“Help him what?” I said. “He ain’t never caught up nohow. He can’t get no further behind. He can sholy take care of this little shirttail of a farm while me and you are whupping them Japanese. I got to go too. If you got to go, then so have I.”
“No,” Pete said. “Hush now. Hush.” And he meant it, and I knowed he did. Only I made sho from his own mouth. I quit.
“So I just can’t go then,” I said.
“No,” Pete said. “You just can’t go. You’re too little, in the first place, and in the second place—”
“All right,” I said. “Then shut up and leave me go to sleep.”
So he hushed then and laid back. And I laid there like I was already asleep, and pretty soon he was asleep and I knowed it was the wanting to go to the war that had worried him and kept him awake, and now that he had decided to go, he wasn’t worried any more.
The next morning he told maw and pap. Maw was all right. She cried.
“No,” she said, crying, “I don’t want him to go. I would rather go myself in his place, if I could. I don’t want to save the country. Them Japanese could take it and keep it, so long as they left me and my family and my children alone.
But I remember my brother Marsh in that other war. He had to go to that one when he wasn’t but nineteen, and our mother couldn’t understand it then any more than I can now. But she told Marsh if he had to go, he had to go. And so, if Pete’s got to go to this one, he’s got to go to it. Jest don’t ask me to understand why.”
But pap was the one. He was the feller. “To the war?” he said. “Why, I just don’t see a bit of use in that. You ain’t old enough for the draft, and the country ain’t being invaded. Our President in Washington, D. C., is watching the conditions and he will notify us.
Besides, in that other war your ma just mentioned, I was drafted and sent clean to Texas and was held there nigh eight months until they finally quit fighting. It seems to me that that, along with your Uncle Marsh who received a actual wound on the battlefields of France, is enough for me and mine to have to do to protect the country, at least in my lifetime. Besides, what’ll I do for help on the farm with you gone? It seems to me I’ll get mighty far behind.”
“You been behind as long as I can remember,” Pete said. “Anyway, I’m going. I got to.”
“Of course he’s got to go,” I said. “Them Japanese—”
“You hush your mouth!” maw said, crying. “Nobody’s talking to you! Go and get me a armful of wood! That’s what you can do!”
So I got the wood. And all the next day, while me and Pete and pap was getting in as much wood as we could in that time because Pete said how pap’s idea of plenty of wood was one more stick laying against the wall that maw ain’t put on the fire yet, Maw was getting Pete ready to go.
She washed and mended his clothes and cooked him a shoe box of vittles. And that night me and Pete laid in the bed and listened to her packing his grip and crying, until after a while Pete got up in his nightshirt and went back there, and I could hear them talking, until at last maw said, “You got to go, and so I want you to go. But I don’t understand it, and I won’t never, and so don’t expect me to.”
And Pete come back and got into the bed again and laid again still and hard as iron on his back, and then he said, and he wasn’t talking to me, he wasn’t talking to nobody: “I got to go. I just got to.”
“Sho you got to,” I said. “Them Japanese—” He turned over hard, he kind of surged over onto his side, looking at me in the dark.
“Anyway, you’re all right,” he said. “I expected to have more trouble with you than with all the rest of them put together.”
“I reckon I can’t help it neither,” I said. “But maybe it will run a few years longer and I can get there. Maybe someday I will jest walk in on you.”
“I hope not,” Pete said. “Folks don’t go to wars for fun. A man don’t leave his maw crying just for fun.”
“Then why are you going?” I said.
“I got to,” he said. “I just got to. Now you go on to sleep. I got to ketch that early bus in the morning.”
“All right,” I said. “I hear tell Memphis is a big place. How will you find where the Army’s at?”
“I’ll ask somebody where to go to join it,” Pete said. “Go on to sleep now.”
“Is that what you’ll ask for? Where to join the Army?” I said.
“Yes,” Pete said. He turned onto his back again. “Shut up and go to sleep.”
We went to sleep. The next morning we et breakfast by lamplight because the bus would pass at six o’clock. Maw wasn’t crying now. She jest looked grim and busy, putting breakfast on the table while we et it. Then she finished packing Pete’s grip, except he never wanted to take no grip to the war, but maw said decent folks never went nowhere, not even to a war, without a change of clothes and something to tote them in.
She put in the shoe box of fried chicken and biscuits and she put the Bible in, too, and then it was time to go. We didn’t know until then that maw wasn’t going to the bus. She jest brought Pete’s cap and overcoat, and still she didn’t cry no more, she jest stood with her hands on Pete’s shoulders and she didn’t move, but somehow, and just holding Pete’s shoulders, she looked as hard and fierce as when Pete had turned toward me in the bed last night and tole me that anyway I was all right.
“They could take the country and keep the country, so long as they never bothered me and mine,” she said. Then she said, “Don’t never forget who you are. You ain’t rich and the rest of the world outside of Frenchman’s Bend never heard of you. But your blood is good as any blood anywhere, and don’t you never forget it.”
Then she kissed him, and then we was out of the house, with pap toting Pete’s grip whether Pete wanted him to or not. There wasn’t no dawn even yet, not even after we had stood on the highway by the mailbox, a while. Then we seen the lights of the bus coming and I was watching the bus until it come up and Pete flagged it, and then, sho enough, there was daylight — it had started while I wasn’t watching.
And now me and Pete expected pap to say something else foolish, like he done before, about how Uncle Marsh getting wounded in France and that trip to Texas pap taken in 1918 ought to be enough to save the Unity States in 1942, but he never. He done all right too. He jest said, “Good-by, son.
Always remember what your ma told you and write her whenever you find the time.” Then he shaken Pete’s hand, and Pete looked at me a minute and put his hand on my head and rubbed my head durn nigh hard enough to wring my neck off and jumped into the bus, and the feller wound the door shut and the bus begun to hum; then it was moving, humming and grinding and whining louder and louder; it was going fast, with two little red lights behind it that never seemed to get no littler, but jest seemed to be running together until pretty soon they would touch and jest be one light. But they never did, and then the bus was gone, and even like it was, I could have pretty nigh busted out crying, nigh to nine years old and all.
Me and pap went back to the house. All that day we worked at the wood tree, and so I never had no good chance until about middle of the afternoon. Then I taken my slingshot and I would have liked to took all my bird eggs, too, because Pete had give me his collection and he holp me with mine, and he would like to git the box out and look at them as good as I would, even if he was nigh twenty years old.
But the box was too big to tote a long ways and have to worry with, so I just taken the shikepoke egg, because it was the best un, and wropped it up good into a matchbox and hid it and the slingshot under the corner of the barn. Then we et supper and went to bed, and I thought then how if I would ‘a’ had to stayed in that room and that bed like that even for one more night, I jest couldn’t ‘a’ stood it.
Then I could hear pap snoring, but I never heard no sound from maw, whether she was asleep or not, and I don’t reckon she was. So I taken my shoes and drapped them out the window, and then I clumb out like I used to watch Pete do when he
