“What was your name again?”
I blinked at Gordon’s question, yanked forward three years and a few heartbreaks, away from the golden glow and into the bright January sunshine. The way he looked at me, I could see the struggle inside, like our old connection and his conscience were arm wrestling to see who’d win out.
“Nora,” I said without a single stammer or stutter. “PFC Nora Hightower.” And I stared right back, trying to twist that arm down.
The half second he took to turn back to Mr. Morrissey felt like enough time for me to get my first gray hair. “I don’t have any friends in the military, sir. And I’ve never met a Nora Hightower.”
I gave him a generic smile, but inside, I was ticking off his statements. Not a one of them a lie, if not fully true either.
How did he do that?
And why did he feel he had to?
The rangers and COs were still staring at me, and I realized that was my cue. I gave a slight bow in their direction. “Thank you for your gracious welcome. I look forward to speaking with each of you.”
A young man who somehow managed to keep up his tanned good looks even in the dead of winter shot his hand into the air.
“Yes, Schumacher, what is it?” Morrissey said it wearily.
Instead of answering, the young man turned to me, indicating my barracks bag, abandoned outside of the ranger station. “Do you need help hauling your luggage, ma’am? Because I’m the strongest one at this camp, no question about that.” A bearded fellow behind him snorted in disapproval.
It seemed, in uniform or out, there was always a flirt among the bunch. “What’s your name?”
He beamed. “Shorty Schumacher, ma’am, from Wooster, Ohio.”
Which made me laugh, given that the man in question was head-and-shoulders taller than me, and they’d had to let out the hem of my uniform skirt to get the right size. “Well, Shorty, as for your offer, I’ve been in the WAC for over two years now. And if there’s one thing that’s taught me, it’s to never accept help from the most eager male volunteer.” I strutted down the three stairs to the level of the men and made a show of scanning the crowd, then pointed straight at Gordon. “You!”
The gaping-trout look made a reprise. “Me?”
“Yes. Would you help carry my things? It looks like you’re already”—I sniffed deliberately, as if I’d caught a whiff of him on the breeze—“fragrant from hard work. So this won’t change much.”
Shorty hooted and swatted Gordon on the back. He blushed, poor thing. I’d forgotten how easily he did that. “Where to?”
“The Morrisseys have been kind enough to let me stay with them for the rest of my visit.”
Which wasn’t the full story, of course. Earl Morrissey had been careful to introduce me to his daughter and secretary, Sarah Ruth, a petite, trouser-wearing woman whose handshake felt like a test of character. I’d returned it with an equally firm grip.
When she heard I’d planned to stay at the motel in town and have a ranger drive me in each day, she wouldn’t hear of it. “It’s not safe, a woman alone in a dump like that. Besides, Dad, you know I’ll be gone this next week. She can have my room.”
She hadn’t said where she’d be off to, and I hadn’t felt like pressing, since I was busy weighing the pros and cons of staying with the Morrisseys. I’d be closer to the men, able to get answers more quickly. But keeping up my charade directly under the district ranger’s nose could get complicated.
Thankfully, I enjoyed complications.
Once we were away from the rest of the lot, all dismissed to supper, I took a longer look at Gordon. He’d filled out since the last time we’d met—hefted my bulging canvas barracks bag like it was a petite valise—but what caught me most was the fact that he refused to meet my eyes.
Embarrassed to see me, Gordon?
Or embarrassed by me?
“Well, well, well.” I spoke after checking over my shoulder to make sure we didn’t have any eavesdroppers lurking beside the national forest buildings on either side of the path. “Sure are a long way from New York, aren’t you, Gordon?”
He had been the first city boy to be sweet on me. Unlike the farmers’ sons with their dirty fingernails and stumbling speech, Gordon wore a faded but store-bought suit, dreamed of travel, even quoted philosophers and poets. Too often, in my opinion, but still, there was something polished about Gordon Hooper that couldn’t help catching a girl’s eye.
