The Woodcarver's Secret (Samantha Sweet Mysteries) (28 page)

* * *

Patricio woke to the sounds of efficiency. Nurses bustled through the
ward, delivering breakfast to those who could eat, bowls of some sort of
porridge. Some of the men sat upright, feeding themselves; others relied upon
an attendant to spoon the food for them. Plenty were still incoherent in their
misery and he saw that the nurses were doing their best to attend to everyone.

The wooden box still rested on his belly. He must have slept very
quietly after his wakeful period in the night. Staring at the box he wondered
what had happened—it looked perfectly ordinary now, no special colors, no
glowing stones. The dust was gone. He remembered that he had cried, had wiped
off the dirt. He lifted the lid. Only crumbs remained of the cookies Roberto’s
mother had sent.

Roberto’s parents. Had they received word yet? He supposed so, with the
miracle of the telegraph. Still, he should write to them, find some words of
comfort if he could.

“Good morning, Patrick,” the cheery nurse from yesterday said. “You
look much better this morning.”

She set a bowl of the porridge on the small table beside his bed and
suddenly he felt hungry.

“Can I take that for you? Put it out of the way?” She reached for the box.

“Don’t take it away. I want it close.”

“It will just be right here,” she said, showing him that she would
place it on the shelf of his table.

Patricio watched the box, still dark in color; it showed no reaction to
the woman’s touch. “I had a strange dream last night. That box—” He couldn’t
put it into words; the experience had been too peculiar.

She waited with a little smile. “It’s fairly common. The drugs we give
you to sleep. Some men have very outlandish experiences—all in their sleep.”

That must be it, the reason for his perception of the glow and the
colors. Easily explainable. He picked up the spoon beside the porridge bowl. He
had nearly finished his breakfast when the doctor approached his bedside. The
man studied Patricio’s face more intently than before.

“Your injuries are healing quite nicely,” he commented, gently removing
the forehead bandage. “Very good.”

“The one on my arm itches, much more than yesterday.”

“Don’t scratch it. That was a fairly deep gash and we don’t want to see
it reopen.” He signaled for the nurse to return. “Check and redress this wound.
Let me know if there is any sign of infection.”

The doctor moved on to the next man’s bedside and the nurse went to
work quickly. Unwinding the cotton wrapping, then lifting a strip of padding
she revealed a four-inch line on his forearm, with a track of black stitches
tied in somewhat bulky knots.

“This doesn’t seem normal.” Her voice was very soft.

Patricio stared at the wound. “Is it bad?”

“No … no, it’s actually quite good. I’ve never seen one heal this
quickly.”

He felt a little rush of pride, as if he’d accomplished it through his
own efforts. His eyes drifted toward the wooden box. No. Impossible. That had
been a dream, just a dream.

The nurse glanced toward the doctor, as if debating whether to call him
back. He seemed busy with another patient three beds down. She shrugged and
placed clean padding over Patricio’s wound and rewrapped it.

“I’d like to write a letter,” he said.

“I can send an orderly with paper and pen,” she said cheerfully. “It’s
good to let the family know you are all right.”

He had not even thought of his own family, but the woman was right.
They might have received a telegram saying he was wounded and would not know
his condition.

“Bring enough for three letters.”

By the time the orderly arrived much of Patricio’s earlier energy
seemed to have drained away.

“I can write them for you,” the young man offered, setting down a black
pen, a bottle of ink and a few sheets of paper. “I do it for many of the
soldiers.”

“I’d rather do them myself, but thanks.” The letter to his own family
would be the easy one, the reassuring one. For Roberto’s parents … he was not
yet sure what or how much he should say. “You may leave the paper here. And
could you hand me that box from the shelf?”

He uncapped the pen and placed a sheet of the flimsy paper on the
lapboard the orderly had left. What to say?
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, Roberto
died just before he was about to have his foot amputated because of the nasty
conditions we endured in the trenches together
…? The truth would be too
brutal and far too soon after receipt of the dreaded telegram.
Dear Mr. and
Mrs. Smith, your son and I had become extremely close
…? It would sound too
much as if they were queer for each other. Impossible to explain to anyone who
wasn’t there that the bonds formed in wartime were nothing like that. It had
been more like having a brother, perhaps even a twin brother, a relationship
gestated together in the womb of that section of trench where one’s blood
practically flowed interchangeably with the other’s.

He capped the pen and put the top back on the ink bottle, staring at
the blank page. Let out a deep sigh. Losing his best friend was still far too
fresh.

He opened the pen again and began:
Dear Mamá and Papá, I am well. By
now you have probably received word that I was wounded
…

The words filled a page and a half and he sealed them into an envelope
and wrote the address on it without re-reading. He would be tempted to edit
away half of it, and they deserved to know as much as he could bring himself to
tell. He’d skimmed over the reality of trench life, gone into detail about the
joy of that hot shower after the battle, mentioned the death of Roberto as only
one of many comrades he’d lost in the past month, ended with a wish for a quick
end to the Great War and the hope of seeing them soon. He drafted a similar
message to Emelia, making light of his wounds, assuring her that none of them
were life-threatening. It, too, went into an envelope without a second reading;
he had a feeling it was too impersonal but he did not have it in him to write
words of love and devotion right now.

He rested for a few minutes then tried again to write a letter to the
Smiths. It came out sounding too much like the one he’d written home—too
centered on himself, too general. Roberto’s parents would want news of their
own son, something profound about his final hours. Patricio wadded up the page.
He would try again later.

