Homefront Hero

by Allie Pleiter

  “Because you are valuable and important.” Then the true weight of what he had said began to hit her. “You defied the order to leave? Knowing what was coming? Chicago and France were what you wanted, John. Why on earth did you stay?”

  He looked surprised she needed to ask. “For you.”

  She felt his words like physical force. Tight and clenching. It was suffocating enough to be the survivor on which an entire hospital pinned its hopes. But to be the reason a man had forsaken his goal? Placed himself in harm’s way? Destroyed his chance at achieving his dreams? Especially if it was a man she loved. The weight choked her. “Me?”

  John limped over to the chair again, grabbing her hands. “You. And not you. Me. Everything. I looked at that ticket and I knew I couldn’t use it. Knew I ought to be here. Beside you.”

  “John…”

  “And not only beside you, but here, fighting this battle. I didn’t choose what happened on that airship, but I could choose this. I knew whatever I was running back to France to find was already right in front of me.”

  “That makes no sense.”

  “It does to me. I don’t know that I can explain it any better than that but I don’t regret it. I didn’t want you to know because I didn’t want you to feel like this.” He shook her hands, his voice fierce. “I don’t regret it. Not for a second, do you hear me? I’ll limp until I’m eighty and not look back.”

  “It’s not just your leg. You knew the outbreak was coming. You could have fallen ill just as easily as I. Either or both of us could have…” She didn’t want to finish that sentence, nor did she have to. Every single person in this building was aware that every cough held the possibility of death. “Could still…”

  John pulled her to her feet and held her. “None of that. I’m invincible, remember?”

  She wrapped her arms around him, and they wobbled a bit as if the unsteadiness confirmed that lie. “You most certainly are not.” She had not, for one second, ignored the possibility that John could still fall ill. “We don’t know how it’s contracted. I pray every day you won’t start coughing. I couldn’t stand it if I’d infected you.”

  “You heard Madison. He thinks that those exposed either succumb or don’t. I haven’t yet, so I’m unlikely to.” He tightened his embrace. “And I’ve been very close to an infected patient.”

  “They’re only guessing, John. Dr. Madison says he still can’t say why I survived. There’s so much they still don’t understand.”

  She swayed a bit, and John pulled them both back to the seats. He tipped her chin up to look at him. “Look at me. There’s only one thing to understand here, and it is that we are here. Not altogether perfect, but alive, and with each other. This is where I am meant to be, where God means us to be. I know you know that. Have some of that faith you boasted to me about. The quarantine will be lifted soon and we’ll trust God with the days after that.”

  Leanne let her forehead fall to touch John’s. She could only marvel at how the disaster had changed him, what God had done. “When did you become such a wise and faithful soul?”

  “One very long night not too long ago. You fought influenza while I did battle with…other things.” He pulled back to trace what must be the shadows under her eyes. “You’ve been up long enough, as have I. Rest.” He nodded toward the room’s one bed. It made her wonder if John’s leg let him sleep in any comfort at all. “Dream of fluffy yellow yarn.” He yawned.

  “I love you,” she said, cupping his poorly shaven chin. She felt too full of emotion and fatigue to say anything less. “I am so very, desperately glad you are here.”

  “We may be the only two souls on earth thankful for an influenza quarantine. God certainly works in mysterious ways.” He kissed her again, and she thought she could never tire of his tender touch. “I love you.” He touched her face, then slowly moved to pull himself out of the chair.

  Leanne pulled her own self upright, handing him his cane. “I shall buy you the grandest silver cane ever for your eightieth birthday. It will be so huge and impressive, little boys will fear it and little girls will think you a king. Dream of that.”

  “Goodness, no.” He laughed weakly. “I prefer to dream of steak.”

  * * *

  John offered Leanne a smile as he helped her into one of the parlor chairs at the Red Cross House. It was a victory, moving her back to Jackson. Yes, Dr. Madison approved it half for the benefit of Leanne’s parents—who were coming despite numerous requests to hold off. Madison also approved it for purely practical reasons: the small “recovery ward” she’d “launched” was filling with patients. The quarantines at Jackson and the university had been lifted. An end to the calamity seemed to be in sight.

