“But why?”
He took a step closer, until I could smell cigar smoke lingering in the wool of his uniform. “I don’t know what you’ve figured out—or think you have—but let me make this clear. I’m the district ranger. This is my land. And I’m responsible for what happens on it. If anyone’s going to take a fall for all of this, it’s going to be me.”
“Yes, sir,” I said, too surprised to say anything else. And when he let go of my shoulder, eyes solemn, I was sure. Whatever wild theories Dorie had spun, whatever the details of what was going on, Morrissey felt that what he knew could put him in danger—and he wanted to protect us. Protect me.
Because it was too late to protect Jack.
As far as I knew, Jimmy wasn’t aware that he was supposed to be my bodyguard, an agent of his father to make sure I did my duty and went straight to the lookout after breakfast. His pack bulged with supplies, a human substitute for the mule trains they used to bring provisions to supply smokejumpers in remote locations for the fires that spanned days or weeks.
I’d gotten the lighter load, just a sack of pancake mix, a few bottles of milk packed in a box filled with sawdust, and my belongings—with the documents Dorie had stolen buried inside. Better to keep them safe and close, I’d decided. And at least at the lookout, I’d have plenty of privacy to read them all and understand what had really happened.
The cans Jimmy carried clunked softly together, a low percussion under the sounds of the forest. Soon, the ground began to incline, leading up to the mountain trail, where snow dusted the path in patches as the air cooled. In warmer months, these trails would be a haven for hikers, mushroom seekers, and bird watchers, but even now, the towering pines and exposed rock jutting into the horizon formed a vista worthy of Charlie’s camera. It would be even more striking if the snowstorm the radio weatherman had predicted for the next few days blanketed this part of Oregon.
I’ll miss this place if I go home when the war is over. True, unbroken quiet was hard to find in the city. There was a reason Thoreau—himself a pacifist—called the great outdoors “the tonic of wildness” in Walden, saying our souls needed more exposure to “untamed” and “unfathomable” nature.
Jimmy and I exchanged a few words along the way, mostly warnings of slick spots on the path where ice had formed in the shade. But it wasn’t until we stopped for a water break that Jimmy looked over at me. “So,” he said, tilting the canteen back into his mouth, “you sweet on Miss Hightower?”
I almost said, “Who?” before I remembered Dorie’s false name.
What was the honest answer to that? Something like, “Once, a long time ago”?
For a moment, I let myself remember, picturing the Dorie I’d known three years before, cheerfully greeting guests, her dark hair in a stylish wave, smelling like pumpkin pie and evergreens and home. I’d been dazzled. Would have declared myself willing to climb the highest mountain for her. If I’d been dumb enough to write poetry, it would have rivaled the sappiest of sonnets scrawled in the lookout’s logbook.
But I wasn’t willing to change my beliefs for her. We were so different, the two of us. It made a fellow wonder. How many other compromises would I have had to make to court Dorie Armitage?
“That’s what I thought,” Jimmy grumbled, and I realized I hadn’t answered him.
“No,” I said quickly, “it’s not like that. We might have been friends. If things were different.”
Something tugged at me, saying those words out loud. It wasn’t the heartbreak I’d felt when I got Dorie’s last letter. But it was a sad thought, all the same, to have lost a friendship before it ever began.
Jimmy grunted, just like his father. “That’s not what it looked like.” Then he immediately clamped his mouth shut, chawing a gum wad.
Sure, he could have noticed the fact that we’d talked to each other during chores a few times. But I didn’t think it was only that.
“You were the one we saw in the woods.” I’d decided to state it instead of ask it, and his sheepish shrug confirmed my theory. “Why were you following us?”
“Dad told me to.”
So it wasn’t just the curiosity of a schoolboy crush. “Why?”
Jimmy muttered something, kicking at a rock until it skittered off the edge and into a ravine.
“What’s that?” I prompted.
He straightened enough to look at me. “He wanted me to keep my eye on her because he doesn’t like the army interfering. Says we can’t trust them.”
