The Secret of Raven Point: A Novel

by Jennifer Vanderbes

  Juliet often wrote letters for the men with arm or hand injuries, signing them from “Somewhere in Italy.” But Coppelman assured Juliet his wife would know exactly where he was and what he was doing; they had devised a code, he said, before he shipped off to Basic Training. Juliet wondered if Tuck’s cryptic letter might have contained some kind of code beyond “Miss Van Effing.” She studied it for hours one night, circling every third letter, then every fourth letter. She tried reading words backward; she read sentences diagonally. Still, it made no sense to her, and she once again resigned herself to defeat.

  Beside Alphabet lay Second Lieutenant Lester Cross, an accountant from New York who had undergone a four-hour mending of the femoral artery. He was mostly bald, his head gray and gleaming, with wisps of black hair tucked behind his ears. The afternoon he came out of surgery, he immediately began asking Juliet about the injections he was receiving.

  “Good God, it must cost the army a fortune to keep me in here every day!”

  “It does,” joked Juliet. “So get better soon.”

  When Cross saw the X-ray machine wheel by, he jabbed his forefinger toward it. “A contraption like that—come on!”

  Cross spent hours discussing maneuvers and operations with other patients, trying to calculate how many $18.75 war bonds it took to pay for a half-track and a tank. On a thick ledger he was figuring the cost of the war. He claimed gasoline costs alone would plunge the United States into bankruptcy.

  When Cross spoke, the patient across the aisle, Private Wilkowski, stood on his bed and pressed his finger to his lips, saying, “Shhhhhh. They can hear us.”

  Wilkowski had thick, carrot-colored curls, threaded with wirelike gray hairs, though he couldn’t have been a day over twenty-one. He was pale and gaunt, and ash-gray circles rimmed his eyes. He did not sleep. He did not lie down. He smoked for hours on end and continually counted and studied the cigarettes he had not yet smoked. Each morning and evening he recited unsettling quotes from books no one had ever heard of. He’d been in combat for only two months, since the push from Rome, but had the haggard, hateful look of the men Juliet had seen entering their second year of fighting.

  Of particular concern to Wilkowski were the constant rumors of Germans impersonating American soldiers. With each newly arriving patient in the ward, Wilkowski hobbled over and fired off a stream of incensed questions: Where did the Red Sox play? What team was Lou Gehrig on? Who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner”? He regularly tested the nurses and ward men on the Founding Fathers and refused much-needed medication.

  He had suffered a pancreatic disruption from sniper fire when racing from a foxhole where the two other soldiers suddenly gave off what he called “a stinking Jerry aura.” One of them, Wilkowski said, looked like Adolf Hitler.

  His mother back home in Pennsylvania wrote him regularly, though Wilkowski did not appear to reply. After several extensive interviews, Dr. Willard told Juliet that Wilkowski had once sung in his church choir and volunteered at his local library bringing books to the elderly. Juliet shook her head. It was hard to imagine a kind boy inside the madman interrogating her every day.

  “Why don’t they just ship him home?” Juliet said. “If he goes back to the front, he’s going to end up taking a shot at one of our soldiers.”

  “Only if he’s not cured.”

  “You think you can cure him?”

  “A sane man is trapped somewhere inside of him, and yes, I believe I can cure him. Absolutely. Besides, he doesn’t want to go home, so the army would never send him. He loves being in the infantry, loves killing Germans. He actually wants to fight. It’s combat exhaustion, minus the exhaustion. My hope is to work with him a few more weeks. If I can get him to relax, he might sleep, and if he sleeps, he might be able to shake the paranoid delusions. But without Sodium Pentothal, I can’t find out where all this started.”

  The day Wilkowski was scheduled for his injection, however, he overheard Willard speaking German with a POW in the ward. Wilkowski threw off his bedsheets: “Get out, Kraut! Get out!” He pulled at his hair, saliva bubbling from his mouth, and hurled his body repeatedly against the tent’s canvas wall. Eventually, two ward men had to restrain him.

