The Midnight Cool Read online

  use less sugar, and stir like hell.

  Charles put a note in the Everbright wall asking Catherine to meet him behind the icehouse. He went up there and waited, even knowing she would not show.

  He had thought for a long time about the letter from Edmund, the one she showed him all those months ago on the staircase of the Paradise: You’ve got it worse than I do and I’m headed to the Front. Secrets, he could hear her say. I’m so tired of secrets. He knew, now, what she had meant. He knew the weight on her shoulders. How was it that he could now know so much more about her, yet understand so much less?

  Stores were sold out of American flags. Women traded recipes for cooking wheatless, meatless, and sugarless. A dozen new clubs were formed every week. Mothers of Enlisted Boys. The Calvin Avenue Society of Knitters. Everywhere you went, women knitting socks for soldiers.

  A gang of college boys stole a dachshund dog and staged a trial on Court Square. The boys found it guilty, as charged, of treason and were about to hang it from a tiny gallows when somebody took pity on the creature and intervened.

  Now, whenever you went to a movie, a man would come out before the show and give a talk for four minutes on some subject concerning the war. These men—lawyers, bankers, businessmen—were called the Four Minute Men, a division of Washington’s new Committee on Public Information, and their local chairman was Leland Hatcher.

  Wad Taylor began to publish patriotic poems in the newspaper, with titles like ‘My Star-Spangled Heart’ and ‘Ode to a Soldier’s Mother.’ People memorized them and recited them in the streets. Every week there were several letters to the editor, requesting more.

  Bonnyman came up to the auction one Saturday. The lines around his mouth had deepened. He was sober as a judge.

  His standards were lower, now that he was buying for Uncle Sam. The Americans are a hell of a lot less picky than the Brits, he told Charles. Just send em down.

  Mules, mules, mules. Charles saw them when he closed his eyes at night. They were the first thing on his mind when he woke up in the morning. Where could he find them and how fast could he get them and how fast could he ship them down to Nashville. The farmers were plowing under tobacco and corn to grow potatoes and hemp for the war. Everyone with a patch of slack land was told to plant a victory garden. Charles went up to his lot and planted a big one. With a mule and a walking plow he tilled a plot on the high side, planted corn and beans and greens and tomatoes.

  The Raymond sat under a tarp at the back of the lot, right where the deliverymen had unloaded it, four days after war was declared. He tried not to look at it. He worked without ceasing. As long as he was working, he did not have time to regret it. As long as he was working, he felt like a good man.

  As he drove through the fields and up into the hills he thought, Catherine.

  He tried to write her a letter. Ripped it up.

  Catherine.

  The days passed. The earth steadily warmed. In the few fields still set aside for tobacco, the farmers set the tiny tobacco slips in the plowed dark earth, and the cherry blossoms on Court Square bloomed and pinked and fell from the branches, and swirled around in the Tennessee spring breeze, and caught in the girls’ hair, and in the backs of wagons, and the windshields of the cars, and piled up in corners like petals on the church steps after a wedding.

  Money Matters

  Money Matters

  by Leland Hatcher

  The Richfield Gazette

  Note: I received the letter below from my son, Edmund, with the request that it be printed here, for all Richfield. It is an honor to comply with his request.—LH

  Dear old friends,

  If I could I would tell you where I am at present, but alas, on account of the censors, I must say only that I am “somewhere in France.” How I wish instead I was back in old Richfield, Tennessee.

  As for my current situation, it can be described as 99 percent mud. And the remainder—mud.

  I have been through many trials that I know would be of interest, but it is nearly impossible to relate any of it in a letter. The censors take their jobs seriously. I can say that at [blacked out] I had [blacked out] men die in the back of my car before we could even make it to the hospital. I use that word lightly, as “the hospital” was nothing more than some burlap sacks stretched over the ruins of a church. All day, twenty cars went back and forth to the Front, retrieving the dead and dying. When night fell, for fear of attracting the enemy, we could not use our lights. A man walked along in front of my car, holding a white handkerchief behind his back. I followed this all through the terrible night, and can still see that small white beacon in the dark when I shut my eyes.

