*****
The Fall of Autumn
The Edge of Night to the Light of Day
A slow and steady rain fell as Loren quietly stood and looked out the screen door. She never spoke a word. The year was 1969 in her hometown of Caney Fork in Butler County, Mississippi. Two weeks ago, she had received word that her boyfriend, Shawn Bryant, was missing in action in Vietnam. He had been drafted in 1967 not long after he graduated high school. She waited patiently with tear-filled eyes for the mailman. She prayed and wished to hear some good news. When the mailman ran, he didn’t stop at her mailbox. Disappointed, she watched as he disappeared down the road; another day passed and still no word from him. Maybe tomorrow, she softly whispered as she turned around and wiped the tears from her eyes. Maybe tomorrow I’ll hear something. Maybe tomorrow, she said.
The officers who came to her house and delivered the word he was missing didn’t know too much about the details. They told her he was on patrol somewhere around Sepon, north of Da Nang when his unit came under fire. Eight men were killed and when the chopper arrived to pick up the surviving men, the chopper took on heavy fire and went down as it crossed the Laos border. He was believed to be on the chopper when it went down. Only two soldiers survived the attack. Technically, they didn’t know if Shawn was dead or alive. He was presumed missing. As the officers talked on, she was quiet and really didn’t hear too much more of what the reporting officer said other than they were sorry and if they heard anything they would let her know. When they left, she dropped her head as tears filled her eyes and she fell to her knees.
“Why? God, why?” she cried out in pain.
The next few days, she didn’t eat or sleep. All she could do was think back on the beloved memoires of how things used to be. She thought back to when they were children and remembered the time this boy was picking on her about her hair. She jumped on him and they began to fight. After a few minutes, Shawn walked up and broke them up. As he stood between them, he asked what was going on and then the boy made another comment about her hair.
“Her hair is nappy,” the boy said.
She jumped at the boy again but Shawn held her back.
“Get out of here,” Shawn told the boy.
The boy quickly turned and ran off. When Shawn let her go, he said something about her pigtails. She popped him in the nose and it started bleeding.
“I hate you, Shawn Bryant,” she said as she walked off in frustration.
“Come on, Jennie. Let’s go.”
Jennie was her best friend. She took Jennie’s hand, walked away and left Shawn standing there with a bloody nose. But, deep down, at that very moment, she had fallen in love with him and him with her.
“Bye, Shawn,” Jennie said as they walked away.
Times around Caney Fork were good at times. Most of the people who lived around Caney Fork were black but there were several white families who also lived there. Caney Fork was a small farming community about thirty-five miles south of Tupelo. Loren lived with her daddy, mama, two brothers and one older sister. R.C. and Jeanetta Williams were her parents. They had grown up around Caney Fork and raised their family there. R.C. had given Loren the nickname of Weak when she was just a baby. Everyone around Caney Fork called her Weak, too. Shawn’s parents were Lewis and Brenda Bryant. They had also grown up around Caney Fork. They lived down the road from each other. R.C. And Lewis were not only good neighbors, they were close friends. Jennie’s parents had both died a few years ago. R.C. and Jeanetta took her into their home to take care of her. That was the way it was around Caney Fork. Everyone looked out for each other and helped each other.
From the early sixties, there was marching and protesting all across the country for equal rights and against the war in Vietnam. The rioting and fighting in the streets was making its way onto college campuses. Across the south, the Civil Rights Movement was making its way with violent demonstrations, protests and marches. The KKK came to Caney Fork often to harass not only the blacks there but the whites as well. They would burn crosses in their yards and shoot their guns up in the air to scare them. They burned barns and old houses. They called them racist names and made racial slurs. The Beatles, in 1964, brought in the British invasion; they turned the world upside down with their music. At the time, the world seemed to have lost it all. The country was completely torn apart; the bitterness and hatred drove the country apart. But, it drove Shawn and Weak closer together.
