The Land Beneath Us

by Sarah Sundin

  As the man read names, Clay shivered in his fatigues. The tent was warmed by a potbellied stove, but he needed a sweater under his uniform in the New Jersey fall. A lot colder than Texas.

  “Paxton!”

  Clay grabbed a thick and squishy letter from Leah. “Please,” he muttered. They’d agreed she’d officially announce her pregnancy to him about this time, and then she’d announce it in Tullahoma. She was four months along, and soon the pregnancy would announce itself.

  He opened the envelope and pulled out two yellow baby booties, and he whooped. “I’m going to be a daddy!”

  His buddies gathered around. “Congratulations,” . . . “Now you’re shackled for good,” . . . “Sure you’re the dad?”

  Clay glared at Frank Lyons and his smirking dark eyes. “Sure, I’m sure.”

  “Can’t believe you beat me.” Gene grinned at him. “When is she due?”

  Clay skimmed the letter as if he didn’t know the agreed-upon due date. “Early May.”

  “May, April, March . . .” Lyons ticked off the months on his fingers.

  “It’s nine months, you numbskull,” Clay said. “We were married in August.”

  The congratulations resumed, and the men turned to their letters.

  Clay fingered a tiny yellow bootie. For the second time, a woman in his life was bearing a child he hadn’t fathered. With Ellen, he’d prayed everyone would realize he wasn’t the daddy. With Leah, he prayed everyone would believe he was the daddy.

  He could still see Ellen in Mama’s rocking chair, knitting tiny garments for Timmy. Had she been scared and remorseful behind her phony cheer and her insistence that Adler would return for her?

  She’d paid a steep price for her sin. Too steep.

  True compassion for the woman he’d once loved filled his soul. Lord, I forgive her.

  Thank goodness the Lord had let him redeem himself with Leah. She was a true innocent. She deserved nothing but happiness and security from now on.

  19

  TULLAHOMA

  TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 1943

  Leah scraped scrambled eggs into Mrs. Perry’s serving bowl. “These smell so good.”

  Mrs. Perry grunted and slid pancakes onto a platter. “You certainly eat your fair share.”

  Leah winced at her sharp tone. “I guess I’m gaining back my strength.”

  “That’s not all you’re gaining.” She glanced at Leah’s stomach.

  That stomach turned. Leah couldn’t delay her announcement any longer. Every day for the past week she’d tried to speak but had failed.

  She brought the eggs out to the dining room and took her seat between Darlene and Thelma, across from Adelle, Faye, and Verena, all of whom worked at Camp Forrest—from the laundry to the bakery to the mess.

  Leah scooped a portion of pancakes and eggs and courage. “I have an announcement.”

  When everyone looked her way, she forced a smile. “I’m expecting a baby.”

  Darlene gasped and grabbed Leah’s arm. “You are? My heavens! I’m so happy for you.”

  Leah’s smile relaxed. Darlene had been distant lately, and Leah didn’t know why.

  “I thought so,” Mrs. Perry said. “Skinny thing like you mushrooming like that.”

  “When are you due?” Thelma’s sweet smile more than made up for the homely face the other girls mocked.

  “The first of May.”

  Mrs. Perry spread oleo on her pancakes. “Give me two weeks’ notice before you move out.”

  Leah’s fingers tightened around her fork. “Is it possible to have a room—”

  “No children. That’s my rule. I don’t want no squalling babies in here.”

  A long sigh, but Leah concealed it. “Yes, ma’am.” She’d look for a new place around the first of the year.

  Darlene tossed her napkin onto the table. “Any of y’all have fifty cents I can borrow? I can’t find my pay from last week, and I want to see if the beauty shop can squeeze me in this morning.”

  “I do.” Leah pushed back her chair. It felt so good to give rather than receive.

  “Stay put, Mama. I saw your purse on your bureau.” Darlene trotted upstairs.

  As she ate, Leah fielded questions. If only Miss Mayhew would receive Leah’s news as enthusiastically this afternoon.

  Footsteps thumped downstairs. “Why, you little thief.”

  Leah whipped around in her chair, and her blood ran cold.

  Darlene marched to the dining room, brandishing dollar bills. “My pay! You stole it.”

