In the Company of Women

by Kate Christie

They stayed where they were at the fence, watching the horses root around their winter grounds.

  “For a minute there,” her father said, “in that jacket and your brother’s old hunting cap, I thought you were Alec.”

  “Sorry.” She touched his hand with hers.

  “Don’t be.” He smiled at her, green-gray eyes crinkling at the corners as he squeezed her fingers. “It’s good to have you home. I’d prefer to have all three of you here, but I’m incredibly grateful you could fly in to surprise your mother. It does her heart good. Mine too.”

  “How’s she doing?”

  “All right, I think. It’s hard not knowing where either of them is or even if they’re all right. Brings back certain memories we’d rather not revisit. At least with you we know you’re generally safe. Obviously not as safe as if you were in graduate school, but accidents can happen anywhere. Jacob’s death proves that.”

  Clearly she wouldn’t be sharing last week’s antiaircraft incident anytime soon. “How are the DeWitts?”

  “Grieving. There’s nothing worse than losing a child, and they have three more in harm’s way with no end in sight. I truly believed we had learned something in the last war. Apparently not.”

  His comment reminded her of something Brady had once said, and she thought not for the first time that her father would like her girlfriend. He had an affinity for strong women, and Brady was not only strong but bright. She wondered if they would ever meet. Then she caught herself. Of course they would. They had to, because she and Brady were going to be together forever. And if not forever, then surely for a long, long time.

  “Enough war talk,” her father said suddenly, pushing away from the fence. “Would you like to see the John Deere?”

  “Of course.”

  She followed him into the barn workshop where a portable electric heater kept the temperature tolerable, aided by straw insulation and the hay loft. He had written to her in October about the ten-year-old John Deere he’d picked up at an estate sale. It needed a little work, but Michigan winters were long. His plan was to have it up and running in time for spring planting.

  They spent the rest of the afternoon tinkering with the tractor and discussing local news, national politics and the impact of the war on the current football season, both professional—Nagurski, a Bears fullback, had returned from retirement to help fill the manpower shortage, while the Steelers and Eagles had merged for the current season to become the “Steagles”—and college, which included “service teams” drawn for the first time ever from flight schools and other military training centers.

  To CJ, standing at her father’s side in the barn talking current events over an engine in need of work, it almost seemed as if the war had never happened. Except that they weren’t discussing Joe’s latest season with the Cubbies or Alec’s most recent hunting escapade. The boys were oceans away, and there was no guarantee they were alive. Nate’s parents hadn’t been informed of his death right away, and she had heard stories of other families having to wait weeks or even months to learn a son’s fate. Even in the familiar barn that smelled of alfalfa and motor oil, cow manure and lavender bouquets, even there she couldn’t entirely escape the outside world.

  “Speaking of flight schools,” her father said, “how is it working with the Air Corps? They have a certain reputation as, how shall we say, lady killers?”

  Despite his light tone, she could tell that he was genuinely worried about her safety. So she told him about the Wac from the motor pool who picked them up every morning and dropped them off each evening. She told him about the barbed wire fence around the compound and the MPs who patrolled the gate and surrounding areas. And as she described the varied measures in place to protect the women at Fort Bliss, outnumbered by men by more than twenty to one, her father visibly relaxed.

  “Really,” she summed up, “we feel very safe.”

  “That’s good,” her father said, nodding. “You know, your brothers and their friends are good men, but not all of us are.”

  She gazed at him across the tractor’s frame. “You are.”

  “I was lucky, I had a good father. Plenty of boys don’t have any father at all. I worry that will be the case even more after this war.”

  He pushed back his woolen cap, and she recognized the look that flashed briefly across his face. He still missed his father, who had died suddenly of heart failure a quarter of a century before; probably, he always would.

  But at least her safety was one fewer thing for him to worry about. Then she remembered Brady, and it was all she could do to keep smiling and chatting. She couldn’t tell him, could she? She had never lied to her parents before, but they already had enough to worry about without adding the fate of her immortal soul—not to mention her post-war prospects, should she be discovered—to the list. She would tell them someday, but it would be far kinder to do it after the war when their list of fears had been whittled back down to a more manageable number.

  That was it, she decided as she handed her father a wrench. She would wait until after the war to tell them. For now she would put the future out of her mind and try to focus on enjoying her time in Michigan. Not every Wac got to go home for Christmas while the corps skittered along without her.

  “This is probably easy compared to what you’re used to,” her father commented, giving the wrench a turn.

  “I used to think all engines were pretty much the same.”

  “But not now?”

  “Definitely not now.”

  “Tell me,” her father said, his eyes glinting, “what was it like to fly a bomber?”

  As CJ tried to describe to her father the unforgettable sensation of being in control of a twin-engine Beechcraft, she found herself transported back to West Texas with its blue sky and white-peaked mountains and sparkling gypsum dunes, its skeleton stripped bare for all the world to see. Could it be? Did she actually miss that godforsaken, dusty corner of the country?

