by Dean Hughes
“I know, Dad. I understand that.” She thought how rough she had been on her father over the past few months, and sadly, how right he had been about her at times, however much she hated to admit it.
“This adventure never ends, does it,” President Thomas said.
“What adventure?”
“Raising kids.
“I guess not.” Then she added, “Dad, I do love you. And it’s nice to know you were so worried about me.” She got up and did something she hadn’t done in a long time: she kissed him on the cheek.
And he did something that took her by surprise. He pulled her onto his lap and held her, as though she were still a little girl.
What LaRue wished at the moment was that she could be a little girl again. On New Year’s Eve she had another date with Reed, and this time there was just no way she could go without a new dress. She already had plans for bringing up the issue with Mom that evening, for arguing that the after-Christmas sales presented a very “practical” opportunity for a purchase. Then she would send Mom to negotiate the deal with Dad. It crossed her mind now, sitting on her father’s lap, that she might cut out the middleman and go straight for that dress right here and now, while he was feeling good about her.
At least she didn’t do that, and so she had just a little something to congratulate herself about. But what she knew was that she hadn’t changed much, if any, and she wondered whether she ever would.
***
Later that evening Lorraine Gardner, Wally’s old girlfriend, showed up at the front door. Mom greeted her, hugged her. “It’s so good to see you,” she said.
Lorraine stepped in. “I’m just home for the holidays,” she said.
“I saw your mother a couple of weeks ago. She told me you’re still in Seattle. And she said you were engaged. Congratulations.” Lorraine nodded and seemed just a little awkward, but Sister Thomas didn’t want her to feel that way. She took her hand and looked at her ring. It was a simple gold ring, with only a few stones. “That’s so pretty,” Sister Thomas said. “It’s a lot like mine.”
She held out her own hand, and Lorraine looked at it. “It is,” she said, but nothing more. And the awkwardness seemed to increase.
“Come and sit down. Everyone will want to see you.” And so Sister Thomas called the girls downstairs, and she took Lorraine into the living room to say hello to President Thomas. After all the greetings, Lorraine sat on the couch, with LaRue and Sister Thomas on either side of her. Beverly sat on the floor next to her father’s chair.
LaRue said, “Lorraine, you’re beautiful. You get prettier every time I see you.”
It was what Sister Thomas was thinking. Lorraine still had that lovely figure, but something in the confident way she moved, the natural assurance about her, made her seem so grown up and poised. “Oh, LaRue, don’t tell me that,” Lorraine said. “I’m like a thorn among the roses alongside you and Beverly.”
Sister Thomas knew that Lorraine had said exactly the right thing. Everyone always spoke of LaRue’s beauty, but few noticed the delicate, less striking attractiveness in Beverly. Lorraine had not seemed to strain to include Beverly, however, and Sister Thomas saw Beverly glow with the attention.
“Have you heard anything from Wally?” Lorraine asked.
“No. Not a word this whole year,” Sister Thomas told her.
“That must be terrible for you.”
President Thomas said, “Our soldiers are finding very few prisoners of war in the Philippines so far. Most have been shipped to Japan.”
“Does anyone know anything about the conditions there?”
“The only thing we hear,” President Thomas said, “is that they are put to work–in mines and factories. I’m sure they have to work very hard, but if that’s the case, the Japs would have to feed them pretty well.” President Thomas chuckled quietly and then said, “Maybe Wally has learned to work. That’s not something he was very good at.”
Lorraine smiled. “I’ve thought a lot about Wally–and the way he was. He was under a lot of shadows. Yours. And Alex’s. Even Bobbi’s. I don’t think he knew how to live up to all the things everyone expected of him.”
“That’s exactly right,” Sister Thomas said.
President Thomas nodded. “I’d do some things a little differently if I had another chance,” he said. He glanced at LaRue.
“I would too,” Lorraine said.
It seemed to Sister Thomas a strange thing for an engaged girl to say, maybe even inappropriate. “Lorraine, tell us about your fiancé,” she said.
