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Show Dust One By AN EL C. JOHNS McCh.re Newspnper Syndicate. WNU Features. THE strawberries were shipped m early They were flat, heart-shaped. heart-shaped. Pmldsh red. The cen, wasn't01" the StCm if Pa" wasn t careful. Pattie shouldn't have bought I T But she C0Wn't resist. She had always brought home the first on the market since that time just after her marriage when Philip came home, smelling of gasoline. There was always hard grease on his hands and sometimes on his pu-nosed pu-nosed face. He stopped at the table as always, for a preview of what was cooking and said, "Shortcake! Spring must be here. Spring, when a young man's fancy seriously turns to thoughts of love if he's married to a gorgeous dame like one Patricia." Pa-tricia." But that had been four years ago. And strawberries always reminded ' her of the days Philip went away in the mornings and came back to her m the evenings. Never too tired to dance. Pattie loved the way they moved in unison. Philip holding her a little lit-tle tight, saying, "You're like the music, Baby. You make me know that, if I never have anything more, I've got everything right now. For you I clean carburetors, patch flats. Pump gas. Pour oil. There's a ritzy dame comes into the station about twice a week. She's a iookerl But, Baby, you outlook her even in curlers and cold cream." Did Philip still feel like that? That she outlooked the lookers who danced with him at the USO clubs on his week-end leaves? The lookers look-ers who worked in canteens, doing their bit for the boys? The lookers who flirted? He was sent with his crew to England Eng-land and no doubt met new people with strange ways. Pattie was glad she had been a camp wife. That she had followed her Philip around, put up in a jail for two weeks In Georgia because there were no rooms available. Even slept in the back seat of the car at a filling station when she arrived ar-rived in a town too late to find quarters. quar-ters. She was glad that she had been with him the night he was shipped. The sergeant had let her stay. She and four other wives who had little to say that they couldn't tell with the pressure of their cold fingers. Philip had looked into her face, upturned in the moonlight, until the tears stood at her lashes and her throat hurt. "You're beautiful, Baby. Even now. I hate going before he gets here but I can't be the chooser in this game. Be sure to send me a cable. It'll be tough over there, waiting. wait-ing. I know it'll be tougher here." It was horrible back in their house alone. She tried having the wife of one of Philip's pals live with her. But the girl was morbid. She doted on horrors, especially those of the war. Philip had said, "Don't sit around fretting about me. Worry is bad. I'll take care of myself. If I see a blockbuster coming at me I'll run like the deuce. I want to come home and find you just the same." Well, she wasn't the same. She'd been in the maternity ward without him to stand by. She'd come through the measles and a hand that little Philip burned when he pulled the percolator off the stove. The neighbors neigh-bors helped her when she had a bad appendix that the doctor finally removed. re-moved. Philip said, "Don't ever forget me. Baby. I won't forget you. The going will never be so rough that that can happen. I'll think of you every day. All day. And dream of you at night. Everything I do will be for you and the little one." But all of that had been so long ago. She couldn't bring Philip back as she used to. At first she could make him sit in his favorite chair. Could hear his voice above the radio ra-dio talking without words. Just the rumble of his deep voice. But she couldn't hear his voice any more. She had forgotten how he looked sitting sit-ting behind the evening paper. Suddenly her hands trembled. She crushed a luscious berry between her fingers. She was frightened. If she couldn't recall here, where Philip had been, how could he remember her, where she had never been? How could he keep In mind their simple pleasures when everyone worked to entertain him and thousands thou-sands like him? Time blots out everything. She had tried to keep her hold on Philip. She had sent him pictures of the baby every month. Anniversary Anniver-sary pictures, she called them. And snapshots of herself too. Being careful care-ful to look her best; careful to smile with the wrinkles in her nose about which Philip had teased her. Little Philip came in from outdoors. out-doors. His pug nose was red with the cold of early spring. His hands were smeared with a red sucker and there was a ring around his rosy mouth where he had licked the) stickiness. His cap was gone and his reddish hair was every which wsy "Tan I have one, Muzzer? Dust one?" the little boy pleaded, standing stand-ing on tiptoe to see better. Pattie looked down. She had seen that face before. But it was older. She gave him the biggest berry she could find. "And one for Daddy," Dad-dy," she whispered. |