by Terrie Todd
Henry sighed, but said nothing for several long seconds. His face grew solemn.
“My father fought in that war,” he said through gritted teeth. “He sacrificed an arm for this country. Don’t you tell me I don’t know.”
This was news to Cornelia. Henry had never mentioned his father was an amputee, or even that he was a veteran. She got up from the blanket and walked to the edge of the creek. “Well, that proves my point. That’s terrible! What possible good can come from it? You of all people should know firsthand how futile—”
“I of all people should be grateful and filled with respect for my father, who gave so much. Who am I to offer any less? You don’t get it. Where’s your patriotism? You think this country was handed over freely? How can I not enlist, Corrie?”
Cornelia turned around to face him.
“No, you don’t get it! Your father sacrificed to free you from all that!” she shouted. “It will all have been for nothing if he loses you, too!”
Instead of shouting back, Henry’s voice became strangely quiet. “Or maybe for once in my life I’d do something to make him proud of me.”
Cornelia knew it would be better to say nothing, but she couldn’t risk having him think she was changing her mind. “Well, I won’t be proud of you. Not for a minute!”
Henry simply dusted off his cap, replaced it on his head, and walked away.
“Where are you going?”
“Home.” And he continued walking down the road without a word.
Resisting the urge to scream his name, Cornelia watched him leave and stifled her sobs until he was out of earshot. She picked up the hymnbook and threw it as hard as she could in the direction Henry had gone, but it only landed in the dust with a thud.
She sat on the blanket and cried until she could cry no more.
CHAPTER 8
Cornelia dug up the last of the potatoes, shook off the dirt, and placed them in a bulging gunnysack, tossing their shriveled leaves aside. She tied the sack shut with a sigh and dragged the heavy load to the root cellar door, leaving it there for Jim to haul down later. Stopping at the well, she pumped herself a cup of water and sat down to drink it as she thought back to the afternoon nearly five months ago when she’d planted these same potatoes. Who would have guessed on that May morning that by evening she would have met the love of her life? A lot can happen in a short time.
She and Henry had made up, although she still felt heartbroken about his decision. The community seemed deeply proud of its boys, and last Sunday all the newly enlisted men had stood at the front of the church while the pastor and congregation offered up a prayer of blessing and protection. Cornelia had studied the other women during the prayer: mothers smiling through their tears, girlfriends and young brides beaming with pride. Are they all pretending or is it just me? she wondered. What’s wrong with me? I’m supposed to feel proud. I only feel confused and disgusted. She recalled her father’s words the night she returned home and told him of Henry’s decision.
“Sounds like his mind’s made up,” Charles said. “You might want to think about respecting his choice, even if you don’t understand it. Who will there be for Henry to come home to if not you? Is that what you want?”
Her father’s wise words had been enough to soften Cornelia’s heart, and before the week ended, she initiated a conversation with Henry that began with an apology and ended in a lot of hugging and kissing.
Tonight would be their last evening together before he boarded the train in the morning with nearly a dozen other local boys. His parents would meet him in Winnipeg for a brief reunion before sending him on the next leg of his journey, toward a training base outside Vancouver.
Cornelia took her bath with care and put on her navy skirt and Henry’s favorite soft pink sweater set. Her aunt Nonie had graciously offered to take supper out to the field for the harvest crew tonight so Cornelia could prepare for an evening with “her fella.”
Roseburg was throwing a farewell dance, and Cornelia knew she and Henry would at least make an appearance. She hoped they’d leave early and spend a lot of time alone, though. She was certainly not in the mood for celebration or chitchat.
Cornelia was surprised when Henry pulled up in his uncle’s truck. Until that point, his uncle Ben had allowed him to drive it only for farm purposes. When Henry came to see her, he trekked to her place on horseback or bicycle, or was occasionally chauffeured by Cornelia herself, much to his humiliation.
