CHAPTER FIVE DECLARATIONS
CHAPTER
FIVE
Declarations
Three days later, Benny hunched over his cereal bowl with the morning paper spread out on the kitchen table. Excitement and frustration had coiled a tight, tense knot in his stomach. When Cora stepped into the kitchen with a ‘Good morning,’ he stabbed his finger at the headline.
‘You seen this?’ The words Germany and Italy Declare War blazed bold across the paper. ‘I told you we’d be in it on both sides before long. Next is gonna be the draft,’ he said. ‘You watch. Anybody who wants to volunteer better get on it, like Lee, before they up and call your number.’
Her mouth puckered and she pressed her fingers to her temple.
‘And look at this.’ He tapped another headline further down the page that read US Torpedoes Japanese Sub. ‘We got another one,’ he said with satisfaction.
‘Benny, enough,’ Cora snapped, startling him. She held up her hand for silence, but Benny didn’t know what to say anyways.
When Momma came in, she took one look at the headline and told him to get the paper off the table. ‘We’re trying to eat in here, not have our stomachs turned.’
He’d hoped the news would shift Momma’s and Cora’s attitude some, but each day they doubled down, no matter what the papers said.
Benny ate quickly, barely tasting his corn flakes, and drove to work past recruitment posters all along the way telling guys, ‘Uncle Sam wants you.’ In the colored neighborhoods, they had extra posters telling men they could be like Dorie Miller, the Negro hero of Pearl Harbor who carried his ship’s captain to safety, and then shot down two Japanese planes, even though he was only an untrained mess attendant.
Benny didn’t need to be a hero, he just didn’t want to be a coward, hiding behind his momma’s skirts while the whole world fought around him.
This was his chance to prove his manhood, and he was not going to sit on the sidelines.
At work he replaced a Chevrolet’s transmission and refitted the brakes on a Ford.
Keeler Motors had the contract to fix the Mangrove Bay area Hertz Drive Ur-Self fleet, which kept him in repairs.
Where Benny usually cracked jokes and hummed tunes while he worked, today, stretched under the Ford, he brooded, until finally old Mr Keeler pulled up a chair next to his outstretched legs.
‘Benny, you’ve been quieter today than a broke-down car, and moodier than my wife sitting in a broke-down car. Why don’t you tell me what’s going on with you?’
‘It’s nothing, Mr Keeler,’ he said, staring at the underbelly of the Ford. ‘I just got stuff on my mind.’
‘It’s definitely not nothing if it’s got you mouse-quiet in here all day long. Come on and talk to me.’
Mr Keeler was one of the good ones, but good as he was, Benny didn’t expect a white man to understand what he was wrestling with, so he talked about it in simple terms, watering down the dilemma that was eating him up.
He stayed scooched up under the car where it was easier to talk about things and told Mr Keeler he wanted to enlist, but that Momma and Cora needed him at home and wanted him to stay put.
‘Nothing wrong with fighting for your country,’ Mr Keeler said. ‘And it’s only natural they’d worry about you going and want you to stay.’
‘Yes, sir, but it’s more than that.’
‘Of course they rely on you as the only man in the house, but what do you think it’s like for all the other families? It’s a sacrifice for any young man to go.’
Benny bit his lip and stayed quiet. How could he speak his whole truth to a man who’d once called the Rosewood Massacre ‘a speck of trouble’?
‘You know you get a paycheck in the army, right? With not much chance to spend it. Easy enough to send that home to them. They’ll be okay. The army will see to it.’
He closed his eyes and breathed in the fumes of spent oil and gas. The pungent familiarity soothed him. ‘It’s just not that easy.’
‘I suppose not, but think on this.’ Mr Keeler’s chair squeaked as he leaned forward. ‘If you don’t go, how many years will it take for you to stop wishing you had?’
Benny slid out from under the car and looked up at Mr Keeler’s kind round face.
‘I’ll probably have a harder time getting by without you than anyone, but you have to live your own life. Even I can see that.’ He stood, dragging the chair back to the desk.
A blaze of frustration simmered and swirled around Benny.
