Somehow, in the middle of the wasp’s nest of emotions I was feeling, that comment found an empty spot to sting, and I felt my face reddening to its usual hated blush. Fine, so I’d arrived at the forest a city boy down to the squeaky heels of my wing-tip shoes, but that didn’t mean I was blind. “This is different. I saw a human being, I’m sure of it.”
“I’m not saying you didn’t see anything, Hooper. Just that you might not have seen what you thought you did.”
Could he be right? In the stress of the fire, could I have caught a glimpse of a deer bounding away from the heat and thought it was a person? Just a trick of the light and smoke?
Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Right then, I felt like my two-year-old, government-issued bootlaces: frayed around the edges and one good yank away from snapping.
“I just thought . . . I thought whoever it was might have started the fire.”
Morrissey grunted. “You saw the storm. It was another lightning strike, just like the last one.”
“Then why didn’t Jack report it from the lookout?” Morrissey watched me like a hawk sizing up his prey, but I wasn’t about to back down. “Or did he?”
“Are you accusing me of ignoring a distress report for my own forest?”
I didn’t answer.
“I can’t tell you why Mr. Armitage didn’t call in the fire as soon as he saw it instead of trying to go down there himself. But that’s obviously what happened.” He took in a deep breath, grip tightening on the high-crowned hat he’d yanked off his head.
Well, what do you know? Earl Morrissey was angry. He was better at controlling it than most. But I saw it, just beneath the surface, and it made me strangely glad.
Someone cared. Someone was at least half as upset as I was.
“Is that all?” he asked, placing his hat back on, the professional image back in place with it.
“What kind of tree was it?” I blurted. The blank look didn’t so much as budge, so I added, “The snag that fell on Jack. The one you found him caught under.”
“Hooper, if I tell you that, you’ll run through my forest and chop down every single one of that variety you can get your hands on. And I wouldn’t trust you with an axe right now.”
“I’m a pacifist, remember?”
“Sure. A pacifist with a temper.” He squinted at me like when I studied birds through the binoculars, looking for their distinct markings. “I’ve watched you, Hooper. Don’t think I don’t notice.”
I inventoried my twenty months at the park. Had he seen me excuse myself from dinner to kick the metal garbage can over when Shorty had asked why my father never wrote? Did he notice the way I clenched my fists whenever Jimmy or Roger made one of their stupid comments about conchies? Or see how much effort it took not to lash out when someone at the local church slighted us, when all I wanted was a place to worship on Sundays?
Or maybe he was so used to spotting hidden embers that he could just feel anger seething inside of me, ready to burst into flame.
I took a deep, steadying breath, the way Jack had taught me to. Sometimes it worked better than counting. “Never mind that. I just want to know. What tree?”
The pause stretched out a few seconds before he replied. “Larch. An old, rotting larch.”
Maybe it was the glance to the side, but something about the way he said it reminded me of my mother when she had dodged the truth to keep Nelson, my father, happy. Not mentioning the ice cream we’d bought at the drugstore, or smoothing things over by saying whatever half lie came to mind, or pretending she’d made the sketches in my notebooks since Nelson thought art wasn’t “masculine.”
Or was it just my imagination—again?
I watched Morrissey carefully, trying to keep my voice neutral. “Awful bad luck for Jack to be standing next to the only tree in the forest ready to fall like that.”
He stared back, and I might as well have been standing on train tracks as an engine came careening toward me. “Listen, Hooper, I’ve only ever lost two men to fires in all my thirty years as a ranger. And I don’t mean to lose another one, so you listen to me: Be careful.”
CHAPTER 7
Dorie Armitage
January 12, 1945
The sunny yellow façade and gables of the administration building usually brought a vaguely out-of-place cheer to Fort Lawton, but today I stared up at it grimly.
Don’t be silly. There’s nothing to be worried about. Just a meeting with Captain Petmencky. One that you set up. I tugged on the chain around my neck, and my dog tags jingled, stamped with my name and serial number just the same as the battle-bound boys leaving our harbor in a spanking-new destroyer. You’re a soldier now, Dorie.
