Letter From Home Read online

  He cleared his throat. “Girl.”

  She sat still and tight. Did he sound mad? There was a funny different tone in his voice. Was he going to fire her? Why had she been so stupid? She should have written it the right way. . . .

  “Girl.” A bark now. “What’s your full name?”

  She twisted in her chair. “Gretchen Grace Gilman, sir.”

  “Okay.” He bent back to his work.

  When the first copies of the paper came out of the press-room, he tossed one toward her, then clapped his panama on his head and strode out of the office, heading for Victory Café and coffee. She unfolded the paper and there on page 1, just below the fold, was her story:

  ROSE DREW’S JOURNEY

  By G. G. Gilman Staff Writer

  “I got to go. In my heart, I know I got to go.”

  Rose Drew twisted a handkerchief as she spoke. She looked at the photograph of her husband, Wilford, and . . .

  G. G. Gilman . . . Gretchen clutched the newspaper. She burst out of the Gazette office and darted across the street, not caring that the light was red and a battered pickup honked at her. She pulled open the screen door of the café and ran to the kitchen, skidding past Mr. Dennis, who was settled at the counter with Dr. Jamison and Mayor Burkett. As she pushed through the swinging door, she shouted, “Grandmother, Grandmother, look!”

  Her grandmother, yellow coronet braids a little disheveled, plump face red with exertion, wiped floury hands on her big white apron. She took the newspaper, peered nearsightedly as Gretchen pointed. “Wunderbar, mein Schatz, wunderbar.” She spread the newspaper on the wooden counter near the refrigerator. “We shall cut it out, put it up for everyone to see. Wunderbar.” Gretchen caught her grandmother’s hands and pulled her into a circling dance around the wide linoleum-floored kitchen.

  And now, here she was at the county courthouse, which looked almost like a small castle, built of big red chunks of sandstone. The courthouse crowned the slight rise in the town square, green lawn falling away in every direction. The American flag and the Oklahoma flag snapped on their poles. Dark green wooden benches were placed every so often along the sidewalks that led to the entrances on all four sides. A gazebo nestled beneath two huge cottonwoods near the corner of Cimarron and Broadway. The main steps of the courthouse, wide and shallow, faced Main Street. The county clerk, county assessor, county commissioners, and county treasurer’s offices were on the first and second floors; the courtroom, court clerk, county judge, and county attorney were on the third. She’d check with the court clerk, see if any lawsuits had been filed today, then go down to the basement to the sheriff’s office. Behind his office a dingy green corridor led to the barred door and three jail cells.

  Gretchen reached for the big bronze door handle. She smoothed out her face. It didn’t do to be proud; that’s what Grandmother always said. She couldn’t tell anybody what it meant, seeing her name on the story. She felt like she’d climbed onto the back of a big black stallion and was galloping up a rainbow, riding higher and higher. She glanced at herself in the smudged windowpane as she pulled the heavy door. There. She looked serious, almost stern.

  The door opened into a wide corridor. The floor was a speckled marble, greenish with dots of gold. In the basement, the floor was a dark green cement. The still air in the courthouse smelled like people even when there was nobody in the hallways. There was an acrid dryness of cigarette smoke, old and new, and an undertone of varnish—the walnut walls had recently been redone—and the tickly scent of ammonia as the custodian mopped.

  Gretchen’s sandals slipped a little on the wet floor. She was reaching for the heavy bronze knob of the county clerk’s office when a siren wailed outside. She swung around, skidded across the wet marble. She ran to the end of the hall and the landing in the stairway. She pushed up a creaky window, poked her head out. A black and white patrol car, its red light whirling, the siren rising and falling, pulled out of the parking lot next to city hall and swung onto Cimarron Street, going west. The tires squealed as it turned right onto Crawford. She lost sight of the car behind a row of elms. The city had two patrol cars: Sergeant Holliman in Car 1, Sergeant Petty in Car 2. Everybody was still shocked about Sergeant Petty. Nobody had ever heard of a woman policeman. But Chief Fraser jutted out his red chin and demanded to know what he was supposed to do with every able-bodied man in the county in the service. As far as he was concerned, if women could weld bombers, they could patrol city streets. To be sure, Sergeant Petty, a lanky raw-boned woman with a long face, had always had day duty, which made Kenny Holliman grumble, but after all, there was a war on.

