A story of wartime passions on the World War II homefront
as Bea Meade seeks to discover who she really is.
Chapter
2
It seemed like some towns came with their own
gravity. Towns like Orange, located in the deepest southeast corner of
the state of Texas. Cross the Sabine River, east, and a person stepped
into Louisiana, Cajun country. Go just a few miles south, and they
reached Texas’ northernmost Gulf of Mexico. The Sabine River ran right
down through the middle of town, making Orange a prime spot for
intercostal commerce. Grand Victorian-style homes lined the streets of
town, and virgin pine, ancient oaks draped with Spanish moss, and bayous
full of cypress and water tupelo trees made the town a living,
breathing Shangri-La. The richest men who lived there, some of them
carpetbaggers from Pennsylvania, bought up all the timberland for a
pittance, and then made millions off of prime long-leaf yellow pine.
Working for them
became the most coveted jobs in town, but most people were as poor as a
mouse kicked out of church. The times demanded a stern code of conduct,
and at least in public, were strict and exacting. All a man had to do
was say the word “damn,” and folks fell out in horror.
Set
back by The Great Depression, the aristocratic, proud people nearly
starved to death. About the only thing the small town did during those
years was make babies and scrounge for food. Those lucky enough to own
land survived by growing their own crops, and the really lucky kept a
milk cow for the wee ones. A couple of northern shipbuilders moved to
town and established shipyards along the rivers, supplying a small
number of destroyers to England, but not enough to keep the town alive.
Then,
in December 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and all hell broke
loose. Shipbuilders were awarded major contracts to build vast
shipyards in Orange. Overnight,the yards hired anyone who walked through
their gates—black and white, men and women, skilled and unskilled. News
of the plentiful jobs spread fast. Barefoot, hungry, desperate people
from the backwoods of Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, and Arkansas flooded a
town soon stretched beyond its limits.
Almost
overnight, the population exploded from 7,500, to well over 65,000. The
question them became, where did all the people live? In thousands of
hastily erected and cheaply built temporary housing erected atop river
sand pumped in on mosquito-infested marshland. Work shifts buzzed and
bustled around the clock, and at the launching of each new ship, the
yard and the town went wild in celebration. Life was good again—but not
for everyone.
Not for Bea Meade. She’d grown up in the
Pentecostal church where she learned when a person fell from grace it
likely came as the result of one stupid error in judgment. She didn’t
know it could happen so slowly she might not even know she was falling
until after she hit the ground. Her life changed directions so slowly
the summer of ’43, that only later did she mark it as the start of her
fall. She suspected it might not be, but since she didn’t have a clue
when the fall started, she marked that time as the time—the day she
licked her finger, ran it down a mental blackboard and said that’s the
day the slide began. The day she learned to hate.
The
day her husband, Hal, staggered in after midnight smelling of stale beer
and piss, puked all over the bathroom then yelled at her to get up and
clean the puke instead of laying there crying like she always did. She
dragged herself to the bathroom and cleaned up the mess then dumped the
foulsmelling rags into a kitchen sink full of hot soapy water and
started scrubbing. Hal came in behind her, stuck his head in the icebox
and pulled out another beer. “I don’t care what you say, I don’t cry
every night,” Bea argued back. “Nah, but most nights you do.” He popped
off the bottle top and swigged. “And don’t you think you’ve had enough
of that stuff?”
“Listen to Miss Know It All,” he
mocked, prancing around the kitchen like a show dog expecting to win
first prize. “Lemme ask you this. How come you just lay there like a
bump on a log when I touch you at night? There’s this woman at work, and
she knows what a—” “She knows what? What a man wants?” “Forget it.” He
finished off the beer, tossed it in the garbage, then found something
else to argue about. “How come you’re not thankful for where we live?
Thousands of people in this town still live in cardboard shacks, but you
think you’re Miss Bitsy Rich, and live in one of them fancy houses down
on Green Avenue. Well, I got news for you, honey, we ain’t never…” His
slurred words trailed off and he turned and stumbled out of the room.
