“However they did it,” Grace muttered to herself, “they did a damn good job in here.”
But what Grace had not expected to see was the beautiful piano tucked in the corner. She knew that it had not come over from England with the battalion. She would have noticed it before. How on earth had such a magnificent thing survived the ruin caused by the German occupation and Allied bombings on this side of the English Channel?
Grace stood before it reverently. It took her a few moments before she dared stroke its keys.
“Beautiful,” she whispered. She ran her fingers across the keys. Some of them had seen better days but all of them worked. Intrigued, she sat down on the bench. But when she placed her hands on the keys to play, her mind went blank.
Grace hadn’t played or practiced a note since she had joined the Women’s Army Corps. Looking back, she realized that military life, and the uncertainty of war hanging over her head, hadn’t afforded her the time nor the opportunity to play in the last three years.
Grace stroked the keys again. Then she went through her scales. When in doubt, go back to the basics.
She tickled out a quick rendition of “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” It was the first song she had ever learned how to play. She played it again, this time with a little more flair to it. And again, leaning into each note to evoke a gospel feel into the song. The extra drama that this added to such a simple children’s song made her giggle.
Grace fooled around some more with a few go-to refrains. Those refrains morphed into her old standby.
I’ve got rhythm. My name is Grace. I’m the queen of these keys. Get out my face . . .
A slow clap interrupted her fooling around. Grace turned. She frowned. There stood Hans with a broom tucked into the crook of his arm. “I knew it. I knew when I saw your hands that you were a master. That was magnificent.”
“Thank you.” Grace clasped her hands together and placed them in her lap. Hans’s smile was as bright as ever. But Grace no longer found it alluring. Now it looked . . . feral. His charming demeanor made her skin crawl. The gleam in his eyes had turned into a predatory shine. How had she found anything about this man appealing?
“We must play a duet together.” Hans sat down next to her on the bench. His broom fell to the floor. Their shoulders brushed. His face was so close to hers that they could’ve kissed if she wanted to. But Grace most definitely did not want to kiss him. She scooted over and almost fell off.
Grace stood. “The bench is only big enough for one person. I’ll go.”
Hans stood too. He reached for her hand with a pout. “Not so soon. I was hoping to spend some time with you. Maybe hear more of your music.”
She pulled her hand out of his and looked around. The room was still empty. “I’m not comfortable with that.”
His smile fell, causing the planes of his face to harden. “That schlampe told you her stories about me.”
“Sylvia told me you did horrible things to her and her sister. But not just her stories. I’ve heard about the detention camps too.”
“I see.” Hans tented his fingers under his chin. “All those things they say we did, all the immorality . . . We were just following orders, you know.”
“You were just following orders?” Grace closed her eyes so she didn’t scream. This guy couldn’t be serious. She couldn’t believe she had almost fallen under his spell. The charm, the good looks, the attention—it was all a scam. Hans was nothing but a con in a pretty package.
If he thought that “just following orders” nonsense would fly with her, he had marked the wrong person. Grace took a deep breath. Her side ached with a phantom pain. She palmed her rib cage, remembering how a bigot’s boot had broken Eliza’s bones in that same spot. Grace thought of all the times when it would have been so easy for her, Eliza, and the rest of them to just go along with the status quo, to turn the other cheek and not put up a fight.
“You forget who you’re talking to. I am a female Negro officer in an all-female Negro unit in the segregated United States Army. I, along with every single woman in this battalion, have had to deal with immoral orders given by bigots and bullies. All of us have had to deal with that bullshit since day one.”
Hans shook his head. “We fought for the honor of the fatherland, not that madman and his ludicrous ideas. I am a proud German. I am not the only one who thinks as I do. If I hadn’t shot all of those people—that girl . . .” He paused to reflect on that last thought. Grace watched as the anger in his eyes turned into horror. “You don’t understand. If I hadn’t obeyed, they would’ve shot me!”
Grace sighed at his pitiful excuses. She was not impressed. “You speak of your honor and your pride as if this is some new rodeo for us. We know that there is strength in numbers. Our army refused to give us weapons, but we know that we don’t need guns to fight for what’s right. So, if you’re looking for my sympathy for what you have done—the abductions, the torture, the destruction of families, the intentional starvation of the local population, stealing a young girl’s innocence, the killing of innocent noncombatants in cold blood—with the excuse that you were ‘just following orders,’ you need to take that thinking somewhere else. I am not the fool you think I am. Is that clear, prisoner?”
Hans looked down. His head hung in shame. “Yes, ma’am.” His words, thick with emotion, came out more heavily accented than usual.
“I think you should leave now.” Eliza stood in the entrance, holding the door open for Hans. He shuffled through without another word. They both watched him until he was out of sight.
“Girl, are you okay?” Eliza rushed over to Grace. She tried to put her arm around Grace’s back, but Grace turned away.
“I’m fine.” That was a lie, of course. But Grace wasn’t about to admit that she had briefly fallen under the spell of a German prisoner.
“Are you sure? Because for a second there, it looked like you two were kissing.”
“No, we did not kiss.” Grace shuddered at the thought. “He forgot his place.”
