by Dean Hughes
LaRue wanted to agree with that, too, but she was surprised by her own discomfort. Grace suddenly sounded selfish and self-centered. LaRue knew, when all was said and done, she did want a family.
“Oh, Grace,” Bea said, “I think you’re saying more than you mean. I know how much you love your little boy.”
“Sure, I do. I’m just saying that I don’t feel sorry for myself. I stay home with Jimmy most nights, and I don’t mind. But I’ll tell you, there’s a lot more going on in this town than most of you ladies think. And there’s some awfully good-looking soldiers on the loose. There’s no use letting the boys have all the fun in this life.”
Beverly was staring. Bea was swallowing, trying hard not to looked shocked. LaRue was laughing, in spite of herself. What she said was, “Now you’re talking,” but she was almost as shocked as her mother.
Later that afternoon, LaRue and Beverly took the bus home. Mom told them she was going to have to stay a little longer than she usually did on Saturday, but the girls should go ahead without her. On the way to the bus—in fact, almost as soon as the two were outside—Beverly said, “Do you think Grace does bad things?”
“Bev, don’t talk like a little girl. You’re thirteen now. You can say what you mean.”
“You know what I mean—what she said about those soldiers.”
“It’s not our business. She can do what she wants. That’s what Mormons always do: judge people and act like they’re better than everyone else.”
“Things are right or they’re wrong, LaRue.”
LaRue let her breath out. It was a blustery day, almost April now, but the wind made it feel more like February, and heavy clouds were piled up along the mountains. LaRue could see that it was snowing up there, and she felt some fine sprinkles of rain in the wind, too. Beverly was flushed by the cold, her cheeks pink. She was like Bobbi, fair-skinned with light, wispy hair. No one would have guessed she was LaRue’s sister.
The girls had come to their bus stop. LaRue stopped and turned her back to the wind. She was wearing a heavy wool coat, one she had put away at one time but had gotten back out that morning. She turned the collar up around her ears.
“LaRue, you’re a Mormon.”
“What?”
“You talk about the way Mormons do things—like you’re not one. You said, ‘That’s what Mormons always do.’”
“Okay, we do too much of that.”
“But that’s not what you mean. You think that you don’t do it—just the rest of us.”
LaRue was getting weary of all this. She turned and looked to see whether the bus was coming. The rain was starting to fall a little harder. She had a date with Reed that night. She needed to get home in time to wash her hair and put it up, so she hoped the bus would hurry. “Beverly, when I worked at the USO, I found out how people think about us. Most of the soldiers who came to live in Utah thought we were a bunch of narrow-minded busybodies. They used to say, ‘Live however you want, but don’t try to tell us what to do.’”
Beverly turned a little. LaRue could see how frustrated she was. “You don’t have to agree with everything they say. Maybe Grace didn’t have a very good husband, but you didn’t have to make Dad sound so bad.”
“What did I say? He is bossy.”
“What Mom said was right. She talked to him, and he’s doing better.”
“I’m sorry, Bev, but I don’t think he’s changed very much.”
“What about you? At Christmastime, you told me you weren’t a very good person and you wanted to be different.”
“I know I did.”
“Well, what happened? Now, you’re just the same as you used to be.”
“And how is that?”
“You’re LaRue—the same old LaRue.”
“I never said I wasn’t,” LaRue said, and she tried to sound unconcerned, but she felt the stab. The bus pulled up soon after that, and the two got on, but they didn’t speak again. LaRue was remembering how she had felt that day when Ned had told her off, accused her of caring only about herself, of not being the wholesome person a Mormon girl ought to be. She had seen her own selfishness that day; it had come into focus, suddenly, the way a movie did sometimes when the projectionist suddenly twisted some knob up in the booth and a picture that had seemed clear enough showed itself to have been blurred all along.
But what was she doing now? Reed was so kind and compliant, so nuts over her, that she took advantage of him constantly. She told herself not to do it, but he always let her little manipulations work. She controlled him, tested his commitment, tried things that she knew were only to see how far she could push him before he finally told her to get lost. But he never did.
