Bodark Creek - 28. Chapter 28

Walter’s son’s death was just horrible. Frank had purposely joined the Navy, partly due to Pearl Harbor, but more because of Charley. “He can’t think it’s just about women,” Walter told us. “‘Cause I always let him hear what happened to me in the last war.”

“Frank knows what he’s doing,” we all said. But there was something about Charley, in his white uniform, with his beautiful wife, that made Frank blindly want to be a sailor.

He was all right for a while, serving on a cruiser in the Pacific. “That’s better than being on an aircraft carrier,” Walter claimed. “They’re always the targets.”

But in the Philippines, a carrier was hit, and Frank’s ship went to help fight the fire. Then the carrier exploded, and part of the cruiser did, too. Unfortunately, the part Frank was on.

“No one really knows where he was,” Dougie said. Walter wouldn’t talk about it. “Frank might’ve been killed right out and never knew what happened.”

“We could hope for that,” Sonny said.

“Though it might’ve been worse,” Dougie admitted.

“What’s worse than dying?” my son Del asked. He was twelve then and had been carefully following the war. No one wanted to tell him there were easy deaths and harder ones – or wanted to find out that he already knew. But Martin and I talked about Frank’s death between ourselves.

“If he simply died in the explosion,” Martin said, “he might not have known. But if he lasted till the fire, well, he could’ve been burned alive.”

“I don’t want to think about that.”

“Or he could’ve been knocked in the water. That happens all the time, and people are sometimes rescued. Though from what I’ve heard, in most battles the water’s so covered with oil, it’s practically burning itself. So falling in that’s just like being boiled.”

“How can people do these things?” I asked. But Martin’s answers weren’t any better than my own. And we both knew the war had to be fought.

“Let’s just hope he died without knowing it,’ Martin went on, though that was a terrible thing to pray for.

And Frank was Walter’s only son. And for a long time after he died, Walter wasn’t the same.

“He stays at work for as long as he can,” his wife Myra told us. “And he volunteers for extra, so he doesn’t have to come home. And when he finally does, he just goes and works on the farm.”

“When does he sleep?” I asked.

“He won’t. He doesn’t want to dream.”

“And he won’t talk,” Dougie put in. “He’s never been what anyone could call a great talker. But now he hardly says a word.”

“And if you can’t tease one out of him,” Myra said, “no one can.”

On Sundays, Walter would come to church, but he wouldn’t stay very long. And he’d come to family dinners, then take his plate of food out onto Sonny’s back porch and eat alone.

“And there’s no point in going after him,” his oldest daughter Ceil said. “Or eating with him. He’ll just pretend you aren’t there.”

“Or move away,” her sister Jessie said.

“He’s not angry,” Myra finished. “At least, he doesn’t get angry. He’d just doesn’t want to be around anyone.”

We had a memorial service for Frank at church. And we put a marker for him in the cemetery, near Mama and Daddy. Gordy was buried there, too, besides Virginia. Brodie went back to his family.

“You’re a still a young woman,” Brodie’s mama and daddy gently told his wife Grace. “You’ll want to get married again and have another family. We’d like to take care of our son.”

Grace didn’t argue, but she always said she intended to be buried next to Brodie.

Charley was on a number of ships during the war, and we didn’t always know which one. We just kept writing to his Navy address, hoping the mail would get through. His letters to us came pretty steadily, and if we went without hearing from him for any time, I’d write his wife. Marion was always good about staying in touch.

I foolishly liked to think that Charley was safer because he’d been in the Navy for so many years. I figured he was more experienced than the boys coming in. But that doesn’t really matter when a bomb’s falling from a plane or a torpedo’s coming under the water. It could still kill you, and everything Charley knew wouldn’t stop him from getting hurt.

As it happened, he wasn’t killed. He just got caught at the edge of an explosion.

“It was only a fragment,” he wrote. “Probably a piece of steel no bigger than my little finger. But it tore up my mouth.”

“What happened?” Rosalind asked.

“It doesn’t say. You’ve read the letter.”

“But is he okay?”

We all read the letter. And no one could figure it out.

“What’s he’s not telling us?” Rosalind asked.

I wrote to Charley, and I called Marion because I figured this was an emergency. But she didn’t know any more than we did. Charley soon wrote back, “There’s nothing I’m not telling you. Nothing I’m not saying. Really. Just take care of yourselves. Worry about yourselves. And don’t go worrying about me.”

“There’s no chance that’s gonna happen,” Martin decided. “No matter what he tells us.” At that point, Charley was in a hospital in Honolulu. But he didn’t stay there for long. He went right back to fighting.

“My teeth were pretty yellow, anyhow,” he joked in the same letter. “All those cigarettes, and coffee. And they were never very even. Now I can get straight, white, shiny ones any time I ask.”

“Are you really all right?” I wrote, still unsure he’d tell us.

“I’m fine,” he insisted. “Just fine.”

Charley made it through the war. Frank was the last one we lost. And when the treaties finally came, first with Germany, then with Japan, we were all grateful. But like Daddy had once said, no one was really comfortable till everyone got home.

Martin never had to worry about the draft. He was as old as Walter, forty-six at Pearl Harbor, and the cut-off age was forty-five. The Army was pretty picky about who it took, too, and the Navy and Marines were even worse.

“I could always have talked my way into the Army,” Martin told me. “I know a couple of men who did.” He told me that far more than once, and I think he always felt guilty for not going.

Del and Neal didn’t care, and I sure didn’t. None of us wanted to see Martin die, no matter how bravely. All through the war, Del seemed to know more about the fighting than any of the rest of us. He’d listen to the radio, and read all the newspapers, and see every movie downtown that we’d let him, just to watch the newsreels. And he had us buy him two huge wall maps which he tacked up in his bedroom.

One map was for the war with Germany and the other for the war with Japan. Del would move pins around with little flags. He’d made the flags himself out of colored paper. And he’d lecture us on what was happening till his voice cracked.

“I want this war to be over,” he’d always end. “You have to know that. But I’d still give anything to fight in it.”

“I’d give anything to keep him out of it,” I told Martin, who didn’t disagree.

“This family’s already lost too many boys,” he said.

Dock never thought of enlisting. He was forty-two when the war started, so he could have signed up. He was healthy enough. Instead, he sweated out the years, pretending they didn’t matter. He was working full-time at the mill, more than full-time, so you had to give him that. And the mill was busier than ever. They doubled the number of workers, to almost four hundred, though most of them were untrained women like me. Dock couldn’t have helped not having a job, and no one denied that he worked very hard. But the minute the war was over, he collected his last paycheck.

“Time to be with my family again,” he told us. “Time to watch out for Albie.”

“You don’t hear Rosalind saying that,” Sonny complained. “And Albie’s been fine on his own – playing with all the other kids.”

“You don’t see Dock telling Rosalind to quit now, either,” Dougie added.

“How could he?” Sonny replied. “Then what would they live on?”

“Maybe they’ve saved all the money in the world,” Dougie joked. “Or maybe he has.”

That made everyone laugh, but it didn’t make Dock take another steady job. And Rosalind never said a thing about it.