The Lines Between Us
Page 1
Books by Amy Lynn Green
Things We Didn’t Say
The Lines Between Us
© 2021 by Amy Lynn Green
Published by Bethany House Publishers
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Bethany House Publishers is a division of
Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan
www.bakerpublishinggroup.com
Ebook edition created 2021
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
ISBN 978-1-4934-3383-4
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version of the Bible.
This is a work of historical reconstruction; the appearances of certain historical figures are therefore inevitable. All other characters, however, are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Cover image of smokejumpers and airplane courtesy of the Forest History Society, Durham, NC
To my grandparents,
Bob and Edna Shelenberger and
Ray and Marian Green.
Thank you for the legacy of faith.
Contents
Cover
Half Title Page
Books by Amy Lynn Green
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
Epilogue
Author’s Note
Reading Group Guide
About the Author
Back Ads
Back Cover
Prologue
FROM GORDON HOOPER TO DORIE ARMITAGE
November 25, 1941
Dear Dorie,
When a girl asks a fellow to write to her, is one day after leaving too soon to send the first letter? I bet it is.
But honestly, Dorie, it isn’t fair. Whenever I try to study, my mind drifts back to the time we spent together last week. The way you fired back witty replies before I could catch a breath. Your laugh that sounded like sleigh bells. That easy smile of yours I caught aimed at me across the table more than once during the turkey dinner.
Something must be wrong with me. George down the hall’s got a record playing “Blue Skies,” so Frank Sinatra crooning about being in love must be affecting my mood.
If you’re smart, you’ll crumple this up and tell Jack to give me a good talking-to. Lucky for me, he’s a pacifist now too and won’t deck me for sending his sister a love letter. (Probably.)
Doris Armitage, what have you done to me? I used to be a no-nonsense college man, with dreams of a career and a stock portfolio and making it in the world better than my father did. Now all I can think about is you.
Speaking of fathers, I hope yours doesn’t read this. I got the sense from the way he scowled at me that he didn’t appreciate my visit. This letter probably wouldn’t help.
Listen, even if I’m wrong, even if your request for me to write you was simply one friend to another, I’d love to hear from you anyway. Just have pity on a fellow and put me out of my misery—fast.
Yours in hope,
Gordon
FROM DORIE TO GORDON
November 29, 1941
Dear Gordon,
A love letter? Gosh, Gordon, I barely know you. At least other than the stories Jack’s told about you this past year.
Still, I’ve written a few love letters in my day, though none to a college man who’s got all kinds of pretty co-eds swarming around him. Meanwhile, I’m just a mechanic’s daughter you met hours away in the-middle-of-nowhere Pennsylvania.
Missing you desperately.
Darn this typewriter! I’m awful about writing things before thinking them through, and it’s just such trouble to use the correction fluid that I suppose I won’t bother.
As for Daddy, don’t worry about him. You know how fathers are. Besides that, he didn’t like Jack coming home with new ideas after his first semester away. He’s always hoped Jack would take over his auto shop and thinks college classes are a bunch of hooey invented by city folks to steal money from homegrown people like us. You shouldn’t let him get to you.
By which I mean . . . you should write again, soon and often. Start now, if you like.
Dorie
P.S. I’m glad Jack brought you home for Thanksgiving. You didn’t talk about them much, but I suppose your family will steal you away for Christmas, won’t they?
FROM GORDON TO DORIS
December 2, 1941
Dear Dorie,
Do you know, I actually whooped aloud when I got your letter? The fellow at the post office must’ve thought I was plain nuts, but I didn’t care.
You wrote back! To me! I must’ve read that page five or six times just to make sure I didn’t mistake your meaning.
I don’t care what you call these letters—I want to know everything about you, Dorie. What you like and dislike, who you admire, what you’re afraid of, what you dream about.
I promise I’m normally a rational fellow. President of the campus debate society, member of a Friends congregation, business student, and construction worker during the summers.
But right now, all I am is the happiest man in the United States of America. Maybe the world. Nothing could take away this soaring feeling inside of me, almost like I could jump off a roof and fly.
I’m headed to classes, but I had to get this in the mail. Write back soon.
Yours,
Gordon
P.S. Yes, I’m planning to go to Syracuse for Christmas at my uncle’s house. But if I take the train, I can duck out at the Allentown station stop, even if it’s just for an hour or two. Will you be there? I checked the schedule—I should be there on December 19 at 4 PM.
FROM DORIE TO GORDON
December 5, 1941
Dear Gordon,
It makes a girl blush to have someone go on so about her.
So please don’t stop. I’m awfully pale, and as Daddy insists that “no daughter of mine will wear makeup while under this roof,” blushing is the only way to improve my complexion.
