Tallgrass (7 page)

“Heck, we ain’t got our draft notices yet,” Pete said.

“I’m thinking I don’t want to turn out a cripple like Danny. He got hit by a truck,” Beaner added.

Buddy glanced at me, as if warning me not to say we knew what really had happened to Danny, but I wasn’t that dumb.

“Speak of the devil,” Pete said as Danny crossed the street. His hair hung in his face and a cigarette dangled from the corner of his mouth. I thought he was hoping somebody would say he looked an awful lot like John Garfield. But John Garfield didn’t have a gimpy leg, and he wasn’t a Spano.

“You killed anybody yet?” Danny asked.

“I haven’t seen any action yet, unless you count a fight with a couple of soldiers from Texas. I showed them what a Colorado boy can do.” Buddy got out his keys and told me it was time to go.

“Yeah, I hear you. Well, when you get shipped out, kill one for me,” Danny said. “Right, Beaner?”

“You do that,” Beaner said, and Danny grinned, letting the cigarette drop out of his mouth.

Buddy said good-bye, and we were getting into the truck, when the Japanese boys came out of the drugstore holding their ice-cream cones. “You might could start with those, Bud,” Beaner said. “Slap a Jap.”

“Little boys?” Buddy asked.

“Like the man says, nits breed lice.”

Buddy asked if the boys came from the Tallgrass Camp, although he knew they did. Pete nodded.

“I didn’t enlist to fight Americans,” Buddy said.

Pete sneered and said, “Look who’s getting up on his high horse, just like his old man.”

“Strouds always was pantywaists,” Beaner said.

I felt my hands make fists and wanted to say something smart, but I knew if I did, I would make Buddy look worse, because girls didn’t defend boys, and besides, I’d get pounded by those three. They expected Buddy to slap Beaner a good hard one, but Buddy only slid into the seat and started the motor.

“We got big trouble if Bud Stroud’s America’s finest,” Beaner called.

Buddy acted as if he didn’t hear, and I was disappointed. Bud was as strong as Dad, and he could have licked Beaner easy, maybe even with Pete and Danny thrown in. I’d have been proud of him for standing up for himself, and his winning a fight with Beaner would have rubbed off on me. The kids at school would have asked me about it, and I could’ve said how tough Strouds were, that there weren’t any flies on us. But now the kids would think Buddy was chicken, and maybe he was. “How come you let them talk to you like that?” I asked, turning around to watch Beaner, Pete, and Danny stare after us. Buddy stopped the truck at the dry goods a block away to pick up some things for Mom, and I thought the three might follow us, but they didn’t.

“What good would that do?”

“They insulted you.” Maybe Buddy really was a coward. There was a tiny cold feeling in my stomach when I thought about that. What if my brother wasn’t brave after all? Maybe he’d turn out to be a bad soldier. What if he got into battle and froze or ran away? He could get court-martialed, like the soldier I’d heard about on the radio. That would be a terrible thing for us to live down, I thought, then rolled my eyes. A Stroud wouldn’t run from his duty just because he didn’t stand up to Beaner Jack.

Buddy might have guessed what I was thinking. “You can’t rid the world of bullies. Besides, if I’d smacked Beaner and them around, they’d have been mad enough to take it out on those little Japanese boys from the camp. I don’t suppose you noticed those kids got away while we were talking, did you? Besides, you know what Dad says: ’When a man fights, it means a fool’s lost his argument.’”

“That doesn’t stop Dad from fighting.” Buddy wouldn’t have been a fool if he’d licked Beaner, but I didn’t tell him that.

We did Mom’s shopping, then drove home. Just before the turnoff to our farm, we passed the three little Japanese boys walking back to camp. They were still licking their ice cream. Buddy stopped and offered them a ride. The sky was the gray-white of ashes, and dry snow had begun to fall again. But the boys were suspicious, and the oldest one said, “No thank you, sir.” Bud saluted him, and the three kids stood up straight, their necks stretched out, and saluted him back.

The Japanese boys made it past our farm, but they didn’t get home free. Three men drove along the section road to intersect with the Tallgrass Road just beyond our place. We found out about it when Sheriff Henry Watrous stopped to ask Dad if he’d noticed anybody along the road making trouble.

