After the War, page 66
“Why don’t you say T don’t know’?” Jim Ed said. “Sound like real folks.”
I laughed. “It does not seem natural,” I said. “My English teacher told me not to use contractions.”
“Hell,” Jim Ed said.
“It is hard to break old habits,” I said.
“Hell,” he said, grinning again. “I got to teach you real English. We’ll play up a storm for them. You and me, nobody can beat us. We ought to go on the road.”
“On the road?” I said.
“Playing music around the country. On Saturday nights we could play in courthouses all over the place. Take up a collection afterwards. Maybe play for some dances.”
“It sounds like a hard life,” I said.
“Harder than running a foundry, I reckon,” Jim Ed said with a laugh. “But you don’t get much applause when you run a foundry, do you?”
Eugenia lived with her mother, her sister Bess, and her two brothers in a little house on Hill Street near a cliff that dropped down into the muddy river on the eastern side of the town. We pulled up in front of the house and sat there like bashful children. Eugenia came out with a smile. She was wearing a light cotton dress.
“Take off your coats and relax,” she said. I did not feel relaxed with my coat off, but we removed them and carried them over our arms. Jim Ed was wearing broad suspenders, colored red, and his trousers were a couple of inches too short.
Eugenia led us inside and introduced us to her brothers, Alfred and Charles. They were sitting in the parlor reading newspapers, and they made a show of continuing to read, ignoring us, until we were standing there awkwardly.
Alfred was taller than Charles. Both of them were slender and handsome in a rawboned American way. They were civil without being friendly. They looked very much alike. Charles wore rimless glasses, the kind that break if you give them a tap on a table. He had pale blue eyes. Alfred did not wear glasses and had a direct way of looking at people. Both of them had high foreheads and cleft chins, some hereditary legacy. Alfred resembled Eugenia more.
“I suppose we should thank you for saving Eugenia’s life,” Charles said. He spoke in a mannered way. “She has told us all about it.”
“I am not sure I saved her life,” I said.
“It’s what she said,” Charles said. “Of course if she had been doing something more ladylike, her life would not have been in danger.”
“Charles and Alfred do not approve of my job,” Eugenia said with an indulgent laugh. “Don’t pay any attention to them.”
Eugenia’s mother, Mrs. Pendleton, came in from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her white apron—thin, wrinkled, and dour, dressed in black as Greek women dress when they mourn for the dead. She did not offer her hand, but Jim Ed reached out to it anyway and shook it heartily. She seemed startled and displeased. Eugenia must have got her good looks from her dead father.
Eugenia’s sister Bess came out, radiant with pleasure. She shook hands vigorously. “There’re two of you,” she said. “Eugenia has such luck! I wish I had two young gentlemen coming to call on me.” She laughed. Bess was round and short and wore her black hair in an unattractive braid around her head. She had nice skin, but she was not pretty. She looked like an earlier, happier version of her mother.
“Oh, Bess!” Eugenia said, embarrassed.
“I’m making a lemon meringue pie,” Bess said. “I’m a better cook than Eugenia is.”
“Bess, that will do!” Mrs. Pendleton said.
“All right. I’ll go back to the kitchen,” Bess said in a pout. “That’s all I do around here. You wait and see how good my lemon meringue pie is!” She disappeared into the kitchen and reappeared almost instantly with a large glass pitcher of iced tea.
“I think it’s so exciting that you’re a foreigner,” Bess said to me. “Do you eat bugs?”
“Bess!” Eugenia looked mortified.
“Well, I’ve heard foreigners eat all sorts of things. Maybe if you fried bugs in a nice sauce, they’d taste good.” Jim Ed laughed out loud, saw no one else was laughing, and stifled his laughter. Now and then he chuckled apparently at nothing, and Charles and Alfred looked at him sharply.
We talked about how pretty the spring was. We talked about Bert, the youngest sister, who was coming to lunch from Maryville, where she lived with her husband, Lionel. We heard a lot about Bert and Lionel. When Bert won a tennis championship in Knoxville, her picture was in the newspapers. Eugenia had pasted the clippings in a scrapbook. We looked at the photographs while we drank iced tea and spoke of how good it was. The photographs showed Bert in black skirts and stockings with a tennis racket, smiling. Jim Ed studied the photographs with the care of a man studying a seed catalogue. “This is very interesting,” he said.
