Letters From Home (12 page)

Julia glanced at the cuckoo clock on the wall above her. “Blast it, that’s my taxi.” She tossed Morgan’s pages onto the coffee table and dashed around the corner. “Just need to grab my bag!”

Liz was halfway to the entry when the second set of knocks rattled a shelf full of Nana’s porcelain Kewpie dolls. “I’m coming, I’m coming!”

At the door, she greeted the craggy-faced cabbie. His response of a grunt made it clear he preferred a short route to an extravagant fare. He skulked back to the North Shore cab parked along the curb with engine idling.

Julia came barreling out of her room, cloche hat over her curls, luggage tipping her shoulders. From the sides of her brown rectangular suitcase dangled swatches of colorful garments. She must have plunked her entire body down on the overpacked container to close it.

“Aren’t you only going for three days?” Liz laughed.

“They’ll be my in-laws soon,” Julia reminded her. “I have to keep up a good impression.” A quick hug and she tottered out of the house.

Liz waved good-bye as the taxi took off like a pitted stock car reentering the track. She hadn’t so much as shut the door when a voice whispered in her mind:
All alone in the garden.

The words led her thoughts to an image.

Morgan’s letter.

Splayed bare on the table.

Perhaps Julia was right; maybe something had happened to him. He could have been hurt in combat. A wounded patriot sharing his woes. And who knew when Betty would be back to find out? Nobody could guarantee what “the duration” would be. Six months, a year, two years from now. Besides, with Julia gone, the duty of resealing the envelope fell to Liz. What difference would a quick scan make before rubber cementing it closed?

The letter
was
already open.

Grasping reasoning that would soon slip away, Liz sped back to the living room. She picked up the papers and hopped into the rocking chair. The cushion remained warm, as if expecting her return.

Dear Betty,

I’m sorry for taking such a long time to answer. From your postmark, I see you sent your letter back in July. The only thing more amazing than how long mail can take to reach us is that it reaches us at all. I’m certainly glad yours did. Your words really lifted me up and reminded me of the world we left behind.

It’s funny what I’ve come to miss these days—the murky swimming hole by the old bridge or Sunday suppers of corned beef and cabbage. I remember hoping that just once we could eat something different on Sundays, that my dad would find another favorite meal that wasn’t so Irish. Now, stuck in the middle of a war-blasted country, all I can think about is having it again!

Of course, I’m not the only one reminiscing over food. Seems like all the fellas here have wish lists of what they’re going to eat the second they get home. We’ve spent hours on end talking about chicken ‘n’ dumplings and glazed meat loaf and chocolate chip cookies hot out of the oven like my mom used to make. Probably sounds foolish to you—torturing ourselves with what we can’t have. Then again, if you too relied on canned Spam and cold green beans to get you through the day, I bet you’d jump right in. Boy, what you miss when it’s gone.

Some evenings over here while camped in a pasture there have been moments I almost believed I was back on our farm. And for a few seconds I get the old feeling of relaxing on a tractor at the day’s end, with the engine off and my head laid back, just taking it all in. Did you know you can actually feel the sun going down if you shut your eyes and sit perfectly still? I never told anyone that before. Guess I kept it to myself like it was some big secret, since most folks only enjoy a sunset with eyes wide open. Not that I blame them. The evening sky can sure be calming with its mix of bright colors. In the midst of battle, sometimes that sunset is the only proof we’ve got that there really is a God. Who else could make something so beautiful?

When I was a kid, my mom once told me that God was an artist and how on occasion He’d throw a bucketful of paint across the sky for us all to see. I asked her why the paint disappeared by morning, and she told me that if the sky was always like that we might take it for granted. I suppose she was right. Maybe that’s what war is all about—so we can appreciate times of peace.

These are just some of the thoughts that crossed my mind when I read your letter. Those jukebox days and radio tunes you mentioned—they do seem far away now. Thanks to you, though, I’m reminded they’re still out there. I wish we could get back to them sooner than later, but unfortunately that’s not up to me. As you said, we’re given little say-so in life. Now in the Army, I realize that more than ever. Guess I’ll just have to focus on the things I can control, like keeping my brother on track and sticking to the belief that we’re going to make it home in one piece.

