by Dean Hughes
“It sounds so good to hear your voice, Wally. I always told myself that you were alive, but sometimes I wondered if it was really true.” She was still crying, even harder now. “I’m just so thankful.”
And then Wally heard his father. “Wally. Hello.”
“Hi, Dad. Sorry to get you out of bed. My turn on the phone didn’t come until now.” He couldn’t think of any of
the things he had planned to say.
“It doesn’t matter. It’s just so good to hear you. Are you really all right?”
“I am. I got awful sick over there a few times. But I didn’t give up.” He wanted his dad to hear that, to know that.
“We haven’t heard anything, Wally. We don’t even know where you were.”
“This last year I worked in the coal mines in Japan. I’ll tell you all about it when I get home.” But Wally knew he wouldn’t do that. He was never going to tell his family all about it. He pressed his eyes shut. He hadn’t realized how difficult this was going to be. No one except the other POWs would ever understand what he had been through.
“Listen, Beverly just came running in here. She wants to talk to you.”
“Okay, Dad. We’ll talk when I get home. There’s just a lot I need to say to you.”
“Sure, sure. I understand.”
“Well . . . maybe not. But I can’t be on the phone very long tonight.”
“Of course. When you get here, we’ll sit down and have a long talk about everything. Let me put your sister on for
a minute.”
“Wally, Wally. Hello,” Beverly was suddenly squealing.
“Hi, Sis. How are you?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine. Are you okay?”
Wally laughed. “Yeah. I’m great. All I do is eat and take it easy. I’ve got it made.”
“I want to see you. When will you get here?”
In Wally’s mind, Bev was a little girl in pigtails. He couldn’t make a picture now of this teenager shouting into the phone. “It might be a couple of weeks. I’m not exactly sure.”
“Do you want me to wake up LaRue and—”
“No, you’d better not. I don’t have much time.”
“Okay. But Wally, I wanted to tell you, I prayed for you every single day while you were gone—twice every day, at least.”
“I knew you were doing that, Bev. I knew the whole family was. And it helped me, even just knowing it.”
“But I was scared.”
“I know. I was scared too.”
“Come home soon, okay?”
“As soon as I can.”
“Dad wants to talk to you again.”
“Wally,” Dad said, “I was just talking to your mom. We’re thinking about driving to San Francisco. We could leave in the morning and—”
“They say they might transfer me to another hospital. I might be gone from San Francisco by the time you get here.”
“And you don’t know where they’ll send you?”
“No. Everything is just rumors so far. As soon as I know something for sure, I’ll let you know. But I think I’ll be released quite soon. And, actually, I sort of want to come home to you. That’s what I’ve always imagined.”
“I understand what you’re saying. We’re just anxious to see you.”
“I know, Dad. Let me find out where I’m going—or if I’m staying here—and then I’ll call again and let you know.”
“All right.”
“And write me. I need to find out about everyone. Is Bobbi married? Or Alex? Are they in Salt Lake, or—”
“Bobbi’s not married, but she’s . . . well, it’s kind of a long story. She’s in the navy. She’s a nurse, on a hospital ship. There’s a fellow here who wants to marry her, and . . . but we can talk about that later, too. We just keep hoping she’ll get her release before long. Alex is still in Germany. But he’s married. His wife is in England.”
“England? Did he marry a Brit?”
“No. He married Anna Stoltz—the German girl he met on his mission. They have a baby boy. They named him Gene.”
All that was a little too sudden, too much to digest. Wally felt the rightness of the name, but hearing it, he felt the loss all over again—almost as powerfully as when he had first received his father’s telegram. He was almost home, but Gene wasn’t going to be there. “Well, that’s good,” was all he could think to say, and now he was straining not to cry again.
The door to the office opened, and the corporal said, “I’m sorry, but your time is almost up. You have thirty seconds.”
Wally struggled to find his voice. “Dad, I’ve got to go. I’ll talk to you about all this as soon as I can. But I’m so sorry about Gene. I’ve had a hard time with that.”
“I know. We all have. But we’ve had time to get used to the idea, and you haven’t.”
“I’ve seen so much death, Dad. I lost so many friends.”
“I hate to think of all you’ve been through, Wally. But I hope you know how proud I am of you. We all are.”
“Thanks, Dad.” Wally couldn’t stop himself. He moved the phone away a little, tried not to let his dad hear how hard he was crying.
“Wally, I’ve got a job for you at our plant. So don’t worry about that. You’ll have work, and we’ll help you get back into the swing of things.”
“All right.”
“We love you, Son.”
“I love you, Dad. I love all of you. Tell Mom.”
But Bea had taken the phone back, and she was the one who responded. “Oh, Wally, we love you too. I hope they’ll let you come home right away.”
“I think they will, Mom. I’m in pretty good health—better than a lot of the guys.”
“Your time is up,” the corporal was saying, but Wally clung to the phone. The sound of his mother sobbing softly, the connection to his home, the picture that was in his mind—his house, the phone on the dining-room wall, his mom and dad and sister standing together—it was all something he didn’t want to let go. He was really close now. He was going to be there before much longer. What he had dreamed about all these years was within reach, and his dad was actually proud of him—he had said so.
