Across the aisle, a middle-aged woman with cruel eyes and a pinched face pulled her runny-nosed child closer.
“You’d think the army’d put people like thet away. It’s men like him who run wild killin’ and rapin’ decent women.”
An older, colored man came down the aisle and gently moved the driver out of the way.
“Y’all give us a minute. I were a soldier, I know what to do.”
He bent down and whispered in Luther’s ear. “Sergeant Major, Sergeant Major, snap to, you’re needed on the double.”
Luther let go of Boy Patterson, nineteen years old, good natured and full of laughter. He dragged himself into the present. It took all his strength. His unfocused eyes looked at the black man for a long count.
“What...what is it? He coughed and pounded his knees with bony, clenched fists.
“You’re home, Sar’n Major. It’s time to git off the bus.”
He reached out and touched the four rows of medals, especially the one with the blue background and white stars.
“No more war for you, young fella.” He pulled Luther to his feet. “You gonna be all right, boy?”
Luther focused on the man’s face. He saw concern and respect. “Was I bad?” Luther looked around nervously.
The older man’s face creased with a smile. “Uh, huh, you was talkin’ some. Don’t you worry none. These folk don’t unnerstan. Jus’ ‘cause the fightin’s done don’t mean the war’s ovuh.
“Y’all go home now, find a place where folks won’t mind if’n you talk strange for a while. Find you a big ole’ rock. Talk at it. It helps to know it’ll be there the next day. This pain will ease, time an family ‘ll do it.”
He pulled Luther’s duffel down from the overhead rack. “Go on now, I’ll bring this. Time someone fetched for you, you done fetched for them,” he nodded toward the passengers.
The bus stopped in front of a run-down gas station with a diner attached. Outside the air was hot and humid. A faded Coca-Cola sign drooped across a slab of plywood. Someone had hand-painted, ‘Ray’s Fine Food’ on it.
Luther’s father stood by a pickup truck parked next to a Texaco pump. A twentieth century stoic: raised to work twelve hours a day, hide his feelings, and fear God.
Luther stood in the sun while the driver removed another bag from the storage compartment. The colored man stood nearby. Luther turned to him and put out his hand.
“You musta been a good soldier.”
They shook hands. Two solemn men closer than their neighbors or family would ever allow.
“I were, Sar’n Major. Y’all take it easy, heah?” He got back on the bus.
Luther’s father walked over to the bus. They looked at each other, assessing the changes.
“It’s real good to have you home, Luther.” Luther’s father did not embrace his son.
They shook hands. “I’m tired, Daddy, real tired.”
Over the next few days Luther tried to explain himself to his father but couldn’t find the words. A day came when he blacked out and fell off the tractor. He lay in a dark red furrow of dirt groaning and dreaming.
His father sat in the field with him. He didn’t know what to do, so he sat with his son and prayed. He prayed for what every father who watches his child suffer prays for.
“Let it be me, Lord. Let me have the pain.” Fathers always imagine they are stronger than their sons when in fact they are only older.
Luther finally fell into a restless sleep. His father moved the tractor close to put the boy in the shade. It didn’t occur to him to go for a doctor. There wasn’t anything wrong with his son’s body.
Luther woke up at dusk. It came slow before he realized where he was, what had happened. His father held his hand as he had when Luther was a little boy.
“I’m sorry to trouble you, Daddy, real sorry.”
“Don’t matter none. There’s jess you an me. Y’all need time. Done too much, always did, even when you was a little boy.”
“I don’t know how long this is goin’ to take.” Luther looked across the fields to the purple mountains behind. “I’m glad Mama didn’t see me this way.”
“She’d a’ been fine, boy. That woman had grit, and a gentle nature. Don’t know that I evuh heard her say an unkind word to anyone.” He smiled at Luther, then looked away into the distance.
“Musta been a thousand times I wondered what she seen in me. I weren’t winnin’ no beauty contests in those days. “She was the accountant at Tolliver’s Mercantile: finished high school too! Imagine that. You know up in the north they call us rednecks like it was a dirty word. As if we don’t do nuthin’ but drink moonshine likker and hang black folks.”
He didn’t let go of his son’s hand. He worried Luther would go away if he did.
“Your Mama didn’t mind my red neck, which it sure ‘nuff is,” he chuckled.
Luther looked at his father with surprise and affection. He hadn’t ever talked about Luther’s mother that he could remember.
“I’d a like to been better educated, but it weren’t in me. Then the Depression ‘n all, trying to keep food on the table. Got this here red neck workin’ the farm, raisin’ crops for other folks. Lord, I ain’t had a decent drink of ‘shine in more’n three years; ‘n as far as black folks go, I couldn’t get so mad at a man, black or white, I wouldn’t go out and take care of buiness personal. Don’t need no dang fool bed sheets and burnin’ crosses. It ain’t Christian.”
Luther looked at his father. He didn’t remember his mother very well. She had died when he was three. He never realized how much his father missed her.
Chapter 6
A month after Luther returned from Korea he knew it wasn’t going to get better. He’d blacked out three times that he could remember. He couldn’t concentrate long enough to do a decent day’s work.
He went looking for his father and found him in the barn putting up hay, his face sweaty, streaked with dirt and chaff. Nathan Cole stuck the pitchfork into the hay and motioned Luther out side. They sat on a wooden bench and looked across the fields.
Luther’s father wiped his face with a checkered cloth and slowly rolled a cigarette. The leaf was rough cut and pungent. He grew and cured his own tobacco like his father had before him.
“Not goin’ too good, is it, Luther.”
“No, Daddy. I feel worse ‘cause it troubles you. I know you don’t mind, but it bothers me somethin’ terrible.” His father waited patiently. Luther went on.
“What kind ‘a shape is granddaddy’s place up on the mountain?” Luther looked toward the hills turning orange in the sunset.
“Why boy, I don’t rightly know. Been four, maybe five years since I been up there. Went huntin’ with Cousin Joe Barkwood up that way.” He took a drag on his homemade, and watched the blue smoke catch on the wind.
“He built it good, mostly stone, red oak, and pine. Door still worked: roof weren’t broke. Course that slate probly last three hundred year. Went down to the spring. Big jack pine fallen down and messed it up some, but the waters’ still sweet. “Man could make good whiskey with that water.” He paused to stamp