Doris Elizabeth Smythe (F)

When Doris Elizabeth Smythe moved into her second-floor condo that faces a western reach of the Stono River, no high voltage transmission lines spanned the river from enormous towers on either bank. Now when she stands out on her balcony in the early morning, a cup of coffee balanced on a small flower stand and her first cigarette between her lips, the sunlight often strikes the wires and sets them glowing. The first time Doris saw the reflected light she nearly called 911. But, these days, or at least half the year, she is amused when the wires “fire up” as she likes to say.

A look back inside at the grandfather clock shows the time to be almost eight, and that means Howard will be coming up with the morning paper and another pot of coffee that he will put on her burner. He won’t drink her coffee—too damn weak he tells her. He makes a pot of Community Coffee’s dark roast at double strength, just the way he learned to drink it when he went to LSU before heading off to Vietnam after graduation. Howard doesn’t say much about the war because he knows that Doris lost Toby, her second husband, in that war.

Her first husband, Walter Lucretius Masterson, was one of the last soldiers to be listed as an MIA in Korea. Doris married him when she was 17—he was 25 and her family thought she was nuts. They were married three months before Walter was declared missing. She doesn’t say much about him, and Howard doesn’t ask. Howard lost his wife of 38 years two years ago. She was a smoker and developed lung cancer. The cancer flared quickly and she was gone in less than half a year. "She just kind of slipped away from me" he told Doris the day he moved in downstairs. 

Sometimes Howard is so quiet coming through the front door and getting his coffee that Doris doesn’t know he’s there until the screen door to the patio is pulled open.

“Dammit, Howard, that gives me the creeps.”

“Sorry, Doris.”

“Say something next time, will ya?”

Howard sets the newspaper on the little table between them and puts his VFW cap back on. He drinks a bit of coffee, but doesn’t say much. Doris knows that often he glances over at her when she is taking a deep drag off her cigarette, even holding his gaze, but he never says anything to her about it.

Some mornings, Howard will drink his two big mugs of coffee and read the newspaper and all the while not saying a single word. Usually when he finishes, though, he will think of something to offer.

“Need anything inside, Doris.”

“Nope, not now. Thanks.”

“Headed to the Pig later. Need me to get something for you?”

“Nope, don’t think so.”

“Maybe some beer for the fridge?”

“Nope, I’m good, Howard.”

“Okay, then maybe I’ll see you later.”

“Okay, Howard. Thanks for coming by this morning.”

“No problem.”

She might turn and watch him go through the door and disappear into the dim apartment. Other times she just stares out at the river. He would be gone and she would never know he closed the front door. And the next morning, he would be back nearly to the minute.

Doris and her two sons lived out on Johns Island for nearly ten years, but when they went off to school and got married and had children, she decided the house just didn’t matter anymore, and so she bought the condo right after it was built. She is the only surviving original owner from back at the beginning.

Her son Clarence is a supervisor for the EMS up in Raleigh. Doris gets a call from him every Sunday night between eight and nine in the evening. He always says hello and then "Momma," he says, "You good?"  Chris, on the other hand, lives out in Beaumont, and he hasn’t called in four months, which is about average for him. He ferries crews by chopper out to rigs in the Gulf. Doris doesn’t mind the weekly calls from Clarence, and she doesn’t mind the lapses from Chris.

Doris tries to keep it simple for herself and let folks, even her kin, just be what they are. The first three or four years after Toby died were the hardest, and she stayed angry, angry at the boys, angry at her in-laws, angry at the army, angry at the country, angry at that goddamn war.

But she was never angry at Toby. He loved his sons, and he loved the men under his command. The war report said that he was directing cover fire from an exposed position so that a number of men wounded in a mortar attack could be rescued. A round apparently landed nearly at his feet. He was on an unscheduled visit to a forward firebase to boost morale.

Toby loved her, too.

Doris took one last deep pull, stubbed out her cigarette, and flicked it into the ebb tide.  Ladson 2013