  “I’m well, you know. In fact, I’m quite sure I could have walked.” He’d borrowed an army wheelchair to ferry her from the transport car to the Red Cross House steps.

  “Strolled up those steps and fended off your parents on arrival? You overstate your recuperative powers, lauded as they are.” Her “recuperative powers” had become a joke of sorts between them, for doctors and nurses everywhere wanted to know how Leanne had survived. He felt an urge to protect her from such attentions, knowing how he felt when people asked him how he’d dared to go out on the stay wires of the dirigible. People wanted an answer where no answer was to be had.

  Leanne arranged her skirts on the chair. She’d gained back a bit of weight, looking less like a scarecrow in her own clothes. Her color was better but still not what it had once been, and she tired easily. More than once he’d come up to her room in the dormitory to find her fast asleep with her knitting needles and what she called his “scandalous yellow yarn” still held in her fingers. She held that yarn in her lap now, and he felt the surge of satisfaction he always did when he’d found some way to please or pamper her. “Will you stay and meet them?” she asked.

  “I don’t think today is the day for such an introduction, and…I’ve a dreaded commitment.”

  She raised an eyebrow at his terminology. “Dreaded?”

  “General Barnes.” Horrific as it was, the quarantine had cocooned him and Leanne in a bubble of their own, shielded from the war, the outside world and all such consequences. In truth John was sure fear of infection was the only thing that had kept Barnes from storming onto campus the moment the quarantine had been lifted and hauling John personally into whatever punishment generals devised for valuable liabilities such as himself. Now John found himself with the daunting task of testing his new faith in the realities of ordinary life. If life ever became ordinary in love and at war.

  Leanne reached for John’s hand. “What will he do?” He was glad she hadn’t asked the more accurate “What will he do to you?”

  “God only knows.” Such phrases used to annoy Leanne, but now he loved using it because now he knew he truly meant it. He ran his hand over the back of her palm delighted he could no longer trace the outline of her veins through paper-pale skin. “We’ve prayed over this, I ought to be calmer.”

  “The timing seems dreadful. How can I keep my mind on Mama and Papa knowing you’re with General Barnes?”

  “How can I keep my mind on General Barnes knowing you’re with your mama and papa without me to protect you?”

  The joke roused the laugh he’d intended. “They’re my parents, John, not some angry monsters. They’ll fuss and demand to take me home, I’m sure—” she took his hand in both of hers “—but I’m stronger now. So many things are different. I only hope I can make them see. I’ll admit I do wish I had some of your persuasive abilities today.”

  John leaned in and kissed her. “There. I’ve transferred the lot of them, my mouth to yours. Now I wish I had your faith in unknown outcomes. I’m nothing near calm enough.”

  She returned his kiss. “There. I’ve transferred the lot of it, my mouth to yours.”

  John managed a smile. “If only it worked that way.”

  She caught his collar before he pulled back. “I love you, no mat
ter what.”

  Her words managed what her kiss had not. Should all of the United States Army come crashing down around his ankles in the next hour, he had the love of a Sovereign God and the only woman that mattered. He let his fingers grace the perfect line of her chin. “Then I have all I need, my love. Be well, charm your parents and I’ll come back when…when it’s done.”

  * * *

  “I’m well,” Leanne repeated, trying to convince her parents’ fearful eyes. “Really, I’ve improved a great deal, and I get stronger every day.” She couldn’t bear to tell them she looked much better than just a few days earlier, for Mama clutched her gauze mask in a white-knuckled fist.

  “You should come home with us. Right now,” Papa pronounced as he paced the room. She couldn’t blame their apprehension on being inside Camp Jackson. Everyone was afraid of everything, for the air was the enemy, and the enemy was everywhere. Only the fiercest of worries could have pulled Mama and Papa from the protection of their home in such a crisis. Papa was clearly here to collect his little girl and take her home to safety.

