The look in the eyes of the nurse was one of puzzled astonishment. She started to ask something else, but apparently changed her mind.
John did not see real doubt, only curiosity, but he was glad when she changed the subject.
“John, about tomorrow, I think you’re ready to sit up in a chair. That sound pretty good?”
“Yes, ma’am!”
He smiled at her.
“Good!” she said. “I like to see that smile, John.”
She rose and moved on, to help someone else, but the heart of John Buffalo was good.
His first few shaky steps the next day were accomplished with the help of the nurse on one side and one of the orderlies on the other. John felt that they half-carried him to the chair. He was exhausted when it was accomplished.
It could not have been done without the help of the beautiful nurse. The sensation of her arm around his body, her shoulder against his chest, and the softness of her breast as it touched him … Aiee! All the weakness and discomfort of his aching body, the protest of muscles unused for a long time vanished in the ecstasy of the moment. Just then, he could have accomplished anything.
It took some time simply to recover and restore his labored breathing to normal again. Back in bed, he felt as tired as if he had just done a day’s work. It was a day’s work, he realized. About all he could handle with the help of two healthy people. He slept well that night, with the sleep of exhaustion and work well done.
The move to the chair the next day was accomplished with more of his own effort and less assistance. He faced a real dilemma now. He wanted to do well to please the nurse with whom he was rapidly falling in love. But if he did well and became more self-sufficient, he would no longer need her physical help, the steadying of her strong arm and shoulder around his body. Yet he would have done anything to avoid faking a weakness he did not feel.
However, John did feel that they were growing closer. Somehow, the smile that she gave him was different, from her routine cheer for others, or from her professional smile for the doctors and orderlies. At first he could not make himself believe such good fortune, but it was undeniably true.
She made occasions to talk to him and seemed genuinely interested in his many varied experiences. She laughed with delight at some of the events on the road with the Hundred and One. There was no question that he grew and expanded as a storyteller with such a delightful audience of one.
One morning she had wheeled him outside in a high-backed wheelchair for a breath of fresh air.
“Nurse Jackson,” he said, “I am tired of calling you that. Do you have a name?”
She actually blushed, which John found quite charming in such a capable woman.
“Seriously,” he went on. “I am made to think that we are more to each other than nurse and patient.”
This frankness was very difficult for him.
The nurse shrugged. “We are friends, yes?”
“More than that, I think,” he said seriously. “I think I am falling in love.”
Her face was scarlet now.
“John,” she said gently, “every soldier who has been sick or wounded falls in love with his nurse.”
“I have heard this,” he admitted, “but I think we have more than that, you and I.”
She was silent for a long time.
“Maybe so,” she said softly. “But, back to your question. Do I have a name? Yes … Ruth. But it is not considered good manners for a patient to call his nurse by name … Publicly, that is.”
“And privately?”
He had to know.
“I … I don’t know how it could be prevented,” she murmured.
Now his heart soared.
“John, have you a wife? You’ve never said.”
“No …”
“Ever been married?”
He was unsure how to answer that. His relationship with Hebbie, over a period of years, had been more durable and loyal than many marriages.
“Well … Not a church marriage. No ceremony. We were together.”
“Were?”
“She is dead,” said John. “I guess we were more married than most.”
“A common-law marriage, then? She was a lucky girl to have you, John,” Ruth Jackson said softly.
“I dunno about that,” he muttered self-consciously.
He sensed that she wanted to tell him something, but did not know how. How could he … Ah!
“Have you ever been married?” he asked.
The clear blue eyes looked deep into his.
“John, I am married. Mrs. Ruth Jackson. You must not fall in love with me. We can be friends—nothing more.”
“But … Where is your husband? How could he leave you?”
“He didn’t leave me, John. He had to go. He’s in France, fighting the Kaiser. Lieutenant Emil Jackson.”
“I … I’m sorry, Mrs. Jackson. I had no idea. I apologize if I’ve offended you … .”
She laughed, now, her soft throaty chuckle like music to his ears. Or maybe, spring water over polished pebbles.
“You had no way of knowing, John. I should have told you, but I didn’t realize … At least, not …”
“It’s okay,” he murmured.
But it wasn’t. His heart was very heavy.
“Friends?” she asked.
She stuck out a hand toward him, and he took it in a friendly shake—a strong, capable grip, one he could appreciate.
“Friends!” he repeated huskily.
They were quiet for a little while.
“We’d better get back to the ward,” she said. “It’s getting late.”
She turned his chair and they started back toward the building.
“Shall I call you Mrs. Jackson?” he asked, half-teasing.
“If you like,” she answered in the same tone. Then, somewhat wistfully, she went on. “Or ‘Ruth.’ I have no one to call me that just now. But not publicly. There would be some, maybe, who’d try to read more into it than friendship.”
“Okay, Ruth. Friends … Friends only.”
Their friendship was comfortable. Bringing it into the light of day had illuminated the thoughts and feelings of both. They could now relax and enjoy each other’s company without pressure, but with understanding. Friends. Nothing more.
