OCR Text |
Show 4-4 I didn't particularly like them as they ignored me or called me cute names. They all looked alike to me in their dark jackets and tiny moustaches. I was jealous of Mother's attention to them and wished Father would tell them not to come again. When I asked Mother once why she liked them to come, she told me that they needed encouragement and a place to be themselves. She said when I was a bit older I would appreciate having them around. But the war began Before I got much older. They had one last night at our house, three of them in uniform. They sang the war songs then so popular, "Over There", "It's a Long Way to Tipperrary", and "Smile, Smile, Smile". They talked louder than usual that night and laughed constantly. I lay in my bed upstairs listening for a time and then crept down the stairs to watch. Mother was not in the room but I could see the back of her head where she sat, all alone, on the swing on the front porch. They didn't seem aware that she was not there. When they left, they all kissed her and then walked out into the night still singing. From my bedroom window I saw Uncle Paul turn on the walk and blow Mother a last kiss. When the casualty lists began to come out in the paper, Mother never looked at them. But we always learned when anyone we knew had been killed because the news was all over town. We learned from Darby's mother about Adam Franklin, one of Mother's pets, who was killed three weeks after he arrived in France. And one Sunday the minister read out the name of Henry Baldwin, the finest tenor on earth, Mother had said. Henry had died in the Somme. Mother put away her hymn book, took my hand and walked out of church during the reading of the scripture. |