I received this information in silence. The men in the pictures of the Great War had died. I knew that. The newspapers were full of people who were shot or strangled or who fell off buildings. But I hadn’t imagined that this had anything to do with me. This was the first time in my life, listening to Mrs. Daniels with The Pirate Lover and Leaves of Grass all tangled up in my head, that I felt the truth of this—everybody died. Such a dark discovery, but also so wild and satisfying. There was a pull toward dark things in the poem and in the romance, both. What did it mean that there was this terrible, sweet pull?
When I got home I crawled under Snyder’s bed again and pulled out another Marvel Mystery Comic. A miniature alien riding on what looked like a huge ant was being held under a clear glass bowl by a pair of giant hands. It was going to die. I flipped to the advertisements on the back page: EXPLODING HAND GRENADE. This menacing hand grenade looks and works just like a real one. All you do is pull the pin. Throw the grenade and watch the fun as the caps explode!
Little boys were going to pretend to make things die. I understood this even as I also knew that if I tried to explore this sudden and strange feeling I had right now with a grown-up, I’d be told that there was something wrong with me. Maybe there was.
HYPNO COIN. In just moments your subjects will follow your commands while hypnotized by this powerful visual tool.
THE INSULT THAT MADE A MAN OUT OF ME. The Charles Atlas dynamic tension program will change your life.
I opened the bag of cookies that Violette had given me. She had included a Hermit Bar for each of my sisters and Snyder as well as one for me. I ate Snyder’s cookie. Then, because I couldn’t explain why his cookie was missing, I ate Jane’s and Lilly’s. A spider skittered across the floor. I caught it, put it carefully between the cover and first page of Snyder’s comic, and squashed him. This made me feel better, then worse. I went out to play.
The next time I went to the library, I asked the librarian if I could use the poetry section—it was a skimpy little shelf with maybe twenty titles, most of them there because the local high school assigned a poetry paper every year for the twelfth-graders and they had kept asking for titles that weren’t in the school library. There sat Leaves of Grass, which I slid off its shelf and opened.
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death, And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier.
For reasons I could not explain, once again that made me think of Electra Gates’s dress.
NEAVE
What Happy Women Do
In the months leading up to Pearl Harbor there was no barrier, no domestic happiness, that could keep the coming war from saturating our daily lives–movie newsreels, newspapers, radio shows, talk on the street and in living rooms and diners and churches. Then Pearl Harbor and we were in the fight ourselves. Only Janey was untouched, protected by her naturally sunny nature and our habit of turning off the radio when she came into the room. If she asked anything about it, we told her everything would be fine. I don’t know if she believed it. Being sunny does not necessarily make you stupid.
Rationing made turning to the relief of making a pie or a tray of cookies almost impossible. Mom and I hoarded sugar and traded Daddy’s tomatoes for a neighbor’s eggs, and we scraped together a cake about once a month. I still read for Mrs. Daniels, who didn’t seem to live in the land of rations. At Mrs. Daniels’s house, cookies still came floating out of the kitchen; crusty pumpernickel bread still got slathered with butter. I didn’t know how and I didn’t ask why. I just begged her cook to let me come early some days and bake with her. She said yes and at least once a week I would come an hour before Mrs. Daniels expected me and I’d sit in her kitchen getting a ball of perfect pie dough ready to roll out. I loved that kitchen.
At home it felt like the war sat down with us at the dinner table every night. Snyder was turning eighteen. The draft notice would be in the mail any day. All around us were boys who were begging parents to sign release forms to let them get in early, boys who talked about not wanting to miss their war. Snyder, I’m pretty sure, wanted to miss the war. He was restless and thin-skinned and just about impossible to be around. He was frightened.
I know it started with a scuffle between me and Snyder, but I don’t remember over what. We got in a lot of scuffles that year. Whatever the argument was about on that particular day, some of it happened in the driveway behind the car. Snyder grabbed my collar and yanked, hard enough to make me choke. This upset Mr. Boppit, who flung himself between us. Snyder kicked Mr. Boppit, which made me slap Snyder. He stamped over to the car and turned on the ignition, yelling about going away, going far, far away, and not looking behind him at all. Ha. That’s what I said. We wish.
I heard the brake being pulled free and the ignition cranked but I wasn’t making connections, looking ahead at what could happen but failing because I was busy thinking about how much I wanted to hurt him. I didn’t really believe that Snyder would unlock the brake. Then he did and he and the car started backward with me right in its path. Snyder’s intentions weren’t clearly murderous, because as I said, he was still yelling “far, far away” and I honestly don’t think he was in his right mind. I just happened to be in his path.
It was Mr. Boppit who saved me. He charged in, barking like he thought that noise alone could stop the car, and when that didn’t work, he flung himself directly onto me, pushing me aside so the car just missed me on its way to the end of the driveway. The rear bumper caught the side of his silky head. Only on the one side, though, so when he fell, the broken half of his face was on the ground. He looked asleep until we turned him over. A dead dog is stiller than a barn in a field or a chair in an empty room.