The Show (Northwest Passage Book 3)

by John A. Heldt

  When Grace knocked on the door, neither Caroline Walker nor Robert Walker came to meet her. John Walker did. He seemed surprised but pleased to see his unexpected visitor.

  "Hello, Grace," John said. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

  "An egregious error by the Postal Service. I found this letter for you in the Greens' mailbox and thought I'd remedy the injustice."

  Grace handed the envelope to John.

  "That's very thoughtful of you, Miss Smith, but you didn't have to make a special trip."

  "I enjoy walking, John," Grace said. She gave him a warm smile. "I also enjoy seeing my neighbors."

  John chuckled and returned the smile. He glanced at the small envelope and nodded before placing the parcel in his pocket and opening the door completely to his visitor.

  "Thanks for bringing this. I've been expecting it. It's an invitation to a reunion of veterans in Seattle," he said. "Most of the men I know from this area are still over there, but they're already planning their get-togethers. More proof, I guess, that you never really leave the Army."

  John motioned to Grace with his hand.

  "Come in and get warm. I was just setting up a Christmas gift I bought for my parents. Maybe you can tell me whether I got my money's worth."

  "I'd like to, but I really can't stay."

  "Is something going on?"

  "I'm supposed to make dinner for the Greens. They drove into Seattle to do some shopping and won't be back until six. It's Edith and Lucy's nineteenth birthday."

  John frowned and looked at the floor before returning to Grace.

  "Maybe next time," he said.

  Grace tilted her head slightly, smiled, and slowly met his eyes.

  "Are you going to give up that easily, Captain Walker?"

  John laughed.

  "I guess not."

  "Good. I'd be happy to evaluate your gift. I can always spare a few minutes for a war hero."

  Grace laughed to herself as she thought of the exchange. She felt a little guilty about playing with his heartstrings, but not too guilty. She figured if he could handle Germans with bayonets, then he could handle a blonde with an envelope.

  John took Grace's coat, put it on a rack, and led her to the family room, where a roaring fire in an immense stone fireplace brought immediate and welcome warmth. He leaned his cane against the side of a cushioned chair, pushed away an upturned cardboard box that occupied the center of the hardwood floor, and extended his arm toward the far wall.

  "Well, what do you think?"

  Grace looked at him with puzzled eyes.

  "What do I think of what?"

  "What do you think of this?"

  Grace took a closer look at the back of the room and noticed a phonograph. Housed in a polished Queen Anne-style wooden cabinet, it appeared to be fresh out of the box.

  "It's beautiful."

  "It's more than beautiful. It's functional. It's a Victrola XVI, the newest model on the market. I picked it up this morning, after my folks left for the day. I hadn't planned on setting it up until tomorrow night, but I decided that I couldn't wait."

  "Don't your parents already have a phonograph?"

  "They used to," John said with a smile. "It was an older model that didn't perform as well. I donated it to one of the local schools."

  "It's a lovely present. Your parents are lucky to have such a thoughtful son."

  "They are," John said. Both laughed. "Of course, I couldn't buy a new Victrola without buying some new recordings to go with it. My mother loves Irish ballads, so I started there and worked my way back to Beethoven."

  Grace walked over to the massive phonograph and wondered what John and others from this time would have thought of the MP3 players of 2002. A lot had changed in eighty-four years, but one thing had not: people still loved their music.

  "Are you going to play something for me?"

  John grinned.

  "I thought you'd never ask."

  The captain pulled a paper sleeve from a freestanding wire rack, removed a black disc, and carefully placed the disc on the turntable. He gave the crank on the side of the cabinet a few turns and then moved the brass tone arm, with its rigid steel needle, onto the recording. Within seconds John McCormack was singing "When Irish Eyes are Smiling" and John Walker, with smiling American eyes, was extending a hand.

  "Would you care to dance, Miss Smith? One song is all I ask."