***
A week later Wally still didn’t know what was going to happen to him. Most of the POWs from their ship had been sent by train to Madigan General Hospital at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Washington, but Wally and Chuck kept insisting that they were healthy and doing fine. They just wanted to go home. Wally had met with a psychologist twice, and nurses had poked him a dozen times for blood tests or to give him vaccines. Doctors also questioned him extensively about his medical history, the various diseases he had suffered, and they x-rayed him and checked him over until he felt like some sort of medical experiment. Life was not so bad, with plenty to eat, but he spent every day in his pajamas and robe, wasn’t allowed to leave the hospital, and had little to do most of the time. And all that was beginning to make him nervous.
One evening, after dinner, Wally and Chuck stayed in the hospital cafeteria and lingered over a pie-and-ice-cream dessert. Wally had dreamed about pies and cakes and cookies so many times during his years in the camps. It was hard, still, not to eat everything he could stuff into himself. He had gained back a lot of weight, but he had been little more than skin and bones by the end of the war, so he still looked slim. What he knew, however, was that he had to start backing off the food. He couldn’t afford to keep gaining so fast, at least not for much longer.
Wally had called home a couple more times in the past week, and he had remembered to ask more of the questions he’d had on his mind. One thing he had learned was that Lorraine Gardner was not married. He had experienced a moment of joy when he’d heard that, but his mother had finished by saying, “But, Wally, she is engaged. I’m not exactly sure when she plans to get married. I suspect, now that the war is over, that it won’t be long.”
Wally had asked whether her fiancé was someone in Salt Lake and had learned that Lorraine had met a man in Seattle,
where she had been working for Boeing, and that Lorraine was still living there. Wally wished, in a way, that she had been married for years, had a couple of children—that sort of thing. It hurt all the more to think that she was “almost” available. After hearing the news, he had lain awake in his hospital bed that night, and he had run through his favorite memories—especially the night at Lagoon, when they had danced in the parking lot. He even let the old tune run through his head: “I get along without you very well. Of course I do.”
But then he had stopped himself. He would start over, meet someone new, and that was something to be excited about. He was happy for Lorraine, and he would always remember her friendship at such an important time in his life. The sun was going down behind a hill, a row of buildings creating an uneven silhouette. Wally could also see his face reflecting back from the window. He knew he needed some dental work, but otherwise he hoped he didn’t look too changed, too worn. For a long time such things hadn’t seemed to matter much, as long as he survived, but now he wondered about going back into the world he had left behind. What would the girls back home think of him?
“What are you going to do when you get home?” Chuck asked. “Have you figured that out yet?”
“Dad wants me to work with him. He’s making washing-machine parts now. He said he needs someone to run the place, sooner or later, so maybe I’ll have the chance to do that. Of course, I don’t know what Alex will want to do. He was in charge of the company at one time.”
“Sounds like you’ve got it made, Wally.”
“Well, I don’t know. Some things are still up in the air, but at least there’s something I can do. It just scares me a little.” He laughed. “Right now my only skill is shoveling coal.”
Every time Wally thought about all this, he felt sick to his stomach. He had gained a lot of confidence among the prisoners, had learned how to survive—but now he was facing a world he could hardly remember.
“My dad told me I ought to go to college now,” Chuck said. “He said there’s some kind of government money that vets can get to use for their education.”
“Yeah, my dad told me about that. They call it the GI Bill. That sounds like something we ought to take advantage of.”
“Sure. No question.”
But Wally heard the hesitancy in Chuck’s voice, and he knew that he wasn’t admitting to all he was feeling any more than Wally was. They had both told the psychologist that they were fine and didn’t need time to adjust, but that was only to get themselves out of the hospital. The fact was, Wally’s legs ached constantly, severely, and twice now he had awakened in the night to a dreadful dream in which he was being taken prisoner all over again, knocked down and beaten by Japanese soldiers. He told himself it was only natural to experience some bad memories for a while, but he was sure he could deal with all that and get it behind him.
“I never was a great student in high school, Wally. I hadn’t planned to go to college. I’m not sure how I’d do.”
“You’re disciplined now. You’ll do great.”
“I’ve forgotten everything. I don’t know any math or history . . . or any of that stuff.”
“You can get it back. We both can. We can do anything. We proved that already.”
Chuck looked away, not saying the obvious: that the new challenges were not so focused—maybe, in their own way, even harder. Chuck had lost a lot of his teeth, and the ones that were left were badly decayed. At one time he had lost most of his hair, too, but now that he had been eating better, most
of it had come back in. The only problem was, he still didn’t look healthy. His skin was pale, and he hadn’t gained his weight back as well as Wally had.
Wally finished the last of his pie, and then he pushed the plate away, leaned back, and looked across the cafeteria. The tables were mostly empty now. A thin little man with gray hair was scrubbing the floor, a metal edge on his mop scraping the tile in a steady rhythm. Wally could smell the soap—like the Dreft dish soap his mother had always used. He loved the cleanliness of the hospital, the neatness, the quiet, kindly way that people talked to each other.
