The Silver Star(29)

Liz and I spent the next couple of days knocking on doors all over Byler. Most of the folks on the hill apologetically explained that in times like these, they were lucky if they could pay their bills each month. They couldn’t afford to fork over hard-earned cash to kids for jobs that they could do themselves. Our luck wasn’t much better at the fancier houses on East Street and Davis Street. A lot of times, black maids in uniforms answered the doors, and some of them seemed surprised when they learned we were looking for the kind of work they were doing. One older lady did hire us to rake her yard, but after two hours’ work she gave us only a quarter each, acting like she was being extravagantly generous.

At the end of the second day, Liz decided to check out the Byler Library and I rode over to the Wyatts’ to tell Aunt Al that the job search wasn’t going so well.

“Don’t be discouraged,” she said. “And wait right here. I got a surprise for you.” She disappeared down the hall and came back with a ring box. I opened it, and hanging from a little red, white, and blue ribbon was a star-shaped medal.

“Charlie Wyatt’s Silver Star,” she said.

I picked up the medal. The star was gold and had a small wreath in the middle surrounding a tiny second star that was silver. “A war hero,” I said. “Did he have a lot of war stories?”

“Charlie was quite the talker, but one thing he never did like to talk about was how he got this Silver Star. Or, for that matter, anything about that danged war. Charlie never wore that star, and he never told people about it. He saved one buddy, but there were plenty others he couldn’t save, and it weighed on him.”

Little Earl, who was sitting next to Aunt Al, stretched out his hand, and I passed the medal to him. He held it up, then put the star in his mouth. Aunt Al took it back, polished it with her dish towel, and passed it to me. “Uncle Clarence was keeping this in memory of his kid brother. But it’s yours now.”

“I don’t want to take it if it’s important to Uncle Clarence,” I said.

“No,” Aunt Al said. “We talked, and Clarence thought about it and decided that Charlie would want his little girl to have it.”

Charlie and Clarence had always been close, Aunt Al went on. Their parents were sharecroppers who had been killed in a tractor accident. It happened one night when they were trying to bring in the tobacco crop during a big storm and the tractor turned over on a hillside. At the time, Charlie was six and Clarence was eleven. None of their relatives could afford to feed both boys, and since Charlie was too young to earn his keep, no one wanted him. Clarence told the family taking him in that he would do the work of two hands if they took Charlie as well. The family agreed on a trial basis, and Clarence worked himself to the bone, dropping out of school to take on the responsibilities of a full-grown man. The brothers stayed together, but those years hardened Clarence, and when he went to work at the mill, most of the women thought he was downright mean.

“I saw the hurt orphan inside the bitter man,” Aunt Al said. “Clarence just wasn’t used to being cared for.”

“I should thank him for the star,” I said.

“He’s out tending to his garden.”

I walked through the Wyatts’ small, dark living room, which was behind the kitchen, and out the back door. Uncle Clarence, wearing a battered straw hat, was kneeling in a few dirt rows of green beans, staked tomatoes, and cucumber vines, working a trowel around the base of the plants.

“Uncle Clarence,” I said. “Thank you for giving me my dad’s Silver Star.”

Uncle Clarence didn’t look up.

“Aunt Al said you two were close,” I added.

He nodded. Then he put the trowel down and turned toward me. “Damned shame about your momma going crazy,” he said, “but that woman should have the word ‘trouble’ tattooed on her forehead. Meeting your momma was the worst thing that ever happened to your daddy.”





CHAPTER FOURTEEN


Liz and I continued our job hunt the next day. Most of the houses in Byler were old, both the grand ones and the dinky ones, but late in the afternoon, we turned down a street that had newer ranches and split-levels with breezeways and asphalt driveways and little saplings surrounded by pine-needle mulch. One of the houses had a chain-link fence around the front yard with a bunch of hubcaps hanging on it. A shiny black car was parked in the driveway and a man had his head under the hood, fiddling with the engine, while a girl sat in the driver’s seat.

The man shouted at the girl to turn the engine over, but she gave it too much gas and when the engine roared, he jerked his head up, banging it on the hood. He started cussing loudly, yelling that the girl was trying to kill him, and then he turned around and saw us.