With Every Letter (22 page)

As he walked, Tom’s arms rubbed against the bulk of his mackinaw and made a chuffing sound like a locomotive. It had to be an illusion. Another wall farther back must have hidden the bad things. Or had his mother shielded him and sent him to his room when Dad was violent?

He had to know. But who would tell him? Not Mom, and he hadn’t seen his MacGilliver grandparents since he was five. They’d sent at least one birthday card. Tom had found it in the trash, memorized the address, and replaced the card among the potato peels and eggshells.

He understood. His mother didn’t trust people who’d raised a bum.

But maybe . . .

If they were alive. If they lived at the same address. Maybe they could fill in the holes.

“Hey, Gill! What’s the hurry?” Larry jogged up behind him with Sesame at his heels.

Tom worked up a smile. “Take your pick—anticipation of tonight’s dinner or a painful reminder of yesterday’s.”

Larry laughed. “No kidding.” Dysentery kept the battalion dispensary busy.

“Actually I’ve got to do the weekly report.”

“You need me, remember?” Larry’s face got as stern as it ever did. “Kicking me out of my job?”

“Lot of that around here.” Tom headed toward company headquarters.

“Yeah.” Larry glanced over his shoulder toward Quincy.

Tom grumbled. “I should tell Newman.”

Creases formed in the slim space between Larry’s eyebrows and his helmet. “He and Quincy came over to Kovatch together. He left Quincy here.”

The cold, snaky feeling returned to Tom’s belly, and it had nothing to do with last night’s stew. Was this Newman’s idea?

“That reminds me.” Larry patted his chest. “Newman gave me a letter for you. From Annie.”

“Yeah?” He held out his hand.

A smile crept up. “Shouldn’t you wait until we’re inside so the ink won’t run?”

“Yeah. Of course.”

Larry laughed. “Can’t fool me. Waiting is killing you.”

Tom glared at him. “So’s my platoon sergeant.”

“So’s the food.”

“Don’t even get me started on the mud.”

“And the neckties. General Patton’s in charge now, and suddenly we’ve got to wear neckties.”

“What does he think this is?” Tom spread his arms wide, imitating the whiners on the base. “A bank?”

“If it were a bank, we’d get a decent paycheck.” Larry raised his voice in mock outrage.

“That we would, brother. That we would.”

The men laughed together. Grousing was a full-time sport in North Africa.

At headquarters, Tom flipped back the flap and entered the tent. The smell of damp canvas and cigarette smoke pressed in. He took off his mackinaw, and then unbuckled Sesame’s belt and toweled him off. Sesame shook off the residual moisture and curled up on the towel.

Although his fingers itched for Annie’s letter, he had to
look unaffected. He sat at his field desk and pulled out a form for the weekly report. His platoon had worked hard this week and might catch up to the others. But was it due to his leadership or Quincy’s?

Larry stood in front of his desk and swung an envelope like a pendulum. “What could this be?”

Tom held out his hand. “Orders for the demotion of an annoying sergeant?”

“Ferris? Kovatch?”

“Fong.” He beckoned with his fingers.

“Yeah, yeah.” Larry handed over the letter. “I liked the old Gill better.”

“The old Gill died when Rommel rolled into Thélepte.” Tom sliced open the envelope with his pocketknife.

“So when are you going to meet her?”

“Annie?”

“No, Betty Grable.”

“I’m not. Don’t start on this again.” Tom opened the letter and immersed himself in the music of Annie’s words. She told of an unnamed officer who serenaded her friend in a cracking voice. He sang “These Foolish Things Remind Me of You” with his own lyrics. Annie’s friend had to be a spitfire, because the foolish things included his black eye, the glove she smacked him with, and a bottle of iodine.

Annie also described a stork nesting on the roof of a nearby building, and she drew a picture.

Then she told of her confidence in him, how his kind heart and strong spirit could allow him to become the finest kind of leader. With Annie’s encouragement, he believed it too.

