Reluctant Warriors (20 page)

He walked a few feet toward the stairs and turned. “I thank you so much, missus;
I owe you very much.”

He bowed, holding his cap in his hands, and mounted the steps.

Thus began Mr. Riser's time with us. It stretched on for fourteen years, until he
died quite suddenly in the late winter of 1958.

The next day, after asking Mama's permission, he began to take over the chores. In
the spring he planted for us and then farmed for the first time since Grandfather
was alive. He proved to be a good stockman, good with crops, and a capable mender
of fences and machinery. He went about his work in a positive way with a smile on
his face. I must say he taught me everything I was ever to learn of farming. When
my father returned from the war, he found a fully working farm in the same condition
he had left it in 1937, nine years before.

My father came to call him “Captain.” Over the years we came to think that perhaps
he was a veteran of the First World War who had fallen on hard times. But I never
managed to find out. The two men became very close. I
know Mr. Riser helped my father
a great deal in his readjustment to farm life and in putting the war behind him.
Many nights the two men sat on the porch well past the time the rest of us retired
for the evening.

I am also indebted to him for my nickname, “Billy.” Thank goodness no one has called
me Wilhelmina since 1945!

One evening on the porch he said to us, to me:

“My dear, your name is too long for you. You are a straight up sort of person like
your mama. Your name should be Billy. Wilhelmina is named after the old Kaiser of
Germany, Wilhelm I or II, which, luckily they don't have anymore. You don't want
to be named after some king that a lot of us fought against, do you?”

“No, I guess not.” It wasn't hard to say that, because I never liked the name in
the first place.

He gave all of us nicknames! I never recall him calling any of us by our Christian
names. He called Mama “Missus,” always. He called Papa “Colonel,” which was the Army
version of his naval rank. Unaccountably, he called Toby the “Old Timer.” Danny became
“Sonny” or “Sonny Boy.” Rudd he called “Top.” When Karen came, she became the “Little
Princess.”

Mr. Riser entertained us at night too, acting and singing to us, to our great delight.
He had a clear voice, and while he had some difficulty reaching the high notes, he
was fun to listen to. We would be sitting on the porch, as we did every almost evening
when the weather was at all decent, reading and talking, or listening to the radio,
and he might jump up and begin singing. One of his favorites was the old Louie Armstrong
tune from the late 1920s, “When You're Smiling.”

He would sway back and forth in front of us, almost like Al Jolson. We would applaud
boisterously. Then he might sit down, or open right up into another, like the Bing
Crosby song “Let Me Call You Sweetheart,” which he always tailored to me! At first
I was embarrassed, but as time rolled by, I came to love it. Some songs were funny,
like the tunes from
The Wizard of Oz
, which we had seen a year or so before he came
to us. All of us would laugh when he sang them. He was at his best with the Ray Bolger
tune “If I Only Had a Brain.”

He would act out the part of the scarecrow, even falling on the ground. We were just
glued to his rendition.

Before the war ended, he became very partial to the Mills Brothers and two of their
great hits. “Paper Doll” struck us as funny.

Often he did the brothers' “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” Looking back on it,
I wonder if it had a deeper meaning that escaped us.

When Papa returned, he added his voice to the songs. And then Grandmother! No one
in the family had ever heard either sing outside of church. Papa had a deep voice,
almost a bass, and had grown up singing in the choir at Ebenezer Lutheran Church
in town, our church now for almost one hundred years. And my little petite grandmother,
who we had no idea could sing, actually had a lovely voice. Hers was the best voice
of any of us, an operatic soprano voice that reminded us of Jeannette McDonald, the
1930s movie star who starred so often with Nelson Eddy.

