by Amy Stewart
“Mr. Bielaski wasn’t about to give up so easily. He got wind of the trouble—he was in a more junior position back then, you see—and he went directly to his division chief to propose a new scheme. The division chief was of the mind that no one who had lived less than half a century was capable of having a good idea, but Mr. Bielaski wouldn’t be turned away. After showing up at the fellow’s office for three mornings in a row, his idea was finally heard, and it was a good one. Mr. Bielaski now commands his own bureau, and relies not upon Pinkertons for hire, but upon an ingenious volunteer network of postmen, hotel clerks, and even elevator boys, to follow any suspicious doings and report to him. He maintains a card file with the names and addresses of every man with seditious tendencies discovered to be operating within our borders. In a moment of crisis, he can wire the police in any city and have a man brought to him for questioning.”
He slumped back a little and mopped his forehead with a handkerchief, having exhausted himself with the vigor of his speech. As he wiped his spectacles, he added, “You might think that only the Europeans use spies and secret agents. But we do, too, and we will beat them at their game. That, girls, is why you should know how to give the proper spelling of his name.”
Without glancing back at the blackboard, he said, “Boy item easy love able sail king item. Bielaski.”
11
“WHAT DO YOU know about a Mr. Bielaski at the Department of Justice?” Constance asked Norma the following morning, as they trudged to the field for their setting-up exercises. It was a fair day, brisk but clear, and Constance found it invigorating to be out in the sunshine. Fleurette and Roxie, having stayed up far too late whispering to one another, trailed behind.
“Only the same rumors everyone else repeats,” Norma said. “He’s thought to have intercepted the Zimmermann note at the Mexican border a few months ago. Why are you asking about him? Has he turned up at our camp?”
“Mr. Turner said something about him in our wireless class. I thought his job was to go after German propagandists. What was he doing in Mexico?”
“Oh, the Germans have been sneaking back and forth over the border for months now,” said Norma, with a fatigued air, as if she herself had been watching through binoculars all the while. “We don’t know precisely how Washington got hold of Zimmermann’s note, but it appears Mr. Bielaski was waiting in El Paso and took it off a diplomat.”
“I suppose that’s why Mr. Turner considers him a hero,” Constance said. “If Mexico had taken Germany up on its offer, we’d have German submarines in the Gulf of Mexico right now.”
“I doubt it,” Norma said. “The Germans offered to let them take back Texas if they co-operated. Those Texans would’ve put up a fight.”
Constance had no opinion on what the Texans might do, but she thought more highly of Mr. Bielaski after that. It was one thing to keep an eye on German insurrectionists from behind a newspaper in a train station, and another entirely to intercept a coded message between two governments in wartime. For once, Constance missed Norma’s stack of daily newspapers. There were none at camp, and she found herself curious about what other news of Mr. Bielaski’s doings might have come out since they left.
The campers arrived at the training field, where they were to put themselves into formation and go through their exercises. Mrs. Nash demonstrated from a raised platform, elevated on stilts and accessible by a ladder, so that she could be seen by everyone. The exercises consisted mostly of rising on the toes, squatting and standing up again, and bending to the left and right. All around Constance, girls were groaning and huffing and giggling a little as they dropped to the ground, kicked their legs out behind them, and jumped back to their feet. Some of them looked to be accustomed to hard work, but none were in the habit of hopping up and down in a synchronized fashion in the company of two hundred others. Constance felt silly doing it herself, and wondered whether the Army men were given the same routine and whether they got through it without laughing or spinning around and catching someone else across the ear with a loose shirt-sleeve.
They’d been working on their marching and had learned how to step, halt, quick time, and double time. That left most of them panting and whistling for air, and wanting to drop down on the grass to get their breath back. Two girls had already fainted and had to be sprung loose from their corsets and lectured on the benefits of an unrestricted diaphragm. Several more staggered about, dizzy from the exertion, but recovered and went back to their places. They marched in double time for five full minutes, until even Constance found herself winded and overheated from the effort.