Tom’s leg jiggled. He rubbed the stationery between his thumb and fingers, needing more than words.

The correspondence began with his craving for openness, which had been met. A new craving took shape.

He could see Mellie’s dark eyes, hear her song lift from that captivating mouth, feel her small hand. Feel the connection.

He wanted that with Annie. He wanted to see her, to hold her, to feel her warmth, to smell the fragrance of her hair and taste her mouth.

Once he’d been resigned to a life alone, imprisoned by his name. Now he wanted to break out. Now he wanted to be a man.

Tom squeezed his eyes shut. His name remained. His father’s legacy.

If he told her, he might lose her.

He stuffed the letter in his shirt pocket, rolled the weekly report form into the field typewriter, and pounded out his frustration on the flimsy keys. In anonymity he had only part of her. In disclosure he could lose all of her.

His fingers stilled on the keys. Anonymity didn’t satisfy him anymore. To gain her love, he’d have to risk losing her friendship.

“It’s worth it,” he whispered.

23

Maison Blanche Airfield
April 6, 1943

Lieutenant Hughes, the pilot of the C-47, leaned in the open cargo door and laid down a string of cuss words as long as Mellie’s day. “What did you do? Your patients retched all over my bird.”

“Sir, I used every grain of sodium bicarbonate in my supply.” Mellie picked up her clipboard and her service jacket, a victim of the vomiting epidemic.

One patient’s tank had gone up in flames, and his wounds still stank of burning flesh. The hot, stuffy plane hit every pocket of turbulence over Algeria. Ten patients threw up. Even Sergeant Early looked green.

Mellie edged past the pilot and lowered herself to the ground. “After I turn in my reports and restock my meds, I’ll come back to clean.”

“You’d better.” He walked away, profanity in his wake.

Mellie drew a deep breath of warm fresh air and blew it out hard. The only good part of her day was not seeing Tom at Youks-les-Bains.

Or was that the worst part?

She headed toward squadron headquarters. With all the
fighting on the Tunisian front as the Allies pushed forward at Maknassy and El Guettar, Mellie’s workload had increased. So had her chances of running into Tom.

Why couldn’t Captain Maxwell send her to Bône or Telergma? Why couldn’t he send someone other than Vera, Alice, and Kay to Casablanca with patients heading stateside? She couldn’t concentrate at Youks-les-Bains.

What if she saw Tom again? She couldn’t mention any of the details she’d written in five months of correspondence. Maybe she could follow his advice and ask him questions.

She groaned. Was it dishonest to pretend she didn’t know his identity and to conceal her own? Tom needed this anonymous correspondence. How could she take away the one thing that allowed him to be candid?

Or was it selfishness? A man with Tom’s All-American good looks wouldn’t fall for an orchid like Mellie. Especially after she presumed to know how he felt about his father. If he knew Mellie was Annie, would he stop writing? He’d be polite. The letters would continue for a while, then shorten, diminish, and fade away.

“Oh, Lord, help me.” She gazed at the sky, as blue as the stones in the brooch Tom had sent her from this very country. “Help me do what’s right, what’s best for Tom.”

Outside the squadron headquarters building, Captain Maxwell stood talking with Vera, his favorite. Vera glanced over the surgeon’s shoulder to Mellie, then pointed to her.

Maxwell spun around. His handsome face transformed from congenial to annoyed. He marched straight to Mellie.

Her stomach felt queasier than it had on the flight. “Good evening, Captain.”

“Good evening, Lieutenant. Or should I call you Captain? You seem to think you’re a doctor.”

“Pardon?” Mellie searched his reddening face.

He sank his hands into his pants pockets. “The physicians have noted some green jellylike substance on their patients’ burns. We narrowed it down to your flights.”

That was all? Mellie broke into a smile. “Yes, sir. That comes from the prickly pear cactus. It grows at Youks-les-Bains. Nothing feels more soothing on a burn.”

“Cactus?” His upper lip curled. “You put cactus on our patients?”

“The gel inside the leaves. It has a marvelous cooling effect.”

