Shiloh and Other Stories - Bobbie Ann Mason [68]
“Unh-huh. Go on.” Imogene was clutching the sides of her seat. A Greyhound bus was passing them.
“And so the United States has a treaty with Taiwan, to protect them from the Communists.”
“And so we broke the treaty,” Imogene finished for him.
“That’s right! And now our peanut President decides to be buddies with the Communists and he’s going to have us in a war before you know it!”
Bill got upset when he thought of the President, with his phony grin. Bill couldn’t stand him. He could see through every move he made. Bill had known too many like him.
“He gave Taiwan away, just like he did the Panama Canal,” Bill said.
“I still want to see Plains,” said Imogene.
“So you can see Billy Carter?” Bill laughed.
“I’d just like to say I went to the President’s hometown.”
“Well, O.K. We can probably get there tomorrow.”
“Billy’s always showing up somewhere—on a special or a talk show,” said Imogene. “I bet he don’t spend half his time in Plains anymore.”
They looked for a campground. Imogene studied the guidebook and tried to watch the road at the same time. She located one that seemed reasonable, but Bill missed the turn.
“I think it was right back there,” Imogene said. “Quick, turn around.”
Bill made a U-turn, crossing the grassy strip. A car honked at him.
“Maybe you weren’t supposed to do that,” said Imogene, looking behind her.
The campground was pleasant. Music was playing and there were large shade trees and lots of dogs. Bill walked around the park while Imogene made supper. Being in a far-off place, wandering among strangers with license plates from everywhere, made Bill feel like a kid, off on his own. He nodded to a young man who hurried past him. The man, wearing rubber thong sandals and carrying a plastic shopping bag, had murmured a faint hello. For a moment Bill felt a desire to stop and have a conversation, a desire he felt only rarely.
Imogene made pork chops, butter beans, corn, slaw, and corn bread for supper, and they ate during the news. Bill made a face when the President came on.
“The days is getting longer,” he said later, looking out the window.
“We’re further south,” said Imogene. She finished the dishes and sat down. “I don’t hardly know what to do with myself. Without Mama to feed and watch over. Her complaining every ten minutes. I was thinking about her suppertime. I would go in there with her tray, her cornflakes and a little applesauce. And then get her ready for bed and bring her milk of magnesia and make sure she was covered up.”
“Do you wish we had her along?” Bill asked, teasing. He knew Imogene would keep on if he let her. “We could have started out five years ago. I could have slept here, and you and her could have that bed.”
“Oh, quit it! It hasn’t been a month since we put her in the ground.”
“I just thought you probably missed her snoring.”
She shook her fist at him. “I tell you one thing. None of my younguns is going to have to put up with what I put up with.” Imogene belched. “I’ve eat too much,” she said.
Bill had a hard time sleeping. First the dogs barked half the night. Then a man kept hollering in the distance. And at one point during the night a motorcycle came roaring into camp, setting off the dogs again. Bill lay half awake, thinking of the ocean and remembering the rocking, cracking old ship that he had feared would sink. The U.S.S. Shaw was a destroyer that had been sunk at Pearl Harbor and then raised and re-outfitted in an amazingly short time. He still heard the sounds of the guns. They woke him sometimes at night. And he would occasionally catch himself somewhere, standing as though in a trance, still passing ammunition to the gunners, rhythmically passing shell after shell. He had sailed the Pacific, but the Atlantic was connected—or it had been until Carter gave the