River's Edge (26 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: River's Edge
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“Nobody thinks you're a deserter. But I don't think Papa is, either. You're doing what you think you need to do, and so is Papa. We are going to be fine. Really. I'll watch out for everyone. I'm tougher than you think I am—look how far I can hit a baseball now,” I said, trying to make a joke of it, but Junior wasn't in the mood for joking. He just shook his head and kept watching the world outside the window.
“Junior, don't be mad at Papa,” I begged. I took my right hand off the steering wheel and reached out to hold his. “You've got to realize he did that out of love. Maybe it was unfair, but he was trying to protect you. In his heart, he knew that the war wouldn't be over by June, but he picked June because he figured that was as long as he could get you to hold off. Maybe he was hoping for a miracle. Maybe he thought that every day he could keep you home was one more day he could keep you from danger.”
“Well, that's ridiculous!” he cried. “What is going to happen is going to happen! There is nothing he can do to prevent it. It's a war, Elise, and somebody's son is going to die! If I'm one of them, then there is nothing Papa can do about it.”
His words made my blood run cold, and I could feel the color drain from my face.
He's not having a premonition,
I silently reassured myself.
He's just frustrated and upset. He's not thinking about how his words sound.
I swallowed hard and willed myself not to give into fear.
“I know that, Junior,” I said softly. “Papa does, too, but when you're talking about someone you love ... Well, I don't think logic enters into it. You'll do anything to protect them. Anything to ...” My voice dropped, and Junior turned to look at me as I concentrated on trying to steer the car, blinking back the film of tears that made the road markings blur.
“Elise, pull over. On the shoulder, there by that big elm.” He pointed to a wide turnout on the side of the road. I veered from the road, let my foot off the gas, and shifted into park.
We were still miles from the nearest town or farm, and with the engine shut off there wasn't a sound in the whole world except for birdsong from somewhere in the branches of the elm tree. What were they? Robins? Starlings? I don't remember, but I do remember Junior sliding across the seat and reaching out to pull me toward him. I remember how his arms felt holding me, how easy and right it felt to tilt my chin up to him, and how soft, how very soft his lips were when they met mine. We kissed and clung and there was no time anymore, no bus to catch or war to win. That was our time. It would always be there. No matter what happened tomorrow or in the days after that, I knew we would always be able to go back to that moment, and it would be more real to both of us than all the moments before and after. It was a gift.
Kiss by kiss, the fear that had frozen me for days and weeks and years, before Father had turned his back to me on the dock in Hamburg, since Papa had announced his intention to enlist as a chaplain, since I had turned the key in the ignition to take Junior to the bus depot, began to thaw in the heat that was love and gave me the courage to let love go, knowing it exists eternally in a place unbound by the physical world.
I pulled my head back, releasing Junior's lips from mine. My breath was coming in short gasps, and Junior's chest was rising and falling fast, as if he'd run for miles and miles. His eyes searched mine, asking silent permissions, permissions I wanted to grant with all my heart. At that moment, I knew I could have asked him anything in the world and he would have said yes. I knew that if we held on to each other one moment more we would never be able to let go, never be able to stop ourselves, and that the bus would pull away empty, and we would be left with no options but to flee in the other direction. With one more kiss, I could have kept him by my side, but I didn't need to. No matter what might happen in the future, he would never be more mine than he was at that moment. I wanted him close, but knowing who he was, I could not say yes to his unspoken desires or my own. To do so would have been to reshape him into someone neither of us recognized.
He leaned toward me, lowering his head to mine. I stretched out my finger and touched the perfect, full curve of his lips. “You have to go,” I reminded him, and I knew they were the most loving words I could have spoken.
Junior closed his eyes, nodded, and drew back from me a rational inch, with his mouth opened ever so slightly as he forced his breathing to steady. Resting sideways against the upholstered back of the seat, he slowly traced the curve of my cheekbone with his index finger.
“We still have a few minutes,” he said as he reached into his shirt pocket. “I want you to know that I am planning on coming back. I'm not having any premonitions or nightmares or even vague ideas about heroic sacrifice. But I won't make any promises I can't keep. I don't know what will happen, but I want you to understand that I am planning on coming home. That's why I wanted to get you this.”
He opened his hand, and lying in his palm I saw a tiny circlet of gold mounted with a crimson-colored stone. “It's a garnet—your birthstone. I bought it months ago,” he said. He didn't move to put it on my finger but let it lie still in his open hand, as if to say the gift was mine to take, but he would not require me to accept it. Without hesitation, I picked up the ring and slipped it on my finger.
