January Dawn (11 page)

First on the to-do list: Take a shower.

Directly across from the bathroom was a door that led out onto the porch.

The second story porch only spanned the back side of the house and didn’t wrap around like the one downstairs. Arrayed across the length of it were a couple wooden rocking chairs, a glass table and a couple cushioned seats.

A strange urge in me made me want to touch everything I saw. And I did. Maybe it was to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. I expected at any second to sit up in my bed back on the Stephens plantation, or in the barracks.
Surely this was all a dream
.

There was another door on the other end of the porch. Curiosity got the best of me as I peered into the window next to it to see what I could see. It was another bedroom. It was messy, with clothes scattered across the floor, the bed unmade and the bathroom light still on. There were a couple posters of young men posted up on the wall. Underneath the one hanging by the door was a dresser with a display of a dozen or so golden trophies and medallions. For what I don’t know, I couldn’t tell. It was for some sort of sport I reckoned.

The view from the porch was magnificent, acres upon acres of open grassland with a few ancient looking trees dotting the landscape. A hundred yards away there was a ramshackle barn with a weathervane affixed to the tip of the rusty roof. The backyard had a network of brick walkways that led to an elaborate grill island on one side and to a cozy arrangement of patio furniture on the other. It looked as if Alex’s father had already set out extra chairs and tables in preparation for the party that night.

I breathed in a lungful of the exquisitely tasty morning air that was a tinge salty.

Alex did say he lived near the ocean. I have to go see that some time. I’ve always dreamed of it. How it smells. How it tastes. What it feels like to swim in its vastness.

I yawned and realized that I hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. It was time for bed. I didn’t even bother to move my duffel bag as I collapsed backward onto the bed, sinking into the thick cushioning, my head engulfed in a cool, silky pillow.

I’ll just shut my eyes for a few minutes
.

*

I awoke in a fit of uneasiness. Waking up in such comfort was so strange for my tortured life that I sat up erect, panting, wiping the sweat from my neck and looking around the room until my memory came back to me and I remembered I was at Alex’s house.

In the bathroom, I slapped my face with a couple handfuls of water and ran my hands through my hair. My hair had grown a little since it was shaved off in Basic. It was a comfortable length now and I liked it so.

It was only when I stepped back into the bedroom when I realized how dark it was outside. I had slept the day away.

Shit! The party.

I straightened up my dress uniform and hurried downstairs.

The house was abuzz with the simultaneous drone of conversation, laughter and live music coming from the backyard. The front door sat wide open, letting in the fresh night air. The parking lot outside was stuffed with cars from corner to corner. A few had parked in-between the trees that stretched along the sides of the driveway.

In the living room there were a dozen or so finely dressed people lounging around having hearty conversation. A few shot a glance over at me as I stood awkwardly in the foyer.

Over by the corner there were three young men dressed in the traditional midnight-blue Navy dress uniform. They argued the politics of the war.
Always the war
.

The dining room opposite was transformed into a coat room. Coats and bags were casually tossed on the table, or in a chair, without the slightest concern for someone taking something that wasn’t rightfully theirs. There wasn’t any rhyme or reason to it.
That must be part of that southern hospitality that Mr. Jeffries always talked about.

I needed to find Alex.
Maybe he’s out back
.

“Can I help you find something?” A sweet voice behind me asked.

“Ma’am?” I said, turning around. It was a beautiful, young girl about my age. She was wearing a sleek black dress along with a pair of quiet little sandals.

“You looked lost. I was wondering if you needed help finding something, or someone?” She had a smooth, slender face with a quaint smile that perked up on the edges with little dimples. Her dark, wavy hair cascaded gently over one side of her face, and was tucked behind her ear on the other side, held in place by a handsome white gardenia.

“Ugh, I was looking for Alex. Alex Redman,” I said.

She smiled with a mouth full of evenly white teeth. “I’ve heard of him. You a friend of his?”

“Yes ma’am.”

“You don’t have to call me ma’am, Private.” I couldn’t help but think she was teasing me by calling me that. “I’m Tessa.” She reached out her hand.

I shook it gingerly. “
Private
Tennpenny.” I fired back with a grin on my face that surprised even me.

She giggled. “Well, Private Tennpenny, I saw Alex in the library a minute ago. That room there.” She motioned to the room adjacent the dining room and then started up the stairs. “You’re going to have to get in line though. Alex is loving all this attention he’s getting from everyone.”

“Doesn’t surprise me.”

“Catch you later, Private Tennpenny,” she said, casting a furtive glance at me before disappearing at the top of the steps.

I made my way through the dining room turned coat room and stopped under the archway that led to the next room. The library was magnificent, both in size and in beauty. A floor to ceiling bookcase ran the length of the wall to my right, filled with books of different sizes and colors. Each shelf of books ended with a unique bookend, some were picture frames, one was a small globe, another was a mirror, a toy car, a ceramic cat, to name a few. They were all very interesting pieces.

In the middle of the wall in-between the great bookcases, a large wooden desk with a chair the color of burnt burgundy sat underneath a double framed window.

The library, like every other room in the house, had an equally brilliant floor with shiny, textured hardwood and a spacious throw rug on which most of the furniture rested on. Directly in front of me were two couches that faced each other over a glass coffee table.

There were sixteen or seventeen guests there in the library, nearly half of them swarmed around Alex, who stood leaning his elbow on top of a piano that was the color of black. And I don’t mean just black. I mean the black one only sees when they close their eyes in a room shut off from any light on a night where there is no moon.

