by Jina Bacarr
Pushing aside my offbeat philosophical leanings, I look around me. The train is packed, the holiday travelers excited to be aboard. It’s three days until Christmas and I’m lucky to find a seat in the back where it isn’t full. The conductor tips his cap to me and checks my ticket. He has a sprig of pine pinned to his lapel. The scent is divine. Puts me in the holiday spirit.
I poke around in my purse for my mirror when my fingers wrap around the strange letter and my breath catches. I wish it was from Jeff and lost all these years, but I know it isn’t. Who would go to all that trouble to find me? The sudden curiosity to know what’s in that letter makes my pulse throb.
I open the envelope and begin to read, the clickety-clack of the train wheels taking me back in time when I see the date. October 1948. A sharp memory stabs my brain. I recognize the Signal Corps US Army insignia engraved on the paper. A sepia rendering of a soldier talking on a portable radio. The same stationery Jeff used to write me.
I received two letters from him, then nothing. He wrote me about fifteen mile hikes, chowtime, and then school at night. How much he missed me and loved me. I cherish those letters, keep them hidden in a book of French literature he gave me.
I nearly choke now when I scan the bright, blue-inked words written by a soldier who served with Jeff. A radio operator named Herbie, a farm boy from Iowa. He was part of a three man team on a secret mission overseas with Jeff along with a British operative.
I sit very still, stunned. His words hit me hard in the chest and I swear I stop breathing. Is this a cruel joke? Or in God’s name, can it be true? Jeff never hinted at any secret mission. All he talked about was flying bombers. I should toss the letter back into my purse, but a nagging itch crawling up my spine makes me read further, as if tempting me with a fierce kind of hope that it is true. That there’s something here about the man I loved that will soothe my soul after all these years.
It was very hush hush, the soldier wrote, but the three men learned to trust each other and shared stories from home. Jeff talked about me all the time and he had every intention of coming home and marrying me, but their mission was compromised because of a traitor among the rural fighters they teamed up with and Jeff died trying to save others.
The sergeant never spoke of it after the war, but he was plagued with nightmares about a promise he made that wouldn’t let him go.
To assuage his conscience, he wrote the letter on stationery he commandeered from a buddy in the hospital before he was shipped back to the States after the war. Then he left instructions with his wife to send the letter to me upon his death.
Now the letter is in my hands.
I couldn’t talk about the mission during the war, Miss Arden. Even now, I can’t give you all the details. Maybe someday our stories and what we did for the Office of Strategic Services can be told, but not when we’re facing an unknown future.
What I can tell you is this: Jeff and I never received the intelligence that would have changed everything. We were set up on that moonless night by a traitor. A French collaborator who loved his wine more than his country. He sold us out. A two-timing son of a gun we called ‘Leftie’ because he was constantly reminding us to eat with our forks in our left hands.
He had a mean streak like you never seen. Like someone cut out his heart. I remember the time he kicked and beat a starving stray dog with the butt of his rifle. Jeff got so mad, they nearly came to blows. We should have known then he wasn’t to be trusted. If we hadn’t listened to him, we never would have walked into a trap. The Nazis had us surrounded before we could fire off a shot.
Jeff smelled the enemy before we did and brought down them Nazis with his pistol, but he couldn’t save the Résistance fighters working with us. Or the Brit. The man went down fast. A bullet to the heart. But he rigged the explosives so we could set off the blast and derail the supply train and clog up the railway route. A key line of communications.
What we did that night stopped the Nazi flow of men, arms, and tanks into Southern France for months. Helped the Allies with the invasion yet to come. Jeff forged so deep into the underground, cavorting with the Vichy, I forgot he wasn’t French. He became one of them so he could get the information we needed. Without him, it never would have happened.
Afterward, I escaped into the woods but I was later captured and spent the last two years of the war in a POW camp. I never saw Jeff again. If he wasn’t killed in the blast, the Gestapo got him. God knows what they did to him. No one in the Army would tell me anything officially except he died somewhere in Europe.
The reason I’m telling you this, Jelly Girl (I told you he couldn’t stop talking about you), is I made Jeff a promise I’d tell you the truth. I owed him that much, seeing how he saved me from a Nazi bullet when we parachuted into France.
