A sergeant bellowed above the hubbub of the crowd, “All of Company C get aboard!”
Jared kissed Emily on the cheek and then turned. He shook hands one more time with his father. The two men embraced and then he kissed his mother. He turned to give Wes a brotherly punch on the shoulder and ruffled his hair. “You’re the boss until I get back.”
“Sure, Jared,” Wes managed to say.
The soldiers, a mass of khaki, boarded the train, and then the whistle sounded as the engine gave a huge huff. Soldiers leaned out of every window, waving and smiling, most of them looking fit and eager to fight for the cause. Emily searched for Jared. She saw him in the middle of one of the cars and shouted, “There he is! Good-bye, Jared, good-bye!”
She saw his lips move as he said good-bye, and then the train moved out of the station.
Emily turned blindly, unable to keep the tears from her eyes any longer. She looked at Wes and saw that he too was fighting to keep from crying. She took his hand, and the two of them followed their parents out of the station.
“He’s got to come back, Wes!” Emily whispered. “He’s just got to!”
****
America was not ready to go to war. The United States was so low in arms and matériel that draftees had to train with wooden guns. One general said, “It would be better to give them broomsticks than not to train at all.” Posters sprouted up everywhere with Uncle Sam pointing his finger, saying, “I want YOU for the U.S. Army,” and a sailor putting his arm on the shoulder of a civilian, saying, “The Navy needs YOU—don’t read American history. Make it.” In almost every city from coast to coast parades were held, and a tremendous gathering on New York’s Fifth Avenue symbolized the growing emotional involvement of Americans everywhere. Speechmakers thundered their rhetoric to the crowds, bolstering morale and justifying the rightness of America’s involvement.
In small towns and on farms all across America, men and women suddenly saw the Great War in a different light. As their young men left by the thousands to join the army, the world had become much smaller, and the reality of war had touched the home front as never before.
Jared’s letters from boot camp were as cheerful and witty as he was himself. He made light of the hardships and commented once, “The farm boys do better than any of us. They’re used to getting up before daylight and working hard all day. Us city slickers are soft, but we’ll toughen up by the time we get to France.”
More than once Emily asked her father what the war he had fought in was like.
“It was nothing like this one, Emily,” Aaron had replied. “I thought it was rough at the time, but from what I’m reading in the papers from the frontline correspondents, life in the trenches is horrible—dirt and filth, sickness and disease of every kind. Why, measles are killing more men than enemy guns in some places.”
“And Jared’s always been so neat. How will he stand it?”
“He’ll do all right,” Aaron said.
Emily noticed something in her father’s eyes that she had never seen before. Why, Dad’s afraid, she thought. I’ve never seen him afraid of anything!
****
Jared came home on an unexpected two-day leave before shipping out to France in the summer. Everyone was so excited to see him one last time, and they determined to show him nothing but smiles and their support. Emily, too, performed nobly and kept her doubts and fears to herself. All of her girlfriends wanted to see Jared during his leave, but Emily put them off.
“I think you’re mean, Emily,” Wilma Taylor said. She was the current most popular girl in high school and had practically besieged Emily, begging her to invite her to their house or to go on some of her errands with Jared.
“I’m sorry, but we want him all to ourselves,” Emily said firmly. “He’s only home for two days.”
The family crammed every moment they could together, and at sunset on the second day, Wes, Emily, and Jared went swimming in the river. They splashed and yelled and dunked one another, and finally they came out, dried off, and sat watching the sun go down. Wes thought he saw a deer, and he grabbed his camera to try to snap a picture of it.
“He’ll never catch that deer, if that’s what he saw,” Jared laughed.
“Don’t be so sure. Wes is good at taking pictures, and it’s all he cares about. He can be pretty patient about getting just the right shot.”
“What about my best girl? What’s she interested in?” Jared turned and studied Emily. She was no longer a child but a young woman now. He smiled and said, “Don’t you be letting any of those drugstore heroes rush you into anything.”
