by Dean Hughes
“LaRue, it’s Mom. Did you hear the news?”
“Sure we did.”
“What are you planning to do?”
“Bev and I were just going out the door. Everyone’s going to be downtown. We’re heading down there.”
“Your dad wants you to wait for a few minutes.”
“Wait?”
“Yes. We’re going out to the car right now. We’ll be home in ten or fifteen minutes. Dad wants to, you know, just have a little family meeting for a few minutes before you leave.”
“Family meeting? You’re kidding, aren’t you?”
“No. Please just wait that long. There’s plenty of time to celebrate.”
“All right. But get him out of there right now, okay? I don’t want to be sitting here for an hour.” She slammed the receiver back on the hook. “Good old Dad!” she said. “Him and his family meetings.”
“It’s okay,” Beverly said, and LaRue knew what she was thinking: “Don’t get mad, LaRue. Don’t get into one of your fights with Dad.”
The truth was, though, LaRue wasn’t nearly as bothered as she had pretended. She knew what this was about.
The girls sat in the living room and listened to the news on the old Philco radio. Live reports were coming now from New York about the celebration in Times Square. “That’s where I’d like to be,” LaRue told Beverly. “Right in the middle of that big crowd.” But LaRue knew, even as she spoke, that she was playing her LaRue role. What she really felt was a kind of uneasiness, and actually some disappointment that after all the anticipation she wasn’t really as excited as she was pretending to be.
It was Beverly who finally put LaRue’s worry into words. “Do you think we’ll hear from Wally pretty soon?”
“I don’t know.”
She knew what Beverly was thinking, what they were both worried about, but neither of them said it.
When President and Sister Thomas got home, they sat down in the living room with LaRue and Beverly, and Dad turned the radio off. “Girls, I’m sorry,” he said. “I know you want to leave, but I thought we needed to get together for a few minutes first.”
“Good excuse for one of your speeches. Right, Dad?” LaRue actually meant to sound playful, but the irony in her voice seemed stronger than that—even to herself.
“No, LaRue,” Dad said. “I just want to say a couple of things.” He was sitting next to Mom on the big gray sofa. The fabric on the arms was worn thin and dark, and the cushions were flattened, even frayed in spots. For all Dad’s improved income, he still hadn’t bought new furniture, and LaRue knew why. He wanted to leave the house unchanged until Wally came home.
“I don’t know whether you girls remember,” Dad said, “but last fall the First Presidency asked the members of the Church not to celebrate when the war finally ended.”
No matter what LaRue had been feeling, this rubbed her the wrong way. She couldn’t imagine Church leaders saying something like that.
“Don’t roll your eyes, LaRue,” Mom said, and then she winked.
“It’s mostly a time to feel thankful,” Dad said. “War is never anything we ought to celebrate.”
“The end of one is,” LaRue said. “We’re just happy it’s over.”
“I know. And you can go on downtown in about five minutes. But I just wanted to have a prayer with you before you go.”
“A prayer for Wally?” Beverly asked.
“Yes. We also have a lot to be thankful for right now.”
“I’m scared about Wally.”
“I know. We all are. But we’ll have to accept whatever comes. We don’t know what’s happened during these bombings over there. And we’ve had no word of him for a very long time.”
Beverly looked at her mother. “You always said he would come back,” she said.
“I know. And I still feel that way.”
“Well, anyway, I wanted to have a family prayer,” Dad said. “Let’s kneel down.”
So they got down on their knees, the four of them next to each other in front of the long couch. LaRue bowed her head and closed her eyes. She waited for Dad’s big voice. But he said, softly, “LaRue, would you be willing to say the prayer for us?”
LaRue opened her eyes, looked up. She could hardly believe this. She didn’t want to do it. She wasn’t the one to ask something like this. That was for Dad to do. But she was also touched—even honored. “Okay,” she said. And she bowed her head again.