I’d love to meet you at the station on the 19th. I’ll be wearing my red silk scarf. I can only assume you liked it, the way you stared at me the last time I wore it. Gosh, I love train stations, don’t you? The adventure of travel, the thrill of a journey. You never know what might happen.
In the meantime, best of luck with your exams. I’ll keep this short so I won’t distract you from your studies.
Or maybe I’ve
already done that. The world looks—I don’t know—happier and brighter right now, doesn’t it? Like nothing bad can really happen, or if it does, it won’t reach us. I hope you feel it too.
It’s a delicious sensation, being above the world. I’m not sure I ever want to come down.
Yours,
Dorie
RADIO BROADCAST FROM THE NEW YORK NBC NEWSROOM ON DECEMBER 7, 1941
President Roosevelt said in a statement today that the Japanese have attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, from the air. Stay tuned for further updates.
IN THE DECEMBER 8, 1941, PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS
1500 CONFIRMED DEAD IN HAWAII
US DECLARES WAR
Senate–82–0
House–388–1
FROM DORIE TO GORDON
December 10, 1941
Dear Gordon,
War, Gordon! All this talk about it for years, and now we’re finally getting involved. Everyone here is talking about joining up. Some of the farmers will have to stay behind, of course, but I’m sure we women will fill open jobs. Naturally I’m glad to do it—if Daddy will let me. He made me stop wearing overalls and boots at age eight, and I’m not sure even the war effort will convince him to let me back into them at twenty.
Have you and Jack talked about enlisting yet? Or will you wait until you graduate?
I know both of you went on about peace after dinner one night, but surely you can see this isn’t some political stance. When I read about what Hitler’s men are doing in France . . . well, it makes my blood boil. Not to mention the awful news from Pearl Harbor.
My friend Carrie and her sweetheart are getting married next week, before he enlists, just to have a few months together first. I’ve thought about it and want you to know I’m willing to wait for you if you go overseas. After all, it’s the girls at home that keep our men fighting for victory.
Please write to me. Better yet, call. You have such a deep, steady voice. I miss hearing it in times like these.
Yours,
Dorie
APPLICATION FOR
CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR STATUS
GORDON HOOPER
December 14, 1941
The following is my appeal for exemption from military service on the basis of my moral objection to war. As a university student in Philadelphia, the city of brotherly love founded by pacifists, I hope to find sympathy for my convictions.
As evidence that this is a long-held belief, I’ve been attending a Friends (also known as Quaker) assembly, one of the historic peace churches, since I was eighteen. I’m prepared to appear before the draft board and explain how Jesus’ teachings leave me no choice but to reject all kinds of violence.
When I was young, I used to delay bedtime by begging my mother to tell me a story about Clara Hooper, her great-grandmother, a Quaker abolitionist who sheltered enslaved men and women on the Underground Railroad.
I remember huddling under my blanket near the radiator at eight years old, imagining myself as one of those fugitives, heart pounding in fear, back sore from hard labor and whippings, feet cut from nights stumbling through the woods. And there was Clara, standing inside the farmhouse door, with her soft-spoken “thees” and “thous,” her kettle of soup simmering over the fire, and her quiet, unshakable commitment to peaceful resistance of a great evil. Almost every refugee who came through her door made their way safely to Canada.
When I was eighteen, I applied to legally change my surname to hers, rather than keep the name of my late father.
I tell you this because I want you to know: I am not only an idealist who can’t imagine looking his fellow man in the eye and taking his life by force. I am also the great-great-grandson of Clara Hooper. I have a legacy behind me, and I hope to leave one after me.
Please give me the freedom to choose what that legacy will be.
Gordon P. Hooper
FROM GORDON TO DORIE
December 19, 1941
Dear Dorie,
You weren’t at the station.
At first I thought the snow delayed you. Then I wondered if your father tried to keep you from coming, or if you’d bummed a ride from someone with an unreliable car, or even if you’d forgotten.
Eventually, after I wore out a groove in the platform hoping to see you coming over the hill, I had to get back on the train home to New York. That’s where I’m starting this letter.
Jack told you, didn’t he? That I’m going to apply for conscientious objector status, I mean.
That’s why I wanted to see you in person. How else can I explain what I believe? You assumed I’d leap at the chance to fire bullets through men who have the misfortune of living in a country ruled by a madman.
It’s not right, Dorie. I can’t read the New Testament and find a way to justify killing or any violence, and now . . . well, now’s my chance to live it out. Even though it’s hard.
One of my professors told me I should start the paperwork, since the process to prove my sincerity can be intensive. If I’m drafted and approved as a conscientious objector, I’ll be assigned with the CPS—the Civilian Public Service—till the end of the war.