  That night, when Juliet made her final rounds, his dinner tray lay untouched beside his bed. A fly buzzed madly over the gelatinous soup. His eyes were red from weeping and he rolled an unsmoked cigarette between his fingers.

  “‘Darkness rises in the unseen night, and the ghosts of those forsaken and forgotten claw at the recesses of our minds until we bleed.’” He looked ahead blankly. “A. R. Turnley, The Death of All Souls.”

  “At least have some water,” she pleaded, handing him a glass.

  He poured the water down her dress.

  “German water,” he said. “From the German’s lover.” He let his eyes half close in exhaustion. “Rest in peace, Germany.”

  Juliet stumbled away, amazed that Willard believed he could cure the man. Wilkowski was far worse in the head than any other patient she’d seen. But when could you say a person was truly ruined—damaged so hideously that he could never return to his former life, his former self? She saw it all the time with bodies: amputees, cripples, the blind. Physical injuries wrought clear changes; gauging wounds of the mind was complete guesswork.

  “Nurse Dufresne,” Cross called from across the tent, “how much dough are they throwing at you to work in this circus?” It was getting dark, and the crickets chirped loudly; it was the hour when the men spoke eagerly, as though afraid of nightfall.

  “Not enough,” Juliet answered, toweling her dress dry.

  “Me? I’m making one-third what I raked in back home, with the added bonus of bullets flying past me all day. No G.I. Bill of Rights is gonna make up for that kind of a pay cut. But I’m collecting every scrap of Jerry junk I can get my hands on. Watches, Lugers. Even pulled a gold brooch off a Kraut I nailed and sent it home to my mom for her birthday. I figure it’s worth at least five hundred. Of course, back home, I’ve got money in the stock market. Forget war bonds. You wanna get fat off this war? Head for Wall Street. The longer the war drags on, those stocks are gonna soar. So I’ve devised a sure thing, assuming I make it home to cash in. How about you, Berenson, what were you?”

  Private Berenson had pulled his sheet to his waist and stared dreamily at the top of the tent. “Plumber,” he said.

  “Hey, Donner, what were you before all this started?”

  Lieutenant Donner set his book in his lap, and everyone looked over to hear his answer. He was the most taciturn of the patients.

  A slight grin lit his face: “Happy.”

  “Big day today,” said Juliet, pulling a stool beside Barnaby.

  Peeling back the gauze, she soaped the toughened ridges of his scars. She snipped the strand nearest his eye and pulled out each stitch, one by one, dropping the short black threads into a metal bowl. Pink zippers of flesh stretched across his cheekbones, encircling his mouth.

  He was watching her, his gaze shifting between the tweezers and the tray.

  “How are you feeling, Christopher?”

  His eye blinked several times, but his mouth remained firmly closed.

  “Well, I’m sure you’ve heard the good news,” she said. “Dr. Willard managed to stall your court-martial proceedings.” The intensity of his stare unsettled her; she removed the last stitch and hastily lathered petroleum jelly over his cheeks. “There—all done. You’ve got enough Vaseline on you to catch flies.”

  She lifted her tray and stood to leave, turning back. “Look, I know you hear me, and I believe you understand everything I’m saying. I’m Tuck’s sister.” Nerves gripped Juliet’s stomach, but she pushed breathlessly on. “I just want to know what happened to my brother. I want to know why you said ‘Tuck, forgive me.’ I want to know why you have his white glove.”

  Barnaby slowly shook his head, and Juliet knelt.

  “No, what?” she whispered. “Are you trying to tell me something?”
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  He laid his cheek, thick with Vaseline, against his pillow, and gazed dreamily at the far wall of the tent. “Please, wake up,” she said. “Just come back to the world and talk. We’ll take care of you.” But Barnaby’s face remained limp, his stare vacant, and Juliet had the same feeling as when she’d ranted at the sky after Mother Hen’s death—forsaken.

  The next morning, a letter arrived for Juliet:

  Dear Nurse Dufresne,

  Many thanks for taking the time to write, and I appreciate your good intentions, but I must confess, when I first opened your letter, it seemed the worst of insults.

