Morning Glory (52 page)
Because of Corporal Parker's determination and bravery the 1st Raider Bn. won a decisive victory over the Japanese at the mouth of the
It is with pride and pleasure that for heroism above and beyond the call of duty I am recommending to the Commander in Chief of the United States Armed Forces that Corporal William L. Parker, USMC 1st Raider Battalion, be awarded the medal of valor of the Order of the Purple Heart.
Yours truly,
Col. Merritt A. Edson
Commander, 1st Marine Raiders
USMC
Balboa Naval Hospital
San Diego
,
Dear
Mrs. Parker
,
I am pleased to inform you that on
husband, Corp. William L. Parker, 37 773 785, was transferred to
U.S.A.
for further medical treatment.
Balboa Naval Hospital
San Diego
Dear Elly,
I'm home again and you don't need to worry any more. A Red Cross nurse is writing this for me because the doc won't let me sit up yet. I finally got all your letters. They caught up with me in a hospital in
Melbourne
. Elly honey it was so good to read all those words from you, all about Donald Wade going to school and Lizzy P. saying her first words and how they taught her to say Daddy. I wish I was there with you all now but it looks like that'll be a while yet. My leg isn't so good but at least I've still got it and it might be stiff but I'll be able to walk, they say. The docs here say I'm still carrying a piece of metal in my left leg and I may have to have surgery again. But what the heck, at least I'm alive.
I'm sorry they didn't tell you more right after I got hit so you wouldnt have worried so much. I would have done so myself but I guess I wasn't in much shape for writing. But don't you worry now. I'm okay and I mean it.
By now you know I got hit by a Jap grenade while I was trying to flush eight of them out of a holeup near the airfield on the Canal which it's okay now to tell you where I was, on
Guadalcanal
. The Canal was rough and we lost a lot there but we set them back and the airstrip is ours now. If we hadn't the Pacific would still be theirs and I'm damn proud of what we did. I might as well tell you now my buddy Red didn't make it and thats all I can say about it at the moment because its hard for me to think about it. So as I was saying it doesn't seem much to put up with a few chunks of steel in your leg. But I have to confess I never was so glad to see anything as I was to see Old Glory waving over the
All my love, Will
Dear Will,
Oh Will your home at last. Your letter just came and I cryed when I read it I was so happy. They won't send you back will they? Is your leg healing any better? I'm so worried about it and what you must be going through with the operations and the pain. If you weren't so far away I'd come to you again like I did in
Augusta
, but I just don't see how I can come clear to
Dear Elly,
The nurses strung colored lights across the foot of our beds but looking at them gives me that choky feeling again. I'm layin here thinking of last Christmas eve when you and me filled the stockings for the boys. I want to be home so bad.
Dear Will,
Happy birthday...
Dear Elly,
They got me up on crutches today...
Chapter 19
C
alvin Purdy dropped Will at the end of his driveway.
"Thanks a million, Mr. Purdy."
"No thanks necessary, Will, not from a GI. You sure you don't want me to take you the rest o' the way on up't the house?"
"No, sir, I was always partial to this little stretch of woods. Sounds good to walk through the quiet alone, if you know what I mean."
"Sure do, son. Ain't no place prettier'n
Georgia
in May. You need any help with them crutches?"
"No, sir. I can manage." Leading with both feet, Will worked his way out of Calvin Purdy's '31 Chevrolet while Purdy retrieved Will's duffel bag and brought it around, then laced it over Will's shoulder.
"Be more'n happy to take your duffel up," Purdy repeated accommodatingly.
"'Preciate it, Mr. Purdy, but I kinda wanted to surprise Elly."
"You mean she doesn't know you're comin'?"
"Not yet."
"We-e-e-ll, then I understand why you want to go up alone ... Corporal Parker." Grinning. Purdy extended his hand and gripped Will's tightly. "Anytime I can give you a lift or be of any he'p, just holler. And welcome home."
After Purdy pulled away, Will stood for a moment, listening to the silence. No cannonade in the distance, no bullets thupping into the earth beside him, no mosquitoes buzzing, no men screaming. All was silence, blessed May silence. The woods were in deep leaf, heavy green weighting down the branches. Beside the road a patch of wild chicory created a cloud of blue stars. Nearby a clump of wild clover startled, livid in the heat of its summer blush. Some creature had feasted on a smilax vine, spreading a scent like root beer in the air. A yellow warbler did a flight dance, landed on a branch and sang its seven clear, sweet notes, eyeing Will with head atilt.
Home again.
He moved up the driveway beneath the arch of branches that allowed the azure sky entry. He tipped his head and admired it, marveling that he need not cock an ear for the sound of distant engines, nor squint an eye in an effort to identify a wing shape or a rising red sun painted on a fuselage.
Forget it, Parker, you're home now.
