The Girls from the Beach

by Andie Newton

  “Listen. I want Red listed as a POW. All right? And promoted to increase her pay.” He nodded. “And I want Doctor Burk’s family given a special medal. I don’t care what it is, but they deserve something more than a telegram.”

  “Of course,” he said, blubbering. “I’ll do what I can.”

  “Yeah, well you’d better. We have a secret me and you, and don’t think I won’t use it.”

  He stood back up. “Is that a threat?”

  I smiled. “No. It’s a fact, sir.”

  Roxy pulled the soldiers’ dog tags from her dress and placed them on the sergeant’s desk with their wedding bands. “Come on, Kit. Let’s get out of here.” And all three of us turned on our heels, but before we could leave, Meyer spoke up.

  “Did you get the package?”

  I looked over my shoulder, pausing. “Yeah. We did.” And we walked out of that tent, leaving Jack to explain how I’d lost it.

  “Do you think he’ll believe you really lost it?” Roxy asked once we were outside.

  I shrugged one shoulder. “Doesn’t matter.” I looked at her. “Does it?”

  Moments later Jack emerged from Meyer’s tent to drive us around our field hospital to our nurses’ tents, looking a little washed up and drained from what I was sure was a doozy of a conversation. I didn’t ask how it went, because I didn’t care.

  He opened the jeep door for me, and I stopped, looking at him and then to the seat that awaited me.

  “Thanks,” I said, and I got into the jeep, making eyes at Roxy and Gail.

  “Opening a door for a woman,” Roxy said, climbing in the back. “Out here? In the war?” She whistled.

  Jack pulled up near the mess tent and while the others got out, he walked around to open my door again. We stared at each other for a moment, with his hand still on the door. “Will you… ahh…” He looked at his feet when he talked.

  “Oh, here it comes,” Roxy said as she passed. “Spill it will ya, Jack? We have a war to get to.”

  He cleared his throat first. “Kit,” he said, looking up. “When this war is over, would you have dinner with me? At a real restaurant with forks and nice plates.”

  I laughed. “I socked you in the nose, Jack.” He looked a little embarrassed, and that’s when I realized he really did like me. “Yeah, Jack,” I said. “I’ll have dinner with you.” I almost told him I thought about our time in the cellar while we were separated, and that it gave me hope when I was at my lowest, but then decided to keep that to myself.

  I kissed his cheek.

  “What’d I do to deserve that?” he said.

  I smiled. “Maybe one day I’ll tell you,” I said, and I turned to walk away when he called out to me.

  “Kit. Listen,” he said, “I’ll do everything I can to find Red.”

  “Thanks, Jack,” I said, and Roxy hooked my arm, and together with Gail, we started the slow walk back to our tent and past nurses washing their hair.

  Nosy Noreen lifted her head from her helmet, suds in her hair, one eye closed from the sting of the soap. “Where have you been?” she said, but we didn’t answer.

  “They’re back,” I heard, followed by, “They look awful!”

  “Hey, where’s Red?” one said, but we kept walking, not even a glance in their direction, when all of a sudden Benny the photographer snuck up behind us.

  Flash!

  I snatched the camera from his hands, gritting my teeth and squeezing the strap, thinking about chucking it over our tent. “Here!” I shoved it into his chest when he cowered. “Damn you, Benny. Can’t you tell we’re not in the mood for photographs?”

  “Yeah, sure, all right, Kit,” he said. “Whatever you say.”

  Noreen shook out her wet hair, standing next to Benny. “Why are you wearing dresses?” Her little nose turned up. “You girls are up to something.”

  “What did you say?” I said, and I took a pointed step toward her.

  “Kit,” Gail said. “She’s not worth it.”

  “I know you’ve been in our tent,” I said, “and if you ever come in here again, I’ll… I’ll—”

  “You’ll do what?” Nosy folded her arms. “You’ve been missing for days. And why are there only three of you?”

  My heart raced at hearing her voice, having her question us. Roxy forcefully turned me around and pushed me to walk toward our tent. “Buzz off, Nosy!” Roxy said to her over her shoulder, before tuning to me. “You gonna be all right, doll?”

