He held me like a father would hold a child. “Shhh,” he said. “It’ll be all right. Everything will be all right.”
“W-what are you doing here?”
“I’m here because my son asked me to come. He said you would need me, so here I am. At your service.”
I didn’t know how long I cried on his shoulder. It could have been minutes, hours, or even days. Time became nothing but a black hole, a void, something that slipped through my fingers. I repeated the words I’d said to my mother. “I want him to come back. I f-feel like I’m dying.”
People huddled around, watching us, drying their own tears. I grabbed a napkin off the table and wiped my runny nose, embarrassed that at our first introduction I had almost knocked him down.
“This must be how I greet all Hudson men,” I said, laughing at myself. It was reminiscent of when I’d met Charlie.
“How do you mean?”
“The first time I met your son I plowed into him, knocked him right off his feet.” I shrugged. “I guess I like to leave an impression.”
Mr. Hudson chuckled, and I found his laugh lines to be endearing, chiseled in deep grooves along both sides of his mouth. He handed me a clean napkin. “Well, you’re definitely unforgettable.” His eyes softened and he regarded me with worry. “You okay, hon?”
I shook my head, my chin quivering. “No.”
He wiped a tear from my cheek with his thumb. “He’ll be back. You have to believe. He wouldn’t want you this upset.”
“I know. I just need a minute to be sad.”
He looked at Elizabeth. He had the same coffee-colored eyes as Charlie and I battled with wanting to look at them and not wanting to look at them. “Mind if I take Sophie for a walk? Let her catch her breath?”
“Of course. Take all the time you need.” Elizabeth pulled me into her arms. “I love you. We all love you. Come back when you’re ready.”
Henry, my boss, stepped in front of me. “Take the day, Sophie. Don’t worry about this place. It’ll be here when you get back.”
Mr. Hudson and I walked along the same path that Charlie and I always took. When we got to the bench at the halfway point, we sat down. I looked up and thought…I am as blue as the sky. I closed my eyes, wondering how long I was going to feel this way.
“You’re the first girl Charles has ever talked about. He wrote to me a couple of months ago. Told me that he’d met someone. You know what he said?”
“What?”
“He told me…She is what I love most about myself.” Mr. Hudson looked down, studying the ground. “When he was little and even as he got older that was what I always said about his mother.” He flashed a boyish grin and brought his eyes up to mine. “He stole my line.”
I smiled. “It’s a great line.”
We talked and chatted in between moments of stillness. After he walked me home, we had dinner with my parents, and when he was ready to leave, he placed a letter in my hand, kissed my cheek, and said, “From Charlie.”
“From Charlie,” I whispered.
I waited until the world was quiet until I opened the envelope Charlie’s father had given me and began to read…
Dear Sophie,
I just met you and you know what I thought? Besides thinking you were beautiful?
I thought…finally.
Finally, I can breathe, because until I met you, I wasn’t breathing and I wasn’t living either. I was a walking shell of a man with no heartbeat in my chest.
When I met you my lungs expanded with your smiles and your laughs gave my heart rhythm. You brought me back to life.
And I thought…
Finally.
Dear Charlie,
Did I ever tell you what I thought when we first met? I was a mess – complete chaos.
And here you were…staring at me like you had been lost in a desert and I was a fountain of water. It was the briefest of moments, yet the feeling persisted. And with every glance thereafter, I felt pulled into your gravity, orbiting around you. Or maybe we orbited together, like moons and planets. All I know is that I was in a new universe and you were at the center of it.
Looking back on it now, I know this to be true: if I was chaos, then you were order. Because the minute I looked into your eyes my life started to fall into place.
I knocked on the door and pulled my coat tighter around me. Trees, lawns, and bushes were all bathed in the snow that had fallen the night before and everything was bright white, almost blindingly so. Closing my eyes, I thought of the things I wanted to say but drew a blank. I had started to leave when the locks disengaged and the door opened. A woman who had looked like she’d seen better days stood before me. Her hazel eyes reminded me of a cloudy day.
