by Sarah Sundin
Helen rested her cheek on Jay-Jay’s soft head. “Thank you, Vic.”
Only Ray remained to be notified, but that letter would have to wait until evening, because Helen’s eyelids felt as heavy as blackout curtains.
Bury St. Edmunds Airfield
Ray leaned back in the upholstered chair in the Officers’ Club and cradled a cup of coffee. Someone pounded “One O’Clock Jump” on the piano with more enthusiasm than skill.
His smile rose with the steam from his coffee. Later tonight he’d write Helen about today’s experience. He had faced his fears, and the Lord got him through. No matter what else life threw at him, he knew he was no feiges Huhn.
“There he is, the talk of Bury St. Edmunds.” Jack sat in a chair across from Ray. A smile tilted his mustache.
“Guess I could do it.”
Jack dipped his chin. “Sorry I doubted you.”
“It’s all right. I doubted myself.”
“No one doubts you now. I tell you, the Eighth Air Force had a banner day. First Division took out a station where the Nazis build those robot buzz bombs, Second Division helped British ground troops break out of Caen, and Third Division hit oil targets, but everyone’s talking about the photos you fellows took.”
“Good?”
“Outstanding.”
Ray nodded. Intelligence must have seen something useful.
Jack unwrapped a canvas bundle on his lap and pulled out a corrugated rubber hose. “Bodey was right. The oxygen equipment is sound. But you’re right too. Look close.” He stretched out the hose, and minute cracks appeared.
“Wow.”
“Plane’s older. All that exposure to cold broke down the rubber, gave you slow leaks.”
Ray sipped his coffee. “Apology accepted.”
“Oh, you’re not out of the woods yet—literally.” Jack chuckled and pulled a mangled leafy branch from the canvas. “We found this wrapped around the radio direction finder antenna.”
The football-shaped device was mounted on the belly of the plane. Ray reached for the branch.
“I can’t believe—” Jack’s laugh sputtered out. “I can’t believe you buzzed Germany.”
Ray smiled at his trophy. “A souvenir of Deutschland.”
Antioch
Although it was two o’clock in the afternoon, it looked as if it were two in the morning with the living room windows boarded up.
“How can I help?” Helen asked.
On the couch under a lamp, Mrs. Carlisle glanced over the top of McCall’s magazine. “Oh, I’m all done. I’m just taking a break during Jay-Jay’s nap. They have meatless recipes in here this month.”
Helen glanced around. Expecting work, she’d tied up her hair in a scarf and put on an old red gingham blouse from the charity donations after the fire. Now she had nothing to do, and for once, her agendas and committee plans didn’t entice her.
“I’ll see if Betty needs help.”
“Good idea. She’ll be relieved to see you.”
Helen walked down C Street, past her childhood home. Her parents had rented it to a man from Philadelphia working at the Fibreboard Paper Products research facility at the old Riverview Union High School, Ray’s alma mater.
She gazed up at her old bedroom window, still framed by creamy ruffled curtains. If only she and Jay-Jay could live there instead.
Her heaviness deepened and shoved her right on Sixth Street—away from her sister’s house. Her hands opened and closed, her heartbeat skittered about, and her foot caught on a crack in the sidewalk.
Now that she didn’t have to be brave, the trauma of the night before was catching up to her. So much death. So much pain. So much blood. She’d see Betty later. Not now.
Pastor Novak swept up a pile of broken glass on his front porch. He waved to Helen. “Glad you weren’t there last night.”
“Thank you.” She would explain later. But perhaps, like his parents, Ray wouldn’t worry if he heard how late at night the explosion occurred.
She turned left on D Street, a familiar route to a familiar place. The rubble from the fire had been cleared, and all that remained of her former home was the garage and the oleander hedges.
Helen walked the blackened outline of the house. She traced the boundary of the kitchen, as black as the burns Jim had inflicted on her. Then around the bedroom—the source of the fire, as Jim’s abuse was the source of the chaos in her life. She kicked at the dirt where their bed once stood. “Why? Why did you do it?”
