Bodark Creek - 26. Chapter 26

When Pearl Harbor was attacked, we didn’t know where Charley was. He’d been in and out of Honolulu for two-or-three years, but none of us knew exactly when because it hadn’t been important. At least, we knew the name of his ship, unlike the one Walter had been on in the first war, and we didn’t hear it named in any reports. But news was so hard to get in those first days, and then it got harder when everything was restricted. We’d hear things on the radio and see them written up in the papers. And any time any one of us heard something new, we’d call everyone else. But there was so much we didn’t know, and the biggest thing was about Charley.

“We need to write his wife,” Rosalind said. “If anything happens, the Navy will tell her first.”

“They’ll tell us, too,” I insisted. I was sure.

“Maybe not.”

So I wrote Marion. I’d never really written her before, other than a card at Christmas and one on her birthday. I didn’t keep up with my nieces’ birthdays, either, because our family was so large. But Marion wrote back immediately, thanking me for my letter and saying that she was “just worried sick about Charley.” Still, she didn’t know any more than we did. She gave us the name of his ship name again and told us where to write, but I’d been doing that all along. “Please call us,” I wrote her, “the minute you hear anything. I know it’s expensive, but just reverse the charges.”

“You’re not really gonna send that?” Martin asked, even before I sealed the letter.

“Why not?”

“She won’t be thinking about us if anything happens to Charley.”

“You’re right,” I quickly admitted, and I tore up the letter. “If anything bad happens, she won’t be in any kind of shape.”

“Then what should we do?” Rosalind asked, when I told everyone on Sunday.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Walter said, “you don’t want to be bothering the Navy right now. They’ve got enough to do.”

I had to laugh, because it was almost the same thing Daddy said when Walter was missing. Though of course, Charley wasn’t missing. His ship wasn’t even missing. It just hadn’t been mentioned in the papers.

“How many ships do we have?” I asked Martin. “And how many were there before Pearl Harbor?”

He didn’t know. Even with Charley in the Navy, no one in our family had thought to count.

“We’ll just have to see,” Martin said.

“We can’t just wait.”

“What else is there to do?” he asked. Unfortunately, he was right.

Marion wrote us before we heard from Charley. “I got a letter this morning,” she said, “so I’m sure you’ll be getting one soon. He said he’d try and write you, too.”

“Where is he?” we all wanted to know, though Charley wouldn’t have been able to tell us that. And even if we knew, it wouldn’t guarantee that he was safe.

“No one’s safe in the Pacific anymore,” Sonny said. “It’s a huge ocean, and there’s only a certain number of ships. But no one’s safe.”

We didn’t have a globe, and we couldn’t even buy a good map because suddenly everyone wanted one. But the newspapers printed small maps, and we all stared at those blurry lines, trying to figure out where Charley could be.

“Marion said his ship had been out of Pearl Harbor,” Dougie reminded us. “But it could’ve been out just a few days, and he could’ve gotten lucky.”

“Charley’s always been lucky,” Dock said. “We’ll have to depend on that.”

“Or he could be on the other side of the world,” Dougie went on. “Out by Australia, completely safe.”

“Even if he was,” Walter said, “he won’t be for very long. The Navy’s gonna need every ship it has, and Charley’s a radio operator. You know he’ll be in the middle of this.”

Charley was soon in the middle, though we didn’t know that till later. As Walter said, “Everyone in the Pacific got involved.”

We finally did get a postcard from Charley, and then a letter. He said that he was fine, at least as of that writing. He also said that some of his friends hadn’t been as fortunate. Some of their ships had been in Pearl Harbor while Charley’s was out of port. The letter couldn’t tell us more than we already knew, but Charley did mention, “You don’t want to hear the rest of it, anyhow.”

“It must have been awful,” Rosalind said.

“You just can’t imagine,” Walter agreed.

And before we even heard from Charley, he wasn’t the only one we had to worry about. Almost as soon as he could, Sonny’s son Lyle enlisted, along with Dougie’s two adopted sons, Gordon and Dennis. Sonny and Dougie’s daughters’ husbands also went, and when he was old enough, Walter’s son. Nine men in all, including Charley. No one waited to be called. They all signed the papers, and we said goodbye.

This war was so much worse for us than the first one. For one thing, I was only ten the first time, and I thought I understood. But I didn’t really. I knew Walter could die, and I thought I knew about people dying because it was something that happened all the time. But I was wrong. This time, I could count how many men were gone every day. I’d go into town, and it was mostly women and older men and children. On Sundays, half the church was empty, and at Sunday dinners, there were extra chairs from Jack and Earl, and Henry and Brodie, and Lyle and Gordon and Dennis. Dock and Martin were still there. And my brothers and the boys. But there were so many women. My brothers’ wives. And Rosalind and me. And the daughters and daughters-in-law, Gayle, Madeline, Doris, Janice, Cecile, and Jessica. Plus, the younger girls.

This time the whole world was at war. The last time had just been Europe. We’d followed the war in Germany even before we got involved, because, again, people in church still had relatives there.

“Why don’t they leave?” we’d ask. “Can’t they get into this country if they have family here?”

“They don’t want to leave. It’s their home,” we were told. “Would you want to leave here?”

“But things are worse in Germany. Even worse than the worst times here.”

And a few new families were moving to town. “I think I hear more German in the feed store than I have since I was a little boy,” Martin told us.

“It’s a good thing we have jobs for everyone,” Sonny added. “Though we wouldn’t if we weren’t fighting.”

The mill had moved to a second full-time shift, and before the war was over, it was working around the clock. Everyone needed the material we made, and it seemed we couldn’t ship in cotton fast enough.

“Our machines are falling apart,” Dougie said. “They break down every day, and we’re just patching them together.”

“We’re getting new ones,” Dock assured him. “I heard that at lunch yesterday.”

But first the government had to spare a factory to make our looms. Then they had to be more important than making other equipment. Still, we got new machines, and we all went to work if we could. I was working harder on the farm than I had for a long time, because there were so few men around. But I still found time to work my shift.

Letters came in from overseas, and we read them all together, and then they got passed around. Sometimes we read the letters in church, so people who hadn’t heard from their sons or husbands would feel included. And there were deaths, and funerals, sometimes for boys who weren’t even there.

“War is just awful,” Walter finally told us. “Being in a submarine was bad enough. It didn’t work. And they didn’t know how to fix it. And the only reason we had ‘em was the Germans had ten times as many and were tearing up our ships. When they finally let ours sink, I thought we’d gone to heaven. Then I ended up worse.”

“Were you a prisoner?” Del asked. He must have been ten at the time, and I didn’t have a chance to shush him.

“No, but I got so sick I nearly died,” Walter said. “And then the Navy forgot where they’d put me.” And that was all he’d say.

“That’s more than I’ve ever heard him talk about the war,” Sonny told us afterward. “I wasn’t living here when he got back, so we never talked about it then. But whenever the war comes up, around other men, he gets really silent.”

“It’s got to be hard,” Dougie said. “I’m glad I never went.”

He suddenly looked embarrassed, knowing all that meant. But no one said anything.