Sugar Cookies

                                                   By Nick Nixon 

                           Ivan Schemmer was a six foot, hundred and eighty pound decorated American soldier. Like a million other servicemen, he was coming home. He’d been in the army for three long years. He wasted no time in St. Louis, but high tailed it home to Pollard, Arkansas on the first Pullman coach south. All the way there he kept thinking it might be a dream. He had begun to think he would never see home again.

     During those long cold nights on the front line in Germany he used to repeat to himself over and over as if it would happen sooner if he said the words enough. “All I want is to go back home, I want to go back home for Christmas.”

      He was needed there, and had been acting head of the household next to Mom. His dad relied on him to read and write when Mom was busy. And he helped them with the modern things, like the Oliver tractor, and the little Chevy they bought in 1939 with the fall cotton crop money. Ivan drove it every where they went. 

     His sixteen year old sister, Wanda, was the first family member he saw as the train drew up to the platform. She jumped up and down with anticipation of his arrival. Her breaths puffed into the frigid air like steam from the locomotive. She had two brothers but Ivan suspected he was her favorite, her hero and her best friend.

     His brother Melvin stood with his foot on the running board of the family Chevrolet grinning like he had stolen his little brother’s girl and was waiting to tease him of it. Even though he was four years older than Ivan, and near three hundred pounds, he was still only fourteen in his mind.

     Mom and Dad sat in the warmth of the automobile with dark winter coats, scarves and woolen caps. He knew they’d probably been there for hours. At first standing outside, but finally retreating to the little Chevy when they’d gotten too cold.

     It was the same Chevy that took Ivan on his first date with Peggy Cambell, a cheerleader at Piggott High. She married the quarter back who stayed home from the war with a bad back and worked his daddy’s hardware store. Ivan loved this car. He kept it washed and waxed before he left for boot camp training. Now it was covered with the Arkansas dust and mud and he wanted it to look the same as the picture he carried in his mind for the past three years.

     Wanda ran to him, and as they hugged he realized she was pregnant and said, “So, you and that rascal Walt finally got hitched did ya?” 

     Her eyes looked down and she started crying.

     He pulled her closer and added “It’s ok honey, none of my business anyway.”

     Big Mel’s grin was twice as wide by then and his Dad was getting out to greet him.

      Mom waved her fingers frantically from over the top of the lowered car window. She told him in her letters that she missed him. That she never realized how much until he was gone. She said she couldn’t imagine her boy being so far away and her not being there to watch over him.

       In truth, he was a full grown man and had been looking after them instead since he was sixteen.

      With her wraparound scarf he could hardly see her hazel eyes but she pushed it back and kissed his forehead, cheeks and finally his lips the same way she had always done at bedtime since he could remember. Some gray hair spilled from under her scarf and suddenly she appeared much older than he remembered.

     They all loaded into the little Chevy and pointed it home with Ivan driving. He checked the gauges and asked, “Have ya been changing the oil Dad?”

     “We can’t get any.” Wanda Girl answered for him. They ration every thing cause of the war,” she added.

     “It’s pretty cold, why do ya have the windows cracked open Dad?”

     Mr Schemmer, a little man with nervous eyes was the only one left of the old family that came over from the Rhine valley of northern Germany in 1904. He saw the world’s fair as a kid in St Louis and talked about it for the rest of his life. He still spoke with a German accent. “Oh de muffler dis gotten a hole, and vee can’t git de new vun cuz de var is taken all de steel.” He smiled and licked his lips several times as his old habit returned when he talked or got excited.

     “Old man Dagman at de shop tol me de smoke from de hole not goo’d to git too mach of.”  He was licking his lips frantically now trying to put emphasis on the point.  “Vee glad yer home Beelze-bub. Like you say in yer letter, de place it be just de same as vin you left it.”

      “Beelze-bub,” Ivan smiled and repeated it. He hadn’t heard his nick name spoken in so long. He was grateful that in his dad’s eyes he was still his favorite “Bad-Boy.”