Those stupid, poisonous oleander hedges. They served one purpose, to screen the house so no one could see and no one would know.
Helen grabbed a bush close to the ground and yanked. “You wanted to conceal it, didn’t you? You said I deserved it and it was your right as a husband, yet you hid it. You told everyone clumsy Helen got in another accident, the poor little cripple, because you knew it was wrong. You knew, but you did it anyway.”
The bush didn’t loosen, although Helen had starved it and trimmed it low.
She marched to the garage, tugged open the door, and grabbed a shovel. She sank the shovel into the earth, jammed it deeper with her foot, again and again until the bush tipped. Helen grabbed it with both hands and wrestled it out of the earth.
“I won’t. I won’t keep it inside anymore. I can’t.”
She kicked the bush aside and stomped on it.
“Helen?” Mrs. Llewellyn peered around the hedges. “Are you all right?”
Despite her sudden drop in blood pressure, she managed to smile and wipe her brow. “I—I never liked oleander.”
Mrs. Llewellyn’s forehead smoothed out. “I’m glad to hear that. I wondered why you had poisonous plants with a small child around.”
“Not my choice.” Helen turned, waited for her neighbor to leave, and then attacked the next bush. She had to tear it down, tear down her façade, but she had to be discreet. Jay-Jay needed to look up to his father, and the community needed its war hero.
But Helen had needs too. She needed to get her demons out and deal with them.
She tossed the next bush aside. God had provided for her need with a sweet man who knew part of the truth. Ray would listen. He could help her work through it.
Helen ducked her face to wipe her stinging eyes on her shoulder. A sob hiccupped out. “Thank you, Lord.”
21
Bury St. Edmunds
Thursday, July 27, 1944
Ray inhaled the ancient scent of the square Norman-style Abbey Gate Tower, and stepped into its recess with Jack. California, with all its beauty, lacked this connection with centuries past he felt in England. He’d already seen Cambridge and couldn’t wait to see London.
“This is what I like.” Jack pointed at the long arrow slits penetrating the massive walls. “Back then they shot arrows through holes in stone. Now we shoot .50 caliber bullets through holes in Plexiglas.”
“Yeah.” Ray wandered through to the gardens surrounding the abbey ruins. He preferred to think of monks chanting their worship and transcribing Scripture in illuminated manuscripts.
“Got a letter from Dad yesterday.” Jack grumbled and stuffed his hands in the pockets of his A-2 leather flight jacket. “He got my letter about staying in the military and not being a pastor.”
“We knew he wouldn’t be pleased.”
Jack snorted. “I hope he’s happier with my choice of a wife.”
“He will be. Ruth’s a fine woman.” He entered a neat circular garden in full summer color. “Is this the first time Dad hasn’t been proud of you?”
Jack leveled a gaze at him. “Have you forgotten how much trouble I got into as a boy?”
Ray chuckled. “Have you forgotten? He’d spank you and leave snickering under his breath. You know he did the same stuff when he was a boy. He took pride in your mischief.”
“Pride.” Jack shook his head. “The same pride that made him push all three sons to be pastors. Now he only has one.”
Ray shrugged. “You’re doing God’s
will for your life, so is Walt, and so am I. If Dad has a problem with our career choices, he can take it up with the Almighty.”
“You tell him that. I’d rather face a squadron of those new little German fighters.”
“Not me.” On his last mission, a triangular plane zipped past at over five hundred miles per hour—without any propellers. Now he knew how Grandpa must have felt the first time he saw a carriage rumble down the street without a horse.
“Wouldn’t Walt like a look at those jets?” Jack whispered.
Ray also had a hunch Walt’s classified engineering work at Boeing involved jet engines.
They turned right toward the ruins and passed a trio of British soldiers singing “Hang out the Washing on the Siegfried Line.” The Tommies and the Yanks exchanged salutes.
“Jets,” Jack said. “All the more reason to smash Nazi aircraft factories, oil refineries, synthetic oil plants. We worked long and hard for air superiority, thousands of good men died for it, and our troops on French soil rely on it. We can’t lose it now.”
