After the War

Chapter One By mid-August, in the third summer of the Second World War, heavy and relentless heat had yellowed all the grass and almost all the flowers in the little college town of Pinehill, in the middle South. Cynthia Baird, an actively unfaithful Navy wife, contemplated the limp petals that lay beneath what had been a beautiful display of roses, massed blossoms of gold to pink to white -- although she was not thinking of roses, nor actually of the war, but rather of her lover, Derek McFall, the famous war correspondent. Derek, who was tall and blond and not in love with her, not at all. Cynthia thought too of her husband, Harry -- Captain Harry Baird, USN, now in London -- but less often than she thought of Derek; Harry and wartime London, as well as the war itself, were vague to Cynthia, as they were to most of the rest of that town. People there were more aware of the state of Cynthia's lawn and her flowers, of their own lawns and flowers, than of the terrible but distant war. If they had known about Derek and Cynthia, they would have given that some thought, and much talk, but so far they did not. In the town's view Cynthia was still a transplanted Yankee, from Connecticut; over five years now but her Yankee ways and those of Harry were still remarked on, in Pinehill. And the trouble with the lawn and the flowers was that the Bairds were hardly there in Pinehill anymore, since Harry went up to Washington to work for the Navy, and then was sent off to London. They actually lived in Washington -- Georgetown, of course; there was a rumor about Cynthia going to law school in Georgetown, but she gave that up, of course, when Harry went to London. Abigail, their daughter, came down to Pinehill more often than they did during the Georgetown days, but she did not do any gardening chores; she came to stay with her friend Melanctha Byrd, and they both went out with a lot of boys. Abigail had always been independent -- "a regular Yankee child, always does pretty much what she wants to, always has." But now Cynthia lived mostly in Pinehill, and it was too bad that the garden looked so pathetic, especially today: Cynthia was having an important party that she said was for Abigail, and for Melanctha too. The girls were both going up North to college in just a few weeks, Abigail to Swarthmore, a Quaker place that had boys as well, and Melanctha to Radcliffe, the girls' part of Harvard. What gardening got done at the Bairds' house these days was done by Odessa, the maid. Odessa actually lived at the Bairds', sort of, in the out back -- "real nice of Cynthia to take her in like that, but sort of Yankified, wouldn't you say?" In any case, Odessa had enough to do just keeping the house in shape, not to mention certain problems of her own: a wandering husband, Horace (too bad: Horace was a wonderful gardener, just terrific with flowers, but he'd been off somewhere all summer); a daughter in trouble at the defense plant -- Nellie, Odessa's only child, and no one knew just what kind of trouble, but they had their own ideas. But the garden was nobody's fault, not Abigail's or Odessa's, but probably the Lord's. Or the war's, like everything else. Odessa's husband, Horace, was actually in the Navy, in the Pacific Ocean. He was overage but he looked young, and he'd lied about his age, and Odessa saw no point in telling anyone (no one white) where he was, and she never had, not even Miz Baird, who had treated her good. But she sorely missed him, and all she got were little notes sometimes that Horace got some man there with him to write. She didn't even know just where he was, but sometimes on the radio she heard these Japanese-sounding names, Okinawa, Hirohito, and talk about boats and battles, and she was scared, just plumb dumb scared, and not a single thing she could do about it, and not a person to tell. And then Nellie: some white folks' crazy talk about a union ovAdams, Alice is the author of 'After the War' with ISBN 9780375406836 and ISBN 0375406832.