Under the Same Blue Sky (37 page)

“How did you get back?”

“I was working in a café and an American came in. He said, ‘Are you Tom Jamison?’ I jumped. I hadn’t heard that name in months. It was Captain Shay, my squad leader. He bought me drinks. Apparently I
had
bombed the railroad station. A few days later, he showed up with this.” Tom reached in his pocket and put a bronze medal on the table. “He said I’d earned my eagle wings.”

“Eagle wings,” David repeated.

“Yes,” he said ruefully. “I seem to be a hero.”

“Then you left Paris?”

“Yes. Shay said it was time to go home, that I’d get adjusted better in familiar places.” Tom stopped suddenly, looking around as if surprised to find himself with us. Lilli nudged his leg. He stroked her and went on. “He arranged a berth on a ship for New York.”

“Captain Shay seems like a good man.”

“He is. He asked me if I had a girl waiting back home.”

My arms tightened around David. “What did you say?”

“That there was a girl, and she might be waiting, but maybe she shouldn’t. He told me there’s no harm in asking.”

I heard myself say: “No, there’s no harm.”

“Can we eat? I’m
really
hungry,” David demanded.

“I bet he wants me to stop talking.”

I got up to make dinner. “David, didn’t you say your truck was broken? Show it to Tom. Maybe he can fix it.”

“Let’s see.” Very slowly, David edged around the table and put his truck in Tom’s outstretched hand. “Hum, one wheel doesn’t turn. I wonder—yes, here’s the problem. There’s something stuck in the axle. See?” Mesmerized, David inched closer until two heads bent over the wheel. “Now if I just had a pencil—” David scurried to get one. My heart pounded. Wasn’t this the same Tom—the same patient focus on every problem, the same pleasure in small solutions? Surely he’d “get adjusted.” Lilli would help. David and I could help. See, he had fixed the wheel.

An instant later, an owl hooted and Tom jolted upright, eyes wide and wild, sweat popping from his brow, gripping the table so hard that his hands went white. David seemed oblivious, happily running his truck along the kitchen floor. I went back to stirring the soup, as if I’d noticed nothing. But “getting adjusted” would be a task far beyond fixing wheels and eating pie.

Still, when dinner was ready, we were like any family around a kitchen table. Tom’s speech came slowly; sometimes a question had to be repeated, but he was
here,
talking, just like people do. I asked for news from Dogwood. Anthony lived at the castle now. He and Georg had a small party with friends from New York. “No footmen or musicians, but Anthony played the piano.” More and more, their trade was in rare books. “People want them, and they don’t need fancy packing.” Yes, of course. How hopeful the sheer normalcy of this fact that books don’t need fancy packing. It’s what he would have said
before
. Couldn’t we build on this?

“How’s the bakery doing?”

“Very busy. And the café is always full. Your mother had her hair bobbed like yours. It looks good. She brought Martin over for dinner.”

“Who’s Martin?”

“You know Martin Birke, the pastor. Her sweetheart.”

“Her—?” I choked on bread.

“Sweetheart. You didn’t know? Hazel, I may be crazy, but I’m not
blind
.” He said this so deadpan, smiling so slyly, that I laughed, he laughed, and David looked between us, perplexed.

I explained the joke, but he wasn’t interested. “Does Lilli have new tricks?”

Tom’s smile slipped away. “Yes, I suppose. She helps me get back to myself.”

“What?”

“I’ll show you in the morning.”

“It’s late now. Tom, excuse us, please. I have to put David to bed.”

“Take your time. I’ll be here.”
Take your time.
I’ll be here.
So simple. As if he’d always been here.

I tried to hurry David, but he balked, full of questions. Would Tom and Lilli be staying with us? Could Tom really fix
anything
? And finally: “He’s a little strange. But nice.”

“Yes.”

Winding his fingers in the cloth of my shirt as he did before sleep, David pulled me close to whisper: “Bucephalus says you look pretty tonight.”

“Go to sleep, now. It’s late.” He turned over and over in bed, begging me to stay just a little longer, a little longer. The kitchen was clean but empty when I returned. Silence all around. Was Tom gone already? Heart pounding, I rushed out to the porch. He was smoking a pipe as Lilli explored my yard. “You’re still here.”

“I’m still here. Is he asleep?”

“Yes.” I sat on the porch, close but not touching.

