Prisoners of War by Steve Yarbrough Page B

across the table, whispering something to his sister and Sally Mankins, probably hoping to find a way to help Marie save face.
    But evidently, she decided to save face herself. Instead of turning and walking out, she came over to the counter and sat down beside him. Lizzie looked at her sharply, then grabbed a stack of dirty dishes and piled them in the sink.
    “Hey, Dan.”
    “How you doing, Marie?”
    “Not too bad.”
    “Well, that’s good.”
    “You got drill tonight?”
    “Yeah.”
    “I thought so. Y’all do it every Wednesday night, don’t you?”
    “Three out of every four.”
    “How long before you go in the army?”
    “I aim to join up at the end of the year. That’s when I turn eighteen.”
    “On December seventeenth,” she said. “Did you think I’d forgotten?”
    “Well, I don’t know.”
    “I didn’t forget.” She pulled a paper napkin from the holder on the counter and began tearing off bits. “I’m not as bad as your momma says I am.”
    Before he could reply, Lizzie said, “This ain’t the time to be tearing napkins to pieces. Those are the last ones we’ve got. If you’re nervous, why not bite your nails?”
    For a moment, all conversation stopped. Lizzie went right on washing dishes, her hands submerged in soapy water. Marie looked as if she’d been hit in the belly with a baseball bat.
    Dan said, “Why don’t we go take a walk?”
    Marie said nothing, just nodded, and he dropped some coins on the counter. “Thanks, Lizzie,” he said.
    She never looked up. “Sure thing, Captain. March hard.”
    Outside, the streetlights had come on. A brisk wind was blowing in from the west, and looking above the buildings on the far side of the street, he saw a purple mass of clouds. “I wouldn’t mind if it rained tonight,” he said. “We just keep doing the same drills over and over. It don’t amount to much.”
    She walked along beside him, step for step. They weren’t really touching yet, but once or twice her elbow grazed his. He’d thought they never would share a sidewalk again.
    “That’s what you do in the army, isn’t it?” she said. “Just the same things day after day?”
    “Yeah. Till somebody starts shooting, anyway.”
    “Nobody’ll ever shoot at you. The war’ll be over by next summer.”
    “Who told you that?”
    “That’s what everybody’s saying.”
    “Yeah, well, let’s hope everybody’s right,” he said. “What’d you mean—what you said about my momma?” He knew what Shirley thought, of course, but he couldn’t believe she would’ve said anything to Marie.
    “She stopped my mother in Woolworth’s. Not long after we broke up. She really gave her what-for, about me being two-faced and all, and Mother started crying. She told your mother it wasn’t me and it wasn’t her, that it was Daddy that made me break it off. And then your mother—well, she used foul language about Daddy and asked where he was right then, like she meant to go after him, too. When Mother said he was at work, your momma grabbed her arm and stuck her face in Mother’s and asked if she was so G-D sure about that.”
    The shoes Mrs. Lindsey was wearing during the encounter probably cost more than all the clothing his mother owned, but you couldn’t call Shirley Timms a coward. Tomorrow, he might feel a little proud of her, though it wouldn’t do to show it now. “Seems like everybody’s going crazy,” he said. “You probably remember me mentioning L.C.? Now, I’ve known him since I was seven or eight. Me and him’s tromped cotton together, pitched baseballs back and forth for two, three hours at a time. But the other day my wallet went missing, and I’m pretty sure he stole it.”
    “Sooner or later, that’s what they’ll do. You can’t even blame them. None of ’em have any money or ever will. Mother’s been through more housekeepers than I can count, and I don’t even know what the current one’s called.”
    She allowed him to take her hand. And