Under the Same Blue Sky (28 page)

“Thank you,” Walter said after Jud and Stan darted off. “I should just keep my mouth shut.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” I said. “Walter, do you draw in your free time?” He turned to me, startled, as if a secret vice had been discovered, and nodded cautiously. “Could I see some of your work?” He shook his head and excused himself, disappearing around the corner of the school.

“He’s shy,” Lena said as we walked back to the classroom. “Maybe next time we’ll invite only the interested children.” But there was no next time. Some of the parents had complained about “Kraut art” being shown to the children. Walter’s mother wanted no more excuses for her son to be beaten up. We might try again after the war, Lena suggested, when “things are quieter.”

But I’d seen Walter’s head snap back and forth and said only, “Yes, perhaps.”

I
N THE NEXT
weeks, I looked for Walter when I passed the schoolyard; on Sundays, when most of Dogwood walked to church; on Main Street; and in the library, where Lena said he often passed his afternoons. Perhaps he was avoiding me.

So many in Dogwood were avoiding each other now. The local casualties had begun. A Dogwood man died in Flanders. The Sandersons lost both sons in one week near the Hindenburg Line. The war had been so remote, and the soldiers’ leaving so festive, with flags and songs, many calling out that they’d be back by Thanksgiving, or Christmas at the latest. The whole town shuddered when the first black buntings
draped doorways. Those who had lost men and those whose men were safe for now did not speak to each other, looking away, hurrying along on the streets, huddled with their kind after church.

I found cards with names of the dead tied to the castle gate, fluttering in the wind. “Satisfied?” someone had scrawled. I pulled off the cards, but more came. “Stop the Hun!” they might say or “Smash the beast!” Pastor Birke walked my mother home one afternoon when boys were following her on the sidewalk, hissing. Captain Neal went to speak with the boys’ families. The hissing ceased, but now Kurt drove her to work early and picked her up at the back door. When I went into town, I was constantly asked what the baron thought of the latest war news.

“He hopes for peace, as we all do,” I always said.

“You don’t have to go into town,” Anna observed. “Kurt can get what you need.”

But Dogwood was my town for now, and the war encased us all. Weeks had passed since my last letter from Tom. I drew daily courage from knowing that other women wanted a letter as much as I did, that they also longed to touch paper that their men had touched. We shared a silent sisterhood in that endless spring.

Despite constant losses, the Allies steadily advanced, fueled by fresh American troops, new tanks, and ceaseless air strikes. In April, jubilant headlines announced the downing of Manfred von Richthofen, the Red Baron. “He was your baron’s cousin, wasn’t he?” I was asked outside the Hendersons’ store. “One less flying ace for them. What does
he
think about it?”

“Manfred was his cousin, as you said.”

“And our enemy.”

“Yes.” Manfred was my enemy, for he might have flown against Tom. Now Manfred was gone. So I should rejoice. But how? Manfred
and our baron had been like brothers despite their difference in age. They took walking tours together. Until the baron left Prussia, Manfred had been his strongest ally in the family.

Kurt brought newspapers covering Manfred’s death and extraordinary funeral. The Australian Flying Corps buried him with full military honors, with a wreath inscribed: “To our gallant and worthy foe.”

“Full military honors,” the baron repeated. He circled the tower office as I read accounts of Allied officers carrying his casket, led by a chaplain in his robes, an honor guard, and a final salute. “Should I be comforted, do you think, Hazel, by this display of military courtesy? Nearly medieval, is it not?”

“I’m not sure.”

“Exactly. You remember what Shakespeare said of honor? He called it ‘air. A trim reckoning. Who hath it? He that died o’ Wednesday. Doth he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. ’Tis insensible, then? Yea, to the dead.’ Now Manfred is dead. So let’s not speak of honor. War is death and destruction. Nothing more.”

He was wrong, I soon discovered. War was also void. It was not knowing. Jud, Walter’s tormentor, worked for Western Union now, delivering telegrams in a crisp uniform that made him look far younger and wiped the brash confidence from a now-earnest face. On a Saturday morning in early May, when the lawns were bright with tulips, Jud brought my telegram: Thomas Alan Jamison was missing in action after a flight over enemy lines in Belgium. The words danced, meaning nothing until I read them aloud.

