Earl didn’t waste a second thought on the six years he had spent in Japan. His country had been sneak-attacked by the Japanese, and he wanted to pay them back for their treachery. “I’ve decided to attend the U.S. Army Chaplain School,” he told Gertrude. “You and Van can move back to South Carolina and stay with Estelle until I finish. I’m going to join the military.”
Gertrude pleaded with Earl to let her and Van stay in California, but he refused. “No. We don’t know what’s going to happen. They might attack again. I want you with my family, where you’ll be safe.”
The next day, the three of them rented a car and left California, heading for Estelle’s home in Conway, South Carolina. Earl kept up a steady stream of conversation with Van, who relished the attention, while Gertrude pouted the whole way across the country. Her mood worsened a few days later when they pulled into Estelle’s driveway and she saw Bits and Aileen playing outside. It dawned on her that she would have to help take care of them.
“I am not taking care of those brats,” she informed her husband.
“Calm down, Gertrude,” Earl said. “Estelle can’t continue to care for three children by herself. She was kind enough to take Louise while we were gone. We’re Christians. These girls are family. We must behave like Christians and help her.”
“Christians be damned!” Gertrude shouted, marching into the house and slamming the door behind her.
After getting their bags from the car, Earl put his arm around his sister.
“Don’t pay any attention to Gertrude,” he said. “She’ll be fine.”
Estelle wasn’t so sure. She loved her brother and wanted to help, but she was well aware that Gertrude was spoiled and petulant. Louise had often complained that Gertrude had treated her poorly when she lived with her.
Once his family was settled, Earl submitted his application to the Corps and waited eagerly for his acceptance letter. While he waited, Earl acquainted himself with his new parishioners, many of whom were happy to turn to him for guidance and prayer as they proudly and fearfully watched their sons go off to war.
Earl soon received his letter of acceptance and headed off to Williamsburg, Virginia, where he would eventually earn his degree from the U.S. Army Chaplain School. He then joined the Navy as a chaplain, determined to give spiritual guidance and counsel to young soldiers who were putting their lives on the line for America. He moved up quickly, earning the rank of lieutenant, and was assigned to the USS Altamaha, an escort aircraft carrier, under the command of Admiral “Bull” Halsey. His primary role was to give comfort and inspiration through his message of hope and salvation.
When he wasn’t ministering, Earl worked as an intelligence officer, tasked with tracking and deciphering the enemy’s coded messages. Because he could read and write Japanese and German, Earl soon became an asset to his unit. During World War II, the U.S. Navy and Army utilized a complex cipher machine called SIGABA to write American codes. This machine proved to be a valuable asset, because SIGABA codes were unbreakable, whereas Japanese codes, called PURPLE, and German codes, written with a machine called Enigma, could easily be deciphered by the Americans. The U.S. military had another advantage when passing along secret information not meant for enemy eyes: American Indian Code Talkers, comprising Navajo, Cherokee, Choctaw, and Comanche Indians, among others, who used the arcane language of their forefathers to create intricate codes. There were so many dialects in the languages that no one in the Axis forces could crack the codes.
Earl loved serving his country, but back home, angry that her husband had left her with his sister and the children, Gertrude fumed. Like Louise had years before, Aileen and Bits quickly learned to stay out of her way. So did Van. He hid in his small room at the back of the house, wishing that his father would hurry back. He didn’t like his cousins. They laughed at his books, his music.
My grandmother, desperate for some fun, began concocting this reason or that for why she needed to be away from the house in the afternoons. Estelle wasn’t fooled when she saw Gertrude’s hair swept up in a bow and the pretty dresses she wore. Word soon got to Earl that his wife was fornicating with members of his congregation, but he had God’s work to do. He would deal with her as soon as he had fulfilled his obligation to the military.
A few months later, Earl traveled back to South Carolina to straighten out his errant wife.
“Look, Gertrude,” Earl yelled, placing his Bible in front of her, “right there in Hebrews, chapter thirteen, verse fourteen, it says, ‘Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.’ Do you want to be judged as an adulteress?”
Gertrude tearfully shook her head. “I don’t know what comes over me,” she cried.
Earl didn’t know, either.
“I’m a minister, for God’s sake. My wife is supposed to be a pillar of the community.”
He begged and pleaded with his wife to be faithful, and when that didn’t work, he screamed at her. Nothing he did mattered. Gertrude craved more attention than her husband could give her.
Things got so bad that Gertrude would weep when Earl pulled up in the driveway. It was a strange dichotomy. On Sundays, he would stand in the pulpit preaching the gospel, and Gertrude would sit at the piano, playing hymns beautifully, smiling as she praised God. They looked like such a happy family, but no one was fooled. Earl didn’t have to ask which men who sat in the pews of his church had slept with his wife. He knew. He could tell by the way they averted their eyes when he looked at them and spoke about sin. He struggled to forgive Gertrude for her transgressions, but she just transgressed some more.
To take his mind off his problems, Earl focused on my father. Back then, most children did not have a television to occupy their time, so they either stayed outdoors playing ball or inside playing board games, word games, tic-tac-toe, and checkers. When my grandfather was home on leave from the Navy, he began teaching Van how to write and solve simple codes using numbers, Japanese symbols, and German and English lettering. Van was a good student, often deciphering his father’s encrypted messages quickly. Earl was impressed and endeavored to make each new one more difficult than the last. Before long, Van was creating his own codes and asking his father to break them. Van would watch from a corner of the room while Earl worked his way through the letters, numbers, and symbols. What had begun as a learning game became a competition as father and son tried constantly to outwit each other. Van enjoyed the challenge and the attention he received from his father during this pastime.
Earl had no way of knowing that one day Van would employ their game to do the devil’s work and to gain attention on a much larger scale.
After the war was over, when he could take the embarrassment no more, Earl moved with Gertrude and Van to San Francisco, hoping that his wife would be happier there and would mend her ways. But San Francisco offered Gertrude a host of new men with whom to carry on her flirtations, and Earl, well aware that divorce was unacceptable in the Methodist religion, did the unthinkable. He asked his wife for a divorce.
“I want you to file the papers, because I don’t want my son to grow up thinking I abandoned him. I’ll let him stay with you, though,” Earl said. “A boy needs his mother. You can send him to me during the summer months.”
As unhappy as she was, Gertrude did not relish the idea of being a divorced woman. She liked having the best of both worlds – all the men she wanted and the security and respect that came with being a preacher’s wife.
“I’ll be better. I promise,” she cried, as she had so many times before. “Please, Earl, think of the embarrassment,” she said, placing her arms around him.
“I am thinking of the embarrassment,” Earl retorted, removing