“The nerve of you coming here,” one of the women said. She had kettle-colored hair, her mouth a pinch. “We don’t tell men what girls we have or not.” With that, she stared me up and down. “If you’re looking for your sisters, you best go home. You’ll find a letter there. Then you’ll know plenty about where they are.” She moved to shut the door.
“Ma’am?”
“What now?”
“If they’re here at all, will you tell them? Even if you don’t tell me. That their brother has come looking. We miss them something terrible.”
She swallowed, her voice quiet. “I miss my son too. But I don’t go bothering people.” She closed and bolted the door.
We miss them something terrible, I’d said. But for me, it was more than missing. My head felt hot, my stomach sore. All the way down to my bones, it felt. My face, maybe it didn’t show what it should. That’s why the women closed their doors.
I kept knocking. Sometimes the girls were in for breaks, eating dinner at the tables. Sometimes they weren’t. Sometimes I could see them when they’d just taken off their coats. “You’re no kind of gentleman,” the matron said when she caught me looking. “Interrupting them at their dinner. Go on, why don’t you?”
Those doors, they closed them fast. I couldn’t help but think what might walk these alleys to make them do that. My sisters, maybe they already knew.
The other houses were the same. A no. Then another. Not here. Never was. A girl going up the stairs, a girl coming down. A glimpse of a scarf, the kind Esther wore. But I saw all sorts of scarves like that. When I tried to see more, the doors pulled shut. They were clean places, at least, the smell of bleach and flowers, while the streets they stood in were everything but. You go on home, the women said, shooing me. Girls don’t just disappear. They’ll write if there’s anything decent in them. They’d want to tell their mother where they are.
“That’s it, ma’am,” I answered. “Mother’s gone.”
One woman touched her throat. “That doesn’t change a thing, now does it? One person goes off, then another. You have to get used to it. We all have to get used to these things.” She fiddled at the gold loops in her ears, as if they hurt her. “Daughters, they don’t want to stay in one place anymore. Probably never did.”
There was one thing I knew then: If Esther hadn’t been the one to take Myrle off, Myrle never would have come to this place. But Esther was different. She was trouble to track. I walked from door to door, thinking about that. My breath was hard. The ball of my boots splitting, both sides. Hours of knocking and my feet did some ache, but never so much as France. That night in my alley when I slept, I felt myself knocking still.
The next few days, that’s the way it went. I imagined Esther around every corner. Esther with her brown cap. Across the end of every street, before I could get a sure glimpse, she was there carrying a white bag, her flat-footed bounce. “Hey,” I called out. Sometimes she was alone, sometimes a whole group at her side. I pushed through one girl after the other. A hand on her shoulder, swinging her around. The face was plain as the moon.
“Sorry. I thought . . .”
“You’re crazy, that’s what you are.”
“Leave us alone.”
At night my head knocked and Esther was there too. The way she’d slid into my smithy before she was gone, her hands polite in front of her skirts. She had never stood with her hands like that. Back then, she wore my old cap, but backwards. It pushed her hair close to her cheeks, hiding that she was a girl.
“Lee?” she asked. “What’s that lock on the shed?”
I’d been fixing a horseshoe over the fire, the fire a smoke and my glasses thick. Esther reached a freckled finger to touch its sharp point. I pulled it back.
“No one locks their sheds around here,” she said.
I shrugged. “Father does.”
“Can you open it?”
“It’s a hard one.”
“That means you can? Ray couldn’t do it, but you could.”
I shrugged again, but already I was thinking: Ray couldn’t. That was right. Esther straightened her skirt. She had never done much straightening before.
“You know what?” she said. “I bet Father’s hiding something in there. You know how he’s always keeping things to himself.”
“Not so much.”
“Aw, you know. Remember that time he didn’t tell you about the new seeds he picked. He told Ray, but he didn’t tell you.”
“I don’t worry about seeds.”
“But that’s the thing. He’s always locking doors. Drives a person crazy.”
I scratched my ear. “What about the barn? Nothing’s locked in there. You can do anything you like.”
