Across a War-Tossed Sea (5 page)

“I
'll need you boys to check the pumpkin patch and load the ripe ones onto the truck tomorrow afternoon so I can drive them into Shockoe. Customers have been coming into Mr. Epstein's store asking for pumpkins to make jack-o'-lanterns.” Mr. Ratcliff tipped his wooden chair onto its back legs as he talked to Bobby. “Plan on a big work weekend, son. We've got to cut the corn and shred the stalks for fodder, then plant winter wheat. Somehow got to find time to hay, too.”

He patted his stomach and added, “Wonderful chicken dumplings, Mary Lee.”

“Thank you kindly, sir,” Mrs. Ratcliff said, teasing him as she spooned squash onto the twins' plates. “Eat up now, honeys. No arguing. There are plenty of children who'd be grateful for that extra helping of squash. It'll make you big and strong.”

Wesley moved his elbow so Mrs. Ratcliff could ladle a spoonful onto his plate too. Squash was an American vegetable Wesley tried hard to like, especially after learning its importance to the Indians' diet, but he still gagged over its limp seeds. He took a few bites. Then he carefully spread the remnants around his plate to look like he'd eaten most of it.

He noticed Patsy watching him with an amused smile. She held a plate of still-warm bread toward him. “Roll?” she asked. Wesley gratefully took one, wondering if she'd guessed what he was doing with the squash.

“Ah, that'll be tough, Dad,” Bobby said, as he reached across and grabbed the last roll, beating Ron to it. “Chuck and I have football practice for championships. And Saturday we need to set up the barn and make guts and stuff for our haunted house. Can't Ed help you?”

Mr. Ratcliff lowered his chair legs back to the floor. He leaned forward. “Robert, I am proud of your football record. Very proud, son. But I need you. Ed will already be helping. You know this time of year I usually hire extra field hands in addition to Ed. But I can't find any—they've all joined up, or work in the factories, or have gone down to Newport News shipyards. Ed's sons, too.”

“They're hiring Negroes at the docks?” Ron asked.

Mr. Ratcliff seemed to consider his middle son carefully before answering. “I'd hate to think you harbor some of the bass-ackwards attitudes others around here have, Ronald. We need every able body to help in this war, either in the armed services or in the jobs that keep them going. I know Richmond gentry are squawking over their help going AWOL. But I applaud the Negroes taking the opportunity to get better jobs. About the only good thing in this war is that it's finally opening doors for them that were glued shut before. I hear they can make fifty-eight cents an hour at the Yorktown Naval Yard. That's double what they're used to being paid. We should be glad for them.”

“Fifty-eight cents an hour?” exclaimed Mrs. Ratcliff. “Lord love a duck. If I didn't have so much canning and preserving to do right now, I'd get myself a job.”

Her sons stopped eating, forks halfway to their mouths, to stare at her.

“Boys, I had a perfectly good secretary job before your father and I married,” she countered, a bit miffed. “Why do you look so surprised?”

“You're just such a good mama,” said Bobby, “it's hard for us to see you any other way. I always think of you playing hide-and-seek with us behind the sheets when you hung them to dry on the clothesline and never yelling at us if we got dirt on them during the game.”

“Well, aren't you the sweetest thing, honey. But that's beside the point. I am a trained stenographer, you know. Your daddy and I met at the bank, after all.”

“Tell the story again, Daddy,” Patsy prompted him.

The twins clapped their hands. “Tell us, Daddy.”

Mr. Ratcliff leaned back in his chair again. “Well, well. There I was behind my desk approving a loan for some fat-cat lawyer—one of the first loans my daddy let me process. He was president of the bank, if you remember.”

“We do, Daddy,” sung the twins.

“So it was a right big moment in my youthful career, a serious moment, a moment I became a real banker in my own right. A moment to be dignified and mature.”

Bobby stifled a laugh.

“Never mind him, Daddy.” Patsy slapped Bobby's arm. “Do tell.”

“Well, as I was saying.” He cleared his throat and smiled at Mrs. Ratcliff. “There I was at a moment of import. The ink was drying on the documents, and I was about to stand up, shake the old lawyer's hand, and hand him a Cuban. I reached into the drawer for the cigar, when the front door to the bank atrium opened, light flooded in, and there stood this gorgeous, I mean breathtaking, gal. She wore a lilac-colored suit and had the prettiest little hat perched on her auburn curls, and leeeeggs that went all the way down to here.” He patted the floor.