  “I don’t know, Rox,” I said, and I felt a raindrop on my arm. “I’m feeling all sorts of things, and being back at our tent, it feels…” My hands shook out in front of me as more raindrops fell.

  “You ready to go in?” Roxy said, and after staring at the closed tent flaps for a second, I nodded, but I still wasn’t ready. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready. She pulled the tent flaps back and I took a step inside with Gail.

  Red’s blanket was still folded where she’d left it on her cot, her ration packs still unopened, and mail from her mother bundled with brown string lay at the foot of her mattress.

  “Don’t touch anything,” I said.

  “But we’ll be bivouacking soon,” Roxy said.

  “Just don’t touch anything, all right?” I sat down on her cot, feeling her thin mattress under me.

  “I can still smell her,” Roxy said. “She’s everywhere in this tent, Kit.”

  “I know,” I said. “I smell her too.” And I did, like a ghostly memory of what used to be, a nauseating reminder of the love we had for her.

  Roxy found our dog tags where we’d left them. I picked up the box of letters I’d written to Nurse Blanchfield and flipped through the pages. So many complaints. So many stupid remarks. None of it mattered. None. I threw the box against the side of the tent and letters flew up into the air.

  Roxy and Gail sat down, each slipping their tags over their heads.

  “Kit…” Roxy said.

  I walked around, one hand on my hip, closing my eyes and feeling the pounding throb of a migraine, seeing Red on the train, a darkened figure with the glow of the interior light casting on her hair. Her hand tapping her heart.

  “She didn’t use it,” Roxy said, and I stopped pacing. “I feel it.”

  “We have to hope,” Gail said. “It’s all we have now.”

  “Yeah.” I lowered myself onto Red’s cot. “Hope.” I slipped my dog tags over my head and held Red’s tags in my hand. “What’s that we always say?” I said, but I knew. “We have to believe?”

  “Yeah, Kit,” Roxy said. “We have to believe.”

  We hugged, all three of us, and wept. We wept for Red, what we’d been through, and because we were the lucky ones who narrowly survived. Our lockets dangled from our necks, clinking up against each other as we hugged. Three. When there should have been four.

  And somewhere in between the sobs, we made a promise to never talk about what happened during those five days in September.

  *

  We packed up that day and moved north to Nancy and then on into Luxembourg, picking up our lives in the field as if we’d never left. Meyer arranged for news to spread that Red and Doctor Burk had been transferred to explain their absences. That was the hardest part—acting like nothing had happened, as if those five days in September didn’t exist. On the outside, I was the competent, calm nurse Red had taught me to be, but on the inside, I was plagued with the constant, nagging question of where she was, and what happened to her, steering my thoughts and haunting my days and nights.

  In October, we’d stopped setting up Red’s cot, and shared the responsibility of caring for the brown box that held the last of her things. Eventually, the Nurse Corps sent her belongings home to her mother along with her dog tags. By December, the Battle of the Bulge had sent us more wounded and casualties in a single day than I’d seen in all the days since landing on the beach. The rain still hadn’t stopped; everything and everyone was wet. However, we were now very used to life on the battlefield, and did
what any good nurse would do—what Red would do—and carried on.

  A soldier with his arm blown to bits was brought into our clearing tent. “How old are you, soldier?” I asked, moving the examination light closer to his eyes, which were crystalline as glass, beautiful, yet forever tormented.

  “Twenty-two, ma’am,” he said. “Am I gonna live, ma’am?”

  I took a good look at where a German bullet had punctured his flesh and ripped it open like an overcooked hotdog. “Absolutely,” I said, rolling up my sleeves.

  “Are you sure?” he said, still worried.

  Roxy leaned in. “Ya, she’s sure. Kit here, she never lies. She’s from Washington.” She handed me her forceps. “You’ll be holding your sweetheart’s hand in no time, let me tell ya.”

  The boy had gotten it with a wooden bullet, soaked in something pink. No doubt poisonous, but it hadn’t split like it was intended. “How do you know?” he said. “The medic said it could be poison.”