“The men do the drills every day for two months,” Mrs. Nash called out to them, with a naval megaphone to her lips. “By the end of their training, they can march at a double-time rate for as much as twenty minutes without fatigue.”
Some of the girls tried to laugh at the very idea of marching for twenty minutes, but it came out in the form of more panting and coughing. Constance was relieved when it was over, and eager to begin the next drill, because Mrs. Nash announced that they were at last to be trained with rifles.
Here is something interesting and useful, she told herself. Constance had her own history with firearms, having been trained in their use by Sheriff Heath himself, long before he ever hired her as a deputy sheriff. It was her skill with a pistol, and her willingness to use it, that had first impressed him and given him the idea that she might succeed as a deputy sheriff. In fact, she rarely had a need for her revolver when she held the job, but she liked wearing it at her side and appreciated the fact that she’d been equipped in precisely the same manner as the male deputies.
It came, therefore, as something of a shock when Hack and Clarence pulled a canvas cover off the back of a wagon and Constance had a good look at the rifles they were passing around.
“They’re just toys!” Fleurette said.
Norma turned one over in her hands, puzzled. “It’s a wooden model. You couldn’t kill someone with it unless you bashed them over the head.”
The girls took great delight in pointing them at one another and at kneeling down to take aim at the far horizon, one eye squeezed shut and a hand placed somewhere near where a trigger might be.
But Constance could barely touch hers. What was to be gained by training with toys? The militaristic aspects of the camp—the marching, the drills, the wooden rifles—were more like play-acting than serious preparation for war. If the real intent was simply to train women in sewing, cooking, and first aid, why not hold those classes in church basements? There was no need to live in a tent and wear a uniform if they were only to be taught how to make soup.
Sarah mistook her silence for fear. “You can touch it! It’s only wood. They’ll have us practice with these until we’re ready to shoot. Jack learned on a rifle just like this one, although he already knew how to fire one, of course.”
Jack was her brother, the one driving the ambulance in France. Constance had never known a twin before and could see that there might be something to the idea that they speak to one another telepathically. Jack seemed to be constantly present in Sarah’s thoughts. She spoke about him as if he’d only just walked out of the room. “Jack misses a hot bath more than anything else,” she might say, as they waited in line for one of the two showers, which were fueled by an old and unreliable copper boiler and offered up to each demerit-free girl according to a weekly lottery system. “Jack hasn’t seen a banana in months either” came her answer when they had no fruit at breakfast again. The idea seemed to be that if Jack was living without it, so could she. Perhaps she felt obligated to share in his deprivation, Constance thought, so that their experiences might be as similar as possible.
She had never known a woman so torn apart over the absence of a brother. She found it a bit of a relief to be a few hundred miles away from her own meddlesome older brother, but he was safe at home, not overseas in the line of fire. Although every one of her siblings grated at her from time to time, they were as indispensable
as her own arms and legs. She couldn’t imagine sacrificing any of them to a war in a distant country.
Sarah handled the rifle thoughtfully, holding it first in one hand and then the other, and aiming it carefully at the ground as if it might actually go off. “I wouldn’t think that an ambulance driver would have any use for a rifle, would you? Even in war, the ambulances should go about unmolested.”
“What does Jack say?” Constance asked. She had already grown accustomed to the idea that Jack was quite nearby and could be consulted on any matter.
“Oh,” she said, her eyes wandering to the tops of the trees around the edge of the field, “he doesn’t like to say anything that might worry me. Besides, if he goes into very much detail, it wouldn’t get past the censors anyway.”
“Well, I’m not so convinced that we’re going to be given actual rifles next,” Constance said.
“Of course we will!” said Sarah. “Otherwise, why bother with these?”