“When can I go back to duty?” John asked one afternoon when she had taken him outside in the wheelchair.
“Are you in a hurry?” she teased.
Then she relented.
“Forgive me, John. It was an honest question. You’re feeling a lot better. But the flu is treacherous. Try too much, too quick, and it’s almost like starting over. You don’t want that, do you?”
“I’d get to be here longer.”
“Stop that!” she scolded, but with a smile.
“Okay, I understand. But what happens next?”
“You go to an ambulatory ward. What the medics call the ‘walking wounded.’ You can do a lot of things for yourself now. There are calisthenics to get your strength back. You’ll do a lot of things for yourself.”
“Do they dress?”
She laughed.
“You’re pretty tired of underwear and a robe, aren’t you?”
“Right!”
“Well, you’ll probably wear fatigues.”
“Good.”
There came a day before that transfer, however, when Ruth approached his bed with a gleam of mischief in her eye. It was mid-afternoon. Many of the patients, exhausted from morning activities, were napping.
John had been dozing comfortably and was dimly aware that someone had come down the ward’s central aisle.
“John, you have a visitor,” Ruth told him.
Instantly, he was wide awake, and a little embarrassed to be caught off guard. But who … How could he have a visitor? The ward was virtually off limits to visitors, to avoid contagion.
The nurse stepped aside, and a burly man in an officer’s dress uniform moved forward. John started to rise in a ge
sture of respect, but the officer motioned him back. John found himself in an awkward, half-sitting position.
Quickly, he tried to understand the situation, gathering what he could from the uniform. A captain’s bars at the shoulders … The man looked familiar, but …
“Do I know you, sir?” John asked.
The captain smiled. A face somehow out of context …
“You should,” chuckled the officer.
Just then, in the quick search for identity, John’s eyes fastened on the captain’s collar insignia, which designated the officer’s specialty. The small silver emblem on the khaki lapel was not the crossed sabers of Cavalry, but—
An irrational fear and dread gripped John’s heart. The insignia was a small cross. Notcrossed weapons, or the winged medical caduceus, but the simple Christian cross of the clergy. A chaplain. Now he recognized the man. John had seen him before only in the robes the priest used for ritual.
“Father O’Reilly,” prompted the chaplain.
John was caught completely off guard.
“I—I—,” he stammered.
He must be guilty of insubordination. He could hardly believe, now, that a few weeks ago, he had actually cursed a superior officer. There must be a court martial awaiting him. And why was the captain taking such delight in the shame of an enlisted man? John’s anger began to rise over such impropriety.
He might have caused even more trouble, except that at that moment he caught a glimpse of the nurse’s face over the captain’s shoulder. She was smiling.
“Am I … in bad trouble?” John asked seriously.
The captain chuckled.
“No, no, Corporal,” he assured. “But you do deserve an explanation. I’m leaving … Transfer to Europe. But Nurse Jackson suggested that I stop to explain … . You were pretty sick. They couldn’t seem to get you to care. You wouldn’t move, wouldn’t try. The doctors had given you up. The orange card … Extreme. Unction … ‘Last Rites.’ That was a misunderstanding, apparently.”
“I’m not Catholic,” John said apologetically.
“So we learned,” said the priest with a wry grin. “But it did stir you up. You breathed deep, opened your lungs, worked up a sweat … . Nurse Jackson, here, suggested that we repeat the … Uh … ‘treatment.’”
Ruth was chuckling now.
“I … I owe you an apology, sir,” John said hesitantly.
“Not at all, son,” said the priest. “I’ve taken worse. Just pleased that it worked. Of course, I may have to go to confession myself over it. Not exactly the proper use of ritual. But thank your nurse, here, for seeing the possibilities!”
The captain rose.
“Well, I have a train to catch. Good luck to you … son.”
“Thank you, sir.”
They shook hands, exchanged a salute, and the priest was gone. John turned to the nurse.
“I had no idea … . Once more, I owe you, Ruth.”
His voice was choked, and there was a tear in his eye.
“Thank you …”
FIFTY-SEVEN
A few days later, John was transferred to a recovery ward in another building. It now became a problem: how, where, and even whether his friendship could continue with the young woman who had very likely saved his life.
“Don’t try to contact me,” she had cautioned. “You’ll be kept out of the acute wards because of the flu. ‘Isolation,’ they call it. Keeps from spreading the epidemic. They don’t really know how it spreads, I guess. It’s not spread by mosquitoes, like malaria, or in food and water, like typhoid. Well, you’re not interested in that.”
“Not really. How do I manage to see you?”
“I’ll know where you are, John. I know the nurses on those wards, and I can stop by to visit them. As you improve, you’ll also have the possibility of a pass into town before long. And I can learn when that’s a possibility by stopping by your building. We can meet in town.”
“Is that permitted?”
“Not really.” There was mischief in her eyes. “Look … You’ll have to be in uniform, but I won’t. I can wear civilian clothes. Who’s to know who I am?”