  “What? No. I didn’t steal—”

  “Four five-dollar bills—exactly what I was paid on Friday.” Red-hot anger warped Darlene’s features, and she waved the bills in Leah’s face.

  Leah’s breath raced. Just like in the orphanage. Stealing. Accusations. Falsehoods. “I was paid on Friday too. I promise, it’s mine. I would never steal from you—from anyone.”

  “Liar!” Darlene kicked Leah’s chair. “You told me yourself—you used to steal from your friends.”

  Leah ducked her head, her face tingling with coldness. It was all over. “Just little things—things they’d lost. I stopped years ago.”

  “My mama said never to trust an orphan. I should have listened to her.” Darlene stomped her foot. “Mrs. Perry, I will not put up with this.”

  Mrs. Perry stood, crossed her arms over her ample chest, and glared at Leah. “Two things I don’t abide—girls entertaining menfolk upstairs and thieving. Get out.”

  Leah’s chest collapsed. “But I didn’t take her money. We all know she always loses things.”

  “Convenient for you, eh?” Mrs. Perry barked out a laugh. “Should never have rented to a raggedy little good-for-nothing. Get out of my house.”

  Leah stared. But only Thelma looked sympathetic. The hard expression on her landlady’s face and the appalled looks of the other girls said the sentence would never be revoked. “When do you want me to leave?”

  “Right this minute. We’ll watch you pack, make sure you don’t snitch anything else.”

  Nothing to do but obey. Leah trudged upstairs and pulled the dress shop box from under her bed.

  “I’ll help.” Darlene flung open bureau drawers and dumped the contents on the floor.

  Leah winced but kept packing. When girls ganged up in the orphanage, she’d learned to keep her head down, her mouth shut, and to escape quickly. And to never, ever cry.

  Thelma knelt in front of her, holding her compact. “Where do you want this?”

  The unexpected kindness made Leah’s eyes water more than the familiar cruelty. She grabbed her old canvas schoolbag. “In here. Thank you.”

  Thelma gathered Leah’s toiletries into the schoolbag while Leah filled the box with clothes.

  Then Leah pinned on her hat, slipped on her raincoat, slung her purse and schoolbag over her shoulder, and picked up her box.

  Mrs. Perry stood back from the doorway. “I’ll follow you out to watch those sticky fingers of yours.”

  Somehow Leah’s feet made their way downstairs and out onto the porch.

  The door slammed behind her.

  Rain pelted the sidewalk and made the leaves shiver.

  Leah pulled her hood over her hat and arranged her coat around the cardboard box the best she could. With her hands full, she couldn’t raise her umbrella.

  At the end of the block, she stopped. Where to? She didn’t belong anywhere.

  Tiny puffs of her breath turned white and floated away. She had nowhere to go. Nowhere.

  No matter how bad her life had been, she’d always had a place to sleep. Even when her parents died.

  She could still see the terror in her mother’s eyes. “Thalia! The babies!”

  Leah had fallen, rolled to the curb, pebbles scratching her cheek and hands, the carriage with her twin sisters clattering beside her. A double thump, and a black car screeched to a stop where her parents had stood only a moment earlier. In their last moments, flinging their daughters to safe
ty.

  Death had torn her parents from her, but she’d had a roof. Always a roof. She’d been unwanted and abandoned, but never without a home.

  Her chest heaved, and rain splattered her face. She was a good-for-nothing orphan, a godless heathen.

  Leah would always hear the word heathen in Mrs. Jones’s outraged voice, feel the slap across her mouth, see Mr. Jones grabbing the switch. “I’ll teach you not to use that foreign talk in my house.”

  “Leah? Leah Paxton?”

  She blinked, her eyelashes heavy from the rain.

  A pickup truck parked across the street, and Mercer Bellamy peeked out the window. “What are you doing out in the rain?”

  She could only shake her head.

  “Let me give you a lift. Rita Sue would have my head if I left you in this downpour.” He jogged around the truck and opened the passenger door.

  Only a lifelong habit of obedience carried her into that truck.

  Mercer climbed back in. “Where to?”

  Leah stared at the dashboard and shook her head.

  “Are you all right?”

  No. No, she wasn’t.

