“There she is!”
Given the limited female population at Flintlock Mountain, the “she” gave me enough of a clue to look up from my work. Four of the COs, with Thomas Martin bringing up the rear, stormed down the path toward me, dressed in dark winter wear that made them stand out against the flurries of snow filling the air. While I couldn’t see any pitchforks or torches, they managed to be as intimidating as a mob of pacifists could be, armed with angry faces and voices.
This can’t be good. I wrung out my rag, shook some feeling into my red fingers, and waved at them. Since they were too close for me to run away, honey instead of vinegar couldn’t hurt. “Hello, boys.”
As Hank, Charlie, one of the Bontrager brothers, and Thomas surrounded me, their words overlapped with one another.
“What did you say in that report of yours?”
“They can’t really do this to us, can they?”
“It’s not fair!”
“They ought to at least give us a choice.”
“Quiet!” When we all turned, it was Thomas who stood, stern and commanding. “She doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”
Thank goodness for Thomas. A sentiment I never thought I’d have. “Will someone—one person, if you don’t mind—please explain what’s going on?”
Hank stepped forward, scowling in accusation. “Mr. Morrissey told us he called the army yesterday, and they’re sending some officers to inspect the camp tomorrow.”
“And what’s more,” the Bontrager brother interjected, ignoring my “one person” request, “they expect we’ll be out of a job soon.”
“Why? Is the war over?” It was a joke, but no one laughed. True, we were in the middle of nowhere, but Edith snapped on the radio in the evenings, and most of the fellows gathered to hear the latest news. We’d all know by now if they’d wrangled a peace treaty out of the Axis powers.
Charlie shook his head somberly. “Sounds like the army might be taking over smokejumping this summer and sending us all to different camps.”
Oh no. I thought of the documents we’d found, the indications that the unusual fires this winter had been set by bombs. Of course the army would want to get involved. It made sense on paper . . . but looking at the crestfallen faces of the young men around me, it was as if the army had canceled Christmas and Easter and everyone’s birthday.
“I’m sorry, boys, but this is the first I’ve heard of it. Why, I haven’t even filed my report yet.” The fact that it was the honest truth must have shown on my face, because they went from being mad to just plain disappointed.
“Come on now,” I said, trying to inject a bit of pep into my voice. “Cheer up. Aren’t you itching to get out of this wilderness?”
“Nah. I’ll miss this ol’ place.” Hank almost sounded surprised, like he’d only just realized it.
“It’s something to be proud of, you know?” Charlie said, and the others nodded, even Thomas. “We’re doing something nobody else can do, keeping the country from going up in flames. It matters.”
“All work matters.” I passed off the stock line with the confidence of a war-bond-drive organizer, but it was clear none of them would step up to buy it.
Charlie shook his head. “Not like this. During the summer, you’d get up in the morning, go out to those forests, and you thought . . . you thought, ‘Maybe today will be the day we save America.’”
And I saw, in Charlie’s sincere face, a reflection of myself three years before, coming home from the theater, where starlet Loretta Young had looked at me from the movie screen under a fringe of dark lashes and proclaimed, “There is a job for each and every one of us, and it is our duty to find that job. Because every task we complete is a pledge that our homes—and our nation—will not be destroyed.”
I’d found my job . . . and Charlie and the others had found theirs.
And now the army was going to take it away from them.
“When they come,” Thomas said, clearly unwilling to speak the words army officers, “would you talk to them on our behalf?”
How to answer that? Because when the army representatives arrived, whatever their agenda, I needed to be out of sight, or they’d smell a rat for sure. “I don’t think I’ll have much influence, Mr. Martin.”
Even though his expression didn’t change, something in his eyes seemed to issue a challenge. “But we’re your neighbors.”
I had said something about loving your neighbors, hadn’t I? Bother those morals. Whenever you try to dispense them on someone else, they get turned back on you. “If there was anything I could do, I . . . well . . .”