“So he’s not dead yet,” said Jud. We were in the kitchen. I was standing by a window. I wavered; I pawed at space. Jud brought me a chair and snatched off his cap. They probably told him at the Western Union office:
Show respect. Always remove your cap inside
. “Maybe Tom got captured, you know, Miss Renner. Although, if the Krauts can’t feed their
own soldiers, how in blazes can they feed prisoners?” He went on, his voice growing shrill. Why couldn’t he stop? “Or if he was a pilot, that’s another thing. When planes get shot down, sometimes they don’t know who it is because the bodies are all—” Anna came in from the kitchen garden, saw the telegram in my hand, and heard the last of Jud’s words.

“Young man,” said Anna quickly, “Miss Renner needs to be alone now.”

“Just a minute, Jud,” I managed, my voice as flat as paper. “How many telegrams have you delivered this week?”

The face crumbled. “You mean the ‘killed in action’ kind?” I nodded. “Three so far. Mrs. Casey was the worst. She’s that way.” The grubby hand shaped a pregnant belly. “Fell flat on the ground, bang! Bang! Right in front of me. I had to help her up. I hate this job but my folks need the money. I’m sorry, Miss Renner. Tom was nice. He gave us wood for our forts. I hope he comes back.”

“So do we,” said Anna. “But you run along now, Jud.” She gave him a quarter and eased him out the door. Then she pulled up a chair and gathered me in her arms. “You were smaller the last time I did this,” she said softly. “When Margit left you at night, you’d tug on my apron and I’d hold you.” Pressed into the starched cloth over the soft and yielding chest, my body remembered the warmth, the scent of sugar and soap, and the broad hand patting my back.

“Missing in action. Where is he? Why won’t they tell me if he’s safe? He could be a prisoner or burned up, like Jud said. Or lost.” My shoulders heaved. Anna held me tightly.

“Hazel, I’ve been worried about that boy since he came here. Is he eating right? Fevers, nightmares about his father, boys making fun of him at school. Will he fall out of a tree? Moving heavy things for the baron, will he get hurt? Love is worrying about somebody. There’s no way out of it.”

“But this is different.”

“No, it’s not different. You can’t help him right now. You just have to bear it.” Still patting my back, she began singing so softly that the song seemed to rise out of my own mind: “Muss Ich Denn.” My father sang it to me when I was small, holding my hand as I drifted to sleep. Coming back from the bakery, my mother found us sitting together.

“I know,” she said. “Jud told me.”

CHAPTER 17

Breaking the Line

M
issing isn’t dead,” the baron said. “One must have the courage of patience.” Of course. And what right had I to be crushed by this one telegram, when he’d received so many: Friedrich, his father and brother, friends, family, and scores from his academy? Manfred’s death had been shouted in headlines. Yes, I must be patient; I must sleep at night and not stare at the traitorous sky that had not held him aloft and safe, flying with hawks, circling green fields. I must follow the war news attentively. I must be concerned that with Russia’s force occupied by the Bolshevik Revolution, German forces could leave the Eastern Front and strengthen the Western Front along the Hindenburg Line.

“Yes,” I said mechanically to the endless debates on this point. “That could be terrible.”

“Pure bunk,” Mr. Henderson announced when I came for more of the baron’s sleeping powders. “We’ll break that line. Our boys are fresh. You’ve heard of the Hundred Days Offensive? We’ll have peace before Christmas.”
Peace before Christmas
. People said that in 1914, four
years ago. Didn’t he remember? Suppose the war went on Christmas after Christmas, the missing never found?

“Any news of Tom?” Mrs. Henderson asked.

“No, not yet. And Geoffrey?”

“He just wrote. I’m sure they’ll both come back.” Her eyes were as shadowed as mine. Did she watch the night sky as I did, thinking:
Are you covering him, too? Are you keeping him safe?
“Do you need some powders yourself, Hazel?”

“No, thank you.” What was the use? Waking or sleeping, I imagined Tom a prisoner of war or lying in No Man’s Land, burned beyond recognition. I saw him fallen in a forest, his body left for a hunter years from now to stumble upon, or lost to himself and us, one of the legions of shell-shocked casualties of war. Was he missing by intention, having deserted a battlefield more horrible than hell? Had he deserted me as well?

A Western Union boy rode past the store, head down in a misty rain. “Your heart stops when you see one coming,” said Mrs. Henderson. “Then he passes and you live again.”

But was this boy Walter? The slight, strained form was exactly Walter’s. His parents blamed him for being mocked in school, Lena had said. Was this their plan to make him tougher? If so, I’d done my part to put him in that horrible uniform, condemned to bring death news.

