Forty Dead Men Page 2

  He had never said very much at all about his time in France. That did not surprise anyone. Gee Dub had never been a big talker.

  Alafair wondered, but she knew she would not ask her son what significance the boxes held for him. If he wanted her to know, he would tell her. She changed the sheets and pillow case, shook out the blankets, and replaced the boxes where she had found them. She would mention her find to Shaw tonight, after they had gone to bed. Not that she expected him to do anything, but sometimes it’s important to share your burdens.

  Chapter Three

  Gee Dub dismounted and sat down on the knoll with his rifle across his lap. The isolated hill was one of his favorite places in the world. It was located just at the edge of the woods, overlooking the south-facing bank on a bend of Cloud Creek, which was running high this February after the winter rains. The dappled shade of the pin oaks provided camouflage, so it would be hard for the odd casual passerby to see him. But he could see out across the fields to the north for some miles. The silence and solitude comforted him. After the continual clamor and horror of the front, he had lost his tolerance for most any kind of noise. Since he had come home, he had ridden out here every day to spend hours on his own in the quiet peace of nature and wait for his thinking processes to start up again.

  He had been unable to plan more than ten minutes into the future for some months. Or to plan at all, really. Since France, he could only react to whatever circumstance he found himself in.

  He removed a blanket roll from behind his saddle and unfurled it on the ground before seating himself on it. He sat for a moment, enjoying the luxury of the blanket between his behind and the dry yellow grass. After weeks in a filthy, muddy ditch he appreciated small comforts more than he used to. February was drawing to a close, and the air was distinctly chilly. The leaves still clinging to the branches of the pin oaks had turned brown, and he found their continual wind-driven papery susurration soothing as he stared blankly across the empty fields on the other side of the creek.

  He had spent the first twenty years of his life on his parents’ farm. He had never lived anywhere else. But after spending just a few months in France, everything he had ever known had changed. The morning he had stepped down off the train at the Boynton station was seared in his memory. His younger sisters had halfway grown up. He almost didn’t recognize the youngest, Grace. He certainly wouldn’t have known his infant nieces and nephews if he had had to pick them out of a crowd. And they didn’t know him from Adam, either. A year and a half is a long time in the life of a two-year-old. His older sisters looked the same, though—beautiful butterflies, teasing, warm, and doting. In the space of half a minute he went from ecstatic joy and affection, to grief at what he had missed, to blank nothingness. Seeing his parents gave him a jolt. It was as though he had never really looked at them before that day. His mother surprised him the most. He didn’t remember how small she was. It was odd. She had always loomed so large in his life.

  He had been home a week, but he was still disjointed, riding the waves between emotion and the void.

  How long he sat there, he could not tell. He might have fallen asleep, though he didn’t remember doing so. He came to with a start and looked at the sky. He had been in that strange state in which time passed without involving him. The sun had moved a hand-span. A little more than an hour. He was not surprised. But then he would not have been surprised if the entire day had passed. Or only a few minutes.

  A noise behind him caused him to start. He twisted around on the blanket to see a thin young man in an Army uniform standing at the edge of the woods. The man yelped and threw up his hands. “Hang on there, Lieutenant, it’s only me!”

  Gee Dub blinked, still not quite returned from wherever he had been. It dawned on him that his revolver was clutched in his right hand and aimed squarely at a spot between the young man’s eyes. “Moretti?”

  “Yessir, it’s me. You think you could lower that pistol?”

  Gee Dub let his arm sink to his side. “Moretti? What in the…what are you doing here? I thought you got sent home to Pennsylvania.”

  “I did, Lieutenant. But, hey, I felt an itch to see you again. Besides, I got no use for the slate mines anymore.”

  “How in the name of Pete did you know where to find me?”

  “It wasn’t hard. You told us all enough about Boynton and your folks’ farm. I’d have looked for you at the house, but I caught sight of you sitting up here on this hill. I just didn’t know what to do with myself after France, so I took a wild hair and came down to Oklahoma to look up my old commander. I wanted to see what became of you.”

