Authors: Marie Bostwick
River's Edge (19 page)
“But, Papa,” Cookie whined. “I've got to learn to drive someday!”
“I know that, Cookie. I'll teach you myself. I'll do it this summer.”
Cookie rolled her eyes and mumbled glumly. “That's what you said last summer.”
This was true. Papa couldn't deny it, so instead he growled something unintelligible. Cookie saw her opening.
“Papa,” she said sweetly, “it's not your fault. You have a whole church to manage. You're just so busy, and Junior can't teach me because he's going to work at the Jorgensens' all summer. Mark is only going to work part time this summer, so he'll have his afternoons free.” Papa was silent. He took another piece of bread from the platter in front of him and buttered it thoroughly, giving himself time to think. Cookie, sensing his weakening resolve, plowed eagerly on.
“Think what a help it would be to have another driver in the family! What with Junior headed off to college in the fall and everything, it would be nice to have someone else who could run errands andâ”
“I'm not going to college.”
At Junior's announcement, all of the several separate conversations going on around the table came to an abrupt halt. Everyone in the room was perfectly silent and stared at Junior in stunned disbelief.
“What was that?” Papa asked.
“I've decided not to go to college,” Junior repeated more quietly than the first time.
Mama let out a slow breath and glanced around the table at the younger of the children, whose eyes were darting expectantly from Junior to Papa and back to Junior. “Boys, you can be excused,” she said, nodding her head in the direction of the staircase to indicate they should go to their rooms.
Chip complained. “I'm still hungry.” This was probably true. When I'd first come to Brightfield, Chip had been very finicky, and Mama had to coax him to eat. But now he'd grown six inches taller in as many months, and his appetite was constant and ravenous.
“I've got a plate of cookies on the counter. You can take them upstairs with you.”
“Yeah, but I wanna stay and hear Junior get bawled out,” protested Chuck. “Usually, Chip and me are the only ones that get hollered at. It'd be nice to see somebody else get it for a change.”
Mama's voice took on an impatient edge. “Go!” she commanded. “Both of you. You too, Curt.”
They hesitated for just a moment. Mama gave Chip her no-nonsense glare. Chip sighed resignedly. “C'mon, Runt,” he said to Curt. “Bring the cookies.”
All three boys did as they were bid but with much grumbling and shuffling. They thumped up the staircase even more loudly than usual, signaling their displeasure at being sent into exile just when things were getting interesting, and slammed the door at the top of the stairs as a final protest.
Papa's voice was even, but I could see that the tips of his ears were turning red. Papa was sometimes irritated by his children, but only rarely did he show true anger. On the rare occasions when that did happen, red ears were the first signs of his rising ire, and, once unleashed, Papa's fury was an awesome thing to witness.
“Junior, you've already been admitted. We discussed it,” he said through slightly clenched teeth. “You're going to get your undergraduate degree at State, then you're going on to seminary. We talked about it.”
“No sir,” Junior corrected his father with quiet intensity. “We didn't talk about it. You talked about it. You never asked my opinion.”
“That's not so, Junior! We discussed the whole thing. Nobody is going to give you a pulpit if you don't get a college education. You can't enter the ministry withoutâ”
“Papa! I don't want to enter the ministry!” Junior shouted.
Papa tolerated this interruption, but I could see it was an effort for him to remain silent in the wake of his son's outburst. His jaw tightened as he waited for Junior to continue.
Junior lowered his voice and continued in a tone that was contrite but determined. “I'm sorry I shouted, Papa, but I don't want to be a pastor. You're a wonderful pastor. I mean that. I admire you so much, Papa, but I'm not like you. It wouldn't work. I wouldn't be any good at it.”
Papa's jaw relaxed a little. “I understand, son. I do. It's an awe-inspiring and sometimes frightening responsibility to respond to God's call to ministry. But you're absolutely up to it,” he said reassuringly. “You're young yet. It will be a long time before you come face to face with a congregation. When you finally do, you'll have years of education and training behind you. You'll be ready.”
“No, Papa,” Junior said firmly, “I won't. I'll never be ready.
“Papa, do you remember a few weeks ago when Bob Klein, Joe's son, was home from college for the weekend and came over to get your advice on him going on to seminary instead of taking over his dad's farm?”
Papa nodded affirmatively.
“Well, I was listening outside your study door when you were talking to him. You told him that it wasn't enough just to believe in God and become a pastor just because you thought it would make God happy or other people happy. You told him that a pastor had to have a calling, and that meant ministry wasn't a choice you madeâministry was what you did because you had no other choice, because you simply had to serve God in the church and your soul wouldn't rest unless you did.”
Junior looked intently at his father across the broad expanse of that table. For a moment, it was as if he and Papa were the only people in the room.
“I'm not called, Papa.”
Papa took a deep breath and closed his eyes. It was impossible to know if he was thinking, praying, or both. Every pair of eyes was glued to his face, wondering what he would say next. When his eyelids finally opened, his response was simple and direct.
“All right.”
Junior's face broke into a relieved, grateful, and somewhat astonished smile, as if it had all been so much easier than he'd imagined. “Thank you for understanding, Papa! You see my point, don't you?”
“I do,” Papa said somewhat irritably and raised his hand up to keep Junior from going on, “but don't belabor it.” There was a palpable sense of relief in the room. Everyone relaxed a bit and began eating again, though much more quietly than before. They were still listening for Papa to say something more.
“My own words come back to haunt me. A man mustn't enter the ministry if he's not called. If you aren't, there is nothing I can do about it, though, who knows? Your feelings may change when you're older. Many men don't get a call until late in life. My grandfather didn't get a pulpit until he was well past forty.”
