by Amy Stewart
Anyway, this poor soul was off by himself, pretending to look at the magazines, but obviously wishing he didn’t have to take part in the gaiety. My neck, by then, had a permanent crick in it from looking up at my dancing partners—whether by luck or design, they were all simply gigantic, and made tiresome jokes about “the weather down there”—so I was ready for any excuse to sit out a song or two. I sat right down next to him.
At first, the boy talked to me because he had to, not because he wanted to. (Did you know that there is such a thing as a soldier who’s immune to my charm?) He gave his name—George Simon—and told me that he’d come from some other little town down the road I’d never heard of. Camp Funston itself is bigger than any city he’s ever visited in his life.
“I wonder what you’ll make of Paris,” I said, but this was precisely the wrong subject to introduce, for he only looked more miserable and said:
“I’ll find out soon enough. We’re shipping out next week.”
Oh, Helen, I never know what to say! Do I wish them well, or do I commiserate? Don’t ask me why, but I thought to make light of it a little, so I said, “Is that how you won a ticket to the dance? Is it to be nothing but parties and dancing until you leave?”
But I was only making it worse, and he let me know it. With eyes already tortured and far away, he said, “Today we had to apply for our war insurance, and write down the names of everyone who depends upon us for support, so they could figure how much to take out of our pay.”
“Is that what they do?” I said. “I never knew how it worked.” We were by then quite comfortable in our corner together. I expected someone to pull me back to the dance floor at any minute, but so far we’d been left alone.
George nodded. “You might put down your mother, if she’s a widow, or your wife if you have one.”
Of course I wanted to know who he’d written down, but I couldn’t think how to ask. “Who will receive your war insurance?” makes the prospect of death on the battlefield sound like a business transaction. I thought it best to wait, and let him talk.
At last he said, “I told them I didn’t want it. There’s an aunt who raised me, but we didn’t part on the best of terms. She has a son of her own, anyway. Let him support her.”
It sounds cruel when I write it down like that, but he was more dejected than angry. The song changed just then and I thought he might ask me to dance, but instead he said, “Tell me something about yourself. Where do you live, and how did you come into this way of life, going around the country and singing like you do?”
I told him, and I tried to make it sound lively and gay so he’d think of something other than war insurance. I told him that my own mother had died, and that I’d been raised by my sisters who were old and dull like an aunt might be—and he smiled at that. I told him all about Constance, and how she’d become a lady police officer and been written about in newspapers all over the country, and how she was doing secret war-work that I wasn’t supposed to know about, except that she tells me more than she should, and I knew it had to do with hunting for German saboteurs.
He chided me a bit and said that she didn’t sound old and dull at all. He wanted to know how she’d gotten into that line of work, so I told him about the man who’d threatened to kidnap me, and how she stopped him. It did sound thrilling, the way I put it to him.
And I told him about you, and how we auditioned together for May Ward’s troupe, and about how I’d already been going around the country with Mrs. Ward before the war. I made it sound quite a bit more glamorous than it ever was.
He loved to hear about all of it, and he asked a hundred questions. He seemed happy to think about anything else, if only for an evening. I’d only just started to tell him about Norma and her pigeons—and you should’ve seen the way he lit up when I mentioned those pigeons, I can’t imagine why—when the music ended, and the lights came up.
At the prospect of parting he looked positively crushed. He’s one of those men who looks like a child in his uniform—skinny shoulders, a gap in the collar, and a belt cinched tight and high around his waist because his pants would simply drop right off without it. He’s not at all square of jaw and broad of chest—he’s just the opposite. Who knows what France will do to him?
He stood to say good-bye, and I just looked at him, trying to memorize him. I had the funniest idea that I would see him when he returned, and that I would compare the picture in my mind to the man who would someday appear before me. What a strange notion—but no stranger than the realization that you might spend an evening with a man, and tell him everything about your life, then never see him again.
At a moment like this a man usually asks for an address, and a picture. They all want to write home to a girl.
But he didn’t ask for any of that. He only said, “I didn’t want to come tonight. That business with the war insurance had me thinking that they were asking me to bet against myself, and I didn’t like the odds. But then my luck changed, because I met you. Good-night, Miss Kopp.”
Before I could say a word, he was gone! I admit that a little piece of my heart went out the door with him. It’s hard not to love them, just a bit, when they talk to you like that.
You tell me that you’re living vicariously through my accounts of life in the Army camps, but you could get out yourself once in a while, you know. I’m sure your little brothers would be happy to watch a parade or see the training exercises. If you want a soldier of your own to write to, just step outside without a hat. They can’t resist red hair. Charlotte talked me into a henna rinse, but you can hardly see it unless I’m out in the sunshine. I can’t say I’d give a Scottish girl like you any competition.
We’re here for a week, if you want to risk another letter.