I chuckled. That was all? “Well, we agree about that at least.”
He brightened, as if he’d never thought of it that way before. “Say, that’s right.”
I thought back to all the times he’d stood by when his friend had made fun of us for not lining right up to enlist. “Does Roger know what your family thinks about the army?”
Jimmy shook his head. “You kidding? I could never tell him.”
I could understand. It wasn’t so long since I’d been his age. Fatherless, awkward, wearing pants a few inches too short because Mother was gone and my uncle refused to buy new ones. Just wanting a friend. I hadn’t found one, not in high school. Not until Jack.
Of course. That’s why Jack hadn’t told me. Just like Jimmy, Jack—the fearless one, who could give a war whoop as he fell through the air to a raging fire below—had been afraid of what I would think. Maybe even afraid I would be angry at him. So he sought out the recruitment brochure in secret.
And by now, I was fairly sure I’d guessed how he’d gotten it.
“That’s why I didn’t join up, even when I got old enough. Most people around here, they were raring for war from the start,” Jimmy went on, passing the canteen my way. “They don’t know what it’s like to—”
He shrugged, and I remembered his brother again, the way Jimmy had disappeared for days after they got word of his death.
They don’t understand what it’s like to lose someone to it.
Well, now I did too. Because if my instinct was right, and that bomb had somehow been launched from Japan, Jack had died in the line of fire just like any of the overseas troops running into battle.
I took a swig out of the canteen before passing it back. “Looks like you’re more one of us than you thought.”
And instead of getting mad, Jimmy’s shoulders relaxed a bit. “Yeah. Yeah, I guess I am.” He put the canteen in his pack. “Anyway, if you ask me, better to stay away from that Hightower woman. She’s trouble.”
I couldn’t quite bring myself to agree with him. Sure, Dorie was reckless, maybe even irresponsible. But she had a good heart underneath it all. “Thanks for the tip.”
He grunted. “Just had to be sure, y’know? I’ve seen the way you smile at my sister. And we Morrisseys look after one another.”
There it was, that familiar heat trickling up my neck and into my face. “Um . . . that’s a good thing for a family to do.” I tried to think of what Dorie might say, how she’d fill up the empty space. “So . . . read anything good recently?”
His face lit up. “Well, I went to the dime store on Saturday, and they had the new Detective Comics in. . . .”
By the time we reached the lookout, out of breath from the climb, I’d almost managed to forget the heaviness of my pack and my heart in a lively discussion of art, heroism, and how characters like Super-American and U.S. Jones were blatant rip-offs of Captain America.
Small talk. Who knew?
The fire tower stood in solidarity with the tallest pines beside it: three stories tall, with crisscrossed flights of stairs built within the stilted frame holding the platform aloft. It was flanked by a telephone pole strung with wire to its left, and a lean-to filled with firewood to its right.
At the top, Jimmy threw open the door, only to be greeted by a startled Sarah Ruth, wearing layers of bulky sweaters instead of the Forest Service uniform, her auburn hair plaited, frazzled, and fuzzed like a discarded bird’s nest.
And, more important, she had an antique-looking pisto
l aimed right at us.
I was instantly grateful to be behind a human shield of Morrissey blood.
“It’s just us,” Jimmy exclaimed. “Geez, Ruthie, will you put that thing down?”
“I’ve got eyes.” Sarah Ruth lowered the pistol—but with a reluctant expression on her face. “Isn’t being a lookout supposed to be a solitary job? It’s been like Grand Central Station around here, the amount of company I’ve had this week. Can you blame me for being jumpy?”
“What’s wrong, Sarah Ruth?” Jimmy taunted. “Did’ya think we were that old boyfriend of yours?”
I saw Sarah Ruth’s eyes narrow. “Jimmy, I wouldn’t—”
“If you were,” Sarah Ruth interrupted, her voice low and dangerous, “I’d shove you down the stairs and hope you broke both of your legs.”
With that, she disappeared back into the lookout, leaving the door open, presumably an invitation for us to enter.
