish.”

I watch the dripping coffee, not wanting to return to the battlefield like they had time and time again.

“We were exhausted when we made camp in an abandoned village in the Ardennes Forest outside of Brussels. It was freezing, snow on the ground. Through this mist, we saw a boy, nine, ten, maybe, soot and blood all over him, head to toe. He shook so fiercely I thought he’d surely drop what he was carrying—”

“Lewis—”

“It was a baby, Row. We thought it was dead until it started crying. Bud told us not to rush the boy, that we might scare him.” Lewis pulls out a handkerchief and wipes his face. “Then we heard the whistle. Bud headed for the boy, but he ran away with the baby. A shell exploded, then another. Bud ran into the smoke and fire. Next thing we see is Bud walking back, holding the baby.” Lewis bows his head. “We buried what was left of the boy.”

“And the baby?”

“Bud tried to keep it alive. It was so damn cold. We didn’t have any food. We buried it two days later. It was a girl."

“My God.”

“Every time Bud looked at Amelia—he saw …that baby.”

Lewis takes my hand, but I pull away.

“I needed to know, Lewis—to understand.”

“Bud didn’t want you to, didn’t want you to know death like he had.”

“He didn’t trust me.”

“You got that wrong, Row. Bud Cochran loved you the first time he saw you in the halls of Blanton High. I ragged him hard about it, but he didn’t give a damn. Never saw anyone so happy and nervous on your wedding day. Hell, I thought I'd have to stand in for him.”

I’m crying now. I let Lewis take both my hands.

“You remember when you threatened Bud when all that was happening with Amelia?” I nod. “You woke him up. Made him see life was bigger than that goddamn war. And he did save her.”

I hug Lewis hard and tight. “Yes, he did.”

“Damn, now you’re making me cry.”

People crowd together at the parlor register. Flowers line the back wall. I stand at Bud’s casket, realizing what they say about the dead is true—they are peaceful.

After the visitation, Lewis, Mack, Andy, and Scott are back in the lounge drinking coffee. I grab a fresh cup.

“Hey,” Mack says to the guys. “Remember skirt patrol in Paris?”

“That was a hell of a mission,” Scott says. “Life and death.”

I laugh and pull out a chair. “I know what skirt patrol is, you guys.” Scott eyes me, looking like a young soldier again. “I was listening more than you thought.”

“I’ll never forget what Bud did that Christmas Eve in Marcouray?”

“Come on, guys,” Lewis says. “Rowena doesn’t want to hear another war story.”

I look at these old soldiers, wishing I had listened more—and seen beyond the stories to see …them.

“No, Lewis, I want to hear,” I said. "Really."