His jaw shifted forward. “You’re a doctor now? You can make these decisions for yourself?”

Mellie edged back, and her mouth dried. “Sir, I just want to make the patients comfortable. My father’s a botanist. He kept a cactus plant. I’ve used it all my life.”

“This isn’t the jungle. We have modern civilized medicines. Leave your witch doctor mumbo jumbo at home. And don’t ever step outside your scope of practice again, or I’ll ship you home so fast the U-boats won’t be able to keep up.”

Mellie’s eyes and her heart stung. Why would he deny the wounded such a benign treatment?

She nodded. “I won’t, sir.”

Three hours later, Mellie trudged back to quarters in her coveralls. She’d changed out of her service uniform for cleaning duty. Exhaustion pressed on her eyelids and her feet. She’d missed dinner, but she didn’t care.

She stopped in front of the barracks. Golden light and laughter spilled from the open windows and deepened Mellie’s fatigue. All she wanted was quiet and solitude.

She sat in the dirt and leaned back against the wall under a window and pulled out Tom’s latest letter. Twilight glim
mered like a mirage, promising light but failing to deliver. She angled the stationery to catch the beam cascading from the window and she reread her favorite parts.

Sesame’s turned into quite a soldier. He wears his uniform with pride and performs his duties with diligence. He’s getting brave too. The last air raid didn’t make him flinch. By the end of the month, he may outrank me.

Mellie smiled at the sketch of Sesame standing on his hind feet and saluting. He wore a cartridge belt and a helmet with a general’s star. But the end of the letter drew her eyes and her heart.

You probably wonder why I never talk about my dad. My conscience niggles me, and I think you need to know what kind of fellow you’re writing. So here goes. I have more to be ashamed of than you do.

My mom left my father due to his drinking. Things got tough, he turned to crime, and he paid for his crimes. I can’t share more and maintain anonymity, but I wanted you to have some idea.

I’ve spent my life trying to be the opposite of my father. My mother says he was no good. But I wonder. My memories of him are few and vague, snippets of film edited out of my life and tossed aside. But they’re here, on the floor of my brain, and they’re good memories.

Most boys long to be like their fathers. Not me. But what if he had good in him? What if he has something to teach me, even now? Who was he?

I know he loved me. I know he had a laugh deep as a locomotive that rumbled in my tummy and made me laugh too. I want to know more.

Mellie’s eyes brimmed with tears. He trusted her enough to share part of his legacy. Considering Georgie and Rose’s negative reaction to his identity, he had reason to hesitate. But he must have known she’d understand because of her own legacy.

Papa said nothing about her mother. What she knew would fit on the back of the single photograph she owned of the woman who bore her. Her mother was fickle. Her mother loved fun more than family. Her mother didn’t love Mellie enough.

She and Tom were in the same bind. They’d each been blessed with the deep love of one parent, but each groped for someone to emulate.

Laughter from the barracks tinkled down on Mellie. Georgie and Rose, who had proven worthy of emulation. Mellie closed her eyes and smiled. “Thanks, Lord,” she whispered.

Her name pricked her ear. She sat up straighter and lifted one ear closer to the open window.

“This weekend.” That was Kay’s voice. Since when had Georgie and Rose gotten chummy with Kay?

“Uh-huh. Clint found a French restaurant in Algiers.” Rose’s voice lingered on Clint’s name. His persistence was paying off. “I admit, I like the idea of a date, just the two of us, but we have to get Mellie fixed up.”

Mellie shuddered, tired of their matchmaking.

“Who’s left?” Georgie asked. “We’ve tried half the men in his squadron. She’s a wonderful girl, but we need the right sort of fellow.”

Mellie’s mouth tightened. Georgie didn’t mention her looks, but that’s what she meant, and Rose and Kay murmured in agreement.

“I don’t get it,” Kay said. “I thought she had something going with that pen pal.”

The skin on Mellie’s face went taut. She’d never told Kay about her correspondence with Tom. How did she know?