The raccoon was extraordinarily fat and lazy. Not for him the joyous cavorting about of his peers. There was nothing Mr. Jim loved more than his long siestas on the roof of the family latrine. Each day, Rosa stood a little closer as she watched him eat his snack. Before long she was within touching distance of him. One afternoon she did not put the apple pieces on a plate, but held them out to him instead. To her delight, he shuffled closer and carefully took each slice from her fingertips.
Soon, much of Rosa’s day began to revolve around the plump little creature. She spent hours watching him pad about the yard, casually sniffing out food and making himself at home. The only time he grew agitated was when other raccoons tried to eat Rosa’s fruit. Then he quickly saw the intruders off, growling and snapping at them until they retreated. Rosa was pleased—Mr. Jim knew that the food was meant for him alone. Before long she was able to feed him sugar cubes out of the palm of her hand, and played with him like a regular pet.
The two of them quickly became devoted to each other. The minute Rosa stepped out of the kitchen door Mr. Jim would materialize, as if he had been waiting all day for her to appear. They would find a warm spot in the sun, and there Rosa would feed him and scratch his stomach. Mr. Jim lay on his back, his little legs akimbo, sighing blissfully.
One morning the little raccoon hobbled gingerly across the yard, and held his front paw up for Rosa’s inspection. It was dark with blood. “Oh, you poor thing,” whispered Rosa. “What did you do?” She went inside and fetched the family first-aid kit. Mr. Jim watched as she looked through Jette’s box of home remedies. (My aunt, of course, was very well-acquainted with all of the various rubs and tinctures in that box.) She pulled out some alum peroxide and iodine. “Here, boy,” she said. “Let’s get you tidied up.”
The raccoon did not move as Rosa cleaned the wound and then tightly bandaged his paw in gauze. When she had finished, Mr. Jim limped cautiously around the yard with a mournful look on his face. Rosa went to fetch her mother.
“Look at him,” she said. “He’s too hurt to go back out into the wild.”
Jette watched the raccoon shuffle lopsidedly by. “What are you proposing, Rosa?” she asked.
“Can’t he come and live with us?”
“I thought he already did,” said Jette dryly.
“No, but I mean
really
live with us,” said Rosa. “He could be the family pet. We could take it in turns to—”
Jette shook her head. “I like Mr. Jim just fine, but he’s not coming indoors.”
“Just until he gets better,” pleaded Rosa.
Jette sighed. “All right, look. If you want to make a little bed for him on the porch, that would be fine. Just until his paw gets better. But he stays outside.”
They found a wooden crate, and Rosa spent the rest of the day transforming the box into a luxury raccoon accommodation. To her delight, Mr. Jim climbed right into the warm bed of straw that she had prepared for him. After that, Rosa dedicated herself to nursing Mr. Jim back to health. She checked and cleaned the wound every day and lavished double rations of fruit on the invalid.
Of course, that raccoon was no fool. He knew a good thing when he saw it. Even once his foot had healed, he returned to his comfortable crate every night. Jette had planned to throw the makeshift bed away, but she could see how much Rosa adored the little creature. In fact, she had grown quite fond of him herself. And so the crate was allowed to stay on the back porch, and my aunt continued to lavish all her untapped reserves of affection on the lucky creature. Thanks to Mr. Jim, Rosa finally found a way to escape her loneliness and heartache.
W
hen Frederick’s first letter arrived, Jette had been too angry to open it. During those first days without him, her fury had propelled her onward in a whirlwind of indignation, eclipsing sorrow. The next day, a second letter was delivered, and she dropped it unopened on top of the first. Another envelope joined the pile the next morning, then another.
After two weeks, Jette felt her resolve wobble. She moved the letters to the ledge above the fireplace, where she wouldn’t have to look at them all day. Each morning a new envelope arrived. Jette found herself wishing that Frederick would miss a day, just once. But he never did. The letters sat in chronological order beneath the terra-cotta angel’s wing. Not one of them had been opened.
By the spring of 1918, however, Frederick’s unswerving dedication to his epistolary task had begun to provide Jette with a measure of lonely comfort. Her anger had not survived the long winter nights. Now she simply missed him, and wanted him home again. She still did not open the envelopes when they arrived—it was too late for that—but now she began to dread the morning when the postman’s hands would be empty. While the letters kept coming, she knew that Frederick was still alive. And so that unread library became a testament to hope.