“Father in Heaven,” she began. For a moment, however, she couldn’t think what to say. And then, she was too moved to say the words that came to her. She held on, let the tears run down her cheeks for a time, and then she began again. “Father in Heaven, we are so thankful that the war has finally ended and that Alex and Bobbi are all right. We pray that they both might be able to come back to us soon.”
She waited, trying to keep control. “We also pray that Wally is safe, and that he will come home.” She didn’t want to add to that, but she knew what her dad would want her to say. “But Father, if Wally isn’t well, and can’t come back, we pray that we can understand and accept that, the way we did when Gene died.” But the words cost her, and now she was crying hard. She wanted to tell God that it would be unfair if Wally didn’t make it back after all he had been through, and after all the prayers the family had offered. She thought of adding something stronger, of making something of a demand on God, but she couldn’t do it. “Father, we just want our family to be together again. We pray that our new little Gene will come to us soon, too . . . and that he will never have to fight in a war. That no one will. Ever again.” She tried to close the prayer but couldn’t. She put her face into her hands and sobbed.
Her dad was next to her, and she felt the weight of his big arm as he reached around her and gripped her shoulder. “In the name of Jesus Christ, amen,” he pronounced, and then for a long time he held LaRue close, and LaRue felt his body shake, as he too cried.
When LaRue finally got to her feet, she hugged her mother, but emotions were still storming inside her. LaRue wanted the war to be over now, really over, and that could only mean that Wally would come home—no matter what she had said in her prayer. And the truth was, what she really wanted was to find out that some horrible mistake had been made, and that Gene was actually still alive. He had gone to the place called “the war,” and it had swallowed him whole. No matter how hard she tried to accept that, she had never stopped feeling that the war, that God, should give him back.
“Thank you, honey,” Mom was saying. “I’m so glad you thought of little Gene. It’s what we need now. We need him with us.”
But LaRue didn’t want to talk anymore. She didn’t want to hurt.
“Maybe Beverly and I can cook dinner,” LaRue said. “We could have something special tonight.”
“Aren’t you kids going downtown?” Dad asked.
“We can go later.”
She looked at Beverly, who nodded back to her. “Yeah. That’ll be better,” Beverly said. She was still crying.
After dinner Dad surprised everyone by saying, “Why don’t we all drive downtown and just see what’s happening. This is a day to remember.”
So Mom agreed to leave the dishes on the table for now, and they all piled into the old Hudson. But as they drove toward town, north on State Street, they got bogged down in a terrific traffic jam. Cars were filling the streets, and so were people. At Fifth South, Dad gave up and turned east, but traffic was thick there, too. He finally parked the car, and the family walked into town. People had especially jammed State Street between First and Third South. LaRue could hardly believe how wild everyone was acting. Music was blasting out from stores, from speakers, and people were dancing, forming snake-dance lines, or just milling about, shouting and laughing.
“Look at that,” Beverly said.
LaRue looked to see where Beverly was pointing. A man in a white sailor’s uniform had hold of a girl who was maybe twenty or so, and he was kissing her—just like in the movie
s. He had thrown her back, and he was leaning over her. She was clinging to him and kissing him back, and LaRue thought maybe she was his girl. But when the sailor finally stood her up and looked at her, he grinned and said, in a loud voice, “Say, it’s nice to meet you.”
“Same to you,” the girl said. She grabbed hold of him again, and they went for another one. She was a slim girl, and she had on a pretty polka-dot dress with heels, white gloves, and a cute little hat, which she had to hold onto with one hand as he bent her back again.
“Isn’t that Clarence and Vivian Wadham’s girl, from our stake?” Mom asked Dad.
“I hope not,” Dad said, and he looked away. LaRue and Beverly both laughed. But a conga line was coming their way, the people singing as loud as they could to make their own music. The end of the line snapped as it turned, and a man bumped against President Thomas. “Excuse me, sir,” he said, in a slurred voice. He tipped his hat and then chased after the line. “Whew! Did you smell that guy?” Mom said.
