The Land Beneath Us

by Sarah Sundin

  “You take that end, and I’ll take the other,” he said to Gene. This drill was dangerous, and the other four men had hangovers. Since the USO didn’t serve booze at their party, the men had made up for it on the Fourth of July itself.

  Clay looked them each in their bloodshot eyes. “Look lively, boys. Y’all can do it.”

  “Quit yelling.” Holman cringed and massaged his temples.

  Wait till he heard Lombardi. Clay squatted and wrapped his arms around the log, as fat as a telephone pole and just as heavy.

  “Ready!” Lombardi shouted. “Exercise.”

  With loud grunts, Clay and his buddies hoisted the log waist high and stood. Clay’s thigh muscles strained.

  Following Lombardi’s commands, Clay ducked under the log until it rested on his right shoulder. The other men stayed with him, but with more cussing than usual.

  Clay pushed to standing and set his feet wide. With his right arm wrapped around the log, he set his left hand on his hip and leaned to the left. His abdominal oblique muscles made their presence known, and perspiration tickled along his hairline.

  The men straightened to standing again. The log lurched to the right, and Clay scooted his feet to compensate. McKillop swore—he must have been the one who stumbled.

  “Y’all can do it, boys. All together,” Clay said. With both hands he thrust the log overhead. Every muscle in his arms screamed and screamed harder when he lowered the log to his left shoulder. The weight increased—one of the men behind him had messed up.

  For the next half hour, they manipulated that log. The drill built both muscle and teamwork, and Clay put his all into it.

  At last they set the log down on the dirt, with only a few new scratches on ears and shoulders and hands.

  “To the pit,” Lombardi called. “Double time.”

  The men jogged off the parade grounds and along the road.

  Gene fell in beside Clay. “Hate picking up their slack when they’ve got hangovers.”

  “It evens out. Remember, they picked up our slack when we had dysentery.”

  “Don’t remind me.” Gene clutched his stomach as they ran. “Glad Rudder’s putting our cooks through cooking school.”

  “Me too.” Major Rudder showed no mercy in training the men. But he’d also moved the Rangers out of Tent City and into real wooden barracks with showers and a dayroom and electric lights. He’d started “gripe sessions,” and he listened to the men’s concerns and made changes. “Looking forward to good food.”

  Gene whacked him in the arm. “That’s why you should’ve gone to the USO party.”

  Clay’s shirtsleeves, tied around his waist, slipped, and he tightened the knot as he ran. “I told you. I won’t be here long, and I don’t want to start something I can’t finish.” Here in Tullahoma . . . here on earth . . . Gene didn’t need to know what he really meant.

  “Doesn’t mean you can’t go out and have fun.”

  “Come on.” Clay spread his arms wide and mimicked the bragging look he’d seen so often. “How could a girl go out with me even once and not fall in love?”

  Gene cracked up and punched Clay in the arm. “Yeah, that’s likely.”

  Clay laughed too, but his own words stung. Ellen Hill had been his only girlfriend. In Kerrville, the white girls were put off by his brown skin, and the Mexican girls by his white name. And Ellen? Even after a year together, she’d only had eyes for Adler.

  “Still, that little Leah—I bet she’d like a USO party.”

  Clay swiped sweat from his upper lip. “Nah. She’s sweet, but she’s too young.”

  Gene gave him a funny look. “You’re not that old. What? Twenty-two? She’s got to be at least eighteen.”

  “Just barely. It’s more . . . she’s really young inside.”

  “Yeah? She’ll grow up quick around this place.”

  “Reckon so.” It would be a shame if Leah lost that innocence.

  “Well, me and Betty Jo had a swell time. I’m gonna marry her.”

  “What?” Clay studied his friend’s beet-red face. “You’ve only known her a few months.”

  “As you said, we’re leaving soon. Think about it. If we get married, she’ll get my allotment. She’ll be able to afford a real place, won’t have to live in that converted chicken coop anymore.”

  The housing shortage in town was bad indeed, and Clay grimaced.