Alfred and Charles talked about business. They told us about their plans. They wore nice suits. They removed their coats only after, we had seen them in their splendor.
“What do you do, Mr. Curry?” Jim Ed asked Alfred politely.
“Automobiles,” Alfred said. “The automobile is the greatest invention of the modern age. Everybody’s going to be buying cars. I don’t see how you can go wrong in the automobile business.”
“Do you make cars or what?” Jim Ed said.
Alfred and Charles both laughed scornfully. “No one makes cars in Tennessee,” Alfred said. “I’m the service manager for Maxwell here in town.”
“Our friend Dr. Youngblood has a new Maxwell,” I said.
“Smart man. Smart man,” Alfred said, for the first time looking at us with a degree of approval. “Eugenia drives a Maxwell. I’ll say that for her.”
“If I hadn’t bought a Maxwell, Alfred would have disowned me,” she said.
Charles wore a mustache clipped very thin in the sexless American way. He talked volubly. As Jim Ed had reported, he had vast experience in every endeavor. Alfred asked what I thought of the Bolsheviks and their apparent victory in Russia. Before I could answer, Charles launched into a long explanation of why the Bolsheviks could not possibly prevail. The Russian people were religious, he said. The Bolsheviks were atheists; ergo, that was that.
“I see you wear a mustache,” Charles said to me. “You don’t see many of them now. I started wearing mine in the army.”
“I don’t like mustaches,” Mrs. Pendleton said. “I tell Charles it makes him look foreign.”
“No, mine is an American mustache. Mr. Alexander’s mustache is foreign. See how bushy it is.”
“Charles,” Eugenia said.
Bess came back into the room, bringing more iced tea. She filled our glasses. “I think it’s a very handsome mustache,” she said, smiling at me.
“Lots of men in the northeast and in California wear mustaches,” Charles said.
“Charles, you haven’t been in California,” Bess said, as if Charles had made an inadvertent mistake that she must correct. She seemed astonished that he would have forgotten that he had not been in California. Everything was dramatic to Bess. She adored her brothers, but she was also literal-minded and demanded explanations whenever any statement seemed to deviate from what she knew was fact.
“I was in the army with men from California and all over the place,” Charles said. “Many of them wore mustaches. I don’t see why we should make an issue of it. European men wear mustaches.” He fought to keep his voice level, but he was furious with Bess. She did not notice.
“I was so afraid the army would corrupt Charles,” Mary Pendleton said. “So many soldiers learn to drink. And they use bad language, too.”
“The American Army is different from other armies,” Charles said.
“Is that right, Mr. Ledbetter?” Mary Pendleton said.
“The army I was in was just like church,” Jim Ed said.
Charles laughed, and I smiled.
“Where were you in the line?” Jim Ed said. “I don’t think you said when you were down at the house.”
“I was in the army aero service,” Charles said uncomfortably. “I was a pilot.”
“What about that!” Jim Ed said.
“Charles got to France too late for the war,” Bess said brightly.
“Eugenia said you were in France, too, Mr. Ledbetter,” Bess said. “What did you do?”
“I was in the infantry,” Jim Ed said. “I carried a Springfield rifle.”
“I wanted to fly,” Charles said. “I love to fly. Nothing on earth like it! Don’t you agree?”
“Oh yes,” I said.
“Eugenia said you were wounded,” Alfred said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Shell fire?”
“Yes, shell fire.”
“Deuced bad, shell fire,” Charles said. He sounded as if he had studied the line or heard it in an English pub. “At least you were in on it.”
“For a few weeks,” I said.
He looked at me speculatively. “I wanted to be in on it,” he said. “But I arrived in France a week before the Armistice. I did some routine patrols. I flew over the trenches. Terrible things, the trenches. I wonder if they’ll ever repair the country. It was a stupid war, you know. You fellows should never have started it.”
“I believe the Germans started it,” I said.