As Weak laid down and closed her eyes, she hoped in her heart that tomorrow would bring a better day. We have made it this far, we can’t turn back now, she said to herself. The days lingered on and the nights were long. Lewis and Brenda were distraught over Shawn being missing and so was everyone else around Caney Fork. He was well thought of in Caney Fork. Like Weak, his dad and mom waited and hoped to hear some good news. They all prayed for Shawn’s safe return home. As Weak walked the floor, she stopped occasionally to look out the door and then the window to watch for the mailman to run. She prayed each day she would get word of him being found. One day, as she stood at the window, she took her shaking hand, pulled back the curtain and looked out. The mailman had stopped; she watched him as he placed some mail in her box and then drove off. Eagerly, she ran out of the house to her mailbox as quickly as she could. She took the mail out of the box and quickly thumbed through it. But, there was no word. All she got were bills and sales papers. Disappointed, she slowly made her way back inside the house, sat down and began to think about Shawn and herself once again. She remembered the times, when they were growing up, they would strip down to their underwear and go swimming in Hogan’s Creek. He often made fun of her flour sack drawers. They also fished in Hogan’s Creek. In the early summer, they picked blackberries and would get eaten up with chiggers. They played games like red rover, tag and hide-and-go-seek. They used to hookup Shawn’s pet goat to their sled and he would pull them around. They also caught lightning bugs and tied a string onto the legs of June bugs and let them fly about. She thought how simple life was then and giggled to herself about the little things they did that meant so much to her now. They loved to play in the meadow. In the summer, they would lay out in the meadow to talk and think about the future; they figured they would always be together. The first time they held hands and he put his arm around her was in the meadow. She recalled how simple life was back then.
Several more days passed and she still hadn’t heard a word. As she sat on the porch swing and waited for the mailman, once again, she thought back on their lives as they grew up in Caney Fork. She thought about when they helped their parents in the tobacco fields. She hated raising tobacco. Their daddies would plow the rows with a mule and they had to chop out weeds with a hoe. They would sucker the tobacco and top it. She remembered the big old green tobacco worms they would pull off the plants; she used scissors to cut the worms in half. When cutting time came, they picked up leaves and dropped sticks. In the late fall, they would strip the tobacco and the only heat in the barn was a five-gallon drum with a fire in it. One time, Shawn’s daddy told him to chop the grass and weeds out of the garden. But, he didn’t want to because he wanted to play with Weak. So, Shawn got mad and chopped up everything in the garden. However, he paid for it dearly. Lewis whipped him all the way home. Her daddy and Lewis had some old hunting dogs that she and Shawn had to feed and water. She remembered how they hauled in water from the well and packed in wood and coal for fire in the winter. It was rough back then but life was simple. When she saw the mailman coming down the road, she eased up from the swing and stood on the porch. Once again, he didn’t stop. He blew his horn, waved and passed on by. No news today, she said to herself as she sat back down in the swing. As she looked out across the yard, she noticed her flowers and thought back to their times in the meadow. Shawn often picked her beautiful bouquets of wildflowers for her. Bluebells were her spring favorite and black-eyed Susans were he
r favorites in the summer. During the hot summer nights, they used to slip out and meet in the meadow to wish and dream. She loved to write poetry and share it with him. They built a treehouse in the woods near Hogan’s Creek. It was in the treehouse that he stole his first kiss from her. She remembered him getting choked when he smoked his first cigarette and getting sick from his first chew of tobacco. She thanked God he never picked up those nasty habits. He went to church with her a lot on Sunday mornings and on Sunday evenings they had picnics. They vowed they would never leave each other and would always be there for each other. However, times were not always as good. She raised her eyebrows and thought about the arguments they had. But, she didn’t linger on that thought for long. She couldn’t help but laugh about the rooster they had that would chase him around the yard every time he came over to her house. Why, she didn’t know. She just laughed as she remembered the look on his face. Her thought were interrupted when the phone rang. She ran inside and answered it; it was Brenda. They had received a call from the officers. The crash site of the chopper had been located but Shawn’s body was not found among the wreckage. It was possible that he could still be alive but they didn’t know for sure. They were still looking for him. If he survived the chopper crash, he could be somewhere in Laos. Brenda told her if they found out any more, they would let her know. As she laid down the phone, she prayed to herself, Oh, Lord, please let him be found safe. As she went over and took a seat by the window, she was unaware of what was going on across the other side of the world. She wondered if he was okay. She didn’t know if he was hurt of if he had been captured. In fact, no one knew. The day soon passed and she hoped for a better tomorrow. That night, she tossed, turned and tried to go to sleep. Once more, she thought back about the past and how they had been caught stealing a watermelon from Henry Baskerville’s tobacco patch. Even though they had stolen it, it was the best watermelon she had ever eaten. She remembered how they used to cross the fence on old man Andrew’s place and steal green apples from his tree. Shawn would climb up the tree, pick the apples and drop them down to her. As she continued to think about Shawn, a smile crossed her face and she slowly drifted off to sleep.
