The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  “Oh, go ahead and tell her, Kit.” Red popped open the bottle of champagne for herself. “I’m sure she’ll keep it secret.” My face must have been one of shock because Red glared at me to play along. “Kit, you know… the story.”

  “Oh, yeah, sure,” I said, realizing she wanted me to make something up. “The story.” I was good at making up stories. Some people would call them lies. I took a drink while I thought one up, something Roxy would believe, which wasn’t hard because she believed everything I said.

  Roxy sat up tall.

  “Well you see here, Red and I, well we… ahh…” I looked at Red—she wanted a story. It was all I could do but keep a straight face. “Are you sure you want me to tell? I mean, aren’t you embarrassed?” Red’s eyebrows rose into her forehead, and I coughed out a laugh. “All right.” I shrugged. “I thought you’d be embarrassed, but since you insist…”

  Roxy moved to the edge of her sandbag, mouth gaping open.

  “Why would I be embarrassed?” Red said.

  I leaned forward, getting really close to Roxy, cupping my hand near my mouth but it was all for play. “So, it turns out I wasn’t in trouble, just like the doctor said.”

  “You weren’t?” Roxy said, near breathless.

  “Nah, but Red here sure was.” I slapped my palm to my forehead. “God, I can’t believe you want me to tell her the truth, Red.” I sighed. “Well… you see here, Rox.” I inched even closer. “The sergeant blamed Red for infecting his platoon with a venereal disease they couldn’t diagnose.”

  Roxy burst out laughing, falling feet over head off her sandbag.

  “Serious!” I crossed my heart. “God’s truth.” I slugged down some wine.

  “Oh, yeah, Kit?” Red said, giving me a little push.

  “Yeah, Red.” Now I was the one laughing. “You said to tell her.”

  Red dumped champagne on my lap, tipping the bottle up as I tried swiping it away in the air. “Knock it off, jeez…” I said, but I knew I deserved it.

  “Don’t listen to her Roxy,” Red said.

  Roxy straightened her headscarf and fixed her hair. “No really, where were ya? I can’t say I was lonely, but I sure was really tired of doing it all. Nurse this, nurse that. There was only so much I could handle, and with the doctor swearing like he was and me trying to keep the soldiers from fading off—”

  Red glared at me, saying words with her eyes and I turned to Roxy. “Friendly fire struck some villagers,” I blurted. “Building caved in right on top of them. The sergeant wanted the wounded taken care of without alerting too many people. A messed-up shoulder, a perforated thigh, and a torn gut.” I pointed in the air, making up a location. “A blacksmith and his wife. Nice lady, given the fact she’d almost died. We were working all night like you.” My eyes were set on Roxy in the dark; she had no idea that while the details of the made-up scene tumbled out of my mouth, I thought about the German, and every stitch me and Red sewed into him under a flickering lantern. I took a drink.

  Roxy set her wine down. “Why didn’t ya say somethin’ before?”

  “We had orders to keep it secret,” Red said. “You understand, right, Roxy?”

  “Sure,” Roxy said, taking sips of her wine. “Will you get a load of that? Friendly fire.”

  I didn’t like telling Roxy a story this time, mostly because I wanted to talk about what we’d done—but Red would kill me. I felt a push to at least tell her a little bit of the truth and release some of the tension in my chest. My foot tapped, thinking… thinking about what I could and shouldn’t say.

  “Did you hear about the German spies? Dressing up in our boys’ uniforms, pretending to be soldiers—” I looked over both shoulders “—walking around camp and coming into our tents.”

  Red’s eyes lit up in the dark. “Kit!” Her voice was curt, as I expected it to be.

  “What? It’s the truth,” I said.

  Roxy’s mouth hung open a second or two, then she laughed. “Oh, nice one, you gals. You’re not gonna get me twice.”

  Red tilted her head. “Hear that, Kit?”

  I took a drink. “Yeah, I hear.” I did feel better, even if it was only for a second. I moved some sandbags out of the way so we could stretch out. With the lull in the bombings, the stars had come out, winning their own war with the haze.