  “And, you know . . .” Gene gazed away with a smile. “I sure wouldn’t mind some time together as husband and wife before we ship out.”

  Clay chuckled and rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that’s a foundation for a strong marriage.”

  “It’s worked since the dawn of time. Don’t knock it.”

  Clay would never find out, and he no longer minded.

  His company gathered around the pit, about eighteen feet on each side, waist deep, lined with logs on the sides and sawdust on the ground.

  “First platoon, shirts off. Second platoon, shirts on. Everyone in.”

  Clay unknotted his shirt from around his waist, and Gene unbuttoned his. Poor man fought a losing battle against sunburn. But the shirtless platoon had an advantage.

  Rudder and Taylor and Lombardi stood nearby.

  Clay had to do his best. He’d decided on his new approach—fast, fierce, and fair. Wrestling and football had taught him to be fierce and fair. He only needed to add speed. By now he knew the strengths and weaknesses of the men in his company. When replacements arrived, he could size them up during drills so he could act quickly when it was time to fight.

  Abandoning good sportsmanship didn’t seem fitting, even in time of war.

  Clay jumped into the pit and plotted his strategy. His platoon had to toss out all the members of the other platoon—without getting tossed out themselves. There were no rules, and injuries were common.

  Manfred Brady stood by the wall, cracking his knuckles. About four inches taller than Clay and built like an ox, he’d expect to be the last man attacked.

  Lombardi blew the whistle.

  Clay charged at Brady from the side, low and fast, and barreled into the man’s torso. Using the judo moves they’d been taught, Clay kept his momentum going, swung one shoulder down behind the man’s hips, and used Brady’s own height and weight to heave him out of the pit.

  Brady swore at him.

  Clay kept moving. Frank Lyons shoved wiry little Ernie McKillop out of the pit. McKillop’s high-pitched scream said Lyons was fighting dirtier than dirty.

  From behind, Clay clamped his left arm around Lyons’s chest and grasped his head with his right arm.

  A sharp pain in his forearm. Lyons had bitten him. So the man was used to biting—was that how he’d lost that chunk out of his ear?

  Clay didn’t lose his grip. He boxed the man’s ear so he’d stop chewing him, and he buckled his knees. Lyons sagged in his grip. Now to hoist him out.

  Someone yanked Clay’s hair and swept one leg out from under him. Lyons turned, jammed his fingers into Clay’s windpipe, and the two men flung Clay out of the pit.

  Coughing, he stared up at the blue sky, then pushed himself up to his knees. He’d done pretty well. Only a third of the men remained in the pit, and it had taken two men to remove Clay.

  But would a middle-of-the-road performance be enough to stay in the Rangers?

  6

  CAMP FORREST

  THURSDAY, JULY 8, 1943

  “Good night, gentlemen. We’ll open tomorrow morning at eight.” Leah let out the last three soldiers and flipped the sign on the library door to read “closed.”

  Leaning back against the closed door, she grinned at her domain. Darlene said she was crazy to enjoy being alone in a library late at night, but it was heavenly.

  After she turned off unneeded lights, she retrieved her purse from behind the circulation desk and headed to the stacks. Tonight she was up to the 280s in the Dewey decimal system, and she pulled out a volume about the Orthodox Church.

  At a table she pulled a composit
ion book and pen from her purse. Perhaps this book would yield a picture of the ornately decorated church in her memory or of a Greek surname.

  No pictures graced the pages, but Leah transcribed a few names. None sounded right.

  The ink flowed so smoothly from her new pen. She’d purchased a celluloid pen with a swirl of greens that reminded her of a mountain brook, but it wasn’t the gold pen of her dreams, the sort of pen her classmates had received from family for high school graduation.

  What would it be like to have family to love her and give her a personal gift? Since she and her sisters had been sent to an orphanage when their parents died, their other family members must have been dead or in Greece.

  Leah had spoken Greek well enough to assume her parents were immigrants, but she’d spoken English well enough to conclude the immigration wasn’t recent. She’d clung to the Greek language, but Mr. and Mrs. Jones had beaten her every time she used “that foreign heathen talk.”

