After most others had left the train, Red hefted his duffle over one shoulder and reluctantly grabbed the cane, forcing away his brooding thoughts. He dreaded seeing the look on his mother’s face when she saw him with his cane for the first time.
Sure, Ma knew about the injury, but to see her youngest hobbling on a cane like an old man? No mother should have to witness that.
Finally, out of the window, he saw Lilly Meyer come riding up in a buggy pulled by the big bay gelding Seymour, and Red felt a rush of relief.
Ma’s broad, sun-reddened face showed him she’d spent a lot of time outside in the vegetable garden—one of Red’s jobs when he was home. She guided Seymour carefully through the crowd in the parking area, waving to several acquaintances along the way.
Even before the gasoline rationing of the war, Lilly Meyer had held with her horse. She wasn’t afraid of cars. She wasn’t afraid of anything. She just always loved her horses. Pa had tried to teach her how to drive when he was alive, but she would have nothing to do with it. She didn’t mind people thinking of her as a little backward.
In fact, Ma was the envy of the town with a business that had thrived through the depression and kept going during the war.
Hay and oats weren’t rationed here because the farmers raised their own. Neither were garden vegetables or milk from their own cows, or meat and eggs from their own stock. In his travels, Red saw what the rest of the country had had to do without. He couldn’t believe how blessed he’d been all those years.
Red grabbed the metal soffit over the door and tried his hardest not to grimace. As he stepped down, he saw his mother look at his cane, then his leg. The pain in his leg was nothing compared to what he felt when he saw the look in her eyes.
“Now, Ma, don’t you go worrying about me,” he greeted as he rushed to hug her. Ordinarily, he’d pick her up and twirl her around—well, maybe that would be called lumbering her around. Lilly Meyer was, after all, nigh on three-hundred pounds. He couldn’t lift her now, but he wrapped his arms around her bulky form and was grateful for her strength.
She clung to him for a long few seconds, and this surprised Red. Their family’d not been much for shows of emotion.
She drew back at last, and he saw tears on her cheeks. She patted the moistness on his uniform collar with alarm.
“Now, look what I did,” she said.
“It’ll dry, Ma.” His mother didn’t cry. Even at Pa’s funeral, she’d been as strong as a man, setting the example for Red and his older sister and brother, Agnes and Howard, not to show a trembling lip or damp eye. The Meyers wore brave faces for the rest of the world, no matter what.
Her double chins wobbled as she looked up into his eyes and brushed her fingers across his cheek, like he was a little boy again. “It’s going to be okay now. My hero’s home.” She glanced around them. “And none too soon, either, from the looks of things,” she muttered.
“What’re you talking about?” he asked. “The war’s half over.”
“Germans aren’t exactly the best-liked people in Hideaway right now, especially since we’re hearing about all those death camps.”
“But we’re not German, we’re American, Ma.”
“We’re German enough for somebody to hate us.”
“Who’s been snubbing you?”
She sniffed once more, then composed herself. “That ol’ Drusilla Short says I’m a Nazi sympathizer. Thinks I oughta surrender and be locked up and my guesthouse shut down.”
“Since when did anyone ever listen to that woman’s opinion?” Red patted Seymour on the nose and received a welcoming nudge that knocked him off his stride.
“Since two nights ago when someone threw a brick through our window that nearly conked poor John Martin on the head when he was reading the paper,” Ma said.
“John!” Red paused before he climbed in beside his mother. “He okay?”
“Fightin’ mad, but other than that he’s just got a mark on his noggin from some flying glass. Tough young buck.”
Red clenched his hands into fists as anger streaked through him. “Who do you think did it?” If he found out, he’d hobble out and bang some heads. They’d never try to hurt his mother again.
“You know bullies are cowards,” she said. “They don’t show themselves. And our house ain’t the only target for mischief. It’s been going on a couple of months. Mildred went missing last month.”
