CHAPTER 32
Before the Americans joined the fighting, the prospect of war held the breath of the country the way an autumn frost stiffens grass for snow. Ears tuned to radios took hope that Europe’s war would not become America’s war. Woodrow Wilson, in speech and pomp, appeared of like mind and so the hope remained.
But there were others who knew the war was growing. Leonora knew, for she heard the murmurs between Alex and her uncle, saw the shadows that lined their faces as they spent more time at the mills, the way their mouths twisted at telegrams.
The people of Pittsburgh raised their noses in the air and sniffed the tainted, first scents of war. Leonora saw the subtle, silent fear in the female help as they wondered at this strange threat of a draft, their thoughts occupied with sons or new husbands or brothers as they dropped the silver and carried the china with unstable hands. Leonora saw the faces of stable boys, the close way men spoke to one another, looked at their feet and then off into the distance like they smelled fire. She noticed the ripple of violence in the air, moving and gnawing like a hungry beast, spurring deep lines in foreheads and jaws clenched against the unknown.
Then, on April 6, 1917, America declared war on Germany. The skin of the country rose like gooseflesh with a mix of fear and excitement. The bravado of the American boys rang in the streets, as they spouted their strength over that of the Krauts. But these were boys who did not know the cold of the trenches, the weight of a bayonet or the sight of another man gutted.
And no sooner were the young men sent out—dropouts from Sewickley, miners from McKee’s Rocks, tutored boys from Shady Side—than boys returned in broken pieces. Outside the hospital body bags and gurneys made quick bursts from ambulance to sidewalk to building, while two streets over a longer procession filled the road as a parade of boys, brown clad, steel hatted and armed, waved farewell to the people lining the streets.
Emotion filled the faces of the people as the boys walked off intact. Mothers memorized their children’s features, wondered if they would scar or warp, and they saw not the faces of the young soldiers or the men they had become but the innocence and frailty of the children the women had borne. Fathers saw their sons as older than they were, as men, as extensions of their own arms. They looked with pride and pain and questioned, Did I make him strong enough? Will he be brave enough? And so the war began and brought casualties before good-byes were even spoken.
In the hospital, along the rows of torn bodies, Leonora saw the rainbow of war—each macabre hue—the yellow of typhoid and sclerosis, the black of gangrene, the white of pneumonia—the recurring colors that foretold amputation or death as inevitably as a sentence. The duties at the hospital were gruesome and left Leonora rattled and consternated. And she hated it and loved it all at the same time. For even in the horror, the sights were stark and real and, despite the smell of death, there was life and intrepid hope in the sterile rooms.
And there was healing. For here Leonora found a piece of herself that did not belong to the Fairfields, had not been warped in lies or transformed by false impressions. Here she brought smiles to those who cried, gave hope to those who had none and held the hands of soldiers who woke each night screaming with hidden horrors. And this belonged to her and yet was not about her. She gave and gave freely and opened her heart to a greater good that lit with hope. This was not bought or held upright through forced conditions but flowed from her soul and brought gooseflesh to her arms that she was still here, she was alive, she was intact and could serve a purpose that was real. Here she did not shrink and wish to disappear; here she wished to shine and offer what she had to give.
Leonora was deep in these thoughts as she changed the bedsheets and jumped slightly when Nurse Polansky tapped her shoulder. “Someone’s downstairs looking for you,” she said, smiling oddly. “He’s tall, dark and handsome.”
Leonora’s hand came to her throat. She patted her uniform, picked at lint that wasn’t there. She was surprised by her sudden resistance, annoyance that Alex was here. This was her sanctuary and she felt him strangely as an intruder.
“Wouldn’t keep that one waiting,” the nurse reminded. “The Red Cross ladies are panting at the window.”
Leonora nodded, hurried through the hall and down the metal steps, while trying to shake off her petulance. As she rounded the corner, she found Alex observing a watercolor hanging on the wall, his hands laced behind his back. Her hands were dry, but she still wiped them over her white skirt.
“I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” Alex gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.
“What are you doing here?”
His eyebrows went up. “Well, I thought I might get a warmer reception than that.”
“I’m sorry.” She looked furtively down the hall. “I just didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Apparently.” He picked up the name tag, his finger lingering on her breast. “Clara.”
Quickly, she reached up and unclasped the pin, putting the name tag in her pocket. “The Fairfield name has a strange effect on people.” She pointed to the family’s plaque on the wall.
He sighed and nodded, for this he understood. “Why aren’t you with the volunteers?”
“They were shorthanded upstairs.”
“Oh.” He put his tongue in his cheek. “With the soldiers?”
Her heart galloped with his tone. “Yes.”
“You think that’s appropriate? You’re not a nurse, after all.”
“I know.” Her insides shrank. “Alex, why are you here?”
His face calmed, he reached for her hands. “I need to go away for a while.”
Alex shifted his eyes to the nurses in the hallway and lowered his voice. “My number in the draft came up. Your uncle is trying to pull some strings, saying I’m needed here. It’s true actually. England and America can’t get enough iron. Anyway, it’s best if I go away until the whole thing is cleared up. I’m fairly confident your uncle will make them see that I’m more useful at the mills.” He chuckled. “Certainly more useful than getting shot on the front lines.”