Smoke drifted over our heads. “You’re teaching school?”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to speak of David or teaching. I was afraid to touch him, but soldiers are afraid and still they advance. I dared my hand to cross the No Man’s Land between us. Our fingers locked. He spoke into the moonless sky.

“Captain Shay said there’s no harm in asking. But Hazel, I don’t even know what to ask for. I’ve got nothing, just a dog and some tools. I don’t even have myself sometime.”

“Tom?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll ask. Will you stay the night with me?”

He closed his eyes. Not even the night was breathing. Finally he stood. His voice was thick: “Lilli, come.” He held out his hand for me. In my bedroom Lilli curled against the door, protecting us. In darkness we undressed, fingers fumbling. I felt scars from his flight through the woods and a tender place in his back where shrapnel lodged. But here were the arms, the legs, the chest, the scent, the touch, the whole of him, here with me was as I had imagined . . . as I’d never imagined, as if I’d been far away myself.

“There’s nothing like peace,” he said at last, as we stretched over the sheets. “It’s heaven on earth.”

“Are you tired?”

“Very. I didn’t sleep for two nights, thinking about coming here.” Thick clouds rolled behind the trees. We curled together. I woke in the night. Tom was shaking me gently, asking: “Hazel, are you here?”

“Yes, I’m here.” His breathing eased, and I remember sleeping deeply then. My bed faced the window. I woke to fog and sat up in terror. Fog! Tom and Lilli were gone. He wasn’t on the porch or anywhere around
the house. His knapsack was gone. Footprints in the soggy ground led to the road and then disappeared. I sank on the porch steps, arms aching with emptiness. The ache said I hadn’t been dreaming. I’d had him again and lost him.

David found me there. “Will Tom and Lilli come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“I liked him.”

“I’m sure he liked you, too, David.”

“Then why did he leave?”

“I don’t know.”

One hour crawled into the next. It was Saturday, without even the distraction of school. We worked in the garden, built towers and knocked them down, and walked out to a waterfall. Perhaps Tom would be waiting when we returned. He wasn’t. I hung a lantern on the porch, but he didn’t come at night.

In the morning, I left David with the Burnetts, who thankfully asked no questions. The Galway stationmaster remembered Tom’s coming well enough. “Curly-haired man with a wolf-dog? No, haven’t seen him since. I would have remembered the dog.” So Tom was still in Galway. No use searching houses or roads. I knew he’d be drawn to the safety and deep quiet of the woods, as he had been in Belgium, as Ben was. Wouldn’t he go to Red Gorge?

Half a dozen search teams hadn’t found Ben or his camp in winter, when the hills were bare of underbrush and a man’s tracks were easily seen. How could I find Tom? But still I walked to Red Gorge, crossed the bridge, and took the first trail up. Perhaps it caught Tom’s eye. Ben had spoken once of cool at his camp even in the summer’s heat. So it must be up. But so many hills rolled into Red Gorge. Which one was his?

The trail divided. I laid my hand on a mossy trunk and closed my eyes, imagining Tom in the apple orchard, in the airplane when we flew
with a hawk, and in the forest where he hid from any soldier. If I were Tom, which way would I go? Wouldn’t it be where the green was thickest and most tangled, where a man would be hardest to find? I followed the faintest trail. Sometimes I found a freshly broken branch or lightly trampled ferns. By his feet? I couldn’t read the signs. I scrambled over rocks, followed a butterfly over a fallen tree, heard a squirrel scramble through dry leaves, and found another stretch of path. I wasn’t lost, I convinced myself, only moving steadily upward. Sometimes I felt him so close that I wondered if he was hiding, pressed against a tree, as still as moss, invisible, so no enemy could find him.

“There’s no harm in asking,” Captain Shay had said. This was my journey for asking. It was near noon. Sweat slicked my body. I was exhausted and had reached the end of a fragile trail. Had I fought this far up a hill to find I was on the wrong one? Parched, I’d drained the last of my water when my eye caught a spot of red in a crease of stone. Blood? No. I came closer. It was a child’s glove, finely made. A girl’s glove. So tired, so hot, I sat on the rock, holding the glove, turning it over and over, trying to think why this glove seemed so significant. Yes! Susanna. When she’d come to my house that snowy night, which bare hand had reached for hot cider? The left. And this was a left-hand glove. She must have been coming down from Ben’s camp when she lost it on this hill. Tom must be here, in the place that solaced Ben. One lost soldier’s refuge had summoned another missing man.