With that fortifying thought, I charged up the steps and inside, past the tat-ta-tap of typewriters and warm, feminine voices answering the telephones for the higher-ups behind oak office doors. The administrative WACs—with their hair perfectly in place and not a spot of motor oil on them—nodded at me as I walked by.
Secretly, with all their talk of independence and equality, this was where the army wanted their women. When we’d first arrived at Fort Lawton, my own platoon, trained as drivers and mechanics, was told to fill desk jobs in the port engineers department. I led the girls in a strike, where we simply refused to leave the barracks until we were allowed to do the work we’d been trained for. Lieutenant Ida Stoller, our commanding officer at the time, had defended us stoutly and wheedled a reluctant “trial period” from a grim-faced officer.
When the trial ended, Max and his buddies practically begged the officer to let us stay on, and so the grease monkeys of Fort Lawton became a co-educational lot.
But now Lieutenant Stoller was gone, and there was a new commander in charge. And today, I had to face her.
“I was starting to think you weren’t coming.” Bea, stationed outside the office as Captain Petmencky’s personal assistant and secretary, gave me an encouraging smile. I’d told her about my mission the night before. She stood, rising above the towering stacks of national newspapers that the captain read first thing every morning so she could be informed of world events. “You’ll do fine, Dorie.”
Drat. She could tell I was nervous. “Thanks, Bea. You’re a pal.”
With one last fortifying breath of air from outside Captain Petmencky’s office, I did an about-face toward it and knocked.
I’d been inside once. Before Christmas, Captain Petmencky had presented me with my speech to memorize for the rallies and women’s luncheons several of us had been selected to attend for the spring recruitment tour. An upbeat, “proud-to-serve-the-boys” ditty, as impersonal as the overcoats they’d handed to us our first year, all the same formless size, no matter our heights.
“Come in,” the voice behind the door said.
This was it. Stand tall. Walk with confidence.
I strutted into Petmencky’s office, my leather portfolio tucked under my arm like I was a movie star disembarking the Hollywood Victory Caravan to the cheers of adoring fans.
The captain sat barricaded behind her bulwark of an oak desk. “You asked to see me, PFC Armitage,” she said in a voice that indicated the documents before her were Very Important Business and I was only a distraction.
Gathering my courage, I took a step forward instead of retreating. “Yes, ma’am. It’s about the recruitment tour.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Don’t tell me you’ve misplaced the speech I gave you.”
“Of course not.” I had it all but memorized already, coaxing one of my fellow WACs to drill me on it at least once a week until they were all bored to tears. “I actually have a few ideas for the program.” I took a deep breath and clutched my portfolio. “Literature to hand out, slogans for the banners, that sort of thing.”
She barely looked up, yet her expression looked as though I’d suggested we all eat herring and cabbage for breakfast. “We have a team in the Signal Corps who prepared materials for the tour months ago.”
“Yes, I read them.” Be
fore I could stop myself, I rushed forward. “And, if you don’t mind me saying so, they were dreadfully dull.” A Book of Facts about the WAC, their main pamphlet was called. If they thought it was a clever rhyme . . . it wasn’t.
“I suppose you’d want to turn it into something churned out by Action Comics? Or a script that could star Ingrid Bergman?” The captain’s voice had gone from “dry as toast” to “dry as the Sahara in August.”
“Of course not.” I’d cast Olivia de Havilland in a WAC promotional film before Bergman any day, but that was a point for a different conversation. “But there’s no harm in telling a few stories instead of citing statistics. Maybe adding some sketches.”
This garnered one of the captain’s famous raised eyebrows, arched in such disapproval that an inexperienced cadet might limp away in shame. “Artwork is expensive. We’ve spent enough on posters.”
Just go before you embarrass yourself, part of me said.
But another part of me spoke louder. No. Stay and fight.