Red stared at his mother. The loss of one of Ma’s two milk cows would’ve been a huge blow to her. “You never told me that. You never found her?”
“Nope, but Joseph Moennig loaned me one of his. Said he’s got his hands full with all the farm work now that Bertie’s in California.” She nodded. “That Joseph is a good man. But he paid for his goodness two weeks ago. Some of his own stock went missing.”
“His cattle?”
“A couple of cows and some pigs, and you can bet they were taken off to market and sold. He’ll never see them again, and they were the best of his stock.” She shook her head. “I’m tellin’ you, Red, this place is in for troubled times. Want to know why I was late gettin’ here?”
“I figured you had a good reason.”
“Somebody decided Seymour needed to be let out of his corral sometime last night. If he wasn’t such a homebody, no tellin’ where he’d be by now. As it was, I found him washing his feet down by the river. I saw a chalk mark on the side of the shed. It was that broken cross the Nazis use.”
“A swastika?”
“That’s the sign.”
“Anything else?”
“Nope. Don’t you think it’s too much of a coincidence that ol’ Dru Short’s been hurling lies about us, and now we’ve got bricks through our window and Nazi signs on our stable?”
“Is the sheriff doing anything about the thefts?”
“Not that I’ve seen. Mayor Gerald says he’ll not let ’em get away with this, but he can’t stop it if he don’t catch nobody.” She patted Red’s arm. “Not to worry now. You’ll take care of it. You’ll find out who’s doing this, if anybody can.”
Red climbed into the buggy, glad for the sturdy handles he grasped to pull himself up. He felt more helpless than ever. What was happening in Hideaway?
Chapter Six
On the short ride back to the plant with Connie, Bertie slid Red’s last letter out of her purse. She’d studied it over and over when she’d received no new letters, thinking maybe it held a hidden reason why he hadn’t written again.
Sometimes she nearly convinced herself he’d met someone else—not that there was much chance of meeting a woman in the muddy trenches where he’d been stuck for so many months. Still, she’d heard there were women aplenty in the towns where the men went when they were on leave.
In all his letters, Red had never made any promises to her about the future. What if he’d met some Italian beauty off in that foreign world? From what she’d read in letters from other soldiers, a man could get mighty lonely, mighty desperate in the midst of war.
She carefully unfolded the letter written nearly six weeks ago. It was two pages of awkward words that had gripped her heart and convinced her for sure that she loved him and he was the only one for her.
Bertie, you keep asking me if I’ve gotten a chance to see Italy. I’ve seen more of this place than I’ve ever wanted to see of any country, anywhere, anytime. I’ve seen whole orchards battered to kindling wood. I’ve seen people living in bombed buildings, starving, begging us for food.
I see your face every time I close my eyes, and can almost hear your voice every time I pull your picture out of my pocket.
Funny, ain’t it? I always thought of all Italians as dark haired, dark eyed. That’s not true. Some are as blond as you are, with skin like yours. I’ve been into some towns a few times, and I can’t tell you how often I thought I’d seen you in the crowd on the street, and I’d run toward you and call your name, and when I got there, I’d find a stranger watching me like they thought I was about to
shoot them.
She looked up from the words, as the warmth of them flowed through her. Instead of the California highway, she saw the lines of Red’s smiling face—he was most always smiling or laughing at something—never at someone else, most times at himself.
She wanted to cry over his loneliness for her. And yet she felt reassured. A woman couldn’t read such heartfelt words and doubt a man’s love for her.
Straightening the fold in the page, she read on.
These people aren’t the enemy. They were dumb, maybe, and weak when they should have been strong, but how can I say what I’d have done in their place? They’re defeated now, you can see it in their eyes, and especially in their land.
There’s times I can hear your laughter or your voice in the middle of the night when the shells are whizzing through the sky, and that voice keeps me from going plumb out of my mind.