“Oh, for goodness' sake, Andy, where else would my legs go?” But Mrs. Ratcliff blushed and laughed all the same.

“Do you remember what happened next?” he asked his children, making a silly face.

“You fell right out of your chair,” the twins shouted, giggling.

“Yes sirree, Bob, I sure did. Right on my keister. I was one cooked goose right then and there. My heart was hers.” He reached for her hand and kissed it. “Always has been.”

“Awwwww.”
Patsy, the twins, and Wesley sighed.

Mr. Ratcliff wagged a finger at his sons. “You be sure to find a lady like this one to love. She hasn't complained once about my family losing the bank during the Depression or about my having to turn to farming or about my bum leg keeping me from taking her dancing.”

“And why would I, Andy, when I have you and five such beautiful children, aaaannnnd”—she drew out the word—“lovely British guests to boot.” She stood to clear dishes.

Mr. Ratcliff watched her a moment and then turned with earnestness to Patsy. “And you make sure, sweetheart, that your husband loves and respects you as much as I do your mama.”

Mrs. Ratcliff came back with some fried apples for dessert. “You know I could get a job if they're offering that much in wages, Andy. Truly.”

“Mama,” Patsy interrupted. “You're already volunteering with the Red Cross rolling surgical bandages. I should be the one to get a job. I can't be that much help in the fields. I've heard Bellwood is hiring women. I can ride my bike there after school.”

“Bellwood? That's no place for a girl, Pats,” said Bobby. “There are a thousand Nazi POWs there now.”

Charles saw Patsy bristle. Maybe it was because she'd grown up running with a pack of brothers, but Patsy was always infuriated by any implication girls weren't as brave as boys. Most of the girls around the high school always acted so helpless and kind of silly. Not Patsy. She had a tomboy grin and didn't bother to pluck her eyebrows or perm her hair like the other girls either. Charles really liked that about her.

“Oh really?” Patsy pointed her fork at Bobby. “I'll have you know that Meredith was just hired as a chauffeur. And she told me that they were hiring women as storekeepers and secretaries, even as guards. What about all those magazines celebrating Rosie the Riveter?”

“Back home, my mum is a volunteer ambulance driver,” Charles spoke up.

Patsy smiled gratefully at Charles. “There, you see, Daddy?” she said.

Mr. Ratcliff frowned. “Pshaw, this war is going to take us to hell in a handbasket. Women working at a depot knee-deep in soldiers and POWs. What next?”

The Ratcliff brothers nodded in agreement.

Patsy's cheeks turned red under her freckles, but she folded her hands together like in prayer, and took a deep breath before speaking. “Daddy,” she said, “I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Don't you remember the time the truck had a flat when I was running the twins to Aunt Mamie's, and I changed it myself? And the time that I—”

“Hold on, girl.” Mr. Ratcliff held up his hand to quiet her. As generous as he was, Charles knew Mr. Ratcliff did not like his authority to be questioned. He kept his hand up for a moment. It was calloused from hoeing and fixing farm machinery. But his voice softened to courtliness as he continued, making it easy for Charles to imagine Mr. Ratcliff behind a desk in a vaulted, elegant bank building once upon a time.

“You're busy getting your education, honey. You're the smartest among us. I'd give just about anything to have the money to pay your college tuition, but the reality is you will need a scholarship.” He patted his daughter's hand. “You focus on that. I just know you'll be an outstanding teacher or librarian or nurse one day.” He turned to his eldest son. “I just need Robert, here, to be responsible. I need help with our fields.”

Bobby sighed. “Okay, Dad. I understand. But everyone's got to chip in, then, with setting up the haunted house Halloween morning.”

“Sure thing, Bobby,” chirped the twins.

“Now, hold on a minute.” Mrs. Ratcliff had a thought. “Isn't the thirty-first on Sunday this year?” Mrs. Ratcliff was a devout Methodist. One of the first things Bobby had told Charles was that their attic room would be the main hang on Sunday afternoons so they could play gin rummy without getting caught playing cards on church day.

“Mary Lee, sweetheart, there's a war on,” said her husband. “Sabbath rules will have to bend for a while. If I am only able to get help on the weekends, that's when I'm mowing the hay—Sunday or not. As it is, even with our sons helping, I'm hard pressed to get things harvested before they rot. We'll have our first hard frost any day now. I can't afford our last timothy hay and clover being ruined because I can't get it cut and baled in time. I've already lost more than two hundred dollars profit that I should have made on my corn, thanks to that drought. How it didn't rain for fifty-seven days straight is beyond me.”