  “Your husband has been injured, by his own hand, it is said. But we are investigating his actions fully, and his physical recovery has been nothing short of miraculous.”

  Nurse, please understand, my husband died almost six months ago here in the States working for the army at a munitions depot. I already suffered the trauma of the official army notification, two months pregnant, no less, and have had all the bad news about my husband that I can take for a lifetime.

  I can only assume that you are writing to me about my brother, Christopher Barnaby. Your mistake was an innocent one. No doubt I’m the only girl writing to Christopher! And you were quick to assume . . . I’ve always believed in truth telling, and I want to reciprocate for your honesty in writing. What I’d like to say is that Christopher isn’t the marrying kind and never will be. Whether this helps your understanding of him, I can’t be certain, but I offer the information just in case, and trust you have his care as your top priority. If he suffered some kind of mental break, please know that it must have been an extremely difficult place for him. Christopher is an idealist, but also a very sensitive soul. He always was. Guns and firefights aren’t for him. He’s a talker, a thinker. I wish he’d never gotten it in his head to enlist. I was worried he wouldn’t belong, but there’s no stopping a man with duty in his heart.

  As for the name Tucker Dufresne—Christopher never mentioned him, though he didn’t much write about anyone in his squad. I didn’t get the sense he liked them much, though that’s not too unusual. He liked to write about justice and liberty; principles usually made him happier than people.

  Sorry I can’t be of more help.

  I’ll pray for him daily, but in the meantime, please give him my love and write if anything changes. Christopher is amazingly strong, in his own way. I don’t know what I’d do without him. Send him home as soon as you can.

  Tina Barnaby Emmons

  CHAPTER 11

  JULIET DIPPED THE comb in the metal bowl of water and parted Dr. Willard’s hair. Unfolding the cloth, she found surgical scissors.

  “Will these do?”

  “I just hope no one’s performing a celiotomy with the barber shears,” he said. “You’re kind to do this. I only asked out of desperation. Patients expect me to look generally clean-cut.”

  The day was hot and bright, and Willard was seated outside his tent; a threadbare towel lay across his shoulders over his khaki shirt, and Juliet stood behind him. She began trimming the back of his hair just above his neck, blowing the cuttings.

  “Dr. Willard, I want to ask you something . . . well, and tell you something. It’s personal, and I know you don’t like that sort of thing, but it bears on our professional work. With Barnaby. I think you should know. It’s sort of about my brother.”

  “Tucker Dufresne?”

  “Yes.”

  “And this relates to our patient?”

  “It does.”

  “Proceed”

  She let the scissors dangle. “Tuck was reported missing in action almost a year ago now, here in Italy. And the thing is, just before he went missing, he sent a letter to me that sounded somewhat strange; well, it sounded almost delirious, and he mentioned a woman named Ms. Van Effing, which was a name we used to signal each other that something was wrong. So I decided to enlist. . . .”

  “Please don’t tell me you decided to ship here to Italy to see if you could find him.”

  Juliet was silent.

  “Nurse Dufresne, I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I didn’t tell you you’re on a wild-goose chase.”

  “That’s what I thought at first.” She stepped in front of him. “Private Barnaby knew Tuck.”

  “I’m sure dozens of soldiers in the division knew your brother.”

  “Dr. Willard, that white glove. The one you thought belonged to his wife?” She crouched, reaching for his hands. “It belonged to Tuck. Our stepmother gave it to him before he shipped over.”

  “I’m not sure that means anything for our patient or for your quest.”

  Juliet herself was uncertain what it meant, but it couldn’t be ignored. What if Barnaby’s breakdown and Tuck’s disappearance were connected?

  “You don’t think it’s strange,” she said, “that they served in the same squad but Tuck never mentioned Barnaby? He mentioned all the others.”

  “On the long list of things I find strange about this war? Come on, Juliet. That doesn’t even graze the bottom.” He must have seen her eyes widen in anger: “I see where your mind is leading you and I’m trying to spare you: it’s a dark and endless passage.”