Even if Mr Keeler couldn’t understand his situation, his boss was right about needing to live his own life.
He just wished he knew if this ache to go that was tearing him apart was more painful than the guilt that would eat him up once he’d gone.
It took a week for Benny to work up the courage to tell Momma and Cora what he’d decided. Lee getting his induction papers through was the push he needed. He came home that evening to soft voices and a dinner smell coming out of the kitchen, heavy with onions and tomatoes.
‘What’s wrong?’ Momma said when she saw his face. ‘Something happen?’ As if something hadn’t been happening every day since Pearl Harbor.
‘Can you sit down a minute?’ he said. ‘I’ve got to talk to you. You, too, Cora,’ he told his sister at the stove. She turned the burner off and came to the table, her head tilted in concern.
He only got as far as ‘I’ve decided to enlist,’ before the onslaught came. He expected resistance, but this was a doggone assault.
‘No,’ Momma said, cutting and final. ‘There are plenty of men in this country. Let them fight.’
Cora paled. ‘Benny,’ she said his name laced with heartbreak and hurt. ‘You can’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said.
Her eyes teared up and she blinked hard. ‘How could you do this? First Lee and now you.’
Benny sank low in his chair, his confidence in his decision fizzing out like air from a flat tire. ‘I can still help take care of things when I’m away,’ he said. Momma sucked her teeth and turned her head. ‘I can send my army pay home and—’
‘You’re not sending anything anywhere ’cause you’re not going,’ she said, her mouth barely moving, tension clenching her jaw.
He mashed his lips into a tight line, the strain of it pulling at the muscles in his neck.
‘Does this war mean more to you than us?’ Cora said, with a bite to her hurt that stung.
On the wall, the tick of the clock marked the seconds passing.
‘You know that’s not true,’ he said, his voice straining at patience. He counted to ten, tried again. ‘How can you two act like everything’s the same?’
‘Because everything’s the same for us,’ Momma snapped.
Benny ran his hand through his hair. Stood. Sat. He knew it was their fear talking, but it was his life. His choice. And everything was not the same.
‘Lee passed his physical,’ he said. ‘He got his army reporting papers.’ He could feel the tension spike. ‘I’m driving him to the reception center tomorrow.’
Cora stared at him with wide eyes. ‘This can’t be happening.’
‘That hooligan boy’s nothing but a run-around fool,’ Momma said, ‘jumping from one half-baked idea to another.’ She stood and went to the counter, sliding an empty frying pan into the sink where it clamored noisily as it fell. ‘And now, just because he’s running off to get himself killed –’
‘Momma—’
‘– there’s no call for people with sense to follow after him.’
‘I’m not following after him,’ he exploded, stamping his foot. ‘I have to go. Why can’t you understand that?’
‘You don’t have to go,’ she said, her words like ice. She ran the water in the sink and washed the pan, banging it against the sides as she turned it over. When she finished, she washed it all over again, letting the water run and run.
Benny dug his fingers into his thighs and turned to Cora, whose face had grown blotchy and flushed. ‘Lee wanted me to ask if you’d come say goodbye.’
Her nostrils flared. ‘I already said goodbye,’ she said, folding and refolding her hands in her lap. ‘How many goodbyes can a person say?’
Benny watched her try to hide her fluster. ‘Is something going on with you two?’
She looked away and, with a strained voice, said, ‘I don’t think he should go.’
A warm tingle ran down his spine worrying him that he’d missed something important about two people so close to him. ‘Cora, I promised him I’d ask you to come.’
Her gaze flitted around the room like she was following a midge fly, as her breath got quicker, louder, and he wondered about the hidden parts of Cora’s life that he had no idea of.
‘She’s not going,’ Momma said with her back to them, the water still running.
He stiffened at the sound of her voice, and Cora got up and went to her at the sink, reaching past her to turn the water off, taking the pan from the sink and drying it with a rag.
Benny had too much to say, and the words caught in his throat, as frustration burned through him.
This was his decision. His risk. His life.
The legs of his chair scraped and caught on the uneven floor as he pushed back from the table to stand.
He left the house and drove, going anywhere as long as he kept moving.