“A real romantic, my sister.” Jimmy grinned at me, tossing his pack down beside the door.
“There was nothing romantic about Roy Winters.” She spat out the name like it left a bad taste in her mouth.
I, valuing my life more than Jimmy did his, declined to comment, and instead busied myself putting the supplies away in the cabinet by the stove, where a teakettle was set to boil. The question I’d asked myself earlier this morning burned in my mind.
You could just let it go. Never ask her, never know, not for sure.
It was the coward’s way out, I knew. But ever since the news of Jack’s death, it felt harder to be brave.
Sarah Ruth stepped over the pack to get to the stove, shoving another log inside to counteract the cold air we’d let in. “Did you come all this way just to restock my cupboard?”
Jimmy frowned. “Didn’t Dad call to tell you?”
“Would I be asking if he had?”
That was odd. Then again, Morrissey had a lot on his mind lately.
Jimmy shrugged. “He wants you back early. Don’t know why. But he was sure set on it. Gordon’s taking your place.”
“Knowing Dad, he’s got his reasons.” Sarah Ruth sat down on the cot, pulling a bag of clothes from underneath it and tossing in a hairbrush and a bar of soap. No protest, no further questions. Loyal to her father, no matter what, just like all the Morrisseys were to one another. “Well, Gordon, try not to go mad from boredom up here.”
Jimmy leaned against the wall behind us, so I had a direct line of sight to Sarah Ruth.
This is it.
Time to test my theory, one I’d developed back at the bunkhouse. “Don’t worry. I’ve got some interesting reading material to pass the time.” I cleared my throat to make sure she looked up at what I’d tugged out of my pocket: the army recruitment brochure.
I knew the look on her face, because I’d seen it in the mirror. Not just surprise. Recognition. Guilt.
She knew I had found her out.
In the next instant, she’d recovered, standing and waving at the metal milk pail by the door. “Hey, Jimmy, take down that water bucket to the spring and fill it up, would you? There’s only an inch left.”
I glanced up from my can stacking to see Jimmy scowl in true younger-brother form. “What am I, your maid?”
She snatched up a tattered dishcloth. “Either that or wash dishes. Your choice. Gordon’s already making himself useful, see?”
Muttering something about tyranny, Jimmy let the door bang behind him as he dragged the bucket away, leaving the two of us alone.
Someone had to say it. So I did, standing, watching her as she wrung the dishrag in her hands, the only sign she wasn’t completely at ease.
“You’re the one who gave Jack the recruitment brochure.”
The hands on the dishrag stilled. “I did.”
Even though I’d been fairly sure of my guess, hearing her speak the words triggered a familiar sensation inside me, hot like a flame. I thought I’d beaten it, that I’d learned my lesson after the fistfight with Thomas, but there it was again, my old enemy, inherited from my father. And like him, it wouldn’t truly leave me till the day I died.
“You should have left him to his own conscience.” I slapped the brochure down on the table.
“He asked if he could have it.” Calmly. Stating the facts, not making excuses. “Saw it on my desk one day—it was Willie’s—and said he had some things to think about.”
The note about Ecclesiastes 3 written in the brochure had been what tipped me off, after I’d looked the reference up back at the bunkhouse. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven . . . a time to kill, and a time to heal . . . a time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
Just like what Sarah Ruth had said to me back in the empty church sanctuary: “There’s a season to everything. Maybe you’re meant to come back to the scorched earth and help something grow again.”
“And,” Sarah Ruth added, “he made me promise not to tell anyone, especially you.”
Was it true?
Probably. It sounded like Jack, all right.
“Still, you should have . . . kept out of it,” I repeated, trying—failing—to keep my voice from rising. “He was doing the right thing, and you . . . you tried to . . .”
I had to get away. Had to get out of here before I said something, did something, I regretted. But when I stumbled toward the door, there she was, blocking my path, like a mama bear staring down a hunter.