  “I’ll take you to Rita Sue.” He turned the truck around, drove a few blocks, and parked in front of his house. Then he opened the door for Leah and reached for her box.

  “No.” Leah clutched it tight and walked to the house.

  Mercer passed her and opened the door. “Rita Sue! Leah’s here. Something’s wrong.”

  “Leah?” Rita Sue stepped out of the kitchen in a housedress. “What’s wrong, sugar?”

  “Found her out in the rain.” Mercer smacked a kiss on his wife’s cheek. “I need to get to the bank.”

  Rita Sue guided Leah to the kitchen. “What’s wrong? Is it the baby? Clay?”

  Thank goodness, no. The concern in Rita Sue’s hazel eyes loosened her vocal cords. “My landlady kicked me out.”

  “Because you’re pregnant? No.” Rita Sue pried the box from Leah and set it on the table. “You didn’t tell her Clay isn’t the father, did you?”

  “No.” Leah removed her coat, draped it over one chair, and sat in another.

  Rita Sue perched on the edge of the kitchen table beside her. “Couldn’t pay your rent?”

  Leah grasped the edges of the chair seat. She had to be honest and tell the whole story. “Darlene said I stole her pay—twenty dollars. I didn’t, but Mrs. Perry believed her.”

  Rita Sue frowned. “Why would she believe Darlene over you?”

  Leah squeezed her eyes shut until red spots appeared in the blackness behind her eyelids. “I used to steal. I told Darlene about it, and—and she told Mrs. Perry.”

  “You did?” Rita Sue’s voice went tight. “What did you steal?”

  Oh no. She’d lose Rita Sue’s friendship as well. “In the orphanage we all took extra food whenever we saw it. And—and I stole other things—things children left out in the rain or abandoned or lost. But I haven’t stolen anything for years, ma’am. I promise.”

  Rita Sue let out a long sigh. “That wasn’t right.”

  “I know.” Leah pinned her gaze on her former friend. “I know it wasn’t right. I stopped and I returned what I could and the Lord forgave me and—”

  “No.” Rita Sue waved her hand before her face, her glistening eyes. “I meant it wasn’t right for them to hold your past against you. I’m so sorry this happened, sugar.”

  A thickness built in Leah’s throat and behind her eyes. Rita Sue believed her? Just like that?

  “The rental house won’t be ready for another week or two. It’s yours and no arguing.” Rita Sue sniffled and picked up Leah’s box. “We’ll put you in the spare room for now.”

  Leah’s head spun at the mercy, and she gripped the seat edge even harder. “I—I won’t be able to pay until Friday. Darlene took my money.”

  Rita Sue snorted and marched to the stairs. “And who’s she calling a thief? Come with me, sugar. This week’s free. You’re our guest.”

  Leah stood on shaky legs and gathered her coat and schoolbag. “Are you sure?”

  “Sure as sure can be.” Rita Sue leaned over the banister and beckoned with her chin. “You write that husband of yours and tell him you have a new address, with people who care for you.”

  Leah followed her friend upstairs, but a swirl of nausea filled her belly. She’d have to tell Clay why she’d moved. She’d have to tell him about Darlene’s accusations and Mrs. Perry’s verdict and her own past. Never once had she told Clay she used to steal.

  She clamped one hand on the banister for balance. Clay had been the victim of theft. What would he think to learn his wife was a thief?

  “Lord, no,” she whispered. She was preparing to lose him in battle, but to lose his respect and regard as well?

  How could she bear it?

  20

  NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK

  SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 21, 1943

  Clay whistled at the sight of the massive gray ship rising before him. “Y’all can’t say the Army isn’t good to us. We’re taking a cruise on Britain’s finest ocean liner.”

  Behind him in line, Bob Holman snorted. “Something tells me we ain’t getting staterooms.”

  Nope, they’d cram some fifteen thousand troops onto the HMT Queen Elizabeth.

  Clay stepped forward in line, his M1 steel helmet heavy on his head, his field pack on his back, his rifle on his shoulder, and his duffel bag in hand.

  A Red Cross lady stood beside a stack of boxes. “Everyone take a book. There are thirty titles, so you can share on board.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.” Clay took Walter Lippmann’s U.S. Foreign Policy—one of the new paperback Armed Services Editions.