  “Man, oh man, look at those sparklers,” Roxy said. “Makes you wish you were with your fella, gazing at you like you’re gazing at the stars.” I tossed my helmet at her, and she acted as if I’d socked her in the stomach. “Ugh… What’d you do that for?”

  “You’re dreaming,” I said. “Fellas and stars…”

  “Don’t you get looked at, Kit?” Roxy said. “I get looked at.” She dusted off her shirt where it was still unbuttoned from earlier.

  I laughed. “We know you do, Rox,” I said. “And no, I don’t get looked at.” I took a slug of my wine, then thought about Jack, and his eyes, wondering if he was taking a look at me near the mess tent, or just looking at me.

  “What do you mean you know?” Roxy said, tossing my helmet back, and I shook my head.

  “Forget it,” I said, and I tipped my bottle up for a drink, washing thoughts of Jack away.

  Two nurses from the swing shift sauntered by. “Well, what do you have here, Kit?” one said, and when she bent over and picked through the bottles, I reached into her pocket and lifted her lighter. She looked at me, still bent over, and I stuffed it in my pocket.

  “You have a good look?” I smiled. “Because you’re not getting any,” I said. “I won this fair and square.” I glanced at Red, who took another look at her champagne bottle.

  “Actually, I’m in the market for smokes,” she said. “You got any you can spare?”

  I pulled two from my pack. “It’ll cost you some chocolate.”

  She traded me the chocolate for the smokes, and after her and her friend walked away, I had a little laugh.

  “What?” Roxy said, and I tossed up the lighter in my hand.

  “Looks like one dropped their lighter, that’s all,” I said, and I lay back again, hands under my head.

  “Achoo!” Roxy sneezed, startling both Red and me.

  “Easy, Rox.” I pulled a tissue from my pocket. “You’re gonna lose the war for us with your sneezing,” I said, and she swatted me.

  “Stop it,” she said. “I am not.”

  It was how me and Red met her—the sneezing.

  *

  Our first night on the beach. The air was thick with smoke and heavy with the smell of spent ammunition. And dark. Pitch black—and when someone says ‘pitch black’ they have no idea what pitch black really means unless they’d dug in the sand and in the grass with me and Red that night on Utah Beach.

  I sipped from my canteen, wetting my drying lips, trying like hell not to guzzle what clean water I had left. My limbs felt like gelatin, and my skin was raw with sand rash. We helped set up the hospital and tended to over a hundred patients. Still hadn’t eaten. Still hadn’t gone to the bathroom in the grass, but mostly out of fear of stepping on a mine.

  Red lifted her canteen to her lips, but dropped her arms they were so tired, so I helped her lift it, and by the slosh and swish of the water, I knew she only had a few drinks left too. We’d never spoken of it, how tired we were the first day, not with so many of our boys dead on the beach, some still floating in the surf.

  “Thanks for saving me,” I whispered. I pulled back my uniform collar, where it had stretched from the ocean water, to brush sand from my neck. “I would have drowned had you not pulled me up.” I clinked my canteen against hers. “I’ll save you next time, all right?”

  “Sure, Kit,” she said.

  Gunfire tapped in the distance—a monotonous, deadly beat all through the night. Bap, bap. Followed by a long pause. Bap, bap. I chewed my nails in the dark, hoping to catch winks in between the shots. Footsteps came up from behind in the sand and my whole body froze. We’d been warned about Germans sneaking up on us in
the night and slitting our throats.

  I pulled my last fingernail from my teeth. My hands shook. “Red,” I whispered, and she searched for my head in the dark, pushing her lips into my ear.

  “It could be a nurse,” she said.

  “Achoo!” we heard, followed by complete silence. Not one bless you from the ground where other nurses had dug in, which made me think they thought it was a German too. More footsteps followed, closer, louder, the crunch of boots on the beach followed by the spray of sand from moving feet. “Achoo!” we heard again, only this time we definitely heard a voice. A woman, and she had cursed, then moments later she fell into our hole. “Achoo—whoa!”

  “You all right?” I said, untangling her feet and arms from my body. “Cover your mouth.”