Bertie, if I get home alive, it’s because of you. I feel like I have somebody waiting for me. I feel like I have a future. So many of my buddies’ve gotten their Dear John letters—their women didn’t want to wait around. All this time, I keep on getting letters from you. I never expected different, but I want you to know something. If I don’t make it home, it’s not because you didn’t pray hard enough, it’s because the evil caught up with us, after all, and the old devil won a battle. Like you keep reminding me, he won’t win the real war.
You take care out there in California. You never know what could happen in a place like that, so close to the ocean. The enemy can reach you better there than he can in Missouri. Don’t let that happen.
If anything happens to me, I want you to be happy. Marry somebody you know I’d approve of, settle and have that passel of kids you’ve always wanted. And know that there was one soldier who went to his reward fighting for the best gal in the best country in the world.
I kinda like you.
Your Red
She folded the page and slid it back into her purse, and felt the sting of tears in her eyes. No promises, for sure, but he never “kinda liked” anybody else. He’d always been good at understatement. But she knew Red Meyer better than most anyone except his mother. He never made a promise until he knew for sure he’d be able to keep it. And then he kept it.
Just because he hadn’t written in the past few weeks didn’t mean he’d forgotten about her.
This letter was filled with his affection for her, his abiding friendship. She’d read love letters received by her friends at work that didn’t show as much love as this letter did.
Could the man who’d placed his life in her hands stop writing because he’d met another woman he liked better?
She knew things were different now, and she couldn’t help worrying about how lonely a man could get. But Red wasn’t the type to lead one woman on with letters while courtin’ another. It wasn’t his nature. He was constant, steadfast, not a ladies’ man at all. He was a man any lady would be proud to marry, who would put a lot of joy and laughter into her life—as he had always done in Bertie’s.
She couldn’t help smiling when she remembered how Red had changed after he’d first asked her out on a bona fide date more than three years ago. Always before, he’d seemed as comfortable with her as he was with his old bluetick hunting dog. Then, suddenly, when he came to pick her up with the horse and buggy for a drive down to the lake, or when he and Ivan double-dated with her and Dixie Martin, John’s sister, and went to the cinema in Hollister in John’s tan Pontiac, Red got all tongue-tied. He didn’t know how to talk to Bertie.
He opened doors for her, paid for her meals and movie, treated her like she was someone special, but he stumbled over his words and his face flushed more easily.
His awkwardness touched her. She felt honored that he thought that much of her.
“We’re here,” Connie said, interrupting Bertie’s thoughts. “You want me to walk back to the department with you in case Franklin decides to strangle you?” She grinned. “That way I can administer first aid quicker.”
“I can handle him,” Bertie assured the nurse.
She wasn’t so sure of herself once Connie left, but if Red could depend on thoughts of her to get him through the horrors of the battles he’d fought, she could keep him in her heart as she tried to deal with Franklin.
Red took the reins from his mother and guided Seymour toward the road that followed the course of the White River back to Hideaway. It would be a long ride.
“Let’s check on Joseph on our way home,” Lilly said.
Red looked at his ma. “He sick or something?”
“Nope, I’m worried about him, is all. I didn’t see him outside anywhere on my way here, and Erma Lee Jarvis called out to me from the garden as I passed their house. Joseph didn’t answer Bertie’s calls last night.”
“Calls?”
“Four times, according to Erma Lee.”
“He never misses her calls.”
“That’s what I’m saying. Something could be up.”
Red flicked the reins to urge Seymour forward at a quicker walk. “Why didn’t the Jarvises check on him last night?”
“You know how tetchy Joseph can be when a body tries to coddle him. Besides, he gets tired of the neighbors always listening in on his calls with Bertie. He can be sharp at times, you know.”
Red nodded. Yep, Joseph could be that. Bertie called him grumpy, but she knew better. Joseph tried hard to be a tough ol’ farmer, but he was a man with a soft spot for those he was closest to.
Red remembered when one of Joseph’s prize milk cows took out after Bertie for petting her new calf. That poor ol’ cow got sold so fast, she never saw it coming.