Now, wearing muddy boots and a sweat-stained shirt under a tattered coat, he could be any old corn-fed day laborer. How far the mighty have fallen.
His head flicked in my general direction, if only for a moment. “What are you doing here, Dorie?”
I planted my hands on my hips. “What do you mean? You practically summoned me.”
His mouth worked to form words, and only puffs of white came out in the cold air. I’d never seen debate champion Gordon Hooper at such a loss. Then again, I’d only really seen him for five days at Thanksgiving three years earlier, palling around with Jack. Could I really be surprised that I’d made him into a more impressive figure than he really was?
“Dorie, I didn’t . . . You weren’t supposed to . . .” He seemed to give up on both of those options and landed on something more straightforward. “Are you actually in the Women’s Army Corps?”
Hadn’t I thought from time to time that Gordon Hooper would have a conniption if he knew I’d spent the war in uniform? This was even better than I’d planned.
“I’ve been a WAC for over two years now,” I said with dignity, “which you’d know if you weren’t hiding away in some forest, waiting for the war to end.”
He didn’t take the bait. “Did you . . . are you fighting, then?”
I was tempted to make up some nonsense about my prowess with a machine gun but decided against it. “Our weapons are switchboards, air-traffic control headsets, and, in my case, a ratchet and the occasional blowtorch, but I’m as military as any South Pacific–bound GI, thank you very much. Now if you’d listen—”
“But you’re not really here to conduct a report for the army, are you?”
I took a deep breath. “Gordon, I know you’re very smart, and it’s difficult for you, but will you shut up for just one second and let me talk?”
Which he did, worry still etched in lines across his face, making him look older than his—what was it?—twenty-five years.
I took advantage of the silence to drop my next line, one that had echoed in my mind all throughout the bone-rattling train ride here: “What if what happened to Jack wasn’t an accident?”
He must have expected it, because he only paused a moment before countering, “Anything can go wrong with fires, Dorie. It’s awful, but it happens.”
The soothing way he talked, the outright pity in his eyes, made me place my hands firmly on my hips and scowl. “You’re the one who said you were worried because no one would answer your questions. And now you’re backing down?”
“Listen, Dorie, I’ve been thinking about this for days.” He set the barracks bag down on the well-worn dirt path, jamming his hands into his pocket. “Say Jack snooped into something he shouldn’t have, or made someone angry, or got into trouble.”
I’d thought about all those scenarios, wondered who on earth would be enemies with Jack.
“Imagine someone . . . attacked him out there in the woods,” Gordon went on, his Adam’s apple bobbing as if that were hard to say aloud. “Then, what, did they start a fire to cover up the evidence? That’s ridiculous.”
I frowned. Was he right? If this were a detective novel, I was stuck in the first-chapter suspicion of foul play, while Gordon had flipped to the accusation at the ending. It was a bit farfetched when you looked at it that way.
Still, as with any story, there was a lot of missing information in between.
“I don’t know what the connection could be, but I’m going to find out. Unlike you, I don’t abandon questions when there is no easy answer.”
I shrugged. “The way I see it, all’s fair in love and war, and we’re dealing with both.”
“You don’t love Jack. If you did, you wouldn’t have abandoned him.”
I took the breath that had caught at the accusation and pushed it out into a sharp reply. “Who did the abandoning, Gordon? Was it me . . . or the two of you? Abandoning your families and your duty to your country?”
There. His jaw tightened, like he was holding something back. I’d finally scraped something under the calluses of his rational philosopher self, and he didn’t have an answer. “Now, are you going to help me or not?”
Confusion replaced anger in the space of a second. “Help you?”
“That’s what I said.” It wasn’t how I’d meant to make my request, but there was no going back now. “I’m an outsider asking questions, trying to get some idea of what happened, but you know these men. Surely if someone suspected anything was afoot, they’d tell you.”
“What if nothing is—” he grimaced as if it pained him to say the word—“afoot?”