Junior bobbed his head in appeasing acknowledgement, reaching across the table to get the bowl of mashed potatoes.
“However,” Papa continued, “Just because you don't see yourself in the pastorate doesn't mean you shouldn't go to college. You're a smart boy, and you've got to do something with your life. You'll go to State in the fall, just like we'd planned.”
Junior groaned, and the balloon of tension quickly reinflated in the kitchen. “What's the point of going to college now? We're going to get into the war any second! I'm planning on working at Mr. Jorgensen's all summer so I can put some money away for the future.” He threw a quick, furtive glance in my direction as he said this last word, and I knew it was for my benefit. Only hours before we had shared our first kiss. And though we hadn't discussed it, and wouldn't do so openly for some time, we knew that our futures lay together. How amazing! I lowered my eyes to my scarcely touched plate, but I could feel my mouth draw up in a small, shy smile.
“I'm going to work all summer,” Junior continued with conviction, “and unless the war starts before the crop is in, I'm going to join up. If I sign up early as a volunteer, I'll have more choice about my duty than I would if I waited for a draft.”
Mama lifted her eyes from her plate and looked at Papa, then at Junior. “It sounds as if you've thought it out and made up your mind,” she said gently.
“I have.”
Papa's eyes darted from Junior to Mama and back to Junior. He was quiet for a moment, but I could see a glimmer of acquiescence in his face. He took his napkin from his lap and wiped his mouth.
“Well,” he said slowly, “I think you're wrong about the war starting any day. President Roosevelt said he'd keep us out of it, and I believe he'll keep his word.”
No one wanted that to be true more than I did, but by this time no one really believed America could sit out the war, not even Papa, not really. War talk had been going on around Brightfield for years. Almost from the day I'd arrived I'd heard people discussing it, and although the conversations had tended to become more subdued if people noticed me in the room, my presence didn't stop them from giving their opinion about the war and the probability and wisdom of U.S. involvement in the European conflict. At first, the preponderance of opinion had been that America should keep out of the war, that it was too far away from her shores and had too little to do with her national interests to be worth risking the lives of American boys. But lately the sentiment had changed.
The younger generation, boys like Junior, tended to be more gung-ho when it came to the subject of American intervention in the war than older people. Initially, men who had lived through the first war, and remembered too many friends who had not, had been firm and vocal in their insistence that America must stay out of the war at all costs. But as time had gone on, and especially after the German occupation of Paris and the sudden very real possibility of the occupation of England, their rhetoric softened. Poland and the Ukraine were one thing, but Paris! London! These were places that many of them had visited and grown to love as young, eager privates and second lieutenants. These were the cities in which they'd had their first drink of liquor and their first romance. It had been impossible for them to believe that the German army would ever get so far, and yet it had! If the Nazis could occupy Paris, then why not New York, Boston, or Washington?
The war was raging “over there,” but suddenly it seemed very close indeed. And yet, in spite of the seeming inevitability of war, many of those old soldiers, men like Papa, hoped that if they could just stay out of it for as long as possible that somehow the war would end and their idealistic sons would be spared the knowledge of what their fathers had learned: there is no such thing as the glory of war.
“No,” Papa said, with less conviction in his tone than in his words, “I don't believe that America is going to enter this war.”
“Papa,” Junior broke in derisively, “you can't mean that! We've
got
to get into it. It's our duty, for cryin' out loud!”
got
to get into it. It's our duty, for cryin' out loud!”
“What do you know about it?” Papa shouted, pounding his fist on the table so hard that the silverware next to his plate jumped in response to the force of his blow. We all froze in surprise at this unexpected outburst of emotion. “I have been to war, Junior! I know what war is!
“In 1917 someone said it was our duty to go to war because this would be the war to end all wars. I believed them. So did my kid brother, Gordy, and most of our friends. I was in my second year at seminary, but I quit as soon as the war was declared. I came home to see my folks and say good-bye before I enlisted. My dad was furious. He said, âWhy don't you wait another year and a half and finish your degree? If you want to join up after that, I won't object; at least then you'd be able to do those poor boys some good instead of just becoming one more wasted piece of cannon fodder!' We argued for three days, but I wouldn't listen. Neither would Gordy.
“We went to the recruiting office together, and we shipped out together. By late October we were in the trenches of France, some of the first Americans in the fight. We were so young ...”
Papa's voice trailed off, and his eyes clouded with memories. He stared at a blank wall on the far side of the room, as if the shadow of his younger self were standing there and only he could see it. Then he went on with his story.
“Just three days after we got there, the sergeant said to get readyâwe were going out over the top. We were so nervous. We already realized that the war was nothing like we'd imagined it. So many dead men. I knew Gordy was as scared as I was, but we didn't talk about it. We just smoked a few cigarettes and joked around while waiting for the order to go. It turned out to be our one and only day in combat.
“When the order finally came, Gordy and I charged out with the rest of our unit. I was surrounded by shouting soldiers and smoke. I lost sight of Gordy, but I kept going. I made it twenty or thirty yards before an explosion knocked me off my feet and unconscious. I woke up in the field hospital pretty torn up and completely deaf. The force of the explosion had burst my eardrum.
“Bud McCandless, a guy from our unit, came to visit me. I couldn't hear anything, so he wrote out the news on a piece of paper. Gordy was dead. He had gotten up pretty close to the German line before he got hit by some mustard gas. The gas blinded him, and he stumbled into a tangle of barbed wire. He was caught there like a spider in a web, and the Germans riddled him through with bullets. Dozens and dozens of bullets. He was almost unrecognizable.” Papa choked with the pain of the memory. His eyes filled with tears.
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