John Robert [Short Story]

John Robert

The last time I saw my mother was in a railway station in Chicago, Illinois.

It was two years after my Daddy went to the war, and seven years ago. I ain't seen her since then, and now I guess I won't.

I don't remember as much about her as I used to, but I guess it probably doesn't matter. In the good parlor, there is a picture of my Daddy in his uniform, but none of her. Her name is stamped on the brass tag on the side of my suitcase. It's scratched some, but you can read it when it is polished up. E. Wolke. Elizabeth.

The ladies in our building back then in Chicago called her Lizzie Wolke, but my Daddy called her Bess. He'd call for her when he stamped in from the cold to our kitchen, I can remember him saying it. First I'd hear him on the stairs and then in the hallway talking to the outside people and laughing and then the door would open and I'd see his boots, clumped up with snow and dirt and he'd call her Bess.

There would be puddles on the floor where he melted down in the heat of the stove and she'd stand in them with her toes near his and her stockings would get wet. Then he'd see me and swing me high and say "Buddy!" My name is John Robert, and always was, but he called me Buddy.

He could change things like that, Mama said later, and no one would mind cause what he changed them to was always better than what they were before. But that was after he left and went to the war.

She dressed me in the dark that morning of the railway station. I don't know how long she'd been awake, but a while. She never got me up so early or so quiet. Even my wool Sunday suit and coat weren't as warm as my bed by the stove, and I think I cried some. I was seven, a baby, and not very smart about things, yet. All the time she buttoned and tied and tucked me, she talked and I guess she was crying, too. She didn't look pretty like that. I don't remember what she said, either, so don't ask.

Whatever it was it probably wasn't true. Sometimes people just cry to cry, cause they think they should and it don't mean nothing at all. You get to know that when you grow up. When I was seven though, I didn't know that yet.

My Daddy was a Sergeant in the war, which is better than a Private. Uncle Willy was a Private and he came back with a missing leg and a missing eye. Aunt Lou says he's a hero and if he was, then I guess my Daddy was a hero too since he never came back at all. I reckon a Sergeant is more a hero than a Private anyway.

They say he went missing, but when I came to Oak Falls, I think he was already dead. I think Mama knew it too, but she was too yellow to say it. I told Aunt Lou that once and she boxed my ear pretty good, but I still think it. You know when someone is dead. There's a place in you when they go missing and it just gets hard sometime, and you know.

When Mae Wickam from school went missing on the hill I knew she was dead. They didn't believe when I said it. When it turned out she was, you could tell they were sorry, but they didn't really look at me. Folks don't like being wrong about things.

It must have been very early, that morning, because in our building people always made noise before the sun. But there was no sound anywhere except Mama talking to me in the light by the stove. When I was all dressed in my good clothes, Mama kneeled in front of me and wrapped my scarf around my neck and untied a brown paper parcel from the kitchen table. It was a cap and matching mittens, green wool and soft, not scratchy like the old ones. I still have the cap in my strong box in the loft. It doesn't fit me anymore, now I'm fourteen and grown. But the mittens are lost.

Mama said she was sending me to the country on account of it was dangerous, but don't you believe it. We had the influenza in Oak Falls that Spring, and my cousin Davy died of it. So Oak Falls couldn't have been worse than Chicago. I'm sure if she read the papers my mother would have known that but Aunt Lou says she couldn't read so good. So I guess she didn't know and that's that, but it seems like she could have asked around.