The boys were less than half a mile from the camp, he said, when a truck pulled up behind them, and three men threw snowballs at them, calling the boys names. The men got out of the truck and pelted the boys with dirt clods. Then as the boys ran down the road, the men threw rocks at them, threatening to break their necks. A rock hit the smallest boy in the head, knocking him to the ground, and his brothers dragged him along as the men laughed and told them they’d better hurry up or they’d sic dogs on them. The boy who fell had a concussion. A guard at the camp called Sheriff Watrous, but the parents didn’t want things to go any further, for fear of stirring up trouble. Besides, the boys said they hadn’t seen their attackers’ faces and couldn’t identify the truck, which Sheriff Watrous said was bunk, because boys were boys, and they knew motors. After all, they’d told him that when Bud offered them a ride, he was driving a 1933 red Ford pickup with a cracked back window and crumpled left rear fender.

Buddy said he was sure it was Beaner and them, and Sheriff Watrous said he knew it was, but there wasn’t any proof. He asked Buddy and me to drive back down the road with him to see if we could spot anything that would help him identify the bullies. But all we saw were half a dozen cigarette butts, a pair of broken spectacles, and an ice-cream cone frozen in the dirt.

THAT NIGHT AT SUPPER,
Dad told us there had been other rock-throwing incidents. “Every time something’s in the news about our soldiers going into battle in the South Pacific and even in Europe, people here want to take it out on the folks in the camp. Hen Watrous says some of those Japanese out at the Tallgrass Camp get hot under the collar about being held responsible for every American who gets killed, but most of them just want to be left alone.”

“You can’t hardly blame Ellis folks,” Mom said. “Two boys up to Mingo already got killed in the Philippines. Their pictures were in the paper last week, just kids. It could have been Buddy.” Her face went rigid then, because we never talked about the danger Buddy might be in, and she glanced at him and said quickly, “Bud, I swear they don’t feed you in the army. You eat enough for two men.”

“Me and Kilroy, that’s who I’m eating for,” Bud said, and we all laughed, because even in Ellis, we’d learned about Kilroy. Some kids had soaped
KILROY WAS HERE
on the window at the Vogue Dress Shoppe, along with that funny cartoon of the GI. Betty Joyce had had to explain to me about Kilroy, because I thought the drawing was of Frank Martin, who had a nose like an Idaho spud.

“You better finish these boiled potatoes, or we’ll just have to fry them up for breakfast.” Mom handed the bowl of potatoes to Bud, and Granny passed the cream gravy. Bud took half a potato and a dab of gravy. “Now save room for dessert. We’ve got apple pie. I don’t know why everybody’s so crazy about apple pie. I’d rather have rhubarb any day of the week, but we won’t have rhubarb until May, maybe April if there’s an early spring.” Mom talked about food when she got nervous.

Dad wasn’t nervous, and he asked Bud how he felt about the camp.

Bud mashed the potato with his fork, but he didn’t eat it. “It doesn’t bother me, but I don’t have to live next to it. You might be in more danger because of Tallgrass than I’ll ever be from anything in the army.”

Dad tore off a piece of bread and wiped his plate with it. “Oh, I don’t believe we’re in any danger, unless the Japanese march into town and throw sugar beets at us. They’re just ordinary people up there, farmers most of them, like me and you.” He shoved the bread into his mouth.

I held my breath, waiting for Bud’s answer.

“No, sir,” Bud said slowly. “They’re Japs—all right, Japanese.”

“They’re not any more Japanese than the Krugers are Germans.”

“You don’t know that for a fact,” Mom said.

“No, I don’t. I don’t know for a fact that water won’t run uphill, either. But I’ve never seen it do that, and neither’s anybody else. None of those people at the Tallgrass Camp have ever been caught spying.” Dad snorted. “What’s there to spy on in Ellis?”

“That’s not the point. They’re not spying in California; that’s the point,” Mom said. She told Buddy. “Your father’s made some enemies talking like this.”

“It’s not right to lock up those people. I wish we hadn’t done it,” Dad said.

“Well, I wish we could fly like birds, too,” Mom retorted, then calmed herself. “I agree with the jolly Stitchers when they say we’re better safe than sorry.”

“Is that what they say?” Dad asked.

Mom gave him a look that said she didn’t appreciate the remark.

“How’d you feel if we got locked up?” I asked her. The question just popped out, probably because I was upset about the little boys. At first, I thought Dad would tell me not to be smart, but maybe he decided I had the right to ask. Or perhaps he was curious about the answer. He cocked his head and looked at Mother as if to say. Well?

Mom pushed back her chair. “Oh, who’d lock us up? We look just like everybody else.”

I got up and helped clear the dishes, listening to snatches of conversation between Dad and Bud as I walked back and forth to the kitchen. I’d rather have sat there and listened to them talk, but Dad wouldn’t have stood for it if I didn’t help Mom, especially since she’d been feeling peaked lately. He asked how the boys in the service felt about the internment camps.