Anyway, I’d best sign off. Thanks a million for sending such a wonderful letter. Already I look forward to the arrival of your reply. Kindly,

Morgan McClain

Liz sat in silence. With such openness, his candor infectious, the letter was unlike any she had ever read. His tender words channeled the memory of his voice. His descriptions, inciting mental brushstrokes, transported her to another place. On that tractor he’d held her in his arms, the sun gracing their faces as its rays descended beyond the fields. If only she could stay in that world, continue to see life’s beauty through his eyes.

She hugged the page to her chest.

What was she to do? Allow a post like this to go unanswered?

A soldier risking his life for their country at least deserved a response. Besides, there was no question Betty would have retracted her oath and begged for help in writing him back. The handwriting needed consistency, after all. And if Morgan ever sent another one, Betty would be thrilled that Liz had taken it upon herself to sustain their correspondence while—

A sparkle interrupted the thought, the binding sparkle of an emerald surrounded by five diamonds on her left pinkie. She ran her thumb over the ring she had described to her father on the phone.

I’m delighted.
That was his response when she shared her news, the expression almost identical to the one Dalton had relayed. No yelp of joy or twenty-one-gun salute, but based on the scale of her father’s limited emotional range, he was pleased.

She placed Morgan’s letter on her lap. Her eyes retraced his words. No doubt, her father would be far from delighted if he knew what she was considering. As would her mother, if she were around to intone her disapproval.

Then again, it wasn’t as though Liz would be breaking any rules. She wasn’t
lying
to Dalton. And composing a note on someone else’s behalf certainly wasn’t cheating.

Or was it?

13

October 1944
Belgium

“I
’ll do it!” Morgan replied so fast the words smeared into a single syllable.

Lieutenant Drake flicked an acknowledging nod. His gorillalike build filled the dark archway that had once featured the front door. The house was one of the few in the Belgian village to still have the majority of its stone walls and roof. A relative mansion.

“No firearms or helmets! Only edged weapons!” Drake barked as if Morgan were a hundred feet away rather than ten. According to scuttlebutt, the guy’s overpowering volume was the result of a grenade explosion in Saint-Lô that had deafened one of his ears. Morgan, though, suspected that the commander’s inflated ego was just as much to blame. “Briefing outside the CP in five minutes, Private!”

“Yes, sir.”

Drake spun around to leave.

Morgan rubbed his hands a final time over the potbellied stove. Glancing at Frank and Charlie standing beside him all nice and warm, he realized what a numskull he was, snagging the last spot for the midnight recon patrol. Out of instinct, he’d volunteered before his brother had a chance—for weeks the kid had been antsy for an assignment more exciting than message running and tele phone guarding—but with the cold temperature and six-inch-deep mud, no way Charlie would have spoken up.

Too late to reconsider. Morgan wasn’t about to say,
Hey, Lieutenant! Never mind!
He wasn’t that much of a numskull.

He threw on his moist, mildewy jacket, wishing he’d laid it out to dry earlier. In the back corner of the room, he carefully un-clipped a trio of pineapple grenades and placed them in his helmet, next to his propped rifle. Behind him, Jack was pilfering a pile of debris-smattered belongings—civilians’ lone shoes, tattered books, jagged records. Abandoned normality.

“Hey, get a load of this,” Jack exclaimed, approaching Charlie with his find. He held its serpentine handle, displaying the large white porcelain bowl brightened by a castle scene in colonial blue. “Thing looks like a big ol’ teacup. Gotta be from the Brits, don’t you think?”

“It’s a thunder pot,
Jack-ass,”
Charlie corrected him.

“A what?”

“You know. To take a crap in.”

“No way,” Jack shot back, studying the item. Then, “Shit.”

“Precisely, genius.”

Jack tossed it back onto the heap, his face contorted. The handle snapped off upon landing. The rim cracked.

At the wooden block near the doorway, Morgan paused to grab his only permissible weapon. He’d found the trench knife and worn scabbard in a cupboard, and the blade had proven razor-sharp at suppertime. Unfortunately, arming himself with the knife didn’t lessen his unease; stripped of his usual gear, he still felt as naked and defenseless as a newborn.

