Chapter 15

Vanaver Mainwaring to Grace Mainwaring. May 14, 1937

… Harry was glad to hear that his parents arrived safely in New Bedford. It is a relief to him that his father will be working in a mine where he won't have to breathe in coal dust or risk fires and explosions. He's sure that his mother must be overjoyed.

… There is a Spanish sniper with the battalion named Antonio Dominguez. Normally, unlike most of his countrymen once they warm up to you, he isn't very talkative. However, even the flintiest loner gets starved for company sometime. Some of us were swapping stories of where we came from after supper. All of us were getting a little homesick. Johnny Pike was admitting to actually missing the hard work of spring planting at his grandfather's farm. Antonio was listening carefully, but it was still a surprise when he told Johnny that he was lucky to have someplace to go back to after the war is over. As he started to tell us about himself, his eyes seemed to stare through us into a far distance.

He comes from a small village in Andalusia. His father was a doctor who was much respected for his compassion and dedication to his patients. He was also a moderate liberal who had his reservations about the Republic. However, he had come to believe that public education and at least a modicum of land reform were the only hope of improving the desperate conditions of his often impoverished and illiterate neighbors. One day, shortly before the war, Antonio said goodbye to his parents and left for the University of Granada to study civil engineering. He was their second child to leave home. His older brother, Enrique, became friends with the middle son of one of the less obnoxious local landlords. Both had gone into the army together hoping for adventure and excitement.

When the war began, Antonio feared for his family. He soon learned that his parents and younger brother had been murdered along with many of their neighbors by Franco's Regulares [Moroccan mercenaries ed.]. This crime was part of a general slaughter of anyone in Andalusia who so much as suggested that the poor might deserve a better lot in life than ignorance, starvation, and servitude. He and the family friend who brought him the news escaped to the Republican lines. He had no idea where his older brother was. Hopefully he had the sense to desert at the first opportunity. However, if he was still with the Fascists and Antonio ever found him in his sights, he would no more hesitate to pull the trigger than he would to crush a louse between his thumb and forefinger. I felt a chill at the casual, emotionless way in which he said this.

This war has set brother against brother and neighbor against neighbor. I can't help remembering what my grandfather told me about the outbreak of America's civil war. He knew a number of Southerners at Yale. A couple of them were good friends. All of them went home to fight for the South after Lincoln's election and the secession of their home states. My grandfather was as convinced of the Negro's inferiority as any Southerner, but he couldn't understand why anyone would be willing to drench his own country in blood for the privilege of enslaving them or anyone else. Neither can I. Be very glad that your country has never had a civil war.

From the Journal of Honey Sutton May 14, 1937

I ran into Jim Flett in the lobby today. He was returning from school just as I was on my way upstairs to the family apartment after closing down the beauty parlor for the day. As we walked up the stairs, we chatted about this and that. I was surprised to hear from him that he had tried to persuade Grace that she should continue working at CRNB through the summer. They had talked about the matter a couple of days earlier. Apparently, Grace hadn't been able to believe Jim's stance either.

"I'm good at announcing and interviewing," he explained, "but I can be a little formal. Grace isn't like that. She has a warm, friendly, and relaxed style that draws the listeners in and the advertisers know it. CRNB needs the revenue she generates."

"Is she really that important to the station?"

"She is, although I think she has a hard time believing it herself. I told her that Mrs. Cramp showed me the books. She asked me which set."

It was terrible of me, but I couldn't resist a quick laugh. Jim paused for a second and then continued. "Of course, she doesn't really believe Mrs. Cramp is that underhanded. At least I don't think she does."

Grace still refuses to continue on through the summer. She knows that Jim needs his income from CRNB to support Pritchard and save for a home for the two of them or the three of them if Audrey Collins leaves her work as a teacher to marry him. For these reasons, she is reluctant to deprive him of any of it. Speaking of Pritchard, Henry continues to be envious that Jim is allowing him to be part of Grace's pen pal scheme while he is being kept out of it. I suspect that the admiration Pritchard is getting from Rebecca as a result explains some of Henry's feelings.

Grace Mainwaring to Vanaver Mainwaring May 23, 1937

… Canada may not have had a Civil War, but thousands of Canadians fought in yours, mostly for the union, including two of my great uncles. One, Ray Bailey, was wounded at Antietam. Afterwards, they stayed in America. The last we heard of them was when Ned sent a sympathy letter after my father died. He was living in the Midwest in a small town called something similar to New Bedford. At least I think it had Bedford in the name. Bedfordville? Bedford River?

… I was interested to read in the Daily Clarion of the formation of the Friends of the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion. I am almost as confused by this as I am by the habit some American Communists have fallen into of calling your battalion the Abraham Lincoln Brigade even though it is not a brigade. I know that a second American battalion, the George Washington Battalion, is being organized. Has someone in Spain started a Canadian battalion and named it the Mackenzie-Papineau Battalion?

… We had the Schmitzes for Sunday dinner. Johann was a friendly and relaxed dinner companion. He chatted pleasantly with Max and Honey about Hub and Henry. Then Maisie asked him what part of Germany he comes from. His conversation became sad and nostalgic as he remembered the Ruhr of the long ago days before he immigrated to America. He spoke of hard work in the mines and a bitter strike in 1899 in his hometown of Herne, but also of music and laughter and high hopes. From the letters he receives from his nephew Gottfried in the Thaelmann Battalion, that has changed. In his day at least some German youth dreamed of a better world. Now, they are all bullied and deceived by power hungry criminals into working for a worse one.

… There was an anxious moment when Violet asked Ida what the rest of us had avoided because none of us wanted to pry. Why was she was collecting bottles and sticking them on the ends of tree branches? Fortunately, Ida understood that Violet was a child and wasn't trying to be rude. "That's a bottle tree. A lotta folks have 'em in Mississippi. Them colored bottles is so evil spirits'll see how pretty they look an' fly in. Once they in there, they cain't get out an' make trouble."

The look on Juanita's face was the same one the town mouse in the fable must have given the country mouse. "That sounds like sheer superstition to me."

"I ain't no heathen," Ida retorted sharply. "I'm a godfearin' Baptist jes' like you. So was my mama an' she taught me how to make a bottle tree. I ain't never lived no place without one in my back yard an' I ain't gonna start now."

At that point, I remembered something. "That sounds like the rowan wood cross that Cousin Jessie gave Mother to hang above my cradle when I was born. It's a Scottish custom. Supposedly it protects you against being taken away by the fairies."

Of course, nothing would do then but me getting the cross-two rowan twigs bound by red thread-and letting Violet look at it. Seeing Honey and Max with her and the rest of their children, I can't help but think of us together like that with children of our own. Such things are often on my mind when I can't find something to keep myself busy. Please, keep safe and come back to me. . .

Next Post: The Summer of '37