Under the Same Blue Sky (38 page)

“Where did you go?”

“To a hill I saw from the train. Hazel once told me about a camp made a long time ago by someone like me. I thought it might be there.”

“David, do you remember what I told you about my friend Ben?”

He nodded, his eyes fixed on Tom. “Will you go away again?”

“That’s the problem. I might. But I can promise you this: I’ll come back.”

Thick silence filled the room. David’s eyes drilled into Tom’s. “Maybe you won’t.”

Tom pulled something from his pocket and reached for David’s hand. “Here are my eagle wings. I want you to have them. They’re my promise that I’ll come back.”

“I have a medal from Uncle Georg for not coughing.”

“Well, this is another.” A small hand closed around the wings. “David, can you trust me to try to get better, to work as hard as I can?”

“Can you show me Lilli’s tricks?”

“Yes. Let’s go outside.”

In the long June evening, David learned to have Lilli sit, stay, lie down, come, fetch, and speak. We took turns hiding and having Lilli
find us. We watched fireflies fill the grass and darkness below the trees. I brought out a blanket and we lay together, watching stars. Very late, Tom carried David inside, clutching his medal. Then he came to get me, and we went to bed ourselves, with Lilli by the door.

A
BRIGHT BLUE
week followed, bringing us good days and happy plans. Tom already had a commission from Georg for a revolving bookcase. We walked into town to ask Jim Burnett for permission to build a workshop onto the house. Jim welcomed him, discreetly not inquiring of our relationship. I had brought with us the miniature of my father’s coffin and Tom’s wooden puzzle.

Jim studied the workmanship. “My wife’s been wanting a china cabinet. Could you build her one?”

“Yes. I can, but I can’t say exactly by when. I have bad days that I can’t predict.” He explained why.

“You make a good china cabinet and we’ll get it when it’s done. Come by tomorrow and talk to Ellen about exactly what she wants.” We finished our shopping and were about to leave when Jim drew us aside. “Tom, other men around here had a rough time in the war. When you get settled, I’ll introduce you. And Hazel, we can say he’s your hired man, but you do realize that Galway’s a small town. People talk. Some things have changed, but not that.”

“Yes. I understand.”

“Good. I’ll tell Ellen she’ll have her cabinet.”

Our engagement wasn’t romantic. “We
could
get married,” Tom said as we walked home.

Infected by his caution, I added only: “Yes, we could. I’d like to.”

“When I was a boy, I dreamed of you coming back to Dogwood. Then, like magic you did come back, looking for Margit Brandt. That night, I told Anna how much I wanted you to stay.”

I described how my own love bloomed the afternoon of picking apples, but he didn’t seem to be listening. “Hazel, Jim’s right. People will talk if we don’t get married right away, and I’d hate that for you. But I want you to know what it is that you’re choosing. I want you to be sure. And I want David to be sure.” He touched my shoulder tentatively, although we’d done so much more. “Could we stand the gossip for a while?”

We’d stand it until August, we decided. When we’d passed the last house, our bodies came together; our shadows fused. We stepped into the woods, hidden from passing cars. The next day, we called the castle to announce our intentions. “We’d like to get married in the gazebo,” I told my mother. “You and Georg can decide everything else.” For the rest of the summer, the castle swirled with preparations. I had Ellen take measurements for our wedding clothes. Tilda’s sister would make my dress; Georg’s tailor would make suits for Tom and David. Jim convinced the school board to accept a married teacher. Then I stopped thinking about the wedding. My work in those months was to learn about life with Tom.

There were night sweats and nightmares. Sometimes he woke up screaming, frightening even Lilli. There was sleepwalking; once he stumbled off the porch and gashed his head on a rock. Sometimes he was gone but close by. I’d tell Lilli, “Find Tom,” and she’d lead me to him, rigid behind a tree, hiding from soldiers. He might or might not be startled by thunder, owls, twigs snapping, a distant dog, cars honking, wind slamming a door closed, or rattling windows. The slight crowds of Galway were sometimes bearable and sometimes not. David could not have toy guns. We could never have tea in the house, for tea reminded him of Colin. Once he ran out of church, having “seen” Colin beside him.

