‘See if you can find him. And tell him to wash his face and hands.’
‘Yessum.’ He held the door for them and they passed into the house, leaving the twilight behind them filled with Tobe’s mellowed voice calling across the dusk.
2
But young Robert Saunders could not hear him. He was at that moment climbing a high board fence which severed the dusk above his head. He conquered it at last and sliding downwards his trousers evinced reluctance, then accepting the gambit accompanied him with a ripping sound.
He sprawled in damp grass feeling a thin shallow fire across his young behind, and said Damn, regaining his feet and disjointing his hip trying to see down his back.
Ain’t that hell, he remarked to the twilight. I have rotten luck. It’s all your fault, too, for not telling me, he thought, gaining a vicarious revenge on all sisters. He picked up the object he had dropped in falling and crossed the rectory lawn through dew, towards the house.
There was a light in a heretofore unused upper room and his heart sank. Had he gone to bed this early? Then he saw silhouetted feet on the balustrade of the porch and the red eye of a cigarette. He sighed with relief. That must be him.
He mounted the steps, saying: ‘Hi, Donald.’
‘Hi, Colonel,’ answered the one sitting there. Approaching, he discerned soldier clothes. That’s him. Now I’ll see, he thought exultantly, snapping on a flash light and throwing its beam full on the man’s face. Aw, shucks. He was becoming thoroughly discouraged. Did anyone ever have such luck? There must be a cabal against him.
‘You ain’t got no scar,’ he stated with dejection. ‘You ain’t even Donald, are you?’
‘You guessed it, bub. I ain’t even Donald. But say, how about turning that searchlight some other way?’
He snapped off the light in weary disillusion. He burst out: ‘They won’t tell me nothing. I just want to know what his scar looks like but they won’t tell me nothing about it. Say, has he gone to bed?’
‘Yes, he’s gone to bed. This ain’t a good time to see his scar.’
‘How about tomorrow morning?’ hopefully. ‘Could I see it then?’
‘I dunno. Better wait till then.’
‘Listen,’ he suggested with inspiration, ‘I tell you what: tomorrow about eight when I am going to school you kind of get him to look out of the window and I’ll be passing and I’ll see it. I asked Sis, but she wouldn’t tell me nothing.’
‘Who is Sis, bub?’
‘She’s just my sister. Gosh, she’s mean. If I’d seen his scar I’d a told her now, wouldn’t I?’
‘You bet. What’s your sister’s name?’
‘Name’s Cecily Saunders, like mine only mine’s Robert Saunders. You’ll do that, won’t you?’
‘Oh . . . Cecily. . . . Sure, you leave it to me, Colonel’
He sighed with relief, yet still lingered. ‘Say how many soldiers has he got here?’
‘About one and a half, bub.’
‘One and a half? Are they live ones?’
‘Well practically.’
‘How can you have one and a half soldiers if they are live ones?’
‘Ask the war department. They know how to do it.’
He pondered briefly. ‘Gee, I wish we could get some soldiers at our house. Do you reckon we could?’
‘Why, I expect you could.’
‘Could? How?’ he asked eagerly.
‘Ask your sister. She can tell you.’
‘Aw, she won’t tell me.’
‘Sure she will. You ask her.’
‘Well, I’ll try,’ he agreed without hope, yet still optimistic ‘Well, I guess I better be going. They might be kind of anxious about me,’ he explained, descending the steps. ‘Good-bye, mister,’ he added politely.
‘So long Colonel.’
I’ll see his scar tomorrow, he thought with elation. I wonder if Sis does know how to get us a soldier? She don’t know much but maybe she does know that. But girls don’t never know nothing, so I ain’t going to count on it. Anyway I’ll see his scar tomorrow.
Tobe’s white jacket looming around the corner of the house gleamed dully in the young night and as young Robert mounted the steps towards the yellow rectangle of the front door Tobe’s voice said:
‘Whyn’t you come on to yo’ supper? Yo’ mommer gwine tear yo’ and my hair bofe out if you late like this. She say fer you to clean up befo’ you goes to de dinin-room: I done drawed you some nice water in de baffroom. Run ‘long now. I tell ’em you here.’
He paused only to call through his sister’s door: ‘I’m going to see it tomorrow. Yaaaah!’ Then soaped and hungry he clattered into the dining-room, accomplishing an intricate field manoeuvre lest his damaged rear be exposed. He ignored his mother’s cold stare.