  “Sorry,” she whispered. “I’ve been wandering around for an hour trying to find a place to bunk. They said we’d have tents tomorrow or somethin’.” She paused, and I thought she’d clammed up, but she didn’t. “Oh, and boy is it dark or what? I’ve never seen it so dark. Back in Jersey…”

  “What is it, the Roxy Hour or something?” Red said, and she sat up in the dark, dropping her canteen in the sand.

  “The Roxy Hour?” she said. “Oh, yeah… Nonna used to listen to the show on the radio…”

  “Shh!” me and Red both said, and she did, but only for a second.

  “Does whispering count?” she said.

  “Hey, did you hear about the Germans? You know… the war and all that? We’re trying to get some sleep here,” I said.

  “Oh yeah,” she said, and she buried herself into our foxhole. “Me too.”

  I covered my face with my helmet and closed my eyes.

  “Achoo!” My eyes sprung open with her sneeze. “Sorry,” she whispered, before rolling over. “Roxy… I like it!”

  *

  Roxy took the tissue I’d offered her and blew her nose good. “Dang, Kit, you’re a walking PX. You know that?” She tossed the used tissue into a barrel for burning. “What else you got in there? Churchill? Is he in there too?”

  I laughed, pressing my back against a sandbag, and the assortment of tools in my pocket jingled and twanged. “Only the essentials. I like to be prepared.”

  “She was like that when I met her, in the days before the landing,” Red said. “If you needed something, Kit was the one to see.”

  “Yeah, yeah…” I said, looking up at the stars. “Girls, where do you think we’ll go from here?”

  “We follow the boys,” Roxy piped. “Straight on to Berlin.”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I said. “When we go home. Will it be different? Will we be different?”

  Even Roxy sat quietly.

  “Not between us.” Red clinked her bottle against ours. “We’ll meet up, you know? Someplace nice, and not at a hospital or in a tent,” she said.

  “As soon as I get home, I’m moving someplace nice, sophisticated. Somewhere far away from eastern Washington where everything is brown. I want to live somewhere green.”

  Roxy looked shocked, her black eyelashes fanning into her eyebrows. “You mean it’s not green like what Woody Guthrie sang about?”

  I laughed. “Douglas firs and lush mountains? No, where I live it’s more like sagebrush and rattlesnakes. And dry. Only a little bit of rain.”

  “Why would he do that?” Roxy stood up, and she looked as if she wanted to stomp right off to America and give Woody Guthrie a piece of her mind. “No, really. Why would he do that?”

  Me and Red laughed at her reaction—her indignation—the gall of Woody Guthrie. “I don’t know, Rox,” I said, taking another swig of wine. “Because he’s a liar? There’s a lot of liars around here.”

  “Oh, here we go,” Red said, leaning back. “More about Nurse Blanchfield?”

  “Listen,” I said. “I’m not bellyaching or nothing—”

  “Sounds like you are.” Roxy giggled, tipping back her wine.

  I promised Red I wouldn’t talk about Nurse Blanchfield and the War Department film almost every nurse in America had watched before signing up. White dresses and lipstick were what she promised.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “Listen, you should have seen my face when I got issued my fatigues and boots instead of a white dress. My mouth hung open and the lady told me I’d catch flies if I didn’t close it.” Red giggled from under her mouthful of champagne. “That’s when I realized Nurse Blanchfield was a better storyteller than me.” I toasted my bottle in the air. “So, here’s to you ole crocodile. You got me. You got me good.”

  “That’s the one then,” Red said, nodding. “You found your match.”

  “I suppose.”

  Roxy sat back down with a humph, her wine bottle cradled between her legs. “What about you, Red? Where are you going after the war?”

  Red took a long quiet sip of her champagne. “Home to Oklahoma where I support my mama. She can’t take care of herself since my dad died and without me and the dough I’m bringing in, she’d be destitute. Life can be tough there.”

  “Oh sorry, Red,” Roxy said. “I didn’t know.”

  Red nodded with her head down, and I reached for her hand. “In a strange way, the war saved us a little bit with the steady pay.”

  “You mean somethin’ good came out of this here war?” Roxy said with a laugh.

  “I guess so,” Red said.

  “Well, ladies,” I said, clinking our bottles together, “here’s to the war!”