Ray clamped down on a smile. That sounded like the speeches Jack gave at mission briefings. He might not be a pastor, but he certainly could preach.
When they reached the abbey, Jack sat on a low wall of medieval rubble. “That’s why I needed to talk to you today.”
“Huh?” What on earth did he have to do with air superiority?
“I need to select crews to train in radar-guided bombing and serve in the 333rd Squadron as the Pathfinder Force for our wing. You’re a logical choice. You’re an excellent pilot and well respected by your crew—and by the whole group after your buzzing adventure. I wanted to ask your opinion.”
“My opinion.” Ray sat a few feet from his brother and ran his hand over the smooth stones embedded in the rough mortar. In the lead position, Pathfinder planes bore the brunt of Luftwaffe attacks, while “Tail-End Charlie” in the rear took the worst of the flak as the antiaircraft gunners found their range. The Eighth Air Force had increased combat tours to thirty-five missions, and most men finished within three months. Pathfinder crews only had to fly thirty missions, but they didn’t fly as often and took twice as long to complete a tour.
Ray studied the jagged wall of what had once been a grand cathedral. Helen’s first letter rested in the inside pocket of his flight jacket, an impersonal letter one would write an acquaintance, the rubble of what had promised to be a grand relationship.
Although his initial purpose in coming to England had been accomplished, he was in no hurry to go home. Besides, the accuracy of radar-guided bombing might decrease civilian casualties and bring a quicker end to the war.
He turned to his brother. “You always ask a man’s opinion before making assignments?”
Jack grinned. “Never.”
“Then sign me up.”
Antioch
Thursday, August 10, 1944
Helen stood waist deep in the San Joaquin River with Jay-Jay on her hip. “Ready? One, two, three.” She squatted until the water covered his shoulders.
He squealed in delighted terror and dug his hands into her shoulders.
She straightened up, and the evaporating water cooled her skin. “What a brave boy you are.”
“Again! Again!”
Up and down she hopped, and she and Jay-Jay laughed together.
“Martha, Martha,” Betty said. “You said you didn’t have time for a fun day out.”
“I don’t. I’m behind in my volunteer work, I have laundry and errands, but my baby lives on the river, and he needs to know how to swim.” The week before, a ten-year-old boy had slipped off the municipal pier and drowned. If only he’d known how to swim.
“My swim,” Jay-Jay said.
“Yes, you will learn how to swim.” Helen placed one arm under his shoulders and one under his round tummy, and glided him through the water. He craned his head up with a grin dimpling his cheeks.
Betty cupped a handful of water and poured it over little Judy’s tummy. “Vic’s not keeping his agreement.”
“Last night was an exception. We had to drive up to Vallejo to find out what was going on at Mare Island.”
“Can you tell me now?”
Helen swung Jay-Jay in a circle. The story would be in the newspaper anyway. “I told you they took the survivors of the explosion up to the Naval Ammunition Depot at Mare Island. They can’t load at Port Chicago until they rebuild.”
“Right.”
“Well, yesterday they took the men out to work for the first time. When the men found out they were loading ammo, 258 of them refused to work. They said they were afraid to do their jobs.”
“Goodness. What did the Navy do?” Betty held Judy under the armpits and dipped her feet in the water. Judy squawked and drew up her knees.
“They locked them on a barge. The brig isn’t big enough. They’re trying to talk sense into them.”
“Is that what Vic did?”
“I had to stay on the dock, but Vic took their side.”
“You’re kidding. Didn’t those men grumble that the Navy wouldn’t send them to combat? Now they refuse to do dangerous work?”
“That’s what I thought, but Vic disagrees.” Her arms grew tired. She headed for the beach and set Jay-Jay in water a few inches deep. “Here, sweetie, splash around.”
“Has he forgotten there’s a war on?”
Helen sat in the water near her son and kicked to strengthen her feet and legs. “He says they saw 322 of their friends die, and they’re shaken. I can understand—I’m shaken too. And I didn’t have to clean up like those men did.”
