Chapter 11
TUESDAY
DECEMBER 1936
“Ma!” LJ thundered into the kitchen, with Dup following and the screen door slapping behind them. “You got to come. Now.” He tugged on her arm so hard she nearly knocked over a huge pot of chili.
“LJ, mind yourself. What are you all riled about?” She sampled the chili. Fair to middling, seeing how this was her umpteenth batch and she’d run out of salt. Tonight was Christmas at the Starlight, which was free to all, and she needed a lot of chili. In about an hour, the place would be bustling with volunteers to decorate and prepare for Ol’ St. Nick to arrive, along with the baby Jesus, of course.
Over at the Nickle place, Harriet baked up a mountain of corn bread, while her sisters Jubilee and Rosalie baked so many pies Tuesday could smell the sweetness all the way to her corner of town.
Everyone turned out for Christmas at the Starlight. This year, a newcomer, Mr. Giovanni Esposito, volunteered all the gelato they could eat. Such a treat. Then, last night, Mr. Milner delivered so many oranges the volunteers stuffed two into every child’s stocking.
The Depression lingered along the Panhandle, but with the Works Progress Administration and some ingenuity, the citizens of Sea Blue Beach prospered, sharing from their abundance, or perhaps their lack, but thriving all the same.
All week long, folks passed on the street, calling out to one another, “Meet me at the Starlight on Christmas Eve,” their arms laden with packages from the shops and the post office.
“Ma, you have to come. Now.” LJ tugged on her again.
“I thought I was the mother around here. Dupree, hand me that crock by the door. LJ, did you do like I asked and pick up the dishes from Miss Harriet’s church? Is Burt at the rink? He’ll need to let folks in.”
“Ma!” Dupree shoved the crock into her arms, his man-boy voice amplified in the small space. “It’s Pa. He’s hurt bad.”
“What? Your pa?” She handed the crock back to Dupree. “Fill this with chili.” Leroy, what have you gone and done now? “LJ, stoke the stove. We don’t need no sparks burning the place down.”
The wet December chill felt good on her skin, while the hammer of her heels against the pavement sent vibrations through her limbs and around her heart. One block, two blocks, three blocks ... yet the Starlight seemed farther away. When she gasped for a breath, the air’s icy edge cut up her lungs.
She burst through the back door into a cluster of men in work trousers and suspenders hovering against the wall, hats in hand.
“You Tuesday?” One of the men pointed to the closed room. “In there. Doc’s with him.”
She shoved into the room, where stacks of presents, and a mountain of stuffed stockings, awaited the evening’s festivities. And where another family down on their luck had recently vacated. A relative came through with a job and wired money for them to drive home for Christmas.
Leroy lay on the floor, his shirt soaked with blood, a strap of leather between his teeth as a man with a knife worked his shoulder, using a candle for more light.
“Nearly there.” He gingerly sank the tip of the knife into an open wound. Leroy writhed in pain, and Tuesday fell against the chest of drawers, clinging to it as her vision began to fade. “Mac, bring a couple of the boys in to hold him steady. Sorry, Lee, but this is the only way. You Mrs. Knight? I need antiseptic.”
“W-what?” She tried to gather some strength.
“Antiseptic.” Doc sank the knife deeper in the wound, and Leroy swooned. “I’ll need bandages as soon as I get this bullet out.”
“Bullet?” she whispered.
LJ burst into the room. “Is he dead? Is he? Ma?”
“LJ, get the antiseptic.” She grabbed his shoulders and turned him out. “In the office ... Medicine cabinet.”
Leroy remained unconscious, thank goodness, while Doc worked. After a minute, or maybe an eternity, he rose up with a small piece of metal in his hand. “Got it.” He wiped his knife with the edges of Leroy’s torn shirt. “We need clean bandages, Mrs. Knight.”
“Of course.” But she was a statue, unable to move from the bureau. When LJ returned with the bottle of Listerine, she told him to run to the house and get a set of clean sheets. She’d taken the ones she used for the Starlight’s guests home to wash.
Doc poured a generous amount of antiseptic over the wound, using Leroy’s shirt to mop up the excess and the blood. Lee stirred with a moan.
“You want him in here?” Doc tipped his head toward the bed. “To recuperate?”
“No, no, take him to the house. After you’ve doctored him.”