* * *

Patricio limped to his desk. A month in the hospital outside Paris,
another month in a convalescent home, and the damn leg still ached with the
chill of autumn weather. Worse at some times than others; the doctors said he
would have to live with it and made him feel somewhat guilty that he
had
a leg—many didn’t. His current post was an office job in
Bapaume
,
a little town somewhere in France—he did not quite recall how he’d arrived
there, except that it was by train and he’d carried a duffle with his few
possessions on his lap during the grueling hours of the trip.

Now, his duties included writing up supply orders for the commanders of
troops still in the field. He thanked God every single day that he’d not been
sent back to the front lines; as a relatively mobile soldier it was a
possibility. He was quartered in a converted warehouse that housed fifty men in
bunks. It was damp in the evenings and cold by morning but, unlike the
trenches, it provided a roof and walls and since the German occupation had been
overcome more than a month ago he did not have to listen to the sounds of
shelling and gunfire. He actually slept, every fourth night or so, when
exhaustion overtook him.

He sat, keeping his sore leg outstretched under the desk. A stack of
forms awaited his attention but his thoughts went to the other task on his mind,
the unwritten letter to Roberto’s parents. While he rubberstamped and signed
requisitions words ran through his head. Tonight he would write the letter and
post it tomorrow. Be done with the obligation.

“There’s rumor of an armistice,” the fellow at the next desk said to
another corporal who sat at an identical desk facing him.

“Can’t happen too soon for me,” replied the corporal.

“Nice if it happened before another winter sets in, especially for
those poor chaps in the mountains.”

Patricio remembered the Italian he and Roberto had met on that fateful
day in early July, how the guy told them of the misery of serving on that
particular front.

Yes, he would write to the Smiths tonight. Finish out his tour here, go
home, put the whole sordid, bloody, smelly experience behind him and find
happiness hoeing a row of corn on his father’s little plot of land in Taos
County, with warm sunshine to bake away his aches.

Later, he plodded back to the barracks, leaning heavily on the cane
provided by the Army, his leg throbbing with each step. The pain constantly
increased as each day went on, and falling into bed at night was always a
welcome relief. One end of their warehouse-barracks served as a mess hall but
Patricio bypassed it. Might have gone there if he’d remembered to take the
bottle of aspirin to work with him this morning, but he hadn’t and now all he
wanted was a bit of relief from those little white pills.

He rummaged in his duffle for them and came across recent letters from
home. His mother wrote regularly, each communication expressing her relief at
his recovery and gratitude that he was no longer caught up in the fighting.
Emelia’s letters had become less frequent. Perhaps she was wary, wondering
whether he would be the same or if his war injuries had caused irreparable
damage. He had no idea how to answer that. Below the letters he found his
writing supplies. He swallowed three of the bitter pain pills and lay back with
his leg propped on a pillow.

Dear Mr. and Mrs. Smith, I
apologize for the lateness of this letter. I should have contacted you weeks
ago …

He went on to let them know what a good friend Roberto had been,
embellishing a couple of amusing episodes, omitting any reference to the
rampant infection of trench foot and the fact that their son would have
returned home minus part of a limb. At this point they probably would have
welcomed that, as opposed to his not returning at all.

His gaze traveled to the wooden box; a corner of it showed down inside
his duffle bag. Should he mention it to the mother who had sent it to her son
filled with his favorite cookies? By rights he should offer to return it to the
family. But perhaps it would serve only as a painful reminder of the events, of
the fact that Roberto had died on the very day he received the gift. He ended
the letter with
Very sincerely yours
and tucked it into an envelope. He
stared at the envelope flap before sealing it.

Was his true reason for not offering to return the wooden box because
of the pain it would cause the Smiths? He suspected a more selfish motivation.
The box had saved his life. And he still faced surviving this god-awful war for
some unknown period of time. He could always contact them again once he was
safely at home in New Mexico.

* * *

Dockside in New York Harbor thousands of people milled about—sailors,
soldiers, weeping women and shrieking children. Jubilation rode at the surface
of the greater anguish over all the war had cost, like the very thin skin over
the pulp of an apple. A smile on a grieving face barely masked what was going
on inside, and he saw those expressions everywhere. Patricio stood still in the
middle of the moving human tide, staring at his surroundings, unsure what to do
next. It wasn’t home but it sure felt American and better to him than anything
he had encountered in the past seven months.

With discharge papers in hand, he had no orders, no plan. Somehow he
would get from the dock to a train station—he knew nothing about where to find
it in the city. From there, west. A few days and he could be arriving near
Santa Fe. All the logistics were attainable but at the moment his head swam
with the prospect of putting it together, of finding his way around in the
throng.

A chant arose at one edge of the crowd, female voices shouting and
waving placards on sticks that said “The Saloon Must Go!” above the heads of
the crowd. A uniformed man nearby muttered something about ‘the damn temperance
league’ and asked Patricio if he knew where the nearest bar was.

“I don’t,” Patricio admitted, “but I think I would join you if you led
the way.”

He needed a few minutes respite from the unending noise. Maybe a glass
of beer would settle his nerves. The man turned and extended his hand.

“Franklin Hastings. Last duty station, Paris. Believe me, I can find us
a bar.”

Patricio followed as quickly as he was able, half wondering what he was
getting himself into, the other half thankful that Hastings was leading him
away from the thickest part of the huge crowd. One beer, he told himself, then
directions to the train station and he would be on his way.

“Ah, don’t settle for a beer,” Hastings said once they had settled
themselves on stools inside a little neighborhood place that called itself,
simply,
O’Ryan’s
. “Those preachy temperance women get
their way we’ll soon be out of anything decent to drink. Have a whiskey.”