“But aren’t you in the army, Miss Hightower?” Charlie pressed.
The earnest way he looked at me made the dog tags tucked underneath my blouse burn against my skin.
“All you ever do is lie.”
Maybe Gordon was right.
Really, though, what was the point anymore? Jack hadn’t been murdered after all. Oh, Morrissey was hiding something, but nothing close to foul play. None of the secrets we’d uncovered could bring my brother back.
“What would it feel like, do you think, to tell the truth for once in your life?”
Well, Gordon. I guess we’re about to find out.
“Yes,” I said, hooking the chain near my collar and pulling it over my head, “I am in the army. But the army didn’t send me here, and my name isn’t Nora Hightower. It’s Doris Armitage.”
The dog tags dangled from my fingers, clinking together in the wind with my real name stamped on them, but Jack’s friends didn’t so much as glance at them to verify my story. They just stared at me.
Confused, for sure. And shocked. Thomas certainly looked like he had a half dozen scriptures in mind about how taking up a false identity was a sin.
Or so I thought. The first words out of his mouth were actually “That’s why you asked all those questions about him.”
I nodded, suddenly tired and empty.
“He told us he had a sister,” Charlie said, darting a glance at me, like he was trying to see Jack’s face in mine. “Just not that she was . . . well . . .”
“A soldier?”
He dipped his head in a sheepish nod, like he’d accidentally insulted me, even though I was as proud to be a WAC as Jack had been to be a conscientious objector.
“You don’t look like him,” the Bontrager brother said. “Except maybe your nose is crooked in the same way.”
“I’m flattered, thank you.” It wasn’t crooked so much as one nostril was slightly larger than the other, but now wasn’t the time to get into that.
“Why?”
I expected Thomas to add more to the question that they were surely all wondering, but he just stood there, arms crossed, waiting.
Why had I come? Because the vague description of what had happened to Jack made me suspicious. Because Gordon’s letter gave me some direction, something I could do instead of sitting at Fort Lawton, waiting for another awful telegram.
Because Gordon had sent me the detective screenplay Jack had written, and I’d read one line from it over and over, until I had it memorized: “I’m not gonna give up on her. Not that easy. Not until I make sure she’s all right. We’ve got to find my sister. Whatever it takes.”
I breathed in the January air and tried to force out something that would make sense. “I thought maybe . . . if I could find out where he was, if I knew what happened to him, maybe we could . . .”
I felt a sudden similarity to the rag draped over my bucket—limp, cold, the life squeezed out of me. Before my knees could buckle, I sank down on the stoop of the laundry building steps, arms wrapped around my knees to guard against the cold, not wanting to meet their eyes.
I can’t cry. Not right now. Not in front of them.
But the sadness finally hit me, cold and cutting, and even the pain of biting my cheek couldn’t keep back a sob.
The four men didn’t sit down beside me or lay a hand on my shoulder. They didn’t speak a word
. But they gathered closer, like a platoon forming ranks before a charge. Alone, there was nothing to say or do, but together, at least they could shield me from the wind.
I tucked my head and focused on breathing in and out. Over the wind, I could hear someone—Charlie?—hum a low, sad song I’d never heard before. Somehow, I felt like I knew the words, or at least what the words meant. There was a bone-deep sadness to them, but here and there, a note of hope.
After a few moments, I started to breathe easier. Surrounded by these men of peace, I felt a bit of peace myself for the first time in a long time. Enough to make me stand, straighten my shoulders, and angle myself toward Morrissey’s office.
They parted for me, but Charlie stood in my path, looking uneasy. “You all right, Miss . . . Armitage?”
It was nice, hearing my real name. “No,” I answered calmly. “And I probably won’t be for a long time.” I’d been honest enough in these past minutes—why not keep it going?
“We miss him too.” His dark eyes were solemn, and the others nodded, even—I was surprised to see—Thomas.