“It’ll be good to see Joseph again.” Red cast his mother a quick glance. She looked worried. “He been around in the past day or two?”
“I saw him at church. He was lookin’ forward to his daughter’s call.” She shook her head. “That’s another reason it’s so strange he never answered. Hope he’s not had any more trouble with cattle rustling.”
Red flicked the reins again, and Seymour broke into a trot. Red tried not to worry, but worry seemed to’ve become a part of him since going off to war.
Joseph had always seemed partial to Red, and taught him a lot about being the man of the house, looking out for his mother, taking on a lot of the workload. He’d shown Red everything from stacking firewood the right way to handling newborn calves to plantin’ a garden.
Joseph had also written to Red at least twice a month all the time he was in Europe. Nobody would take Pa’s place, of course, but Joseph Moennig came the closest. He had to be lonely with Bertie out in California.
Red cast another curious glance at his mother. Well, maybe Joseph wasn’t always lonely. Ma would see to that. And it didn’t seem she’d mind all that much.
“I can’t do much right now to help him on the farm,” Red warned her.
“He won’t care none about that, he’ll be worried about you.” She sighed and shook her head. “Can’t deny it’ll be a relief to share the load a little.”
“What load’s that?” Red asked.
She jerked her head toward his leg. “Since you didn’t want Bertie to know about your injury, I couldn’t tell nobody about it. Somebody’d have blabbed for sure. You’re gonna be a shock to all our Hideaway friends, Red. Nobody even knows you got shot.”
He nearly groaned aloud. Why had he done that to his poor mother? “I didn’t get shot. I got hit by shrapnel. They’ll know soon enough.”
“Guess that means you need to have a talk with Bertie before long, because you’re sure not going to keep this thing a secret now. You’re back in the States, you can pick up a phone and call her. She’s really gonna be hurt you didn’t tell her about this right off.”
“I couldn’t, Ma. I didn’t know how it’d all work out, and you know how she worries.”
“You can tell her now.”
Red nodded. “Guess I could.”
“You know, I never did like keepin’ this t
hing a secret from her, especially when she asked about you time and time again.”
“I know, and I’m sorry.”
“I’ve never been a liar, and keeping this from her felt like I was lyin’.”
He sighed. “I know, Ma. I know.”
“And you never did tell me why you did it.”
“She’s gone through a lot, Ma. Her brother moved away, then the war hit, then her mother died. And now she’s all alone in California without any kin nearby.”
“And now her beau’s stopped writing to her,” his mother said, giving him a pointed look.
“I’d rather have her wonder about a few missed letters than know about this.” He tapped his leg.
“It’s gonna heal fine,” Ma said.
Red didn’t argue, but he couldn’t agree, either. That’d be lying. For the past few weeks, he hadn’t believed anything would be fine again. But no reason to try to tell his mother that.
Still, she was right. He had to tell Bertie about this leg. He dreaded doin’ it, because it would change everything. Could be that was why he hadn’t said anything about it yet—pure selfishness. As long as Bertie didn’t know there was anything wrong, in her mind, at least, they were still together at heart.
But when he told her about the leg, he’d also have to tell her his decision about the two of them. He still didn’t know how he could bear it.
“So you might as well get it over with,” Ma said. “She’s hurtin’ out there in no-man’s-land, all alone, thinkin’ her man’s done dropped her like a hot biscuit.”
Red started to speak, and he couldn’t. He swallowed hard, feeling his mother’s sharp gaze. “I will, Ma. Soon as she’s had time to get home from work tonight, I’ll call her and tell her all about it.”
From the corner of his eye, he saw his mother nod, saw her mouth open to speak, and he cut her off.
“I heard tell you’ve cooked Joseph a meal or two lately.” He hoped she would let him change the subject.
When he glanced at her, his eyebrows nearly met his hairline at the sight of the blush that tinted her face.
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