     The first night was warm and wonderful, and for the first time in three years the smell of Mom’s bread wasn’t just a memory. They listened to Ivan’s stories and took turns telling him of funny things that happened at home while he was away, like the time Wanda wore Dad’s farm boots to help dig the cow manure from the floor of the stalls. She suddenly fell with the pitch fork stuck in her foot screaming with pain as tears rolled down her cheeks. She called for her big brother Ivan, but he was ten thousand miles away fighting the other Germans. Mel finally came to her rescue, yanked on the fork and it pulled the big brogan off with it, leaving a perfectly fine little white uninjured foot. Wanda’s face blushed as the others laughed.

      Mel took his turn but quit half way through his tale and went to stomping an imaginary snake. No one looked because they knew about Melvin’s strange spells. Especially Wanda. She wasn’t amused by Mel’s disorder. The others tried to contain theirs.

      Mr. Schemmer stood and softly said to him, “Now Son, I tink you got ‘em. Yep, you gots dim good. Sit back down now and teld yer story.” 

      He then turned to Ivan and said, “See, I teld you, ever ting at home de same as vin you left. Heh-Heh.”  His smile broadened to expose his bare gums.

     “My lord Dad, where’s your teeth?” Ivan shrieked.

     The old man just kept smiling, his eyes sparkled like the Fourth of July and his tongue flicked in and out like a chicken snake in a hen house. The emotional hold-back and tension of the moment evaporated when everyone caught the laughter and hearts melted like butter on Mom’s newly baked bread.

     Thanksgiving came to a happy and once again lively home. Mrs. Schemmer baked for two days. Vanilla cake with vanilla icing piled high between the layers and double thick on top, just as he remembered. She had been saving back sugar ever since the rationing started and knew Ivan would come home hungry. She wanted to spoil him like he was still her little boy. Her family was her life, all she thought of, all she lived for. And now they were together again, back home for good. He heard her repeat it to herself as if she needed it validated.

     The biggest turkey on the farm stuffed full of her dressing and sweet potatoes with butter and molasses decorated the table that had been in the family for at least a hundred years. Life was full again.

     Ivan washed the Chevy even though tiny ice cycles dripped and grew from the running boards like stalactites in a wet cave. He wiped the dash until it looked new again. He loved this car, it took them every where without fail. Its white wall tires were worn, but he planned to replace them as soon as they were available.

     They drove to church that Sunday with the maroon paint shinning like a polished fall apple out of Mom’s table basket. That evening Wanda and Ivan bought hot chocolate with whipped cream from the drug store then went up on Hay Field Hill.  This time they left the bicycles at home and drove the little Chevy. They sat on the fenders and bet on who would be first to spot a shooting star.

      The sky was as clear as Keeners cave-water and a hundred times as deep.

       They sipped their hot chocolate and waited as if a movie was about to start. “This is where mom and dad fell in love,” said Wanda. “Remember how she used to say he seemed more interested in her sugar-cookies that she baked for the picnic? Cause he ate every one of ‘em. Times were simple then.”

      This is what Ivan had missed the most. The last three years had been a nightmare that he finally awakened from. Night fell with a chill and a million stars appeared over them. He turned up his collar and said playfully,  “There goes one.”

     “There were a lot more stars this past summer,” said Wanda before she thought. Then she placed her hand on her stomach and it seemed to scare her. “Let’s go home. It’s too cold,” she whispered.

     Home was almost like before the war, and remained so through Christmas. The smell of hot coa-coa and pumpkin pie filled the house once again. On Christmas Eve, Wanda sang carols and Mom played the pump-organ till midnight when they all exchanged modest gifts for the first time since Ivan went away.

     He gave his mother two silk scarves made in France from an American parachute. Mel got a German fur-lined aviator’s cap. Wanda received a gold ring that Ivan bought from a German mother who needed milk for her new baby. She discreetly slipped it on her finger while listening to his story.

      He gave his dad a sea bag full of army gear; jackets, shirts, trousers. He kept his gloves. He was safe at home again and that’s all he wanted from the army and all its miseries.

      Mr. Schemmer opened a blue box that he found and said, “Look mum, de medals our Beelzebub von.” Everyone gazed at the two bronze stars, the purple heart, and the odd French medal.

      Ivan left the room without comment. Memories of the war had no place in his renewed life at home.