  “You never were all that smart, I reckon. You got somewhere to stay, Moretti?”

  “I just got here, Lieutenant.”

  Gee Dub fell silent and studied the young man’s face for a minute or two. A small, thin little guy, so young, with black hair and dancing brown eyes. He had never expected to see Private Moretti again, and to have him turn up out of the blue like this was hard to accept. In fact he could hardly believe his own eyes. He wondered if he looked as stunned as he felt. “Moretti,” he murmured, and the young man smiled.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Gee Dub shook himself and stood up. “Well, I have an extra cot in my room behind the barn. You’re welcome to bunk with me while you’re here. And quit calling me Lieutenant. You might as well call me Gee Dub, like everybody else around here. I ain’t your superior officer anymore.”

  “Oh, I don’t think I could do that, Mr. Tucker. It’s too late for me to change now. You can call me Dickie, though.”

  “I’m not going to call you Dickie, Moretti. That’s a stupid name for a grown up man. How about Dick. Or Rick, or Richard?”

  “I wouldn’t know who those guys are, Mr. Tucker. I been Dickie all my life.”

  “I reckon I’ll have to keep calling you Moretti, then. Come on up to the house and meet my folks. It’s about dinner time anyway.”

  “Thanks, but I’m pooped. If you don’t mind us going back to your room now, I think I’ll just have a little nap. Maybe later I’ll head to town and look around. I’ve never been to Oklahoma, you know.”

  “Suit yourself.”

  ***

  Gee Dub left Moretti stretched out on his extra cot and made his way up to the house for supper. Shaw had come in from the fields and was already seated at his accustomed place at the head of the huge oak table in the kitchen. Alafair was at the cookstove, ladling food out of pots and into bowls, while Gee Dub’s three youngest sisters, thirteen-year-old Blanche; Sophronia, age twelve; and six-year-old Grace, were ferrying serving dishes from the stove to the table. Phoebe and her children were still there, joined by Phoebe’s husband, John Lee Day, whose gimpy leg and bad eye had prevented him from going into the service. Gee Dub made his greetings properly and sat down in the empty chair between John Lee and Phoebe, who was holding her newborn in her lap.

  “I expect I’d better lend Mama a hand,” Phoebe said. She stood up and thrust the baby at Gee Dub. “Here. Hold on to George H. for a spell.”

  Gee Dub was no stranger to holding newborn babies, but it had been a while. Last time was the little fellow he had dug out of the rubble of that bombed house in Château-Thierry. That one had been a little older than this tad. George H. was staring up at him with a speculative expression, not yet willing to decide what he thought of this newfound uncle.

  “His name is George H.”

  Gee Dub looked down at the owner of the high-pitched voice who had just spoken. Zeltha Day was standing by his left leg. Phoebe’s oldest had been not much more than a toddler when he left. She was a big-eyed four-year-old now. “I know it,” he said.

  Zeltha had one hand on John Lee’s thigh as she gazed up at her uncle. “Mama says you’re her brother. You’ve been away at the war.”

  “That’s right.”

  “George H. is my brot
her,” she informed him. “I was hoping for a sister. Tuck is enough brother for anybody. But Mama said we don’t get to choose what kind of baby we get.”

  Gee Dub gave the baby a critical once-over. “He doesn’t look like much trouble.”

  She shrugged. “He’s all right, I guess. He don’t do much.”

  “You’ll have to raise him to suit you. You want to hold him?”

  She lifted her hand off her father’s leg and gestured no. “Mama don’t let me hold him yet.”

  “What does your mama let you do?”

  “I like to play with my animals. I like all animals. I got a white cat that lives in the barn, and a baby goat, and a duck.”

  Gee Dub shifted George H. to the other arm and winked at Zeltha’s doting father before he replied. “What’re their names, these animals?”

  “The cat don’t have a name. I call the goat Goatie. The duck is named Gregory.”

  Gee Dub lifted an eyebrow. “Gregory? That’s right fancy for a duck.”

