With Every Letter (37 page)

Look at Colossians 3:10: “Put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him.”

You’re doing this in your life. You’ve taken the best parts of your earthly father, put aside the rest, and filled in the gaps by emulating your heavenly Father.

You have a ways to go, as do I, as do all who love the Lord. But my beloved Ernest, you must not give up. You have so much to live for.

Tom rested his head back on the pillow. Annie’s letter merged with Larry’s and with the memory of Mellie’s touch and words and songs. “I’m not my father,” he whispered. “I’m a new creation.”

And he had a lot to live for.

“Lieutenant Steinmetz?” Tom raised himself on his good elbow and caught the nurse’s eye. “I’m ready for that pill.”

Ponte Olivo Airfield
July 24, 1943

Mellie brushed dirt off her stationery box. Thank goodness it hadn’t opened when her musette bag got dumped next to her cot.

Rose picked up Mellie’s toiletry kit. “Those slobs. Couldn’t they pick up the mess they made?”

“We don’t know how it happened.” Mellie picked up her scrapbook and inspected it for damage. She’d found everything on the ground after breakfast.

Kay poked her head in the tent. “Lambert says to get your tails to the trucks. Heading up to Agrigento, and it’s a long way to walk.”

The front had moved north, and so had the evacuation holding unit. “I’m not ready. My bag tipped over. It’s a mess.”

“I’ll say.” Kay frowned. “Well, hurry, ’cause Lambert’s in a tizzy.”

“We’ll be there.” Georgie whacked Mellie’s hairbrush on the cot to shake out the dust.

“You’d better.” The tent flap closed. “It’s a real big tizzy.”

Mellie grimaced. “Georgie, Rose, I appreciate your help, but why should all three of us get in trouble? Go.”

“Mellie . . .”

She picked up Georgie’s barracks bag and thrust it into her arms. “No. It’ll go faster if I’m not bumping into the two of you. Go. You can explain. Lambert will understand.”

Rose’s mouth shifted to one side. “You know what she thinks of tardiness.”

“I don’t care. Go.”

To her amazement, they obeyed. Mellie picked hairpins out of the dirt and put them back in her carved wooden box. How had things gotten so scattered when her bag fell only eight inches off her cot?

A sick feeling squeezed her belly. It hadn’t fallen. Someone had done this on purpose. She’d been the victim of too many mean pranks not to recognize one.

“Mellie.” Lieutenant Lambert stepped into the tent, eyes snapping. “I told you to be at the truck ten minutes ago.”

“I know. There’s been an accident.” She closed her bobby pin box.

The tent flap opened. Vera stepped in. “Excuse us, ladies. Just need to get our gear.”

Alice wrinkled her nose at the mess. “Unlike some people, we packed ages ago.”

Mellie pressed her lips together and scooted out of the way. She couldn’t even look at Vera since discovering her with the flight surgeon, but the other nurse acted as if nothing had happened. Had she no shame?

Vera gasped. “Who did this?”

“Did what?” Lieutenant Lambert went over. “What on earth?”

Mellie peeked around them. A pile of dirt sat on Vera’s barracks bag, as if someone had emptied a bucket on top.

“Well, I got a present.” Alice smiled and picked up a little cardboard box from her cot. She untied a ribbon, opened the box, shrieked, and tossed it aside. Bugs skittered out in all directions.

Vera screamed and stamped on them. Mellie joined in the stamping.

Lieutenant Lambert set her hands on her hips. “What is going on here?”

Alice smoothed her blonde hair and sniffed. “I can’t imagine who would do such a thing.”

“I can.” Vera’s brown eyes honed in on Mellie. “I complain about the dirt. Alice complains about the bugs. You think you’re better than us because you like dirt and bugs. As if a jungle were a good place to be raised.”

Mellie’s jaw hung low. “You think . . . but I didn’t . . .”

Alice poked out her chin. “You’re getting back at Vera because she told Captain Maxwell about the twigs.”

“What? I didn’t know that was Vera.”