She
slammed a rag against the rub board and scrubbed. Not stupid, she knew
they’d chopped down thousands of cypress trees from the marsh and filled
it with wet sand pumped in from the river bottom. Before the sand could
even dry out they’d poured unreinforced concrete and expected it to
serve double duty as streets and drainage. These ugly-as-Army barracks
houses went up overnight. She tossed the rag into the other sink she’d
filled with rinse water and proceeded to scrub another.
“Don’t
tell me I’m not thankful,” she’d yelled back at him, sprawled on the
couch in the other room. “I’m thankful I have a dry place to lay my head
at night. That’s why we need to pay the rent on time. If you don’t
bring your paycheck home, I can’t.”
She finished the
laundry, dumped it in the clothes basket, and went to bed. Hal came in a
few minutes later, still reeking of beer. When she turned her back, he
slapped her ass and said, “Roll over.” She did, and hated every jab he
shoved into her. Afterwards, he fell over and within minutes, snored.
She turned out the light and cried. Most nights she cried, and always
had. No one ever understood why.
The next morning she
awakened with two consuming thoughts: the pail of dirty diapers in the
bathroom and relief that another night had passed. She slipped the
heart-shaped mother-of-pearl brooch—the only thing that ever brought her
a semblance of comfort—from underneath her pillow, tucked it in the
cigar box on her bureau and stumbled to the bathroom, fearful she might
awaken Hal.
A couple of minutes later she watched the
water swirl out of the toilet, marveling again at the miracle of indoor
plumbing. The luxury made her feel rich for the first time in her life,
and helped take her mind off the enemy, who everyone else believed to be
Germany. For her, a deeper, more seditious adversary chewed at her
insides.
She shoved the mass of thick, blonde hair off
her face and stared at her reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror.
“Just because you can’t sleep at night has nothing to do with the
blessings you do have—like sweet Percy, sleeping in the next room.”
After she washed and dried her face, she took her housecoat from the
nail behind the door, slipped it on, and then tied the sash as she
walked across the hall into the baby’s room.
Percy lay
sprawled on his back, arms out to his sides. A tiny bubble rested on
pink lips that curved into a smile. She eased the door shut and headed
through the small living room sparsely furnished with discards from
neighbors and friends.
A rocking chair sat at a right
angle to the pale blue coffee-stained couch she’d shoved against double
windows. Irritating spring-roll shades on the windows forever thwarted
her attempt to keep them raised. Mismatched end tables on each side of
the couch held not-to-be-outdone mismatched lamps. The spotlessly clean
bare floors refused to shine, regardless of how much she scrubbed the
unfinished wood. She gave the room a quick once-over and spied a rubber
ducky on the floor. Her movement quick, but precise, she picked it up
and tucked it into the pocket of her housecoat.
After
checking the mousetraps and emptying out two of the little destructive
devils she went to the kitchen sink and scrubbed her hands until they
ached. Eager now to get Hal’s breakfast ready before Percy woke up and
screamed for his, her first task, the one she dreaded even more than
emptying mouse traps, was lighting the infernal oven on the small
four-burner stove. She struck a match, turned on the gas and waited for
the small explosion.
Even though she expected it, the
blast made her jump back just like it did every time she lit the dang
thing. She glanced behind her, hoping Hal hadn’t come in and laughed at
her foolishness. She hated the way he made her feel like such a child.
She lit the burner under a teakettle full of fresh water and while that
heated, spooned coffee into the drip pot. The strong smell of the local
brand gagged her, but Hal wouldn’t drink any other kind, and complained
if she made it too weak. “Baby, it don’t take near as much water to make
a pot of coffee,” he’d say, teasing. But she knew he meant business.
By
the time Hal ducked his auburn-colored head and walked into the
kitchen, eggs were scrambled and hot buttermilk biscuits had been
flipped over on a plate so they wouldn’t sweat. Mama hated thick,
soggy-bottom biscuits. In her mind’s eye Bea saw Mama pinch off a small
piece of the dough, pat it flat, place it in a pan of hot grease, and
turn it over to coat top and bottom. The results were thin biscuits with
crispy tops and bottoms and soft tender insides. Bea swore that’s why
Hal asked her to marry him—for her mama’s biscuits—hoping one day Bea’s
would be as good. Of course, Mama had cooked many a year by the time Bea
came along, for she’d been Mama’s change-of-life baby. Good Lord, she
hoped she didn’t have a baby at that age.
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