Dirty Faces - Book 2

Chapter 17: On a Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Chapter 17: On a Lazy Sunday Afternoon

Time, for Ginny, was measured in terms of “summertime” and “not-summertime”. She had often heard her elders say that one comes to a certain point in life when time suddenly speeds up and what seems like yesterday was truly ages ago. Ginny was sure she had reached that point, but only in the summer; the rest of the year dragged by.

It was just nearly the second week in December, yet the previous summer seemed like another lifetime ago, and the next one another lifetime away. The return to school had been rather dull, even though it was the beginning of her last year attending the schoolhouse in town. As had been the trend in the summer, Becky, J.D., and Danny continued to fade into the crowd of faces, becoming more and more friendly acquaintances than friends. On a brighter note, with the start of cooler weather, Mama had managed to get her a new coat, since the sleeves on her old one were beyond too short now.

Seeing Adam with two crutches had taken some getting used to, but it was admittedly much less painful to watch. Both he and Kody had had birthdays, but Kody's had undoubtedly been the more eventful of the two. Mama had bequeathed to him unofficial ownership of Lilly. She and Ralph would, of course, still drive it whenever they needed to, but for the most part, she was Kody's; no longer did he, Adam, or Jack ride the bus across the mountain to school.

Church, as always, had been miserable and long, but now came the lazy, albeit boring, part of Sunday afternoon. They all lounged around Aunt Betty's front room, drowsy and full from Sunday dinner. The radio was on and the boys were gathered round listening to it, but Ginny paid it little mind. For some reason, this day, it irked her more than usual that her old friends held so little interest in her anymore. She had thought about it all through church, dinner, and dwelt on it even now, as she sat on the footstool next to Uncle Bill's stockinged feet. And the more she thought about it, the more frustrated she got because she just couldn't make any sense of it.

Mama and Aunt Betty were on the couch, embroidering separate works. The old farmhouse still smelled like fried chicken and cinnamon, despite the fact there wasn't a bite of anything left. Uncle Bill reached into the pocket on the bib of his overalls and produced from it a pipe. Before he could retrieve his pipe tobacco from the same hiding spot, Aunt Betty shot him a nasty look and snapped, “Not in my house. You get on outside with that filth.”

Uncle Bill made like he was going to say something, but instead pulled himself out of his armchair and tucked the pipe back from whence it came. “ 'S what I was a-doin',” he said as he made his way out the door. Aunt Betty returned to her embroidery, shaking her head.

Ginny realized that whatever dumb program the boys had been listening to was coming to an end and turned her attention to the radio, in hopes that the next program was at least interesting enough to hold her attention and keep her thoughts off her disloyal one-time friends. To her dismay, though, the following show was a news program.

After the introduction of the program, the announcer stated, in that very serious, news-reporter tone,  that the Japanese had attacked a harbor in Hawaii. The boys all glanced anxiously at one another, and Mama and Aunt Betty looked up from their embroidery. Hawaii, she knew, was a long, long way from Mabry's Ridge but attack sounded serious, and her family's apparent interest in the story convinced Ginny to pay attention.

“Bill, put out ye pipe and get back in here!” called Aunt Betty.

“Why fer, woman?” he called back from the porch.

“Just get in here!”

He came back in as instructed and took his seat, grumbling under his breath.

It wasn't until the second speaker came across the airwaves that what had happened began to make sense for Ginny. An attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor would “naturally” mean war, reported the man in Washington. She didn't in the moment know why, but her heart skipped a beat. It had been, she would later realize, that word: war.

The color drained from Mama's and Adam's faces, and she knew why. When she looked around the front room, she saw concern on Aunt Betty's face, so much so that she didn't even notice Uncle Bill had not, in fact, put out his pipe when he came back inside. But he didn't smoke it; he seemed to have forgotten it was there at all, and the tobacco burned away, the smell melding with that of the chicken and cinnamon. Kody, as always, looked very somber. But for the first time Ginny could really recall, so did Jack.

They stayed gathered in Aunt Betty's front room on into the evening, afraid something may happen during the short trip between her house and theirs and they might miss it. When they did go home, the radio was turned on and left on. Mama made supper but little was said over the meal. The latest letter from Uncle Kent lay folded on the counter, a constant reminder of the elephant in the room.

When she went to bed, Ginny didn't once think about how her friends had turned their back on her because her head was too full of worry. She worried mostly for Uncle Kent, but she also worried for herself. She worried that when she fell asleep she would have another one of those strange dreams because she knew, deep down, that it did come in threes.

*****

The front page of the local newspaper usually dealt with the things that mattered most to the locals: union news, the high school football team, upcoming church singings and such. National news was generally a few pages back, but not this week. An issue had been printed on Monday afternoon, which was a pretty big deal for a small press that only put out a paper each Sunday morning.

Jack sat on his bed staring at the headline on the front page: “WAR WITH JAPAN.” He had read this issue cover to cover. Several times. He had listened to the news broadcasts every morning before school and turned on the radio as soon as he got home. A few times his mama had insisted that he shut it off, that she had heard enough bad news for a good long while.

Nearly a week since the news first broke, the number of casualties had gone from speculation to a more accurate count. Jack always hated numbers, now more than ever. Each time he heard the death count, he felt that raw, gnawing, helpless feeling in the pit of his stomach that he'd been dealing with since Sunday. He didn't know a single one of those people, but it didn't make it any better.

He folded the newspaper and dropped it in the floor, then lay down on the bed and covered his face. All that craziness that had been going on had had nothing to do with Jack Paserella, yet he knew he had to do something. He was just supposed to do something to make it right, if that was even possible. Listening to the news wasn't going to make any difference, nor was any degree of anger or grief. No, he knew what he had to do and he also knew that if he didn't, he would be overcome by guilt.

Jack had been looking for a sign, and one day, it came from the sky. He just hadn't expected it to come in the form of a fleet of Japanese fighter planes, thousands of miles away.