Why bother, indeed? Constance leaned against her rifle as one would a walking-stick and tried to think of a single useful thing she’d learned at camp thus far. All that came to mind was Mr. Bielaski chasing down diplomats at the Mexican border. It was the most intriguing sort of war work she’d heard of in some time. It sounded far more worthwhile than marching into battle with a rifle, real or wooden.
At last all the girls had their rifles and they were ready to begin. Mrs. Nash picked out one for herself and climbed back up the platform to demonstrate.
“Stand at order arms with the butt of your rifle square on the ground,” Mrs. Nash called, “sights to the rear, toe of the butt in line with your own toes.”
After some fidgeting, they all managed it.
“Port, arms,” she called, and they raised the rifles up in their right hands and clasped them in the center with the left, then moved their right hands down to the small of the stock. A few girls tossed their rifles very smartly from one hand to the other, but Mrs. Nash was quick to discourage the throwing of rifles, even wooden ones.
Order arms was the next maneuver, which involved reversing the movements and sliding the gun back down into place with its butt on the ground. This proved trickier than it should have been, owing to the coordination required to let go with the right hand, slide the rifle down with the left, and take it back up again with the right. They went through the sequence five times before Mrs. Nash, looking somewhat dubious, decided to move them along.
“Present, arms,” she called next, and hoisted the rifle straight up, with the very end of the barrel even with her eyes and the left hand holding it at the balance. There was no special trick to it, but somehow Constance kept ending up with the wrong hand on the balance or the rifle at an angle. She wasn’t the only one—from the back of the company, she watched a forest of wooden rifles at jaunty and un-militaristic angles, all rising and falling with little regard to the commands Mrs. Nash shouted through her megaphone.
“Well,” Sarah said brightly, “I’m ready to take on the Germans now, aren’t you?”
Constance turned around to answer her. It was at precisely that moment that a gasp rose up among the company of women and a crash was heard from the direction of Mrs. Nash’s platform. When Constance whirled back around, their leader was gone.
Here was a moment for a policewoman’s instincts. Without hesitating Constance rushed to the front of the crowd, shoving a few girls out of the way as she ran. When she drew closer, she saw that the rail around the platform had broken loose, and Mrs. Nash had stepped backwards and fallen into the ravine behind her.
It was there that Constance found her, face-down in the bramble. A breathless crowd of anxious girls looked down at her from the ravine’s edge.
“Go and call Clarence and Hack,” Constance ordered. Several girls ran off at once to find the soldiers, who’d returned to guarding the front gate. “And bring Nurse Cartwright.”
Constance stepped out of her skirt—never had she been gladder for those riding pants—and passed it to Sarah, who’d run up right behind her. “We might need this to pull her up,” she said.
Mrs. Nash was moaning now, and trying to turn herself over. “Stay where you are,” Constance called. She was only a few feet away, but the terrain was steep and muddy. Constance lowered herself into the ravine and was relieved to find the flattened end of a stump against which she could anchor her feet. She bent down and put a hand on Mrs. Nash’s shoulder.
“Can you move your arms?” she asked in a low voice.
“I think so,” Mrs. Nash said. “It’s my leg that—oh, I don’t know!”
“Stay where you are. The boys are coming.”
“I don’t want them handling me,” Mrs. Nash cried. “I can get up on my own.”
“You most certainly cannot,” Constance said.
“Don’t let them climb down here and make such a fuss. I’m sure I’ll be fine once I’m on level ground. I don’t want everyone to see me being carried around like an invalid.”
Constance had seen women in crisis like this before: fearful of being exposed, afraid to take help, wanting to draw a curtain of privacy around their pain. She would carry Mrs. Nash out herself if she could, but if she’d broken a bone, the risk was too great. Fortunately, there came from behind her a skidding sound, and then Nurse Cartwright’s figure loomed over them from above.
“The nurse has come,” Constance said to Mrs. Nash, her voice still low and reassuring. “The two of us can manage you ourselves.” Turning to look up at Nurse Cartwright, she said, “Sarah has my skirt. Will it serve as a stretcher?”