Over and over, I had to learn that sometimes—often—I was less useful, less comforting to him than a dog. More than my touch or words, he needed Lilli’s cold nose on his skin, the softness of her fur, and her mute loyalty. Then there was the going away. On foggy mornings, and sometimes for causes I’d never fathom, he’d leave us. I learned not to follow, but to simply wait. Returned soldiers who shared a brotherhood of wandering sometimes found him on the road to Red Gorge and brought him back.

Wilbur Reed sought me out. “I was a pilot, too. If Tom ever needs help, just call me, day or night. And you can always talk to my wife, Gracie. Men like us aren’t what you women signed on for.”

“You didn’t sign on for that kind of war, either.”

“No, we didn’t. We had no idea. But one thing’s sure. Tom loves you. He’d go through fire for you.”

“I know that, Wilbur, but suppose it’s foggy the day we leave for the wedding? Suppose he’s gone?”

“We talked about that. You send word and I’ll get the guys together. My buddy Lloyd was a scout, better than any bloodhound. Wherever Tom is, in Ben’s camp or someplace else, we’ll find him and put him on that train. He’ll have a military escort down the aisle if that’s what it takes.”

“What did Tom say?”

Wilbur grinned. “I won’t repeat his words exactly. The gist was yes, do what you have to.”

In the weeks before our wedding, the good days were very good. We planted a rose garden and laid out an orchard. Tom put a swing in the schoolyard and cut wood for a tree house he’d build with the older children. When he made a little truck that a child could sit on and steer, David was delirious with pleasure. In the evenings, we sat on the porch
with Lilli at our feet until one of us said the words that brought us to bed: “Well then.” In the darkness our touches eased away loneliness and pain. As David held his horse at night, I held these memories close when the Tom I knew was replaced by a stranger and Galway became his Western Front, surrounded by enemies.

I
N LATE
A
UGUST
, Wilbur took us to the station. “Looks like you guys missed your manhunt,” Tom said. At the last minute, a new conductor wouldn’t allow Lilli on the train. “Orders is orders. No dogs.” he said. Wilbur promised to keep her until we came back, but in the crowded carriage Tom gripped my hand for hours, sweating, his eyes clamped shut. Passengers stared at the wooden man beside me.

“He’ll be fine once we’re there,” I whispered to David. With the rattling wheels, words spun in my head:
He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. He’ll be fine
. Finally in New Jersey, Tom opened his eyes to the humps of green hills. “It’s not Belgium.”

“Not it’s not.”

He struggled to smile. “And Wilbur’s not here with his escort.”

“No he’s not.”

“Lilli’s not here, either. I have to do this myself.”

“Yes you will.”

David had been pressing Tom’s medal between his hands. He opened them slightly to show his treasure, like a butterfly about to escape. Tom studied the small, drawn face. “Shall we have a wedding today? Do you think it’s a good idea?” The blond head bobbed. David leaned against Tom. In the last miles, we reached another peace.

My mother met us in Dogwood. “Johannes would be happy today,” she said. “He was so fond of Tom.” She was happy herself, looking younger than I ever remember.

The castle gate stood open; the gazebo was draped with flowers. I’d never seen Georg so handsome, resplendent in a new cutaway jacket with waistcoat and striped trousers. “We did what we could with Anthony,” he said. “Tailors make him nervous.”

“I’m sure he has other virtues.”

“He surely does.”

Tom was hurried into a fine linen suit that Georg had ordered. There was a miniature version for David, who would carry our rings. Anna, Tilda, and my mother showed me the silky cream dress with graceful folds and satin sash. It fit perfectly, and the flowers they’d chosen were perfect as well, but I kept asking: “Will there be fog today?”

“With this blue sky? Hold still,” said Anna. “I’m not done with your buttons.”

Lena’s parents were there, Walter and the Hendersons, the Finkles and Charlie Snead, Mayor Woodruff and his wife, others from the town who were now my mother’s friends, and all who ever worked at the castle. Luisa and her family had come on a separate train from Pittsburgh to surprise me.

We were married in the afternoon. A slight breeze cooled the summer heat and fluttered my dress. In the linen suit, with his dark curls coaxed to order, Tom’s wide smile was pure joy. Georg walked me down the grassy aisle to the table that was our altar. Pastor Birke conducted the ceremony. I remember the soft blue sky and waft of roses, the warmth of Tom’s hand in mine, and the smooth slide of gold around my finger.