  She remembered what Brady had said about being torn between two places that both felt like home, and she realized—Brady, not Fort Bliss, was her home away from home. For now, she would have to remain CJ’s secret, but it wouldn’t be that way forever. One day when the world had settled back into uneasy peace, her parents would meet Brady and fall in love with her too. How could they not?

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  That night, Pete came home after supper to help with chores. He had grown three full inches since summer and was now almost as tall as his older sister. He was also trying to grow a moustache, which CJ found ridiculous. When she offered to help milk the cows, he insisted she stay with Rebecca. This was surprising mainly because the last time she was home, he had tried to dump his chores on her. Apparently a lot could change in half a year.

  The evening passed in the upstairs bedroom with soap operas, puzzles and card games, amusements that became routine over the next few days. Pete came to the house before school and after supper each day while CJ slept in his room each night—oh, blessed solitude!—and spent the daylight hours moving between upstairs, downstairs and the barn. Occasionally her mother would sit in a chair on the second floor landing and chat with them from a safe distance, but Rebecca seemed to prefer having CJ’s attention all to herself. She’d been like that as a small child too, always begging her big sister to play dolls or cart her around on her back.

  It must have been hard for Rebecca to be the lone real girl in the family, CJ thought one afternoon as she groomed Molly in the relative warmth of the barn. Wait—she had just deemed herself as less than a real girl. Had the idea arisen by virtue of her tomboy tendencies, her sexual aberration or both? Possibly it was a chauvinistic view she’d absorbed without realizing it. Throughout the war, newspapers had printed opinion pieces declaring that the WAC and other military branches would masculinize women and disrupt their traditional roles as mothers and homemakers. Military and congressional leaders had initially laughed at the notion of women in the Army, until Pearl Harbor forced their hand.


  Even then, Representative Edith Rogers’s legislation to authorize formation of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps took a year to be approved. The debate in Congress was acrimonious at times, with those opposed variously referring to the bill as “revolting,” “a grave mistake,” a direct challenge to “the courageous manhood of the country” and “the silliest piece of legislation…ever.” A House representative from Michigan was quoted far and wide for his memorable comments about how women should stay home to “maintain the home fires” and do the cooking, the washing, the mending and all the other “humble, homey tasks” to which American women had devoted themselves—conveniently forgetting the suffragist movement and the gains early women’s rights activists had made in the last century, advances that a decade of economic turbulence had almost completely undone.

  The bigoted moron did have a point, CJ thought that night, lying in her brother’s bed listening to the familiar creaks and sighs of the old farm house. She wished she had a cigarette, but her parents didn’t allow smoking indoors, and it was one of those cold clear nights when your nostrils froze the second you stepped outdoors. The barn would be ten degrees warmer, but only an idiot would light up in a wooden structure filled with hay, straw and sleeping animals.

  The thing was, the WAC did provide women an alternative to being a wife and mother. Wacs were serving all over the world—in Algiers and England, Hawaii and Iceland. They were cooks, telephone operators, mail clerks, drivers, mechanics, flight trainers. They were working on secret projects in the East and in the West (if Army gossip could be believed), maintaining confidential files, developing top-secret film and keeping up the morale of male troops. American women in droves were exercising their right to have a life outside of hearth and home.

  All of that independence threatened some American men. Since she’d entered the WAC, CJ had heard countless stories involving the reactions of brothers, boyfriends, fiancés, even husbands serving overseas upon learning their loved one had joined the Army. Sisters were threatened with disownment, fiancées were ordered to return rings, wives were divorced all because the men in their lives believed the rumors that American servicewomen were little more than glorified camp followers.

  She still remembered one woman in basic who’d received a letter from her brother that said girls who joined the WAVES or WAC or any other service branch were automatically prostitutes, in his opinion. He wanted to know why his sister and all the other female enlistees couldn’t just stay home, be their “own sweet little selves” and leave patriotism where it belonged—with the men.

  Another girl had cried quietly as the girls in her squad read a letter from her soon-to-be ex-husband. He’d written to tell her that he’d meant it when he told her she didn’t have his permission to join the WAC. He wanted to come home to the girl he remembered, not some cartoon version of her. But she’d gone ahead and joined up anyway, and now he wanted a divorce because in his words: “I don’t want no damn Wacko for a wife.”

  These men were controlling and insecure, but they also recognized an uncomfortable truth: The war was changing the men who left home to heed the call of duty, but also the women they believed had stayed behind. Apparently she had been smart to cut herself loose from Sean. Brady, on the other hand, was experiencing what happened when you allowed what someone else wanted to trump what you wanted for yourself.

  At the thought of Brady, CJ felt tears gathering. She missed her, but even more she missed being on their own in Texas, well insulated from family expectations. At Bliss it was only the two of them, and they weren’t beholden to parents or brothers or friends. They could do whatever made them happy without worrying about how anyone else would react.

  Nothing would ever be the same again, she was starting to realize. Like Brady had said, the genie couldn’t be put back into the bottle. Now that she was back under her parents’ roof, she was beginning to wonder if the gap between home and Army, good daughter and secret homosexual, could ever be bridged.