“Don’t lie. I told you myself.” A challenge quirked around the corners of Vera’s eyes. She had framed Mellie because Mellie knew about the affair, even fabricated a reason for Mellie to pull the prank.

“I’m not lying. You never told me.” But truth spun in her head. To defend herself would require revealing Vera’s
motivation—her affair. That would open Mellie to charges of slander.

“Oh, Mellie.” Lambert shook her head slowly. “I can’t believe you’d do such a thing.”

“I didn’t.” Her fingers worked together in front of her stomach. “You have to believe me.”

The chief rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know what to believe anymore. All I know is I’m tired of having to defend you.”

Mellie’s heart plummeted to her knees and made them wobble.

Vera spun and faced the chief. “I don’t blame you. The nonsense with Georgie and Rose, a riot on her plane, using cactus and bark and cutting off a dog’s tail, all that know-it-all jungle talk, and now this. Why is she still here?”

“Oh! The jungle talk.” Alice waved her hand in front of her face. “Don’t forget to take your Atabrine, girls. Your mosquito netting isn’t right. Set your cot legs in cans of water. Heaven’s sake, who put her in charge?”

“I wanted to help.” Mellie fought for breath as cruelty burned up all the oxygen in the tent.

Vera looked down her nose at Mellie. “Well, save it, sister.”

“No one wants her here.” Alice leaned in close to the chief. “Georgie and Rose, even Kay, they try to be nice, but it’s hard. She just doesn’t fit in.”

Mellie sucked in a breath, hating the sobbing sound. She wrapped her arms around her belly to hold herself together, as if she could, as if she could keep her world intact.

Pity covered Lambert’s face. “Back at Bowman Field I told you we had to work together, that I couldn’t let one nurse drag us down. When will you learn?”

Mellie shook her heavy head back and forth, grasping for words, for breath. She had learned. Couldn’t the chief see?

“I have to think about this.” Lieutenant Lambert marched out of the tent. “Hurry up, ladies.”

“We will.” Vera tipped over her barracks bag and poured the dirt onto Mellie’s things on the ground. “A little dirt won’t kill you.”

On her way out, she and Alice shared the shortest, meanest smirk.

Mellie dropped to her knees and poked through the mess. Tears left dark divots on the ground.

Why did it have to be this way? She’d been set up. Vera and Captain Maxwell wanted her gone, and they’d get their way.

She lifted the brooch from Tom out of the dirt, and a sob hopped out. Was he improving? Were the antibiotics working? She brushed off the colorful stones and blew dust from the delicate setting. Never once had she worn it. Jewelry didn’t belong on the front lines.

Just as Mellie didn’t belong in the 802nd. She was a good nurse. She’d become more open and taught herself to smile. She’d made friends. She’d even cut her hair.

But it would never be enough. She’d never belong.

39

3rd General Hospital
July 26, 1943

“Which one of you is the Killiver?” A man in fatigues leaned in the hospital tent, wearing an arm brassard with C for Correspondent.

Tom sat cross-legged on the hospital cot with his stationery box on his pajama-clad knees, and he sighed.

In the next cot, a tank officer with malaria pointed his thumb at Tom. “That fella.”

The reporter’s face lit up and he rushed to Tom’s side. “Fred Freeman,
Stars and Stripes
. Got a few questions for you.”

“Sorry.” Tom gave him a polite smile. “I don’t do interviews.”

“Ah, come on. I’ve already got my headline.” He formed his hand into a bracket and painted a banner in front of him. “‘Son Uses Father’s Murderous Skills for Good.’ Whaddya say?”

“I say no thank you.”

“Ah, please?” He pulled out his notepad. “Everyone’s glad you’re on our side. Hey, they even say the Italians deposed
Mussolini yesterday ’cause they’re scared of you. Why bother fighting when the U.S. has MacGilliver the Killiver?”

Tom opened his stationery box. “Sorry to disappoint you. The U.S. has Tom MacGilliver, an engineer who happened to be at the right place at the right time and did the right thing, same as any of our boys would do.”