I’d wondered that myself on the trip from Seattle, so I told him the only answer that satisfied me. “Then at least we’ll know.” My voice dropped lower. “I read that radio scene you sent, where ‘Mr. Jackson’ said he’d do anything to find out what happened to his sister. Well . . . maybe it’s my turn.”
It was like I was looking at the old Gordon, the one from my memories, flushed with firelight reflecting from the hearth, ready to listen to all of my ideas and dreams.
And so I aimed with the only line I was sure would reach the man I hoped he still was, deep down. Not the one who had made excuses about ethics to the draft board. The one who was a decent person and my brother’s best friend. “Please, Gordon. For Jack.”
Errol Flynn as Robin Hood couldn’t have struck a blow so true.
Gordon studied me in the way that had made me blush back in the old days. Now it only made me impatient. “Would I have to lie?”
I couldn’t help letting out a frustrated breath. “The whole point of this is to find out the truth.” Couldn’t he see that?
“But would I have to lie?” he repeated.
“Maybe not. You could just ask questions on my behalf.”
“I’ll think about it,” he said finally, after a pause long enough that, if you asked me, he could have thought about it then and saved us the trouble. With a grunt, he hefted up my barracks bag and started down the path again.
At least it wasn’t an outright no this time. “Trust me, Gordon. It’s the right thing to do.”
“Trust Nora Hightower?” The way he stressed the false name, with the slightest smirk, made me itch to fire off a comeback. But my quiver of wit was empty.
That could mean only one thing. Gordon Hooper’s conscience was my mortal enemy. Again.
CHAPTER 12
Gordon Hooper
January 19, 1945
If he’d just gone home after dinner instead of hanging around, we wouldn’t have had to deal with him at all. Could have lit our bonfire and gone about our business, no one bothered.
But no, there Jimmy Morrissey stood, only a dozen yards away, leaning against a fence and smoking—or holding a cigarette between his fingers anyway. I’d seen him turn as green as bread-mold once when he’d actually taken a long drag on it.
Seated on the fallen logs that surrounded the rusty bonfire barrel, we watched the pinprick marking his mouth glow red in the semi-darkness just beyond our ring of fire and warmth.
“Well, anyone gonna invite him?” Charlie said, putting into words what we were all thinking.
“Like Jack always used to” was the unspoken rest of the sentence, and also the reason everyone, from Third John balling up newspaper to the quiet Bontrager brothers to Thomas with his still-swollen nose, looked at me.
“Blessed are the peacemakers.”
I’d failed at that once already today. Maybe I could make up for it now.
“I will,” I forced myself to say, rising to a stand. Charlie gave me an encouraging smile, but my feet still felt heavy as I dragged myself over to the fence.
Maybe with Roger gone and after what had happened to Jack . . . maybe this time . . .
Jimmy looked up as he heard my footsteps crunching toward him on the rocky path, and the glow of the cigarette travelled toward his mouth for a quick puff, as if to prove he really was smoking. “What are you doing here?”
An excellent question.
“We’ve got popcorn,” I blurted.
Good opening, Gordon. It was like I was asking a girl to the high school dance. Which, come to think of it, I never had. Maybe then I’d have more practice at awkward situations.
“If you’d like to join us, I mean,” I added. “For the bonfire.”
“You don’t really want me there.” But even as he said the words, the way he glanced over at the distant glow of the fire told me it wasn’t popcorn he was hungry for.
Connection. One of humankind’s basic needs, the philosophers agreed. The COs had it together. I was no socialite, but I’d never been with a group of people who understood me the way my fellow pacifists did. Did Jimmy have any friends like that, with his brother dead and Roger deployed?
We stood there for a moment, staring into the dark, each waiting for the other to speak next.
I tried my best. “Have you heard anything from Roger yet?”
He shrugged. “Nah. Said he’d write, but you know Rog.”
I didn’t, actually, other than the fact that Roger had a large vocabulary of insults. “Why didn’t you join up with him? You’re eighteen, aren’t you?”