“We don’t pay much attention to them, but I don’t suppose any of the soldiers would object. You see one of those Japanese on the street, and you ask yourself whose side he’s on. Maybe Mom’s right about being safe instead of sorry.”

“It doesn’t bother you that their rights have gotten taken away?”

Buddy leaned back in his chair and put his feet on the center pedestal of the big oak table. He pushed his plate toward me, but I was slow in picking it up. Then I rearranged his knife and fork on it because I wanted to hear his answer. “No, sir. They’re not the only ones. Besides, their rights are only being suspended. Our boys who’ve been killed, now their rights are gone for good.”

Dad asked about the rights of the three boys who’d been beaten up.

“Oh, come on, Dad. We’re not talking about little kids. I’m sorry for them. But you said yourself there are angry men in that camp. Who’s to say they wouldn’t help Hirohito if they had the chancer What if I’m sent to fight the Japanese? Wouldn’t you feel better knowing all those people are locked up? How come you’re so hot around the collar anyway?”

Dad thought a minute, putting his hands together so that they formed a little church, his index fingers a steeple. “It might have been that colored boy who was lynched up near Limon when I was a kid. You remember that, don’t you. Granny?” He looked over at Granny, who nodded, and I knew she did remember. “They said he raped and murdered a white girl.” Dail glanced up at me, and I was afraid he’d wait to continue until I left the room, but he didn’t. “They burned that kid to death, tied him to a stake and piled up brush around him. The girl’s father lit the match. Folks danced and laughed while that poor boy screamed, his flesh melting off the bones. Hell’s fire itself couldn’t have been any worse for him.”

I shuddered and held on to the chair. I’d never heard that story and couldn’t imagine anyone doing that. “Was anybody from Ellis there?” I asked.

“I hope not,” Dad replied, but he didn’t sound sure.

“You saw it, did you?” Bud asked.

“No, I was just a tyke. Besides, your grandparents didn’t hold with lynching. Isn’t that true, Mom?”

Granny, who was staring at her hands, which were folded in her lap, didn’t look up. “There was a newspaper man in New York City who wrote colored people weren’t any freer in Colorado than they were down south,” she said softly. “I was ashamed to say I lived here.”

“Folks talked about it for years. Some of them were kind of proud of themselves. I heard one man say the boy smelled just like a pig roasting on a spit. He went to church every Sunday, too. That’s one reason I don’t. But there were some, like your Granny and Gramp, who never could come to terms with it. Isn’t that so?”

We all looked at Granny, but she was still staring at her hands, and I wondered if her mind had begun to wander off. Mom said once that Granny’s mind was like an old crazy quilt, where some of the pieces were bright but others were worn through. Now her mind seemed as thin as shoddy.

Dad continued. “Aunt Mattie—she was a righteous woman, just like all the McCauleys.” He reached over and patted Granny’s hand. “Aunt Mattie said if it’d been a white boy who’d killed a colored girl, some of those folks would have put up a statue to him, and what a shame that would have been. Maybe those words stayed in my mind because they were just about the last ones Aunt Mattie ever said to me. She died right afterward. I’ve thought about that poor Negro boy lots of times over the years, and it’s never set right with me, there being different rules for different people, based just on how they look. I didn’t hold with prejudice. I never held much with statues, either.”

“It’s different now, Dad. We’re at war,” Bud said.

“Yes, son, we are.” Dad slowly twirled the castor set, the silver stand we kept in the middle of the table that held crystal bottles of vinegar and oil, salt and pepper. I reminded myself I had to fill them. It felt like I’d never remember all the things I was supposed to do. Taking on a woman’s responsibilities wasn’t easy.

“How about you, Rennie? What do you think?” Bud asked.

I stopped clearing the dishes, Bud’s plate in my hand, as Dad and Bud stared at me. I shrugged.

“No, you tell us what you think, Squirt,” Dad said. “You haven’t done that.”

I looked down at the potato left on Bud’s plate. The truth was, the people at Tallgrass were different from us, and they still scared me. So did the lights and the dust and the noise and locking our doors at night. I didn’t like the war and how it took away Buddy and Marthalice, how it changed our family. But what upset me right then was the meanness toward those three little boys. It wasn’t the Japanese who frightened me the most; it was us. I didn’t understand what made somebody from Ellis hurt little kids just because they were Japanese. “I don’t think right and wrong change just because we’re at war,” I said.