Occasionally, Papa would sing solo. His choices were usually love songs that he invariably
sang to Mama. A few stand out even after all these years. He particularly loved the
middle '50s' tune “Let Me Go Lover,” the one sung by Johnny Ray rather than the much
more popular version done by Teresa Brewer with her booming voice. Ray wasn't nearly
as popular, but we loved him because you could just feel, even over the radio, that
he was putting everything he had into his singing. I think he only had one top one
hundred song, “The Little Cloud that Cried,” in the early '50s. Papa had the same
skinny figure as Ray, but did not do the gyrations. He would smile, but mostly just
stand in the yard and sing a few stanzas, which are easy to remember even now.

I remember one other song he loved and sang many times, which was always such a treat.
It was the Dean Martin song of the late '50s, “Return to Me,” which was just perfect
for his voice. Mostly, I recall the two men singing duets, Mr. Riser reaching for
the higher notes and Papa the lower. They were at their very best with the Patti
Page song of the early '50s, “The Tennessee Waltz,” which was just wonderful.

To me, the singing on the porch represented the postwar years as much as anything
else. They were wonderful years for our family, all of us healthy, all
of us together
again with no war to separate us. Papa and Mr. Riser farmed, and these were golden
years for farming on the Great Plains.

In 1952, our family was finally completed with the arrival of my little sister, Karen
Finney. I was sixteen then, a junior in high school. It was fall, after the harvest.
Papa was over on the forty acres Great-Grandfather Fallon had purchased in 1891,
near the crossroads of Iowa state Highway 6 and a county road. This was the same
intersection Papa hiked from when he came home from the service. Papa heard a terrible
crashing sound above the sound of the tractor. He looked and could see that two cars
had collided at the junction. He jumped from the tractor and ran there.

There were the car of State Senator Milton “Ted” Bywinger, a Cadillac, and a late
model Dodge sedan. He could see no movement in either vehicle as he came closer.
Upon getting there, his worst fears were realized.

It was obvious that the senator, driving on the county road, had been going at a
tremendous clip and had not heeded the stop sign at Highway 6. Before anyone else
arrived, Papa examined the Cadillac and found two bloodied and dead people inside:
the politician and his secretary, whose name now escapes me. As he looked into the
broadsided Dodge, he saw a young couple, also dead, bloodied and slumped over. He
almost did not notice the little bundle on the floor of the backseat. But in the
next instant the little girl, no older than three, began crying. He yanked open the
back door and pulled the child out, holding her to his chest.

In a few minutes, Mama arrived in our Chevrolet, her apron still on. She had heard
the crash at the house. She could see that something was wrong with the child. Luckily,
she had called the police, and in only about twenty minutes old Dr. Karnes arrived.
He was concerned enough to ride in the ambulance with the child to the hospital in
Waterloo, where he set her broken left arm.

The young couple's driver's licenses said that they were Tim and Louise Finney of
1218 Roark Street, which turned out to be an apartment in Dubuque. Obviously, they
were traveling west from their home. But where they were going has never been solved.
Nothing more has ever been learned
of them. Neighbors said that they had just moved
to town. Their landlord had recorded no previous address and had taken cash for their
deposit and two rent payments. No employer came forward, despite a massive effort
in Dubuque. In fact, despite a national effort by local and national newspapers,
no relative was ever located. An unfortunate series of events took their lives and
gave no clue as to whom to inform.

Of course, Mama was ready. She insisted that the child be brought to our house. Perhaps
the old doctor cut a corner or two to make it happen. He knew that Mama had taken
in four children, and that one more would be as welcome as the first. She was one
of us from the first moment we saw her. She was as blonde a child as I ever saw,
small-boned, unlike me, and petite in every way.

She was in considerable pain for a few days. But she mended quickly, and in a few
weeks, the splint was gone. We all doted on her. It must have been obvious to her
that she was in a new home. The boys would bring her little presents: a hard candy
that one of them was saving in a secret place, or a little metal car with worn-off
paint. After school, I would come into the bedroom we shared with one of my favorite
books from when I was her age, and she would smile and listen intently. We knew exactly
how to make someone feel safe, and we knew how important it was to do so.

