Read Online Born Under a Lucky Moon by Dana Precious - Free Book Online Page B

to me on the settee. “Senility is so sad,” she whispered. I managed to turn my laugh into a cough.
    Father Whippet continued. “So you’ve known, uh”—he looked down at a piece of paper—“uh, Chuck, long enough to know you want to spend the rest of your life with him?”
    â€œI’ve known him for seven weeks.” Lucy looked straight at Father Whippet.
    â€œWell, uuuum, but you love each other deeply?” Father Whippet was beginning to have the same desperate tone my mother had had in the car.
    â€œSure.” Chuck shrugged.
    At that point Father Whippet gave Mom the eye, and Sammie, Mom, and I found ourselves back out in the hallway. Lord knows what he was going to say to the happy couple. Mom paced while Sammie and I sat on the wooden bench outside his office. “She didn’t look happy,” Mom fretted.
    â€œShe looks how she normally looks,” Sammie said as she tried to adjust her back against the slats. This same conversation took a few different forms while we waited. Eventually, Lucy and Chuck emerged from the office looking slightly dazed.
    â€œHe said it was okay,” Lucy announced. “Since we’re already married by a judge it doesn’t really matter.”
    The drive from St. Peter’s in downtown Muskegon over the Causeway to North Muskegon only takes about five minutes. We passed the Rupp Plant, which was situated just off the Causeway on the edge of Muskegon Lake. When I was little, it spewed nasty black stuff from its stacks out over the road, the marshes, the lakes, and our town. When it started killing the Canadian geese, the good people of North Muskegon starting calling for an environmental rehab. They weren’t that worried about the geese, but they were damn sure worried about their property values. Now the plant had a two-hundred-foot smokestack so the wind could catch the black spew and spread it more generously on our neighbors.
    Figuring that hitting the house and seeing the limp tent lying in the backyard might be a bit much for Lucy, Mom pulled in to Main Street, a restaurant three blocks from our house. Chuck hadn’t said a word since we had left the church. Granted, men did not tend to speak much around the Thompson females, because it meant jumping into the fast-moving current of our words. Seated at the table, Mom, Sammie, and I looked expectantly at Chuck. He looked expectantly back at us. Lucy fiddled with her fork and kept checking the door to see if anyone she knew was coming in.
    â€œSo, Chuck, do you study Russian as well?” Mom asked politely. I could tell she was wondering when he was going to take his hat off.
    â€œNo, ma’am.”
    â€œAre you an officer?” It was a good question, but none of us knew what that meant anyway. He could have told us he was Field Marshall Rommel and we would have nodded our heads politely until we could check with Dad.
    But his answer again was “No, ma’am.”
    Then he did it. He made the fatal mistake. The one thing that sealed his fate in my mother’s eyes. She would deny it, but I knew better. It was a small gesture, but my mother had not spent her life trying to better herself for no reason. Chuck’s Coke was sitting in front of his plate. Leaving his hands resting at his sides, he leaned forward and fumbled for his straw with his mouth. I watched Mom lean slightly back from the table. Her eyes were glued to Chuck’s lips as he slurped his Coke, his hands dangling uselessly. And that was that. He was not “our people.”
    None of us dared to look at Lucy, who surely must have noticed. Chuck, clueless to the awkward silence, volunteered, “I’m a private first class, ma’am, in B Five-Three Company.” This sounded vaguely like a Boy Scout troop. I wondered if their oath was similar to the Girl Scout oath. Once, on a Girl Scout camping trip, I had been asked to lead the pledge. I practiced hard the