  “I got The Adventures of Tom Sawyer,” Bob Holman said. “How about you, Ruby?”

  “Hopalong Cassidy Serves a Writ.”

  Something for every taste, and Clay grinned. Wouldn’t Leah like to see?

  An officer stood at the foot of the gangplank with a roster. “Paxton!”

  “Clay!” He took a blue card from the officer and headed up the gangplank. The card read “Keep this card. Sleeping quarters: Room M 21.” M had to be for the main deck, and the card’s color designated their shift for eating at the mess.

  The steep gangplank clanged below Clay’s feet. They’d spent the past week and a half at Camp Shanks, outside New York City. Since the crack of dawn, they’d been marching and riding in trucks.

  Higher and higher, until a sailor admitted them inside and motioned toward the stern of the ship. They jostled down passageways designed for genteel passengers, not grungy Rangers.

  Clay opened door M 21. A nicer sign below read “Second-class lounge.”

  A large room filled floor to ceiling with four-tiered canvas bunks. No room for lounging, that was for sure.

  McKillop pointed. “Hey, look! A bar.”

  “Yeah, like they’d leave us any booze,” Holman grumbled.

  Clay set his gear on a bunk and slipped on his garrison cap. “Let’s explore, y’all.”

  His squad followed. Soon they’d be restricted to the blue section of the ship at the stern, with other enlisted men in the red section at the bow and officers in the white section amidships.

  For some reason, the Rangers had been allowed to board early and had the run of the ship.

  Clay climbed a staircase with brass banisters. The ship hadn’t been fitted out in her ocean liner finery before the war broke out, but he could imagine how swanky she could have been.

  He headed out onto the sundeck, but there was nothing sunny about Manhattan in November.

  Under lifeboats suspended from davits, Clay stood at the railing and looked down the river, packed with warships, freighters, and tugboats. Skyscrapers poked toward the clouds, but he couldn’t spot the Statue of Liberty.

  Gene leaned his elbows on the railing. “Say good-bye to the USA, boys. Next time we see her, the war will be over.”

  Sid Rubenstein lit a cigarette. “Won’t be lo
ng, now that the Rangers are coming.”

  “Reckon the invasion won’t come till spring though,” Clay said.

  McKillop leaned toward Ruby’s Zippo lighter and lit his own cigarette. “Hope they send us on raids first, so we can shake up the Jerries and get some licks in.”

  Raids. Chilly air stilled in Clay’s lungs. He’d always pictured dying in a big battle, but what if he died in a raid? That could come long before spring.

  If only it could wait until after the baby was born. Not yet, Lord. Please.

  HMT QUEEN ELIZABETH

  NORTH ATLANTIC

  THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 25, 1943

  Clay stood with his rifle at “right shoulder arms” inside a door amidships, guarding the sundeck from any enlisted men foolish enough to venture into officers’ country.

  The 2nd Ranger Battalion had been allowed aboard first because they had military police duty, which they hated.

  Clay’s stomach rumbled. The passing officers kept grumbling about the ship’s British crew serving pork for Thanksgiving, but Clay was too hungry to care.

  The door opened, admitting a blast of freezing North Atlantic air and two naval officers. Clay snapped his rifle vertically in front of him, presenting arms. They saluted but barely met his gaze.

  Private First Class Nobody.

  An Army officer dashed upstairs, green in the face. No time for protocol. Clay shoved open the door, and the man ran to the rails. They’d been at sea for three days, but seasickness still prevailed.

  Not for Clay.

  One summer his family had taken a vacation on the Gulf of Mexico. When they went sailing, not one Paxton had gotten seasick. Mama insisted her spicy cooking had toughened their stomachs.

  An Army Air Forces officer climbed the stairs wearing an olive drab overcoat and a crushed service cap. The flyboys’ military courtesy tended to be as sloppy as their caps, but Clay presented arms smartly.

  The officer didn’t look him in the eye as required, but he flapped his hand toward his forehead.

  Tall, blond, broad shouldered, a familiar set to his chin.

  Clay’s mouth fell open. It couldn’t be.

  The man opened the door and stopped short. “Hoo-ey!”