I watched him pedal away and then turn right. Toward the castle. Now I was hurrying after him, with barely a word to Mrs. Henderson. Did Walter have a telegram correcting the first one? Was Tom not missing, but killed in action? Walter’s classmates mocked and shook him. Wouldn’t I shake him if he was my messenger of death? Stop! We received dozens of telegrams at the castle. Why should this one not deal with some trivial matter of a Rembrandt or the wildly rising market for Gauguins? I walked faster. Then ran. But nobody was at the
gate. Walter had pedaled on, bringing death or trivia to another house. “Then he passes and you live again,” Mrs. Henderson had said. Panting with relief, I stopped running, suddenly grateful for “missing in action”—a message of promise and hope.

“Miss Renner?” a child’s voice whispered. Walter and his bicycle were pushed into the deep shade of pine trees. He beckoned me closer. Fear surged back: he’d give me the telegram in private. But no, he was holding a rolled sheet. White, not Western Union’s sickly buff. “I wanted to show you my drawing.”

I smoothed open the paper and gasped. Despite a web of creases, the work was stunning. Beginning with a simple-seeming house and garden on a cloudy day, sunrays made skillful rhythms of light and dark. Subtle distortions menaced the country scene, drawing one to look deeper, learning more.

“Walter, you have incredible talent.” Pride lit his face; gladness poured through me. Just a wonderful drawing, not a telegram of death. Joy made me generous and eager to help.

A thin finger hovered over the paper. “There wasn’t really a tree here.”

“You put it in for balance?”

“I guess so.”

“I’d like to show this to the baron. And you can see the castle.”

The brown eyes widened; he pulled back into the pines. “No. People say there’s mad scientists in there who catch boys and make them weak. It’s the Kaiser’s plot so that when he invades us—”

“Walter, stop. You can’t believe that nonsense.” He shrugged. “What about Tom? He was strong, right? And he lived in the castle for years. Come with me. I promise to protect you from mad scientists.” A tiny smile. “What do your parents say about drawing?”

“To stop doing it if boys make fun of me.”

“They made you take this job?” He nodded. “And you hate it?” Nod. “Walter, maybe I shouldn’t have brought those pictures to school.”

“No, I’m glad you did. When I draw or think about drawing, I’m happy.”

Through the gate, I glimpsed the baron walking with Lilli. “There he is. You don’t even have to go inside. He can come out here and see your drawing.”

Walter peeked through the gate and jumped back in alarm. I knew why. “Walter, it’s a
dog,
not a wolf. Her name is Lilli. She’s very gentle. She’s a—we call her an Alsatian shepherd now. And the baron is very kind. You have to believe me.” I took Walter’s silence as assent and signaled the baron to join us. Walter stood closer to me as they approached. His hand barely moved from his body as I introduced him, so the baron bowed slightly to grasp it.

“Walter Baines. Miss Renner has spoken well of you.”

Walter was mute. “Let’s have Lilli show you her tricks while the baron looks at your drawing.” I handed over the wrinkled page and had Lilli sit, shake, lie down, and fetch for the slowly warming Walter.

The baron cleared his throat. “Miss Renner has not exaggerated your skill, young man.” He returned the drawing as if handing over a Leonardo. “She showed you a watercolor by the English painter J. M. W. Turner?”

A whisper: “Yes, Mister Baron Sir.”

“‘Baron’ is sufficient. Turner was the greatest landscape master of his time. His work at age twelve was remarkable, as is yours at age—”

“Ten.”

“Ten. As I say, remarkable. You might study his work.” He noted Walter’s uniform. “Yours is a difficult job in these times.”

Still a whisper: “People hate me. They scream at me to go away.” The
beautiful face surveyed the small one. He offered no advice, no wisdom or encouragement. He simply laid a hand on the thin shoulder. Walter raised his eyes and said in a normal voice: “Thank you, Baron. You can keep the drawing.” He retrieved his bicycle and was gone, pedaling frantically back to town, looking over his shoulder at another boy on a bicycle far down the road.

“Next time we could show him some Turners,” I suggested.

The baron sighed. “There won’t be a next time.” He was right. Walter never came back. Jud had seen us with the baron and reported this fact to his parents. Lena told me that Walter seemed daily more timid and withdrawn. His parents had taken away his drawing pencils. “They said it was for his own good. When he’s not working, he should be playing baseball with the other boys.”