She waited until the bus had reached its stop and the girls were walking home from Twenty-First South before she said, “Bev, I do need to change. I tried there for a while, but I’m not doing very well lately.”
“I’m sorry,” Beverly said. “I shouldn’t talk so mean myself.”
The girl could be so endearing, so simple. “Bev, you’re not the problem,” LaRue said. “I am. Like you said—what’s wrong with me is that I’m LaRue.”
“Everybody loves you, LaRue. You’re popular. Every boy wants to go with you.” She walked for a time before she added, “I’ll never have a boyfriend.”
It was such a strange response, and yet the leap of logic was easy enough to follow. “You’ll have boyfriends,” LaRue said. “And you’ll find a good husband and have a nice family. Everything will be just fine for you.” She didn’t say the last part, not out loud: “I’m the one who’s making a mess of things.”
When they turned the corner near their house, Beverly said, “Look who’s at our house.”
LaRue had just noticed the same thing. Grandpa and Grandma Thomas’s Hudson was parked in front of their house. Grandma and Grandpa had apparently gone inside. The Thomases never locked their doors. LaRue wanted to be happy about seeing her grandparents, but she had let her feelings dip too low for that.
When they reached the door, however, she heard her grandma, in that husky voice of hers, shout, “So there you are, finally. Where’s your mother?”
The girls stepped inside, and Grandma walked to them. She was wearing a flowered dress, all yellows and greens, and looking like spring, not like this miserably cold day. She threw her arms around Beverly and hugged her. And then she turned to LaRue and wrapped her in those long, wild arms that always seemed a little out of control.
“Mom had to stay late. She had some things she had to—”
“Oh, that woman. She’ll never learn. She never has known enough about having fun.” She stepped back and grabbed LaRue’s shoulders. “We need to talk,” she said. She spun around. “Grandpa, you talk to Beverly for a minute. LaRue needs me right now.” She took hold of LaRue’s hand and marched up the stairs, taking two steps at a time, pulling LaRue along.
And then, as she opened LaRue’s bedroom door, she said, “So tell me what’s wrong.”
“Wrong? Nothing, Grandma. It’s cold outside, and—”
“Don’t give me that load of manure. This is your grandma talking to you.”
LaRue smiled. She took her coat off and threw it on the bed, and then she sat down next to it. Grandma grabbed her desk chair and pulled it up close to the bed. “I’m okay,” LaRue said. “I’m just a little bit down today.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Listen, I have to wash my hair right now. I’ve got a date tonight.”
“With that basketball player?”
“It’s baseball season now.”
“He’s no genius, is he, LaRue? I tried to talk to him, and I thought his tongue was going to break off. Why do you keep going with him?”
“He’s cute, Grandma. You said that yourself.”
Grandma let her eyes widen. “He is that. But you’re not only beautiful, you’re brilliant. You can do a lot better.”
LaRue folded her arms and looked down at the floor. “He’s nice, Grand
ma. And I’m not. He could do a lot better.”
“Oh, hogwash. I won’t listen to any of that.” She got up and came to LaRue, sat down next to her and put her arm around her shoulder. “Why would you say such a thing?”
“I don’t know how to explain it to you. But it’s true.”
“All right. Now you listen to me.” Grandma walked back to the chair, pulled it closer to LaRue, and sat down directly in front of her. “LaRue, your father, my dear son, takes life much too seriously. He’s spent his whole life telling you kids all the things you ought to feel guilty about. You need to take that man with a grain of salt.” She leaned her head back and laughed in a loud burst.
LaRue smiled.
“I’ll tell you what you are. You’re wonderful. You’re feisty—and I like feisty. You’re quick. You’re clever. And I’ll tell you what else you are. You’re as sweet as clover honey. You don’t know that about yourself. You think you can’t be feisty and sweet at the same time, but you can. If I had had your looks, your brains, your goodness, I would have knocked the world on its ear, little girl. I did pretty well, and I was plain as an adobe shack.”
“You were gorgeous, Grandma. I’ve seen the pictures.”