“I won’t. I don’t care about that sort of thing.”
“I know you don’t.”
The two sat there quietly for a while, and Jared said, “I know you’ve had to put on a good front, but I can tell when you’re sad, Emily.”
A lump rose in Emily’s throat, and she had to clear it away before she said, “I wish it were all over, and you were back home again.”
“You’re going to pray for me every day, aren’t you?”
“Yes, every day, Jared. I promise.”
“And I hope you’ll write, too. You’re good at that,” Jared said.
“Of course I will,” Emily said. “Every day.”
Wes came back shortly after that, having found the deer and taken the picture, and then the three got back in the car. Jared took one last look at the river and then uttered the only words of regret Emily had heard from him: “I won’t be seeing this old river for a while, but you two come every chance you get and think of your old beat-up brother over there in the trenches.”
Emily put her arms around him, and Jared hugged her. Reaching out, he grabbed Wes, too, and said, “All for one and one for all. Just like the Three Musketeers.”
“That’s right,” Wes said.
Emily could not speak, and later, when she got home and went to bed, she could not sleep. Finally she got out of bed, knelt down, and began to pray, “Oh, God, take care of my brother. Don’t let anything happen to him. Please.”
The next day they all rose early and accompanied Jared to the train. The station was filled with soldiers again, but there was no celebration this time. Men were loading on quickly, and Jared shook hands with his father and brother and hugged his mother. “We’ve done this before, Mom,” he said.
Gail managed a weak smile. “Oh, son,” she said, “I wish you didn’t have to go, but I know you do.”
“I’ll be back,” Jared said.
He hugged Wes, and Emily heard him say, “You take care of the folks until I get back.”
“I will, Jared.”
Emily then felt Jared’s arms go around her. He hugged her, held her tightly, and she clung to him. He whispered, “Don’t forget, you’re my best girl—and you’re going to pray for me every day.”
“I will, Jared. I will.”
They all stood there with the rest of the parents and families of the men who were leaving, and again they watched the train pull out of the station. Aaron stood between his two children and put his arms around them. “He’s got to go. I pray that God will bring him back safely.”
Emily bit her lower lip. She felt the tears rise in her eyes and run unbidden down her cheeks. She turned and buried her face against her father’s chest, unable to speak.
CHAPTER FIVE
Emily Has a Disagreement
Emily Winslow rose early one September morning, and before dressing, she pulled a small sheaf of letters from the top drawer of the armoire. She had worn Jared’s letters thin by reading them over and over again.
Sitting on the edge of her bed in front of the window, she pulled the first letter out and ran her eyes over the writing. Jared had always had the best penmanship of the three Winslow youngsters, writing in script almost as readable as print. As she looked at the bold, square lettering, a longing rose in her breast. She read his first letter that he had sent from boot camp back in the spring. Moving her lips as she read, she coul
d possibly have quoted it from memory:
Dear Emily,
Well, here I am in basic training, sis, and I must tell you it’s kind of a joke. There are young fellows here from all over the country, but most of our boys are from the South. Some of them are right off the farm and others out of offices and quite a few like me just out of high school. We get up every morning before dawn to the sound of a bugle, and the barracks is always filled with groans—mostly from the city boys who aren’t used to such early hours. I must admit I had some trouble with that myself, but now I’ve gotten accustomed to it.
I have a good friend here whose name is Bobby Carr. He comes from a little town on the Gulf Coast in Alabama that I’ve never heard of called Gulf Shores. Bobby claims there’s no place like it on earth. Just nothing but heaven. He’s made me promise when we get back to bring you and all the family down for a fishing trip. Says he’ll guarantee we’ll catch more fish in a day than I’ve caught in my whole life, at least as far as weight is concerned. He’s a fine young man but not converted. I’ve been witnessing to him, and I’m hopeful. Pray for him, will you, Emily? His family’s not Christian, so he doesn’t have anybody to care about his soul.