We had our wedding dinner in the grand dining room with musicians playing. “Just like you remember,” my mother said slyly. She sat close to Martin Birke. Yes, anyone could see they were sweethearts. A Lutheran bishop would be in town at Christmastime to marry them. We’d come back to Dogwood then, we promised. After the wedding
cake and toasts, we danced in the mirrored hall that reflected thousands on thousands of us, all my people laughing, swirling and spinning, happy as if the Great War had never happened.

I would like to say that after our wedding Tom’s bad times were fewer or less painful, but I can’t. The nightmares, sweats, sudden terrors, and escapes to Red Gorge have slackened, but not vanished with time. Yet our good days are many and their pleasures are deep. When fog comes, we know that it will lift. Someday we may go to Paris. Meanwhile I teach; Tom works wood. David plays with Lilli’s first puppy. We know there may be no end to the private battles we wage. Any truce may be fragile and incomplete, but we soldier on. And it is enough. More than enough.

Acknowledgments

T
he few years between the setting of my second novel,
Swimming in the Moon
(1905–11) and the World War I years of this one made possible an astonishing range of easily available online film material for the research process: war footage and documentaries, clinical films of shell-shock victims, film and photographs of fashions, automobiles, work conditions in Pittsburgh, and the influenza pandemic of 1919. These resources are a boon for any writer or reader.

The University of Pittsburgh maintains a fine digital archive of Pittsburgh history. I am grateful to the research staff of the Knoxville Public Library, particularly Melissa Brenneman and Jamie Osborn, for their patience and sleuthing wizardry. Margaret Sudekum, DVM, helped on issues of dog training. Karen Schoenewaldt answered questions on art conservation and shipping. Jonathan Gaugler of the Carnegie Museum of Art was helpful in ascertaining which works of art Hazel might have seen in her visits to what was then the Carnegie Institute. Jane Buchholz, Gudrun Gorla, and Jeff Mellor lent expertise on issues of German language, culture, and cuisine. Gudrun generously shared her stollen recipe. Mark Loudermilk advised on banking practices and Jim Andrews on military matters.
An Iowa Schoolma’am,
edited by Philip L. Greber and Charlotte M. Wright, uses a young teacher’s letters home to illustrate the joys and frustrations of one-room schoolhouse education.

On matters of the Lutheran practice, I consulted with the Reverend William Boys. Reverend John Gill and Jim Sessions unraveled other issues of theology, pastoral care, and spontaneous healing. A luminous meditation on events beyond our sense of reason is C. S. Lewis’s
Miracles
. For historical perspective on American healers at the time of my novel, I suggest Linda L. Barnes and Susan S. Sered’s
Religion and Healing in America
and Nancy A. Hardesty’s
Faith Cure: Divine Healing in the Holiness and Pentecostal Movements
.

For medical issues and pediatrics, I consulted Leonard Bellingrath, MD, and Lisa Herron Oros, MD. There is a horrific account of one city’s response to medical emergency in “With Every Accompaniment of Ravage and Agony: Pittsburgh and the Influenza Epidemic of 1918–1919,” by James Higgins, in the
Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography
. Isaac Starr, then a student at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, recalled his clinical experience in “Influenza in 1918: Recollections of the Epidemic in Philadelphia,” in
Annals of Internal Medicine
. Eileen A. Lynch’s “It Started in the Summer of 1918,” in the
Philadelphia Gazette
was also valuable. Epidemiologist Kathleen Brown generously contrasted current and past treatment options, as well as symptoms and disease course of the H1N1 influenza virus.

The devastating distress reactions noted in soldiers after the first battles of World War I were described as “shell shock” by Charles Meyers in a
Lancet
article of 1915. The name stuck, even if soldiers not exposed to barrages of shells began presenting the range of symptoms we now term post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Wendy Holden’s classic
Shell Shock
was invaluable. Professor Stephen Joseph of the University of Nottingham answered queries on the variety of clinical manifestations of shell shock and PTSD. Dr. Laurel Goodrich illuminated contemporary treatment options. Dr. Ellison Mitchell, therapist and veteran, offered resources and professional insights on combat-related
PTSD symptoms and typical outcomes which helped me shape the final chapters of this book. Dr. Kathleen Sales shared her professional work in fugue states and generously critiqued Tom’s account of his lost months.