Much love to you and the boys—
Fleurette
Fleurette to Helen
August 18, 1918
Oh Helen, Oh Helen, Oh Helen—
You will think I’ve completely lost my mind, and perhaps I have. Do you remember that sweet sad George Simon I cornered at a dance? He turned up again yesterday, just before he was to leave Camp Funston for points east. We aren’t allowed visitors here at the Hostess House (isn’t it funny that a place called Hostess doesn’t welcome visitors, but never mind—our virtue is unassailed, and that’s the main thing), but it was a lazy sunny afternoon and all eight of May Ward’s Dresden Dolls were lolling about on the porch. We made a very pretty picture. Everyone in camp could walk by and have a word with us, and they did.
George looked as nervous as a debutante when he approached. You can only imagine how I felt—had I unwittingly entered into an understanding with the young man? Had he been given Reason to Entertain Certain Expectations? Really, there was a knot of dread in my throat as he made his way down the road. (This place is like a city, you understand, a treeless city of tents and wooden barracks and bare dirt roads between, crowded day and night with soldiers running off to their exercises.) I waited stoically to learn my fate.
He carried something quite large in one hand, but it was covered by a blanket and I couldn’t guess what it was. When he walked up to the porch, I grinned and waved, but he only stood awkwardly, obviously wanting to ask if there was someplace private we could talk but not knowing how.
I didn’t know how, either, as the entire point of the place is to keep chorus girls and soldiers apart from one another. But I rose nonetheless and walked down to the very end of the porch, where I could dangle my feet off the edge as one would at a dock on the lake. Surely the deck-railing between us would stand for propriety.
He came around and set his queer package down, then said, in such a huff—I could tell he was bursting to get it out of him, whatever it was—“Did you say your sister knows something about birds?”
NORMA? He wanted to talk about NORMA? It has never once happened, in all my years on this sweet Earth, that any young man has come running over to speak to me of Norma.
Nonetheless, I took it with gra
ce. I said, “She would be the first to tell you that she knows everything about birds. She’s been raising and training her messenger pigeons since the day I was born, and now she’s over in France, showing the Army how to do it.”
That set him back on his heels. “Do you mean to say she’s enlisted? She’s a real girl soldier?”
“Something like that,” I said. I was already bored with the conversation. At least he wasn’t asking to marry me. Perhaps he wanted to marry Norma—what a relief that would be to all of us!
“Would you like to write to her?” I offered. “I’ll give you her address.”
“No, I just—” He looked down at the package on the ground next to him. “You come from a family that knows something about birds. I just wanted to make sure of that.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that the entire family—” But it was too late. He pulled the covering off and revealed that he’d been carrying a bird-cage—and the cage held the most magnificent green parrot you’ve ever seen.
Oh Helen, oh Helen, if you could see her, you would know how captivated I am. She wears the most astonishing emerald-green plumage, with a little yellow cap, and red tips at the ends of her wings like ruby bracelets, and orange eyes, and—oh, she’s simply magnificent. She sat on the perch inside that cage with perfect composure, blinking at me through one eye and keeping the other eye trained on her surroundings, like the bright, alert girl she is.
George was staring at me so intently that I thought he might faint from the effort. “They won’t let me take her to France,” he said.
“No, I don’t suppose they would,” I said. I put a finger out to the bars of the cage, and that darling bird kissed it—well, she hasn’t any lips, so she can’t kiss, exactly, but she took my finger very gently into her beak, as if getting to know it, and then she let it go. It was quite elegant, the way she handled me.
“I can’t leave her with my aunt, either,” George said. “She hates birds. Thinks they’re filthy. She said that if I left her at home, she’d open the cage and let her fly away.”
“No!” I cried. “She can’t be turned loose in a cornfield in Kansas! She belongs—well, in a conservatory, or an orangery. Where have you kept her all this time? Surely they don’t allow birds at Camp Funston, either.”
“One of the lieutenants rents a cottage in town. His wife wanted company, so they’ve been keeping her.”
At that the bird let out a very pretty whistle—and would you believe it? It was an absolutely perfect high C. She’s a soprano, like me!
“Does she sing?” I asked.
“Not yet,” he said. “She’s only just grown. But the lieutenant’s wife plays the Victrola for her and she whistles along.”
“Then she’ll have a nice life until you come back for her,” I said.
“But they can’t keep her, either,” he said. “They’re being moved down to Camp Travis, and they have a baby on the way. This was only ever meant to be temporary. I want you to have her, Miss Kopp. You and your sister who knows all about birds. She’ll be looked after, no matter what happens to me. I can tell you’ve taken a liking to her. Not everybody does.”
Oh, who couldn’t love an exotic bird with such chic feathers and a high, clear voice? I felt a kinship with her instantly. She was just so perfectly put together and seemed entirely composed, even as her fate hung by a thread.
Of course I put up all the usual arguments: I’m traveling for another month, at least, and we expect to be extended after that, and the Hostess Houses aren’t exactly welcoming to avian visitors, and, besides, it’s no life for a bird, going from city to city. How would I even carry her on the train? Mrs. Ward isn’t about to buy an extra ticket for her cage.