  “Fronie won’t call him by his right name. She calls him Ducky-Doodle.” Zeltha was insulted by the slight.

  Behind him, Gee Dub heard his sister Sophronia bark out a laugh, and a chuckle escaped him before he could catch it. “She’s just teasing you. I’m sure Gregory is fine specimen of duckhood.”

  “I love him.” Zeltha’s expression attested to her sincerity. “I even taught him to do a trick.”

  “A trick!”

  “When I say ‘flap,’ he flaps his wings like this.” She demonstrated.

  “Well, that’s amazing. You can show me next time I’m over to your place. Why doesn’t your cat have a name?”

  Zeltha moved closer and draped her arms over his knee, the better to carry on an intimate conversation. “He wouldn’t know his name to hear it. Mama says white cats are deaf.”

  “I’ve heard that. Cats don’t generally come when you call them, anyway.”

  Zeltha gave a philosophical nod. “That’s true.”

  George H. started to fuss and Gee Dub began to bounce him in his arms.

  “He’s probably wet,” Zeltha said.

  Gee Dub put a hand on the back of the baby’s neck and maneuvered him into a saggy sitting position on his knee. “He is, indeed. You know where your grandma has stowed his drawers?”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “Run fetch one.”

  Zeltha streaked out of the kitchen and Phoebe held out her arms. “Give him here, Gee, before you get stuck with diaper-duty.”

  As Phoebe left the room with her damp baby, Sophronia turned from her task to shoot Gee Dub an amused glance. “You’re a pretty good hand with children.”

  “I had a lot of practice with the rest of you lot.”

  John Lee laughed. “You ought to get some of your own. I guarantee they’ll keep you on your toes.”

  Gee Dub snorted. “Y’all quit trying to marry me off. When I get the notion, I’ll manage that task on my own.”

  ***

  Supper consisted of leftovers from the larger midday meal, but there was still plenty of food, and Gee Dub indulged himself to the full. After eighteen months of Army rations, he had developed a rare appreciation for his mother’s home cooking. Besides, he suspected that Alafair was making a point of cooking his favorite dishes as a homecoming treat, and he intended to make the most of it while it lasted. He had not told her that he had taken to hoarding leftovers in his room—anything easily portable that he could sneak out of the house. He had even spirited away a couple of mason jars of home-canned fruit and green tomato relish from her pantry. He was aware that this was an odd thing to do. His mother would have cheerfully let him take anything he wanted.

  After supper was over, the men repaired to the parlor for a few minutes of farm talk before the women finished cleanup and joined them. Gee Dub retrieved a guitar from his parents’ bedroom and began to noodle out a quiet tune from his seat next to the piano. Alafair came in from the kitchen and sat down in her armchair with her mending in her lap. Tuck was playing with the family’s long-legged mutt, Bacon, on a rag rug beside Alafair’s chair. The other family pet, Bacon’s daddy, Charlie Dog, snored softly by Shaw’s feet. In the way of all two-and-a-half-year-olds, Tuck suddenly got an idea in his head and jumped up off the floor, startling the dog, and ran over to Shaw. He clambered up into Shaw’s lap and placed his hands on either side of his grandfather’s face. Apparently, Tuck had come up with a delightful idea, because his words tumbled out so fast that it was hard to understand what he was saying.

  “Flabber me, Grampa!” he cried, and Shaw lifted the toddler’s shirt to blow a raspberry against the boy’s tummy, eliciting peals of laughter. Alafair and the girls began to laugh as well, because who can resist a little child’s hilarity?

  Gee Dub did not laugh. He was disoriented, as though he had just awakened from a dream. Why was Tuck still here? Phoebe and John Lee had gone home. They must have left Tuck to spend the night with the grandparents. There was always some grandchild here. At least one, maybe two or three, seldom the same combination. Somebody sitting on a pile of pillows in a kitchen chair, a little pair of eyes peeping over the edge of the table at supper. A roly-poly form sleeping on a pallet on the floor of Granma and Grampa’s bedroom with her thumb stuck in her mouth and long eyelashes curving over her apple-red cheeks.