  But enough of all that. The purpose of this letter, when I sat down to write it, was solely to express to you the enthusiasm and excitement here over the coming arrival of “Les Americains.” It is something akin to the happiness of children on Christmas Eve. It sure makes a fellow proud to be an American.

  When you all get over here, we will kick the Boche in the teeth and be back home before anyone has time to blink.

  Get over here just as quick as you can.

  May God bless Richfield, and may God bless America.

  Your friend,

  Edmund Hatcher

  Get in the Game with Uncle Sam

  June 5. Registration day.

  The predicted rain had held and the day had turned out dry and hot, no cloud in the clean sky. The mayor had declared a holiday so that all the men of draft age could get up to the high school for the registration. Things had gone without a hitch. Better than expected, everyone was saying. Registration was over and done by ten o’clock. Now it was time for the parade.

  On his way to East Main, Billy stopped to study the poster in the window of the post office. It showed a gawky Uncle Sam on the pitching mound, winding up, pipestem arms and legs accordioned. The batter at the plate was a young man in uniform, smiling.

  get in the game with uncle sam

  A boy in short pants was standing there, looking at the poster while he scratched his armpit with his thumb. He had a wide white face like a halved apple.

  Wish I was old enough to go over, the boy said.

  Billy acted surprised. You mean you ain’t of age?

  Nossir.

  Surely next year.

  The boy scowled. Won’t even be eleven till next Tuesday.

  Billy winked at him. Well here’s to ten years from next Tuesday. If they’re still going at it then, you’ll surely be the man to take it over the top.

  * * *

  Charles cut through an alley and came out on Maple Street, right into the middle of the staging area. On the wall behind the marching band a poster of the Statue of Liberty read, do your part. A woman was trying to help an old man button the coat of his Confederate uniform. One sleeve was pinned up over the stump of his long-gone arm. The other trembled at one of the brass buttons. The woman kept reaching out, and he kept batting her hand away.

  I can manage, Susannah, he growled.

  I’m Mary, Father, the woman said patiently, reaching again for the button. Mary. Remember. Susannah’s gone.

  On East Main, the crowd stood six men deep. Chatter and laughter. Parasols and straw hats. All the young men wore red, white, and blue buttons in their lapels to show they had registered. A boy was handing out cheap cardboard fans. Charles took one.

  compliments of hatcher boot and shoe.

  Catherine. Finally he had spoken to her, the day of Cherry Orchard Tisdale’s wedding. She had been sitting on the back steps of the church, all dressed up for the wedding. He was coming up the alley with a mule. Seeing her, his heart leapt. His blood rose with the familiar heat. He thought she might run, but she did not.

  I heard the news, he said cautiously. Cherry and John Rich.

  Catherine screwed up her mouth.

  She’s a turncoat, she said bitterly. A traitor. She didn’t even tell Ed. He heard about it from Wad Taylor, then he wrote me a letter. You know what it said
? ‘I hope to God they’re happy. Because I am in hell.’

  She put her face in her hands. He tied up the mule and sat down next to her and didn’t care who saw them. He just sat there next to her, watching her shoulders shake. Wanting to put his arm around her but not daring.

  I’ll never forgive her, she said.

  I’m real sorry I did what I did the night of the party, Cat. The way I got down on my knee. Wish I’d never done that.

  She spread her hands and looked at him. Ed always says I ought not be so hard on people. He says I’m pure Roberson, too proud. You know, what I’ve been so angry about all this time isn’t that you got down on your knee like that. I’ve been angry with you all this time for saying you weren’t good enough for me. That was a terrible thing to say.

  I shouldn’t have said it, Charles said.

  It was a lie and an ugly and terrible thing to say and you should have known better than to say it. She looked him in the eye and took a long breath. Don’t ever say that again, alright?

  Alright.

  Above them the church bells started clanging. She looked up, then back at him.

  Did you get your land?

  He nodded. And a house too. Only I’m too busy to get it built.

