Jilo (Witching Savannah #4)(46)
“Those Jerries aren’t going to keep our boys from having a good Christmastime. Not if we have anything to say about it . . . and we do,” said stunning redheaded, hazel-eyed singer Betty Wills, pictured here with Briggs and several of our adoring servicemen looking on. Her words were met with thunderous applause. Miss Wills, 28, and many of her peers from last night’s performance will be taking leave of our shores soon to spread holiday cheer to our troops stationed around Europe and Northern Africa.
January 1943
May shook her head several times as she held the newspaper clipping up to the light, doing her damnedest to recognize any familiar part of her former daughter-in-law in the black-and-white—mostly white, May noted—photo that accompanied the text. Sure, it was Betty all right, all hips and curves and victory-roll hair, but if May hadn’t known it was her, she could’ve passed this woman on the street without looking twice.
The article had arrived by itself, with the words “Show my girls their mama” scrawled beneath the photo in a slanting, loopy script May’s eyes had been hard-pressed to decipher. May wasn’t sure she should let the girls see it.
May grunted as her eyes fell again on “Miss Wills’s” age. Twenty-eight years old with a twenty-one-year-old daughter. True, Betty still looked good, May could tell as much from the photo, but the reporter’s acceptance of Betty’s claim spoke more of his infatuation with his subject than anything else. May wondered just what the newspaper fellow had gotten in return for the write-up.
May’s eyes focused again on the newsprint she held. A semicircle of besotted and uniformed white boys gazed adoringly at Betty. Betty, who was about to set sail with them. For all May knew, those boys might all be over in Europe now. Might even be dead.
Her eyes drifted from the photo to scan the text once more. Imagine it. Betty singing over in Europe. Even setting foot on Africa. Opal was in the Orient, working as an army nurse—the army wouldn’t let her say where—and for a moment May found herself imagining the two meeting up overseas, Opal a black nurse, Betty a “stunning redheaded, hazel-eyed” white singer. Would the two even recognize each other if they were allowed to congregate in the same hall?
May nearly wadded up the newsprint, but something made her hesitate. Maybe Poppy would want it. She could mail the article to Poppy in Charlotte, but no. It would probably just get returned, unopened, like every other letter May had sent her over the last two years. Poppy blamed May for the horrors that had unfolded on Christmas night two years back. She had left Savannah swearing that she would only speak to her grandmother again if May gave up working magic. It broke May’s heart every time she thought of her girl. Lord knows May would like nothing better than to give up the magic. The problem was that the magic didn’t seem ready to give her up. When May finally made it home that Christmas night, she’d been greeted by the Beekeeper, sitting sprawled out on her front steps. The damned creature hadn’t raised a gloved finger to help May’s girls. “I wanted to see how the little one would handle herself,” she’d said, screeching with laughter as she began to recount the acts of savagery that had just taken place in May’s home.
May had ordered the Beekeeper away. Commanded her never to return. But even though the creature had not shown herself since then, her power continued to flow, as unwanted as ever, through May. Hypocrite, May thought. A part of her was more than grateful the magic hadn’t just dried up. For one thing, she hadn’t managed to track down Maguire’s demon, and she was grateful she’d have more than her increasingly disregarded prayers to protect her babies. Maybe Jilo had managed to take it out, or maybe it was just playing possum until it was strong enough to strike again. Besides, she couldn’t deny she’d grown accustomed to the little luxuries that the “donations” she received for working the magic, which folk mistakenly believed to be Hoodoo, could buy. Perhaps it was too late for her. Maybe she’d sold her soul just like Maguire—only he was better at bargaining.
Maguire. Without missing a beat, that damned buckra had gone from praising Hitler as a great thinker and a noble man to mobilizing his many factories to join the war effort against the German leader. As best she could tell, Maguire had made money from the Jerries before the war by selling them things they were now using to kill our boys. And now he was making even more money by selling our military the things they needed to fight back. It was all a big circle. A snake feeding on itself, and growing fatter from the feeding. May had no doubt regarding where Maguire’s true allegiance lay in all of this bloodshed. His only loyalty was to himself. She held a complete record of his weasel words and deeds, at least those reported in the local paper, in the form of the clippings she still collected about him.
Maybe someday, after May had passed, Poppy would find the scrapbook, and these clippings and the notes May made on them would help her begin to understand what May had been up against. Help the girl find a bit of forgiveness in her heart for her old nana.
Poppy blamed May for ruining her relationship with Henry Cook. Henry. He’d up and enlisted before the war, probably as much out of desire to put some space between himself and Poppy as to serve his country. Whatever romance had blossomed between the two was now good and dead.
May remained angry as a hornet at Henry for his part in Maguire’s plan, but still she said a prayer for his safe return. He should’ve warned her about what she was walking into that night, but he wasn’t a bad boy. Would he and the other black servicemen be allowed to see Betty’s show if it passed through where he was stationed?