  And we drank every last drop we had, not knowing what kind of boys we’d get coming to us in the morning, or who would be alive come the afternoon. Only the wounded and the dead knew what we’d been through, what we’d seen. And I thought, When I leave this godforsaken war, I’ll leave my memories in the ground with the last-word whispers from the dying.

  And I’d never step foot in Europe again.

  4

  EVELYN

  June 1989

  Evelyn Jones walked around her house in a hurry, closing all the window blinds with her purse hooked on her arm, before double-checking the stove and filling up her cat’s water dish. She took a parting look at herself in the hall mirror and studied her pink blouse, the one her daughter Michelle had given her for Mother’s Day, ruffling the poufy cap sleeves before sniffing her wrists where she’d sprayed a little Windsong perfume. She unbuttoned her collar to show off the strand of pearls she’d clasped around her neck, another gift, this one from her husband, touching them lightly with two fingers, but then thought they were a little too fancy for coffee at the Pancake House with her church group and slipped them into her purse. She’d run out of rouge, and pinched her sagging cheeks to redden them up, before sweeping a lock of hair from her forehead and looking into her eyes, examining the shafts of color that used to be so bright.

  A puff of air blew from her mouth; there was little she could do about that at her age.

  She pulled her purse strap up over her shoulder and walked briskly down the hall for the front door, but before she could set her hand on the knob, a knock came from the other side and shocked her still.

  She stood on her tiptoes to look through the peephole.

  A man. A nicely dressed man. Young. She guessed he was about thirty, with shiny brown hair and fitted clothing—and a tie? He didn’t strike her as the type of man she should be afraid of, but still, she wasn’t used to getting visitors. She opened the door cautiously, keeping the screen door locked between them.

  “Hello, ma’am,” he said, and he adjusted the leather bag he had slung over his shoulder. The American flag her husband had strung on the flagpole waved and rippled behind him. “That’s a nice flag you have,” he said, smiling, but when Evelyn didn’t smile back, he cleared his throat. “I was wondering if you could help me. I’m looking for someone.”

  “Out here?” Evelyn lived in the country, a few miles from the nearest town. She glanced over his shoulder and to his car; he had to drive down the long gravel driveway, past the barn, and through the cattle pasture
s to make it to her house.

  He smiled. “Yes, ma’am…” He searched his pockets, padding them first before digging his fingers into one and pulling out a business card. “I’m a reporter from New York.”

  Evelyn held in a laugh. “New York! What on earth…”

  “I’m doing a story.” He held his card out for her to take, but Evelyn still didn’t feel comfortable enough to unlatch the lock, and he stood with his arm extended.

  She wondered what kind of story would bring him to eastern Washington, where the local news only talked about the weather. Clearly, he had the wrong house, the wrong county—God, even the wrong state. The only reporter she’d ever known was back in the war, and he was a sneaky little man, someone she never trusted. She hoped this man wasn’t like him.

  He finally lowered his arm after waiting for Evelyn to take his card and reached into his leather shoulder bag. “I’m looking for…” He glanced at some notes he’d pulled from a folder, balancing his bag and the papers in his full hands. “Do you know…” He looked at Evelyn through the screen, back at his notes, then back to Evelyn. “Are you Kit?”

  Evelyn felt herself go pale, paler than she already looked without any rouge on. She hadn’t used that name in over forty years—that name belonged to a girl. Someone else. Another life.

  She slowly moved her head from side to side, too stunned to squeak out any kind of words.

  The man stared at her, a little gleam in his eye, and Evelyn sensed that he didn’t believe her. A few excruciating quiet seconds followed. She rested a hand on the screen door lever, making sure the lock was still firmly engaged, which he noticed.

  “This is the fifth dairy farm I’ve visited in Grant County. The farm over there—” he pointed off in the distance “—said he thought you might be the woman I’m looking for.” He smiled, but Evelyn only continued to stare, unblinking, until her eyes flicked to his papers and she caught a glimpse of what he had compiled.

  Letters, they looked like, old yellowy envelopes addressed in pencil. Cursive handwriting. He swiftly pulled the letters back so she couldn’t see, clearing his throat.