Out of Splinters and Ashes

by Colleen L. Donnelly

  “Campaign,” Frank muttered over the sound of grit being crushed beneath his tires.

  “What?”

  “Campaign. A means to a goal. A strategy. A plan. A series of actions. Jill looked it up last night after you called about running this morning and told us you and Emerson were getting married.”

  “What does ‘campaign’ have to do with getting married? And why would she drag out a dictionary so late? What time did I call? Midnight?”

  “It was pretty late, but you know Jill. Nothing slows her down. She’s always off on some tangent that sticks in my head more than hers. Especially when that tangent is in our bed with the lights on and her bent over a book reading definitions out loud. She said campaigns aren’t organic. Not entities in and of themselves. They are nothing more than methods to gain something real at the end. Means to ends, not ends.”

  Like burning books and military mementos, reading too many authors, carving sticks until nothing was left. “Isn’t ‘campaign’ a noun, an actual thing?”

  “It’s a verb too. Even an adjective. If your dress fits Jill’s definition of ‘campaign,’ it will make Emerson look better than you.”

  Hold on. Hold on to her. And I will hold on to him, Grandpa. And I would.

  “Pick it up, Cate. You’re lagging behind again.”

  Stretch. Pump. Stretch. Pump. For. Me. Not. Because. Of. Me. For. Me.

  “That’s a little better.” Frank nodded at my feet.

  It wasn’t better. I dug my toes into the pavement and threw my weight backward, bringing my stretch and pump to a halt. Bringing everything to a halt—my running, Emerson’s race, and Jill’s campaign. Frank’s tires caught on the pavement, dry skids rising from his wheels as he clamped down on the brakes. He leaned his bicycle into a circle that wrapped around and around where I stood, unhappy loops, frowning from every angle.

  “Why in the world did you stop?” he asked. “Jill said getting engaged to someone so public might cause you to have some…”

  I raised a hand. Frank’s loops tightened around me, his final one bringing him to a stop right in front of me.

  “Have some what?”

  Frank fiddled with his brake lever.

  “Look, Frank, that dress will be for Emerson and me both. It will fit his functions because it will fit me. I’m a part of his campaign now because I’m a part of him, not some tool used by him.” My voice sounded rangy, not a good store voice. “That dress will be for me, for both of us, not because of anything else.”

  “Jill’s just saying…”

  “Never mind, Frank. I gotta go. I have some pictures to take.” Jill was a sprinter. That’s why these immediate finish lines worked for her—campaigns, friendly dinners, opinions about my life. I was a runner, I was fast, and I kept going.

  “Some questions,” he shouted at my back as I turned and trotted away. “You might have some questions, that’s what Jill said…”

  That Jill would know the answers to better than I would? I ran hard. I wanted to keep going and never stop.

  Chapter 10

  “Marvin Shanks…Marvin Shanks…” Carl’s hands slowed as his mind searched to pinpoint a detail in a broad subject.

  Counters were obstacles, and Dietrich wished he could step to the other side of this one and peer over Carl’s shoulder as he struggled through the Library of Congress’s system while meshing it with his own.

  “Army. Nineteen thirty-five. Also a Marvin Shanks earlier than 1930, but no tie to the Armed Services.” Carl glanced up. “There are others. You want me to go on? They’re slightly outside of the time period you asked about.”

  Dietrich shook his head. “I think you’ve done well. Again. Where can I find information on the Shanks in the army?”

  Carl was quicker this time, his eyes and his hands scouring through information. “Here,” he said, pushing toward Dietrich a notepad he’d written on. “Look in those spots.”

  Dietrich stared at the numbers and letters. Codes to the man he’d been searching for so he could dismiss him. “Thank you. He sure was the Olympics’ best-kept secret, it seems. Maybe I won’t even need him for my article, but good journalism leaves no details to chance.”

  “Yes, sir. If you need anything else, you know where to find me.”

  “Unless you patent your system and become a wealthy man.”