“He’s a Lieutenant, junior grade, in the Navy. Right now, he’s stationed on Guadalcanal, and he has a nice, safe desk job.”
“I guess, even if you were married, you couldn’t have gone there with him?”
“No. He wanted to get married before he left, but . . . I don’t know. I just felt like I’d rather wait until he got back.”
“I can understand that,” Sister Thomas said.
“If you hear anything at all about Wally, could you please let me know? I’ll leave my address with you.”
Sister Thomas gave Lorraine a sheet of paper, and she wrote down the address, and then they chatted about Seattle, about Lorraine’s work, and about LaRue and Beverly and the rest of the family. But Lorraine didn’t stay long, and when she left, she stood at the door and hugged Sister Thomas, held her a little longer than Sister Thomas expected, and she said, “I love your family so much. I hope you can all be back together before too much longer.”
***
Afton Story was spending Christmas day with the Nuanunus. She hadn’t broken the news to her family yet, but she had now admitted to Bobbi that she was planning to marry Sam. Bobbi was happy for her. And yet sometimes she wondered whether she had done too much to talk her into her choice. Afton and Sam would be facing some hard challenges.
Bobbi had still not had a letter from Richard, and she was worried about that. But he was alive. And more than that, she felt some sense of protection, some sense that God had blessed her, granted her desire, and the only appropriate response was gratitude. If only she felt as sure about Alex. The world was watching and waiting to see what would happen to the men in Bastogne, and Bobbi dreaded every day the possibility that she would receive bad news.
Bobbi and Ishi and the kids had dinner together at Ishi’s house. Little David loved Bobbi, and the two of them played on the floor after dinner. David had a little collection of wooden cars and trucks, and he liked to make loud noises and push the cars around. Bobbi built little bridges out of blocks, which David knocked down more often than not as he tried to cross them with his vehicles. Bobbi would pretend to cry, but that only made David laugh. He was an intense little boy, almost wild at times, and sometimes, even at his age, he intimidated his shy big sister.
After a time, Bobbi got up and sat on the couch, and Lily came to her, sat next to her. “My dolly is tired,” she told Bobbi. “She needs to sleep.” The doll was wrapped in a pink blanket. Lily began to rock her, with a little more bounce than a baby might really like.
“Nice and soft,” Bobbi said. “That’s what puts a baby to sleep.”
David looked up. “It’s just a doll,” he said, as if to explain to Bobbi that she needn’t worry.
Bobbi and Ishi laughed. Ishi was feeling some relief herself these days. She had heard from Daniel a few days before, after hearing nothing for a long time. His unit had been pulled out of Italy and was now in southern France. He couldn’t tell her much about what was happening, but Ishi thought he might be in safer circumstances than he had been in the mountains of Italy.
“Remember last year, on Christmas?” Bobbi said. “We all hoped the war would be over by now.”
“Well . . . it’s a lot closer.”
“I don’t know, Ishi. This new push by the Germans really worries me. It seemed like they were almost finished off, and look how they’ve come back strong again.”
“You’re worried about your brother, aren’t you?”
“Sure.”
“I feel sorry for his wife.”
“I know. That’s what I keep thinking. I love her so much, and I’ve never met her. She sent me a sweet letter, in such correct English. She said, ‘Alex should not be a soldier. He loves people too much.’”
“The sad part is, that’s true of so many of these boys out shooting at each other. No one should be a soldier.”
Bobbi nodded. She thought of Richard the same way. What he had seen in the war had hurt him so much. She wondered what more he had been through now, and what it had done to him. “I wonder what Richard will be like when I see him again,” she said. “Ishi, sometimes I get so scared. I don’t really know Richard very well. I’m not even sure anymore what made me fall in love with him.”
“That’s not how you’ll feel when you’re with him again.”