“Thank you.” I dusted the snow and dirt off my coat. “Well, boys, it’s been fun. But I think it’s time I turned myself in. I’m sure you’ve figured out by now that I’m not supposed to be here.”
As I walked away, I couldn’t help but think that Gordon would be proud. If he ever found out. Maybe I’d just disappear from his life forever.
“Miss Armitage!”
I stopped to see Thomas running after me, boots crunching on the path, snowflakes white against his dark beard. Ah, of course. Now it was time for the Bible-thumping judgment. I braced myself. “Yes?”
“I’ve been thinking about what you said. About whether I was too harsh with Jack.”
“And?”
“I . . . I don’t know.”
From the surprised look on his face, it seemed like Thomas had very few occasions when he was anything but fully certain.
I patted him on the shoulder as I passed. “That makes two of us, Thomas.”
As I marched over to the ranger station, I realized I had an answer now for Gordon, if he ever spoke to me again. Telling the truth for once in my life felt like freedom.
I beat my fist on Morrissey’s desk, something Nancy Drew would never dream of doing, and I couldn’t bring myself to care.
When I’d found the ranger station empty—locked, no lights on, no sign of Morrissey anywhere—I’d decided to let myself in and talk to the only person who might be able to tell me what to do next.
But when I picked up the receiver and tried to contact the lookout tower, the line was dead. Here, only flurries filled the air, but I supposed it would be worse in the mountains.
“It’s always the weather,” I muttered, slumping down in the creaky chair, comfortable enough even though the indentations in the cushion were fitted to Morrissey’s larger frame. Detectives were constantly struggling against the elements, although usually it was a dark and stormy night, with flashes of lightning that gave the English country home a dash of the sinister, rather than a plain old Oregon snowfall.
Now what?
According to the calendar on Morrissey’s desk, he was in town in a meeting with the mayor for the next hour. The framed service flag didn’t seem to have been moved, so Morrissey might not know we’d found his secret stash, or that Gordon had it with him up in the fire tower.
I stared at the receiver. No way to get word to Gordon and warn him about the army delegation. To ask him what to do. To tell him I’d decided to turn myself in, or even to say good-bye.
An unexpected sound cut into my worried thoughts: a knock at the door.
“Mr. Morrissey,” a muffled male voice said from outside. “Are you there? I’d like to speak to you.”
I gripped the keys in my hand. The ranger station door was unlocked.
The options flew through my head. Pretend to be Morrissey and order the visitor to go away? No, even at my best, my imitations could only sink to a respectable tenor, not Morrissey’s growly bass. Come up with some reason why I had broken into Morrissey’s office? No, that would look even more suspicious. Climb out the window? No time.
The only option left was to duck under the desk, hold my breath, and hope the CO outside hadn’t heard me.
I heard the creak of the ranger station door. Footsteps sounded on the floor cautiously, like someone unsure of being invited in, and I pictured him eyeing the eerie stuffed birds swooping from their perches on the wall. “Mr. Morrissey? Sir? Are you there?”
Just in time, I bit my lip to keep from breathing in sharply. I recognized that voice.
Of course I’d left the office door ajar and—I cursed myself for not thinking about it—the desk lamp on. The footsteps got louder. Stopped in front of the desk.
I held my breath, because that always worked in books, but no one clicked off the lamp, said, “Strange, I thought for sure I heard something,” and walked right back out the door.
Instead, the tall black boots—I could see the toes of them from my hiding place, covered in slushy mud—remained firmly planted. “I know someone’s under there,” the voice said. “You can come out.”
The floorboard underneath me squeaked, ratting me out, and I gave in. I tried to clamber up with dignity by using Morrissey’s desk chair like a ladder, putting on a brave face for the tall, shadowed figure to see.
“Well, if it isn’t PFC Doris Armitage. How did I know it would be you?”
I straightened my cap and saluted at the crisply uniformed man in front of me, trying to smile. “Hello, Lieutenant Leland. Fancy meeting you here.”