THIRTEEN
When Frederick’s train arrived in Kansas City, a committee of officers barked and cajoled the new recruits into straggling lines. They were led to a hall across from the station, where temporary lodgings had been established. Exhausted by his uncomfortable night in the outdoor latrine and the journey west, Frederick slept deeply, too tired to dream.
The following morning the men were woken before the sun had risen, and for the next three hours they paraded up and down a hastily cleared strip of land in their civilian clothes. A granite-faced captain screamed orders at them. By the middle of the morning the sun had risen high in the sky, baking the makeshift parade ground in stupefying heat. Frederick marched and spun to the left and right, his heart filled with foreboding. That night he lay on his bed and wrote another letter home.
Frederick was at least ten years older than all the other recruits. The men didn’t know whether to laugh at him for his advanced years or respect him for volunteering. He passed the physical, but only just. The army needed men; it wasn’t going to set the bar too high. After five days of marching and saluting, Frederick filed through the quartermaster’s store and was finally handed his uniform. He was now an infantryman in the 35th Division of the United States Army. His platoon was moved out of their quarters and put on a train heading south.
For the next seven months, Frederick’s home was a vast encampment of tents on a bleak, windswept plateau of rock, high above the Oklahoma plains. During that winter he forgot most of what he knew of himself, and learned how to be a soldier. He marched for miles across barren landscapes, buffeted by high winds and blinded by dust storms. He dug trenches in the frozen ground, unable to feel his frostbitten fingers. He rehearsed drills for poisonous gas attacks. He skewered countless sacks, practicing how to twist his bayonet into a man’s stomach without catching the blade. He learned a number of ways to kill a man.
By springtime, Frederick was unrecognizable. Clean-shaven now, his face had lost its cherubic rotundity. His gut had vanished. An alien matrix of muscle grew across his chest and shoulders. Every evening he lay in his tent, shivering beneath threadbare blankets, and wrote to Jette, a single candle his only source of light and warmth. After a brief report on the day’s activities, he would return to the old familiar themes as the cold seeped into his veins. Night after night he scribbled pages of explanations, arguments, and justifications. He wrote until his fingers were too numb for him to continue. The next morning he would take the letter—the envelope still unsealed for the censor’s eyes—to the postal tent.
Not once did Jette write back.
A
s 1918 wore on, Frederick grew tired of the endless drills and exercises. He was ready for real opponents, not just the villainous figments of his commander’s imagination. Finally his unit boarded a train east, to New York City, and one fall evening the liner
George Washington
set out from Pier 17 of the South Street Seaport. Frederick stood on the deck, watching the lights of Lower Manhattan twinkle into nothingness, and bade America good-bye.
The atmosphere on board the ship was celebratory. The men were part of the largest military operation in American history, and they were proud of it. None of them had fought in a war before. The
George Washington
made slow progress across the ocean, cautiously tacking one way and then another to avoid enemy submarines.
Frederick spent hours alone on the aft deck, gazing at the trail of churning white water that the ship left in its wake, edging its way back to old horizons. The moment he had stepped on board and felt the swell beneath his feet, memories of the voyage on the
Copernicus
rushed up in ambush. Retracing that journey alone, there was nothing to do but gaze back toward the family he had left behind.
When the ship arrived in France, the quayside at Brest was lined with crowds waving French and American flags. A brass band played and pretty girls blew kisses at the soldiers. A man with a huge wicker basket over his arm stood at the front of the crowd, handing out freshly baked pastries to the disembarking troops.
Frederick stared at the ground beneath his feet. The soil of mainland Europe: he was back where he had begun, ready to make good on a debt that nobody had asked him to repay. In that cheering crowd of strangers, he had never felt so lonely.
Many of the soldiers were directed immediately onto waiting trains to begin their journey to the front. Frederick’s platoon was not due to depart until the following morning, and most of the men disappeared into the town, looking for excitement. Frederick carried his canvas bag to his appointed lodgings, sat down on his bed, and wrote another letter to Jette.
