Platform Four: A Legacy Falls Romance

by Eden Butler

  “We do work long hours,” I offered, taking a sip of my sweet tea, “and the work is a lot harder than I thought it would be. But then we all have to do our part, don’t we?”

  “Yes, well,” he said and I caught the slight blush coloring his cheeks. Mama had mentioned he’d been rejected for the draft, something to do with a childhood illness that left him partially deaf in one ear. Still, tongues did wag about such a strong, apparently fit young man of a well to do family hanging back while plenty of other loved ones risked life and limb on a foreign battlefield.

  “Ada Mae,” Mama interrupted, pointedly staring at me. “Why don’t you fetch the apple pie from the kitchen window seal?” Grateful for the distraction, I nevertheless knew that whatever plans either my mother or Deacon Smith had for me, that there was a picture in the pocket of my dress that seemed to burn against the fabric, and just as that picture was never far from my heart, Garreth was never far from my thoughts.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dear Garreth,

  Magic is real. I’ve seen it as well. It’s in the sight of true love, when worry is not present and strength becomes a solid thing that keeps us upright. It’s in the brush of a hand, the slowest, sweetest smile that shoots through your whole body when its turned towards you. I felt that. The day I met you.

  From Ada to Garreth, 1943

  Deacon’s presence became common place in the weeks that followed, despite Mama's growing weakness. To be honest, I didn’t mind Deacon being at dinner even though it wasn’t Mama’s meals he came for, even when Uncle Bleu joined us at the head of the table, adding to the tension in the dining room. At least Deacon’s presence distracted my mother, gave her something to rally around, whether it be on setting a good table or making sure I set a good example of marriageable material.

  And still, there was the echo of Garreth’s smile, his lulling Irish accent to cradle me at night when I had dragged myself bone tired from working in the factory. Or when I became so blind with worry over his well-being, over Mattie’s and Mama’s, that I thought I simply could not carry that heavy ache in my heart. For months now—almost half a year—his letters continued to sustain me.

  “At night, late, when I’m so weary, so broken by the day,” he’d written, not three weeks before, “I remember the soft, lovely feel of your pale skin, how it felt as though the slightest grip from my fingers would break the surface. It was a burden and blessing, touching you, wanting so desperate like to never let there be an end to any of it.”

  That letter I’d kept under my pillow, as though each word would sink into my mind, become part of my sense and remind me that there was no one in the world quite like Garreth McGinnis.

  “If I have any regrets, my sweet Miss Ada, it is that I did not kiss you though I was desperate to and somewhere, deep inside yourself, I like to believe that you wanted my kiss. At least, I pray you did.”

  I had. I did. I still very much wanted that kiss, and I could not, would not let myself be ashamed of how I felt. How could I? Garreth had written a hundred letters and I’d matched each one. Sometimes I’d receive two or three a day. Sometimes it would be weeks that I didn’t hear from him and then one bright, sweet day, I’d get a stack of ten or more. Things overseas was unreliable, like the mail and since D Day and the escalation of the war, no one could count of anything to remain normal. So we stopped expecting normal.

  We also stopped wondering if we’d ever see an end to the arrival of coffins at the train station or the slow, patriotic funerals that had become commonplace in our small town. We stopped complaining about war bonds and doing without sugar and coffee.

  We lived moment to moment and never expected to have another because it was those expectations that would shift your reasoning and make you forget just how vulnerable we all were—every single person who dared to love and be loved.

  Every week Mr. Franks, the portly, balding man who had delivered the mail in Legacy Falls for years, gave us our letters and packages with a nod and a dimpled smile. Since Garreth and I began our…well, our what-have-you, he’d even occasionally given me a little wink when he handed me yet another stack of letters, or accepted the fifth one in five days from me. Then the telegrams from the War department began to come more frequently and Mr. Franks’ footsteps became slow and labored, as if the burden he had to bear in delivering the news that someone’s husband or son or loved one had been lost to war in one way or another was something that weighed heavily on him, as well. I hadn't seen him smile for weeks, except for the feeblest of attempts when I met him at the end of our long walk.