  Juliet stood impatiently. Having finally decided after months of secrecy to share the entire truth with someone else, she’d expected, if not practical support, at least some compassion, something more than Willard’s cold circumspection. She turned away from him and in a rush of frustration confessed what she had meant to withhold, what she did not yet fully understand: “I think there’s something with Barnaby we didn’t realize. That I didn’t realize. I got a letter from Tina.” She looked back.

  Dr. Willard immediately stiffened, shifting in his chair. “And how, exactly, did that come about?”

  “I wrote to her.”

  “Nurse Dufresne.”

  “Dr. Willard, she’s not his wife; she’s his sister.”

  “Cousin, aunt, next-door neighbor—it doesn’t concern you. You shouldn’t have written.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m sure you’re sorry. People who do things they shouldn’t are always sorry afterward. But they keep doing them! I need you to respect the work I’m doing here”—he pulled the towel from his shoulders and let it fall to the ground—“and if you can, try to maintain, challenging as it might be for a girl, some slight semblance of professionalism. We need boundaries in this work, or it simply doesn’t work. And we need it to work; the stakes are very high. So we must have clear lines—lines that do not, under any circumstances, get crossed.”

  “I understand.”

  “Then please stop using my patient for your own ends. And make no mistake, that’s what you’re doing. Your job is to take care of him: to help him recover from his physical injury, and to assist me in trying to help him regain some shred of mental and emotional stability. He is not a clue in your investigation or a piece in your personal puzzle. He is a human being, one who needs a great deal of help right now or he may be put to death—by our own army. Are you registering the severity of the situation?”

  Willard’s anger was frightening, his disapproval unsettling—she realized now how much his closeness, his respect, meant to her.

  “But I thought they postponed the court-martial until you had spent more time with him and given a full report. Until he was at least speaking.”

  “In a sane and rational and just universe, certainly. Not in this one. Because they count on me to get hundreds of soldiers back to the front lines, they occasionally grant me a wish. I bought Barnaby a week, two more at best. They are essentially humoring me.”

  “I had no idea.”

  “I didn’t burden you with these details because, as I said, boundaries matter. These are my professional worries, not yours.”

  Juliet lifted the towel from the ground and folded it several times. She could not bring herself to look at him. “I’m embarrassed.”

  “Oh, come now, people do reckless and impulsive things in the n
ame of love, and I can see that you love your brother. I truly hope you find him. But I can’t help you. My plate is overflowing here; you know that. For the past week I’ve been struggling to make sure Private Wilkowski doesn’t starve himself to death out of fear. I am Barnaby’s only advocate and his only ally. My obligation is to him. And that far supersedes any personal fondness I may have for you. Now, if we can agree we’ve come to a peaceful understanding on this matter, and you trust my anger has passed, and I trust you with surgical shears pointed at my head, would you be so kind as to finish my haircut?”

  He straightened his glasses, sunlight glinting off the lenses, and looked toward the green hills beyond the encampment. She saw now that he would never allow her to question Barnaby about Tuck. He had closed that door, and she couldn’t blame him. She’d been taking advantage of her role as Barnaby’s nurse, rifling through his belongings, interrogating his sister. What was wrong with her? She had no other options; that’s what was wrong. No other leads. And her brother had asked for her help.

  Juliet draped the towel around Willard’s shoulders. She moved behind him and clipped carefully at the hair on the top of his head.

  “In your entirely inappropriate and unprofessional correspondence with Private Barnaby’s sister,” Willard said, gazing at the hills, “did you learn anything that might be of use to us?”

  “She said Christopher wasn’t the marrying kind. And she wrote it, well, as if she thought it was absurd I had mistaken her for his wife. Said she’d be the only girl writing him.”

  “I see. Anything else?”

  “Not really.”

  “So, this suggestion as to Barnaby’s lack of interest in women . . . do you think it has any bearing on our work with Barnaby? Or on what happened to him at the front, or why he turned his gun on himself?”