  “It is poison.” Gail was about to stick him with morphine, but held up her arm instead, showing him her pink scar. “But look,” she said. “I bought one too once, and I survived. Now they call me Bullet.”

  The soldier smiled after Gail stuck him with some morphine. “Thank you, ma’am. Bastard Germans,” he murmured, but then apologized for saying bastard in front of Gail.

  Roxy leaned over and kissed his forehead as his eyes got droopy with morphine.

  He would survive, but whether or not he could use that arm in the future we had no way of knowing. Gail had gotten lucky with only losing the movement of her pinkie, which she kept hidden from our new surgeon; otherwise, she’d be sent back to General.

  A jeep pulled up outside in the mud and rain. I heard raised voices, someone asking for me, then Jack blew through our tent flaps, half smiling, half shocked. “Kit…” The surgeon barked at him to leave, and he did, but not without leaving me in a panicked state. I quickly sewed the boy up and sent him to evac.

  I looked at Roxy, whose eyes had gotten big. “Do you think?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Roxy said.

  I pulled my cap off and twisted it in my hands. “Could it be…” I swallowed. “Could it really be?” I watched the closed tent flap carefully, hearing Jack’s footsteps sloshing around in the mud on the other side.

  “You can come in now,” Roxy said, throwing open the flaps, and I expected him to rush into the tent, but instead he walked in cautiously. He took off his dripping hat, and my stomach dropped. I felt behind me for the nearest cot to sit down and immediately began to sob, covering my face.

  “Would you get a load of that,” Roxy said, and I looked up.

  A man. Heavily bruised, rough and haggard.

  “Sam?” I think my heart stopped because I didn’t feel it beating. I stood up, and he rushed over to me for an embrace. It took a few seconds to breathe, then I sobbed into his shoulder.

  Sam pulled me back. “Hey ya, sis.”

  “Hey ya, back,” I said, and we hugged again, knowing he’d never know how close he’d come to dying at the hands of the resistance. I looked over his shoulder as he hugged me, at the open tent flaps with the rain spitting in, and for the first time I stopped waiting for Red to walk through them, and looked toward the ceiling and the heavens, clutching the locket with her half, and thanked her for my brother’s life, and mine.

  27

  EVELYN

  I stood in front of the mirror in our hotel in Atlanta, feeling out the itchy skirt suit I’d bought for my interview. It was the perfect shade of pink, and something I imagined Gail wearing. Jack noticed how uncomfortable I was.

  “I don’t know why you packed a skirt,” Jack said. “You hate skirts. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I saw you in a skirt. Maybe at our wedding—wait, that was a dress. That probably doesn’t count.”

  I sucked in my gut, twisting the skirt around, but I still didn’t feel comfortable. I exhaled, my middle ballooning. “Ah hell, I should have brought pants.”

  “It’s not too late,” he said. “I can run down to the shop in the hotel lobby.”

  “No…” I said, still looking at myself in the mirror. I’d cut my hair into a nice bob, and dyed it dark brown, covering all my gray. At least I had that.

  Jack pulled back the window curtains to look at the parking lot below where guests had started to arrive for the reunion. “Too bad you didn’t bring your uniform.”

  I laughed. “My fatigues?”

  “I’m serious,” he said, pointing out the window. “Look…”

  Little old ladies walked across the parking lot in their white dresses and blue cape uniforms, arms hooked on young men, probably their sons, helping them inside the hotel, patriotic red, white, and blue corsages pinned to their lapels. My mouth hung open.

  A knock at the door brought in Michelle and her husband. I had told her about the beach landing, how I met her dad during the war, and just before we left Washington for the reunion, I told her about those five days in September. Well, as much as I was willing to speak out loud before the interview. She was surprised, to say the least, and took it all in without saying a peep. When I was finished, she wrapped her arms around me and cried. But it was a good cry, saying she understood me more than she ever had before, and she welcomed me home, and it was the first time I’d heard those words—welcome home—and started to feel like I was.

  “Your mom doesn’t like her outfit,” Jack said.

  “Actually, I have something,” Michelle said, wincing slightly, holding up a bag. “I hope you don’t mind.”