“I’m not talking barns,” she burst out. “Look, if you open that lock, I promise I’ll tell you what I find.”
I shook my head.
“I’ll ask Ray then.”
“Ray’ll never do it.”
“Maybe he will.”
I sighed. The lock was more than Ray could fix. I knew that. The smithy fire was squaring low. I fed it, stirred the ash. The horseshoe, it’d be getting hard if I left it long. I might have to make it right over.
“Lee, you’re not listening. Don’t you care what Father’s doing?”
My ears were abuzz. It was a buzzing like the nerves in my feet. “I care plenty.”
Esther tried to smile, but her face didn’t match. Those freckles on her cheeks, every inch, they had a way of looking dark. “So then you know how to trick that lock. You’d do it, if a girl asked?”
I sighed again.
“Thanks. You won’t regret it.” She was out the door, taking off the hat as she went. She threw it in the air, caught it easy. When she snapped it on her head, it was frontways. I never got that hat back.
IV
At the boardinghouse, George was away for four days. I had the sheets on a cot, a ceiling over my head. I didn’t dream any dreams. The other two men in the room, they roared good as dogs when they slept. Those nights after the meal, my stomach was sure full. I might have roared some too. But then George came back. He was the wife’s second cousin, the man with suspenders said. He turned up his eyes at that. Cousins had it good over strangers, even quiet ones, he meant. In the morning, I passed George as I left. He had his suitcase. I had my pack. He was small as a tailor, missing a circle of hair. A cold dome George’s would have been. No good for alleys. No meat on his frame. He had a room. But in a week or less, I’d have a home again and acres. I’d have my sisters too. They were better than cousins. Already I had our tickets in my pocket.
Snow came. A fine cold shake, growing thicker with the wind. When I closed my eyes, I got myself to imagining Esther and Myrle. They were behind one door or another. And the way they’d hold up their hands, ready to come home. Ray would grip me by the arm. And Nan, even Father. Didn’t think you could, they’d say. But you did it. You did.
I woke in the alley with wet cheeks, my boots soaked, jacket too. I bundled my blanket in the early light and walked. The snow fell for hours. The alley would be a cold floor by night, full of drifts. Not enough room to fit a man’s legs across. The snow glowed like fireflies against the city lights. The girls from the factories kept their eyes down. With their hoods over their foreheads and scarves tight, I couldn’t search for faces. At the factory doors, the heat let out in waves. I was cold in my throat, my ears, and walking tired. In France I’d learned to walk like that. On your feet and marching, letting your head slack. One man in front of you, one behind. You might march a mile or two and not even remember it. Now I wished I could walk to a place where the snow was gone, alleys too. My tickets turned soft as I fingered them. Still the print stayed clear. I put them quick in my pocket.
Before I left for the war, it was all of it snow. I’ll go to the office next week, I said to Father in the dugout. Si
gn my name. He touched my forehead. That hand of his, it was some warm. Your mother will never forgive us, he said. It was almost a whisper, his saying that. But Mother, she was the one who’d thought accidents were accidents. No matter Ray’s hand. There was no one to blame.
Father didn’t tell me don’t. He never really did. After he said his piece, he left me in the dugout alone. It was late. There was only a moon. Then the sound of footsteps by the door, but softer this time, and someone sniffling. I stepped out to get a glimpse. In the snow at my feet, the shape of my name, the words already filling. They looked carved by a mitten.
LEE DON’T GO
The moon pulled behind the clouds. The light was gone. Those words, I might never have seen them at all. Far off, the back of a black coat cut against the house. She must have run to get so far so fast. I imagined Esther’s face wet, how she’d wipe it with her sleeve. Esther had never been much for feelings. But even if I didn’t see it, I had that picture in my head. Even when I got to going the next week.
Already it was growing dark. Still the factory whistles for the night were hours off. The snow kept up and I was some cold. I was colder than that. I opened the door to a diner hoping for heat. The place wasn’t bright, but it was clean. A lamp on every table, scattered spots of light. I found a corner where I could sit with my back against the wall, my shoulder at the window, and see out. My face was scruff. I rubbed at my cheeks. The place was not so busy, but it was busy enough. The smell of eggs and biscuits. The ovens hot. My feet burned even as they warmed.