“I know, but still.” Betty plunked down next to Helen and set Judy on her knees. “Men on the front lines see horrible things, and they have to plug on even when they’re shaken. Jim did.”
Helen nodded and made her lips waver. “They say they want survivor’s leave. To be fair, the white survivors got leave, but still, men at sea don’t have that luxury.”
“And Vic took their side?”
“He says they have a point. They still don’t know what caused the explosion. They’re working under the same officers, and nothing’s been done to improve safety.”
Jay-Jay stood in water to his chest. Helen scrambled over and scooped him up. “Oh no, you don’t, my little fishy. Not without your mama.”
He howled, but Helen whirled him in the water and made him laugh.
“Apricot canning time,” Betty said.
“Mm-hmm.” The sweet smell of apricots from the Hickmott Cannery filled the air.
Betty smiled at the clear sky. “I love it here in the summer. What happy memories.”
“Not for me.” Helen plunged down so the water lapped Jay-Jay’s chin. “My summer memories involve Aunt Olive’s old house, a tyrannical ballet teacher, and San Francisco fog.”
“You made up for it the last two years of high school when you begged off. I know you just wanted to flirt with Jim.” She winked. “It worked.”
Helen managed to smile. She’d only exchanged Madame Ivanova’s abuse for Jim’s. But then she buried her face in Jay-Jay’s damp curls. A torturous marriage, but what sweet reward.
“Is it hard living with the Carlisles?”
Helen jerked her head up. “What?”
Betty laughed. “I didn’t mean like that. They’re wonderful people. They may be old-fashioned, but he’s so funny, and they’re so devoted to each other—and generous. Not just with charity. Goodness, you have the most darling wardrobe. They spoil you rotten.”
“Sure.” But Mr. Carlisle talked to his wife the same way Jim had talked to Helen—the wounded tone when she disappointed him, the dismissive tone when she expressed an opinion, the cutting tone when she made a mistake.
The corners of Betty’s eyes tugged down. “I meant it must be hard living where Jim grew up. Everything must remind you of him.”
For once, Helen didn’t have to fake a pained expression.
Betty stood and walked to her towel under a will
ow tree. “I rushed you, didn’t I? With Ray. You two seemed perfect for each other, and I thought you were ready. But then if, God forbid, anything happened to George, I wouldn’t be ready for years, if ever.”
Helen dragged her feet out of the water. Part of her longed to tell Betty the real reason she wasn’t ready, but she’d only hurt Jay-Jay. And what would Betty think of a girl too stupid to follow her family’s advice to postpone marriage, stupid enough to marry a wife beater? Jim tried to control her, even when they were dating. Wasn’t that a clue?
Betty toweled off Judy’s dark curls. “Maybe you’ll be ready when Ray comes home.”
“It’s not like that. Not anymore.”
Betty flipped a hand. “I see how often he writes. Oh! Almost forgot. I brought you his latest letter. George feels like a secret agent delivering your letters. He wants to buy a trench coat.” She dug around in her bag.
Helen tried to look casual as she dried off the little boy Ray called “munchkin.” Ray had such a gentle way with Jay-Jay. And firm. He’d never been more attractive than on the day he hauled Jay-Jay off and shut him in his room.
Betty swung an envelope between thumb and forefinger. “In an envelope this time. Ooh, a love letter.”
“Oh, brother.” Helen snatched away the letter and opened it. “See, it’s not for privacy. There’s something loose in here. A leaf?”
“A leaf? That’s not very romantic.”
“I told you.” Helen pulled out a dried-up leaf and frowned at it. “Why a leaf?”
“For goodness’ sake, read the letter and find out.”
“Bossy, bossy, bossy.” But Helen read.
Dear Helen, July 18, 1944
As of today, I haven’t heard whether you wish to correspond, and so I write. I pray often that the Lord will bring you peace and strength to help you through your difficult times.
You’re probably wondering about the leaf. It’s a tradition for soldiers to send home battle souvenirs, and this is mine. I can’t disclose details, but on today’s mission, under fighter attack, I flew at rooftop level over the homeland of our enemy.