Blue Skies Tomorrow (32 page)

Dorothy Wayne pulled up a chair and set Susie on her lap. “Sorry I’m late. I couldn’t bear to wake her from her nap.”

Ten-month-old Susie rubbed her eyes with her head on her mama’s chest.

“I can’t get over how much she looks like Art,” Betty said.

“I’m so glad.” Dorothy kissed her daughter’s straight brown hair. “Art’s been in Italy a year and a half. Sometimes—sometimes I’m afraid I’ll forget what he looks like, but then Susie gives me an Arthur-look and everything’s all right.”

Helen’s head felt stuffy. Ray didn’t have a child, someone with contemplative gray eyes.

“Are you all right?” Dorothy’s forehead bunched up.

“Sure.” However, Helen couldn’t coordinate her smile. “It’s just—goodness, the children—how they’re growing. Soon they’ll be off to school and jobs and getting married.”

Betty laughed. “He’s turning three, not eighteen.”

Helen nodded, but she could see the man inside her little boy.

“So, how are things?” Dorothy’s voice was light, but she gave Helen the confidential look they’d shared since Christmas.

Helen returned the look. “Same as always.” The Carlisle home rested in the lull between storms.

“How’s your volunteer—oh, that’s right, you gave that all to Allie, didn’t you?”

“Mm-hmm.” Helen scraped the last spoonful of ice cream. “Don’t let me forget. I found my notebook from last year’s spring tea. I need to drop it off on my way home.”

Dorothy’s brown eyes widened. “You’re not going to the Novaks’ today, are you?”

“Um, yes.” Helen cocked one eyebrow.

“Haven’t you heard? It’s awful, but Mr. Wayne says it’s better to know the worst than to suffer the waiting.”

The words buzzed around Helen’s head, and she tried to block them and keep them from landing in her ears, in her mind.

“Dorothy,” Betty said, her voice firm. “We don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Except deep inside, Helen did know. She’d known ever since the telegram arrived and she couldn’t breathe.

“Heavens,” Dorothy said. “I guess word isn’t out yet. My father-in-law’s on the elder board. That’s how—”

“What word?” Betty said.

Helen’s eyelids fluttered. The glass bowl for her sundae sat before her, white smears marring its clarity. Melted ice cream puddled in the divot where it couldn’t be reached, could never be reached.

“Yesterday they heard from the International Red Cross. They received Ray’s dog tags.”

Ray was dead. His body lay buried in Germany, crushed or burned, all light snuffed, never to smile or speak or write again. How—how could such light ever—ever be quenched?

From deep in her soul, a moan rose and escaped.

“Are you all—oh goodness, I forgot. You dated last year. Oh, Helen, I’m sorry.”

Convulsive waves swept her body like the labor pains before Papa gave her ether, not the pains of life straining to light and air, but of death extinguishing her light, choking off her air.

“We have to get her out of here,” Betty said. “Remember how hysterical she was when Jim died?”

Betty and Dorothy busied themselves with children and checks and tips, and then pulled Helen to standing. Her left leg wouldn’t move, wouldn’t move at all.

Betty looped her arm around Helen’s waist and half-dragged her out of the White Fountain. “Come on, darling. We’ll go to my house.”

Helen’s contractions pushed out deep and animal sounds that didn’t belong on G Street on a Saturday afternoon, but she couldn’t stop.

“I can’t believe,” Dorothy said. “I can’t believe I was so thoughtless.”

“She had to find out,” Betty said. “Better now than in church tomorrow.”

Helen gazed up to the sky, gray as Ray’s eyes, his closed, buried eyes. How could she ever look at the sky again, the sky he loved, the sky that betrayed him?

Lechfeld
Monday, February 12, 1945

Ray sat cross-legged on the cellar floor in his long underwear and leather flight helmet, with the overcoat around his shoulders. He dog-eared his Bible page at the twelfth chapter of Exodus—the second book for the second month, and the twelfth chapter for the twelfth day. Then he wound Johannes’s wristwatch. These two daily habits grounded him in the real world.