“It's lovely,” I breathed as I turned my hand to see how the stone glinted with the sun. “Thank you.”
He smiled. “It looks nice on your finger. It's a promise ring. I thought about getting an engagement ring, a diamond, but I didn't think it would be fair. We can't know how long the war will last or if I'll—”
“Shh,” I hushed him, reaching my hand up to cover his lips. “We don't have to talk about that now.”
He pulled my hand gently away from his face. His lips flattened into a stalwart line. “Yes, we do,” he said firmly and took my left hand and held it between his as gently and carefully as if he were holding some delicate blossom in his hands.
“This ring is my promise to you,” he vowed. His eyes focused on mine and held them fast. “This is a pledge I'm making to you with all my heart. But I want you to know that I'm not holding you to anything. I'm not asking you for anything. I just want you to wear this so that no matter what happens, you'll remember my promise—as far as it is possible with me, I intend to come home to you and spend the rest of my days with you. So even if something should prevent that from happening, you'll know that I love you. Even if someday you decide that your feelings for me have changed and you don't want me anymore—”
“That would never happen.”
“Even if it did,” he insisted. “No matter what comes next, no matter who I meet, or what I do, or where I go, or who my enemy is in battle, I love you. Nothing will ever change that. I will love you always.”
“Always,” I echoed.
There was so much more to say, but no time left in which to say it. We shared one more kiss, a hurried, urgent one, before driving the last miles to the depot, arriving just as the driver was helping the last of the passengers aboard and getting ready to close the doors. There was no more time for good-byes or kisses or promises or scenes. Junior grabbed his suitcase from the back seat and disappeared inside the bus. I got out of the car and stood in the road, watching as the gray monster swallowed him up, shuddered, and roared to a start, then pulled slowly away, kicking up a little dust as it heaved its way onto the road.
I waved broadly, not knowing exactly where Junior was seated inside the coach. As I waved, he opened a window near the back and leaned out, pointing to his hand and shouting a word I couldn't hear above the noise of the bus engine but whose meaning was all too clear to me as I saw his lips move.
Always.
Chapter 17
I
t sounds odd, but during those first months of the war there was a certain kind of excitement in the air. It reminded me of that kind of purposeful tension that happens when a big snowstorm is brewing and everybody pulls together to beat it, everyone knowing their task, giving encouragement and confirmation to each other as they scurry about making sure there is enough wood in the shed and food in the cupboard, that the window sashes are tight and the animals are in the barn. It feels like a grand adventure; arguments, rivalries, and slights are forgotten when the clouds of tempest begin to form on the horizon. Everyone is on the same side. With the preparation completed and the first flakes beginning to fall, the family gathers in the warmest room in the house. Jockeying for spots close to the fire but with a clear view of the window, they marvel as the winds howl and flurries turn to a blizzard. They sip hot drinks, feeling awed and proud to know that they are seeing the worst that nature can send and yet they are safe inside the tight cocoon of warmth and provision they wove with their own effort and good sense.
That was the mood in Brightfield during 1942, an excited sense of preparation to survive a gathering storm that was serious but would pass before too long. Of course, we reasoned, there would be losses but not among our personal circle. So we cheerfully planted victory gardens, collected rubber, bought bonds, and presented our ration books without complaint, proud and eager to do our part. After months of worrying about getting into the war, it was almost a relief to actually be in it. In many ways life wasn't all that different than it had been before, at least not for me—not for a little while.
It seemed I'd lived half my life in the shadow of war, near it but not in it. Father had gone to a place called war, and I had missed him, but he wrote and life went on as it always had. As a little girl, I knew the stories of all the great German battles and warriors, and that was what they were—stories told at bedtime just before I drifted off to the world of dreams where all the soldiers rode white horses and uniforms dripping with gold braid, where the enemy was ugly and formless and scattered unwounded at the first artillery thunder. That was war to me, a bedtime fairy tale, something not quite real. I did not associate it with bullets and blood, cannon fire and corpses. When Papa and Junior left, I tried to mentally remove them to the fantasy world that was “war” in my mind, but I couldn't manage it for long. I wasn't a child anymore but a young woman of seventeen. I couldn't keep dreaming forever.
It was a Sunday when I finally understood the truth. I wasn't the only one.