“That’s swell.” He scribbled on his notepad. “Right place . . . right time . . . right thing.”

He rolled his eyes. He hadn’t meant to be quotable.

Lieutenant Steinmetz stood at the foot of the bed in her belted GI coveralls. She put her hands on her hips. “That’s the problem with tents. They don’t keep out the rats.”

Freeman turned to her. “Say, toots, how about a quote from you? What’s he like?”

“My quote?” The nurse put her finger to her cheek and batted her eyes at the ceiling. “Get lost before I give you an enema.”

Tom burst out laughing.

“Hey, now, baby, you wouldn’t do that to me.” The reporter draped his arm over her shoulder.

She grasped his draped arm and marched him away. “I would. There’s the door.”

“Please, baby. I’m the first one to get in here.”

“And the last.” She gave him a gentle shove outside.

He leaned back in. “Come on, MacGilliver, at least tell me one thing. Did you enjoy it?”

Tom scrunched his eyes shut. Had the reporters tortured Dad before his execution? As horrid as his father’s crimes were, Tom knew he didn’t enjoy murdering the DeVilles.

“Get lost. Now,” the nurse said in a firm voice.

“All right, all right.” Footsteps shuffled away.

“He’s gone.” Lieutenant Steinmetz smiled down at Tom. “Better?”

He worked up a grin. “With nursing care like this, how could I not feel better?”

She flapped her hand and walked away. “My mama warned me about charmers.”

“Smart mama.” But he meant every word about nursing care. He had no doubt the Lord sent Annie and Mellie and Lieutenant Steinmetz. Without Mellie’s physical intervention, he might have died. Without all three women’s spiritual intervention, he might have withered.

Tom rolled his left shoulder, pushing against the pain to regain strength and mobility. He would live for Sesame, for his mom, for Annie, to honor Mellie’s faith in him, and for the Lord.

To live, to really live, he had to make changes.

He pulled his mother’s latest letter out of the box and scanned her familiar script. After he heard from his grandparents, he’d taken two weeks to write his mother. Likewise, she’d delayed in replying.

It must have been hard for her to write. In her letter she confirmed her love for Tom’s dad, her fears due to her father’s violence, her lack of mercy, and her failures as a mother. Regret flowed with every loop of her handwriting. She meant only the best, but she’d failed him. Could he forgive her?

Tom laid a fresh sheet of stationery on the box and pulled the cap off his pen.

My dearest, most beloved Mom,

Of course I forgive you for wanting to protect me, even though you made some mistakes doing so. I don’t hold you accountable for my father’s failures, crimes, or death. Each man lives his own life and is responsible for his own deeds.

Likewise, I must live my own life, responsible for my own deeds.

I understand why you raised me to always smile and be cheerful. You meant to show the world I wasn’t my father so I could succeed.

All my life, I’ve suppressed sadness, anger, and distress, striving to be inoffensive. Yet I offended because I would not be strong when strength was required, or angry when anger was warranted.

This is a way to function, not to live. I want to live.

From now on, I will mourn and rage and laugh like everyone else, true to how God made me. I will stand up for what’s right, even if I lose every friend. I will seek love, even if my heart is shattered. And I will— “Tom?”

He looked up. A smile rose, natural and unforced. “Mellie. What brought you here?”

“An evac flight.” A twitch of a smile, which melted into a real one. “Goodness, you look so much better.”

“I feel better too. Come, sit down.” Tom scooted his rump back to the head of the bed, set aside his stationery box, and patted the foot of the bed. “I’m glad you came. I wanted to thank you.”

“Thank me?” She bent to sit. She had curves in all the right places and plenty of them.

Tom jerked his gaze back to her face where it belonged. “Yeah. Thank you. For bullying me into the hospital.”

She smoothed her blue trousers and winked. “All in a day’s work.”

Why did she have to be so cute? “Well, you earned your pay and then some.”

“It’s worth it to see you healthy again.” She leaned a bit forward. “I stopped by Ponte Olivo yesterday. Sesame says to get back soon. Larry takes good care of him, but no one spoils him like you.”