The Truth According to Us Page 6

  Yours very truly,

  Benjamin Beck

  Field Supervisor

  May 30, 1938

  Mr. Benjamin Beck

  Field Supervisor, Federal Writers’ Project

  Works Progress Administration

  1734 New York Ave. NW

  Washington, D.C.

  Dear Mr. Beck,

  I am in receipt of your letter of May 28. Given that the research assistants who are available to gather agricultural and industrial information for the State Guide are entirely inadequate to the task of writing about it, I am most strongly of the opinion that any new personnel should be hired by me in order to complete that task. I cannot but regard the hiring of this field worker for the purpose of a publication other than the State Guide as a usurpation of my authority as Chief Research Editor for the West Virginia Writers’ Project, and I protest most vigorously. I will inform Mr. Alsberg of this breach of administrative protocols at once.

  Yours sincerely,

  Ursula Chambers

  [Telegram from Benjamin Beck to Mrs. Judson Chambers]

  June 1, 1938

  HOLD FIRE. ALL WILL BE EXPLAINED. BEN

  June 1, 1938

  Private and Confidential

  Dear Ursula,

  My hair is singed and my fingertips charred by your last. Hush your screams of rage for a moment, and I’ll explain what happened. Rely upon it, you’ll be grateful to your old friend Ben instead of demanding my head from Alsberg. My previous letter was composed with the official file in mind; this one is for your personal perusal. If you show it to anyone, I’ll deny that I wrote it and accuse you of forgery.

  The new field worker is none other than my niece Layla, daughter of the Senior Senator from Delaware. Surely you remember his faithful support of Federal One last year? He believes—and given affairs in North Carolina, how can I deny it?—that he is entitled to some patronage in return, and he therefore demanded that I find a job on the project for his daughter. In view of his position on the Appropriations Committee, I thought it unwise to disappoint him, and hired the girl at once. She is, to put it bluntly, spoiled, frivolous, and ignorant, and she’s exactly as fit to work on the project as a chicken is to drive a Buick. She was a hair-raising child, and I was quite fond of her, but my brother likes his women purely ornamental, so she was packed off to a finishing school at the age of fourteen, and it was the ruin of her. They taught her to dance, play tennis, drink cocktails, and act as though she hadn’t a brain to call her own. However, Layla has brains enough to know which side her bread is buttered on, so she learned her lesson well, and she’s spent the past six years wrapping my brother around her little finger. Imagine his shock last month when she (to her credit) unexpectedly dug in her heels and refused to marry a bankroll. The reprisals were swift and severe—King Lear has nothing on Grayson Beck—and within days, Layla had been banished from the lap of luxury and told to support herself. The Senator from Delaware does not tolerate domestic dissent, you’ll be pleased to know.

  In any case, she was deposited on my head, together with some burning coals, and we were both left to make the best of it. The prospect was not heartening for either of us. When she came down for her interview, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that she had heard there was a Depression. And somewhere she has learned to type. Aside from this, she knows nothing. She’s never worked a day in her life. I’ve spent the last week cudgeling my brains for a place to put her. Upon whom could I foist such an albatross? Anything west of the Mississippi is too far from home, wails her mother. No daughter of mine will interview Negroes, declares my brother. In New York, the Stalinists and the Trotskyites would lay down their arms to wage war against her. Vargas says she’s no use to him if she doesn’t know Spanish, and Wayland would kill her within a week.

  Then my thoughts turned to you, Ursula, and West Virginia and The History of Macedonia. It is the perfect solution, not only for me but for all of us. It’s true that Layla will be no help at all with your present problems (incidentally, I must have the agricultural chapter by June 15), but think of the praise and honor you’ll receive for taking on the Macedonia project simultaneously with the State Guide. You’ll be held up as a model of industry and devotion to the aims of the Washington office, and Alsberg will send out a memo disparaging the work ethic of all the other state directors. They’ll gnash their teeth while you bask in glory.

  In the meantime, Macedonia will keep Layla out of the way and out of trouble. It’s east of the Mississippi, and the town council prefers to pretend that it has no Negro population, so Layla won’t be required to record their history. She’ll work alone, so she won’t irritate other field workers. And it’s possible that the chivalrous councilmen of Macedonia will be so stirred by the spectacle of a Gentlewoman in Distress that they won’t notice the quality of Layla’s prose. It’s ideal.

  She need not derange the progress of the State Guide in any way. You simply inform the State Field Assistant for the district of her existence and ask him to supervise her work. I suppose he can provide her with a description of the project’s requirements.

  I hope you take my view of the matter, Ursula, because the thing has been done and would be difficult to undo. Reflect and you’ll see that the advantages outweigh the drawbacks. You get the acclaim, Macedonia gets a book, and the project gets its appropriation renewed for a year.

  Yours ever,

  Ben

  June 15, 1938

  Dear Ben,

  Observe postmark. I am residing in Macedonia, West Virginia. Thy will be done.

  Layla

  June 17

  Dear Layla,

  Blame your father. Blame yourself. Don’t blame me.