  “Dr. Madison says I’m not yet strong enough to travel.” It was true, but only half the truth. She couldn’t bear the thought of leaving Camp Jackson, not now. Her world had turned upside down and righted itself in a completely new way. To go back to who she was six months ago—which was exactly what would happen if she went home now—seemed terribly wrong. It made her thankful for Dr. Madison’s medical excuse. She couldn’t conceive of how to make Mama and Papa understand she wasn’t anything close to the young woman who’d left them on the station platform just a few months ago. “It’s best I stay here.” After summoning her courage, she amended her statement. “And, Papa, I want to stay here.”

  “Nonsense. Military camps are the most dangerous places of all right now. We can easily take care of you at home where it’s safe.” Mama said the words as if defying the world to breach the sanctuary of the Sample family threshold.

  The reality was that no place was truly “safe.” The quarantine had been lifted, but cases were still coming in. The base hospital was still full to overflowing, as were both of Columbia’s hospitals. Some were surviving, but many were still dying. The last report predicted that the number of cases here would peak near three thousand, and other cities were just coming under the wave of infection Columbia had crested. Safe? Safe couldn’t mean a lack of danger anymore. Safe had come to mean simply wherever John was. Wherever God watched over the pair of them together. “I am safe here, Mama. I’m healing, and when I’m well enough I’ll need to return to my post.”

  Mama’s wide eyes showed she didn’t believe a word of it, and that she didn’t much care for her daughter’s newfound independence. “You’re so very thin and pale. Are you eating? Is everyone wearing masks?”

  I’ve watched men die behind their masks, Leanne wanted to say. “Yes, they’re very careful here. And now that the quarantine is lifted, the camp is eating quite well.” Her words brought back the memory of John feeding her sausage on the front steps, and she hoped Mama would mistake the flush it brought to her cheeks as the radiance of health.

  * * *

  John stood before General Barnes’s desk, at attention despite how much it hurt. The general had not invited him to sit as he normally did when they met. This was no normal meeting.

  The general ran his hands down his face, the weary gesture a revelation of how difficult life under quarantine had been. “Do you know what the worst part of my job is, Gallows?”

  “No, sir.”

  Barnes pointed to a stack of letters on his desk. “Signing these. Orders for telegrams bringing the worst possible news to some poor mother or father, or wife. I’ve signed nearly three hundred of these, and I’m sick to death of ugly, pointless deaths. Influenza isn’t supposed to kill, Gallows, it makes no sense.”

  John couldn’t argue with that. “It doesn’t, sir.”

  “The last thing I need—” Barnes took off his glasses and looked at John for the first time since he’d entered the room “—is one of my best weapons doing something even more senseless. I needed you in Chicago. I tried to save you from what I knew was coming, and you disobeyed a direct order and went A.W.O.L. The thing I can’t work out is why.”

  John gave the only answer that came to him. “I doubt you’d believe me if I told you, sir.”

  The general leaned back in his chair. “Try me.”

  John had prayed all morning that Barnes would simply reprimand him and not demand an explanation. He was sure any attempt to convey all that had happened to him recently would fail miserably. Barnes didn’t look like the kind of man who’d embrace either a spiritual or a romantic motive, and John had no other explanation.

  “You might as well sit down, Gallows,” Barnes interjected at John’s hesitation. “It looks to me like this is a long story and frankly I could use the diversion.”

  John wondered if God wasn’t smiling somewhere. He’d prayed specifically for a short meeting, afraid that his passions would run away with his mouth if asked too many questions. Today his father was right when he called John “a man of too many words.” The simplest explanation seemed the best place to start. “A woman, sir.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “It wasn’t hard to glean what was coming from my last visit to your office. I found I couldn’t leave a particular woman to face it alone. Well, without me. Or rather, I suppose I couldn’t bear the thought of her falling ill and not being here.” The words sounded far more ridiculous than romantic.