  One Monday afternoon Mr. Franks didn’t come at all. Not that afternoon or the next morning, and by Wednesday that week, Mr. Franks’ replacement, a wiry woman who wore too much rouge, had gotten used to the different stops and which houses had missing or broken mailboxes.

  “Poor Micah Franks,” Uncle Bleu said one afternoon when the new mail carrier winked at him after handing over the mail.

  “What happened to him?”

  Next to me on the front porch swing, my uncle didn’t take his gaze from the thin stack of mail in his lap as he answered, casually handing over a letter from Garreth. He couldn’t read well, but he did know his own name and by that time, he recognized way my eyes likely lit up anytime that overseas stamp and a scrawl that wasn’t his son’s passed through our mail. “Joe from the general store said he had a fit. Told his boss he’d not deliver another notice to some poor woman, some wretched family afraid of bad news.”

  “So he quit?”

  “Transferred,” he said, tapping the edge of the unopened envelopes against his knee. “Got transferred to the distribution center, and from what Joe said, is happier for it.”

  But not everyone had the luxury of ignoring the telegrams when they came. And they did come, far too often. There was no way to guess who would get them. At the factory, when the carrier came, the spindles of thread slowed, then stopped. The lengths of fabric stopped skidding into neat stacks on the concrete floor. There would come a silence unlike anything I’d ever known—aching and visceral as everyone held their breath. Everyone waited for the carrier to step towards the shift manager, then waited to see which direction they would head, what path they would take towards which station. Their heads would be lowered inches from each other as they spoke, mumbling names and whatever it was they said to one another at such as time—attempts at subtlety, discretion that stopped after months of those futile attempts to make what was happening any easier.

  Then a woman would be approached and there was always a scream. Always. It was a noise that tore inside you, something that felt like the flu and the heat of desperation and the abject sense of relief and remorse for it, all at the same time.

  Now we lived on held breaths, waiting for our lives to fracture. Even with that knowledge that a telegram would never come for me, with my not being next of kin for either Garreth or Mattie, I held my breath, felt my heart thumping in my chest. That knowledge did not stop me from standing at Farrah’s side, my hand gripping hers, our fingers twisted together as we held our breath, praying that the carrier would not stop in front of either of us.

  “Land’s sake, I hate that,” she’d said, last week when the carrier had come again. Then she pulled a pack of Chesterfield’s from her pocket and attempted to light it with shaking fingers. “I…Lord.” She stopped trying to flick her lighter when I covered her trembling hand and lit the cigarette for her. There was a glassy, shiny glimmer in her eyes when I pulled the flame away from her face, forcing a smile when she inhaled. “Honestly, Ada, I just don’t know how many times I can stomach that.”

  How she did it, I’d never know. My worry, the burning ache that set inside my chest every day only grew with the passing months. It was the same ache felt all over the country. It intensified with Mattie’s last letter.

  Ada Mae, I am scared.

  Mattie’s letter wasn’t long. There were fat lines of black from a felt tip marker that redacted locations and movem
ents, several rows of them, so as to not reveal where my cousin had been when the bloody battle took place, but still I caught his melancholy. His worry. His grief.

  Lionel Phillips was a good fella. He was from Boston and had been in my unit since we landed in Italy. Some of the boys here called him Red because when he drank too much, and he usually did, the tips of his ears and the end of his nose would get all ruby red, just like Dorothy’s shiny shoes.

  Mattie had been the only person I knew that hated “The Wizard of Oz” when we watched it a couple of years ago. He said Judy Garland would be a looker when she grew up but the flying monkeys and the talking scarecrow were too silly for words.

  Lionel was with a few men down the embankment last week and we were ambushed by a group of Jerrys. They came out of nowhere, Ada Mae. It was like they’d been part of the fog that camouflaged the earth around our camp. It was Lionel and two other fellas I’d known since the whole start of this, that didn’t walk away from that sneak attack. Just like that, they were gone. I’d had a beer two nights before with Lionel. He’d just gotten word that his little brother had made the Junior High football team. Showed me a picture of the kid in his uniform and I’d never seen a man so proud. He had a girl too. Lila. Always talked about her, about how he couldn’t wait to be back home with her and his folks. He said the first thing he’d do was ask Lila to marry him and pray like hell she remembered how much she loved him.