  Grace gave him a suspicious grin. She knew a setup when she saw one, but she didn't mind. Dinner could wait for a dance or two. She put one hand in his, put another on his waist, and was soon moving in circles on a hardwood floor.

  Dressed in a white tea dress, Grace laughed as they moved around the cardboard box and John tried to compensate for a leg that did not yet allow graceful movement. She appreciated the effort, just as she appreciated his interest in the girl next door. She wasn't sure where any of this was headed, but she did know that she liked the attention.

  The experience conjured images of the last time she had danced in a house. She remembered every detail of that memorable Thanksgiving night in the still memorable year of 1941.

  She remembered taking Joel to his place to get money for a movie but never making it to the show. She remembered dancing in his kitchen to music that streamed from a battery-operated radio and moonlight that streamed into a house without power. She remembered waking up in his arms. It had been the most romantic night of her life and her defining moment as an adult.

  Grace snapped back to the present when the "Irish Eyes" recording, barely three minutes long, gave up the ghost. She thought again of MP3 players and compact discs and how nice it would be to have even a long-playing album to enjoy.

  John Walker did not let the limits of technology ruin the moment. For the next hour, he mixed marches and waltzes with classics and jazz, an African American music style that had migrated westward from the South and was just now taking hold in Seattle.

  Grace told John that she loved jazz but did not explain that she had developed that love in the late 1930s or that she had last heard the music on an iPod while pushing Ginny and Katie in a double stroller in 2002. She merely asked to hear as much of it as possible.

  The captain had his own favorites. He insisted on playing songs from local Hawaiian guitarist Helen Louise Ferera, John Philip Sousa marches, and fast waltzes.

  The fast songs produced comic moments as the wounded warrior and his dance partner tried to keep from falling down as they maneuvered around the box and large pieces of furniture. Twice Grace laughed so hard she had to stop dancing.

  The slow songs, which came toward the end, produced something else. When John put an arm around Grace's back and moved her around the family room, he neither laughed nor talked. He did not fall down. He instead gazed into his partner's eyes like a man falling in love.

  Grace did nothing to discourage the looks. She knew it was wrong to even think about another man when she was still mourning the memory of her husband, but she didn't care enough to stop the moment. She liked being held. She liked laughing again. She liked living.

  When the last of five slow waltzes concluded and the stylus on the Victrola slid from music grooves to scratchy grooves in the middle of the disc, John brought the dance to a stop and gazed at his neighbor. He moved his lips to within inches of hers but stopped when a grandfather clock in the back of the room chimed four times.

  Grace stepped back, sighed, and smiled nervously.

  "I think . . . I think I should go. The Greens are expecting dinner," she said.

  She slowly released John's hand and watched him display the wistful smile of a man who had been denied but not defeated. She knew he'd be back to woo her again. She knew she would not mind. The question, as always, was where to take their growing affection.

  CHAPTER 50: GRACE

  Monday, December 23, 1918

  If there was one thing mechanical that Grace Smith missed about the twenty-first century, it was its washing machines. She did not miss c
omputers or cell phones or even dishwashers, but she did miss devices that allowed her to clean clothes without turning a crank by hand.

  She stopped for a moment to wipe her forehead with a small towel. Despite temperatures outside that hovered in the thirties, it was warm in the basement of the Green house.

  "I can take over," Edith said. "You've had quite a go at it."

  "I think I can go a bit longer," Grace said. "Besides, I like turning this crank. It reminds me of the beauty of life and how it runs in circles."

  "You don't mean that," Lucy said.

  "You're right. I don't."

  Lucy laughed.

  Grace smiled as she watched Edith fold sheets and Lucy hang wet undergarments from a clothesline that stretched the width of the musty, utilitarian basement. She did not like doing laundry, but she did like spending time with the teenage versions of her aunt and mother.

  "How are you and Bill getting on, Lucy?"

  "I think I love him," Lucy said matter-of-factly.