‘Robert Saunders, where have you been?’
‘Mamma, there’s a soldier there says we can get one too.’
‘One what?’ asked his father through his cigar smoke.
‘A soldier.’
‘Soldier?’
‘Yes, sir. That one says so.’
‘That one what?’
‘That soldier where Donald is. He says we can get a soldier, too.’
‘How get one?’
‘He wouldn’t tell me. But he says that Sis knows how to get us one.’
Mr and Mrs Saunders looked at each other above young Robert’s oblivious head as he bent over his plate spooning food into himself.
On board the Frisco Limited,
Missouri, 2 April 1919
Dear Margaret,
I wonder if you miss me like I miss you. Well I never had much fun in St Louis. I was there only a half a day. This is just a short note to remind you of waiting for me. It’s too bad I had to leave you so soon after. I will see my mother and attend to a few business matters and I will come back pretty soon. I will work like hell for you Margaret.
This is just a short note to remind you of waiting for me. This dam train rocks so I cannot write any way. Well, give my reguards to Giligan tell him not to break his arm crooking it until I get back. I will love you all ways.
With love
Julian
‘What is that child’s name, Joe?’
Mrs Powers in one of her straight dark dresses stood on the porch in the sun. The morning breeze was in her hair, beneath her clothing like water, carrying sun with it: pigeons about the church spire leaned upon it like silver and slanting splashes of soft paint. The lawn sloping fenceward was grey with dew, and a Negro informal in undershirt and overalls passed a lawn mower over the grass, leaving behind his machine a darker green stripe like an unrolling carpet. Grass sprang, from the whirling blades and clung wetly to his legs.
‘What child?’ Gilligan, uncomfortable in new hard serge and a linen collar, sat on the balustrade moodily smoking. For reply she handed him the letter and with his cigarette tilted in the corner of his mouth he squinted through the smoke, reading.
‘Oh, the ace. Name’s Lowe.’
‘Of course: Lowe. I tried several times after he left us but I never could recall it.’
Gilligan returned the letter to her. ‘Funny kid, ain’t he? So you scorned my affections and taken his, huh?’
Her windy dress moulded her longly. ‘Let’s go to the garden so I can have a cigarette.’
‘You could have it here. The padre wouldn’t mind, I bet.’
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t. I am considering his parishioners. What would they think to see a dark strange woman smoking a cigarette on the rectory porch at eight o’clock in the morning?’
‘They’ll think you are one of them French what-do-you-call-’ems the Loot brought back with him. Your good name won’t be worth nothing after these folks get through with it.’
‘My good name is your trouble, not mine, Joe.’
‘My trouble? How you mean?’
‘Men are the ones who worry about our good names, because they gave them to us. But we have other things to bother about, ourselves. What you mean by a good name is like a dress that’s too flimsy to wear comfortably. Come on, let’s go to the garden.’
‘You know you don’t mean that,’ Gilligan told her. She smiled faintly, not turning her face to him.
‘Come on,’ she repeated, descending the steps.
They left the delirium of sparrows and the sweet smell of fresh grass behind them and were in a gravelled path between rose bushes. The path ran on beneath two formal arching oaks; lesser roses rambling upon a wall paralleled them, and Gilligan following her long stride trod brittle and careful. Whenever he was among flowers he always felt as if he had entered a room full of women: he was always conscious of his body, of his walk, feeling as though he trod in sand. So he believed that he really did not like flowers.
Mrs Powers paused at intervals, sniffing, tasting dew upon buds and blooms, then the path passed between violet beds to where against a privet hedge there would soon be lilies. Beside a green iron bench beneath a magnolia she paused again, staring up into the tree. A mocking-bird flew out and she said:
‘There’s one, Joe. See?’
‘One what? Bird nest?’
‘No, a bloom. Not quite, but in a week or so. Do you know magnolia blooms?’
‘Sure: not good for anything if you pick ’em. Touch it, and it turns brown on you. Fades.’
‘That’s true of almost everything, isn’t it?’
‘Yeh, but how many folks believe it? Reckon the Loot does?’
‘I don’t know. . . . I wonder if he’ll have a chance to touch that one?’
‘Why should he want to? He’s already got one that’s turning brown on him.’
She looked at him, not comprehending at once. Her black eyes, her red mouth like a pomegranate blossom. She said then: ‘Oh! Magnolia. . . . I’d thought of her as a — something like
