Prologue
Robert Lambert
I couldn’t deny that when I saw her run after the car with her brother inside, headed off to fight in the war, that I saw a side of Tammy Jones that I had never seen before. A single tear fell from her light brown eyes onto her caramel-colored-skin. I saw such beauty in her as she stood alone on the dirt road, dark curls blowing gently in the spring breeze. Tammy was my neighbor and classmate. We both graduated from high school this year at Madison High. She was mixed black and white, a peace lover, a hippy you could call her. Why you could tell by the way she dressed, she wore a white mini dress that rose right above her knee. It was laced all over, with see-through lace fabric for sleeves and a pink pale bow tied around her waist. Seeing such a joyful spirit so lost and dazzled broke me, but I couldn’t let it show. This girl was a curse in the eyes of my family and they would never allow me with such a thing. They would want me with a white country girl, like Ellie Frank, who lived up the road at her family’s country home.
Love though, was something I was not worried about. The draft, the same draft that had took Tammy’s brother is what had me. I couldn’t imagine fighting, killing, people I did not know. And then seeing it, witnessing it, would change me. I just knew it would, I wouldn’t be able to look at myself the same. The main thing though, was death. I was too young and had so much more to live for. Tammy Jones could be one of those things. She was such a soulful joy. Always smiling and laughing, the type of girl I always pictured marrying. That thought, though, was quickly dismissed when my father stepped out onto our front porch, shooing Tammy away from getting any closer to our property. She looked once more up the dirt road, then slowly turned and walked back her way. If I recalled right, she had glanced up at me just for a second. A glance that had took the breath right from my throat. We both couldn’t have known the events that would follow this day, that would shake up our world and bring us together for the first time.