When he stepped out of the truck, Cornelia felt her breath get sucked away, and her knees almost buckled. Dressed in his newly issued uniform, Henry stood before her as an official member of the Royal Canadian Army. She had known that the new recruits were to wear their uniforms to the dance tonight and on the train tomorrow, but she hadn’t prepared herself for the picture now before her. Henry, a soldier. He looked taller.
“Hello, beautiful.” He took her hand and kissed it lightly.
She couldn’t choke out so much as a hello. Henry led her by the hand to the truck and opened her door with a grand flourish. “M’lady.”
As she climbed in, Cornelia smiled back. She felt like a princess. Maybe I should just relax and enjoy it, she told herself. This is Henry’s night, after all. Be there for him, Corrie. You can do this. Give him a reason to want to come back.
As she walked into the town hall, Cornelia couldn’t believe the efforts the ladies of the Women’s Institute had made to create a festive atmosphere. The aroma of freshly brewing coffee and fall flowers masked the usual musty smell of the building. Red, white, and blue streamers created a glorious canopy above their heads, while miniature Union Jacks graced every table. The room was filled with her former schoolmates—the boys in their new uniforms, the girls wearing their finest.
Onstage, the Brewster Brothers band was already taking requests, playing each one with their enthusiastic blend of toe-tapping guitar, fiddle, and accordion music. The three of them were also in uniform, and Cornelia wondered if they would have opportunities to use their talents once they shipped out.
It was not considered good etiquette to dance every song with the same man, so Cornelia dutifully accepted each invitation extended to her and made the rounds of the boys in the group. She chatted briefly with each one, wishing him well and doing her best to bolster her own courage and patriotism even though her heart ached. During every dance, she managed to spot Henry and make eye contact across the room, whether he was dancing with another girl or taking a break at one of the tables. Each time, her heart soared with longing for him, and she refused to let herself think of what the next day would bring.
The older women kept the punch and sandwiches coming, and the young people danced the night away. It was midnight when Henry and Cornelia finally stole away and drove his uncle’s precious truck to their favorite spot down by the creek.
“Awfully chilly for sitting here tonight.” Cornelia rubbed her arms. Henry reached behind the seat and pulled out a thick quilt. She smiled at him and begged time to stop as they snuggled together, watching the stars into the wee hours of the morning.
CHAPTER 9
November 1939
Cornelia placed a towel over her bread dough and carried it to the wood stove. After she’d opened the oven, she set the bowl on the oven door, allowing the comforting warmth to fill the room and raise the dough. She paused in her work long enough to watch out the window for a while. Harvest was over. The last of the fall leaves blanketed the ground. Gray clouds filled the sky and Cornelia wondered if it might snow. She spotted her brother letting the cows out of the barn and knew he would soon bring in the morning’s milk.
Another gloomy day. She sighed. The same mundane chores and the same endless thoughts about the same absent person filled her days. Three weeks had passed since she’d said good-bye to Henry, and already she had trouble picturing his face.
Just as she turned back to the kitchen, Shep
began to bark and Cornelia looked toward the road. An old gray truck bumped down their driveway, and she strained to figure out who was driving, to no avail. It wasn’t until the driver got out that she recognized her friend Agnes. How unusual, she thought as she pushed the coffeepot to the hottest part of the stove and went to open the front door.
Agnes held her eight-month-old son, Wayne. Both smiled at Cornelia.
“Corrie!” Agnes was out of breath as she came in. “I went to town this morning and decided to stop by. We’ve hardly seen each other, except at church. How are you?” Her words all seemed to come out in one big gush.
Cornelia reached out and took the baby, who immediately began to wail for his mother as she took off her coat. Cornelia gave him back quickly and poured Agnes some coffee. Agnes’s husband, George, was one of the men who’d enlisted and boarded the train at the same time as Henry. George and Agnes had been schoolmates of Cornelia’s long before they became a couple, and while she and Agnes had once been close, they hadn’t socialized much since Agnes had married. Although the girls were the same age, marriage and motherhood set them worlds apart, at least in Cornelia’s mind. Now, however, they had much in common once more.