“Well . . . I wasn’t too bad. But I wasn’t half as smart as you, and I never was nearly so nice. Since your father got called to be stake president he’s been way too pious. Sometimes I think I ought to poke that boy in the nose just to take him down a notch. He has no right to take the fire out of you. You’re going to do great things with your life—and then he’ll want to take all the credit for making you so wonderful.”
LaRue was amazed by all of this. She never knew what to expect from Grandma. “Dad’s not really so bad, Grandma,” LaRue said. “He wants to be a good father and a good stake president, and he worries—”
“Way too much. I know all that. But I remember the kid he was. He was a lot more rebellious than you can ever imagine. I watch how hard he tries to do the right things, and he breaks my heart. It’s like he knows who he would really be if he ever let go for a few minutes. And maybe that’s all right for him. But he can’t break your spirit, LaRue. You just be who you are, and you’ll be fine.”
“I use people, Grandma. I take advantage of them.”
Grandma nodded. “I know,” she said. “But you know that you do it. Your problem is, people fall at your feet, and it’s hard not to take advantage of that. But you’re only fifteen. Your impulses are right. You’ll grow into yourself.”
It was a wonderful thought. LaRue slid off the bed and dropped her head into her grandma’s lap. “I love you,” she whispered.
“See, that shows how sweet you are. And smart, besides.”
LaRue laughed, but she still wondered about herself. She knew she didn’t like what she was now, but she didn’t know who she wanted to be, either. In some ways Grace appealed to her, but so did Mom, and the two were nothing alike. And strangely, she felt that Grandma was being a little too hard on Dad. Maybe he understood her better than anyone did—saw the same faults that she saw and only wanted her to be what she should be, could be.
But at least Grandma thought LaRue was all right, and that seemed important right now. It was nice to think that someone could know her so well, understand her, and also really like her.
Chapter 16
It was April 1, 1945. Bobbi had been awakened in the night by the sound of artillery, airplanes, bombs. The Americans were softening up another island for a beach landing. This one was called Okinawa, one of the Ryukyu islands. The war was moving ever closer to Japan, and everyone said this island would be an important air base in the final onslaught. All Bobbi knew was that her ship was likely to fill up with wounded and burned men before the day was over.
She stayed in her bunk, but she lay awake and listened to the tumult. Gradually the room began to lighten until, through her porthole, she could see the orange glow of morning. And then she remembered that it was Easter. The thought took her breath away.
For each individual Marine or soldier arriving on the beach, this day represented a solemn gamble. But for Bobbi, for everyone on her ship, the focus was not on which boys would be hit; what they knew was that many would die or be wounded. It was, of course, much worse to be out there, offering one’s life on that island, but it didn’t change the reality that the war was coming to the Charity. Bobbi remembered the exhaustion and the wracking empathy she had felt last time, and she hated to go through all that again, but what she knew now was that it didn’t end in a day or two. The pain continued, the nursing, but more than that, the visions of it all—the blood, the smells, the screams of pain—would be stamped inside her forever.
But Easter? She never liked to think of Christ on the cross. For her there was something disturbing about a crucifix. It seemed a kind of sensationalism, throwing the ugliness of Christ’s death into her eyes. What she liked to think of was Christ’s tender moments with Mary Magdalene. She liked to remember his gentle voice, his telling her, and later the apostles, that he had risen. She wanted, this day, to see past the blood and hold onto the promise that Christ offered.
She got up and looked out her porthole, across the water, but the island was on the opposite side of the ship. At times the light intensified, and she realized that the flash of artillery was meeting the light of the sun, mixing with it. She thought of a poem she had read in college, one by John Donne: “Good Friday, 1613. Riding Westward.” The narrator of the poem laments that he is moving away from Christ, not toward him. He wants the Lord to call him back. “O, think me worth Thine anger, punish me,” he says. “Burn off my rusts and my deformity.” Long ago, before she knew anything at all, it now seemed, she had cried at those words. She had felt her own lack of spirituality and longed to have the Lord touch her, maybe shake her by the shoulder when she needed it. But today, the idea took on a new perspective. She was so far from home and the things she found comfort in, and she was about to do something sacred: offer her healing touch. She wanted to bring her spirit to this act, so that these boys, some taking their final breaths, would know that life wasn’t only ugliness and hatred. She wanted them to know that nobility also existed—goodness and kindness. She didn’t want to get caught up in all the bandaging and tugging bodies here and there and forget that it was Easter.