“Maybe we should go,” Dad told her.
“Oh, come on, Al. Don’t be such a stick-in-the-mud. People need to let loose a little.”
“They don’t have to use alcohol.”
“I know. But most people aren’t drinking. Let’s walk on up the street. It sounds like there’s a band playing up there.”
There was a band all right, and it was playing a jazzy version of “You’d Be So Nice to Come Home To.” It was not at all the sort of music Dad liked. But as they got close, LaRue grabbed his hand. “Come on,” she yelled in his ear. “I’ll teach you how to swing.”
She spun around backward and pulled him off the sidewalk and into the street. She was mostly just teasing him. She was sure he wouldn’t really dance with her. But he took hold of her, and off he went. He wasn’t doing a jitterbug, but he certainly knew how to keep up with the beat. He spun with LaRue, moved her through the crowd, knew exactly how to lead—like no boy her age ever did.
“You’re good, Dad,” she yelled at his ear. “You’re really good.”
He looked down at her and smiled, and then he spun her again, but maybe a little too wildly. They crashed into another couple, and LaRue was thrown off balance. He hung on to her, kept her from falling, and then gave her a hug. “Sorry, honey,” he said.
“That’s okay.” She was laughing, feeling happier than she could ever remember.
“I love you, LaRue,” he said.
And the words were out before she even thought. “I love you too, Dad,” she said. “I’m sorry I worry you so much.”
“I’m sorry you worry me, too.”
LaRue laughed again. “I hate to tell you, but I’m just getting started.”
“Do you think I don’t know that?”
But they were dancing again, twirling, and LaRue wondered where in the world her dad had learned to dance so well.
Chapter 28
Wally was glad when his crew got an early train ride into the mine. They reached a big pile of timbers early and were able to get enough to keep them going all day. That meant they wouldn’t have to dig any out from caved-in sections of the mine—something all of the men hated to do. All the same, the crew put in a hard morning. They cut the big logs to size and prepared the wedges they would need to timber the ceiling and walls of the mineshafts they were now preparing.
Wally was with Chuck, and the two of them were working with their foreman, about to raise a timber into place, when a young Japanese guard came running down the mineshaft. He was shouting commands in Japanese. The men knew enough of the language to understand what he was telling them to do: to stop working and take their tools back to the toolshed.
“Nan no?” Wally asked the man. What was going on?
The guard shrugged, but the thought struck Wally immediately: maybe this was it. Maybe the war was finally over. He had always tried to imagine what would happen when the war ended, and this seemed a possibility, that the prisoners would be called from the mine. Then again, once before the men
had been called out, and it had been nothing, only the
guards demanding to count the prisoners—because one had disappeared. So Wally told himself not to get his hopes up. “What do you think it is?” he asked Chuck.
“Probably someone missing,” Chuck said. “You know how the Japs are—scared one of us might actually get away. Where do they think we would go?”
But Chuck’s words didn’t fit the tone of his voice. He sounded more intense, more alive, than he had in a long time. Of course, anything that changed the routine was exciting to the men.
At the toolshed other crews were gathering, and everyone was speculating. One man had the audacity to say, “This isn’t like the Japs. This could be the day we’ve been waiting for.” But the others were quick to put the idea down.
Wally saw the mine supervisor for this section talking to the Japanese foremen, so he moved closer. He was an older man with a raspy voice, and he was talking very fast. Wally couldn’t pick up much of what he was saying, but the man did seem excited, maybe even happy. And then Wally heard the words. “Senso yamu.” Or at least he thought that’s what he heard. He took another step closer, and he heard it again.
“Come here!” Wally grabbed Chuck and pulled him closer. “I think they’re saying the war is over.”
They listened closely, and then they both heard it again. Chuck grabbed Wally, looked into his face. Chuck’s eyes were wide with elation, but he said, “Would they know? Maybe they’re just talking. Maybe they just think that’s what’s going on—the same as us.”
