“Yes. With Mother and” — and now I thought she would stop but she didn’t even pause— “Manfred. I remember.”
I wrote Pascagoula a shipyard where they are building ships to carry airplanes guns tanks if California will take you so will they will you go there
“Yes,” she said. She said, “Russia.” She drew a long breath. “But the Security will be there too.”
I wrote yes but that’s close I could come there quick & even if Security I could probably find you something else
“Yes,” she said, breathing quiet and slow at my shoulder. “Close. I could come home on week-ends.”
I wrote you might have to work week-ends they need ships
“Then you can come there. The draft board is closed on week-ends, isn’t it?”
I wrote we will see
“But together sometimes now and then. That’s why I was afraid about California, because it’s so far. But Pascagoula is close. At least occasionally now and then.”
I wrote Of course
“All right,” she said. “Of course I’ll go.”
Which she did, right after New Year’s, 1941 now. I know a lawyer there so she had a small apartment with its own entrance in a private home. And apparently her belief was that, once she was free of Jefferson, at least twelve hours away from interdiction by Snopes or me or either or both, nobody could challenge her intention to buy a small car and run it herself, until I threatened to tell the Pascagoula police myself that she was deaf the first time I heard about it. So she agreed to refrain and my lawyer friend arranged for her in a car pool and presently she was at work as a tool checker, though almost at once she wrote that she had almost got them to agree to let her become a riveter, where the deafness would be an actual advantage.
Anyway, she could wear overalls again, once more minuscule in that masculine or rather sexless world engaged, trying to cope with the lethal mechanical monstrosities which war has become now, and perhaps she was even at peace again, if peace is possible to anyone. Anyway, at first there were the letters saying When you come we will and then If you come don’t forget and then several weeks and just a penny post card saying I miss you and nothing more — that almost inarticulate paucity of the picture cards saying Wish you were here or This is our room which the semiliterate send back, until the last one, a letter again.
I mean, in an envelope: It’s all right. I understand. I know how busy the draft board has to be. Just come when you can because I have something to ask you. To which I answered at once, immediately (I was about to add, Because I don’t know what I thought. Only I know exactly what I thought) Ask me or tell me? so that I already knew beforehand what her answer would be: Yes. Ask you.
So (it was summer again now) I telegraphed a date and she answered Have booked room will meet what train love and I answered that (who had refused to let her own one) Coming by car will pick you up at shipyard Tuesday quitting time love and I was there. She came out with the shift she belonged in, in the overall, already handing me the tablet and stylus before she kissed me, clinging to me, hard, saying, “Tell me everything,” until I could free myself to write, restricted again to the three- or four-word bursts and gaggles before having to erase:
You tell me what It is
“Let’s go to the beach.” And I:
You don’t want to Go home first & Change
“No. Let’s go to the beach.” We did. I parked the car and it seemed to me I had already written Now tell me but she was already out of the car, already waiting for me, to take the tablet and stylus from me and thrust them into her pocket, then took my near arm in both her hands, we walking so, she clinging with both hands to my arm so that we would bump and stagger every few steps, the sun just setting and our one shadow along the tide-edge before us and I thinking No, no, that can’t be it when she said, “Wait,” and released me, digging into the other overall pocket from the tablet.
“I’ve got something for you. I almost forgot it.” It was a shell; we had probably trodden on a million of them since we left the car two hundred yards back, I still thinking It can’t be that. That can’t be so “I found it the first day. I was afraid I might lose it before you got here, but I didn’t. Do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful,” I said.
“What?” she said, already handing me the tablet and stylus. I wrote
Damn fine now Tell me
“Yes,” she said. She clung, gripping my arm hard and strong in both hands again, we walking again and I thinking Why not, why shouldn’t it be so, why should there not be somewhere in the world at least one more Barton Kohl or at least a fair substitute, something to do, at least something a little better than grief when she said, “Now,” and stopped and turned us until we faced the moment’s pause before the final plunge of the sun, the tall and ragged palms and pines fixed by that already fading explosion until the night breeze would toss and thresh them.
Then it passed. Now it was just sunset. “There,” she said. “It’s all right now. We were here. We saved it. Used it. I mean, for the earth to have come all this long way from the beginning of the earth, and the sun to have come all this long way from the beginning of time, for this one day and minute and second out of all the days and minutes and seconds, and nobody to use it, no two people who are finally together at last after all the difficulties and waiting, and now they are together at last and are desperate because of all the long waiting, they are even running along the beach toward where the place is, not far now, where they will finally be alone together at last and nobody in the world to know or care or interfere so that it’s like the world itself wasn’t except you so now the world that wasn’t even invented yet can begin.” And I thinking Maybe it’s the fidelity and the enduring which must be so at least once in your lifetime, no matter who suffers.
That you have heard of love and loss and grief and fidelity and enduring and you have seen love and loss and maybe you have even seen love and loss and grief but not all five of them — or four of them since the fidelity and enduring I am speaking of were inextricable: one — this, even while she was saying, “I don’t mean just—” and stopped herself before I could have raised the hand to clap to on her lips — if I had been going to, saying: “It’s all right, I haven’t forgotten; I’m not going to say that one any more.” She looked at me. “So maybe you already know what I’m going to ask you.”
“Yes,” I said; she could read that. I wrote marriage
“How do you know?”
What does it Matter I wrote I’m glad
“I love you,” she said. “Let’s go eat. Then we will go home and I can tell you.”
I wrote Not home first To change
“No,” she said. “I won’t need to change where we’re going.”
She didn’t. Among the other female customers, she could have worn anything beyond an ear trumpet and a G-string, and even then probably the ear trumpet would have drawn the attention. It was a joint. By midnight on Saturday (possibly any other night in such boom ship-building times) it would be bedlam, jumping as they say; with the radio going full blast, it already was to me. But then, I was not deaf. But the food — the flounder and shrimp — was first-rate and the waitress produced glasses and ice to match the flask I had brought; and with all the other uproar her voice was not so noticeable.
Because she used it, as if by premeditation, about things I would need only Yes and No for, babbling actually, about the shipyard, the work, the other people, sounding almost like a little girl home on her first holiday from school, eating rapidly too, not chewing it enough, until we had done and she said, “We can go now.”
She hadn’t told me yet where I was to stay, nor did I know where her place was either. So when we were in the car again I snapped on the dash light so she could see the tablet and wrote Where.
“That way,” she said. It was back toward the centre of town and I drove on until she said, “Turn here,” and I did; presently she said, “There it is,” so that I had to pull in to the curb to use the tablet
Which is
“The hotel,” she said. “Right yonder.” I wrote
We want to talk Havent you got a Sitting room your place Quiet & private
“We’re going to both stay there tonight. It’s all arranged. Our rooms are next door with just the wall between and I had both beds