We are training now with wooden guns, and it makes me feel a little bit like a kid before I started school and even for a while afterward. You remember we made rubber guns and begged the old inner tubes from all the gas stations. Those were some wars we had! I remember once I popped you right in the head by accident, and the knot raised a welt. I expected you to start crying, but you never did. You never were a weepy girl, though. I think of those days often.
I miss you a great deal already. Please write. And watch out for Cap’n Brown. I miss him more than I thought I would.
Laying that letter aside, she picked up one he had written later in the summer after he’d arrived in France. It was very brief. He had simply responded to the news she’d told him about the family and the town and ended by saying,
Your letters mean more to me than you can know. You’ll be a senior in high school this year, and you’re such a good-looking girl I know you’ll be besieged with suitors. Do you have a favorite right now? If so, don’t let him take you to see any of Theda Bara’s movies!
For some time she leafed through the letters trying to read his moods, and finally she got to the one that had given her the most fear. It started out with the announcement that he had been in action:
Please excuse my writing. It’s getting dark here, and all I have is a piece of candle. It’s been raining for days now, and the trenches are nothing but mud. All of us have fungus between our toes. “Trench foot” they call it, and many of the fellows have gone sick with flu or pneumonia or just plain terrible health. Thankfully trench foot has been my only problem.
The handwriting changed at this point on the letter, and she had known when she read it that something was wrong:
We had our first action today. It wasn’t much, but I must confess it shook me up. We all knew that we were going over the top in an offensive, and I kept watching the old-timers—an old-timer here is someone who’s survived one offense—and I saw that they weren’t in much better shape than those of us who’d never been through any action at all.
You remember I told you about Bobby Carr? He’s become very close to me, and he gave his heart to Christ a week ago in a service we had here. I don’t think I was ever so happy, because I cared a great deal for him.
But Bobby didn’t make it. The barrage began today, and everyone was pretty tight-lipped. Bobby turned to me and said, “I hate to tell you this, Jared, but I’m scared green.”
I managed to grin back and said, “Every man here is as green as you are. Don’t worry about it, Bobby.”
“I’m glad I found Christ,” Bobby said.
“I’m glad, too,” I said. “So many of the fellows haven’t, but you and I are safe now, no matter what happens.”
At that moment the barrage began. It seemed like the whole world was blowing up. Our cannons were throwing shells as fast as the gunners could shove them into the breach. I noticed that the birds overhead scattered in erratic patterns across the sky. The air was so thick with smoke we could hardly breathe, and when I took a chance and looked over the top, I saw the shells exploding on the German lines.
The whistles started blowing, and our lieutenant was screaming, “All right. Let’s go.” We all managed to scramble out of the trenches. I put everything out of my mind except getting under the barbed wire and not making any mistakes. It was like nothing I’d ever experienced, but I won’t go into it. When we were halfway across, I saw Bobby go down. I turned to him, but the lieutenant screamed at me, “Never mind! We’ll come back later for the wounded.” So I ran on with the rest. We took the position, but we lost a great many men. I went back, and Bobby hadn’t made it. I sat beside him for a long time and thanked God that he had not gone out to meet the Lord without being prepared.
Emily could not read the rest of the letter. She folded it quickly and moved on. She got to the letter that she had enjoyed the most:
We got a weekend leave, and a bunch of us went into Paris. Morals are pretty bad here, and many of our fellows don’t seem to care. Even some of the married men have gone wrong. God has been faithful and protected me from all of that. I did meet a young woman named Marie. She reminds me a great deal of you. I met her at a canteen where she was serving cakes and coffee to the troops. She was so pretty she was getting a lot of attention, but I managed to cut the other fellows out, and she and I went for a walk outside. She spoke very little English, and I spoke little French. But we hit it off right away. I hope I get to see her again. She said I could see her when I come back on another leave.