The last of the evening light streamed through the slit of a window near the ceiling. Ray flipped to the verse that spoke to him earlier in the evening. In John 4:34, Jesus said, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me, and to finish his work.”

Ray sighed. “Then this is true hunger.”

He had no purpose but to survive. He had no one to teach, no one to preach to, and no one to counsel. “Who am I, Lord, if I can’t serve you?”

The only thing he could do was pray, which he did with increasing fervency. He set his elbows on his knees and rested his forehead in his hands. He praised God for the sunset and prayed to see the next. He begged God to comfort his family, and he pleaded for Helen with his eyes squeezed shut so hard he saw stars.

“Lord, if there’s some way, any way, show her I’m alive and I love her and I don’t blame her. More importantly, show her you’re alive, show her you love her, and show her you don’t blame her.”

The light was waning, and Ray needed to finish his evening routine.

He pulled on his light blue shirt and gray-blue trousers, which were no longer tight. Next came the tie, cardigan, and short fitted jacket. After he pulled on the overcoat, boots, and gloves, he exchanged his warm flight helmet for the peaked Nazi service cap. Last he tied Helen’s gray scarf around his neck and kissed it, the only item to remind him of home.

He dipped the toothbrush from his escape kit into icy water in his steel flak helmet, and he scrubbed gunk from his teeth.

He stank.

Every night he sponged himself off using a scrap of parachute cloth as a washcloth. On Mondays he rinsed his underwear in the river, and on Thursdays his shirt, but without soap, the smell grew ranker each day.

Ray checked his overcoat pockets for the night’s supplies—the miniature hacksaw blade from the escape kit, his pocketknife, his daily potato, and his two remaining matches. If poor Johannes hadn’t been a smoker, Ray would have run out long before. He’d never been good at starting fires by rubbing two sticks together, and he didn’t look forward to it.

On top of his supplies, he laid the large scrap of parachute cloth he’d use as a white flag on the blessed day he heard American or British voices. In his breast pocket he stowed more scraps to use as handkerchiefs or toilet paper.

Ray settled back to pray and wait.

At nine o’clock he climbed the cellar stairs and slowly raised the trapdoor. Last week after a heavy snowfall, he could barely lift it.

No platoon of German soldiers met him, and he breathed a sigh of relief and climbed out into the frosty night. No stars shone, nor had they for weeks. Other than the strange whine of Me 262s, he hadn’t heard planes overhead since February 5. Was the Eighth Air Force grounded, or were they concentrating on northern or western Germany?

Ray tramped north, careful to step in his own footprints so it looked as if one man had come through one time only.

After he visited his latrine spot, he headed south along the riverbank to the spot where he’d strung fishing line between two bushes on either side of a small cove. From that line, a shorter line hung with his last fishhook.

The line stretched taut, and Ray grinned. He pulled out a silver fish, about ten inches long. Whatever these fish were, they liked the Lech’s cold, rushing water and gravelly shoals.

Ray felt like whistling as he headed to his cooking spot, a good distance from the cellar so the sight of smoke or the smell of frying fish wouldn’t draw anyone to his hideout. On nights like this, with a good meal ahead, he took pride in surviving on his own in the wild—behind enemy lines, no less. Other nights he felt more like a raccoon than a man.

Under a bush at his cooking spot, Ray pulled out the tripod he’d built from branches lashed together with parachute cord, and the wooden spoon and plate he’d carved. He cleared a spot in the snow and started a fire with only one match, thank goodness, and then he set up the tripod with his flak helmet as a kettle.

After he cleaned the fish, he cooked it in his helmet with the chopped-up potato. His mouth watered. Even if he weren’t so hungry, he’d like the taste of this fish—like salmon, with a flavor that reminded him of thyme.

Ray sat on a log and thanked God for his provision. While he ate, he planned out his night.

After he cooled off his helmet in the snow, he’d clean it in the river, then boil the day’s drinking water. He’d already run out of halozone water purification tablets, so he had to be careful. Then he’d put out the fire with snow, a hissing and crackling spectacle. Before dawn, he’d return to cover the spot with snow.