At first, we feared that our new little sister would be taken from us by a relative
who might knock on the door at any moment. But first a week went by, and then months,
and finally years, and no one has knocked on the door yet.

This was an incredible joy for Grandmother. This was the child she had hoped for
all of her life! Finally, a dainty girl to dress up in frilly clothes! (She had long
since given up on me.) The two spent vast amounts of time together. Mimmi made her
dress after dress. Grandmother had always made practical clothing for us. Now, she
delighted in going to town, carefully choosing a pattern, buying the material, and
making something pretty for Karen. She labored with joy as she ironed every ruffle
with care. It's not that she abandoned Rudd; after all, he had his brothers. This
was a special “girl” relationship, and the two of them were very close until Grandmother
died.

From the beginning, Karen was so positive and nice. She had good manners, which we
weren't used to. “Thank you,” she would say, in her squeaky little voice. Soon, there
were lots of “I wove yous,” and later, “I love you. You are my best friend!” which
she managed to say to everyone with equal sincerity. No one ever complained! She
would set the table so that everything was perfect, all the flatware just so, making
sure everyone had a proper napkin.

When she was the one who folded our clothes, we could always tell. She was always
so fastidious, even as a small child. While I was up long before her to help Mama
with breakfast, when I looked in on her, she would be making her bed, the only one
of us to do so. Before she would come down to eat, she would assemble the things
she might wear by placing them perfectly on her bed. I would sometimes watch as she
carefully considered each choice, while the rest of us would just slap on our clothes.
Then she would carefully put away the things away she had rejected, and the ones
that remained on the bed, she would wear.

We had money for things by that time. For the next twenty-five years, almost until
the passing of my folks, small farms like ours just boomed on the Great Plains. It
was a golden age, as wonderful as the Dust Bowl years had been terrible for my grandparents.
About the time Karen came, Papa purchased the first of a seemingly endless line of
brand new Chevrolet cars and trucks from Mr. Kay Jenson's dealership in nearby Waterloo.
I know the same expression passed Papa's lips a thousand times: “If Chevrolet doesn't
make it, I don't want it.”

There was money for clothes too. Mama delighted in buying clothes for us. Of course,
that didn't change us much. We still assembled in order, with me as the leader, and
then Danny, Toby, and Rudd. Off we went, looking for sailing ships, pirates, monsters,
and the like. At the time I had a dog that I just loved, a German shepherd named
Kim. She was a great dog and a pal to all of us. We would be running on one of our
expeditions, and she would have to be in the lead. When we suddenly decided to change
direction and she was last, it wasn't long before she made up the distance and was
first again.

But our daily excursions were never really of much interest to Karen. She was never
too sure, like the rest of us, that dirt was good. When all of us went into the barn
to climb up to the loft and jump down on the hay piled on the floor, Karen would
climb up a few rungs, watch us jump, sharing the fun of the moment, but not jump
herself. I don't think she ever jumped. Mostly, she stayed near the house and helped
Mama. She wore dresses when I was in jeans, and generally shunned everything that
even hinted of being a “tomboy.” Unlike the rest of us, she was a little sweetheart
all of the time. She never threw things, only occasionally pouted (usually for good
reasons), and was just plain nice. We soon learned that to put rocks in her bed or
bugs in her shoes was too low, even for us.

And she did things for us. Coming back from building a fort or at the end of some
other adventure, we might find sandwiches and drinks carefully laid out for us on
the porch in such a way that we knew Karen had been the preparer.

Papa was absolutely wound around her finger. The two played a sweet game that all
of us loved and heard time and time again during her elementary school years. She
would be on his knee reading a book and he would ask her: “Sweetie, was anyone mean
to you today?”

She would nod her head without speaking, that innocent expression on her face. Papa
knew no one had actually been mean to her. It was a time for validation and intimacy.

“Was a boy mean to you?” he would continue.

Again she would nod, perhaps playing with her hair. He would hold her a little tighter
then. “Well, you don't have to worry about that. You are safe from all of the mean
boys here.”