She read Psalms and sang hymns from memory. The day she thought to bring her Bible, his eyes lit up. She opened to the twenty-third Psalm and laid it before him. Later, when she reached to take it, he pressed his hand on it so she couldn't. That was also the day she told Joyce the candy striper to leave his dinner and see if he ate it on his own.
Joyce left it and Bruce waited and watched his mother, as if expecting her to feed him. “I'm going to sing to you,” she said. “You have to feed yourself tonight.”
As she sang he idly picked up his spoon and began with his dessert. “That's my Bruce,” she said.
Joyce came in to see how they were doing and smiled when she saw him eating. She and Elisabeth had been getting him up and walking him to the bathroom each evening.
“Wait here a moment, Joyce,” Elisabeth said. “I want to try something after this song.”
She sang:
Open my eyes, that I may see glimpses of truth Thou hast for me;
Place in my hands the wonderful key that shall unclasp, and set me free
.
Open my ears, that I may hear voices of truth Thou sendest clear;
And while the wave notes fall on my ear, everything else will disappear.
Open my mouth, and let me bear gladly the warm truth everywhere;
Open my heart, and let me prepare love with Thy children thus to share.
Silently now I wait for Thee, ready, my God, Thy will to see;
Open my eyes, illumine me, Spirit divine!
When Bruce finished eating, they helped him out of bed, each supporting an arm. “Let go, Joyce,” Elisabeth said. “I've got him.”
Joyce was reluctant but slowly pulled free. “Now, Bruce, I want you to stand on your own,” Elisabeth said.
“He'll fall,” Joyce said.
“Get your balance, son.”
When Elisabeth pulled away, he reached for her and wobbled, fear in his eyes. “I'm right here,” she said. “You can do it.”
He shuddered and jerked to keep his balance, as if he might tumble any second. Elisabeth backed off, and there he stood. It would be a while before he could walk on his own, but for now he was standing unaided. And that was progress.
E
lisabeth dreaded the day Bruce would ask about Trudy. Apparently the girl had no stomach for adult life. Meanwhile, Elisabeth made it her business to get to know everyone who had anything to do with Bruce's care. She was especially interested in finding someone who would read Scripture to Bruce when she was not there.
Whispering at Bruce's bedside one evening, candy striper Joyce Adams told her, “I'm switching to mornings. I got a waitressing job in the evenings.”
“But you'll still volunteer here?”
“I like helping people.”
“You could help both Bruce and me if you would do me a favor.”
“I will if I can.”
“If I left you a list of verses, would you read them to Bruce when you have time?”
“Verses? Poems, you mean?”
“Bible verses.”
Joyce hesitated. “I suppose.”
“And Bruce likes to go and sit in the chapel when the chaplain speaks on Thursday mornings.”
“I'll see that he gets there.”
The next week, Joyce left a note for Elisabeth. “Bruce helped me find a verse today. I didn't know where Ephesians was, so I was looking in the front of his Bible. He reached over and turned to it for me. See if he'll do it again.”
Bruce had stopped struggling to speak, and Elisabeth worried he had given up. “You can nod or shake your head, can't you, Bruce? Can you talk to me that way?”
He looked away.
“If you're not ready, just shake your head.” She saw the hint of a smile. He had caught her.
“That didn't make any sense, did it?” she said. “Shake your head if you're not ready to shake your head! Mother is batty, isn't she?”
He shrugged and she saw the upturned lips again.
“That's progress, Bruce. When you're good and ready, I'll be here.”
That gave her an idea. She had made him stand by backing away. She had made him eat by busying herself with something else and implying that if he was hungry he had to feed himself.
“I'm going to go see your father for a few minutes before I leave. I'll come back to say good-by, but only if you want me to.”
He looked at her.
“Do you want me to?”
He held her gaze.
“I guess not. All right then, I'll see you tomorrow.”
He lifted his chin and struggled. Had she made him regress? “All you have to do is nod. Otherwise, I'll see you tomorrow.”
He struggled.
“You don't have to speak yet, Bruce. All I need is a nod.”
He nodded. Though thrilled, she didn't make a big deal of it. “All right. I'll be back in a few minutes.” He nodded again.
When she returned, she said, “I have some reading to do tonight. I could do it here until you fall asleep, or I could do it at home. I think I should leave, don't you?”
He shook his head. She knew it wouldn't be long before he spoke.
How long had it been since she had felt so needed? She read for a while. When it was past time that Bruce should be sleeping, she stepped to the side of his bed. “I'm praying for Joyce. You know who she is?”
He nodded.