  Good, she said, standing. He stood with her. So close. They nearly touched.

  I’m glad you got what you wanted. She smiled at him, tenderly. I think you ought to have everything you want, Charles.

  The bells kept clanging. She turned to go. He watched her disappear through the back door of the church, because he did not know how to say what he was thinking. That what he wanted was not land or a house or anything else. That all he wanted was her.

  Charles slipped the fan into his hatband. Just seeing her name on it made blood rush to his face. He would see her today. He felt certain of it. He must. He and Billy had been invited to sit on the podium during the speeches after the parade. The letter had come from the Richfield draft board. Chair, Leland Hatcher.

  Behind him, two girls giggled. A father hoisted a little boy up onto his shoulders.

  Here they come!

  First were three lines of National Guardsmen, bearing flags and bayonets, marching in step, and at the sight of them Charles, along with every other man along the block, stood up taller and squared his shoulders, removing his hat for the flag. Behind the soldiers came two sloppy lines of schoolboys bearing two hand-painted banners:

  it may be hot, but it’ll be hotter in berlin!

  watch your back, kizer bill

  Beside him a woman, fat and well powdered, violently flapped her Hatcher fan and huffed to her companion.

  With the dust they’re raising, mercy, I won’t be able to hang washing out till Wednesday.

  The first float rattled down the street: a trailer towed by a Model T, draped in banners, carrying schoolboys dressed as soldiers, all with wooden bayonets. One stood poised, ready to toss a magnolia cone grenade. At the back, on a riser, sat a girl dressed as Winged Victory, in a bedsheet and chicken-feather wings. Her arms, thick pink ham hocks, were wrapped around a boy who was lying across her lap, trying very hard to look dead.

  The crowd cheered. A gust of wind lifted the cloth beneath her, revealing a stack of hay bales. Lifted her bedsheet, too, enough to reveal her bare legs for an instant. Charles felt the blood-rush of desire, coughed and shifted his pants.

  The high school marching band came through playing ‘Are You from Dixie?’ The woman who had earlier complained about the dust clapped along, her chest heaving.

  Charles felt the drums in the walls of his heart. America! He loved it. Lately he loved it more with every passing day. One day last month he had repeated to Kuntz the story George Tisdale had told at the Bone Dry party, about the mother on Court Square who took away her children’s ice cream cones because children in Armenia were staving to death. That’s a tragedy! Kuntz had barked. Who is this woman? I’d like to buy those children another ice cream myself! Because if the children of America aren’t eating ice cream cones, McLaughlin, then where in God’s name can the rest of the world set its sights and aspirations?

  Now came the float carrying the Confederate veterans. You could hardly see the men on the float for all the flags: the American flag and the Confederate flag, the Tennessee flag, a mess of regimental flags, a billowing jumble of stars, stripes, and bars, blues, reds, and whites. Every so often one would snap aside in the wind to reveal a waving hand or a weathered, fringe-bearded face before it closed back up like a curtain.

  The crowd was going wild. Charles thought he saw the man who had been trying to button his coat back in the alley, but he wasn’t sure. Then from behind the flags came a rebel yell, half fox yelp, half grizzly roar. Part mad glory, part pants-pissing fear, and it was him, Charles saw as the flags parted, the man from the alley, his eyes far gone to some battlefield of his youth.

  Billy had told him about the draft riots in New York during the Civil War, which he himself had heard about from a man who had lived through them, who claimed that since that day his sense of smell had forever been burned out of his nose.

  Police cracking the skulls of Irish men cracking the skulls of colored men, Billy said. Well Uncle Sam sure as hell won’t let that happen this time, will he? This time they’re throwing us a parade.

  The veterans rattled past. Charles put his hat back on. The Hatcher fan fell from the band, and he reached down to pick it up, suddenly in a different world, now at the level of trouser legs and shoes and litter. He fumbled for the fan, caught under someone’s heel, and then from above he heard a whistle and a man say in a nasty tone, Well looky there.