  Gee Dub was suddenly hyper-aware. Alafair stopped laughing long enough to stick the end of a long strand of black thread into her mouth. She drew it out, twirled the end between her thumb and forefinger, and threaded a needle by feel. Gee Dub watched the deft movement of her fingers. How did she manage to poke that cotton thread through the infinitesimally small eye of the needle without even looking at her hands?

  Gee Dub stood up and walked out of the parlor, through the kitchen, and onto the back porch. He expected that the family was too busy being entertained by Tuck to notice that he had left.

  ***

  When Gee Dub got back to the bunk room, Moretti was sitting at the table. He had ditched the uniform and was dressed in regular civvies. “Where you been all evening?” Gee Dub asked him.

  “Looking around. Yourself?”

  Gee Dub took off his hat and hung it on a peg beside the door before sitting down on the side of his bunk. “Up to the house. My sister and brother-in-law came to supper with their three little rascals in tow.”

  “You’re in a pretty good mood, Lieutenant. You must have enjoyed the little imps.”

  He shrugged, then acquiesced with a nod. “I played my guitar for a while, and music always cheers me up. Besides, it’s always a hoot to play with the youngsters. How ’bout you, Private? What did you think of Boynton?”

  “Well, it’s no Pittsburgh, but it’ll do.” He stood and stretched. “Well, I’m going to bed. It’s been a long day. Hard to know what to do with myself. It’s going to take me longer than I thought to get used to civilian life again.”

  “It’s strange when nobody is shooting at you,” Gee Dub said.

  “Maybe that’s it.”

  Gee Dub skinned off his shirt and trousers, blew out the lamp, and lay back on his bunk. The ceiling had been recently whitewashed. Funny, he hadn’t noticed that before tonight. Whitewash couldn’t cover the cracks and weathering in the boards. The room had been carved out of one end of the old toolshed that Shaw had built by hand over twenty years earlier. This shed was older than the house. Can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, he thought. He was just drifting off to sleep when it occurred to him that he had never mentioned Moretti to his family.

  Chapter Four

  The next morning, the bed that Gee Dub had made up for Moretti was empty and Army-neat. Gee Dub figured his guest had gone back into town and he wouldn’t see him for the rest of the day. He’d wait until this evening to introduce Private Moretti to his folks. He dressed quickly and stepped outside.
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  The weather had changed. It was late February in Oklahoma, so there was no telling what any particular day would be like, or even any hour. Yesterday had been quiet and sunny, but a front had moved in overnight, and it was cold, cloudy, and spitting icy little needles of rain.

  He heard a loud chirp, a rustle and flutter, and was just turning toward the sound when he was startled by a flash of gray feathers. He groped for his sidearm, but it wasn’t there. Just as well. Another swoop and he saw that he was being dive-bombed by an incensed mockingbird bent on giving him a warning. He took a breath to try and calm his heart. He recognized the behavior. Winter was having its last hurrah, but spring was near and the mockingbird was building a nest somewhere at hand. He moved far enough from the door to placate the bird and watched her disappear under the eaves of the toolshed. He could barely make out a corner of the nest under the shelter of the roof. The mother bird did not dive at him again, but settled on the edge of the roof and chittered at him. Keep your distance.

  “Tell you what, Mother,” he called, “let’s call a truce. You don’t bother me and I won’t let anybody bother you.”

  She cocked her head and gave him a calculating look with one bright black eye, then disappeared under the eaves.

  Gee Dub stood outside the door for a minute and studied the sky with detached interest while the freezing rain numbed his cheeks. It was uncomfortable. It was downright painful, which gave Gee Dub a perverse pleasure. He pulled his hat down far enough to protect the skin on his face before the cold could do him some damage. While he didn’t much care about his face, he did care about his fingers. He had had frostbitten toes before, and it had taken him a while to recover enough to walk without clumping along like an elephant. He didn’t mind the pain, but he did mind not being able to get out of the way if he needed to, and it was important that he not lose his ability to squeeze a trigger.