  Now he’s gone. Like so many others I knew well.

  It got me thinking that I was just a little bit happy I hadn’t left anyone behind in Legacy Falls. No, I don’t mean you or my pop or Aunt Cora. I mean a girl. I mean someone waiting on me to start her life. Someone who stays up at night worrying over me, wondering if I’ll ever be home. Worried that she’ll waste away waiting on me. I can’t imagine the hell that is.

  Ada Mae, I hope you’re not sitting there, pining away for some sweetheart out in the trenches. I want you to be happy. It’s all I’ve ever wanted for you. But I hope, cousin, if you do have someone overseas, that you do not spend your nights worrying over him. Or me, for that matter. I hope you know that I take strength in thinking of you out there where there are no bullets or blood, living every day to the fullest. I hope you’re laughing and having a drink and kissing as many men as you like. I hope to God you aren’t crying over a man thousands of miles away.

  Mattie was my blood. We’d skinny dipped at eight down on Peyton Creek and slept with our heads together, both sucking our thumbs, when Mama and I had come to live with Uncle Bleu and his only son. We were closer than cousins and in many ways, Mattie was a sibling I’d never had. Nothing he said to me was done to hurt me or to scare me. He only warned me because of the awful things he had seen, and had been asked to do, and all that he had lost. Maybe I would have disregarded Mattie’s morose ponderings, chalked them up to his sorrow over losing his friend. Maybe I would have ignored his warnings and kept on worrying and fretting that I might not ever see Garreth again. Maybe I would have never doubted what I felt for that beautiful stranger. Maybe.

  But then, the next week at the factory, laughing right along with Farrah as we rethreaded the spindles, the warehouse doors slid open and the mail carrier walked inside.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Miss Ada,

  If magic is real then you must be a witch. You’ve sent such a spell over me that I scarce believe how often I think of you and how slowly it makes my day crawl by. I find myself keen to run through maneuvers, to get my tasks done just to find a moment to sit and write you. I’ve even gone off and missed my chance at the pub tonight. That’s real magic, indeed, keeping an Irishman from his pint.

  From Garreth to Ada, 1944

  Farrah had worn a new shade of lipstick.

  “Fever Pitch.” She demonstrated the bold color by sliding on another coat and kissing the air before she tucked the gold tube into the front pocket of her overalls. “I’ve decided I’m going to buy a new color every month until Billy gets home.”

  “And what would be the purpose of that?” She ignored me when I held out the empty spindle for her to load with a fresh rack of thread.

  “Aside from making me feel better?”

  “Yes.” It wasn’t until I nudged her that Farrah finally reloaded the metal spike in the center of the spindle. “Aside from that.”

  She waggled her eyebrows, laughing when I shook my head at her. “To give my husband choices. I’ll send each color on lip prints with a letter every week. Billy can pick his favorite and then, when he comes home, I’ll meet him at the train station wearing his favorite and then later that night, when we’re all alone…”

  “I get the idea,” I told her laughing harder when she sent more air kisses to her invisible husband’s lips as she pantomimed dancing with Billy and covering his face with her red lipped kisses.

  Farrah was in a great mood. Another packaged had come from Germany, she’d told me earlier that morning, filled with decadent chocolates and fine silk scarves that Billy had stolen from some rich German’s abandoned mansion. She wore one of the scarves around her head, curls framing her round face and the bright flowers painted onto the fabric matching the color of her lips.

  “I’m gonna try another color I saw at Mitchell’s drug store next week. What do you think? Pink or an even darker red?”

