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speak for three years, until VJ Day, when the woman lost herself in the spirit of release that seized them all. Up to then, it was silent Beadie, fuming Beadie, bereft Beadie, uncomprehending, miserable Beadie, alone with three little girls and a young son, cruelly forced to deal with the rude practicalities of life.
    The first casualty of her war was her beauty. She lost weight and the luster of her hair. She didn’t sleep much. Dark, puffy flesh circled her eyes, while the corners of her mouth turned down. Her charm was next. Dismayed and confused as she was, she was not an optimistic citizen but spoke gloomily, even on days when the news was good and the president promised victory. I do not expect to see my husband again in warm flesh, she said to whoever would listen. I have seen his end before me as clearly as I can see Stars and Bars flappin’ there against the flagpole at the post office. When the war news was bad and not even FDR could gloss it, she advised the family to study German along with enough evangelical phraseology to mask their origins. As a result, most of her people gave her a wide berth. Who needed a pessimist during wartime?
    Her masculine cousins deferred from military service or too young for it avoided her company completely. This was unfortunate since what she wanted, what she needed was a man, even a man manqué, someone, anyone, who would take over the functions of the male in a world that had not raised her for manly tasks yet thrust them upon her. With no one else to depend on, she zeroed in on Mickey Moe, all of four and a half years old at the time of his daddy’s departure overseas, calling him “my little man” and “man of the house,” dressing him in long pants straight away even in summer. Since everyone knew manly men loved the outdoors and suffered inside, whenever he tripped and tore holes in the knees, she sewed on patches in a hurry, popped a salt pill in his mouth, slapped his rump, and sent her little man back out into the sun to sweat.
    As a result, Mickey Moe assumed a good old boy’s rites and rituals long before he had the tooth for it. He never once questioned whether the role suited him. Since there were no able-bodied men around him for a time and since the ones returned from war were each and every one of them scarred in some manner, visible and not, he was left to fashion his own code of manly behavior from whatever instincts he could muster or from observing old or infirm white folk and the Negroes around him, too.
    From Uncle Benny Lee, who suffered from asthma and the catarrh, he learned to cough and spit and do it only outdoors or in the proper receptacle indoors if such might be had. From Mr. Banning, the bitter old man from across the street, who dragged behind him the leg he’d mangled in the first great war, muttering a blue streak with every step, he learned how and when to properly swear. Roland, Mama’s housekeeper’s husband, a huge burly man black as coal and in the prime of life, was denied military service when he’d attempted to enlist, because the draft board determined that the womenfolk needed some brawn back home with all the men gone and that Roland, unlike some of them uppity bucks, was a safe bet, meek as a mouse due to being tongue lashed half to death by his wife. From Roland, Mickey Moe learned to hold his hat at waist level and study the ground to make himself look humble and small when the occasion demanded, no matter how he felt inside. Since Mama’s car did not get any younger during the war, nor her hot water heater, Roland taught him about motors and how things mechanical worked. Many was the afternoon Mickey Moe trudged along behind him from basement to driveway, carrying his toolbox. He learned the function of the instruments within when Roland asked politely, Master Mickey Moe, might you please hand me the Phillips screwdriver?
    Another black man he knew, old Bald Horace, sold vegetables and dairy products door-to-door from a