  Ben

  7

  The morning after Miss Beck’s arrival, I awoke earlier than usual. I spent a few moments fingering my new scab, and then I remembered the night before. Had Father come back? Sometimes he went away and didn’t come home for days. I quick bounced out of bed and into the hallway to take a look through his keyhole. Father’s door was kept closed, so you had to peek through the keyhole if you wanted to know whether he was there. I couldn’t see him, but I could see that the curtains were drawn, which meant that he was inside, asleep. So that was all right.

  I sat down on the stairs to wait for Miss Beck. I had it all planned out. When she opened her door, I would pop up and pretend to be on my way downstairs for breakfast, just like her. Over breakfast, I would peruse the newspaper and converse on world events.

  That would be the beginning. After that, I would insinuate myself into Miss Beck’s favor by becoming her faithful assistant. Authors always needed assistants, to help them sharpen their pencils and copy their notes. Maybe she’d even send me to the library to look things up for her. Soon we would work side by side, exchanging a few cryptic words that no one else would even be able to understand. When her book was printed, it might say in the front, Special thanks to my assistant, Wilhelmina Romeyn, without whom I could never have completed this work.

  But that would be gravy.

  My hours of toil would naturally win Miss Beck’s heart, and before long she’d reveal the secrets of her (possibly royal) past. To me alone she’d confide the truth of her palatial home and pampered youth and how her father had come to lose his fortune in the Crash. Or maybe Miss Beck had run away from home. Anything was possible! I’d lend her my hankie if she started to cry and give her my youthful counsel and we’d be friends, at least as much as a lady like her could be friends with me. And, best of all, I for once would know something that no one else knew. I’d never tell, though. I’d be a vault.

  Miss Beck didn’t come out of her room, and my bottom went to sleep. I decided I would go downstairs and eat some breakfast while I waited for her.

  The back door was open to the morning cool, and I gobbled up my breakfast while Jottie drank coffee and read the newspaper backward, the way she did. The last of my milk gulped, I wiped my mouth with my napkin. “Think Miss B
eck’ll wear that white suit again today?” I asked Jottie’s newspaper.

  A newsprint corner flapped down, and Jottie’s eye blinked at me. “No. Yellow dress with a square neck. Looked real nice.”

  She had already been and gone. Jottie didn’t know where. Or when she’d be back. I’d been thwarted. I moped around thwartedly for a little while, until Jottie said something about idle hands being the devil’s playthings, and I made tracks out the front door before she could give me some awful chore to do. I sulked a little more out on the sidewalk, because no one was up yet. Then I took myself off to Capon Street, to the headquarters of Geraldine Lee’s army.

  For how many years had I longed to be in Geraldine’s army? It must have been three or four. It seemed like hundreds. It seemed like I’d stood on the banks of Academy Creek for my entire life, watching the battalions of plum-throwing children as they advanced, retreated, and bayed like wolves, wishing with all my heart that I could join them. If I had been offered a choice between salvation and induction, I know which I would have chosen. But I couldn’t pass muster. The rules were straightforward. There was only one: To get into Geraldine Lee’s army, you had to fight Geraldine. Fighting Geraldine was mostly symbolic; you didn’t have to beat her up—no one could do that—you only had to wrestle her to the ground. But wrestling Geraldine to the ground was no cakewalk. She was a year younger than me, but she was great big and fat, and she had six little brothers and sisters who skittered up while you were grappling and kicked you in the shins. All six of them were mean and skinny; Bird said Geraldine ate their food and it had turned them.

  I had always been puny, and I was puny still. From first grade on, children had demonstrated their muscles by picking me up and lugging me around the playground, and it did me no good to holler about it. They thought it was funny. I was taller now—I had grown four inches since January—but I hadn’t gained any weight to go along with it, and I was altogether a pitiful specimen of a twelve-year-old, according to Miss Nellie Kissining, the basketball coach at the Race Street School. She had washed her hands of me. Mae said I looked like I’d been put on the rack. Jottie said I’d fill out before I knew it, which was an unnerving idea. I was weak as a kitten from all that growing and, I suppose, from so many years of sitting on the sofa with a book in my hand. There were some days I couldn’t even hold the book up and I had to set it on the floor and drape my head over the side of the cushions to read.

  All of which explains why I had been standing for long years in the dirt while the scourge of war laid waste to Macedonia. Specifically, Geraldine’s army was scourging Sonny Deal’s army, except when they stopped fighting each other to band together against the Spurling children. I had tried to worm my way into Geraldine’s ranks by helpfully calling out the location of Sonny Deal’s troops from the branches of the red oak in our backyard, but her soldiers would have none of it. They told me to shut up. It only increased my longing to be one of them.

  I had to bag Geraldine first. Geraldine was real nice about it—she was always willing to let me try. She’d stand there, big as a shed, and I’d leap at her, thinking that if I could just get going, I could push her over. A couple of times, she tottered a little, but I think she was only doing that to make me feel better. Mostly, she shrugged me off like a horsefly.

  In former days, I had despaired. But since the parade—since the birth of my ferocity and devotion—I’d devised a cunning stratagem. The cunning part was the element of surprise. Frank and Joe Hardy and Mr. Sherlock Holmes were all of them big believers in the element of surprise, and I guessed what was good enough for them should be good enough for me. My plan was to sneak up behind Geraldine and knock her flat.

