The War in Georgia by Jerrie Oughton

Author:Jerrie Oughton
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

7

No one has said beans about Louray and her visit to try to get money. Louie certainly doesn’t bring it up. Grandmorgan probably didn’t hear what went on, and I’m certainly not going to tell her. But it rankles inside me like vinegar in sweet milk. Even when I’m not thinking about it, I am. The slightest thought of Louray makes me so mad I almost get sick to my stomach. Here the three of us have cut back to eating meat only twice a week to save on the grocery bill, and Louray leaves Windsor Castle to come clean across town to ask Louie for money. I’d be ashamed if it’d been me; I know that much.

I’m feeding Louie his dinner one evening when he tells me what happened during Louray’s visit. He doesn’t just out and out say it. He relays something else, and later, when I put two and two together, I know what he’s really told me.

We’ve gotten through the nightly Spanish conversation and are talking about the war going on.

“You know what I heard in school last winter?” I ask.

He waits, so I continue. “Our teacher said it was so cold in the Ukraine, that when soldiers died, their frozen corpses were used to hold up the tents.”

“Hm-m-m-m. Doesn’t surprise me. Frozen human posts,” he says. “A final use of manpower. I read that in the newspaper, come to think of it. It was true.”

“That’s horrible,” I say, stirring his mashed-up crookneck squash.

“Oh, in war you learn to use everything, even your dead. And you know they would want you to.

“It makes me so mad! The whole war! I pray every night,” I tell him, “that God will bless Hitler and kill him.”

Louie laughs. “News reports say he’s already dead, if you can believe them.”

“They haven’t found a body yet,” I’m quick to say.

“You’re covering all your bases, aren’t you?”

“Why not? He’s human like us, but he ordered horrible things to be done. Those people we see pictures of in the evening Journal. . . he may as well have killed them. Standing there staring like they’re dead inside.”

Louie clears his throat. “In war, horrible acts occur on both sides. It’s not clear cut, Shanta. Never all black and white . . .”

“We don’t go round torturing and starving . . .”

“Hey!” He holds up one hand. “We do just as bad. Last February the Allies—that’s us, the, in quotes, good guys—bombed the German city of Dresden.”

“So?” I spoon in diced-up asparagus. “Hitler’s German. He’s head of the whole German nation.”

“Now wait,” Louie says. “Listen. Black and white would say, ‘Good! All Germans are bad guys.’ But that’s not so. The Allies said we were hitting Dresden because of the Military Transport Center there. Fine! Hit it and leave. But no. Over a thousand planes bombed that city. A thousand planes.” He sips water from the glass straw.

“We got the Military Transport Center, all right. We also got citizens—adults and children. Museums full of irreplaceable art.

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