  “Working on it.” Carl grinned. However far along he was at turning his nervous energy into profit, the challenge had changed him into a peaceful man. Contented, leading his life instead of dragging behind it, like Dietrich felt himself doing now.

  “Keep at it.” Dietrich returned a smile as he lifted the top page from the pad of paper. He stared at the numbers, nodded goodbye to Carl, and set off. To find Marvin. Hopefully pure fiction.

  ****

  The Library of Congress was like a giant encyclopedia—pages and pages, floors and floors, of carefully segregated categories of information. Pulling the pieces…the few pieces…of information about Marvin together wasn’t simple or quick. Other clerks, other books and files, finally turned up a single photo of the man in military records. Short. Dark-haired. Stocky.

  Dietrich dropped back against the seat he was sitting in. Wrong Shanks? Not a soldier? Or worse, a fictitious name? Dietrich rubbed his temples. He needed coffee. He needed fresh air. He needed to relax so his inner intuition could sort out the jumble of details in his mind.

  Dietrich let his head fall back, and his eyes traced the patterns of the ceiling. It hadn’t been a strong clue Williams had given him that Shanks may have been military, only a hunch. Dietrich’s own hunches were most often right. Evidently Williams’ weren’t.

  Dietrich stretched his arms upward, locked his fingers over his head, and stretched farther. Research was invigorating and frustrating. Miles and miles of data to run through, and sometimes there was no finish line. He loved it just the same, when it wasn’t so personal. He couldn’t stop. He had to reach the finish line, even if he couldn’t see it yet.

  He dropped his arms at his sides and straightened in his seat. He reached for the volume Marvin’s troop photo was in. He was done with this book. He had to find a new thread to follow. As the front cover closed, a tiny face, just like all the others but taller, caught his eye. Dietrich grabbed the pages and laid the book open again. There he was. Marvin—another year, another unit. The man was certainly tall. He was in the background, and even though he truly did blend into the black-and-white picture, Dietrich would know that face anywhere. He was the runner, the singular runner who took Carlson’s place. But his name wasn’t Marvin Shanks.

  Chapter 11

  I stared at the dress Emerson had bought, the one he’d insisted was right for me…for him, according to Jill’s definition of campaign. I ran the bright red fabric through my fingers. That color is perfect, Emerson had said when I held it up, then returned it to the rack and reached for another. You must be colorblind. I’d laughed, but he didn’t laugh when I tried it on. Perfect, was all he’d said, and his dancing eyes agreed.

  My mother would agree also. She would squeal at red the way she’d squealed when Emerson and I called to tell her we were engaged. It was an explosive conversation, her excitement drowning out my father’s gentler congratulations, her insistence that the wedding be near her and far from my grandparents cut short as I promised to call another time and hung up. Call another time when Emerson wasn’t around to hear our family war.

  I let the fabric fall from my fingertips. Grandma was waiting. She had something to tell me. It wouldn’t be an apology. Mavis Crawley never budged for anyone, but maybe she’d seen the light in Grandpa’s fires. Something she’d never seen before, something she needed to see before I donned this dress or determined where my wedding would be. I grabbed my keys, my camera case with yesterday’s rolls of film, and my purse. I cast one last glance at Emerson’s fiery red, then ran out the door.

  ****

  Grandma turned at the tinkle of Non Bookends’ bells. Her face i
n crusade mode, she raised a finger the moment she spotted me—her sign to stay long enough to be her next audience. I raised my finger along with my camera case—hurry and tell me some good news, I have things to do. She ignored both and resumed talking to her customer. I strode to her little home-away-from-home in the back, dropped my purse on her cot, set the case next to it, and took my camera out. Photographing Grandma’s customers would hurry her up.

  I stepped from her room into the jungle of fiction Grandma called truth, truth without standard bookstore arrangement and without a section for romance—even burned romance. I focused my camera on a nearby tier of books—a woman in front of them holding The Scarlet Pimpernel. Average-sized book, hardbound, a faded maroon cover, her face barely visible over its top as I clicked, capturing her rapt attention to what Grandma said battles brought out in a man—patriotism paraded as chivalry when, in the end, true chivalry really began and ended at home. I caught the hunger in the woman’s eyes. I clicked again.

