Great Jehoshaphat and Gully Dirt! Part 16

Later, while Mama had me sitting on our kitchen doorstep soaking my foot, I got to thinking what strange stuff coal oil is. You put it in lamps. You can stop a mean man from fighting with it. You can burn down stores with it. You have to use it to doctor sore feet. It's funny stuff.

In the days that came next, n.o.body paid me and my sore foot much attention. Papa didn't have time. He said he had to go to town and do lots of things.

He didn't even have time to explain to me what he meant about "a plain case of arson," and "just circ.u.mstantial evidence that wouldn't stand up in court," and about the Law giving him some kind of run-around. He explained it all to Mama, though. He told her that Ward laughed in his face, and that Doctor Elton said later that a man who drank himself into a stupor all the time was plain sick.

One night I overheard Papa telling Mama, "This is one time I almost wish I wasn't a deacon and that I didn't believe what the Bible says about not paying back evil for evil."

"I know, Jodie. It's hard, but the only way to live is by the Bible. And it teaches, 'Recompense to no man evil for evil.'"

"Nannie, I'm holding my breath for fear of what the benighted fool will do next"

"I declare, Jodie, you're gonna wear out the soles of your boots pacing the floor! Please sit down. He can't harm the child, or any of us-not with us and everybody else in the settlement watching."

In a few more weeks, after Papa got the carpenters started on building the new store, he quit pacing the floor every night.

And when the store was finished, Papa helped me draw two pictures of it to send off in the mail to my big brothers, who just kept on staying in the army.

Clyde wrote back that he was keeping his picture in a knapsack. Walker wrote that he was going to take his with him all the way to France. He didn't say when he was going or how long he might stay, and Mama almost cried.

The very next day-right in the middle of a tea party I was having with my doll and Mierd's old cat Nero-I heard Mama laughing and crying, all at the same time! I hid the tea cakes from Nero and ran to see about Mama. She was talking on the phone to Papa and whispered to me what it was about.

I ran quick to tell Grandma Ming.

"Grandma! Grandma! Kaiser Bill ain't gonna cut off my hands!

Yours neither!" I was fairly yelling as I dashed into Grandma Ming's house and up to the side of her bed.

"Bandershanks, baby, what in this round world are you talking about?"

"The phone ringed, and Mama was just a-laughing and a-crying and couldn't hardly talk! I asked her, 'What's the matter?' And she said, 'The war's over!' I said, 'Is the old Kaiser coming?'

And Mama said, 'O Lord, no!'" I stopped a minute to catch my breath. "So, Grandma, Kaiser Bill ain't coming! He ain't gonna cross the ocean to cut off little kids' and old women's arms and legs!"

Grandma didn't say a word.

"Ain't you glad, Grandma?"

She just sat up in bed a little bit straighter and went on knitting and knitting, and her needles went on clicking and clicking. She looked at me over the gold rims of her eyegla.s.ses.

Then, all of a sudden, Grandma threw down her knitting and started calling Grandpa Thad as loud as she could holler!

"Thad! Thad! Oh, Thad!"

He didn't answer.

"Baby, run fast and find your grandpa! Tell him to make haste and com'ere!"

I darted through the kitchen, out the back door, and was at the yard gate when I almost ran smack into both Grandpa Thad and Mama. They were walking so fast and talking so fast they didn't notice me.

"Ming! It's over! The war's over! They signed the Armistice!"

"Glory be!" Grandma cried, raising her arms up high and letting her hands fall back down on the bed covers and counterpane. "Glory be! Our boys will come home! Thank G.o.d!

They'll come back! Thank G.o.d!"

Tears were running out of Grandma's eyes, and she kept waving her arms and crying, "Glory be! Glory be!" She was shouting at first; then the "glories" got softer and softer, till she was just whispering them.

Grandpa was trying to tell Grandma something else, but I couldn't understand him because Mama was talking too.

"Jodie told me the Armistice means the war's ended for good!

The shooting has all been stopped! I reckon somebody must've called out to the store from town. I just didn't think to ask how he found out. All I could think about was our boys. I asked when they'd be coming back, and he said, 'Soon, Nannie. Real soon, I hope!' He told me to run tell y'all. And he was gonna phone everybody on the line. Said folks all over the country are already celebrating and having parades and blowing horns and ringing bells!"

"G.o.d knows it's a day to ring the bells! Eh, Ming?" Grandpa looked over toward Grandma and me.

By this time she was lying back, half buried in the pile of cushions and feather pillows and the long bolster she kept on her bed in the daytime. I had crawled up on the foot of her bed and was turning her ball of knitting yarn over and over, unrolling the thick gray thread and then rolling it back up again. I wanted to hold the needles, but I was afraid I'd let them slip and drop a st.i.tch. Grandma always fussed when I dropped her st.i.tches.

"I should say so, Thad! It's a day to ring all bells! When the baby, here, came running in saying something about that wicked German Kaiser, I didn't know for a minute what to make of it. I'd clean forgot the wild tales d.i.n.k told. My! My! I'm so glad I could shout!"

Mama sat down then in one of the high-back padded rockers and rocked a long time, easy and slow, while she and Grandma and Grandpa told one another all they knew about the World War and that Armistice thing somebody had signed at exactly eleven o'clock.

Mama said the Armistice was an answer to prayer. Grandma Ming said she was powerful proud the Germans could tell the jig was up. Grandpa said, "Foot dool! Them German generals saw the handwriting on the wall the day our soldiers set foot in France!"

Soon Mama got up. "Come on, Bandershanks, let's go home.

We've got to start getting ready! Walker and Clyde may be coming home before we can get a thing done!" Mama picked me up and squeezed me. "They won't even know you, gal! You've got so big!

Pa, I'll let you and Ma know if I hear any more from Jodie."

Mama didn't put me down till we got out to our front porch.

Then she let me slide to the top doorstep, and she sank down on the plank beside me.

"Mama, what're we gonna do?"

"Well, tomorrow I'll send for Doanie and Bett to come sweep the yard from front to back. They'll have to have new dogwood brush brooms. And just before your big brothers get in, I'll have Huldie up here helping me bake plenty of cakes and pies."

"Mama?"

"Yes?"

"When we get to Heaven, can we have cake and pie every day?"

"Why, I don't know! Maybe! It's gonna be sorta like Heaven right here when Clyde and Walker come home. But, my, I've got work ahead. I'll have to catch a dozen or so young pullets and roosters and coop them up to fatten. We'll need piles of fried chicken. I hope your papa will have Black Idd get a good-sized shoat ready to butcher so I'll have fresh hams to boil. Or, if it would just turn cold enough, we could have hog killing."

Mama sounded like she was talking to herself, not me, but I didn't stop her.

"I've got a quilt in the frame that's simply got to be finished and put away. I always did hate to see a half-finished quilt hanging up against the ceiling. That makes me think; I'd better set up another bed in the far side room. That floor's got to be scrubbed first, though. This porch and all these old floors need a good going over with sand and lye."

"Mama, what's for me to do?"

"I'll think of something." Mama looked out across the yard toward the grove of black walnut trees in front of our house and at the ones growing by the barns and wagon shelter. The trees were nearly naked. They still had a handful of brown and yellow leaves flipping in the wind, but all their walnuts were lying on the ground, their thick green hulls already shriveling up and turning from green to black.

"I know the very thing, Bandershanks. You can pick up walnuts. We'll make some chocolate candy with-"