I pushed through a thicket of brambles. On the other side was something scrabbling in leaves. A flash of gray. A wolf like the one that came after us in Prussia? I backed toward a tree I could climb, but now the animal was here, jumping at me, barking, circling. Lilli! I hugged her, burying my face in the rough fur. “Lilli, find Tom!”

She was patient, darting ahead, waiting, sometimes circling behind to urge me on. In minutes we reached the trail. It was rocky and steep, but clear. I moved quickly, scrambling over roots, once even holding Lilli’s tail on a slippery turn. We passed through another thicket and into a clearing with a small, rough cabin. And he was there like a statue, waiting.

“Hazel! You found me.”

“Yes, with Lilli.”

The dark eyes swam. I looked down at what he saw: my torn shirt, scratched arms, and filthy, shredded skirt. “Come.” He took my hand and led me to a rain bucket where I rinsed my face and hands. He found a sliver of soap to wash where thorns had scratched me, and gave me a shirt I recognized as Ben’s. We sat on tree stumps with Lilli at our feet. A fresh breeze cooled us.

“Hazel, I can’t believe you’re here.”

“I had to come.”

“I didn’t want to run away. You have to believe me.”

“You heard voices?”

“Like your friend Ben? No. More like a roaring in my head, shells and shouting. I had to find a quiet place. Somehow I found this one and the roaring stopped.”

“Ben’s voices stopped here, too.”

He gripped my hands. “Hazel, I don’t want to be like this, not for your sake or David’s or mine. I’d give anything to be like I was before.” Our fingers knit together. “There are so many men like me. I saw them on the ship. They twitch and shake. Some can’t talk at all or act blind even if doctors say there’s nothing wrong with their eyes. They scream or hide under tables. Nobody knows how to help us. I jump at sounds, like you saw. I have nightmares and sweats. Fog can set me back.
Drinking tea reminds me of Colin. Being close to anyone reminds me of losing him. Hazel, do you want all this in your life? I can go back to the castle. They’d take me. Or I can go someplace else.”

“You don’t have to. You can stop moving. You can get better here in Galway.”

Sunlight through pines struck the dark curls I’d touched two nights ago. I stroked the hands that cut my father down and held mine as we walked in every weather, the hands that fixed David’s truck. He touched a jagged scrape on my arm and bent to kiss it. “Hazel, I love you. I’ll always love you, but isn’t it all the trouble I bring too much?”

Zu schmerzlich.
“Yes, sometimes it will be too much. But other times it will be like this. We’ll be together. You’ll have good days. Fog doesn’t make the land go away. It’s still there. And then the fog lifts. Are you going to ask?”

“Hazel, may I go back with you? Can we try again?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Lilli, up!” She scrambled to her feet. She looked at him, awaiting orders. “Find David.” She bounded into the woods and led us down the mountain, back to my house in Galway.

CHAPTER 24

The Work of Peace

W
ith any American child, explaining Tom’s troubles might have been impossible. But David had seen dogfights in the air and flaming airplanes fall. Every field in Prussia was scored and pitted. He’d heard bombs all his life. In fact, the silence of Galway often disturbed him. “When are they starting again?” he’d ask. In our journey to Antwerp, horrors had bloomed in his fever: bloated bodies, charred houses, dazed men walking, and bands of thieves. For Tom to say “Sometimes I think I’m still back there” made perfect sense to David. But still he was wary.

“You made my Numa cry. I heard her.”

“I know that. I’m very sorry.”

“And her arms are scratched. I saw them.”

“Yes, I know.”

“You said you’d show me Lilli’s tricks in the morning.”

“And I didn’t. I left.”

David set Bucephalus on the table between them and folded his arms. Judge Ashton never seemed so fierce. Tom glanced at me. All I
could offer was help in translating. Tom wiped his brow and pulled a chair closer. “It’s like this, David. I’d waited for a long time to see your mother. And I came a long way to see her and meet you. But when you’ve been confused for a long time, happiness is strange and confusing, as if you’ve forgotten what it feels like. You know how sometimes at night, you remember bad things you saw or bad things that happened to you?”

David moved restlessly. “Maybe.”

“Well, I do. The fog came in, and I was hearing bombs and shells. I saw a friend who died, and I had to leave. I didn’t want to. I would have given anything to stay here.”