  She wasn’t watching me just then. Not while she used the steel surface of the conveyer control panel to adjust her scarf and smooth clear the smear that had formed along her bottom lip. Farrah didn’t see what everyone else in the factory had—the slow, subtle approach of our shift manager, Randal, as he walked next to the mail carrier. This one was older, had a kinder face than the woman who had taken over for Mr. Franks. The man walking next to Randal had deep set lines around the corners of his eyes and mouth, as though he’d spent much of his life laughing and smiling. But those gentle, black eyes were glistening, looked worried and nervous. His mouth drew down into an expression that straddled between a frown and a sympathetic grimace.

  Randal caught my eye and nodded once, prompting the carrier to walk forward as Farrah went on watching her reflection, completely oblivious to the news she was soon to hear.

  “Farrah,” I said, but the name had come out wrong—too soft, too quiet, the word muddled around the crack from my throat and the helpless prayer I hurried to utter.

  “The pink, I think…”

  “Farrah, honey.” That time she heard me, jerked her attention to me as I stood next to her, grabbing her hand before she could stop me.

  Everything went so slowly, and yet with such great speed after that and I felt like there was a bubble around us. Only I could see the streak of horror and shock that seemed to fight for room on her features when the carrier lifted the telegram to Farrah.

  Death brings so much pain, so much grief but those aren’t the only emotions that take over us when it comes. My friend’s expression colored with every emotion; the unyielding denial, heralded by the vigorous way she shook her head, to the abject horror at realizing what message that telegram delivered.

  “No.” It was the only thing she could manage. One syllable cracked and broken, but fierce in its delivery. “No.” She wouldn’t take the telegram despite the old carrier holding it toward her, occasionally crooning a soft, “Come now, dear. Come now.” And when Farrah took to shaking her head, stepping back until she bumped into the spindle she’d just rethreaded moments before, I came to her side, offering a hand which she took before I relieved the carrier of the telegram.

  “Thank you,” I muttered to him, lifting my chin so that Randal would see the others away from us.

  “No,” Farrah said again, and kept repeating even as I led her into the back storage room. There were large boxes of thin fabric and several shelves of thread kept against the wall and the whole room smelled of ink, but there was a large window toward the back and I opened it, settling Farrah on top of a large crate in front of it.

  She watched me mechanically, as though I wasn’
t about to deliver the worst news she’d ever heard, would likely ever hear in her life. The way she kept her eyes wide and open, how she’d wiped at her wet face as though her tears were an annoyance, told me she thought there still some hope yet. And maybe there was. Not all telegrams were a death sentence. Not every bit of news came with the finality of a KIA report. Billy could have been lost, maybe injured. He could have been taken by the Nazis or somehow lost his way, gotten separated from his unit.

  “Farrah…” I started, eager to offer her some hope, something that would keep her from the grief I knew was coming. The telegram flipped against my fingers as a breeze from the open window came inside and I held tighter to the paper. “Maybe…maybe it’s just…”

  “Ada,” she said, silencing me before I went on too much. Then Farrah blinked, held her eyes closed for four slow seconds before she looked at me. “Just read the damn thing.”

  The paper was thick with a faint imprint against the cream background. There was a Western Union logo running along the top of the telegram, the font wide and dark. And then, in bold, upper case font, came the words that read as brisk, unfeeling when I read them aloud.

  “THE SECRETARY OF WAR DESIRES ME TO EXPRESS HIS DEEP REGRET THAT YOUR HUSBAND 2/LT. WILLIAM R. PHILLIPS WAS KILLED IN ACTION IN GERMANY 12 APR 45 CONFIRMING LETTER FOLLOWS…”

  To the point. Cold. The Secretary of War had “deep regret” and yet he’d go on about his life, with whomever it was he loved, living a life of purpose and contentment. Bill wouldn’t. Neither would Farrah. Even as I held her, felt my shirt dampen and soak with her wild, heavy tears, I thought of that politician in his office, conveying his sympathy, then going on about his day. There likely had been thousands of these telegrams going out before the end of the war. I hoped the others weren’t as abrupt, that one day soon Farrah would be sent a letter with more meaning, more heart. But right then, with my friend clinging to me, sobbing uncontrollably against my thin sweater, digging her nails into my collar, I didn’t think about what could be said or written to ease her pain. There was nothing that could.