That day the aged Reverend Holbrook, who filled in for Papa on Sundays, was preaching one of his wandering, somewhat vague messages just as he did every week. Reverend Holbrook only seemed to have seven or eight sermons in his repertoire, which he rotated every couple of months. His subject that Sunday was purity, which he somehow tried to link to fasting. I'd heard it at least twice before and still didn't understand it. I shifted in my seat, crossing and uncrossing my legs and turning my head to look at the rest of the congregation. Mama looked fixedly at the reverend, determined, I supposed, to give the old man her support. Cookie noticed my restlessness and gave me a curious look. “What's wrong?” she mouthed silently.
“Nothing,” I whispered, but it wasn't true. Something was different, and it bothered me, but I couldn't quite put a name to it. I did my best to sit still for the rest of the sermon.
When the sermon was finally finished it was a relief to get to my feet for the closing hymn, “Like a River Glorious.” It was my favorite, because it reminded me of the river and the peace and certainty that flooded my soul when I walked along its banks. However, that day the music did nothing to lift my spirits. Even as I sang the words “perfect yet it floweth fuller every day, perfect yet it groweth deeper all the way,” I was pricked by anxiety, although I couldn't pinpoint its source.
The sticky F sharp on the piano and the way that Mrs. Karlsberg pounded at the keys without ever feeling the necessity to use or even acknowledge the existence of foot pedals was irritating, but that wasn't any different than any other Sunday. I wasn't the only one plagued by this terrible disquiet. Normally the singing of the final hymn was robust and enthusiastic, and it had been even more so since the beginning of the war—as if the singers were determined to demonstrate their optimism and intimidate the enemy by a fierce display of assurance. But not today. Today the voices sounded thin and reedy even though the church was full, as full as I'd ever seen it. Attendance had picked up every week since the war began, so the lack of vocal strength couldn't be blamed on low numbers. Suddenly I understood.
There are no men here,
I thought,
only old men, young boys, and women. Hundreds of women.
It was true. The pews were packed nearly as tightly as if it had been an Easter or Christmas service instead of an ordinary Sunday in summer. Scores of mothers dressed in Sabbath hats and gloves held pew hymnals bravely in their hands and gathered their brood close to them for protection. They were the heads of the family now, a position they filled by default.
Until now the women's courage had not failed them, but for some reason on that day they suddenly saw what I saw and knew what I knew. They were all thinking the same thing:
we've all been left alone here and no matter how determined we are or how many bonds we buy, some of the men who used to sit in this pew, men who sat by their wives and held the hymnals and hushed the children and whose shoulders were strong and tall enough to support the weight of a wife's head, aren't coming back. Maybe mine. And there is nothing I can do about it.
That's when I knew for certain that it was a war, not a dream, and a war has casualties, on both sides. Papa. Junior. Father. Mama. Cookie. The boys. Myself.
Whoever won, I was going to lose.
The next day a package wrapped in brown paper and covered with foreign stamps arrived for me. The postmark showed it was from Switzerland. Everyone gathered around to watch me open the exotic-looking parcel.
“Switzerland?” Curt asked. “Who do you know in Switzerland, Elise?”
I shrugged. “No one.” Of course I thought of Father but could not imagine him being given leave to cross the neutral Swiss border in the midst of battle just to send me a package. I tore away the brown paper to reveal another layer of gaily colored blue birthday wrap tied with a white ribbon. Beneath that I found a large box of Swiss chocolates—a treasure unheard of since the war began!
I was astounded by the generosity of the giver, whoever it was. I looked and looked, but there was no card enclosed. “I can't think who would have sent them,” I said.
“Who cares who sent them? Jeepers!” Chip exclaimed. “There must be a pound of chocolate in there! Elise, can I have one?”
“Chip,” Mama admonished him, “those are for Elise.”
“Mama, it's all right. I couldn't possibly eat them all. Here,” I said, passing the box to Mama, “take some. Everyone, take as many as you want! There's plenty here for us all.” And that is what we did. The whole family sat down and gorged ourselves on the best, darkest, most delicious chocolate any of us had ever tasted. The six of us ate the entire box at one sitting and sat around the table afterwards groaning with pleasure. Mama mentioned something about it being late and we should start making dinner, but no one wanted to eat. We were all too full of chocolate.
I rose from the table and started to clean up, gathering up the pink frills of paper that had housed each individual sweet and tossing them into the trash basket. When I picked up the candy box, the pink cushion of tissue paper that the chocolates had rested on during their long journey fell out, and an envelope fell with it.