  Edith turned to face Grace.

  "That's what she says to all the boys after two matinees."

  "He also took me to dinner, you prig!"

  Lucy lifted her nose and switched to a softer voice.

  "That means he loves me too."

  Grace laughed. She loved Lucy's spirit almost as much as her West County lilt. She could not believe her mother had ever been this young. She could believe she had always been this adorable. When she saw that Edith had no intention of contesting Lucy's claim, she returned to the crank and the drudgery.

  "Grace?"

  "Yes, Lucy?"

  "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

  "No, not at all."

  "Do you mind if I ask you a very personal question?"

  Grace looked at Lucy and eased up on the crank.

  "What's your question, Lucy?"

  "What's it like?"

  "What's what like?" Grace asked.

  "What's it like to be with a man?"

  Grace stopped cranking.

  "Lucy!" Edith said. "That is rude and presumptuous."

  Grace stifled a laugh and then looked thoughtfully at each of the twins.

  "That's all right, Edith. I don't consider the question rude, and given my condition, it's hardly presumptuous," Grace said. She turned to Lucy. "Why do you want to know?"

  Lucy, red-faced, let go of the clothesline and dropped a pair of bloomers to the floor. She glanced at Edith, who shook her head, and then at Grace, who patiently awaited an answer.

  "I'm just curious, that's all. I've been thinking about it a lot lately."

  "Didn't your mother ever talk to you?"

  Grace regretted the question the second she asked it. She knew the answer.

  "My mother did not live long enough to tell me these things and I've never been comfortable asking others. I do feel comfortable asking you."

  Grace resisted the temptation to give Lucy a hug. She felt great empathy for a girl who had not had her mother at a critical age. She could relate. Suddenly, Grace's plight seemed small.

  As Grace looked at Lucy, she also considered a poignant irony. She was now in a position to give her mother the same facts-of-life speech that Lucille Vandenberg had given her as a fifteen-year-old in 1935. The time portal, it appeared, wasn't just a taker. It was a giver too.

  "You must never be afraid to ask a question, Lucy. There is no shame in the pursuit of knowledge, only in the misuse of it."

  Grace wiped her sweaty hands on the towel and then placed them on the washer like it was a laundry-room lectern. Small puddles of wash water covered the concrete floor.

  "As for your question, it depends. If you're with a kind and caring man whom you love with all your heart, then time with him can be a beautiful thing."

  "What if he is not kind and caring?" Lucy asked.

  Grace glanced at Edith and saw her blush. It seemed that she too had more than a passing interest in the answer to the "rude and presumptuous" question.

  "If he is not kind and caring, then relations with him can be something else. What matters, Lucy, is what's in your heart and in his heart. You can make anything fulfilling and enjoyable if you approach it with the right attitude."

  Grace took a deep breath and went back to cranking. She mentally patted herself on the back for handling a delicate matter with both honesty and tact.

  "Does that answer your question?"

  "Well, yes, sort of."

  "What else would you like to know?"

  Lucy, now redder than a beet, first looked to Edith, as if seeking guidance.

  Edith stared at her sister, snorted, and then shook her head.

  "You might as well ask," Edith said. "If you don't, I'll have to buy you Sons and Lovers."

  "Lucy?" Grace asked.

  Lucy squirmed and returned to Grace with sheepish eyes.

  "Does it . . . does it hurt?"

  Grace bit her lip to keep from laughing. She could keep this conversation going for hours, and enjoy every minute, but she knew it was time to bring it to an end. She breathed deeply once again and answered the question.

  "It can, sometimes, but not usually."

  Grace watched Lucy smile, blush, and nod. She could see that she had given her mother the information she had wanted, but she wasn't at all sure she liked what Lucy was going to do with that information.

  "Just remember, Lucy, that marital relations are for marriage," Grace said, conveniently forgetting her once not-so-marital relations with Joel Francis Smith. "I can think of no faster way to get into serious trouble than to abandon your virtue to the wrong person or at the wrong time."