“Did you hear?” Agnes’s eyes sparkled. “Betsy Miller got her first letter.”
Cornelia looked up, feeling instantly flooded with jealousy.
“When?” As if it were some sort of race.
“Yesterday. William wrote it on the train to Vancouver and mailed it from there, so she’d be the first wife to receive a letter. It didn’t contain much new information, but he described the Rocky Mountains to her. ‘You’ve never seen anything like it,’ he said. ‘I wish I could send pictures. They’re breathtaking!’ That’s about all she shared with me, of course. I just came from her place.”
Cornelia longed to simply catch a glimpse of Betsy’s letter, knowing that Henry might have sat within William’s sight as he wrote it.
“Did he mention the other men?”
“I was getting to that.” Agnes placed little Wayne on the blanket she had spread on the floor. “The letter contains greetings for each of us. She’s bringing it to church on Sunday, and she’ll read that part aloud. There’s just one thing.” She looked Cornelia in the eyes. “Henry isn’t with them.”
“What?” For a brief moment, Cornelia hoped Henry had changed his mind and was still in Winnipeg or, better yet, on his way back to Roseburg.
“He got separated from the rest of our boys in Winnipeg and sent to another division. William thinks Henry’s group headed in the opposite direction, to a training base in Ontario.”
Cornelia stared at her shoes, determined to keep the tears inside. Somehow this news made Henry seem even farther away, and she wondered how long it would be before she received a letter of her own. It wouldn’t seem right, she supposed, for her to receive one before any of the married girls. She and Henry had discussed the possibility of marriage when he returned, but it was not a formal engagement. Tucked away in her diary were two short notes in Henry’s handwriting: one he’d left on their front porch one day when nobody was home, simply saying he’d stopped by. The other was for her eyes only, and Cornelia had memorized it backward and forward:
“Dear Corrie, I’m sorry about our spat. Thank you for returning my affection even though you don’t completely understand why I’m enlisting. It’s just something I have to do, but I don’t want this to come between us. I’ve never met a girl like you and I really hope you will wait for me. I love you, Corrie.”
At the bottom, he drew a heart with both their full names inside it: “Cornelia Faith Simpson + Henry Wallace Roberts.”
The two young women spent the next hour visiting and playing with the baby. By the time Jim came in the back door, milk buckets in both hands, little Wayne was starting to fuss and Agnes decided it was time to leave. Cornelia thanked her for stopping by and then watched from the door as Agnes tucked her baby into a basket on the seat of the truck, walked around to the driver’s side, and drove away.
Turning to the pails with a sigh, she began the daily chore of pouring milk through the cream separator and hauling the cream down to the cellar. It would be picked up the next day by the cream man, Mr. Bentley, who paid ten cents a quart.
Later that evening, Cornelia’s father cleared his throat and asked about Agnes’s visit. “Any news from your young man?”
“If you mean Henry”—Cornelia hesitated—“no.” She was in no mood to go into explanations.
“Who else would Daddy mean, silly?” Jim teased. “You got another fella besides Henry?”
“No, of course not. But you both talk about him like he’s my property or something.”
“Well, ain’t he? He’s practically your husband.” Jim grinned. “And when he is, he’s gonna take me fishin’ every day and teach me how to drive his car, and we’re gonna go all the way to Winnipeg, watch ball games, and eat all the ice cream we want!”
His father cut Jim off before the list could grow any longer. “That fancy car belongs to Henry’s father, Jim, don’t forget. Now there’s a newspaper on the seat of the truck. Could you go fetch it for me, please? And make sure Shep’s got fresh water.”
Jim left the house and Charles turned to his only daughter.
“Corrie, did Henry pop the question before he left?”