It would serve. Nurse Cartwright scrambled down with it tucked under her arm.
“We’ll haul you right up ourselves, Geneva,” Nurse Cartwright said. She had an intimate quality to her voice that was naturally reassuring. “Just don’t try to help us. I want you limp as a rag doll. Let us do all the work.”
Mrs. Nash was of a smaller frame than either Constance or Nurse Cartwright, but she made for an awkward bundle. Constance’s skirt, unbuttoned and unrolled, proved both voluminous and sturdy. It wasn’t much of a stretcher, but they were able to roll Mrs. Nash on top of it and drag her out of the ravine, headfirst, with Constance doing the heavy lifting from Mrs. Nash’s shoulders, and Nurse Cartwright guarding her legs to make sure they didn’t move.
Constance fought the mud and bramble, ever the more grateful to have stripped down to trousers and boots. The damp earth threatened to give way every time she planted her heel. Mrs. Nash looked up at her wildly and gripped the sides of her improvised stretcher as if she feared tumbling back into the abyss.
With a mighty effort, Constance planted one foot on higher ground and pulled Mrs. Nash up with her. The force was such that Constance dropped to the ground and Mrs. Nash ended up in her lap. They remained there for a moment, practically in each other’s arms, panting, while Nurse Cartwright prodded the injured leg.
From the edge of the field came Hack and Clarence, running with their hats in their hands.
“Why didn’t you let us carry her out?” Hack said, when he skidded to a stop and saw what had happened.
“She hadn’t fallen very far,” Constance said.
“There’s a stretcher in the infirmary,” Nurse Cartwright said. “Bring it here.”
The privates ran off. Every girl in camp was gathered around, making the air still and close.
Constance stood up and called, “Back to your tents. We’ll suspend our morning exercises while we look after Mrs. Nash. I don’t want any of you out of your tents until the dinner bugle. Go and study, or write your letters home, but don’t take a step outside. I’ll be watching.”
Constance knew how quickly a situation like this could get unruly. Order had been maintained in the camp through nothing but Mrs. Nash’s authority and the patrolling of two privates. Without anyone in charge, it would be too easy for the girls to run wild.
Her harsh tone had its intended effect and the crowd dispersed. Constance knelt down and took
Mrs. Nash’s hand. The older woman was panting a little, and beads of sweat stood out on her upper lip. Constance suspected that shock was setting in.
“Take a long, slow breath,” Nurse Cartwright said. “I’m going to open your collar.” She loosened Mrs. Nash’s shirt and blotted a handkerchief against her neck.
“I’ve gone and ruined everything,” Mrs. Nash groaned.
“Not at all,” Constance said. “Nurse Cartwright will take good care of you, and we can send for a doctor if it looks like—”
“Oh dear, not a doctor!” Mrs. Nash was of that generation who harbored a mortal fear of doctors and saw them only as harbingers of death.
“Try to stay quiet,” Constance said. She stood back, with some relief, when Hack and Clarence returned with the stretcher. She and the nurse slid Mrs. Nash over—eliciting a fresh yelp of pain—and they walked alongside as Mrs. Nash was carried to the infirmary.
Constance returned to her tent for a clean skirt (the riding trousers drew abashed stares from Hack and Clarence, who tried not to look but could not help themselves) and found Norma waiting.
“Is the leg broken?” Norma asked, as Constance rummaged through her trunk.
“I suspect so,” Constance said. “She was in a cold sweat by the time they carried her off.”
“You look like a madwoman. Half the ravine is stuck in your hair.”
Constance reached up and realized she’d lost her hat, and her hair had tumbled down in the commotion. No wonder Hack and Clarence had looked at her so strangely.
“We’ll have to take up a patrol,” Norma said. “I’ll do the east side and you can take the west.”
Constance stepped outside and looked around at the neat rows of tents. Apart from a few girls coming and going from the latrine, no one was out and about. “Why? They can’t get up to too much trouble before lunch.”