  * * *

  The next day, after one too many rounds of Euchre and Crazy Eights, CJ taught Rebecca to play poker after swearing her to secrecy. Somehow, she doubted their parents would appreciate her teaching the youngest member of their brood Texas Hold ’Em. Rebecca learned quickly and could soon, indeed, hold her own. The day before Christmas Eve, they were engaged in a match to determine who would control the radio dial when CJ heard a car in the driveway.

  “Are you expecting anyone?” she asked her sister.

  “Not likely,” Rebecca said as she folded her cards face down and went to the window. Suddenly she perked up. “But it looks like you are.”

  CJ peered through the window, squinting in the rare winter sunlight gracing their property. Subject to lake-effect snow, Michigan was reliably dismal in the winter months. But today the sunshine glinted off the windshield of the familiar sedan pulling up the drive. Sean.

  “How does he know you’re here?” Rebecca asked. “Did you call him?”

  “No, but I think I know who did. I’ll be back soon, okay?”

  “Don’t hurry on my account,” her little sister said, smiling conspiratorially at her.

  CJ left the room without responding. How could the people who should have known her best not see how little she was suited to a relationship with Sean or any other man, for that matter? Toby and Reggie had figured her out right off the bat. Why couldn’t her family see her clearly?

  Quickly she washed her hands and pulled an Army-issue sweater over the white shirt waist she currently wore. The wool coat-style sweater was unmistakably military and therefore perfect—for some reason, she didn’t want to face Sean in civilian attire. She was a soldier; dressing the part reminded her of that fact even here, where she’d lived the twenty-plus years of her life before the Army. She considered exchanging her twill pants for her uniform skirt, but pants were better for battle.

  When she reached the downstairs, she glanced through one of the windows in the vestibule and saw Sean still seated in his car, staring at the front of the house. Apparently the Board of Health directive was doing its job. She didn’t have to go out and talk to him. If she left him there, he would have to give up and go home, wouldn’t he?

  “Were you expecting him?” her mother asked quietly.

  Startled, CJ glanced over her shoulder. “No.”

  “Right. Well, do you know if he’s had scarlet fever before?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “Then you’ll have to invite him to the back porch.”

  Clearly her mother was not about to allow her to leave her ex-boyfriend to languish ignored in his car. But why the porch and not the barn? Was she worried that CJ’s father might send Sean back the way he’d come? Maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing. Sean had obviously heard from Sadie and Tricia that she was in town. Had they also shared other, more delicate news?

  “Fine. But he’s not staying long.”

  She pulled on the bomber jacket, Alec’s favorite sheepskin-lined hunting cap and a pair of her own gloves. Here went nothing.

  The cold air hit as soon as she stepped out onto the front stoop. Behind the wheel, Sean was staring at the door as if willing her to appear, but when she did, he seemed taken aback. After a brief hesitation, he stepped out of his car and crunched across the gravel.

  “Hello,” he said, voice and eyes serious as he looked up at her. His hair was shorter, almost as if in preparation for basic training, and he had dark smudges beneath both eyes.

  “Hello.” She gazed steadily down at him from the top step, noting how little she felt. She had cared about him back at school, she knew she had, but those feelings were paltry compared to what she had now with Brady. Had he loved her the way she loved Brady? It didn’t seem possible that love could be so out of balance.

  “How’s Rebecca?” he asked, glancing at the upstairs window.

  She followed his gaze, unsurprised to see the curtain move. Who needed radio when there was a soap opera unfolding outsi
de your front door?

  “She’s getting better.” She paused. “What are you doing here, Sean?”

  He shrugged. “I wanted to see you one last time before… Did Sadie tell you?”

  “That you joined up? What were you thinking? You don’t believe in killing or dying for the government. At least, that’s what you always said.”

  “I don’t believe in the right of any government to wage war. But it doesn’t matter what I believe, not when so many people are dying. It’s like you said—I’d rather be on the right side of history than be safe.”

  Had she said that? It did sound like something she would have professed at a party after a couple of glasses of wine or beer, a noble-sounding sentiment that didn’t actually mean anything. In reality, their generation had been swallowed up by something over which they had no control or even any chance at impacting as individuals. The one way they could change the future was to sacrifice their bodies and souls en masse to try to stop Hitler and the Germans, Hirohito and the Japanese from killing and enslaving even more of the world’s population. Appeasement hadn’t worked. Only force worked, just as her graduation speaker had warned.

  “Look, can we go somewhere to talk?” he asked. “That little coffee shop near the train station, maybe?”

  “I can’t.”

  He frowned. “Why? Is it against regulation?”

  “Sort of, but in this case, my parents are the MPs.” She nodded toward the side of the house. “Back porch?”

  “All right.” As they walked around the side of the house, dodging barren bushes and flower beds, he added, “Your father never did like me.”

  “That’s not true.” As he looked at her sideways, his eyebrows raised, she amended, “Well, maybe a little true.”

  “Is it because I don’t know my way around a tractor?”

  “I don’t know. You’d have to ask him.”

  “No thanks.” He pretended to shudder. “He scares me more than the Navy does. Your mom too.”