  “What is it?” I said.

  “I did some research and I heard some of the women were going to be wearing their old uniforms.” Michelle set the bag on the bed and pulled out my old fatigues, olive drab button-fly pants and matching faded shirt.

  My jaw dropped. “How did you find these?”

  “Dad said you had a box in the cellar with some of your old things,” she said.

  I shook my head after staring at the button-fly pants. “I can’t wear this.”

  Michelle held the shirt to my shoulders until I took hold of it myself. “Why not?”

  I looked in the mirror, the olive drab color contrasting with the pink suit beneath it.

  Michelle pulled a pair of shiny boots from the bag. “And I bought these. In case.” She looked at my patent-leather heels but flicked her hand at my uniform. “Clicky shoes wouldn’t go with this outfit.”

  I smiled. “Fatigues, dear. They’re called fatigues.” I closed my eyes briefly, still holding the shirt to my shoulders. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but I think I will wear them.” I slipped into the bathroom to change, tearing off my pink suit as quickly as an old lady could without pulling a muscle. One foot after the other I put my old fatigues on, a familiar feel of twill with a smidge of stiffness from age.

  “God,” I breathed. “They fit.”

  I fixed my collar and centered my locket, looking at myself in the floor-length bathroom mirror. I reached for my Max Factor face powder, dusting my nose. The others were quiet on the other side of the door, then I heard a knock.

  “Yeah?” I said, closing my compact.

  “Are you okay?” Michelle said, lips very close to the door.

  I tossed my compact into my cosmetic case to run my palms down the front of my shirt, tucking the tails into my pants and then rolling up my sleeves where my nurse patch was still sewn. “I just need a minute.”

  My eyes welled with tears, but not for the usual reasons. I thought of the girl I once was. The lives I saved. The lives we all saved. It was a strange feeling to put something on after so many years, yet feel as if you’d recently worn it. I emerged from the bathroom only to see all three of them sitting on the bed, Jack with his hands folded and Michelle and her husband smiling.

  “Mom, you look great!” she said, standing. “I can hold your locket for you since you’re not wearing the suit.”

  “No,” I said, looking in
the mirror. “Today it stays.” And while they talked about how we should get going, I suddenly found myself clutching at my locket and my chest. I turned toward the window, and Jack asked Michelle and her husband to wait for us outside. A gush of tears dripped off my cheeks onto the Berber carpet.

  “Honey,” he said, and I took his hands.

  “I’m fine.” I smiled through the tears, feeling my heart and my forehead, which surprisingly felt all right, considering. “It’s just a lot all of a sudden.” I’d asked Roxy and Gail to join me for the interview. They accepted for their own reasons, and I felt some relief that I wouldn’t be alone, but that didn’t change the fact that I’d be telling the world what happened those five days in September for the first time, and Jack, my dearest husband, he’d be hearing the truth about what we did with the giant, and how I didn’t lose it in the Rhine.

  “There’s umm…” I gulped. “Jack, there’s something I need to tell you, something that will come out in the interview.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Something I don’t know?”

  I squeezed his hands, then thought I should tell him now. Break the dam, get it over with. “I want you to know…” I struggled, closing my eyes tightly. “God, this is hard.”

  I took in a big gulp of air.

  “Evelyn, honey,” he said. “Nothing you could say would change us. We do things in war… We all did things in that war. You don’t need to make excuses.”

  I exhaled that gulp of air, nodding. “I didn’t lose the diamonds in the Rhine,” I said, pausing to gauge his reaction but he only stared. “We three decided to hold on to them, and then we…” I winced. “We dumped them in a nun’s kettle in the village.”

  He laughed. “What?”

  “We promised to keep it a secret between us three. After a while, it became one of those things that didn’t need to be mentioned. I couldn’t talk about the giant and not bring up everything about Red. It became a necessary evil.”

  He hugged me unexpectedly. “Evelyn Kit Jones,” he said. “I love you. I only wish I knew so I could have seen those nuns’ faces.”

  “You’re not angry? For keeping this secret from you?” I said, and he shook his head. “All this time I felt guilty for not telling you.”