by Julie Berry
Frankie resumed their tower building. Clear spittle ran from his gummy mouth, complete with eight pearly baby teeth of his own. Hazel wiped his chin on his bib and hugged him.
“It gets awfully lonely out there, in the trenches,” James said, “and having a friend like Frank made all the difference.”
“I’ll bet it did,” said the widow. “He wrote to me about you, too, you know. Said you were a real fine chap. From Chelmsford, is that right?” She smiled. “He said, when the war was over, we were to have you up here to the seaside to visit.” She stuck out her chin. “You can still come.” Then she remembered, apparently, that James was a single man, and she, a widow. “Well, when you and this nice young lady make it official, you can both come.” She beamed at Hazel. “Frankie’s taken a real shine to you!”
“The feeling’s mutual.” Hazel took a blue block from his sticky hand and set it atop their fourth tower. She waited for James to comment on them “making it official,” but he said nothing.
“Tell me,” Mrs. Mason asked James, “do you know anything about how he died?”
James’s eyes closed.
“The other widows around here, they’ve gotten letters from commanding officers telling them what happened, and packages containing their husbands’ personal effects, but I’ve had nothing! Nobody seems to know. Is he buried? Where’s he buried? I’ve written and written.”
Hazel stacked blocks without seeing them.
“Says in the papers the Fifth Army’s disbanded,” she went on. “To whom do I write?”
With effort, James sat up straighter and begin to speak.
“I was with Frank when he died,” he said gently. “I was there.”
The tablecloth bunched up beneath Mrs. Mason’s hands.
“It was the twenty-first of March,” he said. “The first day of the battle of Saint-Quentin. We were under attack,” he said. “The Germans had us hopelessly outnumbered.”
“Bock,” said Frankie, injecting vocabulary into their building exercise.
“We were guarding a section of trench,” he went on, “when German storm troopers invaded it.”
This quiet young man, the one who had danced with her in London and in Paris, surrounded by Germans with guns.
“I read about those storm fighters,” Adelaide whispered. “Did they get my Frank?”
James shook his head.
“There were two of them, with pistols,” James said. “I took out one, then Frank stopped the other from shooting me before I could get him, too. He saved my life.”
“And you saved his, sounds like,” Adelaide said.
But not for long, said no one.
Hazel’s hand shook. James, Germans, guns, and blood. Down came the wooden tower.
“Boom!” squealed Frankie.
“One of the storm troops had a flamethrower,” James went on. “They got our pal, Chad Browning, pretty bad.”
Adelaide sucked in her breath. “Not that funny young kid! Did he die?” James shook his head, and she sagged with relief. “Frank mentioned him, too, in his letters.” She nodded in Hazel’s direction. “My Frank was a fine one for writing letters.”
“Because he missed you,” Hazel said, “and he loved you.”
Mrs. Mason smiled sadly at the tabletop. “What happened next?”
“I shot the soldier with the flamethrower,” James said slowly, “and Frank and another kid dropped on top of Browning to put out the fire. Then we carried him to the Red Cross station, which was a ways off, through the trenches.”
“Frank was a hero, wasn’t he?” said Adelaide. “I always knew he would be.”
Little Frankie got tired of the tower they were on and demolished it with a burst of laughter. Hazel gathered up the blocks and started again.
“Some German soldiers stood atop the parapet, shooting down at us in our trenches,” James said slowly. “We were easy targets. So as soon as we’d gotten Chad taken care of, Frank and I climbed up top to take out the German shooters.”
There were those words again: “take out.” Like something one does with a sack of rubbish. Hazel looked at the grinning, gummy, chubby-cheeked child at her knees, playing building blocks, and at the sober-faced young man seated at the table. Once he was you, she told little Frankie silently. What dread experiences must one face in order to speak so casually of killing?
May you never face them, little one.
But her prayer went unanswered. Frankie is a man now. Private Frank Mason Jr. of the Suffolk Regiment. Stationed in Algeria, bravely fighting the Nazis, just as his father fought the Germans before him.
HADES
James’s Answers—June 15, 1918
THE FOG IN James’s head and the fog over the trenches blended together. At last the mist parted.
“There was a Jerry with a grenade launcher,” he said slowly. “I got him.”
Mrs. Mason sat very still now, with her eyes closed.
“And another, taking aim at me. Frank got him.”
Mrs. Mason flinched, as if she’d felt the impact of the bullet.
Hazel found herself holding her breath. What was this nightmare her James described? This hell faced by her sweet boy who could cry at the loveliness of a symphony orchestra?
The kettle began to shrill. Little Frankie emitted an ear-piercing imitation. Adelaide poured it, through a cloud of steam, over the tea leaves in the strainer, and into the china teapot.
“The fog was thick,” said James. “We were on the ground. A Jerry took aim at Frank.”
“The bastard!”
Hazel covered little Frankie’s ears.
“But he didn’t get him,” James explained. “I shot that Jerry, too, before he could.”
The kettle clunked back onto the gas stove. “Then who did?”
Hazel’s heart bled for Mrs. Mason. She already knew how this sad tale ended. She was just searching to find its villain.
