Bodark Creek - 10. Chapter 10

When the war came, the first person to enlist was Walter. But he didn’t do it because he hated the Germans. In fact, that was the most confusing thing about the war. Growing up, almost everyone I knew was German. It was good to be German, and some of the people in our church had even been born in that country. But now they were fighting relatives who they were still writing letters to, and no one could explain to me why. “It’s something we have to do,” Mama said.

Walter enlisted because Daddy had been at least a little right about Stefanie. She was nice, and everyone liked her, but she couldn’t take care of Walter the way Mama took care of all of us.

“I hate to keep groaning about it,” I heard Walter tell Daddy. “But it’s not any better now than it was two years ago.”

“She’s not the worst cook...” Daddy said, which I thought was nice.

“Well, that’s not everything...”

But then they noticed I was there and stopped talking.

When Walter went into the Navy, Stefanie went back to live with her family. She didn’t work for the mill, and Walter had to quit to enlist, so she couldn’t stay in their little house.

“Couldn’t she get a job at the mill?” I asked Daddy.

He laughed but wouldn’t explain why.

“Daddy’s a little jealous,” Mama told us later. “Neither Walter’s mama or I was ever as pretty as Stefanie.”

“You’re pretty, Mama,” Charley said, and Mama thanked him. But we all knew Mama wasn’t as pretty as Stefanie.

Still, when Stefanie came to the house one night, crying, Daddy wasn’t mean. “He’s missing,” she told us. “No one knows where his ship is.”

“When?” Daddy asked.

Stefanie showed us the telegram. It didn’t say very much. Daddy looked at it, quietly, then went out.

The rest of us waited, first in the kitchen, then in the front room. Mama was holding Stefanie. After a long time, when Daddy didn’t come back, Rosalind asked, “Should we go look for him?”

Mama said, “No. I don’t think he wants to be found.”

Daddy must have come home very late, because it was after Mama made us go to bed. Before that, Rosalind and I walked Stefanie home. But neither of us knew what to say after that, so it was easier going to sleep. In the morning, Daddy had gone to the mill before any of us saw him.

“He’s never lost a grown son,” Mama told us. “It’s very hard.”

“Walter isn’t dead,” Charley said. “Is Walter dead?”

“We don’t know, Charley,” Mama told him. But Charley started to cry.

I didn’t believe Walter was dead. The telegram only said he was missing, so that’s what I believed. But other people thought different.

“I’m really sorry to hear about your brother,” Sally Hollenbeck told me, when she saw me in town. “I really miss him.”

“He’s not dead!” I wanted to say, the same way seven-year-old Charley had. Instead, I said, “I miss him, too.”

Frances and Sonny and Dougie were all still living in Hattiesburg, so Mama wrote them. Sonny and Dougie had little children by then, and Frances’s son was only eleven, so none of them had to think about the Army. Even Walter might not have been drafted, since he was married.

After a terrible month, we all got letters from Walter. Everyone was excited, because that meant he was alive, until Daddy realized the letters had been written before the telegram was sent. Then we were miserable again.

“Can’t anyone tell us?” Rosalind asked Daddy. “Isn’t there anyone you can write, who knows where Walter is?”

Daddy shook his head. “The Navy is busy enough. We weren’t ready to get into this war, and they’re doing everything they can. They don’t have time to worry about us.”

So we had to wait, and pray, and follow the news as best we could. But we didn’t even know the name of Walter’s ship, or where it had been going. So we really didn’t know where to look.

It wasn’t a long war, at least not for the United States, and it wasn’t even long from the time Stefanie got the telegram till the end of the fighting. It took less than a year. But it was a horrible year. Daddy was sure Walter was dead and didn’t want to talk about it. And he wouldn’t let us talk about Walter, either. His birthday was the worst day. There was nothing we could do, and no way we could celebrate. I talked with Mama, and Rosalind, and even Charley. But no one could talk to Daddy.

Daddy also didn’t like us seeing Stefanie. He said it reminded him. Walter probably would have joined the Navy anyhow, once the war began. But Daddy blamed it all on her.

“If they only hadn’t rushed,” he said. “If she’d just been older...”

Then Stefanie came running to the mill one afternoon, and when Daddy read the new telegram, Mama said he started to cry. Then he stopped himself. “We don’t know if this is true,” he told them. “We won’t know anything till we see him again.”

When Walter got home, he was thin and sick. He didn’t only go into the Navy, he went down in submarines. When anyone says that, it sounds exciting, but Walter said it wasn’t. “We couldn’t breath, or sleep, or eat. And we were hot and filthy all the time.”

And that was before his submarine was hit. He wouldn’t talk about what happened after that.

He didn’t move back with Stefanie, either, though she was at our house all the time. Mama and Rosalind cooked for him, and Walter gained weight and started to look much better. But every night, he’d walk Stefanie back to her house, then come home and sleep on the daybed. After a month or two, he went back to his old job at the mill, and that seemed to make him happy. But he never really smiled the way he used to.

“Aren’t you going back to your house?” I asked. “I’m sure the mill would give it to you again.”

“I don’t need a house right now,” Walter said. “Stefanie and I aren’t going to be living together.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Some things just don’t work out, Addy. At least not the way they’re supposed to.”

So Walter stayed on the daybed, and we saw Stefanie in church and in town, and then Walter told me they had gotten “divorced.” “That means we’re not married anymore.”

“I didn’t know you could do that,” I said.

“People can do anything they want to these days.”

I thought about that but wasn’t really sure what it meant. Later, Mama said it was a lot harder than Walter made it sound. But the judge and the other people in the courthouse were all people from town who knew Stefanie and Walter and our families, and they felt sorry for a man who just came back from the war.

And then Walter surprised everyone and got married again. This time to a quiet woman he’d met at church.