She tilted her head, with the perky little smile that she seemed to use more often now. He loved to see her with more pleasure and animation in her face. Her work must be quite depressing at times, he realized. Some joy in success, but so many tragedies. For one in a healing profession, the failures must be a heavy burden to bear.
They managed to meet only twice during the two weeks while John was assigned to the recovery ward. The meetings were similar: an afternoon pass, a meeting at a predetermined location in the town of Ogden. Ruth brought a picnic basket each time, and they walked … . Out into the open country, where they ate and relaxed and talked and talked.
“What do you hope to do after the war, John?”
“I don’t know. I had hoped to coach … Teach sports, maybe. Couldn’t find a job. That’s how I started cowboyin’.”
“But … You’ve told me of your education, John. With so much interest in football, there must be … Didn’t you say you’d been to the Olympics … Where was it? Stockholm?”
“Well, yes. That was a temporary job, as a pretty low-ranked assistant coach.”
She sat straight up from her semireclining position on the picnic blanket.
“Coach? I thought you went as a spectator. John, these are wonderful credentials! Why can’t you find a job?”
Her voice was almost accusing, as if he hadn’t really tried. Long dormant, his disappointment now came rising in his throat.
“Because they’d rather have white coaches,” he said flatly.
It was the first time that he had ever actually said it aloud, that he’d been able to voice his frustration. Now he was embarrassed.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I had no right to say that.”
She was staring at him in shocked silence. Finally she spoke.
“Oh, John,” she whispered. “I had no idea. It’s something I wouldn’t even have thought of.”
She reached over and took his hand. “Is it that way everywhere?”
“Depends. Worse in some places than others. But … I don’t want to talk about it. What about you?”
“That’s not very exciting, compared to you,” she assured him. “Grew up near here, married my high-school sweetheart after nurses’ training. Emil wants to farm near here, supply the fort. A lot of local farmers and ranchers do that. We were pretty well started … . A little place, a few acres. Cattle, hogs, chickens … He’d like to raise horses for the army, too. But when the war came, he felt he had to enlist. So I went back to nursing. It lets me feel like if I’m helping some other soldier, maybe somebody’s helping mine.”
“No children?”
“None. We want some.”
“You mentioned your farm?”
“A neighbor is running it. I still stay at the house sometimes, to get away from my work at the fort. It’s lonesome without him, but I want to keep it ready for when he comes home.”
“Emil is a very lucky man,” mused John.
“Not really.” She smiled wistfully. “But I hope he thinks so.”
If he doesn’t, there’s something wrong with him, thought John.
Things were changing rapidly in the conduct of the war. It was finally realized that men with sabers on horses would never be a match for cannon and machine guns. The action necessary for cracking the Kaiser’s defenses would be artillery. There had begun a rush to train and put into combat a large number of batteries of cannon. Not yet mechanized, these would be drawn by horses. French “75s,” firing an explosive projectile a foot long and as round as a man’s wrist, were shipped in quantity to the United States for training purposes.
Much to the chagrin of old-line professional cavalry officers, they were converted almost overnight to the command of artillery units. At some military posts, mock funeral processions with black-draped coffins mourned the demise of the proud horse cavalry.<
br />
In the midst of this change, Corporal John Buffalo was dismissed from the recovery ward to return to his unit. He found the barracks in a state of turmoil.
“We’re movin’ out,” explained the sergeant major. “They’re makin’ redlegs of us.”
The sergeant was not happy with the change. From the yellow braid and striping of the cavalry to the red of artillery was a major catastrophe to the old soldier.
“We’re shippin’ to Oklahoma to learn to shoot them French cannons,” he said sadly. “Usin’ horses to pull the damn things, like wagons.”
“When does this happen, Sergeant?” asked John.
“Couple o’ days, I guess. By train, prob’ly Monday. Good to have you back, Buffalo.”
“Thanks, Sergeant. Any chance for a pass Saturday? I’ve been shut up in the hospital.”
The sergeant thought for only a moment.
“Why not? Pretty tough over there? We heard a lot of men are dyin’.”
“Pretty bad … A lot I don’t remember.”
“Bad times,” the sergeant major said sympathetically. “Sure … Make out your pass. I’ll sign it.”
He planned almost frantically. A quick visit back to the recovery ward to talk to Ruth Jackson’s nurse friend.
“Back already, John? Just can’t stay away from us, eh?” joked Alice.
“I’m bein’ shipped out,” he explained quickly. “I’d like to say good-bye to Nurse Jackson. She was good to me while I was so sick. How can I contact her?”
The nurse’s face fell. “Oh, John, I don’t know. She’s not working. You knew about her husband?”
“No … What? He’s back?”
“No, no. He was killed in France.”
“Aw, no!”
“Yes. She just learned yesterday, I guess. They gave her a leave.”
“But … Where is she?”
“She went home, I guess.”
“Home?”
“Yes. Her place. Hers and Emil’s. John, have you two got something goin’?”
His anger rose at such a suspicion.
“No! Of course not. She’s not like that. She’s a friend, that’s all!”
The Long Journey Home Page 35