“Be careful out there,” Charlie stressed in his direction.

Morgan nodded once, a confident gesture.

“Goddamn it, Chap.” Jack snatched his socks off the stovepipe. “You said you were gonna yank these off for me before they started smokin'.”

“What am I, your mother? Watch your own damn socks.”

“You just wait, ya little pissant,” Jack said, inspecting them. “If I find one hole burned in these, we’re swapping and they’re gonna be
your
damn socks.”

“You two ever shut your traps?” Frank growled. “I swear to God, it’s like living with two old biddies.”

These were the last words Morgan heard as he ventured down the cobblestone road.

In the center of town, the volunteers huddled around their commander, a quarterback calling a play. Drake gave explicit orders not to engage the enemy, just to scout the vicinity and report back before dawn. Simple enough.

Morgan joined in with another programmed
Yes, sir.

After a few minutes of memorizing the lieutenant’s map, they received their general area assignments and, not to be forgotten, the daily secret password. While it lacked the steel moxie of a loaded tommy gun, it provided the promise of safe admission into and out of their territory, patrolled by American sentries.

Personally, Morgan preferred to have both.

The group trailed behind Drake in a single-file column, silent surveyors. Shadows thick with memories draped crumbling houses and decaying orchards, blasted farm fields. While being pushed out by the encroaching Allies, a German army had poisoned the wells and crops, slaughtered every animal in sight. Apparently, if the Krauts couldn’t have the Belgian territory, they’d make damn sure it had nothing left to offer.

At the village border, the men dispersed. Morgan knelt on the cold ground and began a long, taxing crawl reminiscent of the basic training drills he despised. He’d grown up in the dirt, entrenched in farming soil, never guessing he would loathe it as he did right now.

He slithered on his stomach through the muddy terrain of a heavily wooded area. Night creatures rustling, the smell of damp moss engulfed him. Fear festered inside, a low-grade fever, so constant he hardly noticed its presence.

“Laurel,” a male voice rasped from the invisible outpost, prompting the designated password.

Morgan strained to see farther than ten paces ahead in the tar blackness. “Hardy,” he lobbed back. Cleared by the guard, he continued on.

The moon glowed dim and yellow through a thin break in the clouds. Arms tiring, he alternated between a hunchback’s walk and a crawl. He trusted his hands more than his boots to detect a trip wire.

Soon, from his left, came the distant gurgling of a stream. The sound revived memories of the creek near his uncle’s farmhouse, of those summer afternoons he’d spent perfecting his rock-skimming pitches. He smiled at the image of Charlie hunting for crawdads, gathering a bucketful to toss into the hair of girls he liked at school. They were hot, humid, carefree days that Morgan now missed as his mud-encrusted uniform drank up pools of rain left from the daily downpours.

For hours, he edged his way through an obstacle course of rocks and branches, mounds and trees. Area assessed, he was ready to head back to the assembly point. Empty embankments and a couple rank, bloated bodies of dead Wehrmacht soldiers were all he’d found. Nothing significant to report, and he liked it that way.

He rotated and started to retrace his path toward the village. It took only twenty feet, however, for him to realize he had lost his way along with his sense of direction. Every tree, stump, and boulder he’d noted as bread crumbs on his outbound trail now appeared cursedly identical to all the others around him.

Focus.
He just needed to focus.

With a steadying breath, he chose a route he wanted to believe looked familiar. He plodded warily through the woods. Darkness amplified nature’s sounds, twisted them into a solid mass pressing against his neck; there it remained until he spotted a wide clearing. The invisible rope cinching his shoulder blades loosened a notch. In no time, he’d be slipping back into their heated palace, able to knock off some shut-eye before breakfast lineup at the mess tent. The thought of food made his belly growl.

“Yeah, yeah,” he muttered to his stomach, just as men’s laughter echoed through the forest. He hugged the ground as a precaution, listened for the sound of GIs chatting it up. The voices drew nearer, but the words came in slices and fragments. Nothing he could make out.

“Warte, ich komme gleich wieder!”

Holy Jesus! They were Krauts!

Morgan jerked his hand toward his belt to grab his loaded pistol.