Cornelia wasn’t sure what to say. “No-o . . . not exactly. Nothing’s official. He would need to talk to you first anyway, right?
“He did, honey.”
Cornelia looked up in surprise. She studied her father’s blue eyes to make sure he wasn’t teasing, but she couldn’t speak.
“He did it just a few days before he left. I thought he planned to propose before they shipped out, but I guess he decided to take my advice.”
“Your advice?” Cornelia could feel the blood rushing to her head. “You told him not to propose?”
Her father raised his palms toward her. “No, no, no. I gave him my blessing to ask you, Corrie. He’s a good man, and I can see how much the two of you care for each other.”
Cornelia studied her father’s face. “Then what did you mean?”
“I told him I thought it might be better to wait until he returns before making things official, that’s all.”
Cornelia looked at her hands, which trembled in her lap as a result of emotions she could neither contain nor identify. You mean if he returns, she thought. She found herself feeling mildly annoyed at her father, both for withholding this information and for suggesting that Henry delay his proposal. Her stomach churned if she allowed herself to think about her father’s reasons for doing so, and she pictured Henry’s father returning home from war with a missing arm. Did Daddy think she would change her mind if Henry came home wounded? More than the worry, though, her heart flooded with joy to know Henry had asked for her hand in marriage, and that her father had agreed.
That night as he prepared for bed, Charles Simpson smiled at the unfamiliar sound of his daughter humming contentedly.
CHAPTER 10
December 1939
Saturdays always held plenty to do. Today Cornelia was carrying clean clothes in from the frozen outdoors and heating irons to press shirts for her father and brother to wear to church the next day. She sighed, dreading another Sunday dinner at Aunt Miriam’s. The tension had never really cleared between them since that day back in July when Cornelia had given her aunt a piece of her mind. Cornelia carried no regrets, however, except for the angst the situation caused her father.
“Mary would never let her get away with that kind of disrespect, Charles,” Miriam had told her brother while Cornelia was within earshot. “And you shouldn’t, either. It’s going to come back to haunt you, mark my words. There’s a wild and willful streak in that girl.”
To Cornelia’s relief, her father had never mentioned the incident to her. She suspected that on som
e level he even admired her for doing what he could not do: stand up to his older sister. He hadn’t backed down to Miriam, though. He’d merely listened and made no reply, although Cornelia did once hear him mutter something about “those who can’t do, teach.”
Cornelia knew her aunt meant well. She had been good to them over the years, and she led a lonely life. But there were some Sundays when Cornelia would just as soon be relieved of the endless opinions, go straight home from church, and spend her one free afternoon dreaming of Henry and the life they would make together as soon as he returned. If I believed in prayer, I’d ask God to bring him home quickly, she thought, pushing an iron between the buttons on Jimmy’s shirt. Today would be a really good day to bring him home. Yesterday would have been even better. When she heard a vehicle pulling into the yard and Shep barking, Cornelia put the heavy iron on the stove top with a thud and went to the window.
When she spotted the red Pontiac, Cornelia’s heart began to pound furiously. For one fleeting second her mind even allowed her to consider the “prayer” she had almost prayed for Henry’s return. Maybe God would finally prove himself—make it up to her after all she’d been through. Maybe God knew how desperately she needed Henry. Maybe God had come to his senses and brought Henry back to her. She didn’t even bother to grab a sweater, but charged out onto the icy walkway so carelessly she almost landed in a snowbank.
When a one-armed stranger stepped out of the car, Cornelia stopped in her tracks. Slowly a light began to dawn on her, and Eva Roberts climbed out of the car as her husband opened the passenger-side door. Cornelia strained to see into the backseat, looking for some sign of a third person, but to no avail. Why had Henry’s parents driven all the way from Winnipeg in the middle of winter?
Mr. and Mrs. Roberts trudged toward Cornelia with somber faces, and Eva enveloped her in a long embrace. Cornelia’s head began to spin. What was going on?