“Yes?” she said.
Her brows lifted before looking over my shoulder. Charlie’s truck parked on the curb and me standing on her front porch. Recognition registered in her hazel eyes and then she smiled. “You must be Charles’ Sophie.”
“I – yes, ma’am. I wanted…” I picked up the package that rested against the porch railing. “I wanted to give this to you.”
She stepped aside, opening the door wider. “Won’t you come in? It’s freezing.”
I hugged the package against my chest. “All right. I hope I’m not disturbing you.”
“Not at all,” she said. I stepped inside. “Charles has told me so much about you.”
I followed her through her modest living room and into the kitchen where she pulled out a chair. “Have a seat. I’ll make us some tea.”
I sat down and set the package at my feet. “How did you know who I was?”
Filling the tea kettle with water, she looked over her left shoulder and smiled. “You are exactly how he described you to me. I could probably pick you out of a lineup.” She set the kettle on the stove. “And you’re driving the truck that my son gave to Charles.”
I didn’t know why I hadn’t thought of that. My only defense was that my mind had been all over the place the past few days. “Right,” I said apologetically. I felt guilty for not visiting her sooner. I should have. “That’s actually why I’m here. I mean, Tank is why I’m here. He’s been on my mind…and I wanted to come see you.”
That was the absolute truth. I didn’t know Tank very well, but I loved who Charlie loved, and Charlie had loved his friend. My eyes were misting, however, I didn’t want to cry in front of Tank’s mom. I cleared my throat and handed her the package once she sat down next to me. “This is for you.”
She eyed me curiously before graciously accepting it. She began tearing off the brown paper wrapping. Her eyes widened and her mouth fell open. She stared at it. Just stared. The seconds turned into minutes until her eyes started to shine, like life had been breathed back into her. She traced the lines of Tank’s face, the one I had painted of him to give to her. When the notion struck me to paint his portrait I had to recall his face from memory since I didn’t have a picture of him. I had chosen the day I’d met him in the park when he had held his hand out to mine and how he had retreated his hand when I couldn’t return the greeting. He was looking down, his mouth hooked into a smile, embarrassed, but oh so handsome.
I wanted to paint that moment because it was honest and he had an innocence about him that I knew his mother would appreciate.
“This says so much about him,” she said. “I’ve seen this expression so many times. Now I’ll always see it every time I look at this painting.” Then something changed in her. She sat up, back straight as a pencil, and she held her chin high as though a decision had been made. It was like watching one person dissolve and another person appearing in her place. She nodded to herself in a resolute manner.
I wanted to ask her about it, but decided this was her private moment and it wasn’t my place to question her. I remained still until she was ready to speak.
The woman who set the painting down was a different woman from the one who had picked it up. She looked at me, her hazel eyes clearer than before. The g
ray clouds had parted and a spark of happiness peeked through.
“Thank you so much, Sophie. You don’t know how much I needed to see his face. He never liked having his picture taken, so this…this is everything.”
I placed my hand on hers. “You’re welcome, Ms. Cassidy.”
“Please, call me Julia.”
I smiled. “You’re welcome, Julia.” I patted her hand. “I should get going.”
“If you don’t mind, could you stay a while longer? I think you’re as lonely as I am. Better to be lonely together, don’t you think?”
I stayed and visited with her for several hours. We drank tea and I learned that Charlie checked on her every day after Tank died, until the day he left. And according to her, he talked about me on a continuous loop.
When I got up to leave, she said, “Oh my goodness. Wait right here. I almost forgot.” She left the room and when she re-entered there was a letter in her hand, a smile on her lips, and a gleam in her eye. She kissed my cheek and placed the envelope in my hand.
“From Charlie,” she said.
“From Charlie,” I whispered.
In total, I had thirty letters before the end of that first week from various people Charlie had gotten to know in town and people he had worked with. Thirty letters that I would read and reread for years to come. Thirty letters that I keep with me to this day.