The driveway was soft, the air warm, his crutches poked holes in the red earth. They must've had rain recently. Rain. He'd never much cared for rain, not in his early life when he'd lived mostly in the open, certainly not on the Canal, where the damned rain was ceaseless, where it filled foxholes, turned tent camps to fetid quagmires, rotted the soles off sturdy leather boots and fostered mosquitos, malaria and a host of creeping fungi that grew between toes, inside ears and anyplace two skin surfaces touched.
I said, forget it, Parker!
The odd thing was, though he'd been Stateside for six months he still couldn't acclimate to it. He still scanned the skies. Still listened for stealthy movement behind. him. Still expected the telltale clack of two bamboo stalks rubbing. Still flinched at sudden noises. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. The air here had no mildewy smell, instead it held a tang of wild tansy which seemed familiar and welcoming and very native. During his drifting years whenever he'd caught a cold he'd brewed himself a cup of tansy tea, and once when he'd gashed his hand on a piece of rusty barbed wire he'd made a compress of it that cured the infection.
Walking up his own road amid the smells of tansy and smilax, he let the fact sink in: he was home for good.
At the sourwood tree he stopped, let his canvas duffel bag slip down and lowered his left foot to the ground. Real, solid ground, a little moist maybe, but American. Safe. Ground he'd shaped himself with a mule named Madam while a little boy sat and watched, and the boy's mother brought red nectar and a baby brother down the lane in a faded red wagon.
He resisted the urge to drop his crutches and ease onto the bank where the grass was green-rich and wild columbine blossomed. Instead, he shouldered his bag and moved westward toward the opening in the trees where the clearing lay.
Reaching it, he paused in surprise. During his stretch in the South Pacific, when he'd pictured home, he often saw it as it had first been, a motley collection of scrap iron and chicken dung beside a teetering house patched with tin. What he saw today made him hold his breath and stand stone still in wonder.
Flowers! Everywhere, flowers ... and all of them blue! Gay, uncivilized blossoms, clambering unchecked without a hint of order or precision. How like his Elly to sow wildly and let rain and sun—Will smiled—and all those years of chicken manure do the rest. He scanned the clearing. Blue—Lord a-mercy, he'd never seen so much blue! Flowers of every shade and tint of blue that nature had ever produced. He knew them all from his study of the bees.
Nearest the house tall Persian blue phlox bordered the porch, thick and high and tufted, giving way to Canterbury bells that bled from deepest royal purple to a pale violet-pink. At their feet began a rich spread of heliotrope in coiled blue-violet sprays. Against the east wall of the chicken house a clematis climbed a trellis of strings. There, too, began a carpet of long-stemmed cornflowers, as deep and true as the sky, continuing along the adjacent chicken-yard fence in a wall of royal color. At the shady border beneath the trees, pale violets began, giving way to deep-hued forget-me-nots which ranged in the open sun, meeting a spread of blue vervain. On the opposite side of the yard a wooden wagon wheel had been painted white and stood as a backdrop for a stand of regal larkspur which covered the blue spectrum from purple to indigo to palest
Dresden
. Before them, much shorter and more delicate, a patch of flax-flowers waved in the breeze on fernlike stems. Somewhere in the conglomeration purple petunias bloomed. Will could smell them as he moved up the path, which was bordered by fuzzy ageratum. Where that path led around the back of the house a new pergola stood, laden with morning glories, their bells lifted to heaven. Birds darted everywhere, a chirping cacophony. A ruby-throated hummingbird at the morning glories. Wrens lambasting him with music from the low branch of a crabapple tree, and appropriately enough, a pair of bluebirds near one of the gourds. Spotting them, he smiled, recalling Donald Wade placing the bluebird figurine on the windowsill for just this reason. Well, they had their bluebirds now.
And bees ... everywhere, bees, gathering nectar and pollen from the sea of color they loved best, humming, lifting on gauzy wings to move to the next blossom and join their wing-music to that of the birds.
Only as he neared the house did Will find a ruddy splash. Several feet off the last porch step stood a washtub, painted white, bulging with cinnamon pinks so thick they cascaded over the sides—crimson and heliotrope and coral and rose—so fragrant they made his head light. On the porch steps lay a cluster of them, crushed, wilted. He picked them up, held them, smelled them, glanced around the clearing before depositing them where they'd been, carefully, as if they were the trappings of a religious ceremony.
He raised his eyes to the screen door, mounted the steps and opened the screen, expecting any moment to hear Elly or the kids call, "Who's there?"
The kitchen was empty.
"Elly?" he called, letting his duffel bag slip from his shoulder.
In the answering silence wands of sunlight angled across the scrubbed floor and climbed the mopboard. The room smelled good, of bread and spice. On the table was a crocheted doily and a thick white crockery pitcher filled with a sampling of flowers from the yard; on the windowsill, the bluebird figurine. The room was neat, orderly, clean. His eyes moved to the cupboard where a white enamel cake pan was covered with a dishtowel. He lifted a corner of the cloth-bars, unfrosted, half-gone. He tucked a pinch into his mouth, then poked his head into the front room.