And I had almost forgotten mine.
“Okay. If you’re sure.”
Grace knew Eliza well enough to know that she wasn’t buying it. Grace didn’t care. Hans was gone. And she hadn’t done anything stupid. She sat back down at the piano. “Let’s talk about something else. Where did this piano come from? It’s in too good condition to have come from anywhere around here.”
“I have no idea. It just showed up a few days ago with a note attached that said someone in the War Department raised hell about the ‘Colored girl unit’ needing a piano.”
Grace frowned. “Someone in the War Department, huh?” She had an idea who that “someone” was. And knowing Jonathan, he was bound to do something stupid like have Dutch tulips delivered to her once a week. That, or worse.
Eliza continued to prattle on. “Yeah, you wouldn’t believe some of the strange deliveries that have arrived for us since active hostilities ended. Just the other day, a local showed up with a donkey cart full of cheese. The guy who brought it insisted that we keep the donkey.”
That got Grace’s attention. She looked up. “Did you?”
“Hell, no. I already have enough pains in the ass around here. The last thing I need is a real live ass to look after too.”
As they shared a laugh over that, Grace had to admit that their relationship had come a long way since Eliza had first asked her for directions to the WAAC enlistment office back in New York. She wouldn’t say that they had become the best of friends over the last few years. But things had become easier between them since the U-boat scare and after that wild night at dinner with those older ladies in Birmingham.
“CAPTAIN STEELE! THERE you are.” Three of the enlisted women who worked under Grace rushed into the rec room and made a beeline for her. Mary Bankston and Mary Barlow were privates first class. Dolores Browne was one of her sergeants.
“Evening, ladies. What can I do for you?”
The two Marys looked to Dolores. Evid
ently, she was the spokesperson of the trio.
“We wanted to know if you would grant us forty-eight-hour leave effective immediately. We just met some guys who said they would give us a lift to Paris.”
Now that there weren’t any second or third shifts, the women in the battalion had more time and opportunity for recreational pursuits. One of the most desired destinations was the French capital.
Paris was located about eighty miles east of Rouen. Close enough to make a day trip under normal circumstances. But with the current condition of the roads, mere months after active war combat had ceased, traveling the short distance might as well have been driving across the width of the United States. The main road still bore the scars of bomb craters, debris, and the burned-out shells of combatant vehicles. If that wasn’t bad enough, the traffic generated from the constant flow of the Red Ball Express—the Allied truck convoy carrying supplies from the coast to Paris and back—was enough to clog the road on a twenty-four-hour basis.
Grace frowned. “I don’t know, ladies. You know that we’ve been reluctant to grant leave passes for Paris. With the roads still a mess, the ones who have attempted the trip wind up coming back late and not reporting for duty on time.”
“C’mon, Cap,” Mary Barlow pleaded. “This might be my only chance to ever go to Paris. Shoot, I’m willing to walk there if I have to. There’s nothing to do around here with everything in Rouen bombed out.”
“Tell me more about your plans.” Grace found it difficult to maintain a stern-faced expression to the request made by the three women who stood before her. She knew they had worked through the Fourth of July holiday. They all were hard workers.
By the time they finished stating their case, Grace had already made up her mind. She had a soft spot where Paris was concerned. She understood their desperation to visit the city.
“All right, fine. You all can go.” She started signing their leave passes. “But I’m concerned about your new friends’ plan to take a ‘shortcut’ to get around the traffic. Please, be careful.”
The three women sighed at the same time. “Yes, ma’am. We will,” Sergeant Browne promised.
Grace smiled as she watched the three friends walk out the door. She wondered if she and Eliza would remain friends like that once they all returned home to the United States. A wave of sadness washed over her to think that they might not. They could barely stay away from each other’s throats for more than a few weeks at a time.
“Eliza?”
“Hmm?” Eliza looked up. She had begun to inventory the equipment for the battalion’s softball team. She dropped a catcher’s mask into the team’s traveling trunk.
“I know we briefly talked about this before, but have you given any thought to what you’re going to do when we go back home, now that the war is over?”
“I’m not really sure. My father actually spoke to me the last time I went home.” Eliza hesitated, then closed the lid on the trunk. “But only because my mother forced us all to be in the same room together. He shared some things that were . . . Let’s just say that particular conversation was hard. I still want to write for my family’s newspaper. But I don’t know if working for my father is a good idea. He’s so set in his ways.”
Grace nodded her head in understanding. “I can relate. Things haven’t been right between my mom and me since I enlisted. Not since my brother was killed really. After our U-boat scare, I’ve been thinking more and more about going home and making things right.”
Eliza was quiet for a moment. “That’s tough.”
“Yeah, Tony was the one who kept Mama and me from biting each other’s heads off.” Grace rubbed her arms where goose bumps had sprouted.
“Do you have any place to go when you go back to the States?”
Grace’s mouth fell into a somber expression. “No, not really. I was such a—a bitch before I joined up that I didn’t really have any friends. No one I’m close enough with to let me sleep on their couch while I figure out what’s next.”