“I don’t know,” said James faintly. “Some gunner from a couple of miles away.”
Adelaide’s handkerchief found its use again.
“When I shot the German trying to kill Frank,” James said, “Frank was so surprised that he jumped up tall, from where he’d been lying down.” He swallowed hard. “Just in time to catch a shell right in the chest.”
Silence fell over the kitchen. Adelaide wrapped her arms around her middle, as if to ward off the missile, finding to her surprise that there was a baby there to protect too.
“Boom!” squealed Frankie, capsizing another tower.
Adelaide jumped. “Not now, child!” she cried. “Can’t you tell Mummy needs to think?”
Frankie blithely ignored the scolding, as well-loved children usually do. Hazel busied herself with a novel creation: a double tower, two blocks wide. Frankie quickly got on board with this plan. Build and destroy, build and destroy. This game never grew old.
“Do you mean to tell me,” Adelaide asked James, “that if Frank had stayed down, he might be alive today?”
“I’m so sorry.” James’s voice cracked. “I told him not to come up top. ‘You’ve got a wife and a kid,’ I told him. ‘Stay down.’ But he wouldn’t let me go up alone.”
Adelaide seized his hands. “No more would my Frank’ve done so, and that’s the truth.”
James’s chin drooped. “I’m so sorry.” His body shook. “I’m so, so sorry.”
Adelaide cast a despairing look at Hazel. What should I do?
“I wish it had been me,” James said. “He should’ve come home to you.”
Adelaide Mason poured out a mug of tea for James. “Now, don’t say that,” she said. “It doesn’t work that way, and you know it.” She winced, and rubbed her pregnant belly. “This one’s a boy too, or I’m daft. He’s a kicker, just like his big brother.” She smiled. “They’ll be swimmers, like their dad. He
was a fish. Always wondered why he didn’t join the navy.”
She poured mugs of tea for Hazel and herself, and a tiny cup that was mostly milk and sugar, with a spot of tea, for Frankie.
“Can I ask you, James,” she said softly, “whether you think Frank suffered any pain?”
James sat up a little taller. “None,” he said. “I’m sure of it. It was so very sudden.”
She plied the kerchief and wiped her nose. “That’s a blessing, ain’t it?” Her voice squeaked as she tried not to cry. “I’ve had long nights to imagine him in every kind of suffering.”
Frankie grew tired of blocks, so Hazel found a dog-eared children’s book and began softly reading to him. He plopped his chunky self right down upon her lap.
“Did they bury him, then?” Adelaide asked.
James’s body stiffened. “I don’t know,” he whispered. “After that I . . . lost consciousness for a long time. I spent a good deal of time in hospital. In neurasthenic wards.”
Hazel closed her eyes and silently wept. Frankie prodded at her to continue the story. This was why the letters had stopped.
“I think it’s likely,” James said, softly, “that there wasn’t much to bury.”
The widow winced and looked away. It was unspeakable.
James reached into his jacket pocket and pulled something out.
“I received a DSM for what happened,” he said, “which ought to have been his.” He handed the medal, wrapped in wide red and blue ribbon, to Mrs. Mason.
“I can’t take this,” she protested. “It’s yours.”
“I want you to have it,” insisted James. “And the twenty pounds. Take it for the baby.”
Adelaide glanced once again at Hazel, seated on the floor, for guidance. Hazel nodded firmly. Take it. Adelaide surrendered, and accepted the money, and finally, the medal.
He then handed her Frank’s little singed prayer book. When she saw it, she sobbed.
“Frank showed me your picture, more than once,” he said, opening to where it was. “He was very proud of you and your son.”
She took the tiny book and pressed it to her heart. “I don’t know how to thank you.”
Frankie took this moment to twist around on Hazel’s lap and fling his chubby arms around her neck.
“I worried so much about my Frank out there, all alone.” Adelaide pressed on through her tears. “That was what haunted me. The thought of him, with no one.” She wiped her nose. “And when I knew he’d died, I couldn’t sleep for thinking of him, dying all by himself, with no one there to care.” She took James’s hands once more. “To know that he was never alone, that he died helping his good friend . . .” Her eyes overflowed. “It’ll be such a comfort to me in the years to come. Such a comfort.”
She reached beckoning arms out to Frankie, who forgot about Hazel and toddled to his mama. She took him up fiercely and pressed him close. “His sons will know it about their dad.”
Hazel turned to James. How much older he was than when she’d met him, seven, eight months ago. He looked exhausted. Drained and pale and spent.
Even so, there was something in his face she hadn’t seen since Paris. Something, she thought, like peace.
ENTR’ACTE
Seaside—June 15, 1918
APHRODITE
THEY LEFT THE little house together, promising to visit again. Hazel wondered if she was lying.
The heel of Hazel’s shoe twisted slightly, and she stumbled. James offered her his arm. She blushed but took it all the same.
They reached the corner where they ought to turn right to head back toward town and the train station, but James steered them to the left.
“Aren’t we going back to the train station?” she asked.
