Treat Us Generously

By June Everett

Jilly was a war baby. Not from the battlefields of World War II Europe and its now shabby cities. She lived in Nova Scotia, on Canada's Atlantic coast, in a small town three thousand miles away from the European front. Yet the war seemed to find her. Every Nova Scotian town is near the ocean, and yet Bridgewater was considered inland, in a way as insulated as eleven-year-old Jilly. The big house in Bridgewater was on a main highway, full of old antiques and plenty of noise, with spoiled uncles running off to Halifax in new cars earned by way of those old-fashioned antiques to where the girls were the prettiest in the province.

Yet the war took them away from Bridgewater, and from Jilly, not to a war-torn front, but the far reach of their own country. Except for Skip. Best friend. Tall, handsome, athletic. Shipped overseas to the swamps, jungles, and heat of Burma.

And then there is the improbable and contrary sport of baseball. For Skip, an old man of thirty, bent over by disease, torture, and humiliation, all would vanish with a crack of a bat on an extraordinary field far away.

Nostalgic and winsome, Treat Us Generously has woven the threads of self-assured young men, a young girl on the inharmonious side of her teens, and baseball, with a war fought not only thousands of miles away, but also at home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Release date: Oct 13, 2017
• ISBN: 9781532631306

June Everett

June Everett has lived in New Orleans, Louisiana, for a number of years. She teaches sociology on the faculty of University of Holy Cross in New Orleans, and has previously served in many roles as an educator, including elementary school teacher, librarian, and principal. Active in several community organizations, she has participated on many of their boards. She is a native of Nova Scotia, Canada, which she still considers one of her favorite places.

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Treat Us Generously

June Everett

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Treat Us Generously

Copyright © 2017 June Everett. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical publications or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Write: Permissions, Wipf and Stock Publishers, 199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3, Eugene, OR 97401.

Resource Publications

An Imprint of Wipf and Stock Publishers

199 W. 8th Ave., Suite 3

Eugene, OR 97401

www.wipfandstock.com

paperback isbn: 978-1-5326-3129-0

hardcover isbn: 978-1-5326-3131-3

ebook isbn: 978-1-5326-3130-6

Manufactured in the U.S.A. October 23, 2017

Table of Contents

Title Page

Part I

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Part II

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Part I

Chapter 1

The radio was scratchy with the sounds of Glenn Miller. Static faded in and out as the rhythmic mellow sounds of his orchestra strained over the airwaves from WBZ Boston. The radio console, stood majestic in its place in the living room; while In the Mood blended with the laughter and talk of my uncles . . . the lusty sounds of my childhood.

Ella and Dorothy were probably there too, but I could not tell. But you could always tell the booming voices of Uncle Irving, and the smooth sound of Cary Grant, that is, my Uncle Lou.

They had long ago chased me upstairs, where I lay in my big bed in the large front bedroom. The railing that encircled the long upstairs hall just outside my bedroom door, made it easy for me to to be a part of almost everything that happened or was said in the living room below.

Yet, though our house always seemed very exuberant, it seemed to me that almost nothing happened in our town, except the War. That seemed everywhere, though it was supposed to be very far away. Everyone talked about it. Everyone lived it. Ration coupons . . . for groceries . . . traded, bought, stolen. No one had a new car; drove something they had for years, or something second-hand or nothing at all. Newspapers talked about some attack or plan. You couldn’t ride the Digby Boat or take a train. Sometimes you would get down to the station, and the trip to Halifax would be a troop train and no one else was allowed on it, even with a ticket. I don’t think people splurged at all. Not on food, or lights, or clothes, or things, or life.

And so on those summery nights, everyone sat on