“Well, you know what I mean. You Europeans. You didn’t think twice about what you were getting into. Stupid war. Still, I wish I’d got into more of it.”
Our talk was interrupted by Bert’s arrival. She parked at the curb and strode in, wearing one of those bullet-shaped hats women wore then, and she looked stylish and vigorous. Eugenia greeted her with enthusiastic affection. We stood up for introductions. Bert shook hands with Jim Ed and me—a firm, strong handshake, and over it she looked at us carefully. She was pretty, blond like Eugenia, her hair a shade lighter. “I’ve heard so much about you both,” Bert said to us. “Especially you, Mr. Alexander. What a terrible business the strike must have been!”
“It was not pleasant,” I said.
As soon as Bert arrived, we sat down in the tiny dining room to eat. Bess served us. We were cramped around the table. The room smelled of varnish.
Bess said, “We were talking about Mr. Alexander’s war service, Bert. Charles was telling us about it.”
“I wasn’t talking about his war service,” Charles said, frowning. “I was talking about my service.”
“Eugenia says you were in the Belgian army,” Bert said. “That must have been interesting.”
“It was dangerous, too,” Bess said.
“I was not in for very long,” I said.
“Long enough to be wounded,” Eugenia said.
“That did not take long,” I said.
Jim Ed laughed. Alfred and Charles turned to look at him as if they could not understand why.
“How did it happen?” Bess said. “It sounds just thrilling.”
“I scarcely remember,” I said. “A shell burst.”
“Folks that were wounded don’t like to talk about it,” Jim Ed said quietly.
“I take it you were not wounded, Mr. Ledbetter?” Bert said.
“No, ma’am, I wasn’t.”
“Oh, don’t call me ‘ma’am,’ ” Bert said. “You’re not my gardener.” She laughed in a slightly unfriendly way. Bert had decided against Jim Ed. I did not want her to decide for him, but I resented what I thought were her reasons for deciding against him.
“I’m sorry,” Jim Ed said.
“Oh, don’t be sorry,” Eugenia said, trying to patch things over. “There’s nothing to be sorry about.”
Charles turned to me. “What are you investing your money in?” he said.
“Investing?” I said.
“Yes, you must be investing with a good job like yours. I can help you make a lot of money if you’re willing to take a risk or two.”
“I have no money to spare,” I said.
“No money? Why don’t you have money?” Charles looked incredulous. He held his fork just over his plate and looked hard at me. “Do you gamble?”
“Gambling is a sin,” Mrs. Pendleton said. Her first name was Mary. “Next to being a drunkard or an adulterer, gambling is the worst sin I know.”
“I never gamble,” I said.
“You should take some risks,” Charles said. “Business risks. The kind that pay off.”
“A friend of mine says that,” I said, thinking of Dale Farmer.
“You probably have money stuck away in a mattress somewhere,” Charles said. “It is the Hebrew mentality.”
“Charles!” Eugenia said. “Don’t pay any attention to him,” she said to me. “Charles speaks before he thinks.”
“I am not Jewish,” I said.
“I am not saying you’re a Hebrew,” Charles said with a show of forced patience. “I’m saying that the Hebrew mentality is to put money in a lot of safe little businesses—jewelry stores, pawnshops, that sort of thing. Hide it in the mattress. Bury it. In Europe the Hebrews do banking on a big scale. They’ve taken over everything there. But here the Hebrew mentality is to play it safe. I say if you play it safe, you never will amount to anything.”
“There’s nothing wrong with a man saving his money,” Jim Ed said.
“You can save money, or you can make money,” Charles said. “If you put your money in the bank, you let the bank make money. You can take that same money and make more for yourself.”
“The Jews are cursed by God. That is why they are like they are now,” Eugenia’s mother said. “They are still the chosen people, and when they go back to Jerusalem, the Lord is coming again, and we’ll have the millennium.”
Eugenia looked at me across the table and rolled her eyes.
“Is that so?” Jim Ed said politely.
“Yes, young man, that is so. The Bible teaches us that the Jews will go back to Jerusalem and that there they will be converted and Christ will come again. Haven’t you heard of the Balfour Declaration?”