He paused. “In fact,” he began cautiously, “I've been mulling something over. Some farmers around the county have hired work details of POWs from Camp Pickett to help them hay. I might need to do so as well.”

Instantly, he was pounded with a chorus of protests: “What?” “Nazis?” “In our fields?” “Near our house?” “Are you nuts, Dad?”

Mr. Ratcliff might as well have dropped an incendiary bomb on the table as far as Charles was concerned. Without thinking, he stood abruptly, knocking his chair over.

Startled, everyone silenced. They waited for him to speak. But he couldn't. How could Charles explain that if a Nazi was within one hundred yards of him, he might grab the nearest pitchfork and gut the guy? How could anyone explain feeling that kind of bitter, murderous rage? He just shook his head. Then he ran from the room, slamming the back door behind him.

“Poor lamb,” said Mrs. Ratcliff. “Andy, you should have thought how that might upset Charles.”

“Yeah, Dad,” Bobby piped up. “Chuck told me that five of his neighbors died in just one night during the Blitz. And that only about half the houses on his block were still in one piece before he left to come here. He was pretty torn up about it. I don't know how he and Wes withstood it all.”

“I can't imagine any Londoner being able to stand the sight of a German right now,” said Patsy.

Even Ron appeared sympathetic.

“Now, wait just a minute,” Mr. Ratcliff defended himself. “It's not like I have any love for the German empire. Kaiser Wilhelm wasn't exactly good to me.” He shifted in his chair and tucked his bad leg under the table. “I just haven't many choices these days.”

Wesley looked from face to face, wondering if they remembered that he was sitting right there among them. He rose to follow Charles. He had no idea what to say to his big brother. Always trying to keep that stiff upper lip, Charles got angry whenever he realized Wesley knew that he was upset. But the moment seemed to call for some British brother solidarity.

“Andy.” Mrs. Ratcliff looked pointedly at her husband as she said his name. She reached out without taking her eyes off her husband and gently caught Wesley's arm, stopping him.

Mr. Ratcliff heaved a sigh. “All right, all right. How much is in that mason jar, Mary Lee?”

She smiled fondly at her husband. “I just counted that up yesterday as a matter of fact. Eighteen whole dollars and thirteen cents.”

The Ratcliff boys whistled. “You've been holding out on us, Mama,” teased Bobby.

“For a rainy day, sugar,” she answered.

Humph.
Mr. Ratcliff pretended to peer out the window to assess the clouds. Then he turned to Wesley. “How about you find Chuck and then you two go ask Ed if his sons can catch the Greyhound from the shipyards this weekend. I'll cover the bus tickets and pay wages and a half if they can work both days, all day, including Sunday, until every scrap of hay is baled, every cornstalk is shredded, and the wheat is planted and the fields put to bed for the winter.”

“Yes, sir!” Wesley answered.

Mr. Ratcliff turned to Bobby. “But even with Ed and his sons, I'll need your help to get everything done in time.” He made eye contact with each boy, one by one. “All of yours—Robert, Ronald, John, James—this weekend.”

They all nodded solemnly, even the twins.

“Might send me to the poorhouse,” Mr. Ratcliff muttered, “but it'll keep me from hiring POWs.” He smiled at his wife. “All right?”

Mrs. Ratcliff let go of Wesley's hand to hug her husband.

Out in the yard, Wesley went around and around trying to locate Charles. He wasn't in the grape arbor, or the woodshed, or the smokehouse, or the orchard, or down by the chicken houses. Wesley searched the barn, climbing into the hayloft, where once he'd caught Charles and Bobby choking on hand-rolled chicory cigarettes. Charles was simply nowhere to be found.

Maybe he's gone as far as the river, thought Wesley, starting for the path that wound through the woods to the pebbly banks of the James. He knew the river was where Charles often went to hurl rocks when he was mad, gaining some satisfaction from the enormous splashes they made in the choppy waters. Sometimes Charles even waded up to his knees and gazed east down its murky, urgent waves, saying that beyond their view the river gaped open to be five miles across and gushed into the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic beyond. “That way's home,” he'd tell Wesley, as the waves lapped hard against his legs so that Charles had to brace himself against the tide's push.