Runny03 - Loose Lips (25 page)

“We could go to Cadwalder’s for lunch.”

“Gives me gas pains.”

“Okay, then. I’ll take you home.” He moved slowly, because even with chains he didn’t trust the traction. “Mother, Julia wants a child.”

“I’ve heard that before.”

“She’s worried about her age. She’s worried if we wait she’ll be too old to have a baby.”

“Your wife is a child herself. She couldn’t possibly discipline a child.”

“She was pretty good with Buster when he was a pup.”

“Oh, Chester”—her voice rose in mock amusement—“babies and dogs are not at all the same. Your Julia Ellen is not fit to be a mother. You, on the other hand, would make a wonderful father.”

Nothing like getting kissed and socked at the same time. Chester replied evenly, “Children change people. I think Julia would be responsible.”

“Tainted blood. Listen to me. What have I been telling you?”

“What about Hansford’s side?” He tacked to the wind.

“Nothing good can ever come of Hansford or his blood.” She snapped her mouth shut like a turtle.

Chester realized that members of a generation knew one another in ways the younger generation couldn’t fathom until they, too, were older. He’d never thought to ask his mother or his father about Hansford because no one had even known Hansford was alive. Once he showed up, the questions slowly bubbled in Chester and other people, too.

“Mother, what do you think happened to him all those years he was away?”

She stared out the window. “He got what he deserved, that’s what happened to him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Maybe you knew him better than I thought.” Chester gave her a rare dig.

“What’s that supposed to mean? I did not teach my sons to be rude.”

“I’m not being rude,” he calmly said. “Just curious.”

“Curiosity killed the cat.” She paused. “Is yours still attending services at Christ Lutheran?”

“No. She prays at home now.”

Mother Smith turned her head to stare at her son. He had such a good sense of humor, and since she had none there were times when he was a mystery to her, not that she’d admit it. Part of her armor was in announcing to her sons and husband, as well as anyone else unfortunate enough to get caught in her crossfire, that she knew her sons inside and out.

They reached the house. The blue spruce out front, covered in snow, could have graced a postcard.

He walked her up to the front door. “Mother, if Julia and I can’t have children—”

“Don’t say that. It’s her, not you.”

“It doesn’t matter. It takes two to tango.”

“I do wish you wouldn’t use slang in front of me.”

“If it turns out”—he patiently stuck to his subject—“that we can’t have children, we’re thinking of adopting. Would you accept an adopted child as your grandchild?”

“Never.”

D
o you think Louise will ever remove her Civil Air Patrol white helmet? Perhaps it’s grafted to her head.” Celeste inhaled a Montecristo No. 3 cigar, a habit she hid from everyone but Cora and Ramelle.

Cora laughed and continued scrubbing the intricate pattern of Celeste’s silverware with a toothbrush dipped in tarnish remover. “The good thing about the war is it gives my girl something to think about besides Mary.”

“I don’t suppose she has much choice but to ease up on her—” Celeste took a drag, then added, “I take that back. She could raise recriminations to new heights.”

“She doesn’t shut up, if that’s what you mean.”

“In a sense.” Celeste picked up a heavy fork and rubbed it with a green cloth.

“That’s my job.”

“Idle hands do the Devil’s work.” Celeste smiled and picked up another fork. “How’s Hansford today?”

“He’s down with O.B. at the stable. He says they’re going to refurbish the tack room, except that word ‘refurbish’ worries me.”

“Me, too. I think it means dollars.”

“No.” Cora shook her head. “He’d hike on up here to tell you if’n money was needed.”

“Do you like having him home again?”

Cora shrugged. “There’s things about him I remember as the same, but other ways he’s some old man I don’t much know.”

“I don’t suppose anyone is so strange to us as ourselves when we were young. He must remind you of yourself when you were young.”

“I don’t know as I considered that.”

“Haven’t you ever thought about who you were when you were young?”

“No.”

“Cora”—Celeste exhaled a perfect blue ring of smoke, which lazed upward—“you amaze me.”

“Why think about myself—then or now? I am what I am.”

“You don’t think time changes people?”

“Yes—what good does it do to worry it?”

“I’m not worrying—just turning it over in my mind the way we used to turn over arrowheads when we’d find them as children. Every little chip was a source of fascination and delight.”

“My mind doesn’t work that way.” Cora smiled, hands on hips. “Sometimes my mind doesn’t work at all. Like I say, sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits.”

“And sometimes I think too much.” Celeste whistled a snatch of a tune, then asked, “Well—are you thinking about anything?”

“Mary. The war. Seems like our country gets into these messes every twenty years or so. We raise up a new generation of men and they get killed off.”

“Yes, I think about that, too.”

Cora dipped the silverware in a bowl of warm water after scrubbing it. “Juts worries me.”

“Julia?” Celeste’s voice rose in surprise.

“She finally got Chessy to see Doc Horning. She’s been there twice in the last few years. She’s hunky-dory. What if Chester’s not right?”

“Ah—that does present a problem.”

“Juts is determined to have a baby.”

“Perhaps she could accomplish this without the assistance of her husband.” Celeste smiled wryly.

“That would be a fine kettle of fish, wouldn’t it?”

“There’s more than one way to skin a cat, to use the old phrase.”

Cora shook her head. “I don’t think my girl would do that. Every year this wanting a baby notion gets stronger.”

“I love Juts, but she is spectacularly unsuited for motherhood, that altar upon which the ego is daily sacrificed.”