“Is that in the Bible?” Jim Ed said.
Bess laughed. Charles laughed, too, throwing his head back in a jerk.
Mary Pendleton looked at Jim Ed with the resigned expression of a devout woman among heathen. “The Balfour Declaration is not in the Bible. It’s been in the newspapers.”
“Well, there’s lots of Bible that’s been in the newspapers,” Jim Ed said. I could not tell if he was making fun of Mary Pendleton. Neither could she.
“It’s Britain’s promise to give the Jews a home in Palestine. When they do that, Jesus will come again, and we should be ready.” Mary Pendleton looked at him earnestly. “Have you been saved, young man?”
“Oh, sure,” Jim Ed said. Mary Pendleton looked sternly at him.
“I’m not asking if you have religion,” she said. “Lots of people have religion, but they don’t have salvation.”
“That’s what my mamma says,” Jim Ed said politely.
Mary Pendleton stared at Jim Ed. He seemed cheerfully indifferent. “We should be ready to meet God,” she said. “Are you sure you are washed in the blood of the Lamb?”
“Oh yes, ma’am,” Jim Ed said. “Head to toe.”
“That is not the way we usually talk about it,” she said.
“Different folks talks about it in different ways,” Jim Ed said. He went on eating, concentrating on his plate. I almost laughed.
“I don’t believe this generation will see death before the Lord comes back in all his glory,” Mary Pendleton said.
“That’s great,” Jim Ed said.
“It won’t be great for everybody,” she said.
“That’s what Mamma says,” Jim Ed said. “It’s going to be pretty hot for some folks. Like the foundry—isn’t that right, Paul?”
“I suppose so,” I said, trying to make myself sound serious.
“It’s all in the signs,” Mary Pendleton said, frowning. “We don’t know the exact moment the Lord is coming back, but we know he’s coming just after the Jews go back to Jerusalem. When you see these things begin to come to pass, you know the moment is nigh.”
“I think it would be nice if Jesus could come during the Christmas pageant at church,” Bess said. “It would be so fitting.” She was a saleslady at a department store called Burns’s in Knoxville, and she had taken two hours off for lunch to help cook the meal and to meet us. Saturday was her busy day. She ate hastily, saying several times that she had to go back in a hurry because the store could not do without her on Saturday afternoon.
“Well, we shouldn’t lecture these men on the Bible,” Bert said gaily.
The meal dragged on.
“Tell us about the Catholics, Mr. Alexander,” Bess said.
“Please,” Eugenia said. “Let’s not talk about religion. Religion is very personal.”
“God tells us to talk about religion,” Mary Pendleton said. “Unless Catholics repent of their sins just like everyone else, they are going to hell.”
“We should talk about flying,” Charles said.
Mary Pendleton said, “Won’t you have some more chicken?”
“Oh no, ma’am,” Jim Ed said. “I’m full up to here. You’re a wonderful cook, Mrs. Pendleton. Just wonderful.”
“Eugenia helped me,” Mary Pendleton said. “Eugenia can cook when she wants to.”
“I helped you more than Eugenia did, Mamma,” Bess said.
“Cooking is boring,” Eugenia said.
“She’s got too big for the kitchen now that she’s in the newspapers so much,” Charles said.
“I don’t like to cook,” Eugenia said. “Writing is more fun.”
“I still hope you’ll give up the newspaper and go as a missionary,” Mary Pendleton said. “I know that a newspaper office is not a place for a young woman. You can say all you want to about it, but it’s not a place for a lady.”
“I fully agree with Mamma in that department,” Charles said. “When are you going to quit that job and settle down, Eugenia?”
“Eugenia promised God she would go as a missionary, and she hasn’t done it. I tell her God will punish her, but she won’t believe me. You can’t break your promises to God. Look at Saul’s disobedience. Look at what happened to him.”
“Mamma, I was thirteen years old.”
“A promise is a promise,” Mary Pendleton said. “Especially when it’s made to God.” I felt a chill, and I saw Bernal standing behind Mary Pendleton, his arms folded, looking gravely down at the table. I looked away.