      On New Year’s day they drove Wanda to Little Rock where she met her widowed Aunt Wanda Lou Diekamp whose daughter Emily was visiting from California. It had been agreed and arranged for Wanda Girl to stay through the spring there in sunny L. A.. Wanda wanted to be as far away as possible for she was beginning to show more and she didn’t want to cause her mom any further discomfort.

      Walter Luther himself would have envied the solidarity of the Diekamp women when one of their own was physically wronged by a man. They came to the tidy home in Little Rock with gifts and moral support for two days.

      The parting mother and daughter talk began in the driveway with instructions from Mom. “Now honey, write me everyday and let me know how you feel, and remember come home as soon as you think it’s time. If you need more money just send me a telegram. Ivan still has lots of his Army pay left.” 

      “I know Mom.  He gave me money, he always takes care of me, he’s been doing it ever since I was born.”  She smiled at Ivan who was behind the wheel warming up the Chevy’s engine.

       He smiled and waved goodbye again. Sniffles were already being heard from the women on the porch watching.

     “I’ll be fine,” Wanda Girl said bravely. I might stay out there awhile, maybe get a job, after the baby is …” She stopped the sentence, then said, “I’d like to see part of California before I come back home to settle down.”

      “Ok honey,” said Mrs. Schemmer with a sad look on her face. She got in the back seat of the car to leave.

       When Ivan began backing out of the driveway, Wanda’s brave facade crumbled, her little chin began to quiver. Suddenly she was her mama’s little girl again. The tears came un-ashamed and she held out her arms like a toddler crying.  “Mom, oh Mom. I love you Mom.”

      “Stop Ivan!” pleaded Mrs. Schemmer. “Stop the car.”

       Ivan halted the little Chevy before they reached the street as Wanda Girl ran to the opened car window to embrace her mother one last time. They held each other tighter with each sob. The women watching from the porch pulled hankies from their pockets.  Some buried their faces, others ran inside.

       Ivan and his dad turned away trying not to get drawn into the emotional current. But their mother’s grief was as contagious as a fist fight at Pollard’s annual picnic. And soon they too were reduced to sniveling like girls on their first day of kindergarten.

      The little Chevy never missed a beat, but on the way home more tears from Mom fell as she wailed, “I’ll never see her again. I know.”    

      “Sure we will Mom.” They kept reassuring. 

      “No-no, you may, but I won’t, I just know it”

      Sadness returned to the little home near the railroad tracks outside of Pollard, Arkansas. Ivan drove his mom to the Memphis cancer hospital for tests several times.

     Then Mel took a turn for the worse, he disappeared for three days before being brought home by the sheriff. Will Sarget, the owner of the cotton gin, said he’d been sleeping in a grain bin and talked of snakes. An incident occurred involving a young girl. Finally Ivan drove him to the mental institution in St Louis where he was admitted. He died there strangely sometime later never seeing his family again.

     Most of it was withheld from his ailing mother.

     Eventually the slow farm life wore on Ivan and he struggled with indecision. He had seen the world, witnessed it’s miseries, but also felt the excitement and energy that made it turn. Pollard was simply too far away from the future. The road to the industrial upper Midwest was full of restless men like him, so once again he said goodbye and wedged his way onto the next train north. His vision of home hadn’t changed, but he had.

      Mrs Schemmer gave up the struggle in a Memphis hospital, leaving the sad old man to the roomy house that had seemed so small before. Everyday he sat alone in the kitchen by the stove as if still waiting for Mom’s bread to get done. One night there was a fire. The home went up as if it were a cinder block bar b q pit full of dried hickory. The walls held, but every thing inside burnt through the roof.

     The telegram from Sheriff Hardin ended with, “Come soon as possible.”-stop.

     There at the County Sheriff’s office in Piggott, he spoke with a heavy southern accent, “We found Mr. Schemmer the morning after the fire sitting in his little Chevy on top of Hay Field Hill as if he’d been up there watching the sky. Neighbors claimed he went there a lot. He was behind the wheel, his head back. Hell, we thought he was asleep at first. The windows were rolled up tight, the doors locked, and the motor had been left running.” The sheriff paused and spat tobacco juice into an old can that he carried with him.