“Be right with ya,” the waitress let out.
I ordered coffee and toast, pretending at newspapers. The waitress chewed her lip. She didn’t have a pad of paper when she took my order. I wondered at that. Her hair she’d tied in a bun under a net, her nails bitten to nubs. Working here, she would smell of eggs and biscuits every night. I wondered if she had a room for herself, if she could pay for it for even a month.
“Want another?” The waitress stood at my table with her coffee pot. With a heavy head, I lifted my cup. The owner eyed me from the counter. I dropped two quarters on the table. He went to the kitchen then, and a radio sparked. A couple sat at the next table over. The woman had taken off her shoes and wrapped her foot around the table leg. “Don’t do that,” the woman said, pointing her finger at the man. “What?” he asked. She pinched the scruff on his chin and laughed. “What?” he asked again. Outside, a gaslight blinked against the glass, keeping time with the beating in my chest. The sounds in my head, they blinked too. My coffee cup was empty. The toast had gone to crumbs. I’d read the paper twice, but couldn’t make much of it. It would be quicker to find the girls if I didn’t sleep. It would be quicker without the dark. But a person shouldn’t wish for a thing like that. At home, the dark was a good place. Here it was something else. And during the war, it was worse.
Our squad, we made camp in the woods when a village wasn’t safe. In our last week, we’d camped five days. Me, Stan, Critters, and Sam Bullet. With the flu in the regiment, that’s all that was left of us. The paths in the woods were thick with mud, the sky wintry. In the daytime, it was a hard thing to find our way, and at night, a man couldn’t move save to follow the telegraph wires. All the same, those wires were ankle blades and mussed with shelling so we stayed put. “Hold your position,” staff sergeant had said. We hadn’t had a message since.
“God damn if I have to spend another night,” Critters whined.
We had a dugout in the woods, some two miles from the village. With the leaves gone, we’d lost our cover. Stan kept out of the trees, though he was lookout.
“We’re holding,” Sam Bullet said. He was squad leader, by the book he was, and as cold as his name.
The Huns still had it coming to them. That’s what Stan said. “When we hit them again, they’ll think it’s worse than the flu.” Stan was grinning with his big cheeks, his front tooth gone missing. But it wasn’t so funny. Only the month before, our runner had a letter from home. His father, a man hardy to his fingertips, gone down to a thing a person couldn’t even fight. Our runner had been a sad boy, then he’d taken to the flu too. No runner for the squad, no orders in or out.
“You’re all one for starting up again,” Critters said. “But just get me to the village. A roof and walls. Fritz will sign for peace any minute.”
“I’d keep my hat on if I were you,” Stan said. “Fritz isn’t signing anything.”
Critters sank back against the fence. He was thin to his britches, thin even in his hands. He shook when he got nervous, and he was done with being nervous now. “We’ve been on the line ten days,” he whined. Sam Bullet smacked him on the head.
It’d been a long run. Too cold and wet to take off our boots, the oil gone so we couldn’t grease our feet. Too tight at night to sleep in the hole together. But the village was worse. Not a young man in sight. Only women and old hands. Plenty of houses emptied out. Plenty chance for surprises. When the guns were down, the village was fine enough for sleeping, but it was frightful dirty and the pantries dry. So much manure in the streets, the place was rich with the stuff. On the road, we’d walked through dozens of towns just the same. Fog heavy in the hills, columns of tanks and infantry lines. Many a dead German, too. To the east, the plains of the Rhine and no mountains. Artillery sparks shone far off in the flats, the echo of guns whenever we slept. This was borderland France, but most of the people spoke German, wore wooden shoes. They drank schnapps and wine in heavy cups, and they hated the Kaiser as much as any of us.
“I’ve got to have something to stick to my ribs,” Critters said. “I’m dying here.”
“You’ll die faster if you go down to the village,” Sam Bullet said.
