Letter From Home Read Online Free PDF Page A

Clyde. They were best friends until she got in the pep club. She was so busy then. Everybody was her friend.” Grandmother’s tone was proud.
    Grandmother pushed back her chair, went to the drainboard. She cut two generous slices of watermelon, set a serving at each place.
    Gretchen carefully poked out the big shiny black seeds, cut her watermelon into dripping chunks.
    Grandmother settled back in her chair. “I always thought perhaps someday . . . but your mama fell in love with your daddy in high school. She didn’t see so much of Clyde then.”
    Gretchen had only a dim memory of her father, thick dark hair and bright blue eyes and a smiling face. She couldn’t quite remember her father’s face, not really, but there were pictures in an album and she looked at them so often, she knew them by heart. She remembered laughter and being swung high in the air and nursery rhymes read in the glow of a flickering fire. And she remembered the gray, dark days after the accident and the fresh grave in the cemetery. They took flowers every month and put them there. Every time Mama came home from Tulsa they went to the cemetery. Her mother loved to tell stories about her dad, like the time he saw that Douglas Fairbanks movie and he made two wooden swords in shop and he and Clyde pretended they were French noblemen and everybody laughed when they staged a duel in assembly. . . . The words came back to Gretchen. She’d never thought about the Clyde in her mother’s story being the man who was Barb’s father.
    â€œAnyway”—Grandmother spoke with finality—“it would never have worked out for your mama and Clyde. I’m glad it didn’t because your mama loved your daddy. And once Clyde met Faye, he seemed happy as could be. She came to town when she was in high school. They got married soon after your mama and daddy. But sometimes I wonder if Clyde is jealous of Faye’s painting. A man doesn’t want to be second best in his home.” Grandmother finished her watermelon. “Now it comes to the police being called. That’s a bad way to send a man off to war. But Faye Tatum . . .” She gave a little head shake and sighed. “Well, we’d best be doing the dishes.”
    Gretchen popped up. She was suddenly tired to the bone, but she made her smile bright. “I’ll do them, Grandmother. You go relax, listen to the radio.” The six-thirty news would be on soon with Edward V. Kaltenborn. If Gretchen hurried, she’d hear most of it. And then they’d call Mother.
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GRANDMOTHER BENT CLOSE to Gretchen, trying to hear. She always had Gretchen do the talking. Grandmother didn’t like to talk on the telephone. She always spoke too loud and very fast and her accent weighted her words.
    Gretchen frowned as she tried to catch the words on the other end. “. . . not home . . . take a message?”
    The voice was unfamiliar, but her mother shared rooms with other war workers and people seemed to come and go. “This is Gretchen, Lorraine Gilman’s daughter. Please tell her we called.” So her mother would not know for awhile about G. G. Gilman. “Tell her we are fine.”
    A spurt of cheery laughter. “Will do. She’s fine, too. Out on a date with a navy man. Lucky gal.”
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GRETCHEN TOSSED RESTLESSLY on the bed. The small bedroom was hot. Not even a breath of breeze filtered through the screen of the open window. The electric fan’s whir was cheerful but the air didn’t seem cooler at all. Disjointed words and indistinct images moved in the corridors of her sleep-drenched mind: . . . lucky gal . . . Mrs. Tatum’s eyes . . . the shrill of the siren . . . G. G. Gilman . . . the smell of hot lead from the Linotypes . . . wooden swords . . . her fingers punching slowly but ever faster on the shiny keys of the tall Remington typewriter . . .
    The rattle of the window screen overrode the