Bobbi wished she knew that for sure. She also wished she knew what was happening. If Richard was in a hospital, he was obviously hurt in some way. She remembered how much he feared the idea of being mutilated. The telegram had been so neutral, so incomplete–and since then she had heard nothing. Maybe his injuries were bad enough that he wasn’t able to write.
“I feel a change in Daniel’s letters,” Ishi said. “He started out so devoted to winning the war for his people, for democracy–all those things. But now he never speaks of anything like that. I can’t tell what he’s thinking. It’s like he knows something now that he doesn’t dare say to me.”
“Maybe that’s how we all are. I’ve seen things in the hospital, heard talk, learned things about people. Maybe I’ll be a little better for it in some ways, but I’ll never be the naive kid I was when I came over here.”
“There are so many kinds of costs,” Ishi said. “Just think about these years Daniel and I have lost–and think about Lily and David. During these important years of their lives, they’ve never even seen their father. He’s a picture to them. That’s all they know of him.”
“Ishi, I hope, in a way, that Richard’s injuries are serious enough that he won’t have to go back into action. What if he has to go back–and get in on the invasion, when we go into Japan?”
“I have relatives in Japan, Bobbi. What am I supposed to hope for? I lose on both sides of this war.”
That was easy for Bobbi to forget. She could only imagine what Ishi had to go through, every day hearing the ugly epithets about the “Japs,” constantly seeing the ugly caricatures in the newspapers. Ishi was experiencing an element of the war that other Americans would never know.
But Bobbi was still thinking about Richard. If he was hurt too seriously, maybe his life would be full of problems. Maybe his heart had been changed somehow, too. But if he wasn’t hurt badly enough, maybe he would be going back to sea. Maybe Bobbi’s worry and the waiting would only start again.
“Well . . . Merry Christmas, anyway,” Ishi said. “A year ago we would have been very pleased just to know that Richard and Daniel were still alive. We do have that. Maybe next Christmas we’ll be with them.”
“Maybe so.” Bobbi touched Ishi’s arm. “And no matter what this war has cost us, maybe it’s taught us some things, too.” She didn’t say it, but what she thought about was the afternoon when the telegram had come. She was not a woman of great faith, but that day she had felt God with her before she ever opened the envelope. That was something she could build a future around, no matter what else came.
***
Wally had to work in the mine on Christmas Eve and again on Christmas Day. There was nothing different about such days. The routine didn’t change. But Wally longed for something–just a little extra food or some other indication it was a special day. But there were no packages from home, no letters, not even a sign that the guards or his supervisor knew what day it was.
So Wally decided, on a sudden impulse, to do something himself. When lunchtime came, he walked to Kiku, bowed, and then said, “Merry Christmas.”
Kiku didn’t understand. He shook his head, looked curious.
“Merry Christmas. I want to give you a gift. You don’t kick me anymore, and I want to thank you for that.”
Again Kiku looked confused.
“I’ll work during dinnertime today. You’ll get a little more done. And you like that.” His tone was friendly, and when he finished, he bowed again, something the prisoners usually only did when they had no choice.
Kiku shook his head. He asked something in Japanese, something Wally couldn’t understand. Wally smiled, and then he picked up a shovel. He pointed to some loose rock the men had broken up that morning. “I’m going to shovel this rock during dinnertime. I won’t take off time to rest,” he said. And then he began to shovel.
The other men were watching. Hernandez said, “Don’t do it, Wally. He doesn’t understand. And he sure won’t appreciate it.”
“That’s all right. I want to do it.”
No one else joined in, and Kiku, clearly baffled, walked away and left the men as he always did at lunchtime. Maybe he thought Wally was bargaining, hoping to get an early release that afternoon for his crew. Or maybe he knew about Christmas and finally made the connection. In any case, when he returned and found Wally still working, he approached him, stood before him, and this time he bowed. This was certainly his way of accepting the gift.
That was all. The day didn’t end any earlier, and Wally was so exhausted he could hardly make the march back to the camp that night. But he felt good.
