Miss Dimple Rallies to the Cause by Mignon F. Ballard Page B

lunch at a small restaurant near the college that specialized in hamburgers, and as soon as she stepped inside and inhaled the onion perfume, her appetite came back with a vengeance.
    “Your aren’t going to tell me, are you?” Elaine asked after they found seats in a booth in the back and ordered burgers with everything on them and large glasses of Coke.
    Charlie shrugged. “Tell you what?” she asked, although she could guess what she meant.
    Elaine blew the paper off the straw and laughed when it sailed into Charlie’s lap. “Have you and Will set the date for your wedding yet, and, if so, when ?”
    “We didn’t get that far, but from the way he talks, I think he wants to wait until things are more settled.”
    “You mean until after the war? ”
    “I’d marry him tomorrow if we could, but you know as well as I do we can’t plan anything until he’s completed his training. After this they’ll go to Craig Field in Selma for advanced flight training, and after that…”
    Elaine reached across the table and grasped her hand. “After that they’ll get their wings and be commissioned. They’ll go where they’re sent.”
    They’ll go where they’re sent. Those words occupied her thoughts all the way back to Atlanta. Mr. and Mrs. Martin were a pleasant couple and kind enough to offer her a ride, so Charlie tried to keep up with the conversation. In addition to their daughter in college, the Martins had a son who was in his last year of high school and eager to enlist in the military.
    “He’s only seventeen,” his mother said, “and I’m not giving my permission for him to take that step just yet. I’m hoping the war will be over soon and he’ll be able to go on to college.”
    Her husband, Charlie noticed, reached over and patted his wife’s hand. Charlie knew that he knew this war wasn’t going to be over anytime soon.
    *   *   *
    The week ahead was a whirlwind of planning for the approaching War Bond Rally and rehearsing for the entertainment afterward, but it didn’t take long for the news of Charlie’s engagement to spread like sunrise over the little town.
    “I knew it! I just knew it!” Annie said when Charlie telephoned her Sunday night. After sharing her news with her family, Charlie couldn’t wait until the next day to tell her friend about the most glorious night of her life.
    “You aren’t going to get married and leave us, are you?”
    “You should know better than that! Your own brother’s an air cadet. Is Joel getting married anytime soon?”
    Annie laughed. “Joel Gardner won’t even settle on a steady girlfriend. But you and Will…”
    “What about Will and me?” Charlie asked.
    “I wasn’t sure if you two would be able to wait that long,” Annie teased.
    “Who says you have to wait?”
    “Charlie, you didn’t ?” Annie’s words came in gasps. “ Oh, my gosh, you did, didn’t you?”
    “For heaven’s sake, of course we didn’t. It would have been kind of awkward with another couple along—but it’s not that I didn’t think of it,” Charlie admitted.
    Annie giggled. “I’ll bet Will thought of it, too.”
    “If he didn’t, there must be something wrong with him, and I’m pretty sure there’s not. Damn it, Annie, this war just isn’t convenient at all!”
    *   *   *
    When Miss Dimple arrived at the library early the day of the rally to sell tickets for the evening’s entertainment they were calling Home Front Follies, the whole town of Elderberry was a corridor of red, white, and blue. Flags lined the main streets of town, and posters were plastered in every store window. Reynolds Murphy displayed a mannequin in an army uniform outside the five-and-ten. A sign on the box of small American flags on a table beside him read, Wave one for me! and were to be given to the children who came to watch the parade later that day.
    At the library, Virginia was in such a frenzy, poor Cattus had taken refuge under a boxwood behind the chimney and