  On Capon Street, I approached Geraldine’s house with caution, but I needn’t have. Mr. and Mrs. Lee were too worn out from all those children to trim their hedges. I crouched low inside a rhododendron and waited. Sure enough, Geraldine came out, smacking her lips and burping, and then began to stroll about. The other children must have been eating her scraps, because she was alone. All at once, she did the strangest thing: She began to dance. Not a real dance like the fox-trot, nor even a tap dance, which you couldn’t do on dirt, anyway, but a swaying, whirling dance. I guessed it was a ballet dance, and for a moment or two I was just thunderstruck, but then I realized that this was a fine time to employ the element of surprise. I got myself ready, and the next time Geraldine spun by with her back turned, I burst whooping out of the rhododendron and pounced on her. She fell pretty heavy, but I had my legs around her middle and my arms around her neck, so it didn’t hurt much.

  “Gotcha!” I hollered, and that Geraldine was such a nice girl, she didn’t take a swipe at me. She agreed that I had knocked her down fair and square and welcomed me into her army. She’d been pulling for me all along, she said, and she was glad I’d finally made it, because she needed a spy and she knew I’d be fine at that. How do you know, I asked. She said the way I’d snuck up on her showed natural talent. I had to agree that it did.

  We did a lot of talking, there in the rhododendron. It turned out that the war with Sonny Deal’s army was just to keep in practice for the real war, which Geraldine said Mr. Lee said was against the Reds. According to Geraldine, the Reds were running Washington, and that was only four hours away on State 9, which meant we needed to get ready. I thought that if the Reds were in Washington, I would have heard about it, and when Geraldine told me that American Everlasting was full of Reds, I said I didn’t think so, because I knew folks who worked there and they weren’t Reds. How do you know they aren’t, Geraldine asked, and it occurred to me that this could be yet another matter the grown-ups had not seen fit to reveal to me. I fell silent, and Geraldine said it didn’t matter if I didn’t believe her about American Everlasting, as long as I took a vow to fight the Reds. So I did, and then we got down to the business of training, which was mostly creeping around in the bushes to spy on Mrs. Lee. She didn’t do anything except hang sheets on the line, but Geraldine thought highly of my creeping and promoted me to officer on the spot. She said I was a born sneak.

  When I heard the noon whistle down at the mill, I zipped home for lunch. I wouldn’t have if I’d known it was hash. We all despised hash, every last one of us, but Jottie felt obliged to make it because it stretched leftover roast to two meals.

  “Is this enough, Jottie?” said Bird. She had eaten two bites.

  “No. Two more.” Jottie clamped her mouth shut to get her hash down. “It’s good for you.”

  “You should be grateful,” said Mae. “Some poor little children, all they have to eat is okra and lard sandwiches.”

  “You!” yelped Bird, pointing her chin at Mae’s plate. “You ain’t even had one bite. At least—”

  “Bird,” said Jottie. “What have you been doing this morning?”

  Bird scowled. She knew she was being diverted. “Secret,” she said grumpily.

  “Fine. You can have your secret,” said Mae. Bird scowled worse than ever. She had thought they’d try to wheedle it out of her. Mae turned to me. “What about you, Willa?”

  “Geraldine and I are getting ready to fight the Reds,” I said.

  “Oh. You got in,” observed Bird. She swallowed another lump of hash and shivered all over.

  “What Reds?” Jottie asked. She fixed me with her eyes. “Got in where?”

  “Geraldine’s army. Geraldine says that American Everlasting is full of Reds.” I paused to see what effect this announcement would have.

  “She did, did she?” Jottie didn’t seem too worried about the Reds.

  “Yes, and she says the Reds are running Washington and we’ve got to be prepared to fight. Even kids have got to get out and fight the Reds. Says Geraldine.”

  “I swear, I don’t know what possessed Irma to marry that man,” said Mae.

  “It was that suit of his. Remember?” said Minerva. “She even said so at the time.”

  “Now listen here, Willa,” said Jottie, frowning at Minerva and Mae.
“There are no Reds at American Everlasting, and the Reds aren’t running Washington, either.”

  “Mr. Roosevelt is running Washington,” said Mae. “You know that.”

  “And just you remember to keep your politics to yourself, young lady,” Jottie said. “You’ll bring the wrath of Cain down on our heads if you go around telling people that American Everlasting is Communist.” She put another forkful of hash in her mouth, and her eyes watered. She swallowed and then smiled. “Though I’d like to see Ralph’s face when he heard it.”

  Minerva and Mae snickered. In earlier days, I might not have noticed, but now I did. “Who’s Ralph?” I asked, as innocent as a baby.

  Jottie lifted one eyebrow. “Mr. Shank, and as for the Communists,” she went on, “maybe they have their reasons. That czar was no great shakes. Drinking champagne when his people had nothing to eat but rotten potatoes. And letting that Rasputin come into the palace with his big burning eyes and dirty hair.”

  “Who’s Rasputin?” I asked.