But the day didn’t turn out exactly the way Bobbi expected. The terrible rush of litters didn’t happen. It was almost noon before the first patients arrived, and these men spoke of light resistance at the beaches. Bobbi hoped it meant that the island would fall easily and quickly, but an officer, a young lieutenant, who had broken his ankle and was furious that he had had to leave the battle because of an awkward misstep, told her, “The Japs decided not to take us on at the shore, but they’re dug in deep. They’ve got caves and tunnels up in those hills, and they’re going to make us pay for every inch of territory we take on this island. It’s going to get worse each day, not better.”
And that turned out to be exactly right. By midweek, the steady arrival of LCMs full of broken boys was less rushed and chaotic than at Iwo Jima, but the reality was clear: the shooting was going to continue for a long time. Many of the men were being burned in explosions. The Japanese were using lots of artillery, including several big 150-millimeter guns. They were also launching a steady barrage of 81-millimeter and even gigantic 320-millimeter mortars. One young Marine told Bobbi that the soldiers called these big mortars “flying ash cans,” and he told her about the tremendous flash they made when they went off. “I couldn’t see a thing,” he told her. “The corpsman got to me, and he covered my eyes. I don’t know if I’m blind or not.”
It was hard to think of Christ by then, even though Bobbi kept trying. She knew the Lord would restore the boy’s vision, that in the next life this young face would be made whole, and the boy would be as handsome as he ever had been. But right now his skin was gone, his nose and ears. What mercy he would receive would come later, but for a long time now, he was going to suff
er. She told herself that life was a learning experience, and that suffering was actually a kind of sacrament, a holy experience to lift a person to a higher plane, but when she looked at the boy, she could only wonder what he would think when he finally saw himself.
“What’s your name?” she had asked him.
“Verl Carpenter.”
“Where are you from?”
“Afton, Wyoming. Or close to there.”
“That’s Star Valley, isn’t it?”
“Yeah, sure. Do you know that area?”
“I’m from Salt Lake. We used to make the drive up through Star Valley on our way to Yellowstone. I love that country.”
“It’s the best in the world,” he said. His speech was slurred, and Bobbi knew he was speaking through the haze of the morphine in his body. Still, she heard a sound of longing that touched her.
“Say, are you LDS?” he asked.
“You bet. My dad’s the stake president out in Sugar House.”
“No kidding? I knew you were real nice, right from the beginning.”
“I won’t be so nice if you don’t do exactly what I tell you. And right now, the best thing you can do is give in to that morphine and sleep for a while.”
“Aye, aye, sir.” He raised his bandaged hand in a clumsy attempt at a salute, and then he laughed a little. Bobbi knew that the morphine was making all that possible, but he had some miserable days ahead.
The Charity stayed off Okinawa most of the week, moving in close by day and retreating out to sea at night, but on Thursday the crew finally pulled up anchor and shipped out for Guam. The scuttlebutt was that these patients would be passed along to the hospital there, and that the ship would then return to Okinawa. The soldiers all said this island would take months, not days, to conquer, so Bobbi knew she might make the round trip more than once.
On the first night underway, she finally got something like a full night’s sleep, even though she had to be out of bed early. With so many burn patients, the process of redressing the burns, debriding, and keeping the pain under control represented an overwhelming amount of work. Burn patients were usually at their worst a few days after the initial injury, and they had to be watched constantly for shock. Many of the men had their hands burned, or their eyes, and so those who did feel well enough to eat often couldn’t feed themselves. The feeding kept the corpsmen busy, and Bobbi might have left that to them, but she tried to take part in every aspect of the work—and work harder than anyone. It was her idea of leadership to let the other nurses and the corpsmen know that she wasn’t asking anything of them that she wouldn’t do. She remembered Lieutenant Karras, who had remained so distant from the actual functions of nursing, and she didn’t want to be that kind of administrator. But more than that, she wanted to keep the part of nursing she liked best: making life a little easier for the suffering men.