The following morning the platoon assembled at the train station. The soldiers waited on the platform, stifling yawns, their young faces drawn with exhaustion and pleasure. Frederick listened as they exchanged stories. The women of Brest had welcomed the Americans into their homes, and then into their beds. The men bragged to each other about their conquests, oblivious to the reason for the women’s hunger: their own husbands had already been killed in the war they were now heading toward.
Frederick spent the day watching France unfold outside the train window. By mid-morning most of the men had fallen asleep, exhausted by the exertions of the night before. The carriage was silent but for the rhythmic clatter of the wheels as they pounded across the dilapidated rails. In the fields, children and women dressed in black toiled beneath the warm sun. A sea of purple thyme lapped up against the railway lines. As evening fell, they passed close to Paris. The train swept eastward through densely packed forests, dark with shadow. Hours later, they arrived at their destination, a deserted railway station illuminated only by a pair of dimly glowing gaslights. The soldiers peered out at the darkness. They remained on the platform for an hour, unloading equipment. A wooden cart piled high with apples had been left by the station entrance. In minutes all the fruit had disappeared into pockets. The clock above the platform read half past midnight by the time the group had assembled into long lines of men, guns, and horses. Frederick’s bag felt heavy on his back. The procession shambled off into the darkness, led by two officers on horseback. Frederick was near the front of the line, among the infantrymen. The only sound was the thunderous tattoo of a thousand feet as they fell on the tarmac of a deserted country road.
After two hours, it began to rain.
The soldiers pitched their tents in a forest of closely packed spruce trees just as the sun was rising. The thick canopy of branches offered some respite from the rain, but by then it was too late. Frederick’s uniform was sodden and cold against his skin. He could not remember ever being so wet.
They marched for five nights. Days were spent under the cover of woods or in abandoned farm buildings. Soldiers collapsed where they stood, grateful for the oblivion of deep-boned exhaustion. As the journey went on, the line became a ragtag congregation of listless, wandering souls. Each man walked with his head lowered against the incessant rain, alone with his thoughts.
As the convoy approached the front, they marched through a landscape of dead trees, the fractured bleakness punctuated only by the grim ruins of abandoned towns. The weary clump of marching feet echoed off the walls of half-destroyed buildings. The streets were empty, save for armies of feral dogs, thin-ribbed with hunger, which yowled at the passing soldiers. The men walked by, dead-eyed with exhaustion.
On the last night, they passed a bedraggled line of captured Germans marching in the opposite direction. The prisoners’ uniforms were muddied and torn. Their hands were shackled in front of them. Frederick stared as the captured men shuffled by. Someone muttered
Amerikanisch
, the word fattened with fear and loathing. Frederick’s heart was suddenly awash with sorrow. He was the enemy now.
At the front, they underwent final training to an unending chorus of explosions and gunfire from two or three miles farther north, a faint but persistent echo of death. There was little laughter now. That night in Brest seemed like a lifetime ago.
Frederick’s unit was stationed in the southwest corner of the Argonne Forest in northern France. The battlefields of Europe were soon to fall silent, washed in the blood of a generation. By then the Germans knew that they were going to lose the war, but the tail of the dying beast was still lashing out, as fatal as ever. Enemy troops had scattered into the devastated countryside. They were savage, mutinous, and interested only in saving their own skins. Nobody wanted to be the last man to die. The United States First Army had been assigned the task of mopping up final pockets of resistance.
On October 13, in the first light of morning, Frederick finally stepped into the theater of war. His unit crept through the trees, the last of the year’s leaves beneath their boots. The forest was softened by a fragile white mist. Every cautious step took them farther into enemy territory. They approached the first German post on their knees, inching silently forward, suspecting a trap, but all that remained was a devastation of barbed wire and broken concrete, deserted and desolate. The men wandered through the camp. A blackened pot still hung over the charred remains of a burned-out fire. It was the only recognizable thing in the place. Everything else had been broken into a thousand useless fragments.
The pattern repeated itself as the day wore on. Each camp they encountered had been abandoned with increasingly destructive fury. By the time the sun began to set, the men knew that there would be no Germans waiting to surprise them. Frederick could not help but be disappointed. He scoured the barren trees, still hoping for a glimpse of the enemy.