  Gretchen returned to the lobby, used the Cimarron Street exit. Despite the heat, she broke into a run. At the street, she waited for a horse-drawn wagon to clop past. Lots of wagons were in use now with tires and gas so hard to get. A single-story brick building housed the police station, fire station, and mayor’s office. The door to the police station was closed.

  Gretchen burst inside, swept the long room with a glance. There were several desks behind a wooden counter, a little like the Gazette newsroom, but the only sound was a muted radio and the wooden desks were neat and orderly, papers stacked, not strewn. The door to the chief’s office was open. The office was dark.

  Mrs. Morrison, her plump, placid face beaming, pushed back from her desk. “Hello, Gretchen. Here to check the records? I’ll get the book for you.”

  “I heard the siren.” Gretchen reached the counter and set her sheaf of copy paper on it, pencil poised. “Is there a wreck?” There was a curve as Highway 66 swung out of town and only a little stretch of shoulder before the ravine.

  Mrs. Morrison carried the ledger to the counter. “No. Just a call out on Archer Street. But you won’t want that. The Gazette doesn’t carry domestic disturbance calls.”

  Archer Street? That was her street. A half dozen small square frame houses straggled along the gravel road. Gretchen knew everyone in each house.

  Gretchen bent to look at the list of citations. Four of them. Two speeding, one driving under the influence, a larceny. Her eyes brightened at the latter. Mr. Dennis would be interested to know somebody had stolen a scarecrow from the Hollis farm. Now that could make a good story. Why would anybody steal a scarecrow? As she printed, she frowned. “I don’t see anything about Archer Street.”

  “That call just came in, but like I said”—Mrs. Morrison reached beneath the counter, lifted up a box of hard candy—“Walt don’t carry that kind of news. Families with troubles, well, no sense in making things worse.” She held the box out to Gretchen.

  Gretchen smiled. “Thank you, Mrs. Morrison.” She picked a sour cherry ball even though it would make her mouth feel puckery. The candy reminded her of the cherry phosphates at Thompson’s Drugs. She didn’t go there during the daytime anymore, not since Millard’s ship was torpedoed off Tarawa. The kids all met there on Friday night, but she used to go every afternoon. She pushed back the memory of Millard, with his tight red curls and round face, correcting her in his precise voice when she’d ordered a cherry “fausfade.” Funny, no one in the world knew of their joke and now only she knew. She hadn’t written about cherry fausfades in her story about Millard. She’d written about how he’d tried so hard to take the place of his big brother when Mike went off to war, how Millard had learned to make black cows and hobokens, how he’d played the tuba in the band and done chemistry experiments in the shed behind the Thompson house and how he’d loved stars and music and finding arrowheads. She didn’t write about how much he’d loved a senior girl and why he’d left to join the navy. That was maybe the best story of all, but that one she would keep in her heart. With the cherry fausfades.

  Gretchen sucked on the candy and finished her notes on arrests. She turned her folded sheet over, looked at Mrs. Morrison. “Even so, I better get the information. Mr. Dennis says, ‘Ask and you shall receive.’”

  Mrs. Morrison’s sweet high laughter pealed. “Don’t that sound like Walt! That man has no
shame. Well, it’s one of those things. We got a call from Mrs. Crane that there was shouting and screaming next door at the Tatum house. Well, no telling what’s wrong, but everybody knows Clyde’s back for a furlough before his unit ships out and everybody sure knows Faye’s not been sitting home nights since he’s been gone. It may be that Clyde’s heard tell of her doings. And I can’t think she’s set a good example for that girl of theirs.” Mrs. Morrison’s thin penciled eyebrows rose and her usually kindly glance was bleak as a February sunrise. “Oh, well, the war’s hard on everybody, but a woman has to learn how to be alone.” She turned toward her desk.