  Soft sounds hummed throughout the store as I adjusted the settings on my camera. Grandma’s voice was one of those hums, still preaching her crusade, as I searched for my next victim. A book groaned, the soft sounds of a brittle spine being pried open to release a deluge of sleeping words. Le Morte d’Arthur. I focused on the title below another woman’s hopeful face.

  “Can I help you disturb another customer, young lady?” Grandma appeared next to me, glassiness captured in her eyes with the camera click she wasn’t ready for, a glassy sheen like the rain in Amabile’s story.

  “Trying to capture proof about your theory of fact in fiction.”

  Grandma shook her head. “You want proof of fact in fiction? Go find yourself a modern book on how to be married, and after you’ve been married a while, come to me for a novel. Then you tell me which is more accurate.”

  I shook my head then and glanced at Le Morte d’Arthur, now back on the shelf. It was about war, most likely. Love in war, maybe. It was in Grandma’s W section.

  “What’s W stand for?”

  “Write what you know.”

  I held back a snort. “According to you, this whole store should be under W, then.”

  “Don’t get smart. The whole store is under Non Bookends. Limitless truth in fiction. Writing truth in a story doesn’t create or change an outcome, it just helps you see why things turned out the way they did.” Grandma glanced to other shelves with other letters. “Unfortunately, knowing why can hurt more than just understanding you lost.”

  I stared at the glassiness, at the why she thought she saw behind it.

  “I contacted an attorney.” She looked back at me. “I’m leaving him.”

  “You what? You can’t do that. You can’t do it to Grandpa, especially now, and you can’t do it to Emerson and me. You need a reason…a solid reason. Otherwise…” Otherwise Grandpa’s well-set flames would go out. So would Emerson’s campaign, with my fiery red dress.

  “There are reasons, Cate.”

  “What reasons?”

  Grandma raised her arms and spread them in the midst of her books. “It’s all here, Cate. Ibsen was right. We learn our own ‘what to do’ as we find the truth. And it doesn’t always make other people happy—like calling a lawyer.”

  I took a step back, spotting her hand-printed sign at the end of the shelf—“In this war, we know, books are weapons. Roosevelt.” I looked from the sign to her. How could Grandpa’s efforts to love survive this much opposition? How could any survive? “You’re wrong, Grandma. You need to step out from behind your fictional characters and deceased authors and face the real truth.”

  “There’s more truth here than there has been in the rest of our lives.” Grandma glanced around Non Bookends, a gaze that ended at me. “It’s time for me to leave, Cate. What he expected wasn’t what I expected, but one thing I’m sure of—I’m a part of neither.”

  Chapter 12

  Grandpa’s car wasn’t in his drive, so I rammed mine into his spot. Grandma couldn’t leave him. Maybe he knew; maybe that’s why he was gone. I shut off the engine and stared at his porch and his empty chair, and the pile of wood shavings where his feet should have been.

  Grandpa never went anywhere, except to the store. And rarely that.

  I hurried to the porch and up to the screen door, raised a hand, and knocked. My knock disappeared in the silence. I slid my hand inside the screen and hammered on the heavy inner door, but he didn’t respond.

  Wood shavings scuttled across the porch floor, swept by a light breeze. Grandma had started complaining about his whittled remains right before she converted the back of Non Bookends into a home-away-from-home. If Grandpa had actually carved something, especially for her, maybe they wouldn’t have bothered her so.

  I walked down the steps and to the garage at the end of their drive. Grandpa rarely parked inside it, and going through the side door, I found it empty. The vacant space was close and dark. It smelled of Grandpa—the aroma of wood and woodworking tools, oils, and cleaners. I felt for the light switch, flipped it on, and stared at the only thing I really knew about my grandfather—wood.