“I think the Japs robbed me of something, Wally,” Chuck said. “I don’t feel sure of myself the way I always did when I was a kid.”
“I know what you mean. It’s like we lived in a cave for three and a half years and someone just let us out. It’s going to take us a little while to get used to everything again. We’ll be okay once we do.”
“Some of the guys are really broken down, Wally. They seem almost crazy now that we’re back with normal people. Some of them won’t ever get their health back. You can see they’re too far gone.”
Wally knew that was true. Some had been kept in hospitals in the Philippines, and they were not in good shape; others had come this far and still looked hollow and pale, weren’t gaining any weight. “Chuck, we’re some of the lucky ones. We’re in pretty decent condition.”
“I know.”
But Wally was worried about Chuck. He had been such a strength to his friends all through the hard days at Cabanatuan and, later, in Japan, but he didn’t sound like himself now. “Let’s stick together, back in Salt Lake,” Wally said. “A lot of people won’t understand what we’ve been through, but we can help each other get going again.”
“I’m glad you said that, Wally. That’s what I want. It sounds stupid to say, but I’ve depended on our group so long, it scares me to have it all broken up.”
“Well, you and I won’t have to split apart. We’ll still be together. We’ll help each other.”
“Okay. That’s a deal.” Still, Wally could see the nervousness in Chuck’s eyes, and he felt it in himself. He wanted to get out of this hospital and get on with life—not just worry about everything.
***
Bea was sitting in the living room, reading, when President Thomas came out of his office at the back of the dining room. “Are you ready to go to bed?” he called to her.
“Not yet. You go ahead.” But then she added, “Get ready, and I’ll come up in a minute to have prayers with you.”
President Thomas almost always went to bed earlier than Bea, but they rarely missed having their prayers together. For so long, prayer had seemed the only hope against all the dangers that were stalking the family. Now, Bea prayed a hundred times a day, just quickly, silently, saying, “Thanks, Lord. Thanks so much.” It was her response every time she thought of the war being over and of her remaining children all alive. Wally really would be home soon. Bea had heard his voice, and now she knew his return was real. Bobbi should be released from the navy before too many more months passed. And Alex might not get home until next year, but at least he was not being shot at any longer. President Thomas had written to the Stoltzes, in London. He wanted to sponsor them, help them immigrate to Salt Lake. They were hesitating because they still hadn’t located their son, Peter. But Bea now had hopes that her little grandson, Gene, would be near her at some point, and that Alex would come back too.
Bea finished the page she was reading before she put her book down on the end table, next to the couch. She was halfway up the stairway when the front door opened and LaRue stepped in.
“Did Wally call tonight?” she asked. LaRue had not talked to Wally yet, and she had been disappointed about that.
“No. But he would have missed you, even if he had. I thought you were coming home earlier.”
“I meant to. But . . . well . . . anyway, I’m glad he didn’t call. I’ll stay home tomorrow night.”
LaRue looked pretty with her dark hair set off against a deep red sweater, but Bea could hear something in her voice,
a certain flatness that wasn’t typical of her. Still, Bea knew better than to ask. LaRue would open up and admit what she was thinking at times—when the mood struck her—but if Bea probed at all, she always retreated. So Bea said goodnight and then continued on up the stairs. When she reached the bedroom, President Thomas was already in his pajamas. He stepped to the bed and glan
ced at Bea, and without saying a word they knelt next to one another. He took hold of her hand, and tonight he prayed. He usually called on Bea on alternating nights, but sometimes he seemed to want an extra turn.
“Our Father in Heaven, we are so very thankful,” he
began. “So many blessings have come to us. Our son Walter has returned to his homeland from his imprisonment, and he seems to have become a better, stronger man. It is what we have believed could happen, what we prayed for, and what only thy Spirit could grant him. We sense in him that he has passed through a refiner’s fire and has been made into steel.”
President Thomas had said something of this sort in all his prayers since Wally had first called, but Bea understood her husband well enough to know that these thoughts were on his mind tonight, probably after reading his scriptures, and he wanted to make sure he had expressed his thankfulness as fully as he felt it. Bea was touched, even though Al’s prayers made her laugh sometimes. They were a little too lofty for her taste, as though he were praying at stake conference.
After the prayer they continued to kneel, and each said a silent, personal prayer. Bea poured out her own thankfulness once again, and she enjoyed thinking of all the good things she could thank the Lord for. She was only a little annoyed when Al prayed twice as long as she did. There were nights when he prayed until her own knees ached and she was tempted to sneak away quietly, but she knew he had many matters of the stake to concern himself with—matters he kept to himself—and this was his chance to talk to “someone” about those things.
When he finally got up, he pulled back the chenille bedspread and sat down to take off his slippers. “Are you coming to bed?” he asked.
“I will in a minute. I think I’ll go down and read just a little longer. I’ve hardly made any headway on this book. I’ve been letting my mind wander all evening.”
“Bea, I’m excited about the way things are falling together for our family.”