Things were still bad around the world. There had been a shooting somewhere up north at Kent State. Blacks had to ride at the back of the bus and had to sit in certain places at restaurants. There were whites only signs everywhere along with talks and demonstrations of integrating schools. Young men across the country went to Canada to dodge the draft. The war in Vietnam had taken its toll on the people and the country. A lot of the soldiers that came back from Vietnam were spit on by people when they returned home. The young men were already beaten down from the war and many of them were crippled and lamed from injuries they received during battle.
It was early one morning, Weak was sitting on the porch steps waiting for the mailman to run, when Lewis and Brenda stopped by. They talked with her a while about Shawn. They told her they hadn’t heard anything else and they believed he wasn’t alive. But, Weak refused to believe he was dead. R.C., Jeanetta and the church continued to pray for him and her. Her daddy and mama were real supportive of her and had stood by her from the time she received word he was missing. After Lewis and Brenda left, Weak thought about the time when she, Shawn and his daddy were on their way to Tupelo; they were run off the road by a couple of young Klan who harassed and threatened them. Before things got too out of hand, two more Klansmen pulled up in a car, got out and told the young Klansmen to leave them alone and let them go. The young Klansmen didn’t like it and disagreed but the older Klansmen stood their ground and made them leave. She remembered how scared to death they were because they didn’t know what was going to happen. To this day, they have no idea who the older Klansmen were. They speculated that one of them was Lewis’ brother, Harold. It wasn’t long after that encounter when things began to settle down but the bitter hatred was still there. I guess there will always be some to hold on to it, she thought. Eventually, the schools were integrated and life moved on. She and Shawn were high school sweethearts. They had endured many rough times together. Jennie, who was always there for her, encouraged her to keep the faith that one day Shawn would return home. Jennie finally married, had a child and moved away. Weak’s thoughts were interrupted when the mailman came by and stopped. She ran to the mailbox with hopes of some good news. But, there was none. There were no letters and no phone calls. There was nothing but waiting, praying, hoping and wishing for some long awaited answers to Shawn’s whereabouts. As she stood on the porch that day, she remembered standing on the porch with Shawn and his suitcase before he headed off to war. He kissed her and hugged her tightly. Neither of them knew what laid ahead for them. She remembered a bad feeling had come over her when he kissed her again and told her he would always love her from the edge of night to the light of day. He promised he would always take care of her. She sensed, too, by the way he talked with a trembling lip that he may have thought he was saying goodbye forever. She watched him walk away and get into Lewis’ car. As they drove away, she and Shawn waved goodbye until they disappeared out of sight. As she entered the house, she closed the door behind her, fell up against it and started to cry. Lord, we have been through so much, she said to herself. However, I know with your help, I can get through this.
It was 1969 and there was still not a word. Weak’s daddy had passed and her mama was in an old folk’s home in Tupelo. She drove up there twice a week to see her. By now, all of her hope seemed to have been lost. She helped take care of her mother until she died in 1970; it was the same year Lewis and Brenda died. She attended their funerals and thought how much it would have meant to Shawn if he could have been there. In 1971, she looked out the storm door, once more, and accepted the fact that Shawn was not going to come home. I have got to let it go, she said to herself, and move on with my life. In 1973, the U.S. pulled the last of the troops out of Nam. Weak had recently married a man she had known for a long time. He was born in Caney Fork but his family moved away somewhere up north when he was a young boy. He moved back to Caney Fork and was the pastor of their church. After they were married, he was appointed to another church in Birmingham. They moved to Birmingham but they always considered Caney Fork their home.
A few months after Weak and her husband moved to Birmingham, a man with a walking cane stood upon the porch where she used to live and knocked on the door; it was Shawn. A man came to the door and asked if he could help him. Shawn asked the man about Weak. The man really didn’t know her but he told Shawn he’d heard she had married and left town. However, he didn’t know where. Disappointed, Shawn slowly turned and walked away with tears in his eyes. As he walked away, he remembered telling her that day on the porch when he left for Nam that he would always love her from the edge of night until the light of day. Then, he thought about the war. He remembered being shot down in the chopper and captured by the Laos Army where they held him captive in a prison; he was cut off from the rest of the world. He eventually escaped and traveled south through Cambodia by the way of the Mekong River back to South Vietnam where he was hospitalized in Saigon until 1973 and then released to return home. He, too, left Caney Fork but in his heart it would always be his home.