Love and Lament (42 page)

“I could come work for you,” he said.

CHAPTER 25

1918

June 11
American Rest Camp
Winnall Downs
Winchester, England

Dear Miss Mary Bet
,
This may be the last chance I have to write for some time, as we are heading to France tomorrow. The voyage over was nothing to speak of, meaning it was not quite a luxury cruise. I am sorry I have not written you these past weeks, but as you will see there has been little time for anything personal. Also, I didn’t want to presume that you were hanging on my every word. Believe me, though, when I tell you that you have been in my thoughts every day, for you are one of the best and truest friends I known
.

We boarded the S. S. Portadown in Long Island for the voyage across. It was an old British steamship for transporting beef
and served well enough for transporting 2,500 soldiers—all of our regiments and parts of others as well. We went in a convoy with thirteen other ships, including one battleship. For the entire twelve days there wasn’t much to see except fog and gray water, but we entertained ourselves as best we could. There were plenty of inspections and drills to keep us on our toes. When we got to the cold zone we stood watches looking for icebergs. We never saw any, but the life belts were good added protection against the cold
.

The men don’t much care for British food, and I don’t blame them. We ate mutton and more mutton, and some men in my battery said they wouldn’t care if they never saw or heard of another sheep for as long as they lived. It got so they were saying “baaaaa” every time we got mutton. And there were always potatoes boiled in their jackets and a strange tasting jelly called orange marmalade. I didn’t think it was too bad, but some people kicked about it and I’m ashamed to say that a few cans went overboard. A few fellows were lamenting so and saying that if they ever got back to good old U.S.A. rations again they’d never complain. As their mess sergeant I said that was music to my ears, and I expected nothing but praise once we were on our own mess-line again. We had a right good laugh over it, but I don’t expect promises to be kept
.

We were happy to be on dry land again at Liverpool, having survived the trip just fine, except for a few cases of mal de mer as everybody called it. Camp Sevier seems so long ago, though it was only nine months. And now we are a cohesive unit, full of esprit de corps, and whereas some of us were a little shy or lacking in confidence or difficult in some other way, we are now of one mind. It’s a strange thing how the outfit has taken on a life of its own—we all want to see action, because that is our purpose and what we have been working so hard for all this time
.

The British countryside, which we viewed from a train, is beautifully green, like a park strewn with little villages. But the people are all gloom and doom. They’re happy to see us, but they say we’ve come too late, that the war is over and we have lost. We don’t pay heed to such discouraged voices. Winchester is another lovely town, with an old cathedral that I think you would like. You see, I do have you in my thoughts, and I hope you sometimes are thinking of me. I don’t want you to worry, because I’m not worried and neither are the men. We are all very confident of success. I just wanted you to get an idea of what we were seeing and doing and to tell you that you are uppermost in my mind. I wish you were here to see the sights. Unfortunately we didn’t get to see as much of Winchester as we would’ve liked, because we spent half a day for a review by the Duke of Connaught, uncle of King George, and other nobles
.

Tomorrow we leave for Southampton, and so on to France
.

Miss Mary Bet, you have been so kind to me I hardly know how to tell you just how much I appreciate your friendship. I cannot understand why, but I do know that I long to tell you everything that either gives me pleasure or worry. I suppose it is because you are the most unselfish person in the world and understand human nature. Well, I will have to bid you good night before you become disgusted trying to read this long, uninteresting, scribbled letter. So hurry to dreamland, and dream that you have many friends, but none who care for you more than I—this will be a true dream. Love and best wishes
,

Sincerely
,

LST

Mary Bet folded up the onionskin pages and returned them to the envelope. She studied the stamps with their likenesses of British royalty. She’d never gotten a letter from overseas, and she wondered what Leon had been doing for the three weeks it took the letter to arrive. Probably he was in France somewhere, involved in
something so dangerous she wouldn’t want to even picture it. She tucked it into her scrapbook. Then, as she started downstairs, she took it out again. Why not show it to Flora? News from abroad was important to everybody these days.

Flora was sitting at her machine, her back straight as a board and her head bowed. The machine whirred and clicked, the bobbin and treadle in their own rhythms that sometimes intermeshed, like that great comet that had come dashing around the sun. Mary Bet said, “Here’s a letter from England.” Her friend glanced up briefly. “It’s from Leon Thomas, with news from the regiment. Shall I read it?” Flora nodded, and so Mary Bet plopped onto the settee and read almost all the way to the end.

“Is that all?” Flora asked. She never said much, but when she did speak, her words always meant more than what was in them.

Mary Bet laughed. “Well, almost. All right, he goes on to talk about how he appreciates my friendship and he always wants to tell me things and … well, that’s about it. And he signs it love and best wishes, and then sincerely. That’s kind of peculiar.”

The machine went on to the hem of the muslin sleeve, then stopped. Flora turned around, her mouth a chipmunk smile, scolding with a minute shake of the head. “Now, I have something to tell you,
Miss
Mary Bet. Just this morning one of the girls at the shop was talking about Leon Thomas.”