Jimmy’s eyes turned to slits. “Nineteen.”
We were back to one-word answers. This didn’t seem like the right direction. I waited for an explanation, or at least an excuse, but none came. “Think you have a right to know all about my life, huh?”
Under his glare, I felt the same sensation as when I stepped out of the plane: like I was plummeting helplessly, with no way to stop or slow down. “I only wondered—”
“I don’t want to come to your stupid bonfire, all right?” He puffed the cigarette in my face for emphasis, the effect ruined by the fact it made him hack out a smoke-ridden cough.
We were changing subjects so quickly that it almost made me dizzy. “Why not?”
“Because you . . . you think you’re so much better than the rest of us.” He nodded, scowling. “All of you with your fancy diplomas and vocabularies . . . it makes me sick.”
For every one of us who came to our convictions in academic halls, there were three more born-and-raised Mennonite farm boys like Shorty, who’d dropped out of school at age ten to help with harvesting. We COs were the strangest family the US had known—Protestants, Catholics, Jehovah’s Witnesses, atheists. Philosophers and filling station attendants, married men and confirmed bachelors, city boys like me and some who had never seen a building more than three stories tall in their lives.
I tried to think of how to say all of that, but the right words seemed to be just out of reach. “But didn’t your brother go to college?”
He snorted. “Yeah, and look where that got him.”
“I don’t understand what you mean.” What was going on here? From what I knew, everyone in the Morrissey family had loved William, but the way Jimmy was glaring at me . . .
“It’s none of your business. Don’t talk to me about Willie. And leave me alone. I was doing just fine before you got here.” He threw the cigarette on the ground and twisted it into the dirt with his foot.
Sorry, Jack. I tried.
“Hullo there, boys!” a cheerful voice sang out, and Dorie stepped from behind the ranger station, wrapped snugly in a pleated blue coat with a fur collar. Under the pale white of the camp’s only streetlight, a concession that Morrissey hated because it dimmed his beloved stars, she seemed almost to glow. “I was told there was a bonfire around here. Want to point me in the right direct
ion?”
Jimmy mutely jutted out a signpost arm, as if she could miss the only other light source among the dark-windowed national forest complex.
“Super,” she enthused. “And you must be Jimmy Morrissey. You look the spitting image of your sister.”
“Yeah. That’s me.” I recognized the half-stunned look on his face, one Dorie probably received from every male she encountered.
“Your mother sent me over to get to know you fellows before I begin the interviews tomorrow.”
Interrogations, she meant. Did she really think she could disguise her questions about the fire that killed Jack as an innocuous army report?
“So, what do you say?” she asked, smiling widely enough to throw out a beam of heat. “Are you game to join us?”
“Nah,” he said, backing away a step. “Can’t. I’ve got . . . plans.”
“Suit yourself,” Dorie said cheerfully, ignoring the obvious excuse. “But we’ll be here all night if you change your mind.” And, of all things, she grabbed my arm, tucked in snugly beside me.
“Start walking,” she whispered. “He’ll follow eventually.”
Fat chance.
I kept my voice low too. “What are you really doing here?”
“Like I said, I want to get to know the boys. Gosh, Gordon, not everything I say is a lie.”
“Can you blame me for wondering?”
She ignored that jab. “Plus, Sarah Ruth was packing for some trip, and dear Edith was cleaning for my arrival. I didn’t want to be underfoot.”
Maybe she’ll be a good distraction. After all, hadn’t I thought how awkward it would be without Jack to keep the conversation going, draw out the shy fellows, and rattle off one of his stories or riddles?
I wasn’t like that. Give me time to plan what to say and I could make a decent enough showing, but small talk was so . . . small. Anyone could see what the weather was, no one needed to rehash an entire baseball game, and what was the point of asking how people were doing when they’d just say they were fine? But it’s not like you could just sit down at a dinner party and say, “What do you think are the dangers and advantages of labor unions?”
The Lines Between Us Page 11