He choked with guilt at the thought of leaving them, and fumed that they would ask him to stay.
After half an hour of driving up and down the streets, he was close to Jasper’s place.
He needed to talk to a friend, he realized, but Jasper would bombard him with all the reasons he should stay put and a list of ways America had failed him, so Benny turned his car around and headed to Roscoe’s boarding house.
In Roscoe’s bedroom, the two of them huddled together talking in low tones, blocking out the noises from the other boarders. ‘I’m getting some things in order,’ Roscoe said, ‘and then I’m gone.’
Benny felt unreasonably abandoned. ‘You’ve already decided?’
He nodded, then grinned and smacked Benny’s chest, snorting out a laugh. ‘I can’t let Lee get all the glory, can I?’
Benny forced a smile. He’d always felt sorry for Roscoe for not having a family.
When they were sixteen and Roscoe’s momma ran off, his daddy had already been gone for years.
Roscoe didn’t want pity, but he needed help, so Benny had him come stay with them, sleeping on the sofa for two years until he turned eighteen and got himself into the boarding house.
Benny used to watch him bunk down in the living room and think how awful not to have family, but now, it made him free.
‘I’ve got Momma and Cora to worry about,’ Benny said.
‘You can send them your checks.’
‘But what if I don’t make it back?’
‘I’m not even thinking about that,’ Roscoe said. ‘And you shouldn’t either.’
‘If I’m gone, the money’s gone, Roscoe. They couldn’t stay in our home with just two paychecks.
And I know Momma worries about it, even if she won’t talk about it.
’ Benny picked at the calluses on his palm, embarrassed to reveal just how much he’d be abandoning his family if he left.
‘I overheard her telling Aunt Teen that she and Cora would move to one of those run-down shacks on Gator Plane if they lost my pay. I can’t let that happen. ’
For a moment Roscoe sat thoughtful, then dug into some leaflets beside his bed. Dog-eared and well thumbed, they were army recruiting brochures. He flicked through them until he got to what he was looking for.
‘Here,’ he said. ‘Right there. The army pays out to dependants if you die for your country.’
Benny took the leaflet and read the section Roscoe pointed to. ‘That’s for wives and kids, not sisters and mommas.’
Roscoe nodded, a slow smile spreading across his face. ‘We need to get Cora married.’
Benny spat out a dismissive huff. ‘I can’t marry my sister, Roscoe.’
His friend’s eyes sparkled, looking like a man with a straight flush in his hand and an ace in his pocket. ‘No, you can’t,’ he said. ‘But I can.’
Benny stared at him, caution dampening the excitement. ‘You’re not trying to pay me back like this, are you?’ he asked. ‘Because—’
‘I know. Friends don’t keep score,’ Roscoe said in a droning voice, quoting Benny’s frequently repeated words. ‘And I owe you nothing. I got it. But when my momma left, you were there for me like no one else. Let me be here for you.’
Benny shook his head. ‘I appreciate you, and it means a lot that you’d do this for me, but it’s too big. I can’t ask you to marry my sister.’
Roscoe sat back and pinned Benny with a hard look. ‘It’s too big? Or I’m not good enough?’
‘Don’t be stupid. We’re talking about getting married. Cora’s not going to just do what I say. This isn’t kids’ stuff.’
‘Benny, you know I’ve been sweet on Cora for years, and when I was living with you all, you made it crystal clear she was off limits—’
‘Because you were living with us,’ Benny protested.
‘And I’ve respected you. I haven’t pushed. But she and I could have a real chance. And help you out in the process. So do you not really want to go? Or am I not really good enough?’
Benny regarded his friend. He knew he’d been sweet on Cora. Would it have turned into something if Benny hadn’t stopped it? Roscoe was a good guy, and he knew Cora cared about him. And if there was anybody she’d agree to do this with, surely it would be Roscoe. ‘You sure about this?’
Roscoe nodded and held out a hand that Benny slapped and twisted in their complicated handshake.
‘Thank you, brother,’ Benny said, grinning now as the excitement took hold. They were going to enlist. They were going to war.