For most of the night, he’d traipse in the woods down the length of the airfield. Some of the jets were parked no more than a hundred feet from the tree line. Most Allied airmen saw these birds whiz past at over five hundred miles per hour. Was Ray the first to see one this close?

He grinned. “Wouldn’t Walt be jealous?”

He slammed his mouth shut. Silence was his rule, and if he spoke, it’d better be German.

Ray picked up a chunk of wood left from making his dishes. Walt was the carver in the family, but Walt wasn’t there.

Ray tucked the wood in his overcoat pocket. If he ever got out of this alive, he’d bring his baby brother a model of an Me 262.

Too bad he couldn’t show him the real thing.

32

Antioch
Sunday, February 18, 1945

Wearing a polite, pained smile, Helen wandered around Fellowship Hall as if she had a purpose.

For years she’d faked grief when she felt fine, and now she had to pretend she felt fine when she grieved. She had no right to mourn Ray. Hadn’t she wanted to keep their romance secret? If she could have that time back, she’d proclaim to the world how much she loved him.

Someone jarred her left elbow, and Helen gasped and almost spilled her tea. For a moment, the acute pain took her mind off the smothering ache in her soul.

Mrs. Llewellyn set a hand on her shoulder. “I’m sorry, Helen. Are you all right?”

Helen rubbed her arm and forced herself to formulate a sentence. “I’m fine. I slipped in the rain yesterday and banged my elbow.”

“You should be careful, young lady,” Judge Llewellyn said.

“I—I know.” How on earth could she converse with the Llewellyns?

“That was a moving sermon,” the judge said.

Mrs. Llewellyn leaned closer. “I don’t know how Pastor Novak got up there today. They’re both so strong, aren’t they?”

On the other side of the hall, Pastor and Mrs. Novak stood talking with the Waynes. The pastor had his arm around his wife’s waist, and both wore black suits and brave pale faces.

The space constricted around Helen and squeezed out the air.

“I—excuse me. I need more tea.” She set her cup on the first table she saw, grabbed her raincoat, and fled the hall, out into the rain, fumbling with her coat, sleeves all tangled up.

A sob bubbled in her throat, and tears and rain mingled on her cheeks. When Jim died, Helen had concentrated with precision, and everyone thought her strong.

She thought she’d performed grief well, but she’d had it all wrong. Her lips didn’t quiver; they twitched. In her true grief, she couldn’t think straight, she kept making jerky hand motions, and nothing made it better. Not work, not rest, nothing.

Helen tugged her hood up. The church service made it worse.

Pastor Novak didn’t mention his loss. He didn’t have to. He spoke with great effort and long pauses, and his hands never left the pulpit.

How could he bear the loss of his firstborn son?

Helen lifted her face to the rain. “Lord, I destroy the men I love. Don’t let me destroy Jay-Jay too.”

Jay-Jay?

She stopped so fast, one foot slid out beneath her. Jay-Jay had come to church with her while the Carlisles stayed home with colds. He ran around Fellowship Hall with Judy and his other little friends.

Jay-Jay was still at the church.

“Oh no.” She broke into a run, a faltering run, her left leg buckling with each step. She slipped on a leaf, cried out, and caught herself on a lamppost. She couldn’t afford to have two accidents in two days.

Jay-Jay was fine. He was playing. No one would leave fellowship time for at least another half hour. He wouldn’t even notice she was gone. No one would know she’d forgotten him.

No one could ever know.

However, a tiny figure stood in front of the church on the curb, too close to the street. A small boy with blond hair and no coat. And he held his hands in front of his chest, opening and closing them, his gaze sweeping up and down Sixth Street.

Helen gulped out a sob. “Oh, baby. Oh, sweetie.”

She ran to him, to his contorted face and desperate cries, and she dropped to her knees on the slippery sidewalk and clutched him to her. “My baby. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

His cries changed tone, and he beat tiny fists on her sides. “Bad Mama. Bad Mama.”