But the army needed lumber, and plenty of it. It needed wood for the new fighter planes that would hopefully swing the balance in the Great Powers’ favor; it needed even more wood for the cantonments to be constructed all across the country. Ten months into its existence, the Commonwealth mill had been performing barely well enough to support its workers and to convince buyers to keep returning. But when war was declared and representatives from Uncle Sam began showing up at the mill—pockets overflowing with Liberty Loan–funded dollars, practically begging for more lumber regardless of the price—the mill had taken the bold leap that Charles had always known it could.
The draft threatened to ruin everything. In June 1917, Uncle Sam began conscripting men to the new army. Charles couldn’t afford to lose his workers right when demand had shot up, but he soon learned that men designated as “essential war workers” could be spared from military duty. The draft boards would make exceptions for mill workers, and Commonwealth could continue to run at peak efficiency.
The men still needed to go through the formality of enlisting, though, and even that was no small task. Commonwealth was populated almost entirely by two types of people: workers who had fled the constant harassment of bosses, union busters, and cops; and fellow travelers like Rebecca. These two groups sometimes overlapped but just as often did not. Many were intellectual greenhorns who, never having worked at hard labor, had required careful training and strict oversight by men like Graham. What the groups did have in common was a reticence to join up with what many were calling a rich man’s war.
Like a doting father oblivious to all but his children’s finest qualities, Charles chose to believe that most of the men in town had followed the law, enlisting for the war and securing worker deferments.
Philip had been not quite fifteen when all the men about town were talking about the draft and whether they should enlist. Many didn’t even want to add their names to the draft rolls, didn’t want to dignify the process with their participation. Out here, they felt safely insulated from the rest of the country, cloaked in invisibility.
Philip, who was three years younger than the draft age, had asked Graham if he intended to enlist. They were sitting on Graham’s porch at the time, while Amelia was inside.
“No,” Graham had said after a pause, taking the pipe from his mouth. He told Philip that if he were a single man, he may well have, but he had responsibilities now. At the time, Amelia had been in the midst of her first pregnancy.
Philip had been glad to know that the war would be over soon, that by the time he turned eighteen, this debate would be moot.
The issue of the war had been broached in a Sunday sermon that summer. A traveling Unitarian minister named Inston, who had befriended Rebecca years ago during a suffrage march in Seattle, had volunteered to serve as the town’s spiritual leader. Because he led services in a town thirty miles away, he didn’t make it to Commonwealth until two in the afternoon most Sundays, an unlikely time for church. To the more devout residents, who previously had either traveled into Timber Falls on Sundays or guiltily abstained, Minister Inston’s visits were a revelation, a sign that just because this town had a different way of going about business didn’t mean it had to be godless. Of course, many of the town’s socialists were indeed godless and were a bit ruffled by the minister’s presence, but Charles, who had been brought up a strict Presbyterian, had raised Laura and then Philip accordingly and had happily accepted Inston’s offer.
Those who silently grumbled about the Unitarian minister’s lack of fealty to their particular denomination assumed that in ten or five or perhaps even two years, when Commonwealth had become the strongest mill in the Northwest, the town surely would be filled with the music of dozens of different church bells on Sunday mornings.
Inston was a portly older man with a thick mane of chestnut-brown hair and a youthful exuberance. The day of the war sermon, he’d begun by talking about the day’s Gospel reading. Jesus, in reply to a snare laid by the wicked Pharisees who had asked him what he thought of Caesar’s taxation, had told his disciples to give to Caesar what was Caesar’s but to give to God what was God’s. Inston veered off into commentary on the war. His was a conversational preaching style, in which he asked questions of his congregation. With a group of listeners who were used to sitting in participatory union meetings and labor rallies, this style often caused his sermons to degenerate into freewheeling, boisterous sessions.
“But how can we give to Caesar when what he asks of us is our very lives?” Inston said, his voice filling every inch of the hall. “Not coins but blood. Is Caesar asking us for something we can rightly give, or is he really asking for something that is God’s?”
These words had not been planned, and they surprised the minister himself. He knew as soon as he uttered them that they likely would have landed him in a bit of trouble, perhaps even led to his arrest, had he done so in any other town. But Commonwealth was different.
“How could God want us to give our lives to a crooked war?” one man called out, unofficially beginning the participatory portion of the day’s service.
“We need to ask ourselves why God might want that. Perhaps—”
“To protect the rest of God’s children,” said a tall, bearded redhead named Walsh. His forebears were Irish, but his grandfather had moved to England and renounced the Catholic Church. When Walsh had moved to America he’d left behind many friends and relatives. “To protect those who can’t protect themselves.”
“It’s somebody else’s war,” a man in the middle intoned loudly and with a dismissive shake of the head. “It’s not God’s war, and it’s not America’s, either. It’s Europe’s war, and just ’cause Caesar Wilson wants in on it doesn’t make it God’s.”
Walsh sat in silent anger, his face nearly the color of his hair, as Inston regained control. The minister talked for a long while, straying away from the war and back into Scripture, words safely written thousands of years before that day’s contradictions. The voices from the congregation ceased, and the remainder of the service passed without event. But the die had been cast.