  With a shudder, Leah riffled through another chapter. It was for the best that she’d fallen ill and they’d abandoned her in Des Moines.

  If only they’d given the orphanage more information about her background. Leah had been allowed to read her report before she left Iowa, which had been both painful and futile.

  Mr. and Mrs. Jones claimed to have lost her birth certificate and adoption papers. They said her name was Leah Jones and not to let her say otherwise—she was a lying, storytelling kind, always making up silly names for herself. Like “Thalia.”

  They’d only adopted her to help in their store one day, but when they lost the store in the Depression, they had no more need for Leah.

  “Can’t afford her. Too sickly. Never stops crying,” the report had read. They hadn’t said where they’d adopted her from and had marched out without looking back.

  “Thank you, Lord,” Leah whispered. “Thank you for leading them to a good orphanage.”

  She simply had to find the blessings, even in the bleakest conditions.

  A clicking sound, and Leah looked toward the circulation desk. Nothing. But the service club next door was open until ten thirty, so soldiers would be milling around outside. That must have been what she heard.

  Leah perused the final chapters, but the book hadn’t helped. None had. Was finding her sisters a hopeless quest?

  Callie. Polly. She remembered their sweet baby faces.

  In third grade, Leah had read a book about Greek mythology in the school library and had seen her own name among the muses. If her parents had named her Thalia, after the muse of idyllic poetry and comedy, was it possible they’d named the twins Calliope and Polyhymnia, after the muses of epic and sacred poetry?

  Even if it weren’t true, the idea captured Leah’s imagination.

  She turned in her composition book to the poem she was writing. It needed one more stanza, but the words evaded her.

  Three muses dance, their hands entwined

  A circle of love, as one.

  Thalia laughs, an idyllic song

  Of earth and fields and home.

  Calliope calls, an epic ballad

  Of valor and heroes and might.

  Polyhymnia chants, a sacred hymn

  Of praise and truth and faith.

  Still no final stanza. Leah leaned back in her chair and stretched.

  Odd. The door to the storage room behind the circulation desk stood open, and the light was on. They always kept the door closed, since Miss Mayhew said it gave the library a neater appearance. And Leah had a lifelong habit of turning off lights upon leaving a room.

  This time she must have forgotten. Perhaps she was more tired than she realized.

  After she shelved the book, she crossed the library to the circulation desk. She swung open the half door in the desk, stepped inside the storage room, and switched off the light.

  A hand slapped over her mouth. She cried out, muffled by rough, digging fingers.

  Someone yanked her left arm behind her back. Pain exploded in her shoulder, and she tried to scream.

  “One sound and you die.”

  Her eyes burned with tears. The man stank of musk and onions and beer. The scent of a wolf.

  Gene Mayer sang “The Girl I Love to Leave Behind” as he and Clay left the service club, where they’d watched the movie Stage Door Canteen.

  “The Army was a good choice for you, G. M. You’re killing that song.”

  “Ha. You’re just jealous ’cause I’ve got a girl to leave behind.” In the pale moonlight, Gene grinned. “Saturday I’m asking Betty Jo to marry me.”

  Clay strolled beside the long club building toward their barracks in Block 19. “Unless Rudder gives us another night exercise.”

  Gene groaned.

  Two days earlier, the Rangers had run the assault course until two in the morning with live ammunition firing overhead. Then reveille at 0545.

  They passed the library. Lights shone inside, but dimly. Was Leah still there? The library closed at nine thirty, but it was almost ten thirty. And an awful lot of men roamed in the dark.

  Clay frowned. “Say, go on without me. I’m going to see if Leah needs an escort to the bus stop.”

  “An escort?” Gene mimed dipping a girl low and smooching her.

  “An escort only. A lady shouldn’t walk around alone at night.”

  “Whatever you say, Pax.” Gene strolled away, singing “Here comes the bride . . .”

  Clay rolled his eyes and trotted up the stairs. This would be hard to live down.

  The sign on the door read “closed,” but Clay tested the doorknob and it opened. The library was dark except the central reading area—which was empty. “Leah?”