Other women talking about Leon meant that other women were thinking about him, and Mary Bet had to fight her natural curiosity. “What was she talking about him for?” she asked, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

“She was telling about when he stood up to that preacher that time.” She regarded Mary Bet with a penetrating, amused look. “You know, when the boys were up training in Durham.”

“I know the time,” Mary Bet said. “Just what was she saying?”

“She was wondering if he was being joshed by the boys over there, once the story went round. I expect they’ll keep him true to his word.”

Mary Bet shook her head and pictured the men poking fun at Leon, trying to tempt him into—she didn’t want to imagine what. “I don’t know he ought to’ve challenged a preacher that a-way,” she said. “What made him to do that, do you reckon?”

“You know him better than I do. Why do you think he did?”

She tried to picture him sitting in the pew, hot to the point of burning, until he felt he would burst if he had to listen to one more thing, a fire of righteousness and love for his fellows taking over and making him stand up. She smiled almost imperceptibly. “I don’t know,” she said. “Something got into him.”

She felt for him, putting himself on the line that way, and a sudden warmth spread over her as she sat there, and a fear she had never known. She had a strange feeling, of a soft warm wind and an empty field with deepening shadows along the edge. When Flora turned back to her work, she said a quick prayer for him, a soldier far away.

“Do you think we’d hear about it, if they—if any of them got hurt over there?”

“You’d know more about that than I do, working in the courthouse.”

“Nobody’s said anything about it. I reckon they’ll telegraph if anybody from around here got hurt. The telegraph office would get word out to Leon’s brothers, and send a notice over to the courthouse. Over to me, come to think of it.”

“Why do you want to dwell on such a thing, Mary Bet?” Flora was concentrating on her work now, guiding the underarm through the pecking needle.

“It eases my mind some. If I imagine the worst, then I don’t see how it could turn out that way. Things always turn out different to how you imagine.”

“What do you think of Leon?”

“I like him,” Mary Bet said. “I don’t know why he volunteered though. His father was shot in the War between the States. And here there’s a war in Europe, and our boys have to go over there and fight it for them. It doesn’t seem right somehow. But I reckon it’s the way of things.”

“Does he give you an address where you can write him back?”

“No, they’re on the move.” She thought about Leon, his broad smiling face and stocky body, tramping along in a mass of dark-clad soldiers in their brimmed doughboy helmets, and she wished now that she had never been coy with him. “Well, maybe they’re better off over there, with the flu as bad as it is.” She smiled vaguely.

Flora paused. “I heard the flu was worse over there.”

“I didn’t need to hear that,” Mary Bet said. “Anyway, I don’t reckon they’ll send them to the front, as green as they are.”

She had begun to realize that she did love Leon, though mostly what that word meant to her was that she thought of him in connection with family and home. She thought it likely that he had a more romantic nature than she—he had once praised her for her practicality, for how well she was able to put unpleasant and difficult things out of her mind. And though she had taken it as a compliment, she thought he had put his finger on a weakness of her character. But she also understood that since he was the more romantic, he could probably be relied upon to do as she wanted him to. She liked that about him, that he seemed gallant regarding her needs. Yet the real test lay in how he and they endured, and she thought of her parents and how her mother had said that marriage was like a coat that didn’t fit quite right. Oh, what was the point of wondering about married life with Leon? He had not properly proposed, and—she could hardly stand the thought—he was fighting in a war.

Surely they would not put untested men right up at the front. She was the sheriff of Haw County, but what could she do? Her
jurisdiction ended at the county line. But she had been turning an idea around in her mind. The note falling from the scrapbook had told her it was time to go, and now that she was in a position to get some answers she didn’t think it would be an abuse of her power to work in a visit to a fellow sheriff, as long as she was out in Morganton visiting her father anyway. A barrier had to be breached if she was ever to get on with her life.

SHE THOUGHT OF
taking the boy out with her and Deputy Everett to apprehend a bootlegger, then decided not to show him any more immoral behavior than he was already familiar with. She went on the raid, because there was no one else available, the able-bodied being off at war, and when they got out to the still and found the place abandoned and started chopping it up, one of the Sugg brothers came out from a little pup tent with a sawed-off shotgun and demanded they leave. Mary Bet told him that she was the sheriff. She showed him the badge on her jacket and he laughed, and she said, “I’m the governor’s constable here in Haw County and I’m going to haul you in, so I suggest you put that thing down and start moving.”

Sugg had a grizzled beard that looked as though he’d hacked it off with a knife, tried to shave it, and given up. His sloe eyes drooped in a sad way, and his overalls were caked with hops on the bib and dirt on the knees. He looked more dangerous than anybody she knew, the way he just stared, as though he were looking at a tree, or some animal he was studying how to get the better of; a scar along the side of his mouth creased his face and added ten years to his age, which she put at around forty.