I fumbled with the clasp on the satchel. Why did my hands have to shake now? “If you’d just look at my mockups—”
She waved me to stop, her voice all business. “Doris, you’re a garage girl. And a fine one, from what I hear. Aren’t you happy there?”
Since Captain Petmencky treated compliments like they were regulated by the ration board, I should have been flattered, but instead I somehow felt smaller. “Well yes, it’s just that—”
“We all have our skills, and the army is built on the principle that all of us follow that specialization, that chain of command.”
Papers still in hand, I tried again. “But this is one of my skills. If you’d only listen—”
“Miss Armitage,” the captain interrupted, “I’ve heard all about your ‘skills.’ Talking your way out of punishment when you arrive after curfew again is hardly evidence of the sort of persuasive ability we need.”
I thought better of pointing out that it clearly hadn’t worked, since Sergeant Bloom had reported me anyway.
“Neither does a full month of convincing your poor cook that someone smuggled a cat into the barracks by leaving out saucers of cream prove you have the right sort of creativity.”
Well, there had been that time, but it wasn’t entirely my idea. . . .
“And the fight that broke out over you between two men at the WAC summer fete does not give me confidence in your ability to inspire loyalty.”
“I think I understand your point, Captain,” I interrupted, backing toward the door before she could pull out my full two-year record.
I was the flirtatious garage girl. Pretty, perky, and perfect for shoving into the spotlight to deliver a patriotic speech written by someone else.
Once I hotfooted it out of there and calmed down—which I’m sorry to say involved a good deal of uselessly banging wrenches about while pretending to work at the garage—I realized it was my own fault. The cost of getting into minor trouble, wearing too much lipstick, and having a sense of humor was that I couldn’t be trusted with serious work.
You’d have gotten bored with it anyway. Nothing nearly as satisfying as fixing an engine. Just paperwork and propaganda.
“Doris Armitage?” a voice called from the garage door.
I paused, looked up . . . and nearly dropped my toolbox. Oh no.
It was Freddie Wiley from the base post office. I’d gone bowling with him three Friday nights in a row until he proposed to me, of all things. He’d followed me around like a lost puppy even after I turned him down. But that was five months ago.
The quick, panicked thought, What is he doing here? was quickly followed by Can I hide inside one of the staff cars until he goes away?
Clearly, he’d already spotted me, since he was shuffling his way over. “Hello, Doris.”
Time to be gracious but firm and get ready to holler for Max if I needed him. “Freddie, I know you admire me, but I thought we’d decided—”
His face was stony as he extended a paper. “I’m here on post-office duty, Miss Armitage. It’s a telegram for you. They said it was urgent and to bring it to you here.”
“Oh,” I said. The gap left by my relief was filled up with foolishness. “I’m sorry, Freddie, I shouldn’t have—”
“Just take it,” he snapped, which I probably deserved.
I snatched it from him, scanning the names. From Daddy and Mother.
Only a few lines, and even that surprised me, given the cost of sending a telegram—no matter what Roosevelt declared, Daddy was still sure we were in the middle of the Depression and grumbled about tipping the milkman a dime at Christmas.
I gathered myself enough to read the actual words, then wished I hadn’t.
JACK BADLY INJURED. NOW AT ARMY HOSPITAL. CALL WHEN ABLE.
CHAPTER 8
Gordon Hooper
January 14, 1945
Mr. Wainwright, a deacon in a tweed suit a few inches too short for his arms, held the communion tray like it was the Ark of the Covenant and he might get stoned if he passed it the wrong way.
Which meant, as always, that he moved past our row without stopping. No one else ever sat with us on Sundays, not even the Morrisseys, so it was just a dozen COs in the back, where respectable churchgoers could keep their distance.
Not all of us, though. Lloyd, being an atheist, didn’t put any stock in church, and Charlie didn’t think he’d be welcome—he was the only black man in town, as far as I could tell. The CPS, filled with Mennonites and Quakers and other groups with an abolitionist history, believed in integration, and the Forest Service allowed it, but Charlie decided it was “best not to push things” where the rest of the country was concerned.