But he wouldn’t hear any of it. He had a feeling about me, he claimed. (Thank goodness it wasn’t that other kind of feeling, although when did I start inspiring in men the desire to make a zoo keeper of me rather than a wife?) He just knew that I would appreciate his parrot, and be a good companion to her, and when he heard me mention Norma and her pigeons, it seemed to him like a sign from above.
He wasn’t going to let me refuse, Helen, and oh, I confess, I didn’t try very hard! I never had any interest in a cat or a dog, although they ran around our farm from time to time, and I certainly never wanted anything to do with Norma’s pigeons. We always had cows or goats or chickens, and once we even raised a pig—but you’d best not get attached to any of them, and I wouldn’t have wanted to, anyway.
But this extravagant creature! She is something else again. She looks right at me and I do believe she understands something about me, and I about her. Would she wear a hat, I wonder, if I made one for her? I suspect she might.
The long and short of it is that Laura lives with me now. Oh, yes, her name is Laura. When he told me that, I decided at once to give her a new name—Esmerelda, perhaps, or Octavia—but then he said that he’d named her after his dearly departed mother, the only woman he ever loved, and what could I do? Laura she is, and Laura she shall remain.
Laura comes with a rather large brass cage and a smaller carrying-case so that she can sit on my lap on train rides. She’s perched atop her cage right now in my cramped little room at the Hostess House, watching me and whistling now and then as I write.
Charlotte has the upper bunk and finds the whole situation droll. She wants to teach Laura to climb a ladder, but I’ve declared that Laura has enough adjusting to do without being taught silly tricks.
The ladies at the Hostess House don’t know about Laura yet. There will be trouble when they do. Fortunately, we leave for Camp Grant tomorrow. I’ll write again from our next perch. (See, I’m already thinking like a bird!)
Oh, don’t be mad and tell me I’m irresponsible, I love her too much already—
and you—
Fleurette
Fleurette to Norma
August 19, 1918
Dear Norma,
I hope this letter finds you well and that you’ve made a success of things in France. I’m sorry I haven’t written before, but I can’t think what would possibly interest you about my tour through these training camps, except to tell you that we are shipping men out by the thousands and they had better be ready for you and your pigeons.
It’s because of the pigeons that I write. I have come into the possession of a parrot. It’s only temporary until the man who raised her returns from France. I would appreciate any advice you could give on the care, feeding, and training of a barely grown Amazonian parrot.
I’ve been told to feed her fruit and vegetables and soggy bread, and seed when I can get it. She has a blanket to cover her cage at night, which keeps her both warm and quiet. I worry about taking her from place to place, but I’m not due home for another month. If I hadn’t agreed to take her, she would’ve gone to an awful aunt who intended to just open her cage and let her fly away.
Any advice on the treatment of avian ailments would be welcome as well, although she seems perfectly fit at the moment. I’ve never had to care for any sort of creature at all apart from myself, and I just don’t know what I’d do if she were to become ill or inconvenienced in any way. Write to me at Constance’s, and she can forward it on.
Give the Germans what they deserve—I know you will—
votre sœur—
Fleurette
Fleurette to Constance
August 19, 1918
C—
Here’s another address for you as we depart for Camp Grant in Illinois. Were your ears burning? I was telling a soldier about you a few nights ago, and the work you do (in the most general of terms, of course, not wanting to give away any government secrets). He was quite impressed to hear that you used to carry a gun and make arrests just like a policeman. I told him about how you marched into Mr. Bielaski’s office at the Bureau of Investigation last year and demanded a job when one didn’t exist. He could hardly believe that such a tactic worked. When I think about it, I can hardly believe it, either.
I hope you’
re off on some thrilling case, intercepting bombs or spotting submarines sneaking up the Passaic River. Do you suppose they come up the rivers? You probably couldn’t tell me if they did.
My contribution to the war effort this week (apart from singing and dancing) was to sell tickets to a baseball game to benefit the Tobacco Fund. I went to Junction City with a couple of the girls, all of us in costume and causing quite a stir. We sold every ticket we had and returned with nearly a hundred dollars to put toward the cause of keeping the soldiers supplied with cigarettes. I wonder if Norma ever sees the packages they send over.
Speaking of Norma, you’ll be pleased to know that I wrote her a letter and you didn’t even have to tell me to do it. Give my love to Bessie and Francis and the children—
Yours,
F.
Constance
Paterson, New Jersey
Constance to Bruce Bielaski
August 20, 1918
Dear Mr. Bielaski,
You will have had Agent Gifford’s report on last night’s raid by now, but I told him I’d prefer to write up the part about the girls myself. We did turn up one promising lead that I intend to pursue.
With a pair of New York City police officers we raided the St. Regis restaurant at 440 West Forty-Sixth, on a charge of running a disreputable house in the basement. An inebriated German had been picked up in the alley the night before, and gave the impression that the place was frequented by his countrymen. The prospect of a clandestine enemy clubhouse was reason enough for the police to invite us along.