James shaded his eyes from the sun. “It’s a beautiful day,” he said. “Seems a shame not to spend a bit of it at the beach, don’t you think?”
Hazel didn’t know what to think.
They followed the well-worn path down to the waterfront, where dirt gradually became sand, and grass became sparse weeds and then vanished. They took off their shoes and socks or stockings, which was a tricky proposition for Hazel, but she managed it, underneath her skirt. The sight of her bare feet was just about enough to give poor James a stroke there on the spot.
They rolled up their hosiery and stuffed it into their shoes and carried them on down through the sand. The novelty of hot sand between her toes made Hazel forget herself. She ran down to the water, dropped her things in a heap, and charged into the shallow waves, hitching up her skirts almost to her knees. James hung back and watched her.
She almost made him forget the pain. And her legs! He shouldn’t look. Yes, you should. But more discreetly.
The feel of sea breezes and hot sand, the laughter of children and the cries of seagulls, the smell of popcorn and sizzling sausages, filled him. White-crested waves rolled endlessly in.
He’d gone and seen Frank’s widow and son. He’d done it. He’d known from the start that he must do this. All these weeks, the effort of beating back the fear had left him half dead.
And there Hazel was, bending over to pick up a seashell and squint inside it.
HADES
A faint smell of Woodbine caught James’s nose. A presence he knew stood beside him, but he must not look. This ought to be alarming, he thought, but it was familiar as morning.
He kept his gaze fixed on the horizon line. “You’re a lucky man, Frank.”
“Not by half,” said Frank.
“That’s quite a family you’ve got.”
“I know it.”
They both looked out toward Hazel in the water.
“Why should I get to—”
“Because you can,” said Frank. “Go get her, chum. You’re doing me no favors if you don’t. You don’t think I would?”
James remembered the robust little child in Hazel’s arms, and how she had laughed and played with him. Had there ever been a girl so marvelous, and so kind? One who loved children. Would there ever be . . . ? He felt hot all over, and it wasn’t the sun. A child. He remembered Adelaide’s round belly. Another child who would never know its father.
“I’ll be watching out for them,” Frank said. “I know you will too.”
“They’ll send me back to the war, you know,” said James.
Frank chuckled. “You’ll be out of it soon, sonny,” he said. “No fear. I think you’ll come through the other side. It’s not much longer now.”
James watched as Hazel kicked at the rolling spray.
“You’re not really here, are you?” says James. “This is part of my madness?”
“Does it matter?” asked Frank. “If it’s madness telling you to marry that girl and be happy, whose advice would you rather have?”
“We’re a bit young, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t say you had to do it tomorrow,” said Frank. “Do you feel young?”
“No,” admitted James.
“She’ll make you feel young again.”
“I don’t even know how to make it through a day,” James said.
“Nobody does,” said Frank. “But that girl, there, will help you.”
He felt a firm hand push between his shoulder blades. He stumbled forward in the sand.
APHRODITE
For a terrible moment Hazel thought James had abandoned her. She couldn’t see him. Her skirts sank into the waves, soaking up cold water and clinging to her legs. Then, suddenly, there he was, before her, in trousers rolled-up to the knees and sleeves to the elbows, with his shirt open.
She was seized with a desire to inspect these new bits of James now on display.
He took her face in his hands. Her heart caught in her throat at the pain in his expression.
“You know that I can never be the boy you used to know.”
/> She pulled away from his hands. “But that’s who I see,” she said. “The only boy I see.”
He closed his eyes tightly. “What I’ve done, and what I’ve seen, will always be with me.”
This was the last time she would make this plea. “Let me, too, always be with you.”
He stood there, saying nothing, for longer than she could bear to wait.
She turned toward the sand and headed ashore.
James ran to her then and stood in her path. Before she could speak, I sent a little wave pushing her into him, and she fell into his arms. James only barely braced himself in time to keep them both from toppling over.
The feel of her body pressed against his went through him like an electric shock. When she righted herself and pulled away, he pulled her back to him and held her close, spinning her around and around. Her toes drew circles around him in the sunlight on the water.
ACT FIVE
APHRODITE
The Battle of Henry Johnson—June 5, 1918
BACK IN PARIS, Colette picked up shifts at a café. One morning, while swabbing tables, she noticed a newspaper left behind and ringed with coffee. She was about to toss it when a headline caught her eye: “La Bataille d’Henry Johnson, Héros Nègre Américain! 24 Allemands Tués!”
She abandoned her customers and devoured the article. It told of the heroics of one Henry Johnson, a black American soldier from New York State, who had bravely fought off a large German raiding party. He was a member of the 369e Régiment d’Infanterie US, attached to the French Fourth Army, under the command of General Henri Gouraud, and stationed in the Meuse-Argonne sector. This division, the article mentioned, was famous for its remarkable band.
She dropped into a chair. Her heart thumped and her head flooded. Hope, her dread enemy, came pounding at the door.
Colette ignored customers whose coffee had grown cool. She propped her elbows on the dirty table and tried to think. Aubrey had belonged to the 15th New York National Guard. Could it possibly be the same division? Or were there dozens of black divisions in the American army, all with remarkable bands?