Critters itched his feet.
“And don’t you dare take off those boots,” Bullet said. “You’ll never get them back on.”
“Stinks,” Stan said.
“Hush’s feet stink worse than mine,” Critters said.
One stink was like any other. Numb, now that was something to worry about.
The next morning was quiet. By afternoon we walked to the village hoping for a meal and laid our bags in an empty farmhouse. They had a sofa in that place and a few metal pots, but not a picture on the walls. Nothing more than a lace dress hanging in the closet. We had a roof, but the cupboards were cleared and our men hungry starved, ropes cinching their trousers. Sometimes they didn’t call me Hush anymore. “Hess,” they said. “Hess, go fish something out for us from the Krauts.” I didn’t know the kind of German they used around here. I hardly knew German at all, but the boys looked at me like I did.
“I’d think you were one of them,” Stan said through his missing tooth. “If I didn’t know better. Walked right out of the fields without your lederhosen, that’s what I’d think. We need a little grub is all. If our neighbors got the extra.”
“What neighbors?” Bullet asked.
Critters sat up on his elbows. “You sending him for food?”
“That’s up to him.”
“He’s not going anywhere,” Bullet said. “We’ve got our orders.”
Critters moaned and dropped back on the sofa. He took out his wallet and mooned at a picture of his girl. I looked over his shoulder. “That’s Belle,” he said. “She’s something, ain’t she?”
I nodded.
“You got a girl?”
I didn’t answer.
“Guess that means no.”
“Hush doesn’t have a girl,” Stan said.
“God damn if I have to spend another night.”
“We’re out of the woods at least.”
“We’re starving. Belle won’t recognize me if Fritz signs. I’m walking bones.”
I swung to my feet and put on my cap.
“Where you going, Hush?” Stan and Critters asked.
“Taking a walk.”
I stumbled out
. I had a rope around my trousers too, my boots too small by half. Critters said that was the better. His were three times over and he could fit plenty of socks. Still he fell on his nose with every root and pebble, and we had socks hardly at all. Days before when I took my boots off, my feet were some swollen. They felt full of pebbles. I didn’t want to step too hard.
Bullet thought we wouldn’t find a crumb, but I thought we could. Bullet looked like Ray, talked like him. He was sure solid in the woods and always at the ready. But maybe, if a boy tried a door or two and had the name of Hess. A face of a Hess too. Maybe there was something in that.
I passed row after row of houses set close to the road, most of them empty. A man could smell that. There were other houses a ways back, the barns in front, sheds all around. But there wasn’t an animal left in those barns. A man could smell that too. Far off, a cabin sat high on the hill, a flash of light. I followed the road up, losing my breath. A garden of what must’ve been cabbage lined the yard, eaten to scrub. The fence had been set right, a dead German hanging over it. He was a handsome one with his yellow hair, his uniform old and crusted, his face frosted white. Not so handsome when I saw that. Strange they’d let him hang there, German or not.
The door of the house opened and I jumped. A man, tall as he was wide. He wore a hat and apron seemed made of straw, his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets. Smoke drifted through the door behind him. Sure he would shut the door on me. Get his gun.
“Essen?” I asked. I lifted my arm to show him my uniform. “Essen, bitte?”
He eyed the German on the fence and eyed me some different. Then he pointed at his chest. “Schmidt.”
“Hess,” I said back.
He cocked his head and grinned, waving me inside.
The house was low and dark, but it seemed a good place. Simple enough. Brick for the floors, brick for walls. In the corner, a fireplace stood so large it took up the room by half, but it wasn’t but a little warm. A girl huddled in a blanket, only her forehead showing. When Schmidt stepped out the back door, she spat a question I couldn’t understand. Soon Schmidt stood at the threshold again, studying me and the girl. “Alles in ordnung?” he said. She didn’t say a thing. “Der tote Mann,” he said, to me this time. He pointed at the man on the fence. “Er hat sie angefasst. Verstehen?” In his fist, three rabbits hung by their feet. They fidgeted and kicked, but that fist was as big as the three put together.
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