The room was suddenly quiet and all eyes were on me as I slit open the edge of the envelope to reveal a greeting card with a drawing of white daisies and pink roses on the front. Inside the card, an unfamiliar hand had written,
Dear Elise,
 
Your father and I send special greetings on your special day! Your father apologizes for not responding to your last letter personally, but wants you to know he is fine, his work goes well, and you would be very pleased with the progress he is making and that, even if he is unable to see you in the future, he thinks of you fondly and often.
 
Best wishes for a very Happy Birthday!
 
Your affectionate Cousin,
Rev. Dietrich Bonhoeffer
“I didn't know you had a cousin who was a pastor,” Curt commented with surprise, his face still smeared with chocolate.
“I don't,” I replied and scanned the note again, trying to make sense of it. “I don't have any cousins, except for my cousin Peter, and this isn't his handwriting.”
Cookie stood up and read the card over my shoulder, laying her hand on my arm and squeezing me encouragingly. “No, but you do have a father, and whoever sent you this candy was trying to let you know that he is alive and well.”
“You're right! Father is safe!” For a moment my heart flooded with a profound relief. I read the card a third time and noticed the date—May 31, 1942. On that day Father had been safe, but it was already late June. Who knew if he was still safe? The words on the card seemed suddenly ominous: “... even if he is unable to see you in the future, he thinks of you fondly and often.” What did it mean? Was he trying to say good-bye, knowing he would not survive the war? What was the work he spoke of, and was it dangerous? Being a soldier was always dangerous, I knew that, but Father had never felt compelled to express any doubts about his survival before. What could be so hazardous that he would take the risk of sending me such a message?
That night and for many nights after, I lay awake, trying to sort out the answers, but the note was a puzzle to me, and try as I might, I couldn't fit the pieces together. I didn't hear of Father again for a long, long time.
 
It was August. The thermometer read over ninety degrees, as it had every day that week, but however hot it was outside, inside the tobacco tents it was ten degrees hotter and twice as humid, like a man-made jungle, which is just what it was supposed to be. Mr. Jorgenson bragged that tobacco grown under his shade tents was as fine as any on earth.
 
“Sumatra, Cuba—my wrappers are every bit as good as theirs,” he'd say, his words clear as a bell despite the cigar wedged firmly between his teeth. “Probably better. If you build the tents right, tend the plants proper, the leaf don't know if it's in New England or New Guinea. We needed ourselves a tropical climate, so somebody thought about the problem and went and built himself one, but ours is better 'cause we can control the environment.” He nodded sagely, took a long pull on his cigar and exhaled a plume of self-satisfied smoke. “That's Yankee ingenuity for you.”
He was right. It was ingenious. If I hadn't been able to spot glimpses of linen roof and walls through the emerald forest of tobacco leaves, it would have been easy to believe I was lost in the jungles of Darkest Africa—a place I felt well-acquainted with due to Curt's fascination with Tarzan movies and his insistence that the entire family troop off to the matinee every time a new picture came to town. The only thing that was missing was the sound of hooting monkeys and cawing parrots, but if you had a good imagination, the cries of blackbirds roosting in the nearby maple trees sounded pretty close to the real thing.
I don't know if it was the jungle atmosphere or that mysterious chord that had sounded in me upon my first sight of a tobacco field dressed in miles of white linen, but in spite of the heat, I loved working inside the tents.
After Junior and the other young men left for the service, Mr. Jorgensen had no choice but to hire women to work on his tobacco farm, and I was one of his best hands. Many of the women Mr. J. hired were unable to stand working in the heat of the tents without fainting, but I moved through the verdant rows of tobacco leaf with a grace and speed that eluded me during the rest of the day, pausing only to take deep draughts of water from the jugs that were kept filled at the end of every third row. I knew instinctively how to handle the leaves, working quickly and fluidly to clear out the weeds without bruising the plants. Under the incubating humidity of the shade tents it was easy to forget the world outside with all its worries.
Even if it hadn't paid as well as it did, I would have liked the work. But it did pay well, and with the family having to live on Papa's reduced military salary, the job was a godsend. When my first payday came, Mama didn't want to accept the money I offered her.
“I can't take that,” she protested. “You worked hard for that money. You keep it.”
I was insistent and shoved the pay packet into her hands. “It's yours.” Mama started to speak, but I cut her off before she could say anything else. “How many years have I lived with you? You've fed me and clothed me and never been given a dime towards my upkeep. Father never sent you anything in all those years, did he?” I asked accusingly.

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