I received the first letter with an APO address from Charlie on February 27, 1943, three weeks after he boarded the train. The next letter wouldn’t come for another six weeks. Whenever I did receive a letter I held in with both hands, clutched it to my chest like a shield, and thanked the good Lord because it was a sign that he was alive and okay. My saving graces, I called them.
He never spoke about his missions or where he was. I suspect he wouldn’t have even if he was able to. He kept that all to himself, locked away in some secret vault, and spared me the details. Rather, he spoke about his love for me and his dreams of coming home. I relished every letter, reading the emotions behind his every word. They tumbled off the pages and fell into my lap where I would scoop them up and try them on. I wore them on my skin like a pair of flannel pajamas, keeping me warm when fear chilled me to the bone.
And fear, it sometimes grappled me, held me down, and threatened to be my shadow. Fear was unforgiving and I often dreamed of a day that I could introduce fear to Charlie’s bravery. What a showdown that would be. I thought about it more and more every day.
On May 18, 1943, another letter arrived from Charlie and the first two lines tore my heart open.
Dear Sophie,
They’re all so very young. These pilots…so young. I know I’m young too. I’ll be twenty-three in a week, yet I feel so old. I feel as though I’ve lived a thousand years.
He was revealing his vulnerability and I think it only made me love him more. He trusted me with his honesty. He needed someone to talk to, to tell someone how he felt, and he chose to tell me. It couldn’t be easy for him. I wanted to reach my hand through the pages and be pulled in by him. Lifting the letter to my nose, I smelled it, hoping to catch a trace of his essence. Then Fear lifted my chin, forced me to look in its eyes.
“He could die,” Fear said. “What would you do then?”
“Shut up,” I muttered.
Fear lifted one eyebrow, its lips quirking to the side. “Ah, does she want to fight me today?”
I narrowed my eyes. Yes, she does. I imagined myself in a boxing ring with Fear as my opponent, trying to break me down, get me to submit, cower in the corner. Then I would hear Charlie whisper in my ear, “You never lose, remember?”
I focused all my energy on Fear, looked it right in the face, its smug smile staring back at me. I let anger fuel me, waited until I was ripe with it, let it seep into my pores and get under my skin. Fear started to taunt me once more, and then I reared back, fingers curled into a fist, and punched Fear right in its smug face.
Fear stumbled, shocked that I was fighting back. For a while, however short-lived, I felt victorious. I left the ring and Fear called out after me, “I’ll be back you know. This is just one battle. There’ll be more.”
I refused to look over my shoulder, not giving Fear the satisfaction. I pushed open an imaginary door to the outside, to freedom, and said, “But today you lost.”
~ Too Far Moon
Till My Heart Stops
I filled my time by volunteering a few hours each day, mostly with children whose fathers were away at war, and waited for more letters that never came. I taught art classes in the basement of our local library on Mondays and Wednesdays, and on Tuesdays and Fridays I tutored a summer reading program. On Thursdays, I visited Julia. I still worked at the café as well, so I kept myself busy.
I liked busy. When I wasn’t busy my mind dove into dark places with deep crevices, where doubts slumbered and worry thrived. Staying busy was my lifeline to survival.
I did allow time for myself, though. A few days a month I would wait until the sun settled in for the night, and then I would paint by the soft light of a small table lamp, dressed in an old shirt that was too big for me. It was my oasis, my reprieve from realism, where I created a world where Charlie and I walked into the sunset, hand in hand.
I painted us lying down, standing up, and dancing. I painted us sitting and staring at each other longingly. It was the world I understood, the one my heart belonged to.
My favorite painting was one I’d painted of myself. If you looked closely enough, you could see Charlie in my reflection. The blue in my eyes was the backdrop of the sky and I knew how much Charlie loved the sky and how much he loved me. It seemed right that he should be there.