  Lord have mercy, another said. Did her old man let her out of the house in that?

  She couldn’t—

  But she did. Look at her.

  Charles felt a burn in his face and straightened up and pushed to the front of the crowd because there was only one girl they could be talking about. At first all he could see was a group of boys in tricorn hats carrying the French flag and a banner that said, liberté—égalité—fraternité.

  Vive la France! the boys shouted, and the crowd, with a roar, shouted it back. But no one was looking at them, and now Charles got around a tall man who had been blocking his view and saw her.

  God. She was spectacular. That was what she was. A spectacle.

  Even more than all that bare flesh and chain mail, it was the way she sat the horse. Her thin shoulders thrown back, spine straight as an arrow, the pole of her banner not wavering an inch. Around it her fist was steady, her wrist covered by a metal cuff that went halfway to her elbow. From beneath a glittering helmet her fierce eyes were fixed far ahead on East Main Street. As if she saw beyond it, to shores even farther than Europe’s. Beyond the war to a distant promised land.

  What in the high holy? Charles said. There it was again, ten times stronger than before, the blood-rush to his core. He shifted, feeling it strain his pants. Ashamed of it. Thrilled by it.

  The fellow next to him turned. That, buddy, is Miss Catherine Hatcher.

  Well I know that, Charles growled. Under her short metallic skirt her bare thigh flashed in the sun. But what’s she got up as?

  Joan of Arc, the fellow said. Course. When Charles kept looking at him he raised his eyebrows. Buddy. You mean you don’t know who Joan of Arc is?

  Sure I do.

  The man jogged his eyebrows again, rolled his eyes. Around them the crowd was going nearly as wild as they had for the veterans. The slightest smile turned up the corners of Catherine’s mouth.

  French bird, buddy. God spoke to her. Whispered in her ear that she oughta fight the British, free her people, save her king. Joan of Arc, she saved France. Then they done burned her at the stake.

  Oh yeah. Sure. Charles swallowed around the heat in his throat. The dark horse wore a white leather bridle and a white blanket beneath the saddle. Catherine’s hips rocked with his enormous stride. He was a magnificent horse. Where on earth did she get that horse?

 
But man oh man, the fellow was saying. No French bird ever looked as good as that. Wouldn’t you like a feel of that? Now I wasn’t there, but I heard at last year’s fair—

  Charles was already pushing through the crowd, trying to follow her. He could hear bits and pieces of what people were saying. He wanted to shout, She’s mine! She’s mine! But she wasn’t, not anymore, maybe never had been, and he knew it. His heart was already falling, she was past now, the horse’s tail swaying, and the crowd was packed too tight. A big stocky fellow with a black mustache stopped him. Got up in his face and growled, Where’s your button?

  Ain’t of age, he croaked, and pushed on. She was gone.

  * * *

  Billy stood by the bandstand, watching the streaming sea of people, waiting for Charles. He had missed most of the parade. After talking to the boy he had ducked into the grassy lot of an abandoned house to take a leak, where he discovered another boy, the one with the raccoons. He had heard them first, actually, the mewling howls, tiny shrieks of pain, and had followed the sound to the back of the house, where a colored boy squatted under the half-collapsed back stairs, ripping the guts out of a litter of baby raccoons with a razor blade. Two were already dead, tossed in the dust, their guts in whorls like shiny red streamers. Their tiny black hands curled.

  Billy had slowly moved closer to the boy, until he stood just beside him. He thought the kid would run, but he only glared up at him and turned back to the creature in his hands. Billy talked him into taking his pipe and tobacco, all he had on him, in trade for the animals. And the boy had taken these things with eyes that had been betrayed by everyone, everywhere, since always.

  Billy carried the two that were still alive all the way back to the creek. When he set them down they spun and bumped blindly before disappearing into the brush. He sat down for a long time, just sitting there, staring at the water, and had gone back up towards the parade only because Charles wanted him there. He was wearing the suit Charles had bought for him and he had shined his shoes like he had asked him to, but now, looking down, he saw they were covered in mud from the creek bank.