The doctor was pleased with Bruce's progress over the next couple of weeks. He was still not speaking and strained mightily when he tried. But he got up and went back to bed on his own, fed himself, dressed and bathed himself, and even read.
“If you can read,” Elisabeth said, as they sat in the dayroom, “you can write. Let's try something simple. Write your name. Or my name. Here. Try.”
He sat staring at her, then wrote, “Where's Tru?”
“Do you really want to know?” she said.
He nodded.
“It's not good news.”
He shrugged.
“Tell me one more time you really want to know.”
He nodded again.
“She couldn't handle it.”
He pointed to his ring finger.
“I've heard she's not still wearing it.”
His face contorted as if he wanted to cry, and he leaned back on the couch.
“God knows,” Elisabeth said.
Bruce turned away.
She wanted to tell him she knew from experience that God sometimes protects his children from wrong choices. But Elisabeth felt terrible. “I shouldn't have told you.”
He sat up and wrote, “I asked.”
“That's true. I couldn't lie, could I?”
He nodded and smiled ruefully.
“That's my Bruce.”
He wrote, “I'll win her back.”
Elisabeth hesitated. “That's the spirit,” she said.
“Tell her I want to see her,” he wrote.
She shook her head. “It's not my job to play switchboard for you two. You tell her. If you're not ready to talk, write it down.”
Bruce wrote Trudy three notes over the next week, and Elisabeth mailed them. Trudy ignored them all.
In a note to his mother he wrote, “I want to talk to you.”
“When you're ready,” she said.
One afternoon a month later, pleading silently with God to loose Bruce's tongue, Elisabeth found him napping on a couch in the dayroom. A long note to her lay in his lap. It read:
“Dear Mom, I want to speak so badly I could explode. I even want to talk about what I did, but it seems unspeakable. The doctor wants me to try something simple, but getting close to a normal word makes me want to cry. He suggested trying to whisper. Maybe when I'm alone I'll try.
“But there's nothing to talk about as important as what I went through. It's like I would be desecrating the memories of heroes if I spoke of anything else. I love hearing you speak. I love hearing Joyce Adams speak, even with that clipped accent and those choppy sentences (don't let her see this).
“You were crafty in telling her to look up that list of my favorite verses. They are my favorites all right, but wasn't it interesting that they were arranged just so? Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:8, 9, etc., etc. You set her up, didn't you? All have sinned, sin leads to death, we can't save ourselves. Pretty neat. She's asking me all kinds of questions, and I'm scribbling answers and pointing her to new verses. The other day when she walked me down to the chapel, no one else showed up but the chaplain. He was almost not going to give his devotional, but I gave him a note, telling him I really needed it. She listened and took notes. She's close, Mom.
“She told me she wanted to test God and see if he would give me back my speech. I wrote her that it's not right to test God, but she said she was going to pray that if he were real, he would prove it to her. I don't see how he can ignore a prayer like that.
“The chaplain's retiring. I hope they get somebody else soon. I want to get out of here, but until I do, I want to keep going to that chapel.
“I'm spending more and more time wandering, lying around, sitting. I'm bored, but I'm so tired sometimes I can hardly move. They say it's part of my âproblem.' I feel so helpless. I want to get better fast, but I'm not supposed to rush it. I still want to go to Moody and serve God, but there's no sense studying to preach before I can say two words.
“I'm writing this with the sun at my back. That means you'll be here soon. I wish you'd sing me that song you said was new when you were a teenager. Remember it? That same guy who wrote âWhen I Survey the Wondrous Cross' wrote it, and it always used to make me cry. I want to cry almost as bad as I want to speak, but I'm afraid once I start, I will never stop and wind up dead of dehydration.
“Mom, I need you to know that I did not lose my faith over there. But what we were doing could never have been what God had in mind for anybody.
“Right now I'm fighting to keep my eyes open, because I'm tired of napping during the day and not being able to sleep at night. I want to come home, and I know the doctor wants me to, but I'm afraid. People will visit and they'll be uncomfortable and they'll try to get me to talk. I'll try on my own, and then maybe sometime when you're here, weâ”
He had apparently fallen asleep at that point.
Elisabeth settled in across from him and began to hum the tune to “I Gave My Life For Thee.” Then she sang softly:
I gave My life for thee, My precious blood I shed,
That thou might'st ransomed be, and quickened from the dead;
I gave, I gave My life for thee, what has thou given for Me?
My father's house of light, My glory-circled throne
I left for earthly night, for wand'rings sad and lone;
I left, I left it all for thee, has thou left aught for Me?
I suffered much for thee, more than thy tongue can tell,
Of bitt'rest agony. To rescue thee from hell;
I've borne, I've borne it all for thee, what has thou borne for Me?
