Free A Far Piece to Canaan by Sam Halpern Page B

wudn’t anything I could say. I kept trying to get up enough nerve to go over and ask her to dance when it hit me I didn’t know how to dance. Jeanette Dillard, who was my age, did, so I asked her to teach me and before I knew it I was out there with the rest of them. So was Fred and old Alfred and pretty soon everybody was on the floor dancing, Mom and Dad too, and Naomi with JR Dillard, and the music was playing louder and faster, then Bert Raney and his family come in and Bert yelled, “Yehoo!” and danced around and shook hands with all the soldiers and sailors. While he was dancing he picked up a jug and had a long pull and passed it along and people was yelling “Yehoo!” and dancing like fools and old Alfred was just stomping like mad and Fred was dancing part with Jenny Raney and part with Jeanette until I was laughing fit to be tied, and then Jake West come in with his family, one of which was Joy with her long black hair so pretty and I was dancing with her in a second and she looked like she loved it, but Jeanette didn’t so I’d dance with first one and then the other, and pretty soon Bob and the other boys was doing the Virginia reel and I run in and got to dance one reel with Rosemary. When our hands touched, I almost busted. Joy was really pretty with her long black hair but I loved Rosemary. She was a lot older than me, but if she would just wait! I wanted to tell her that so bad but somehow I just couldn’t. I come close though, because right after she finished dancing with Bob once and was near the barn door getting air I walked up and started to say something when she looked at me and said, “Hi Samuel. You havin’ a nice time?” My throat closed up and nothing come out. Most I could do was just nod, and she laughed and mussed my hair with her fingers and went back to dance.
    That was some barn dance. It lasted late and by midnight all the people making music were drunk and laughing. Matter of fact all the men were drunk and the women were trying to get them to come on home while they could still drive. I looked around for Bob but he was gone. I walked around the barn through the hog lot and there he was with JR Dillard, leaning up against the line post where the gate I met Fred on was hung. I could just make them out against the sky. Both of them were really drunk. I stayed low and got up close where I could hear. They were so liquored it was hard to tell sometime what they were saying.
    â€œEver . . . ever think you’d make it back, JR?”
    JR’s head shook kind of slow. “Naw,” he said. “Shit . . . they don’t know, Bob,” and he staggered and caught himself and motioned toward the barn. “They don’t know . . . if they knowed how scared I been past two years they’d run me right outta here . . . almost shit my pants at Normandy . . . when . . . when we went over th’ cliff at Omaha . . . scared all th’ way t’ th’ Rhine . . .”
    â€œShit, man,” said Bob, “you don’t have t’ apologize. We took a kamikaze on th’ flight deck. I was handlin’ a quad 40 . . . had th’ firing mechanism down and was so scared I couldn’t let up . . . almost melted th’ barrel. Talk about scared . . . shit . . . I . . . shit . . . once when a torpedo was runnin’ at us I don’t remember what I done . . . couple minutes my life I don’t even remember. We done our jobs, though, buddy. We done our fuckin’ jobs.”
    â€œYeah . . . we done them . . . and we got back. Different now . . . don’t wanta crop like Dad. Gonna use th’ G.I. Bill ’n’ get me an education. Not gonna bust that fuckin’ sod out there rest of my fuckin’ life.”
    â€œMe neither. Not th’ same now. Somehow, everything has cha . . . changed