       “Yer Daddy got ta actin’ kinda funny after yer mom died. I’m real sorry to have to tell ya all this Ivan.” He handed Ivan a plastic bag of personals and said, “Oh, there’s a note in there that he scribbled on the back of one of them photos.”

      Ivan arranged for the funeral and buried his dad with his mother mom and his brother Mel behind the church they’d attended for most of their lives. Wanda, who left for her waitress job one night, disappeared, and hadn’t been heard from since. Several letters from California relatives revealed that the baby had been put up for adoption at birth. Ivan tried several times to get in touch with her, even hired a private detective who only worked on it a few days before he returned most of his fee and mysteriously resigned.

      Hay Field Hill and the little Chevy were sold to the cotton gin owner’s son “Cowboy”  William Sarget.

      After thirty six years, a wife and two grown children, Ivan retired and was coming home again to attend their graves and maybe to see the place before it was sold. He drove slowly through the one block town and noticed that nothing resembled the old Pollard stored in his memory. Most buildings were closed and boarded. Even Le-Grand’s Drug Store where his mom once exchanged five dozen eggs for cough syrup and blue stone ointment. And on Saturday mornings school boys gathered to watch Peggy Cambell sip a root-beer float.

      Ivan stopped in the middle of the street to look at a two story red brick, windows boarded over with graffiti painted ply-wood. An assortment of used lawn mowers surrounded the entire front.

     “My God, that can’t be the drug store. If it is, Garvis must have sold out. He always kept the cleanest place in town. Why he even hired big Mel to do nothing but walk the floor armed with a large fly swatter that said Le Grand’s Drug Store on the business end of it. Mel got so good at swatting flies that Garvis gave him free ice cream, then fired him for coping a feel of Ethel Burkmeier’s breast. The boys put him up to it with a fifty cent bet. That wasn’t the first time either. It might not have seemed so bad if Mel hadn’t been nineteen years old and Ethel only thirteen.

       Ivan nosed his station wagon into an angled parking space, the lines barely visible. He looked up at a sign above the door that said in runny white wash letters “W. M. Small Engine and Repair.” A man about Ivan’s age, but skinny and hollow-eyed stood wiping his hands on a blackened shop towel and asked, “Hep Ya.?” Then added, “Or are you just one of them city fellers wantin’ to watch how us Arkansas Hill-Billy’s fuck our sisters?” His mouth and blood shot eyes slid into a sarcastic grin.

       Startled, Ivan’s scalp tingled. He knew the feeling but it had been a while. He’d only allowed himself to lose his temper two or three times since his army years. But this may be another one. He waited to respond and ran it through his mind. “Who is this prick? I know him from somewhere long ago.”

      Then Ivan’s mind flashed back to the day of his home coming, at the rail-road depot. When he realized his baby sister was with child. The scene flashed up briefly. “So you and that rascal Walt finally got hitched did ya?”  Ivan’s eyes narrowed and his body stiffened.

       Walt’s face went blank as he became aware of who he was facing. “I think me and you need ta sit down and talk a spell,” he said.

      Ivan advanced casually without any give-away expression.

      “Wait! Wait now a dammed minute!” said Walt just before shooting stars flashed over Hay Field Hill. Falling into one, two, then three push mowers, he came to rest half aboard a dusty Dixon Chopper. He shook his head, looked at Ivan and said “Why’d you do that? I wasn’t bother’n you a-tall.  I wasn’t.”

      “That’s for baby sister you ass hole. You know you had it comin’.” 

      “Fer baby sister? Yer a hittin’ the wrong man, Ivan, He started to get up but shot a nervous glance at Ivan first, anticipating his reaction.

      Ivan, already regretting his temper, said “Walt, I had decided long ago to let this thing pass. But I don’t think you realize what you did to her. You took away her future. You took away what she could have become.” He felt himself getting mad all over again when Walt tried to get up.

      “Ivan I still don’t know why you’re mad at me for something your brother done!” 

      The world stopped turning suddenly with those words.