As people filed out after the service, Walsh sought out the men who had made the antiwar comments. He walked up to a tall Swede who worked in the mill just as his father had in Scandinavia.
“So you’re fixing to hide here while the real men protect our country?” Walsh challenged. The two men were pinned together by the crowd squeezing through the narrow doors.
“I ain’t doing any hiding,” the man said, “but the boys in the army aren’t protecting any Americans. It ain’t our war.”
“Any man that don’t enlist is yellow,” Walsh said, scanning the men’s faces. “Essential worker or no, every man should enlist.”
“Speak for yourself, buddy,” muttered someone whose back was turned.
“The Germans are out there killing babies while everybody here is all proud of themselves for living in this nice new town,” Walsh went on. “They did it to Belgium, and they’re doing it to France, and next they’ll do it to England, then they’ll come for us. You all heard about them raping nuns and little girls, but you don’t care. You heard about—”
“Those are lies!” barked Alfred Metzger. “No German boy would do anything like that.”
“I didn’t know I’d come to work in a German town,” Walsh said. “German town and German yellowbellies.”
Jarred Rankle, who only recently had started attending services—he still had not forgiven God for stealing his family—slid through the crowd up to Walsh, eying him carefully. “I’m not German, Walsh, and I sure as hell ain’t yellow. But that doesn’t make me agree with a thing you just said.”
Inston had been standing by the door shaking hands, but like everyone else’s, his attention had been stolen by the war debaters.
“Gentlemen, you are in the house of God,” he reminded them.
The stone-faced Rankle was one of the few men Walsh wouldn’t want to spar with, so he cooled down a bi
t.
“I got cousins fighting for England,” he said to Rankle in a softer tone.
“And Metzger’s got cousins fighting for Germany,” Rankle said. “I don’t care to see you two fight your own little war here, all right?”
“That’s why I’m going to fight in the real war.” Walsh said that as if voicing it for the first time. Like anyone else in Commonwealth, he had been deeply conflicted about fighting. But here, in the house of God, he had made his decision. He stepped back a bit, as the crowd had thinned somewhat. “I’m enlisting, and essential worker or no, I’m fighting. If I have to quit the mill and leave this town, I will.”
Other men nodded in agreement. Some shook their heads. Some just stood there looking at him, or at their feet, or away.
“I can’t imagine I’m the only man who’s gonna uphold his duty,” Walsh said.
Metzger glared at Walsh but said nothing. Maybe Commonwealth was a safer place to show support for your distant relatives than other American towns—where they were attacking people with German accents or even German surnames, where they had renamed sauerkraut “liberty cabbage”—but you could never be too sure. Metzger kept his head down and walked out of the church, hurrying to catch up with his wife and daughter, who had made their way out of the building before the tensions had risen.
Metzger was followed by Rankle, who had already seen his fill of violence and would never enlist in any damned army, deferment or no.
After most of the other men had filed out past the still-nervous Inston, Walsh was greeted by ten other congregants, some of whom he knew well and some he did not. They told him they appreciated what he’d said and they shook his hand. Inston watched all this quietly.
Those eleven men became fast friends. One of them would quickly change his mind about the war, but Walsh and the other nine would enlist in Timber Falls and would all specify to the suit-wearing gentlemen of the enlistment board that they wanted no deferral on account of their jobs. Move us up to the top of the list, they said, we want to fight. Most of them had no families, but the four who did—among them Walsh, with a wife and two young sons—found friends who could help provide for them or were confident that the monthly government check would be enough. God would make a way, they decided.
They were indeed drafted. The single men had moved their meager possessions into one of Commonwealth’s unused storage buildings, telling Mr. Worthy not to waste their houses, to let other men move into them. They would take new ones when they returned. Walsh and the three other men with families moved their wives and children out of Commonwealth, disgusted by their fellow residents’ avoidance of their duties. The summer of ’17 soon cooled into a surprisingly dry fall and the ten men were gone, training in Fort Jenkins as they awaited deployment.
No one had heard from them since.
X
Elsie couldn’t believe the news. “He’s locked up in a storage building?”
Laura nodded, her brow knit with concern. They were standing outside the school, the first two students to arrive, as usual. Mrs. Worthy was already inside, having said hello to Elsie and hurried along.
Elsie pestered her friend with questions, only a few of which Laura could answer. Charles had told Laura that Philip had let the man into town because he was starving, that he had refused to just stand there and let the man die. Charles had said he was proud of Philip, that he had surely done the right and Christian thing but that, due to the flu, he and the stranger would need to be quarantined for two days.
“So he might be sick?” Elsie asked.
“I don’t know. My father said I was asking too many questions.”
Elsie shook her head, still taking in the news. “He must have let him in because of what happened to the other soldier.”
Laura gave her a peculiar look. “What do you mean? I figured this was the same soldier as last time.”
