Death in the Delta: Uncovering a Mississippi Family Secret

CHAPTER TWO: A Secret Will Out

7 ASecretWillOut I asked myself, “Who was my father?” if what they tell me now is true. July 18, 1943, North Africa, World War II From Dad, age twenty, to the family in Anguilla, Mississippi: Dearest Family, How my thoughts turn to home and loved ones this beautiful Sunday morning. It’s now 20 minutes to 10 and I can see you all bustling around getting dressed for church. “Aunt Mat” is probably rushing around the kitchen, clearing breakfast dishes off the glass top table on the side porch, and fuming because she’s going to be late again for church. Bub and Bill are probably in the car and Sis will be reading the funnies. I guess mama will be preparing her Sunday school lesson by now and putting the finishing touches to her hair. “Tater” is probably shining by now in a new suit, with suspenders and an enormous hat with a feather in it. John will have come and gone. Frances is probably entertaining the preacher today. At the church, the music will start soon and then the men and boys who are finishing last puffs on their cigarettes will file in self-consciously and congregate on the back rows. Aunt Laura will be there and Pa-Paw. Aunt Hal and Uncle Fred, Aunt Rube, Aunt Lil, Burr and Lucille and the boys, Fred Jr. and Dot, Frank and Rufus . . . and all the others will chapter two a secret will out 8 be there—whispering the latest gossip back and forth. Lord, I’d love to be there. I’d love to be able to take a bath in a tub with all the soap and water I wanted to use and put on a clean uniform that Frances had washed and ironed instead of my own sloppy laundering without pressing. I’d like to sit there in the cool and listen to the music and look around me at folks I’ve known all my life. On this side of the ocean we’re observing the Sabbath in a different way. We’ve had our church earlier in the little French chapel here. The Catholics met earlier this morning; the Protestants at 8:30, and now the Jewish boys are having their worship services. The chapel is plain and simple. A long narrow building whose only claim of superiority over the other buildings is twice the number of windows, whitewashed walls and a number of hard rough benches. But it’s a chapel. It has a cross on top and even though we use it during the week days for school it has a certain air of solemn dignity that makes us wish we had maybe stretched ourselves to the extent of breaking out a clean uniform and shaving before we came in. During the week we are taught how a certain enemy airplane has no protection overhead, how to employ our guns and bombs so as to take as many lives as many ways as we can. How to shoot a paratrooper, how to kill a sentry with a knife so he can give no alarm of our approach. How we can live off the land if we are forced down in the water. But this place is still a chapel. When one enters it still feels one degree closer to God. And we love that chapel as much as we love our little churches at home. Overhead classmates and friends of mine are droning over and away in airplanes. There are low scattered clouds this morning and they peel off on them, zooming through and around them. That’s a “rat race,” a pilot’s biggest sport. I was up earlier and I thought what a fitting preparation for church this is. To float around God’s heavens on wings He has given us sense enough to build. To climb and dive and a secret will out 9 swoop and zoom around with your temples throbbing, every nerve awake and aware, your whole being attuned so that you are a part of the ship, an extra cylinder, an airfoil, and then, to climax it by a carefully gauged and calibrated approach to land. “Too fast, too fast, whoa, whoa, slower, slower, now, flaps down, get that stick forward, okay now, steady, steady reel it in, nose up, nose up, higher, higher. There you’re good, chop the throttles, hold it...