      “What did you just say you son of a bitch?” Ivan’s hair started itching like a million ants had commenced to crawl up the back of his neck. His face went blank again.

       Walt saw it and retreated further behind the little Dixon chopper, yelling, “Ivan, God dam it, listen to me! Please!”

      Ivan’s thoughts rolled back to the time Mel was fired from LeGrands Drug. They said he grabbed both of Ethel’s breast right in front of her Mom, and never showed any sign of remorse. In fact, he didn’t even act like he saw the wrong in it. Mom told them not mention it to anyone ever.  

      Walt saw the change in Ivan’s face and said “Come help me git up Ivan, I’ve got these bad knees.”

          They went into Ike’s dingy office where Walt pulled out a fifth of Hill and Hill and poured two small smudgy glasses half full. He told Ivan the whole story of how Mel threw a fit when he caught them kissing at the fair. “Hell, I thought I was gonna have to cold cock him till Wanda calmed him, but the next day she said they went down to the swimming hole on Old Pollard Creek. 

     “Were you there” Ivan broke in.

     “No, but she told me Mel was acting strange the whole time and when she decided to go on home, Mel broke down and started crying saying how much he loved her, wanted to get married and all. She was shocked, but she tried to talk to him and explain that she loved him too, but like the brother he was. And that brother and sister could never be any thing more. She told me that she could always reason with him before ‘cause he trusted her. But not this time. So she took off for home again.”

      Walt took another slug right from the bottle, some drained down his chin and he wiped at it with the blackened shop towel from earlier. It rubbed off on his gray stubble beard. His expression went blank for a moment till he recalled where he left off. Then with obvious emotional distress, he continued.

      “She said Mel caught her, held her down ,called her a bitch and a whore, said she didn’t love him as much as he loved her. That pissed her off. She said she shouldn’t have slapped him though, ‘cause it sent him into a hysterical rant that ended with the rape. She screamed for help and pleaded for him to stop. She finally broke loose and ran home.”

      “Your mom took her upstairs to her room, carried hot water for a bath, dried her hair and held her in a blanket till she fell asleep.”

      Mrs. Schemmer sent your dad over to Piggott to get some groceries, then waited for Mel to come in. Your mom cornered Melvin on the back porch, she whipped that man like a run-away slave with your daddy’s razor strap.

      Wanda said through the kitchen window she saw Big Mel cry like a child screaming, “I’m bad mama, hit me hard, I’ve been bad. Hit me harder Mom.”  

      And she did. Till the old woman started crying herself. She continued to swing between sobs, till she collapsed. Then with the strap still in her hand, she pulled his face into her arms asking, “Why lord? Why can’t my little Melvin be normal?”

      “I swear Ivan, that Wanda Girl could tell it so sad that she even had me feelin’ sorry for the big ugly bastard.”    

      “I wanted to kill the baboon, but Wanda Girl said no, said he was sick, and ‘touched folks’ aren’t responsible for what they do.”  

      “Your mom swore us all to secrecy. You know how she was. The story leaked anyway, but it was after Wanda left for California, and you left for somewhere else.

      I tell ya Ivan, that mother of your’n was a hell of a woman! She carried more on her shoulders than your daddy even thought existed.”  

      Walt covered his face with his hands for a moment, rubbed his eyes then looked up, nodded his head and said, “That’s the truth Ivan. I never touched her. She wouldn’t budge. Said we had to wait till we were married. I loved her, Ivan. I would of taken that baby as my own, but she wouldn’t hear of it, said it wasn’t right.” 

      Ivan let out a breath that would’ve emptied a truck tire. He was spent. He lowered his head, shook it slightly and whispered, “Poor Wanda Girl, my brave little soul. I should have been there for her. I should have been there.” 

      Walt raised the bottle again and slugged it dry, then asked Ivan if he was gonna drink his glass. He looked right into Ivan’s eyes and said, “She promised to come back as soon as the baby was born. I got letters from her for months. Then she stopped writing as often and took a job in a dance hall.” He looked away again and lowered his voice. “I told her I’d come and git her but she got so mad I swear, she was the most danged fired independent girl I ever seed. You’re right about one thing Ivan, and wrong ‘bout tuther. It wasn’t me that took away yer sissy’s future. But her that took away mine. Cause she aint never comin’ back, never”

       Walt tossed the empty bottle in a barrel and pulled open drawers searching for another. His hand slipped off the counter he was leaning on and he fell to the floor groaning in a stupor.