The leader of the unit was a carpenter from Joplin named Daniel Jinks. He was the only one of them who had a map. Their instructions were to spend the night in the forest, but when Jinks announced that there was a church nearby, the decision was unanimous, and they veered a mile or so off their projected course. When they arrived at the squat stone building, they saw that they were not the only ones who had been tempted by the promise of a night beneath a solid roof. Outside the church’s front door, an American flag had been raised on an improvised pole. Soldiers leaned against the wall, rifles at their feet. Some smoked, others hungrily chased the last scraps of rations around their canteens. A row of small windows spanned the length of the building, warm with light from inside.
Candles were lit the length of the church’s nave, casting shadows across the whitewashed walls as the night stole in. Soldiers sprawled across the pews. Some men faced the altar, cleaning their guns. One or two were writing on scraps of paper, squinting at their words in the half-light. Others knelt or bowed their heads in prayer.
At the far end of the room a man was playing a piano, surrounded by a handful of soldiers. Frederick recognized the tune. It was an aria from
The
Barber of Seville
. He walked toward the music. The piano player was a major—and, like Frederick, older than the other men. He wore thick glasses. Frederick watched for some minutes, and then joined in.
Ah, ah! Che bella vita!
At this, the pianist’s face broke into a smile. He nodded at Frederick, inviting him to continue. When they had finished the Rossini, the pianist suggested some other pieces. It wasn’t long before Frederick was up to his old tricks, striding up and down in front of the piano and gesticulating as he sang. The soldiers applauded, egging him on, grateful for the distraction from what tomorrow might bring. Frederick was happy to oblige. He hadn’t sung a note since he had left Missouri. Now the joy of music coursed through him again. He hardly saw the men in front of him. He was performing for a private audience of three, half a world away. He sang his heart out.
Finally the major closed the piano lid, and waved away the protests of the soldiers. “You men need sleep,” he cried. He smiled at Frederick. “You have a fine voice.”
“Thank you,” said Frederick. “You play very well.”
The man shrugged. “I do all right. It’s nice to find someone who can sing.” He gestured at the men. “You would have thought a bunch of Irish Catholics from Kansas City would have been good for one decent singer, but no.”
“You are from Missouri?” said Frederick.
The major nodded. “Born and bred.”
“I, too, am from Missouri.” Frederick beamed.
“You don’t sound as if you’ve been there long.”
Frederick frowned. “My accent is strong, yes. But I am an American citizen, and proud of it.”
The pianist held up his hands. “I don’t doubt it. I’m sorry. That uniform looks good on you, soldier.”
Frederick saluted. “Meisenheimer, Thirty-fifth Division.”
“Truman, Battery D.”
The two men shook hands and were silent for a moment. “Have you been in France long?” asked Frederick.
“About six months,” replied the major. “Long enough to be sick of it. I mean, don’t get me wrong. France is a grand place for Frenchmen. I don’t blame them for fighting for it. But I miss home.” He looked at Frederick. “You seem a little old for all this.”
Frederick stood up taller. “I volunteered,” he said.
The pianist slapped his thigh in pleasure. “Me, too! But I wasn’t just too old.” He pointed at his glasses. “I had to cheat on the eye test. Memorized the chart.” He chuckled softly. “Right now, there’s nowhere else in the world a man could want to be. I’m proud of my country, proud of what it stands for, and I’m ready to fight for it. Not that my girl quite saw it that way,” he added. “Here.” He pulled a photograph out of his tunic pocket and offered it up for Frederick’s inspection. “I’m going to marry her when I get home. Heart of gold, but a tongue of acid.” He pulled a rueful grin. “Not afraid to make her feelings known, that one.”
Frederick nodded. “My wife is the same. She could not understand why I had to come.”
“You wait,” said the major. “She will. One day people will look back and realize that this war was the most important struggle the world has known.” He looked around him. “God knows how many of these men will make it through tomorrow, or the next day. But we’re here for a reason. You and me, we’ll be able to look back when this madness is over and say, we were there, we did our bit.” He glanced at his watch. “And now I must make sure my men get a good night’s sleep.”