Part 16 (2/2)

They'll come back! Thank G.o.d!”

Tears were running out of Grandma's eyes, and she kept waving her arms and crying, ”Glory be! Glory be!” She was shouting at first; then the ”glories” got softer and softer, till she was just whispering them.

Grandpa was trying to tell Grandma something else, but I couldn't understand him because Mama was talking too.

”Jodie told me the Armistice means the war's ended for good!

The shooting has all been stopped! I reckon somebody must've called out to the store from town. I just didn't think to ask how he found out. All I could think about was our boys. I asked when they'd be coming back, and he said, 'Soon, Nannie. Real soon, I hope!' He told me to run tell y'all. And he was gonna phone everybody on the line. Said folks all over the country are already celebrating and having parades and blowing horns and ringing bells!”

”G.o.d knows it's a day to ring the bells! Eh, Ming?” Grandpa looked over toward Grandma and me.

By this time she was lying back, half buried in the pile of cus.h.i.+ons and feather pillows and the long bolster she kept on her bed in the daytime. I had crawled up on the foot of her bed and was turning her ball of knitting yarn over and over, unrolling the thick gray thread and then rolling it back up again. I wanted to hold the needles, but I was afraid I'd let them slip and drop a st.i.tch. Grandma always fussed when I dropped her st.i.tches.

”I should say so, Thad! It's a day to ring all bells! When the baby, here, came running in saying something about that wicked German Kaiser, I didn't know for a minute what to make of it. I'd clean forgot the wild tales d.i.n.k told. My! My! I'm so glad I could shout!”

Mama sat down then in one of the high-back padded rockers and rocked a long time, easy and slow, while she and Grandma and Grandpa told one another all they knew about the World War and that Armistice thing somebody had signed at exactly eleven o'clock.

Mama said the Armistice was an answer to prayer. Grandma Ming said she was powerful proud the Germans could tell the jig was up. Grandpa said, ”Foot dool! Them German generals saw the handwriting on the wall the day our soldiers set foot in France!”

Soon Mama got up. ”Come on, Bandershanks, let's go home.

We've got to start getting ready! Walker and Clyde may be coming home before we can get a thing done!” Mama picked me up and squeezed me. ”They won't even know you, gal! You've got so big!

Pa, I'll let you and Ma know if I hear any more from Jodie.”

Mama didn't put me down till we got out to our front porch.

Then she let me slide to the top doorstep, and she sank down on the plank beside me.

”Mama, what're we gonna do?”

”Well, tomorrow I'll send for Doanie and Bett to come sweep the yard from front to back. They'll have to have new dogwood brush brooms. And just before your big brothers get in, I'll have Huldie up here helping me bake plenty of cakes and pies.”

”Mama?”

”Yes?”

”When we get to Heaven, can we have cake and pie every day?”

”Why, I don't know! Maybe! It's gonna be sorta like Heaven right here when Clyde and Walker come home. But, my, I've got work ahead. I'll have to catch a dozen or so young pullets and roosters and coop them up to fatten. We'll need piles of fried chicken. I hope your papa will have Black Idd get a good-sized shoat ready to butcher so I'll have fresh hams to boil. Or, if it would just turn cold enough, we could have hog killing.”

Mama sounded like she was talking to herself, not me, but I didn't stop her.

”I've got a quilt in the frame that's simply got to be finished and put away. I always did hate to see a half-finished quilt hanging up against the ceiling. That makes me think; I'd better set up another bed in the far side room. That floor's got to be scrubbed first, though. This porch and all these old floors need a good going over with sand and lye.”

”Mama, what's for me to do?”

”I'll think of something.” Mama looked out across the yard toward the grove of black walnut trees in front of our house and at the ones growing by the barns and wagon shelter. The trees were nearly naked. They still had a handful of brown and yellow leaves flipping in the wind, but all their walnuts were lying on the ground, their thick green hulls already shriveling up and turning from green to black.

”I know the very thing, Bandershanks. You can pick up walnuts. We'll make some chocolate candy with-”

<script>