Chapter 31
Peter, with a small remnant of his company, had retreated again. They were still in Memel, in Lithuania, but they were closer to the bay, pinched in by the Russian forces. They had found a damaged pillbox to hide in. The gun was destroyed, but the reinforced concrete provided some protection against the shelling. Still, the January cold was now a greater threat than the artillery fire, and the pillbox was more exposed to the air than the cellar, their last refuge, had been. By now the civilians were mostly gone, either dead or actually evacuated by German boats. Some of the soldiers had been removed too. But every time another boatload left, the odds for those remaining grew worse, with the Russians moving closer and fewer Germans to defend the position.
Peter was sick. There was very little to eat anymore, and the perpetual cold stole the life from all the men. But now, deep in Peter’s chest was a constant, dull pain, like the pressure of an expanding balloon. He had been coughing for some time, spitting up blood, but now his body was giving up. The energy to cough was too demanding, it seemed, too fruitless, and Peter’s will to live was almost gone. He moved about in a state of groggy confusion, or, more often, sat with his eyes open, more or less asleep, not really seeing what was in front of him.
Sergeant Gottschall, Peter’s latest leader, believed that the Russians had made up their minds to end the standoff in Memel. Peter only knew that the intensity of the artillery fire, the pressure from tanks, had intensified in the past twenty-four hours. The bombardment, which had gone on all day, was as intense as anything Peter had been through. Now it was night, and the explosions were lighting up the sky, the sound rumbling from a distance at times and then crashing all around the pillbox where Peter lay, rolled up, shivering with fright. The close strikes would crack like lightning, suck the air from his lungs, shake the ground, reverberate through his ribs. Twice during the night the pillbox had taken direct hits, the concrete shattering and debris cascading onto the men, but the structure had held together. Peter had felt his body take a pelting from the flying chunks of concrete, but the pain inside him was so deep that surface pain hardly seemed significant.
When the barrage had finally let up, Peter wondered whether he was better off to have survived one more time. Alfred Webber, a veteran of most of the war–one who had survived a thousand experiences just as bad–had been killed this time by flying shrapnel. A little piece of steel had found its way just beneath the edge of his helmet and had torn through his temple and into his brain. So many bullets had whizzed by this man befor
e. He had even been seriously wounded twice, but now half an inch had made all the difference. Peter stared at the man’s body and wondered what it felt like to finally be dead. Peter’s mind had become elemental now, and he didn’t search for what he had been taught. He only stared at the bulk, the flesh, that lay there in a heap, and it seemed to him that the cold couldn’t penetrate, that pain was ended.
It was almost morning when Hans said, “Peter, I’m going to kill myself. I don’t want to wait for the Russians to do it for me.”
Peter had thought of doing the same thing himself, but this shook him. “No,” he said. He didn’t have the energy or the clarity of mind to say more. But he did move enough to get hold of Hans, to look into his eyes. The first light of day was dawning, and he could see Hans, his emaciated face, his hollow eyes. “No,” he said again. And Hans nodded. Maybe it was what he wanted to hear–at least that much concern for him.
Sergeant Gottschall was up barking soon after that. The man had more drive than anyone Peter could imagine, and through his sheer stubbornness, he was trying to keep these few men–now only fourteen–alive. “We must take up our positions at the outpost,” he told the men. “The Russians will be coming this morning. You know they will.”
Surely all the artillery fire was a precursor to a ground attack. What wasn’t clear was what the sergeant thought the few Germans left in Memel could do against another major thrust. Still, Peter pulled himself to his feet. The most meaningful thing left in his life was the leadership of this man, who kept on fighting no matter what he faced. Peter never worried about killing now, never wondered whether anything was right or wrong. His only decision was whether to keep trying.
He walked through the hazy, frozen air. His tattered boots squeaked as they crushed the ice-crusted snow. At the outpost–a trench that extended along a road–Peter sat down, his body trembling from the effort, and, of course, from the cold. It would be a terrible morning.