  Gretchen barely heard Mrs. Morrison mutter, “Says she’s just dancin’ but the devil loves slow tunes.” The Tatum house was three doors from Grandmother Pfizer’s house. Gretchen had grown up running in and out of the Tatum house. Barb was just enough older that she treated Gretchen with casual disregard, sometimes welcoming Gretchen’s wide-eyed admiration, other times brushing her off. Last year was Barb’s first in high school. All the classes, from kindergarten through twelfth grade, were in the same big red brick building, but there was a divide wide as the Arkansas River between junior and senior high. Barb had gone out for cheerleader and she ran around with the older girls now. Gretchen remembered when Barb was skinny and could skip rope a hundred times without stopping. She wasn’t skinny now and everyone noticed her when she came into a room. Gretchen felt a pang of envy. Barb’s hair was a rich reddish brown and it curved in a perfect pageboy. Barb wasn’t really beautiful, but she was interesting looking, with deep-set eyes, a regal face with high cheekbones, a way of throwing out her hands as if she were inviting the world to be her friend.

  Gretchen nudged the sour ball with her tongue. She wrote down: Tatum house. Screams. Yells. She glanced toward the wall clock—twelve minutes to five—guessed at the time she’d heard the siren: Car #2 dispatched 4:40 P.M. “Who was screaming?”

  Mrs. Morrison settled behind her desk. “Oh, likely Faye was tellin’ Clyde off. You know, he ought never to have married her but some men got no sense about women, that’s for sure. Some women are just damn fools about men and they don’t get no better with age. Well, that Barb seems like a nice enough girl though she was wearing her sweaters so tight the principal sent home a note to Faye and that was another big fight. I swear, Faye’s got a tongue that could strip bark off a gum tree. Well, Sergeant Petty will settle things down. And Clyde will be on his way soon enough.”

  Out in the heat, Gretchen shaded her eyes from the sun. She’d have to hurry to finish up at the courthouse before it closed. She walked fast, felt her cotton blouse sticking to her back. The main hallway was empty. At the court clerk’s office, she noted that Mr. Edward Petree, 103 Cherry Street, had filed suit against his next-door neighbor, Mr. Coy Hendricks, 105 Cherry Street, for dumping out an old barrel of oil that had leaked into Mr. Petree’s yard, ruining his vegetable garden. The county commissioner’s office was already closed. She’d have to wait until tomorrow to check and see when they’d take the bids for that new bridge on Kershaw Road. In the basement, the door to the sheriff’s office was shut and locked.

  She reached the Gazette office a few minutes after five. Nobody was there. Mr. Dennis was probably in the press room, seeing that the papers got folded for the newsboys. She took a minute to straighten her desk, made some quick notes about tomorrow’s stories—missing scarecrow, bid date for the bridge—but she needed to get over to the café. She kept her pedal pushers there. She’d change clothes and get to work. Grandmother had protested at first, saying Gretchen worked all day at the Gazette and that was enough, but Gretchen knew how tired Grandmother got. Gretchen started off the day at the café and ended the day there. She and Grandmother were at the café by five to get ready to open at six. Gretchen didn’t go to the Gazette until eight so there was plenty of time to slap bacon into the huge skillets and flip eggs on the grill. Truckers coming through on Highway 66 would stop for the best breakfast on the road: bacon and eggs when they had them, hash browns, pancakes, and grits all the time. They made their own bread and rolls and corn bread. Gretchen still did most of the cleanup after she got off from the Gazette. Grandmother would close up and go home early if the kitchen ran out of food but in any case the door was always shut by five. There was lots to do. Mrs. Perkins might be finished up with the dishes, but Gretchen scrubbed the tables and mopped the floor and saw to the trash. There might be deliveries to unload. The meat plant in Tulsa delivered—when there was any meat—twice a week. If everything went well, maybe she’d get home by six. Grandmother would have rested for awhile and then fixed supper. Macaroni and cheese and watermelon was Gretchen’s favorite.

  When Gretchen finished burning the trash in the incinerator at the edge of the lot behind the café, the sun was a hot red ball in the west. Even the scrawny bois d’arc trees cast a big shadow now. She poked the ashes to make sure there were no more sparks. Though it was still June, the county was tinder dry. Cars and trucks rumbled past on the highway. Despite gas rationing, there was more traffic than ever, most of it military trucks.

  Every so often, she looked down Archer Street. The graveled street curved up and down, following the gentle contours of the hilly countryside. The windows in all the boxy frame houses were up, the front doors open, welcoming any hint of breeze. But the houses were hot, all of them, even with fans. Grandmother said people got mad easier when it was hot; mad in the summer, blue in the winter.

