Chapter Three
Over the next few weeks, we saw very little of Uncle Everett. I missed him greatly, for in every way he was my surrogate father. We did enjoy Mr. Chappels’ visits, especially my mother. He began showing up in the late afternoons. Frequently, he brought her flowers and, occasionally, boxes of candy for my grandmother, Pearl, and me.
My grandmother effused for hours after he left. “Ah! Shaula! I told you there was another man for you. You like him. Don’t deny it. That’s quite all right, dear. Hamilton is dead. Tommy’s daddy is never coming back. I don’t mean to sound maudlin. But we have to face reality. He needs a daddy, and you’re too young to waste away as a widow.” It would grieve her to have to say this. Nonetheless, she would fold her hands in her lap and stare at my mother with that certain look, with that dreadful truth in her eye: that both knew that this was best.
They would rock together. Sometimes my mother would cry. Although, I was quite a large and strong child for age six, my mother would reach for my hand and have me sit in her lap. She would hold my head against her shoulder and neck, and rock and rock and rock.
Sometimes my grandmother would turn with a twinkle in her eye, and, standing with her back to the fireplace, lift the edges of her dress—ever so coquettishly—shuffle her feet in a pretend dance, and sing:
Over there, over there, send the word, send the word, over there.
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drum’s rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer, send the word, send the word to beware.
The Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
And they won’t be back till its over over there.
If she were in a more melancholic mood, however, she would remain seated and hum: “Oh, Danny Boy.” Sometimes she would substitute my name for “Danny’s.”
After awhile, I would fall asleep in my mother’s lap.
As for my mother, she possessed a spirit of grit that wonderfully compensated for any diminution in size. She could not have been more than five-one in those days. Later, she would shrink even more. Long red curls defined her, if anything. Her coiffeur set her apart from other women. Plus, her eyes: a pale shade of green behind warm eyelashes. There was a softness about her touch and her fair skin. It would freckle at the slightest exposure to sun. For this reason, she never left the house without wearing a hat that protected her face, even in the winter. Farm odors annoyed her. She would sprinkle a dainty pink handkerchief, no larger than a postcard, with her favorite perfume: Enchanté de Paris. How Parisian it was, I never knew, nor still know. That she could buy it in the drugstore in Abingdon during the war, says it all. It came in a tiny square bottle, which she kept on her dresser. A delicate fragrance filled the room, whenever she uncapped it.
At that time, Mr. Chappels lived in town. My mother took me to visit him one warm March afternoon. He met us at the door. “Come in young fellow, Master Edmonds,” he addressed me. “I’ve been expecting you,” he winked toward my mother. I realized something pre-planned, no doubt, was astir, but my curiosity overruled any sense of adult management. He escorted me into a large library, where he had set up an electric train near a fireplace. A circular track, with a black engine, coal car, one brown and two yellow boxcars, and a red caboose immediately caught my eye. “Oh, boy!” I must have shouted, for both he and my mother laughed. “It’s all yours,” he beamed.
“Marion! Please! It’s too much,” my mother protested.
“On the contrary! Here, Tommy, let’s sit down and see if it works.”
I followed his lead and sat on the floor with him, with my feet tucked under my legs. He turned on the transformer, and the train began to crawl. He increased its speed. It whistled, and smoke puffed out of its chimney. He ran it around the track a dozen times.
“There are lots of books you can look at,” he pointed toward the shelves. He turned off the train’s switch and rose to his feet. “Your mother and I need a few moments together,” he said.
I thought nothing of his comment and, stooping forward to examine the boxcars, lifted them off the track, turned them upside down to spin the wheels, before placing them back. I did that with all the cars; then I began to explore his library. My eyes struggled to take in his holdings. They equaled anything we had on the farm. His books seemed more neatly organized than ours, and many of them still had their bright, glossy dust jackets in place. Stacks of Life magazines enjoyed a shelf of their own. Their covers had to do with the war, with wounded soldiers and shot-up military matériel. I stared at the soldiers’ bloody bandages and dirty hands, their hollow eyes, and mess kits and canteens. I wanted to be a soldier. To carry guns and throw grenades! To kill Japs and Nazis.
It had grown very quiet in the house. I placed the magazines back on the shelf and crept across the hallway and peeked into living room. Mr. Chappels was kissing my mother. And she was letting him! My face felt hot, my heart numb. I wanted my grandmother; I wanted to run home. I slipped back into the library, closed its glass doors, and curled up in a corner by the Life magazines. How long we stayed, I have no idea.
More and more, my mother drove into town alone. More and more Mr. Chappels came out to the farm and stayed with us for supper.
My grandmother delighted in these arrangements. “Tommy, your mother and Mr. Chappels are going to get married. Do you know what that means?”
“I think so. It means Mama’s gonna move away.”
“No! It means you’re going to have a new daddy, Mr. Chappels. He’s incredibly fond of you and will love you as much as your father. Your mother will be very happy, and we’ll all have a new life.”
That there was anything wrong with our present one escaped me.
“The wedding will be here on the farm. Won’t that be exciting?”
I didn’t know. But as I thought about Mr. Chappels, I drew comfort from the fact that he had steadied Uncle Everett’s horse that afternoon, when I was perched behind the saddle, and had then pulled out his pistol and shot Mr. Crawford, dead! I liked that. That’s what Uncle Everett would have done, if he could have gotten to his pistol.
About that time my mother’s sister, my Aunt Rachel, came to visit us. She generally came once a year and stayed a month or more. Though unpredictable, she could be entertaining. She paid me dimes to run errands and do special chores for her. Her arrival caused the wedding to be postponed, but that didn’t anger my mother. “I need more time,” I overheard her say to Aunt Rachel. “Marion frequently has to be in Richmond, when the legislature is in session. I’ve asked him to wait till late summer.”
Aunt Rachel lived in Roanoke. She and my mother were originally from Wytheville. The two loved to reminisce about their childhood and first years of marriage. Aunt Rachel had a dark side, but if it had emerged in previous visits, it passed unremembered by me.
One afternoon, after my mother had been tutoring me in reading and simple addition, I happened to pass through the kitchen, on my way to play outside. Aunt Rachel was seated in a swing on the back screened-in porch. She was talking to herself and cussing under her breath. I stopped to listen.
“The son-of-a-bitch. I told him not to see her. By God, I taught him. Bastard!” she chuckled to herself. “Got him right in the arm! Swish! Take that!” She held her left hand up, as if gripping a knife. “Shit!” Her eyebrows arched. An ugly smile marred her thin lips. Her complexion was dark to start with, and her forehead wide and sallow. One could not call her beautiful, though perhaps she had been in her youth. Strands of uncombed brown hair hung limp about her ears. She kept tapping the floor with one foot, to keep the swing in motion. In her right hand, she clasped a pint bottle. Suddenly, she stopped, turned, and glared at me, as if through a dense haze. “Tommy! Is that you? It’s not nice to spy on Aunt