Thoughts From the Front Porch

It had been a nice afternoon, not too hot.  And the evening being cool, Nancy sat on the porch waiting for her Daddy to come home. He always went back to the station after supper and stayed to close up about eight o’clock. And she could sit on the swing and watch the cars go by on Gearing Avenue. Except for the ones passing through, she knew who was in almost every car and where they were probably going and certainly where they’d go home to.

Since they’d had the word about Ross—gosh, how long was it? three years now? —the whole house had felt empty and sleepless and indescribably sad. Nancy missed him so much.  Though it had been long enough now that they didn’t talk about it everyday like they had just after the telegram came, she knew that Mama and Daddy missed him too. But it was so painful to say his name. And so Nancy just didn’t.

Nancy had been just six years old and Ross nineteen, when he left for the war. He never got to come home, even after his training. They just sent him on. She still had the funny postcards he’d written and sent  especially for her. He’d joked about her grades at school and how not to get a spanking from the teacher. He knew that would never happen anyway. Mama always said Nancy was such a good child, so easy to raise. And if Nancy’d been wild and ornery like Kathleen, that she would’ve been the death of Mama. She’d saved each of Ross’s letters and cards with all the collection, tied up with a blue ribbon. He had been handsome and funny and loving. He never made any bones about Nancy being his favorite sister. He was youngest next to her.

Nancy had been a midlife baby. She knew that now that she was fourteen. When she was little, folks sometimes got mixed up and thought she was Kathleen’s baby. Kathleen had been 22, already married and divorced, when Nancy was born. She did carry Nancy around town like a baby doll all the time when she’d been little enough.

Kathleen was 36 now and had been married for a long time to Doc McIntosh. She had taken Nancy to Memphis in December, after Doc called from up there saying he was stranded. Kathleen had been so mad. Not at Doc really, but at that “damned Byrd Richardson.” Doc was a sweet man and he loved Kathleen. But when he got to drinking, she couldn’t do anything with him. He’d go months at a time and not drink at all. But anytime that ol’ Byrd came around, he’d carry Doc off and get him in trouble. That time he took him off on a binge to Memphis.

Byrd had a big fancy car. He’d got that car new, right after the war, when nobody else could get one. It seemed to Nancy that Byrd was pretty much accustomed to  getting what  he wanted. Mama said it was because Robert, the oldest child was born afflicted and they just put  him in that back room where nobody would ever see him, and hired Wash Formby to look after him. Then the next one, Fern, poor thing, was just a girl. She’d done the best she could to please those people. Had gone off to Vanderbilt  and got a couple of degrees in something. But Mama said she wasn’t right either. Said she was so frightened of doorknobs that she never took her gloves off. But they still gave her a job teaching down at Auburn.

Mama said “Them Richardsons was just so glad to get Byrd, a fine strapping son, they about forgot about the others and just heaped everything on him, like he was the second coming. Well he wasn’t. That much was for sure.

Everybody knew Byrd had  hired ol’ Partlow Withers to drive him around when he was drinkin’. So they just went on off up to Memphis together, Doc without his billfold or anything. Then Byrd took a notion to come home and left Doc up there at the Peabody Hotel with no car and no money to get home on.

Kathleen didn’t want to go by herself. So she swept in and asked Mama if Nancy could go. Didn’t wait much for answer. Just packed her up and out the door before Mama could say no. It was fun. Once they got there with the money, Doc was sober of course. And they all had a fine time. Doc bought  both “his ladies” orchid corsages and there was a fine dinner in the hotel dining room. They had their picture made. Nancy saved that photo too in the hope chest with her favorite things. They didn’t get home till Christmas Eve. It made Mama so mad they’d been gone so long and she’d been worried to death. So she and Kathleen had a fuss. And Nancy hadn’t seen Kathleen  much since then.

Nancy counted them all off, her brothers and sisters, in her mind. When she was born there was Kathleen, of course, then Buddy had been 19, Frankye 17, Madge 15 and Ross 12. It seemed to Nancy that Buddy and Frankye had always been married with children of their own. Buddy and his family were off in Gadsden now. But Frankye and Kathleen lived close by. Kathleen had been married a long time to Doc. So Ross was the brother she was closest to, the only brother around after she was born. It brought tears to her eyes to think of never seeing him again.

The war was such a long and terrible thing. Doc and Kathleen had tried to make it a little better for a few of the boys away from home. They used to have lots of soldiers come to their house. Nancy couldn’t think where they got them from or how the soldiers knew to come. But somehow during the war, soldiers far from their own families had dinner with Doc and Kathleen. That’s how Madge got her husband. He came from Wisconsin and had dinner at Doc and Kathleen’s. After the war, Madge went up to Wisconsin herself, with her husband. Now they had a new baby.

Nancy watched the night from her porch swing and gave the floor a push with her foot, then tucked herself up again and waited for the cat to die. She wondered why they called it that. Waiting for the swing to slowly stop on its own had always been “letting the cat die.” She wished she had Madge and her baby there in the swing with her. She’d seen a picture. The night was so dark. and silent too. She was glad she remembered what the moon looks like. What if the moon went away and never came back?  If it’s a dark moon in Alabama, is it a dark moon in Wisconsin?

An occasional strange automobile pushed along the main street from the east end of town and on to the west, towards Eden and Birmingham. One by one the window shades blinked shut on Gearing Avenue and porch lights were extinguished up the side street. Nancy imagined young couples parting at doorways. She  thought of Mother’s Day coming up on Sunday. The family would be together then, except for Madge, so far up north, and Ross. Buddy and Ann would come and bring their boys and Frankye and Matt and their children. Kathleen and Doc would be there. And that would make Mama happy. Sunday would be a good day.

Then Daddy came up the porch steps and gave her a hug. “Time for bed,” he said. So Nancy slipped inside and went to find her bed and the grown-up novel she’d secretly been reading, Now Voyager. She didn’t wake up till she heard the fire sirens over at the telephone company.

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The Right Southern Corner is a series by Sara Rast
Copyright: 2008 Sara Love Rast. All rights reserved.

The Right Southern Corner