“It sounds like we’re just a pair of homeless messes, huh?” The smile on Eliza’s face was good-natured enough. But Grace caught a sense of melancholy behind it as well. She could relate.
“Yeah, I guess we are.” Grace returned the smile. “Maybe we should just reenlist.”
“Oh no!” Eliza shook her head. “I’ve had enough of these people’s rules and regulations, thank you very much. I might as well have never left my father’s house. I can do better for myself out on the street than to put up with another unnecessary order around here if I don’t have to.”
“Maybe I could try to get into school again.” Grace thought back to her disastrous audition at Juilliard. She bit her lip. “Never mind. It’s reenlistment for me.”
Grace’s fingers absently stroked the piano keys. Her fingers flurried over the first few notes of Moonlight Sonata. Each keystroke reminded her of the night she spent with Jonathan. She stopped abruptly.
“Why’d you stop?”
“That particular piece has too many memories tied to it.”
“Too bad.” Eliza shrugged. “You sounded pretty good.”
Grace decided she wasn’t in the mood to play any of the music that she used to play. It was time to move on. She would not spend another moment wallowing in the what-ifs where men were concerned. Whatever she’d had with Jonathan could never be. And Tony? He would want her to start living her life. More important, she was beginning to want that for herself. She was tired of grieving over what could have been.
Eliza had emptied out the travel trunks again. She had gloves, bats, and other softball gear laid out on the floor around her.
“Do you need any help?”
“No, I’ll be fine.”
“What is all this stuff for anyway?”
“Our softball team heads out for the WAC championship tournament tonight. But get this, the only reason they’ll be able to get there in time is because of that general who tried to have Charity court-martialed. Remember that guy?”
“Yeah. General Butler, right?”
“Yeah, him. Anyway, now he acts like he and Charity are the best of friends. When she told him that we were having trouble coordinating the team’s travel, Butler let us have his personal train car to get there.”
“No way!”
“Girl, yes. I never would’ve believed it had I not seen the orders authorizing it with my own eyes. He should be here in an hour or so to welcome the team aboard personally. I tell you, anything is possible.”
Grace laughed along with Eliza. But on the inside, her thoughts returned to Tony and wished that platitude were true. “Can you cover me for a few minutes? I want to go grab some sheet music out of my trunk. I might as well tinker with some song ideas since we have a piano now.”
“No problem.” Eliza looked up from the softball equipment. “Are you sure you want to run over there alone? In case that POW is lurking around.”
Grace shook her head. “I’ll be fine. But if anything happens, I’ll scream for you to save me.”
She stepped out into the humidity of the early evening. Her thoughts wandered back to the question: What was she going to do when it was time to go back to civilian life?
You make your dreams come true, that’s what. Her brother’s voice echoed in her mind. Her dreams. Studying composition at Juilliard. Playing her own music in Paris one day. Money, nerve, and distance had been her obstacles in the past. But here she was now within driving distance of Paris, yet she had not made plans to go. The only thing that was standing in her way was herself, and the fact that she lacked the nerve to take the first step toward everything that had been laid out at her feet.
The real question she should be asking herself was: Why was she still standing in her own way?
When Grace turned the corner, she wished she had taken Eliza up on her offer to walk her to their quarters. She spotted a man waiting in the shadows of the entrance. Her steps slowed to a halt.
When the man stepped out in
to the lamplight so Grace could see his face, she screamed.
Chapter 29
JONATHAN!”
“Hello, Grace.” He stepped back and leaned against the doorjamb. That’s when she noticed how much thinner he was now than when she last saw him.
Grace rushed to his side, grabbing his arm. She was shocked to find that she could grip his forearm and almost have her fingertips touch. She looked him over again, noting how much sharper his cheekbones were under his skin. “What the hell happened to you?”
He grimaced as if his first instinct was to shake off her assistance, but he didn’t actually try to fight her off. “Italy happened to me.”
“You’re supposed to be back in D.C. pushing papers. What in the world were you doing there?” Grace unlocked the door. She guided Jonathan into the small lounge just off the entrance and onto a worn love seat. She sat down beside him.
They had received reports of the fierce fighting the Negro troops had encountered in Italy. Some of the men who had been injured there had been shipped to hospitals in England where they had been stabilized. The stories that they told had been bleak.
“It’s my job to check on our Negro troops no matter where they are in the world.”
“Yes, but I didn’t know that meant you would go into an active combat zone.”
“Well, it wasn’t when I got there. We were ambushed. I spent three days curled up in a foxhole.”
“I’m so glad you made it out alive.” Grace winced as she remembered her manners. “Would you like some tea?”
“Tea? No. Something stronger? Yes.”
Grace smiled. “You know we’re not allowed to have any alcohol on post. I’m probably not even supposed to have you in here.”
“We’ll just say I stopped by on official business.”
She frowned. “Is that why you’re here—just for official business?”
“Is this your way of saying that you missed me?”
“No, I—”
He waved his hand, cutting her off. “It’s okay. You don’t have to explain. We said all that needed to be said in New York. You and I are an impossible situation.” The creases around his eyes softened as if to tell her that all was forgiven. He leaned back. “Did my surprise arrive?”
Sisters in Arms Page 27