  General Barnes crossed his arms over his chest. “Surely you’re not telling me Nurse Sample survived because of your illustrious presence?”

  John raised an eyebrow. He’d hoped not to name names.

  “Captain Gallows, you’re anything but subtle and camp gossip is faster than the telegraph. I have one clerk drafting a list of charges to bring you up on while another is suggesting we should call Era magazine and give them the exclusive update.”

  For once, John was speechless, his wobbly smile feeling foolish. “I’d rather you did neither.”

  “I ought to do anything I please at the moment, rather than taking suggestions from the likes of you. How do I explain what you’ve done? I can’t very well let a highly visible, recently publicized soldier—an officer at that—get away with disobeying direct, self-preserving orders for love. You’ve got to give me another reason.”

  God’s smile must have broadened. There was only one other reason, and it wouldn’t sit any better with the general than John’s first explanation. “You’ll like it less,” he quipped, swallowing the feeling he was facing a firing squad.

  “There’s not much ‘less’ left in me, Gallows.” He leaned forward on his elbows with the expression of a man bracing for a hit to the stomach.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  John recalled the Bible passage about Paul defending his refusal to obey orders of silence to Roman officials. He felt a particular affinity, the helplessness of trying to explain the relentlessness of God to someone who’d never experienced it. He couldn’t blame the general; two months ago, had someone given him the answer he was about to give Barnes, he would be balking, as well.

  “Well, sir, I looked at those tickets, I knew what they represented, and all I can say is that I knew at that moment that God had led me to Columbia and I wasn’t supposed to leave it.”

  Barnes looked understandably shocked.

  “No one expected it less than me, sir. And I’ll be the first to admit that it makes no sense to anyone else. But that’s the honest truth. I knew, as much as I’ve known anything in my life—and certainly more than I knew on that dirigible—that I needed to stay. That the place I most needed to be was where God asked me to be, and that wasn’t Chicago. Or France.”

  “God?” Barnes clearly would have preferred just about any other answer. “I ask you for a logical explanation to keep you from Courts-Martial and the best you can give me is God and love?” He squinted his eyes
shut in frustration. “I don’t know why I’m surprised at this nonsense. I can’t fathom a sensible explanation for what you did.” He gave John an incredulous look. “You’ve put me in a hard place, Gallows. Of course you’re not the first soldier to have his head turned by a pretty nurse, and I suppose you’re not the first man to turn to his Maker in a foxhole, but you’ve done so with the press watching. Land sakes, son, the two of you were on the cover of Era. I can’t let it go, nor can it ever be known that you disobeyed direct orders without consequences. Miss Sample was the first South Carolinian to survive the influenza. I can’t just sweep y’all under a rug.”

  “I understand your position, sir. I don’t regret what I did, though. Not for a moment.” After a pause, John asked, “Are you married, sir?”

  Barnes managed an annoyed smirk. “Contrary to legend, I was young once. Your father introduced me to my wife, as a matter of fact. Mrs. Barnes was a great beauty and I made a bit of a fool of myself to catch her eye. I’m no heartless beast, John, but you’re no fool, either. You know what’s at stake here.”

  “I do.” His heart and his soul were at stake, only he was sure Barnes didn’t see it that way.

  “I’ve no idea what to do. I can’t honorably discharge you, but I can’t give you a dishonorable discharge without setting off a press ruckus. I had hoped your explanation would save you, but you’ve only given me more rope to hang you, son. Only I can’t hang you, and according to Madison, I can’t send you back into active duty. Ever.”

  “I know.” John kept his voice neutral even though the finality of the general’s pronouncement stole the peace he’d been feeling up until a moment ago. He didn’t know what to be if he couldn’t be a soldier; he’d been raised to fill a uniform from his earliest days. He tried to remember God was in control, and his role wasn’t to wrangle his future, but to stand firm and tell the truth. The old John could have invented twenty salable explanations for his actions, could have concocted a variety of stories to meet the public need. In every aspect of this situation, the truth seemed not only useless, but downright harmful. “I do appreciate your position, sir.”