Daddy, Tell Me About the War

Daddy comes out onto the porch, leans on the railing, and looks out at the blue mountains in the distance. We live up on the hillside, and from our porch we have one of the best views in the valley. We can watch storms from a long way off, the rain shifting and swaying like curtains in a window as it makes its way on up the mountains, toward our own house. We can see smoke coming out of the chimneys of the houses down in the hollers and the lights of town, far over there.

Every morning it is like this. Daddy out on the porch, looking out at the mountains of his youth, stretching, his back popping. Looking out at those mountains with an expression on his face that makes you wonder what he sees out there. Certainly more than the lavender hills we can see strewn out before us. Daddy has worked all day, and this is his favorite time. He will sit now in the Mennonite chair on the porch and listen to the soft sounds, he will read the newspaper, fold it on his lap, think. He will call Momma “old woman” and slap her on the hindend and tell her to let the housework go a few minutes to sit and talk to him awhile. Daddy will ruffle my hair and laugh when he says, “You can see the meanness right in that boy.” But his eyes look sad when his big hand is on my back and he says that I am growing up too fast. “You was born yesterday, son,” he will say. Sometimes friends or some of our people will come up and all the grownups will sit on the porch while all the people will come up and all the children run down the hillsides watching the lightning bugs come up from the river or go down the creek to sneak a cigarette somebody has stolen out of an adult’s pack. When we have company, you can hear Daddy’s laughter booming all the way down the creek. He will laugh and tell big tales and ask everybody over and over if they need some more iced tea. When they say yes, Momma will jump up and get it for them and Daddy will watch her walk across the porch, as if he enjoys just being able to look at her.

Momma is always in the kitchen this time of day, the sink full of soap suds and the last of the supper dishes. The radio tuned to the gospel station in London, her singing along, the smell of good food and a clean house floating all around her, her hair, turning gray now behind the tortoise combs she uses to hold it back on the sides, her hands wrinkled and white from the dishwater. She scrubs the dishes hard and quick, with all her force. She pats her foot to the music, closes her eyes, and prays silently to herself. She prays in the morning that we will all have a safe day, and in the evening she prays in thanks. When she is done with the dishes she will come out onto the porch, too, wiping her hands on a dishtowel that she will spread over the railing to dry out. She will run her hands over Daddy’s hair and sit in the swing, pushing it back until she is moving back and forth repeatedly, the chains singing a little screech every time she comes forward—swinging, like a child will do. She will take the tortoise combs out of her hair and brush it out, drink ice water, ask Daddy what happened at work today. She is crazy over Daddy, you can tell, and they have been married almost twenty years.

I am in the yard, the soft grass under my back, my arms behind my head, watching the moon come out white and faceless through the branches of the willow. A tattered paperback lies on the ground beside me, its spine broken, its edges curled up with wear. Now I have stopped...