“You going to be able to take over?” He regarded her for a long moment as if deciding Tuesday’s competency. He was handsome, with salt-and-pepper hair, hazel eyes with flecks of green, and an intense scar down his right cheek. “I can show you what to do.”
Tuesday swallowed and nodded. “I-I can.” She resented feeling weak, resented the residue of the scared fifteen-year-old girl standing on the side of Gulf Road South as her mamaw, the only mother she’d ever known, drove off in a loaded wagon, leaving her behind.
“Can’t take you with, Tooz. The town folks will tend to you. Go to school and behave yourself.”
“Ma?” LJ shoved a set of sheets against her middle. “These the right ones?”
“Um, no. Yes. They’ll do. Thank you.” She clutched the linens like a life vest before handing them to Doc. LJ brought her good sheets. The ones she’d purchased from Montgomery Ward after saving for two years. Now they’d soak up her husband’s blood. “I’ll get the scissors.”
She crossed the rink in a haze. Don’t you die on me, Leroy Knight.
At the top of the rink, a band warmed up with a song from the latest Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers movie.
Burt met her as she came out of the office with the shears. “Where’re you going with those, Tooz? I thought you was home cooking chili.”
“I was—I am. We had a ... never mind. Burt, who is that band and why are they here? Where’s Dirk?” If asked right now, she may not know her own name.
“The high school band, Tooz. They’re practicing. You invited them to play for Christmas Eve.”
“And Dirk? Where’s he?”
“Don’t know. Why?”
“Call around, see if you can’t find him. He’s the organist for singing the carols, and I want him here. See if he’s...” Had he been with Lee? Was he shot as well? “Just find him.”
“Tooz, what’s going on? Why you so jittery? Don’t tell me Lee’s gone and done something again.” Burt had never approved of Leroy’s ways and never shied away from expressing his opinion.
“Just find Dirk, will you?”
Back in the room, fragrant with sweaty men and drying blood, she cut up her precious sheets until Doc said he had enough. Even then she continued because she didn’t know what else to do.
“Take these home, LJ.” She looped the extra strips around her son’s neck, her gratitude and anger beginning a tug-of-war.
“Mrs. Knight?” Doc said. “We’re carting him to your home.”
“Fine.” She watched as five men carefully loaded Lee onto a flatbed truck.
“Care to ride?” The lanky one with dark, close-set eyes offered his hand.
“No, thank you. I-I’ll walk.” She steered LJ toward the truck. “Ride with them. Show them where to go.”
She’d started to depend on her firstborn too much, yoking him to manhood before he’d shed all the innocence of childhood. He ran errands, worked at the Starlight, discussed money and provisions. He chopped wood for the fireplace and cookstove, did his share of the washing and ironing, and even tried to teach Dup the ways of a man—which he barely understood himself. He was tall and muscular, disciplined, finishing his homework by lantern after Tuesday cut out the lights to save on the electric bill.
Curse you, Leroy, for doing this to us.
“Can I walk with you, Mrs. Knight?” Doc asked.
“Yes, but you must call me Tuesday.” She returned the scissors to her desk and met the man called Doc out front, along with the crew bringing tonight’s Christmas tree. The volunteers would show up any minute to start the decorations. Then to bring the wrapped presents and prepared stockings out of the same room where Leroy’s blood soaked the rag rug. “Go on in, Mr. Warren,” she called. “Thank you so much. Burt’s inside, he’ll help. Oh, and could you ask him to clean up the back room right away? Please.”
“Sure will, Tooz. You all right?”
“Well, of course.” She struggled to smile. “It’s Christmas Eve. May I introduce Doc? A friend of Lee’s.”
The day was cold, despite the brightness of the midmorning sun. Tuesday wrapped her arms about her torso and walked a block with Doc before either of them spoke.
He went first. “Guess you figured Lee was shot.”
The damp Gulf air sank into her bones, making her shiver. “The big question is, who shot him and why?”
“I can’t say.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Maybe a little of both.”
“He’s running booze, isn’t he? Why else would he be gone so much or need a crew of ‘boys’?” Boys, ha. Hoodlums, every last one of them. Except maybe Doc here. He felt out of place with the others. Had an air of sophistication about him. “What else? Gambling? Women?”
Even with prohibition over, the bootlegging continued. Where there was a flow of booze, one could count on gambling and whoring.