Elsie remembered Philip’s warning that the first soldier’s death be kept secret. “No, you’re right. I’m just…confused by everything.”
“My mother told me I should try not to think about it and pretend it’s a normal day. She said Philip will be home for dinner tomorrow night and everything will be fine.”
“This just feels so…” Elsie couldn’t find the right word.
“I know.”
“Are you all right?”
“I don’t think anyone in my house slept very much. I could hear my parents talking all night.”
“Maybe we could go visit him?”
“We’re not allowed,” Laura said, and finally motioned to the school.
They walked inside holding hands.
Once they were in school, Elsie had no choice but to stew in silence. Mrs. Worthy had already scrawled an assignment on the chalkboard and was sitting at her desk, sifting through papers. Elsie, in her role of elder student and apprentice teacher, asked how she could be of help, and Mrs. Worthy described the day’s lessons. At no point did she say anything about Philip.
“How does that sound?” Mrs. Worthy asked when she finished her instructions.
“Fine, ma’am,” Elsie replied. She realized she hadn’t listened to a thing her teacher had said about the lessons. She stood there an extra moment, confused to be in such an unfamiliar position.
“Everything is going to be fine, Elsie,” Mrs. Worthy said in her typical calmly authoritarian tone. “But there’s much to get accomplished today.”
Mrs. Worthy was the embodiment of her own advice, proceeding as if it were a normal day. Once the students had filled the building, attendance was called, the lesson was read, assignments were distributed, unruly children were disciplined, and order was kept as it always was. The only difference, Elsie noticed, was her: her inability to concentrate, her uncharacteristic daydreaming, the snippets of a letter to Philip she jotted in her notebook while pretending to record Mrs. Worthy’s lesson. When Mrs. Worthy called on her during the lesson on the drafting of the Constitution, Elsie stammered until her instructor seemed to have pity and called on someone else.
During recess, news of Philip and the soldier spread, and by the end of the day, everyone seemed to know the story, despite the fact that Mrs. Worthy never broached the subject. When she released the students for the day, they walked away in a mass, trading stories about what their fathers and mothers had told them, speculating about the soldier and whether either of the prisoners would become ill. Elsie snapped at a few of them, then walked back inside to help Mrs. Worthy clean up. The teacher was standing at her desk, placing some papers in her satchel.
“I’m going to leave early today, girls,” she said to Elsie and Laura, who was busily erasing the board. “I’ll leave you to finish cleaning.”
Elsie said, “Mrs. Worthy, I was wondering…”
Her teacher looked at her patiently. She already seemed to know what Elsie was struggling to say.
Elsie continued, “Does Philip really need to be locked in that building all day? If the man he let in doesn’t seem sick, maybe they could come out this evening instead of tomorrow?”
Mrs. Worthy sat down beside Elsie in one of the pupils’ chairs, finally acknowledging that this was not a normal day after all.
She explained the doctor’s instructions and reminded Elsie of that day’s history lesson. “We all are a part of something larger than ourselves,” Mrs. Worthy said. “Being in a democracy sometimes means we are outvoted. When that happens, we need to press on and trust that the decision the majority made was right. I know it’s hard, but it’s something each of us has to do.”
Elsie thought for a moment, then nodded. There seemed to be two Mrs. Worthys—the friendlier one at Laura’s house and the sterner one in the school—and right now Elsie was looking at Laura’s mother, her eyes a bit larger than usual, a look of empathy on her face.
“But,” Elsie said, stammering again, “but he’s going to be okay, right?”
Mrs. Worthy smiled, but it was a strange half-smile, the outer edges cut off by tension. She reached
out and grasped Elsie’s hands with a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sure everything will be fine.”
Mrs. Worthy explained that Elsie could always write Philip a letter and ask the guards to deliver it—she herself would write to him as soon as she returned home, she said. Then she released Elsie’s hands and stood up abruptly, walking toward the door as if she didn’t want anyone to see her face. She bade them goodbye and was gone.
Elsie and Laura tidied the building quickly, each in a rush to escape the chores. Normally, Elsie’s mother expected her at the store as soon as school was out, but since Elsie was not staying late to further discuss the next day’s lessons with Mrs. Worthy, as she normally would, she had time to return home and work on a letter to Philip. She read through what she had written during the day, displeased with how it sounded. She started over on a clean sheet of her favorite paper, a bright white with fraying corners.
Still, it felt wrong that she had to write him rather than visiting him. Despite Mrs. Worthy’s words, Elsie clung to the hope that when she reached the storage building, the guard would let her in, or perhaps there would be no guard, or perhaps Philip would already be freed from the building, the town elders having decided they were wrong to keep him there.
Her hopes were dashed as she approached the building, letter in hand, and saw a lone figure standing there. His back was to her, and he stood a good distance away from the building, as if wary of its inhabitants. He was holding a rifle.
She felt herself grow nervous as she walked toward the man, embarrassed to be delivering a letter to a boy and awkward to have to do so in someone else’s presence. She concocted a quick lie to explain herself, but her stomach clenched, and she saw the envelope quivering in her hand.
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