I don’t know how often, if ever, they approve furloughs in the CPS. From the sound of things, they want to make things as tough as possible for the COs to avoid getting an influx of lazy men who don’t like the idea of overseas duty. That means my only contact with you might be through letters until this terrible war is over.
I hope I can make you understand. If you have questions, I’m happy to answer them. Below is my uncle’s address in Syracuse so you can write or even call if you want. I’ll pay the long-distance charges. We can work through this, I know it.
Have a wonderful Christmas, and remember as you sing “Silent Night” that I truly want the world to “sleep in heavenly peace.”
Yours,
Gordon
FROM DORIE TO GORDON
December 22, 1941
Dear Gordon,
Your only contact with me will not be through letters. It will be in your memories.
How can you think I’d be interested in a relationship with you after this? Our country is fighting for survival, and you wonder what Jesus would do? Of course he would want you to fight!
If that was all, maybe we could say good-bye as friends. But you dragged Jack into pacifism with you. He’s back for Christmas, and it’s been days of long arguments, cold silences, and angry outbursts—at the holidays, no less, when all I wanted was for everyone to be happy.
Daddy served with distinction in WWI. We still have the saber from our Civil War ancestor, Robert Armitage, mounted over the fireplace. Now it’s Jack’s turn, and all he can talk about is flimsy arguments about peace in a world that’s gone up in flames.
You can have your Inner Light or Sermon on the Mount or whatever you call it. I’ll have justice. If I were a man, I’d be down at the recruiting station this minute. Then maybe the neighbors would stop talking about how disgraceful it is for Jack to join the conchies.
Mother’s always told me I’m too impulsive. Well, maybe she was right. I should have known better than to chase after some city slicker I knew barely anything about.
We live in different worlds, Gordon. Mine is the real one, and yours is some idealistic fantasy where everyone loves their neighbor and no one has to fight for freedom. It took a declaration of war to wake us up to that, but I’d rather know now than keep pretending.
Good-bye, Gordon. I hope the CPS treats you and Jack well—safe, coddled, and far away from those who are sacrificing for the ones they love.
Dorie
CHAPTER 1
Gordon Hooper
December 31, 1944
Three Years Later
Seems to me that if you have to ring in another year of war, you might as well do it parachuting into a wildfire.
That’s what I’d thought, anyway, answering Earl Morrissey’s crack-of-dawn call to pile into the Ford Trimotor with Jack. An hour later, fingers numb under hand-m
e-down leather gloves in the December cold, I was having second thoughts.
Thoughts like I bet the others are eating breakfast right now. A nice tall stack of Mrs. Edith’s pancakes. No butter—rationing hit even the Forest Service—but plenty of maple syrup, pooling over the edge onto the plate.
Not the two of us, though. No sir. We sat crammed in the back of a flimsy plane that lofted us across the forests of Oregon. I could feel the seeping cold of the metal bench beneath me, even through my scratchy long johns and thick canvas pants.
I glanced over at Jack, the padded shoulders of his uniform giving him a hunchbacked look. Puffs of white breath curled out of his mesh-masked helmet, like a dragon had decided to try out for the local football team. “Nervous?” he shouted over the engine’s roar.
I shrugged, figuring that even my Friends meeting back home would agree that wasn’t a lie, strictly speaking. My hands wandered to the ripcord for the emergency chute strapped across my chest, a tiny thread of a lifeline if the worst happened.
“Get ready, boys!” a voice near my ear hollered, the unmistakable Nicholas Tate, a longtime ranger and our spotter. He gestured to the doorless opening near the back of the plane.
I’d crouched atop the practice tower dozens—no, hundreds—of times at our training center in Missoula, Montana, waiting for the starting gun of a single tap on the shoulder. After that, I’d gone on seven real fire jumps, four the summer of ’44, three the year before. But those had ranged from May to September, so I’d never seen snow from the air before, clotting the ground between trees and dusting the coniferous branches far, far below.
At the sight, crooning strains of Bing Crosby wafted through my mind—“I’m dreaming of a white Christmas.” I shook my head to get rid of them.
Another Christmas away from home had come and gone for those of us in the Civilian Public Service. We’d roasted a few chickens back at our remote Oregon spike camp, far from glazed ham dinners, neighborhood carolers, department store displays, and pretty girls in red scarves waiting at train stations.
Where did that come from?
It was the nerves of the jump, that was all. Who knew where Dorie Armitage was now? She never wrote, not to me, not even to her own brother. We’d said our good-byes three years ago and never looked back. While some of her words still stung, I knew in my heart that she was right about one thing, at least: We’d both been young and foolish to think we were in love, until the war interrupted our daydreams.