Jack had talked to the preacher once about why we were passed by for communion after the service. “Denominational differences” was the only reason he cited, though anyone with a pair of eyes and good sense could see the conversation had gone on far longer than that.
To me, it made no difference. Quakers didn’t observe the Lord’s Supper formally, choosing to celebrate Jesus in every meal with fellow believers. As I looked down the pew at the others, though, I could see the disappointment on the faces of some of my friends when “This do in remembrance of me” didn’t include them—again.
Down the well-trodden aisle to the altar at the front, the Reverend Chester W. Jamison intoned, “Let us pray,” after leading his flock in the taking of the blood and body of Christ.
I had half a mind to think that the reason the congregation of the only church in Clayton bowed their heads and closed their eyes during prayer was because they were bracing themselves in case of falling brimstone.
Reverend Jamison’s services were nothing like an assembly of Friends, where we sat in silence until someone had a message to share with the group, laid on their heart by God. No, if God spoke with a still, small voice, it seemed Jamison was trying to distinguish himself by employing a loud, large voice, competing with his tent-revival brethren for volume and vividness.
Today, as ever, the reverend prayed for the troops and the war in great detail, his voice aimed at our row like a weapon. “. . . and make us, your people here on free soil, able to do our duty to resist evil wherever we find it,” he finished over the sounds of the matron coaxing the strains of a familiar closing hymn out of the slightly flat piano.
I glanced over at Thomas, on one side of me, his face hard as flint. Shorty, on the other, flipped through the hymnal until his eyes landed on the lyrics, finger tracing the words to “The Battle Hymn of the Republic.”
We stood respectfully but didn’t trill out the “Glory, glory, hallelujahs” to the hymn along with the rest of the congregation. The way I saw it, you should only sing a song if you meant every word, not pick through it like an army censor and keep the bits you liked. And this one, written during the Civil War, glorified marching into battle.
I thought of my great-great-grandmother Clara, driving a false-bottomed wagon through the night to smuggle slave
s to freedom. “We believe there is a better way,” she would have said in her gentle voice, even after the Confederacy declared their independence. “The Lord’s way. ‘For all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.’”
I caught a glare from an older woman trussed up in a ruffled blue dress, standing across the aisle from us. She whispered something to her husband that I couldn’t hear, but knew the gist all the same. “Look at those boys. So haughty. And they wonder why they don’t belong here.”
But it was all right. I could weather any judgment, knowing that Great-Great-Grandmother Clara would be standing silently by my side.
We endured all five verses before the words of benediction ended the awkwardness. Shorty sprang up, practically shoving the other COs in the row ahead of him to make it to the aisle. “Coming, Gordon?”
“You go on,” I said, waving him ahead. “I’ll catch up.” He didn’t spare a glance back for me, eager to get out into the churchyard, the better to view the young ladies of the congregation before we piled back into the bed of Morrissey’s truck.
As for me, I didn’t care to wait in the cold for Mrs. Edith to finish chatting with her friends. All I wanted was Quaker-meeting silence, somewhere I could hear my own soul.
So I sat, ducked low in the last pew, where I could only faintly hear the murmurs of subdued appreciation the members offered to Reverend Jamison on their way out.
Once the last congregant had passed through the doors, I was finally alone in the quiet. It settled around me like mist on a dewy spring morning. Reassuring, enveloping, complete. Here, I could breathe in my prayers and worries and questions and breathe out calm.
Beside me, the wooden double doors of the church creaked open, and even though I wasn’t doing anything wrong, I froze. Soft footsteps padded down the aisle, and when I looked up, I saw the person belonging to them: Sarah Ruth Morrissey.
Looking over her shoulder once, as if someone were following her, she slipped up to the front of the church, her oxfords hitting a creaky board only once. When she reached the altar, she extended her hand toward the cross there, rubbing it on the side.
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