  I walked along the workbench he’d built at the end of the garage, a long, high, wooden structure with everything he needed if he ever decided to build anything. Grandpa’s work area was organized and ready, boards I used to play with, arranged by size, stacked at one end, jars full of small nails and screws across the back. Large equipment he’d told me the names of every time I asked stood along the adjacent wall, things that gave him the ability to do more than straight lines and sharp corners if he chose to. But he’d never made anything. He never even said whether he knew how, smiling quietly at my girlhood suggestions.

  I tugged open drawers he’d hung beneath his long table, too high for me to reach as a child. Screwdrivers lined one, smallest to largest, Phillips in one row, flatheads in another. Pliers of all sorts filled the next, clean and shiny as if they, too, had never been used. Maybe Grandpa could make me a cedar chest for my wedding. Something fancy, something that would quiet Grandma’s talk of divorce, something he could do to impress Emerson instead of walking me down the aisle.

  I peered into each of the following drawers, everything inside shiny, neat, and clean, making his garage more like a store than someone’s shop. At the last one I caught a tinge of grime around its handle. I ran a fingertip over the gritty blackness. This was his favorite drawer. This had to be where he kept his whittling tools. I looped my fingers over the handle and tugged. An assortment of knives and carving tools rattled in their rows, all looking well used and well loved. I smiled at the one thing I truly did know about my grandfather. He carved. He never made anything, but he whittled and carved.

  The hum of a car came from the drive, a vehicle behind mine. Grandpa was home. I should have parked in the street instead of blocking him. I shoved against the drawer with my hip. It caught and jammed at an angle. Grabbing it by both sides, I jiggled it loose, set both hips against its front, and shoved once more. The drawer wedged again, jarring Grandpa’s tools from their neat rows. The motor died as Grandpa cut his engine. I gave the jammed side a tug. I would tell him I was in here getting the broom to sweep off his porch. The drawer popped loose, and I clawed all of his tools from the back to the front to line them up again, three chunks of old and dried wood coming with them. I grabbed them, dragged them out, and carried them to the trash, pausing beneath the light as his car door closed. The chunks weren’t trash, they were carvings. Flowers. Two round like roses, the other long. Like an iris, maybe. Or a tiger lily. They were beautiful beneath their ruin, finely carved, the work of a true artist.

  I wanted to keep them, but I returned them to the drawer, guiding it shut this time. If Grandpa made those…if he could whittle flowers for Grandma… These were how his love efforts could undo the destruction about to come from her—carved in wood. Even old and splintering, those flowers spoke of love. I felt it. I flipped off the light and hurried out the door.

  “Grandpa, I�
��m sorry about parking in your way.” I shut the door behind me, the broom in one hand for my lie. Two more car doors closed, and I looked toward the car that wasn’t his and faces that weren’t his either. “What are you doing here? No one expected you.”

  Three staunch men in military uniforms stared back at me, their answer in a uniform look—what are you doing here?

  Chapter 13

  Dietrich spotted a small New York bookstore and a parking space a half block past it. A neighborhood store, from the look of it, one likely brimming with the sort of local information he needed. George Crawley’s home was another block and a half ahead. A bookstore was the perfect place to pretend to be a tourist searching for books and an old friend, asking about the area, and learning what he could about the runner who had hidden behind a fictitious name.

  Dietrich stepped from the rental car and strode around it to the sidewalk. He stared toward the bookstore. The perfect setting to prove fiction was just that—that fabled love stories and running under an assumed name for valid reasons had nothing in common. Pounding footsteps came from behind, the direction of the man he intended to quietly but speedily clear. He turned, kept close to his car as a young woman raced past, small but fast, her wavy brown hair nearly straight behind her. He glanced the direction she’d come from. A pursuer, maybe? This was an outer perimeter of New York City. No one was there, but still she was quick, impressive for as small as she was.

  Dark haired and short—he was searching for tall, fair-haired, and thin. He gazed the direction the girl had run from, looking to the opposite side of the street, where the Crawley house would sit. He’d driven by it before coming here. Two cars had been in Crawley’s drive, but the house had looked quiet, no sign of the man who’d run when he shouldn’t have. He turned back toward the bookstore. This shouldn’t take long.