But the word was spreading through the prisoners, and the talk was getting louder, more excited. The foremen weren’t stopping them, either, weren’t yelling for their silence. That had to mean something.
Once the tools were all put up, the supervisor commanded the POWs to take the train out of the mine. It was a long walk through the mineshafts to reach the loading dock, but all along the way the idea was building among the men that this was it. “Something is up,” the men would say. “You could tell that from the way that supervisor was talking to the foremen.”
“You can’t assume anything,” others would answer, but they were walking faster than usual, not hobbling along.
When the crews reached the loading dock, they met men getting off the train. Recently the mine supervisors had begun bringing in a second shift of prisoners at noon. These men worked a shift late into the night. When Wally saw them, he felt the disappointment. Why were they coming down, as usual? He grabbed one of the men by the arm. “What’s going on out there?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“They’re sending us out of the mine. Don’t you know why?”
“No. No one said anything.”
“We heard a supervisor say that the war was over.”
The man shrugged. “I can’t say. But we haven’t seen anything. I didn’t even hear any airplanes this morning.”
He was an Aussie, a little man with crooked, stained teeth. The arm that Wally had grabbed was all bone, and the man’s face, like so many, was full of defeat. All Wally’s hopes disappeared. He turned to Chuck. “It’s nothing,” he said. “These guys haven’t heard a thing.”
Chuck was nodding. “That’s what I was afraid of,” he said.
But now the supervisor was shouting to the noon-shift men to turn around and take the train back out of the mine. Both crews, together, crowded onto the train and packed themselves tight. Some were making the case that it didn’t mean anything that the noon shift hadn’t known anything. “Word is just getting around. That’s what I think,” Wally heard someone say.
“Let’s not get carried away,” Chuck told Wally once again. “We’ll know soon enough.”
Wally knew that was good advice, but as the train jiggled and rattled, as it had done for so many days—so many months—Wally had to fight himself. He wanted to say, “This is it—the last trip out of this stinking mine.” At the same time, he and the other men had always wond
ered what might happen at the end. Maybe the guards were waiting up above to take their revenge on the prisoners.
The train finally angled upward and reached the topside loading dock. Wally ducked his head and squinted for a time until his eyes adjusted to the light, and he could look outside. He was watching for some sign of change. He didn’t see any until he reached the equipment shack. The men turned in their lamps, as usual, but there were no guards to shake them down for stolen tools or contraband.
Then one of the prisoners shouted, “The boy in the shed, he’s saying the same thing. He says the war is over.”
“He’s crazy,” Chuck told Wally. “He doesn’t know.”
But the guards at the gate were telling the prisoners not to bathe, to put on their clothes and get ready to march to the camp. A couple of the guards, with no explanation, began to hand out cigarettes. Surprisingly, the guards seemed as happy as the men, and a kind of looseness was spreading. Wally couldn’t help it any longer; his excitement was at the bursting point. Nothing was happening the way it always had before. There was no way the guards would suddenly let down their vigilance—unless something big was going on.
Chuck was not the only man cautioning everyone. “Something’s up. That’s for sure,” men would say. “But that doesn’t mean the war is over.”
And then one of the prisoners said, “Hey, look. There’s no spotter up in the lookout tower. They wouldn’t stop watching for bombers unless they knew that none were coming.”
That idea seemed right, and now everyone was almost frantic for something definite, some sort of announcement that would make the suspicion official. The parade of men kept streaming from the train, but there was no fall-in order from the guards. The prisoners stood in groups, talking, speculating, many of them smoking, and the change in everyone was obvious in their faces, the tone of their voices.
An hour passed, but the prisoners didn’t let go, didn’t start to celebrate. They had been watched and controlled far too long to let that happen. When the fall-in order finally came, they began their long hike back to the camp, but this time it was not an orderly march. Everyone merely strolled along at a casual pace.