  A muffled thump and a shuffling sound came to his right, from behind the circulation desk, inside a darkened room.

  Every sense went into high alert. Someone was in there. If it were Leah, she would have said something.

  Clay had nothing to use as a weapon. He wiggled loose his necktie, which could be used against him, and he stuffed it in his pocket.

  His heart rate rising, Clay padded around the circulation desk, low and swift. Was it a thief? But what was there to steal in a library? Or had a soldier sneaked in with a girl for a tryst? Clay would feel real stupid if it turned out to be a raccoon.

  The half door in the desk stood open, and Clay darted through and crouched in the attack position outside the back room.

  A tryst, all right. In the dimness, a man knelt buttoning up his pants beside a woman on the floor, more undressed than dressed.

  Disbelief and rage billowed up. Two years before it had been Adler and Ellen in a tangled mass of bare limbs and discarded clothing on the garage floor. His girlfriend. His brother.

  But this was Leah! A gag slashed white across her face, and her eyes met his—frantic and terrified. And there was blood.

  Clay’s rage snapped to the man, a soldier in khakis. A knit cap with two holes cut in it concealed his face.

  No time to analyze. Clay leapt over Leah and tackled her assailant.

  They grappled, and the attacker flipped Clay onto his back. The man reached for something on the ground, and light flashed on steel.

  A knife! Clay parried the thrust, then jabbed straight fingers into the man’s windpipe, the same move Lyons had used so effectively on him.

  The assailant coughed and jerked back. Enough for Clay to kick free.

  Silhouetted against the light from the doorway, the man sat on his knees, knife in hand.

  Clay scrabbled up and chose his next move.

  The attacker’s cheeks jutted out as if he were smiling. Then he swung around and plunged the knife into Leah’s chest.

  “No! Leah!”

  The man dashed away with his knife. If Clay chased him, he couldn’t help Leah.

  Clay scrambled to her. “Leah! Leah!”

  She was conscious, her eyes squeezed shut in pain.

  He ripped off the gag and assessed the knife wound. “Leah, talk to me.”

&
nbsp; “He—he—” She swept her hand down over her clothing, trying to cover herself.

  Clay only looked at the wound, at the blood spilling out. Right upper chest below the clavicle. Arteries and veins ran through the region. “Leah, we’re going to stop the bleeding and get you to the hospital, all right?”

  She looked up at him, breathing hard and ragged, not a tear in her eyes.

  “That’s a brave girl. Stay nice and calm.” He ripped off his shirt, buttons pinging onto the floor. “This is for a bandage. No need to worry.”

  He yanked off his undershirt, rolled it into a ball, and pressed it firmly into the wound.

  Leah moaned but barely stirred.

  Clay held one shirtsleeve in each hand and whipped his shirt in a circle, rolling it into a bandage. He laid it across the wound, tossed one end over her left shoulder, and tucked the other under her right arm.

  “I’m going to lift you to tie this.” He worked his arm behind her shoulders.

  She cried out.

  Her left arm lay at a crooked angle. That vermin had dislocated her shoulder, and Clay’s gut burned.

  “I’ll be gentle, but I need to tie this so I can transport you.” He carefully draped her left arm across her stomach, and she groaned.

  “That’s a good girl. You can do this.” He lifted her shoulders just enough to pass the bandage behind her, and he knotted it beside her neck on the left. “Bear with me. This may hurt, but we need to get you to the hospital.”

  “I under . . . stand.” Her voice was faint.

  He pulled her skirt down and arranged the remnants of her blouse to cover her somewhat, but her life was more important than her modesty.

  Clay scooped her into his arms. “How are you doing?”

  She nodded, her eyes unfocused.

  No! He couldn’t let her bleed to death. “Stay with me, Leah.”

  He strode through the library and kicked open the door. A jeep, a jeep. Why wasn’t there a jeep on the road when he needed one?

  The hospital at Camp Forrest was about a mile away, and Clay took off running. The few soldiers on the sidewalk looked at him in alarm.