Some nights I didn’t paint at all. I just stared at the ones I’d already painted, touching Charlie’s face, having private one-sided conversations with him.
How are you, Charlie? How’s the weather where you are? Are you getting enough rest? My mother made meatloaf for dinner. Wish you could have been here. I’ve been visiting Julia, Tank’s mom, for a while now. She’s okay. A little sad most days, but okay. I’m taking care of her so you shouldn’t worry about her while you’re there.
Elizabeth is dating someone now. She met him before the summer. He seems nice. I had to do a little covert maneuvering to get them talking. Neither one seemed to be making a move even though I would catch both of them giving each other goo-goo eyes when the other wasn’t looking. Were we ever like that? No, we weren’t. You weren’t afraid of being rejected. Or were you? You always appeared so confident. It’s hard to imagine you ever being afraid. I wasn’t, though. Confident that is.
I thought that if you ever got to know me, you’d realize I wasn’t everything you thought I was. But you met me in the middle, didn’t you? Somehow you saw the scars in my eyes and you met me in the middle. You took my hand and showed me the way to love. You were my compass when I had no direction and no idea which way to go. You led. And I followed. I’m glad I followed you. You took me to places I never knew existed. I guess that’s why I stepped in and put things in motion for Elizabeth. I didn’t want her missing out the way I would have missed out on you. She deserves to be happy. I think everyone does. And you’re still my compass, Charlie. I don’t know where I’m going without you. So, you have to come home and show me the way. I’m lost, Charlie. I’m so damn lost.
Please come home.
At night, when my mind relaxed, peace would wash over me. I never felt peaceful during the day. I was always too busy staying busy. When I figured out how to keep my mind from wandering the dark halls of the unknown, I dreamed of Charlie holding me. His hands would slip over me, drawing a map of where he wanted to go. I could feel his touch, heat rising over the places he’d been until I was warm all over.
I was young, but I was also a woman, and I yearned to feel his body connecting with mine. Wondered what it would feel like to have him moving inside me, filling my body the way he filled my soul. I dreamed of watching him watching me as our bodies came together, love
spilling from his eyes. I could even taste his skin, salty with need, and sweet with desire. He would press his lips to mine and I would swallow his breath, and he would whisper, “Are you in love with me yet?” This time, I would answer, “Yes, yes, I’m in love with you.”
Our hearts would beat faster, but our mouths would move at a lover’s pace, slow and careful, unwilling to rush what was happening between us. He would take his time loving me. It would be as though the world knew what was happening, and time would tiptoe away, careful not to disturb.
I had these dreams every night for months on end. I wanted the nights more than the days, needed them, craved them. The days were fast and demanding and downright rude, unraveling me like I was made of old worn sweaters. But the nights – the nights were patient and kind. They were respectful and reverent.
It was only in the dreamy nights that Charlie would visit me, where we were together and alive, happy and falling in love over and over again. Only in the nights, but that was okay because my dreams…they were the thread that sewed me back together.
~ Natasha Blume
Journey (Ready to Fly)
In warfare, it’s not about two fighters dueling….two men sizing each other up and scrapping it out in a back alley. It’s about sneaking up behind someone unseen and shooting them in the back. That’s the ugly truth of it. When I took off and left Levi’s farm behind me, I knew that I may not make it home. However, I locked that thought inside a sealed vacuum and I would not unseal it again. I had one job to do and all of my focus was on completing the task. I was alone in this mission and my life was in my own hands, locked inside a steel bottle.
Having no choice other than adapting to the situation, I figured out a few things after I was in the air. The vibration was less dramatic if I backed off the throttle to lower the engine’s rpms, which made me drop altitude, and I had to fly at slower speeds, but this alternative made me a sparrow in a world full of hawks. I knew this, yet I had no other option. So low and slow was how I flew, flying at five hundred feet above the ground and one hundred to a hundred and fifty miles per hour. I avoided populated areas in order to avoid being shot at from the ground. The risks were great, too great, and I would be a fool to deny it.
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