“Stop. Just . . . stop it, Gordon.” And despite her size, I couldn’t see how anyone could describe Sarah Ruth as delicate, seeing her there, hands on her hips and fire in her eyes. “You can’t run away from this, and you sure can’t yell your way out. Though I can take it if you want to try.”
But I didn’t want to. That’s why I needed to run, like my father had always done. He either lashed out or stayed away from us, sometimes all night. Sure, it made Mother frantic with worry, but I’d always thought it was better than the alternative.
Looking at Sarah Ruth now, standing between me and escape, I wondered if I’d been wrong. “It was your fault he changed his mind.”
“No, it wasn’t. I lent some literature to your best friend, then kept my word not to blab about it. That’s all, and you know it.”
She’s right, something whispered through the anger, and I took a deep breath. “Then why does it feel so . . . wrong? Why am I so angry?”
“Because Jack isn’t here to be angry at.”
Yes.
That was it.
And with that, the anger faded, leaving behind that dull, aching sadness again. I backed away from the door, nearly tripping over the ladderback chair, and sat in it, feeling heavy.
She tiptoed over on the groaning floorboards, but her grip on my shoulder was anything but timid. It was strong, warm, like she was trying to hold me together. “He was a good man, Gordon. This”—she pointed to the offending trifold in all its red, white, and blue glory—“doesn’t change that.”
“I know. But he should have trusted me enough to tell me.”
“Sure. But there’s a special kind of fear when you have a secret. It weighs on you. Keeps you separate from others, even ones who you know care.” She let go of my shoulder and tucked her arms close to her body, a shiver passing through her.
There it was again, the certainty in her voice, even though she didn’t come from a broken family, hadn’t known what it was like to be called a coward at every turn. “What could you possibly know about that?”
Gordon, you idiot. That was the kind of personal question no one answered, but especially not Sarah Ruth Morrissey.
But instead of waving her pistol around and shoving me out the door, Sarah Ruth nodded. She crossed over to the stove, unpinning stiff wool socks from a makeshift clothesline we’d rigged up there, her voice taking on the lilting tone of a campfire tale-teller. “I was just seventeen the summer the CCC men came. Dad had finally let me apply as a lookout after I argued with him for s
ix months. He made sure I was assigned to the Cutter Basin tower so I couldn’t hike back home if I got lonely or scared.”
I nodded. That sounded like the Morrissey I knew, believing in his daughter but also unwilling to coddle her. I pictured Sarah Ruth then, all braids and sharp elbows and hand-me-down clothes from her older brother, climbing the steps to the tower with determination.
She drew in a breath, and I added quickly, “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. I-I don’t know why I asked.”
But she looked back at me, and there was something soft under the hardness I was used to seeing. “I want someone to know.”
I thought of her whispering to the cross, worn smooth from years of silent prayers. “I’m willing to listen.”
She nodded, then took the steaming kettle off the stove and poured it into the tiny sink basin, likely using the dishes as an excuse to keep her back to me. “Sometimes the lookouts would call each other late at night, bored and lonely. Roy Winters happened to be on the line one time, and when we talked . . . it felt like we were inches apart instead of miles.”
She attacked a metal pot, scrubbing it so hard I worried she’d grind a hole inside. “I’d met him before, of course. And I took to his words like a bear to a shank of venison, never realizing they were bait in a trap.”
I remembered the love poems in the early pages of the logbook. Had Roy written those? And if so, had he meant them?
“Back at the camp, we met together in secret a few times. Of course, I knew Dad would make Roy the next stuffed trophy on the ranger station wall if he knew.” She clanged the pot on the table, leaving it dripping. “At the end of the summer, after a month-long drought, we were both on duty again at our different towers. He dared me to abandon my post and visit him here.”
I could see where this was going. “And you did.”
“Twice. It took me six hours to hike from my lookout to this one. And the second time, I stayed . . . all night.” She paused, fist tight around the dishrag, then started in again. “By the time I made it back to Cutter Basin in the morning, a fire fifty miles to the north, directly in my line of sight, had blazed out of control, enough that another lookout had called it in.”
The Lines Between Us Page 23