Alex caught my eye through the throng of people. “Hey, Colton!” He yelled across the room, as he pushed through his entourage. “About time you woke up.”

A few of the other guests shot inquisitive looks at me as I stole the party’s man of honor from their conversation.

“How come you didn’t wake me?”

“You usually don’t sleep so well. I thought I’d let you sleep.” I could smell alcohol on his breath. The party had been going on for a while now, judging by how intoxicated he was already. Drunk, but not foolishly drunk. “Come here, I want to introduce you to my mother.”

From the library we walked across the hall into the kitchen where about ten women, young and old, huddled around the marble-top island. It was no accident that that was where they women decided to have their conversation. A dozen or so bottles of liquor lay arrayed on the countertop.

We interrupted their womanly talk.

“Ma, I want you to meet Colton, my buddy from Basic. Colton, this is my mother.” A fair faced forty something year old woman stepped forward to greet me.

“It’s very nice to meet you Colton,” she said, giving me a forced hug.

“You too, ma’am.”

“Hey Ma, where’s your other offspring? The ones that weren’t as lucky to be born as good looking as I am,” Alex said, filling two glasses with whiskey and handing me one. I took a sip. The potency of the amber liquid made me grimace.

“Watch it young man. You might be my first born, but you’re certainly not the prettiest. That honor goes to your sisters.”

“I can’t argue with that.”

“Sarah and Sam are outside. Tessa went upstairs looking for Lucas and Ben. They’ve been running around this house like little monsters tonight. I don’t know what’s gotten into them.”

Holy smokes, why didn’t I realize that before? Alex had told me her name a while back. She looked just like him. The hair, the smile, the eyes. Tessa was Alex’s twin.

Two little boys, each dressed in khaki colored slacks and button-down shirts came running down the hallway at full speed toward the back door. Alex called after them, but the innocence of childhood left them obligated to keep following their imagination out into the backyard. They slowed down only for a second to offer a curt greeting.

“Hi,” said the boy in the red shirt.

“Hi,” said the slightly older boy in the blue shirt.

Tessa came walking down the hall not a minute later. “Did those rodents run by here?”

“They ran outside. Tessa, I want you to meet Colton. We went to Basic together,” Alex said.

A shy smile slowly separated her lips. “We’ve met. A few minutes ago. He was looking for you.”

As they stood side by side the resemblance between the two siblings was striking. Both of their smiles would uniquely start at one corner of their mouth and then slowly widen to the other side, not showing teeth until the very end. They had the same skinny face also, with a perfectly defined jaw bone that came down to a rounded chin. And her eyes, oh boy, her eyes were a shaded light brown that left you feeling immensely satisfied and relaxed.

Standing in the bright kitchen light, I noticed that her wavy hair was so brown that it almost looked black. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever met.

If I remember correctly, at that moment, I believed that everyone in that room could hear how loud my heart was beating.

“Have you seen Sarah or Sam?” Alex asked his sister.

“They’re out by the bonfire with their friends.”

“Alright, come on Colton, I’ll take you out back to get some food. I’ll introduce you to them later.”

I excused myself from the ladies in the kitchen and followed Alex and Tessa out the back door and onto the porch.

The backyard was bustling with the spirited activity of a live bluegrass band strumming on their banjos, guitars and fiddles. There were fifty or so more guests out here. Some were in uniform but the rest were dressed up in their finest party attire, an interesting mixture of button-down shirts, flannels, dresses, jeans, high heels, diamond necklaces and cowboy boots.

“My father’s over there with the rest of the old guard,” Alex said, pointing off to the left where ten or so older men in uniform sat around with glasses full of liquor in their hands, and cigars bobbing in their mouths. Alex’s father was the only man in that assembly not wearing a uniform.
Those must be the distinguished guests Mr. Redman mentioned
.

“General Gammon’s here?” I asked, spotting him sitting on the railing by the corner column.

“Yeah, he showed up about an hour ago. He used to come over all the time, but he hasn’t visited in about a year.”

I found myself quietly straightening out my cuffs and smoothing my jacket.

We continued down the steps down into the backyard. Tessa’s name was hollered out and she went trotting over to a group of her friends.

“You hungry?”

“Starving.”

We got in the line for food behind a young Major and an older man, who I heard Alex call Mr. Ackerman. I found out later he was their neighbor down the road.

The food was splendidly arranged on silver platters and glass bowls on a red and white checkerboard table cloth. I made my way down the buffet with Alex calling out what was what. I didn’t really care what any of it was. I tried a little of everything, piling up a mountain of food on my plate. Pulled pork. Corn. Sweet potato. Fried okra. Baked beans. Collard greens. It all looked delicious. I topped off my culinary masterpiece with a chunk of buttery cornbread.

We took a seat at a pale looking glass patio table at the far edge of the party. It was close enough to the party to hear and see everything going on, but far enough where you can sit comfortably without being bothered. The table was nestled right underneath an old scraggly oak that stretched its branches in grotesque configurations in every direction. Thick coats of misty Spanish moss fluttered from the branches in the night breeze.

The usual grayness of the moss was skewed to a slightly yellow shade due to the strings of soft globe lights that slithered from branch to branch and from one tree to the next.

“How’s the food?”

“Amazing,” I said, stuffing my mouth full of baked beans.

“Mm, you see that man in the grey uniform walking up the steps to the house?” Alex asked, struggling to force down a mouthful of pork.

“Yeah.”

“That’s my Uncle Don. He’s a First Lieutenant in the Twenty-Fourth Marine Division down in Florida.”