I hope you’ll continue to pray for me because I sure need it. Temptations are strong anywhere, but out here they seem to be more violent than any I’ve ever undergone. Keep yourself sweet and pure, because when I come home I want to see the same good friend I’ve always had.
With all my love,
Jared
Emily sat for a moment and read the letter again. And then her mother’s voice drifted up. “Emily—Wes! Hurry up. Breakfast is nearly ready.”
Jumping off the bed, Emily stripped off her nightgown and quickly donned cotton drawers and a chemise, over which she slipped on an outfit she had just bought. It was a muslin midi-dress with a blue-striped skirt and an azure-colored midi with a white collar. She fastened the matching white belt, took a few swipes at her hair, and then ran downstairs.
“You’d better hurry or you’ll be late,” Gail said.
“I meant to come down and help cook breakfast—” She stopped, not wanting to mention Jared. They spoke carefully about him, not bringing him up too often. They all shared the letters he wrote to them and saw to it that the mailman often got a plentiful stack from each of them. Sitting down at the table, Emily waited until Wes came crashing down the stairs. She smiled at him. “You’re not supposed to fall down the stairs, Wes. Just walk down like everybody else.”
Her little brother grinned at her and said, “I was going to show you something nice, but since you’re being so mean I don’t guess I will.”
“Oh, come on, Wes! What is it? It’s probably a lizard.”
“No, it’s not.” Wes held an envelope aloft and said, “It’s the pictures we took on our vacation with Jared last spring.”
Instantly Emily came out of her chair. “It’s about time! Were they good? Let’s see them!”
Gail had come in with a platter full of golden pancakes, which she set on the table, then came over and stood behind the two as Wes opened the envelope.
The first picture was one of Emily and Jared walking along a grassy pathway.
“Why, that one was taken at Antietam,” Emily said. “Look at Jared. Isn’t he handsome?”
“Yes, he is,” Gail said softly, and for a moment the three were silenced by the realization of how terribly far away he was now.
Wes finally broke the silence. “
This next one I’m going to put on my wall. It’s the best picture I ever took.”
Emily looked as Wes held up the photo. It was a shot of her and Jared standing on the cannon at Gettysburg. He had his arms around her, keeping her steady, and they had just turned to look at each other. They were smiling, their faces clearly outlined against the fleecy white clouds in the sky. Somehow Wes had managed to catch a special moment, and now it was preserved for them for all time.
“It’s a wonderful picture, son,” Gail said, then turned away quickly. “Now you two had better eat your pancakes.”
As Gail left the room dabbing at her eyes, Wes said, “She can’t help crying over Jared.”
Emily could not respond, for she was close to tears herself. That moment in Gettysburg had been vividly brought back to her, and she knew she would give anything in the world to bring Jared back and stand with him like that just one more time. “Let me have this one. Please, Wes.”
“Sure,” Wes said huskily. “I can get another print made.”
The two sat down, and as delicious as their mother’s pancakes were, Emily had trouble eating. She only managed to get down one. Wes ate two, then said, “We’re going to have to run or we’ll be late.”
****
Emily had never adjusted very well to the new English teacher who had replaced Mr. Laurence at Richmond High. Mr. Clyde Clinton was not a handsome man, to say the least. He was so short that Emily stood two or three inches taller, depending on the heels she wore. He had apparently gone bald, because he wore a frightful-looking toupee. “He looks like he’s wearing a squirrel on his head,” Wes had whispered the first time he had met the teacher.
Indeed, the toupee did not improve his looks at all. Nor did the mustache, a definite mistake in Emily’s opinion. He had fair hair, and she thought his mustache looked as though he’d been eating something, and morsels of food were left along his upper lip.
In all likelihood Emily would not have liked any man who had to follow after Ryan Laurence. It would have been better if a woman had taken his place. Every time she had English class, she could not help contrasting the two men, and Mr. Clinton always came out on the wrong end of her thoughts.
The Amazon Quest (House of Winslow Book #25) Page 5