       Ivan was suddenly so tired it was all he could do to make it back to his vehicle. He’d been on the wagon for almost twenty years, but he had never needed a drink more.

       He again started talking to himself. “That changes every thing. My God that’s why Mom gave her consent for little sister’s move. And it killed her to do it. And the move has probably killed little Wanda girl, too. Dammed if it aint gonna get me if I don’t come to terms with it.”

       His body shivered like the winter the Germans broke through the lines at the Battle of the Bulge almost forty years before. His mind was still some-what scrambled, and it pained him even more to wonder if his dad had known the truth as well.

      He drove to the old home place, feeling weak, exhausted, but there was a certain amount of closure mixing in. He opened the farm gate and eased his station wagon to a stop in the middle of a small herd of red cattle. Thoughts still raced through his mind. Feelings of guilt outweighed his ability to cope. Why didn’t I stay and help? He gripped the steering wheel at the top and rested his forehead on the backs of his hands.

      He remained that way until the cattle, thinking he’d come to feed them commenced to bawling for grain. “Now aint that somethin’,” he said to himself. Don’t they know the world’s screwed up, and the crazy people in it can’t be relied on?”

     They got his attention however, and he noticed how each had a different pitch, like horns in an orchestra. One bellowed low and long. Another started out her pitch high, then slid down the scale to end like a Perez Perado trumpet on Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White. The butter started melting on Mom’s bread again.

      A small notion of tranquility turned his thoughts home as he sat looking down at the old place from atop Hay Field Hill. Only a few scattered stone lay where the foundation once held Mom’s world together.

      The barn and smoke house where he’d spent many a happy time stood intact, but their old metal roofs bled rusty color down each corner where the downspouts had fallen off. Weeds had long ago taken over the yard and garden. However, to his amazement, behind the smoke house he saw it. The first and only car he ever loved. The little Chevy sat up on concrete blocks rusted over, but still full of happy memories.

      As much as he had dreamed of coming home again, he knew now that he couldn’t. Even if it were possible, he wasn’t sure he still wanted it.  

     Ivan took out his ‘readers’ and looked at the family photo taken by Wanda, of his Mom, Dad, Mel and himself in uniform standing in front of the two story home. He turned it over, and as he read again the note his dad had scribbled, he could almost hear his daddy’s voice saying, “Home is va’re Mum is. I vaunt to go home now.”

      Ivan now sat alone in the same spot whispering “I want to go home, too. Home to my wife, children and grandchildren. He fought against tears, but they came anyway and it was good. Afterward, everything found its rightful place in his heart and he said good bye to his Wanda Girl who was hopefully in a safer place by now. And his Mom, who has most of her precious family with her again. Dad who couldn’t live without “Mum” is again content. And Mel, who never got a break in this world, may have gotten one by leaving it so early. As for himself, he wondered if he could ever again be happy.

      He remembered hearing a stand-up comedian one night rant that “Happiness is not for everybody,” but then a little smile curled one corner of Ivan’s mouth as he recalled a line at the end of a book he’d read recently by an obscure author, Hershel Paul, who wrote …

     Happiness is never a constant. It comes in little sugar cookies of time. Some sweet, some soft and chewy, others have a strange and wonderful flavor that you can’t get enough of. So lets get up and make some more.

Watch for more from Nick Nixon on this site. He's written three more stories that we'll be posting in the next few days. Nick will also be featured on our Meet the Authors page in the near future. I've seen a picture already of where he writes. His office is in a neat old barn near Wentzville, Missouri. Someone long ago must have put a spell on the old place, because Nick's writing is surely inspired by some sort of super natural hand.

Here's a picture of Nick at a recent Saturday Writers meeting in St. Peters, MO. Nick joined the group about a year ago and has been entertaining them with his guitar playing and story-telling ever since. For more information about Saturday Writers go to:

 http://www.saturdaywriters.org