“You lost me with the altar but I’d say she has a lot to learn.”

Celeste laughed. “Juts is the quintessential little sister: rebellious, self-centered, and somewhat adorable.”

Cora smiled. “Those two girls like to drive me to drink when they were little. I thought, ‘Oh, they’ll grow up one day and all this tussling and hustling will stop. They’ll be best friends.’” She lifted up a dripping spoon. “They’re still tussling and hustling.”

“It is
amazing
, isn’t it? Out of each other’s sight they behave as relatively normal people. Put them together and they’re six and ten all over again. That episode last year in Cadwalder’s was the limit.”

“Over Juts not being a mother. See, that’s what worries me.”

“I thought it was over Julia reminding Louise she was forty.” She tapped her finger next to her nose for a second. “Oh, Lord, her forty-first is around the corner, isn’t it?
And
she’ll be a grandmother soon. And Juts will be—”

“Thirty-seven on March 6. If only Louise’s birthday was in front of Juts’s, she could lie better.” Cora shook her head ruefully.

“You know what will happen, Cora? Someday Mary will be forty and Maizie will be thirty-nine and Louise will tell everyone she’s forty-five.”

This set them off into peals of laughter, these old friends who had lost count of the years between them. Although born on
opposite sides of the tracks, they’d known each other all their lives. In time, the material differences eroded in significance. Only character remained.

“What do you think about adopting a baby?” Cora asked.

“Me?” Celeste was startled.

“Julia.”

“So—this is serious.”

“Appears so.”

“I hope the baby has a sense of humor—it’s going to need it.”

“I’ll be there to help.”

“Julia wants to be the center of attention. For all of Louise’s religious mania, which recurs like malaria, she is the more responsible of the two. Juts isn’t happy if she hasn’t upset the applecart, but usually it winds up being her own applecart.”

“I know.” Cora smiled, thinking of her younger daughter. “She was a kicker even when I carried her.”

“What about Chester?”

“Any man that can put up with Josephine for a mother has hidden strengths. He’ll be a good father.”

“You know, Cora, I never thought of that. He probably is stronger than we give him credit for. He’s usually so quiet.”

“Well, how can he get a word in edgewise? But he’ll come around, just wait and see.”

“Then he’ll have two children—Julia and the baby.”

“She’ll muster up.”

“Juts—no, she won’t.” Celeste shook her head.

“Wanna bet?”

Celeste’s eyes brightened, her shoulders straightened; nothing like a wager to get her blood up. “You want to bet me that Julia Ellen Hunsenmeir will mature enough to make a good mother? How many years do I have for this bet?”

“One. One from the time the baby arrives.”

Celeste slyly smiled. “What are we betting?”

“Your John Deere tractor, the old one. Attachments, too.”

“Cora!” Celeste laughed. “You’ve been thinking about this for a long time.” Cora nodded yes and Celeste tacked on, “Of course, this may come to naught. There may not be any baby.”

“She’ll get a baby even if she has to steal one. Just you wait.”

“Well, how much time, really, are we discussing here?”

“You think Louise hit the hernia note when she hit forty? Wait for Julia Ellen. Oh, Lordy.” Cora pointed her finger, something she rarely did. “She’ll have that baby before she’s forty, and I mean it—if she can’t have one or adopt one, she’ll lift one.”

Celeste crossed her arms over her chest, bit her lip, and thought. “The John Deere. Well, what do I get if I win?”

“Two months—my work—free.”

Celeste reached across the nook table to shake hands. “Deal!” She couldn’t wait to write Ramelle about this!

P
earlie filled in for Lillian Yost, who had picked up a bad chest cold. He crouched next to the small kerosene heater while Chester scanned the deep skies with his binoculars. A laminated chart of enemy aircraft as seen from the ground rested against one wall of the tower.

Huge, inky cumulus clouds were rolling in from the west.

“Another one coming.” Pearlie lit a cigarette and offered Chessy one.

“Ever try anything other than Luckies?” Chessy asked. He was a Pall Mall man, himself.

“If I did, I wouldn’t tell you.” He tapped the pack so an extra cigarette slid farther out than the first.

Chester hunkered down next to Pearlie to light his cigarette off of Pearlie’s. He dragged deep. “Funny how you get used to a brand. Julia and her Chesterfields … She started smoking them when she was twelve. You can’t get her to try anything else and if I forget to bring home a pack after work, I’m in trouble. She’s started playing poker with Fannie Jump Creighton for cigarettes. Says she’ll win lots and save money.”

“Won’t be long before Fannie’s got her playing for dimes and then dollars.”

“She says it makes the time pass.”

“Makes the money pass, too,” Pearlie snorted.

“I wasn’t taking bets on that shop. I figured you and I would be working for the Rifes sooner or later.”

“Me, too.” Pearlie stared up at the winter sky, half of it clear, with stars like big chunks of ice, and the other half looking like a black cauldron. “Imagine flying into something like that.”

“I’d like to give it a shot,” Chessy said.

“I saw one war. I don’t need to see another.”

Pearlie had lied about his age, enlisting in the Army at fifteen, shipped to France within weeks. His memories of the country were of mud, shelled towns, and bloated corpses. “I learned to love American cigarettes. Those French things are like sucking on corn silk, and if you really want to puke, try the Turkish weeds.”

“Too young for the first and too old for this one—hell.” Chessy spit out a fleck of tobacco. “I don’t think I’m too damned old. I’m stronger than I was when I was twenty.”