  "I understand," Lucy said. She nodded more vigorously. "Believe me, I do."

  "Good."

  Grace then glanced at Edith. Her crimson face had only slightly lightened.

  "Don't look at me. I don't like any boys."

  Grace smiled and laughed.

  "Perhaps you should keep it that way, at least for a while. Your world is complicated enough without them."

  CHAPTER 51: GRACE

  Tuesday, December 24, 1918

  "Thank you for having me over. Will we see you all next week?"

  "Count on it, Captain," Alistair said as he stood next to Grace and John by the door. "I know I wouldn't miss New Year's Eve with the one family in Seattle still serving quality Scotch."

  John laughed.

  "Dad's been stocking up for years. He wants to be prepared for the next wartime shortage."

  "Well, tell him I intend to put a dent in his stock. Enjoy your evening. I'll let Grace show you out."

  Alistair stepped aside so that Grace could pass and then returned to his living room, where Margaret, Edith, and Lucy entertained Penny around a Christmas tree and a table of poinsettias. Each adult had already given the girl one present, much to her delight.

  Grace followed John out the door to the front step, where a light flurry and cold air awaited. She shut the door, buttoned her wool coat, and tightened her grip on The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

  "Thank you for the book, John. It's perfect."

  "Margaret told me that you liked to read, so I figured, 'Why not?'"

  "Well, I love it."

  Grace stepped forward and kissed him on the cheek."

  "I hope you like the scarf. Edith deserves most of the credit. She's the knitter. She fixed my mistakes and added the fringe."

  "Then I will thank her when I have the opportunity," he said. "Until then, I'm giving you full credit. It's lovely."

  Grace followed John to the end of the walk, where they stopped and stared at a dark, murky sky. Snowflakes fell at a rate she considered both magical and annoying. After more than a minute of silence, Grace turned to face the captain.

  "What are you thinking?" she asked.

  "I'm thinking about Christmas Eves past and where I was a year ago."

  "You were in France?"

  "I was in a hole that my maps called France, but it could ha
ve been anywhere. I remember a night like this, a night sharing grog and stories and memories with two British officers who had seen far more war than I had and who appreciated the beauty of a peaceful moment."

  "It must have been horrible over there."

  Grace looked at John as she awaited his reply and could almost see artillery shells explode in his vacant eyes. She did not know what war did for countries, but she knew what it did to men. It changed and damaged them in ways that even love and time could not fix.

  "It wasn't bad in the beginning. I spent my first month serving in a regiment of American engineers that had been sent to dig reserve trenches near Cambrai. It was almost pleasant, in fact. Then the Brits decided it was time to test the mettle of their tanks and things got messy very fast. Each side lost about forty-five thousand men. After that, the rest of the war was just a blur."

  Grace was no stranger to such laments. She had once spent an entire evening asking Joel's father about his service as a Swift boat commander in Vietnam. Like Captain John Walker, Lieutenant Francis H. Smith had marched into a war filled with high hopes and idealism and had left it filled with cynicism and regrets.

  "Well, I, for one, am glad the war is over and that you're back safe and almost sound. I'm confident that your future Christmas Eves will be happier and more fulfilling."

  John smiled and gazed at Grace with thoughtful eyes.

  "They will if they are spent with you."

  Grace blushed and turned away.

  "Have you given more thought to my question the other day?" he asked. "Might there ever be room for another man in your heart?"

  Grace grabbed the captain's hand and turned to face him.

  "I have given the matter more thought."

  "And?"

  "And I'm still thinking. I care deeply for you, John. You're a good man. You're the kind of man any woman would want and few would deserve. But it's too soon for me to consider anyone but the child I carry. I still have much to sort out. I hope you understand."

  "I do."

  "Good."

  Grace shivered and wrapped her arms around herself tightly.