CHAPTER 29
Gordon Hooper
January 26, 1945
I dreamed of fire and woke up to ice. Not literal ice—the lookout floor creaked here and there, but it had been solidly built only a decade before. Even under three layers of blankets, though, I could feel an invasive chill, unbroken by the light streaming in on all sides.
The stove had gone out during the night—I hadn’t stocked it with enough wood in the hours of early morning when I’d finally slumped into a restless sleep. Slowly, I sat up, my legs sore from the mountain climb, keeping the blankets wrapped tightly around me . . .
And remembered.
Jack had been about to enlist in the army. A bomb had started the fire that killed him. Morrissey was considering treason. Even Clara had doubted pacifism in the end.
It was enough to make a fellow want to roll over and go back to sleep.
Last night, I’d done what Dorie suggested and read Jack’s last entry in the observation log. She’d been telling the truth for once. Seeing the worries and wonderings there in Jack’s own handwriting took the last bit of strength I had. Numbly, I’d tucked Morrissey’s incriminating papers underneath the observation log on the bookshelf, with a hope that it would be better in the morning.
But it never worked that way.
From the glimpses we’d gotten, I expected the papers describing the balloon bomb. But Mother’s letter and Clara’s journal entry . . .
Think about something else. And I tried, savoring the first sip of coffee after brewing a pot, the feeling of warmth crawling back through my limbs as I edged closer to the relit stove. I wondered if Morrissey had found his folder missing, and what lies Dorie might tell to cover for us. I planned what I would draw next for the trail guide, even took out my sketchbook, looking out at the birds swooping past the tower for inspiration.
Every time, though, my mind drifted back to the faces of two enslaved men, terrified, as light shone down into their hiding place. Sometimes I imagined what would have happened if Clara had picked up the sheriff’s gun.
Should she have?
No. Violence was always wrong. That was the one thing I’d been sure of from the time I was a child. After all I’d seen, it had to be true.
When Nelson overindulged in drink and shouted at or hit my mother, that was wrong.
But when my mother found him passed
out drunk in our garage at midnight, a tire iron clutched in his hand, when she’d turned on the car’s engine and left him there . . . that was wrong too.
She’d worried about what he would do to us when he woke up, so she’d made sure he never would. That was how she explained it to me the next morning. “But . . . you shouldn’t have . . . why—” I’d stammered, trying to push past her to the garage to see my father’s body, but she grabbed my arm in a vise grip.
“I was protecting you,” she countered, her voice eerily calm. “It was what Clara would have wanted.”
“I’m fifteen years old.” My voice, strained under pressure, had cracked as I said it, mocking me. “Almost a man.”
And she’d looked at me, with those dark, serious eyes like mine. “What sort of man would you have become, with a father like that?”
A better man, I wanted to promise her. But how could I be sure?
Because she pled guilty to second-degree murder when she could have easily made Nelson’s death look like a suicide, the court gave her a lenient twelve years. She’d served ten. Maybe, by the time she was free again, the war would be over.
“It was what Clara would have wanted.” At the time, I’d been far too shocked to ask what she meant, but I’d asked her later during my first visit to Bedford Hills Correctional Facility. She had only smiled wearily and changed the subject.
Now I knew.
My pencil flew over the page, shading it heavier, darker than my usual sketches.
How was it possible to feel betrayed by someone who lived and died decades before you were born?
And yet . . . why had God let two men be captured, beaten, and hauled back into bondage if Clara had followed the way of righteousness? Shouldn’t he have rewarded her with a miraculous escape?
That was how it was supposed to work. When a forest burned because of Sarah Ruth’s teenage carelessness, that was justice: terrible consequences following a wrong action, just like Thomas was so fond of talking about. But what happened to Clara’s fugitives . . . that didn’t seem just. Neither was Jack’s death or the German camp from Dorie’s article where the Nazis killed women and children.
The Lines Between Us Page 25