“He loves you, Mrs. Knight ... Tuesday. Talks about you all the time.”
“Is that my consolation prize? He’s never around, and he’s engaged in things that get him shot, but I should feel lucky that he talks about me.”
“He’s trying to be a good man.”
“Then Leroy Knight and I will have another come-to-Jesus meeting, because I didn’t marry him so I could live alone and raise my sons without a father.”
“We live in hard times, Tuesday. A man can’t find a job worth more than the shirt on his back. I believe Leroy is doing his best to provide for his family.”
“Is getting shot part of the plan? What about the WPA? Plenty of men make money on President Roosevelt’s program.” Tuesday slowed and turned toward him. “I don’t buy into this notion of thieving and robbing because a good job just don’t pay enough. Honesty is worth far more than a dollar, Doc. I’d a-soon he washed fish guts off the boats or picked oranges than run with folks who get him shot. The next bullet might not miss his heart.” She brushed a cold tear from her cheek. “Besides, I can’t remember the last time he showed up with any cash.”
“Like I said, times are rough.”
“Tell me, are you a real doctor?”
“I studied but never finished. My father died, and I had to take care of my mother and siblings. By the time my youngest brother left the house, I was thirty years old and ready for adventure. I worked my way across the Atlantic on a merchant ship. Got a job in London as a doctor’s assistant. By some miracle, I married a beautiful, charitable English heiress and had two stunning daughters.”
“How do they feel about you running around with hoodlums?”
“They’re dead.” Said so succinctly she almost didn’t believe him except for the grief in his eyes.
“I’m so sorry.”
“My wife was from a long line of lords and ladies. One of her uncles was a British general during our Revolutionary War. Her family, the great Traffords, had people in New York and wanted my wife to bring our daughters over for the summer Season. That way, when they made their American debut, they’d have made the right acquaintances.”
“Seasons and debuts,” Tuesday whispered. “Sounds like a Jane Austen novel.”
“My wife booked passage for the spring, and I was to follow a month later. After all, I was still a working man. Once I arrived, we’d spend a month with my family and sail home together. I stood on the dock, watching them board the HMS Titanic. ”
“Doc.” Tuesday grabbed his arm. “Weren’t they rescued?”
“Betsy, my wife, was the most generous soul. She had gone to steerage to help a sick family. So like her, my Bets.” He sighed and walked on. “The girls woke when the ship started listing and tried to find her, probably ended up belowdecks or trapped somewhere. They were eleven and nine.”
“I cannot imagine,” Tuesday said with a shiver against the chill.
“Yes, that’s the thing, isn’t it? What we imagine. I had some relief when the wife of the couple in the stateroom next to my girls wrote to me, told me what she believed happened.” Doc gazed toward the sound of the waves. “Two years later, when the Great War broke out, my wife’s uncle recruited me for the Royal Army Medical Corp. I was forty years old. My two brothers died in 1918. The Battle of Belleau Wood. My mother succumbed to the Spanish flu, and my sister married and moved west. In the blink of an eye, I was utterly alone. I sailed back to the States, sold the family home, and hopped a train. Found a life on the rails, hoboing, doing odd jobs, doctoring folks who might not want a real doctor or hospital to know what they’d been up to. Helped a few gals in trouble, who got in the family way.”
“Doc—”
“I am not proud. Not at all.” He glanced at her. “How’d you meet Lee?”
“At the Starlight. I worked there. Lived there too, in that very room where you fixed him up. My mother was sixteen and unmarried. My grandparents raised me, but Mamaw was done raising kids after seven of her own. My mother was the youngest. Probably why she got in trouble. When Gramps died, Mamaw packed up and left. Prince Blue at the Starlight saved me. Then I met Leroy.”
“Lee was real proud when he gave you the rink.”
“You knew him then? Did he tell you what I really wanted was a diamond ring?” She smiled softly. “But the Starlight is a marvelous substitute. Incomparable, really.”
“Can I give you some advice?” Doc waited for her answer, a somberness about him.
“Go on.”
“Leroy may not be living up to what he promised you as a young man in love, but sometimes love requires taking it as it comes and in the manner it’s given. You can choose to accept or reject it. I’ve lived a good many years, Tuesday, and my advice is to see Leroy’s love as he gives it. Then, like the rest of us, do what you must to fill the cracks.”