Bruce opened his eyes and sat up, taking his mother's hands as she sang. He moved his lips, as if singing along. It was all she could do to continue when tears formed in his eyes, the first since his return. She sang the last verse as he began to weep aloud.
And I have brought to thee, down from my home above
Salvation full and free, My pardon and My love;
I bring, I bring rich gifts to thee, what has thou brought to me?
Elisabeth pulled Bruce to her and wrapped her arms around his head, nestling him to her as she had when he was an infant. Suddenly he was wracked with sobs so great that he wailed the mournful cries of a child in the husky, unused voice of a young man. Elisabeth rocked him as his shoulders heaved and every gasp gave power to his howls.
She shielded him from curious eyes, and sensed this was a cleansing keening that, if it did not rid him of the horrors he had experienced, was at least a step toward healing.
When the worst finally subsided, she pulled him to his feet and walked him back to his room. He resisted being led to the bed, however, and sat across from her in a side chair. She held his hands again, and agony showed on his face as he labored to speak.
“I,” he began. “I, I, Iâ” She had the feeling that if he could get out a few words, a torrent would follow. “I kâ, kâ, kiâ”
She nodded and bit her lip. When she looked away he squeezed her hands and leaned close so she was forced to look into his face. When his laryngitic and tremulous words finally came, they haunted her, as if she were hearing a voice from hell.
“I killed Japanese,” he whispered desperately. “I shot some full in the face from a foot away! My friends were blown to pieces, their insides splashing on me. Oh, the smell, the heat! And they kept coming and shouting and shooting! I fired and fired, but they were just boys too. So much gunfire. I knew I had to be hit. Men on both sides cried and screamed like children, calling for their mothers. I was covered with blood and flesh. When the Japanese were dead, I turned to my friends. I checked the chest wound of one and my hand slipped inside his ribs and I felt when his heart stopped beating. He looked at me as if I had done it!”
Elisabeth wanted to soothe her son. As he gushed the awful story, he emitted whines and groans such as she had never heard, and she wanted to tell him it was all right and that he need not continue.
But she knew he did. From the corner of her eye she spotted the orderly, Charles, watching from the door. He hurried off, she hoped, to find the doctor. She didn't know whether Bruce might need to be sedated, if dredging these details might do more harm than good.
“Mom, I lay between and beneath my buddies and the only breathing I heard was my own. I expected to die. I expected to see Jesus, I really did. Mom, did you know that most men who die that way don't close their eyes? They stare at you and you wonder how you survived.
“Then I heard the transports, EVAC planes. They buzzed low as if looking for signs of life. Finally one landed in a clearing to my left and someone shouted, âMore Japs! Last call!'
“I fought my way through the gory mess, ran, and dove on board. Three marines jumped in behind me. They said, âYou saved our tails, Bishop!' But they didn't know the price. They thanked me, but I couldn't speak. The transport got off the ground and those guys looked down and swore. I couldn't move.
“âLook, Bishop,' they kept saying. But I couldn't. I was numb; I was afraid I was paralyzed. One of them grabbed me and pointed me toward the opening. There, coming up over the rise, were another two hundred enemy. We were the only four to get out, and we'd have been dead in another minute. When that guy let go of me, I fell over and couldn't pull myself up. I didn't move until I was in San Diego.”
Bruce was sweating and hyperventilating. Elisabeth felt his hands go weak. “Let's get you into bed,” she said, but he was a dead weight and just sat shaking his head. Charles and the doctor entered and soon had him in bed. The horror on his face had given way to a sadness that broke Elisabeth's heart. She wanted to tell him he'd had no choice, that he was a hero who had done his duty and could be proud. The day would come when the Allied powers would win this awful war and the U.S. would be largely responsible. But Elisabeth knew that paled next to what he had been through. Saying anything to try to make it better would have been as futile as the platitudes she had heard when her father died. Only Pastor Hill and one other had kept silent and grieved with her. Will.
Elisabeth sat by Bruce's bed all night and took the next day off work. He whispered and sang as the sun rose. Whatever had broken free had unfettered his tongue, but Elisabeth would never again raise the subject of his living nightmare, and she doubted he would either.
Joyce treated Bruce like a china doll when she learned he had finally spoken. He started to write her a note, but she swept his hand away.
“No more of that,” she said. “If you're talking, you can talk to me.”
“I just wanted to tell you that you looked cheery this morning, as usual,” he whispered.
“That's the best you can do? I look better than cheery, and you know it. Come up with a better word, and I'll introduce you to the new chaplain next week,” she said.