No firearms or helmets! Only edged weapons!
The lieutenant’s words hit him like a sledgehammer.

Shit! Shit!

The chances of fending off more than one soldier with a handheld blade were slim, and required a proximity that petrified him. But it would be his only option.

He reached for his trench knife, preparing for what he’d have to do if discovered. Across the throat, into the heart …

He patted the leather casing. Patted it again.

Empty! It was gone, the knife was gone!

His thoughts tumbled over themselves. It was there when he—but how did it—

No time for questions.

Pores opened on the back of his neck, the crown of his scalp. Sweat trickled down his face. His knife was out there somewhere in the mud and would soon be a German trooper’s souvenir. Just like him.

Dear God, please help me, please help me.

The snapping of twigs closed in. At least one of the Jerries was headed in his direction. Morgan’s heart pounded so hard he feared the enemy might hear it. He wanted to run. Oh Jesus, he wanted to jump up and run.

Body flat. Eyes down. Don’t move.
His father’s calm but firm warnings floated up to the surface of his mind. The very same words had saved Morgan’s life as a kid, the night he’d surprised a black bear investigating their family’s campsite.

Closer and louder, more twigs snapping. With only a thick tree dividing them, he could feel the Kraut’s shadowed form, the messenger of death.

Morgan clenched his eyes, willing his body to fade into the soil.

Our Father, Who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name—

A sound entered the air: the splattering of liquid. He opened his eyes to a squint, saw no one. He cricked his neck toward the right edge of the tree and caught his first glimpse of the foe—a gray- uniformed German only a few feet away, taking a leak, gazing up at the branches.

Two Wehrmacht soldiers stood in the background. They slurred some comments to their comrade before staggering off. In tandem, the pair belted out folk songs as though Oktoberfest had replaced world war. The smell of their cognac sickened Morgan, not for the scent, but for proof of their arrogance. Celebrating, at a time like this!

Then again, drunkenness impaired coordination. A surefire advantage. Maybe the Kraut wouldn’t notice if Morgan just lay still. Better yet, he could outrun him. But where to? He didn’t know where the hell he was.

As he shifted his torso to keep out of sight, something jabbed his rib. He shoved his fingers into the mud and found a fist-sized rock. A caveman’s weapon. He gripped the stone with every ounce of strength within him.

And he waited.

The soldier’s stream seemed in contention for a timed record breaker.

Finally, the splattering trailed to an end. Morgan reaffirmed his grasp on the rock, a grasp for his life. When the buckle of the trooper’s belt clanked, an exhale crept from Morgan’s mouth. Hope was growing. Just a few seconds more. The enemy would leave and Morgan could flee undetected.

Then at last, the Kraut turned around. He stumbled a couple steps before his boot caught a jutting tree root. Arms too slow to react, he fell onto his side with a squish. He raised his head, two feet from Morgan.

Their eyes locked.

The Jerry opened his mouth wide. He was going to scream for reinforcement. From a dark cellar in Morgan’s mind came a single word:

Survive.

He swung the rock with all his might, a blow to the Kraut’s temple. He struck again, harder. The sound was nothing he was prepared for; it was empty, inhuman, like hitting a hollow log with a baseball bat.

He raised the stone once more. This time he held it suspended in the air. Panting, he awaited movement. Several minutes and still his enemy lay motionless, eyes open, head firmly planted, a cracked boulder in the earth. Adrenaline tempted Morgan to strike him again, but humanity grabbed hold of his wrist, lowered his shaking hand to the ground.

On the trooper’s belt, he spied the nub of a pistol. A Luger. To hell with Drake’s firearm policy!

He dropped the rock and reached for the weapon, like a starving man scrambling for food. If he were taken prisoner, possessing the Luger would bar any possibility of mercy. But he was willing to take his chances.

Now to get his ass out of here.

Slowly, he peered around the tree, keeping the loaded pistol pointed at the Jerry’s head. A German camp had to be close by, yet the starless night swallowed the view.

In the distance, a light appeared. A flame, floating on a current of black air. Into its orange glow came a harsh-angled face. It was another Kraut, a sentry on patrol, igniting a cigarette. Muted voices indicated the guy wasn’t alone, but still far enough away to give Morgan a chance to escape.