  Gretchen gave the ashes a final poke and swung up on her bike. She rode slowly because it was hot, but she didn’t care that sweat beaded her face, slipped down her back. The refrain sang in her mind: G. G. Gilman. She was almost past the Tatum house when she braked to a sudden stop.

  The cover hung askew from the silver mailbox on its post next to the end of the rutted drive. Paint had flaked from the second T: TA UM. Dandelions poked fluffy heads from grass that needed mowing and had gone to seed. The Tatum house had a front porch. Grandmother’s house had three concrete steps to the front door. Grandmother’s steps were swept every day and hosed off once a week. Rambling roses bloomed on either side. The wooden steps to the Tatum porch were rickety and one plank had a broken edge. The house had a frowsy air, some asphalt shingles missing, the white paint weathered and peeling.

  Gretchen swung off her bike, leaned it on the kickstand. She shaded her eyes from the crimson sun. The house looked as it always had, no different at all. Mrs. Morrison was probably right. Mr. Dennis wouldn’t put anything in the paper about the call to the police this afternoon. But it wouldn’t hurt to knock on the door, see if Barb was home. Gretchen walked briskly to the porch. She looked through the screen door—the front door was wide open—into the dim living room. Magazines spilled across the slipcovered sofa. An open box of graham crackers sat on the low coffee table next to an empty Coke bottle. A filled ashtray sat near a half dozen nail polish bottles and wadded tissues. There was an oval braided rug and two easy chairs, both slipcovered in shiny yellow chintz. Despite the disorder, the room glowed with color and life from the matted but unframed paintings hanging on the walls.

  Gretchen knocked. The rattle disappeared into the silence quick as a frog slipping into a pond.

  A quick clatter of steps sounded. Faye Tatum hurried across the living room. Faye always moved fast. She stopped midway when she saw Gretchen. Her narrow face looked hard as marble. Her blond hair fell forward, a golden strand loose across one cheek. Her green eyes smouldered like a banked fire. Crimson lips twisted downward. She carried a saucepan in one hand, a lid in the other. She wore an apron over a cotton top and shorts. The apron wasn’t tied and the strings dangled on either side. There was something about the way the apron fell and the bareness of her legs that shocked Gretchen. Nobody would come outside dressed like that. It didn’t look right somehow. Most women her age wouldn’t wear shorts around the house, only if they were going to a picnic on a hot summer day. But Mrs. Tatum was an artist and everybody knew artists were different. Las
t summer Gretchen remembered coming to see Barb and finding Mrs. Tatum and Barb sitting on the living room sofa in panties and bras and how they’d laughed at her expression. It was the middle of the morning but they said it was just too hot to get dressed and after all what difference did it make because the human body was beautiful. Gretchen knew Grandmother’s blue eyes would snap if she told about that visit so she’d never mentioned it. Today was hot, too.

  “Hello, Gretchen.” Mrs. Tatum slapped the lid on the pan. “Barb’s not here.” She sounded mad. And disappointed. Her lips trembled, then closed into a tight line.

  Gretchen began to back away. “Please tell her I came by.”

  Mrs. Tatum turned without answering. She walked across the floor, pushed into the kitchen. The door swung shut behind her.

  As Gretchen hurried toward her bike, she felt a rush of gladness that she was leaving. She loved the pictures in the Tatum living room, but now she remembered how often there weren’t regular meals, how Barb snacked at night on peanut butter and jelly, how she liked to come to Gretchen’s house to eat.

  Gretchen used the rubber grips on her bike, avoided the hot handlebars. The rest of the way home, she wondered about Mrs. Tatum. Had she shouted at her husband this afternoon? Or screamed? She was still mad when Gretchen came. But a scream was different from a shout. Gretchen glanced at the Crane house. Like Grandmother said, everything was always neat as a pin at the Crane house. The lawn freshly trimmed, though it had to be a losing battle against the blown puffs of dandelions from the ragged yard next door. Bright blue shutters framed the front windows. Begonias flourished in the flower beds. Mrs. Crane would be proud to open her front door to company any time of day or night. There would never be magazines strewn about or unemptied ashtrays or dishes in the sink.