Willamenia Samantha Lark, Willa Girl to most, was born on a dusty June morning in the same house, in the same bed as her father, almost seventeen years before.
Not much changes in Nickel, Oklahoma. The Indians stay on the rez side of town, the isolated whites live around a small country club to the north and the rest, the people, as her Grandmama, would say, lived were folks should. In town, that is, within walking distance of the First Antioch Baptist Church.
Willa knew her father through the house, his high school yearbooks remained neatly stacked on his dresser. She felt his arms around her when she sank into the tree swing he had rigged for her mother before there ever was a Willa.
Beneath the branches of the ancient pecan tree, bare toes dragging in the dirt, she’d talk to him, she called it whispering prayer.
The pecan tree shaded the whole white frame house and as Grandmama said, thank the man that planted that tree Willa Girl, as I thank him every August morning.
Willa knew her father from the picture every poor draftee proudly sent home. William Samuel Lark, Private First Class, U.S. Army. His chin lifted, his mahogany complexion flawless, his hazel eyes fixed on the middle horizon.
He was killed on his second patrol.
Her Grandmama and Auntie Ray ritually went over their men, their deaths. Willa could read the signs of the talk that was coming by the time she was seven or eight. She’d run out of the house to the swing, her sanctuary.
“Poor boys is always cannon fodder. You know that.” Auntie Ray would say. Grandmama would close her eyes and say, “You’re thinking of our Granddad now.
I surely am.” Said Auntie Ray. He could pass, that man was so light and in those Jim Crow times he should of. But what did he do? He joined the U.S. Army to go to France.
Just because he wanted to go to France.” Finished Grandmama.
“It seems as soon as a Lark shows some sense it flies away.” That’s how Auntie Ray would conclude the ritual. And if she were shelling peas or snipping pole beans her hands would move in cadence with her talk.
Willa was planning her moment. She would stand in front of them in the kitchen take a deep breath and say, “Dear ladies, this Lark has got to fly.”
Grandmama and Auntie Ray had been too much for Willa’s little Mexican mama. She had Willa, early, brought on be the telegram sent by the U.S. Army. As quietly as she had arrived, she left. She was all of seventeen. The same age as Willa come next June.