Leonora grimaced at the light reference, thought about the wounded young men upstairs. Alex mistook the look for worry and stroked her cheek. “I want you to come with me.”
It took a minute for his words to register, for the dread to enter. “What?”
“I’m not ready to say good-bye to you yet.”
She floundered and found comfort in an unlikely ally. “My aunt will never allow it.”
He laughed again. “She’s the one who suggested it. Your uncle will be our chaperone.”
Leonora looked longingly at a group of nurses chatting at the front desk. “Alex, I can’t just abandon the hospital. They don’t have enough hands as it is.”
“Yes, yes.” He pinched her chin and clicked his tongue. “How would they ever manage without you?” He leaned in happily. “Besides, it’s already been taken care of. I spoke to Dr. Edwards. Said they had more bandage rollers than they knew what to do with.” He looked very pleased with himself.
“You did what? How—”
“Between you and me, he hardly remembered you volunteered here.”
“You had no right!” The words flew out quick and heated.
“You’re angry?” he sputtered.
“Of course I’m angry!” A few heads from the hall turned their way. “You had no right to go behind my back without speaking to me first.”
He grabbed her roughly by the elbow and his pupils dilated. “You should be thanking me!” he hissed, keeping alert to listening ears. “Anyone in their right mind would be begging for an excuse to get away from this place. You can smell the death as soon as you walk through the doors. I’m not happy with you being here; neither is your aunt.” He hushed again, his voice taking on a hint of smugness. “It’s really not . . . proper . . . for someone of your background.”
“I’m finished talking, Alex.” She turned, but he took her hand, gently this time.
“L
ook, I’m sorry if I upset you. I should have talked to you first. You’re right.” He gave a quick bow. “In my defense, I truly thought you would be pleased.” Alex’s mouth frowned in earnest. “I’m a bit on edge, Leonora. Things are moving faster than I expected. It’s important I leave as soon as possible.” The half smile returned. “I’ll make you a deal. Come away with me for a few weeks and I’ll convince your aunt to let you continue to work at the hospital when you get back. She was planning to have you quit.”
“She can’t force me to quit, Alex.”
“Maybe not, but she can have you fired.” Spite flickered, turned up one side of his mouth. “Your aunt and uncle give this place enough money they’ll do whatever they wish. What’s one volunteer to a new wing of a hospital, after all?”
Once again, the shackles of her family’s name cut into her flesh, choking any freedom. She looked into Alex’s handsome face, searched for a glimmer of understanding or compassion, but found the eyes empty, disinterested. She turned her face from him and her gaze landed on the watercolor hanging on the wall. Her lips parted, and for a moment time slowed and the noise of the hospital faded. The painting brushed the strokes of the sea, of a perfect sky and sheer cliff sides that seemed to rise from the very earth, from an ancient time, from an ancient land. A warmth flooded her chest, and for a second she was there, her feet dangling over the cliffs, sitting next to a friend who always chased the demons away.
Alex shook her arm. “Leonora, did you even hear a word I just said?”
And time began to move again; sounds invaded the silence. The painting turned back into an amateur imitation of a pastel landscape and she pushed the memories away, pushed the ache down to her fingers and then gripped them into fists. She looked at the nurses and the patients moving through the hall. The hospital was all she had in this world and Alex’s ultimatum leaned only one way. Resignation settled. “When do we leave?”
CHAPTER 33
The Shelbys folded James into their home and family as if he had been naturally born into it. There was no mention of Shamus’s abuse; there was no pity, no words of transition, no questions. The extent of the Shelby kindness and warmth made renowned bush hospitality seem like snobbery in comparison. And in turn, James offered the only reciprocation he could—work.
Each morning, James, Tom, John and Will set off for one paddock or another, their stomachs full from Mrs. Shelby’s cooking, their sleeves rolled down against the bite of dawn. Even between their eight strong arms, work outnumbered them. Help was seldom hired, only afforded for the busiest seasons of shearing and harvest. And each night, they returned orange with dust, dirty and smelling of sheep or grass or fur or whatever the job had been for the day. The work was as hard as at home, but here there was chortling and joking, so much that James’s side hurt more from laughter than it did from labor.
Under the guise and training of the Shelby men, James learned to cull dingoes and rabbits through trap and bullet, learned to brand the calves and castrate. With quiet fortitude, he held his stomach and learned quickly that he hated the cruel tasks beyond description. And, after some hearty ribbing from the brothers, learned he would never have to do them again.
Instead, in an equal exchange, James took over the stock, a chore as loathsome to the Shelby boys as branding had been to him. What had previously taken the work of all three brothers James now did alone. Expert riding bareback or saddleback, he steered with a touch of the reins or nudge of the knee and could charge a horse, against all its instinct, straight into a ring of angry bullocks without touching a spur to fur.
James trained the unruly dogs, overbred mongrels with more dingo in them than shepherd. They followed him with wild, alert faces so that he only needed to nod, wink or raise a brow in command. And after a day exhausted with work in the paddocks, he lavished such great affection on them that the dogs would curl and whine with an ecstasy that mimicked pain.
The whip became another appendage. With it looped at his hip in rest, he could flick it out quick as a lizard’s tongue. But James used the whip as warning, not instrument, the crack more menacing than its touch, for he could round the bulls and the sheep without a snap to their hides. So James worked the farthest paddocks, mended fences along the way and drove the cattle from one area of grassland to another.
And he loved this land that grew and stretched under feet and hooves, the land that opened endlessly until it seemed to slope as the curve of the earth. Through the spotted shade of the box gum forest, green and yellow parrots sat in ornament along the branches. Red kangaroos, tall as men, clustered by the hundreds in rust-colored expanse, chewing leaves and licking paws to stay cool. The land was noisy with life but silent in purity.
On searing afternoons, he’d strip down for a bogey in one of the deep creeks and swim from one end to the other. Then, floating on his back, the sun warm against his bare chest and the water cool against his back, he would watch the platypuses slip off rocks and ripple the glass surface next to his body. After the swim, he’d dress back in his clothes that lay cooking on a slab, drying his body instantly.
Beyond the forest, the grassland grew to his waist and the cattle chewed to bliss and here he would spend the night in the open air, under the stars, only his bedroll between him and the earth, and he would drift into the stars as he did with sleep and find it more a home than anything built out of slab or timber.
During these years with the Shelbys, James did not go back to Shamus, tried not to think of the man darkened and lost in despair. Mrs. Shelby, saint and forgiving soul that she was, dropped off food once a week on the old porch steps, never mentioned if it was eaten. Tom retrieved the horse for fear of starvation, but without comment on the homestead. Shamus was a ghost, only accounted for by neighbors who dragged him home from the pub or plucked him sleeping out of ditches along the road. “Never saw a man fall to drink so fast,” one man would say, and another would nod: “Irish got t’drink their grief.” James would burn under the shame, under the pitying glances.
Over time, James’s long body had become used to the ill fit of the Shelby couch, his legs awkward and hanging over the worn side. James scrunched his fist under the pillow, flitted in and out of a dream. Something poked his arm—a wheat stalk, a branch maybe. Stuck in the confines of sleep, he brushed it away. Another poke, a blurred dream. He grunted and flopped his arm over his chest.
“Jamesie,” whispered the poker.
James jolted, dropping the book that was fanned on his lap to the floor with a thud. “Charlotte? What are you doing up?”
The little girl sucked in her bottom lip, wiped her nose through choppy sobs.
James reached for her hands. “What’s wrong?”
“I-I-I had a bad dweam,” she stammered, a snot bubble forming in one nostril.
James patted down his shirt until he found a handkerchief and held it to her nose.
“Can I-I-I . . . stay with you, Jamesie?” she asked with new tears.
He sat her on his knee, hugged her shoulders. “Course you can.” He kissed the top of her red hair. “Want to tell me about the dream?”
She shook her head and leaned against his shoulder. Her chest quivered as she tried to hold her cries. James stroked her arm.
“Do . . . do . . . you ever have bad dweams?” she asked.
“Sometimes.”
“How you make ’em go away?”
James thought for a moment, kissed her on the head again. “I try to think of happy times. Beautiful places, good days . . . that sort of thing.”
She raised eyes that were round and wet and open. “Like what?”
He smiled. “I think of the sea.”
“Tell me ’bout it.” She smiled. “Please?”
“Well,” he started. “There’s a place, not too far from here, where the earth meets the sea. Cliffs as big and golden as a mountain seem to rise right out of the ocean, like a giant took a bite out of the side of Australia. The water is as blue as the sky and nearly as big.” He cl
osed his eyes for a moment. “When the sun shines on the water, it’s like a field of diamonds all glittering at once. It’s beautiful, Charlotte. Almost as pretty as you.” He pinched her chin and she giggled.
“I never been t’the sea,” she said.
“I’ll take you someday. Promise.”
Her little face grew serious. “You’ll always stay with us, right, Jamesie?”
“Long as you’ll have me.”
Each cheek dimpled. James rubbed her arm and rocked her gently until her body loosened with sleep. Then he untwined her arm from his neck and laid her on the couch, covered her with the quilt and took his pillow to Tom’s room, where he stretched out on the floor. He tucked his hand under the pillow and shifted his hips on the hard floor, didn’t realize he had fallen back asleep until the wood boards vibrated and his eyes opened in the dark.
“Get up, ladies!” John jabbed him in the ribs with his boot. James twisted onto his belly and buried his head into the pillow.
John moved over to Tom and pulled the quilt off. Tom grabbed it, his hair in full distress. “Bugger off!”
“Get movin’. Mum needs us to take the wheat down to the weigh station.”
Tom grunted. “What d’you need us for?”
“You know they always pay more when we got two pretty girls with us!” he teased.
“Stop messin’. Why we need t’go?”
“You an’ James need to pick up the new harness. Came in by rail yesterday.” His tone was serious now. “John an’ me will take care of the wheat an’ then you can meet us back there. Got to leave now else we’ll be comin’ back in the dark.”
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