By the time you read this, I shall be gone, off to that place in the sky where old soldiers go to tell their stories to anybody up there who will listen. It can’t hurt for you to know this now and that your man loved you more than life itself. That he never stopped kicking himself in the pants for leaving you at the train station on that December morning instead of eloping with you, and how he couldn’t wait to get home and marry you on his first furlough. That he couldn’t live without you.
Yours in God,
1st Sergeant Herbert ‘Herbie’ Drew Peterson.
My hand shaking, I put down the letter. My heart is pumping wildly, outrageous denial of what I read firing up my blood, my whole body tingling. I glance over my shoulder to see if anyone is watching me, scan the passengers reading newspapers or gazing out the window. Everyone is going about their business. Calmly. With no interest in me.
I want to jump up and tell them my whole life changed in an instant. That while I’m reliving every precious second I spent with Jeff, this soldier’s letter has dropped a bomb into my lap and I don’t know what to do next. It’s like an air raid drill during the war when you least expect it. You know it can happen, but you don’t know how you’ll react until it does. Only this is no drill. This is real.
I hold the letter to my chest to catch my breath. I can’t believe it. Something I suspected for a long time, but never put into words. Until now.
Jeff was a spy.
6
I can’t stop shaking. There’s a sudden shifting in my bones and blood rushes to my face, as if the earth has tilted and I’m sliding off the edge of the world. I believe everything the soldier wrote.
Holding the letter in my hand, I’m aware of a sensation like I’m hanging suspended between now and the past. I get the strangest feeling I’m seeing into another world and Jeff is giving the sergeant the okay to tell me what happened that night.
I feel increasingly vindicated as the train takes me closer to home, a sense of relief hitting me. That my curiosity isn’t misguided. I never talk about it, but I had the feeling Jeff didn’t die somewhere over Germany. He wasn’t supposed to be called up for another month even though his father tried to get him deferred from service to run the factory. Jeff hated his father interfering. Said he wanted to fight the Nazis in a way only he could. He wanted me to think he meant by air as a pilot. I know differently now.
I first suspected the Rushbrookes had close ties with Washington when I was in high school. After I helped Ma deliver the jams and jellies, I often wandered around the big house, imagining what it was like to live there. One day I sneaked into the library and plopped down in the corner with a book where no one could see me. His father, the gruff Mr Ambrose Rushbrooke, rushed in and picked up the ringing phone. ‘Yes, Mr President, I understand. I’ll leave for the continent immediately.’ He paused and I didn’t dare breathe. I was dumbfounded. ‘Yes, I’ll bring my boy with me.’ Pause. ‘That’s correct. Jeffrey speaks fluent French. He was reared by a nanny from Paris from the day he was born until he went away to military school. I’m pleased you believe he could be useful.’
Then he hung up. I never forgot it.
Jeff left for a trip to the French Rivi
era and then Paris soon after, according to the cook when Ma and I came back the next week. It wasn’t the only trip he and his father made together to Europe over the next two years. He often teased me about these excursions, saying he’d teach me French so we could go together someday. I thought it wildly exciting, but I couldn’t imagine why Mr Rushbrooke had a conversation with the President about their trip. I never told anyone what I heard. Not even Jeff. I was afraid he’d think I was a snoop.
I found out after the war that several high profile figures like Mr Rushbrooke often went on low key missions to Europe and Asia to assess what was happening abroad before we entered the conflict in late 1941. I had no idea back then that meant Jeff and his father were spying for the US government, but I often wondered if there was more to those trips than he let on. The letter from the sergeant proved what I suspected, but was never sure of. No wonder he was eager to get into the fight and do it ‘his way’.
Nothing has changed in the railcar since I started reading the letter. The passengers jostle about, the smell of pine from the fresh wreaths placed at each end of the car putting everyone in a holiday mood. The landscape blurs outside the passenger windows. The train whistle blasts its shrill sound.
But I’ve changed. I feel his loss more than ever. He loved me so much, he’d have married me no matter what. Jeff bent the rules when it came to us, defying his family by wanting to elope with me. He drew me into his seductive world of art and French literature with wild enthusiasm and wit and humor. He showed me that love in so many ways. Not with fancy gifts, but gifts from the heart. He protected me like a knight for his lady whenever we were together – will I ever forget him carrying me over a big rain puddle in his strong arms? – but also let me fly on my own so I’d be strong, independent. He inspired me to make something out of myself even after he was gone. How many times have I sat in my New York office, mulling over a piece for my column, or jumping out of my seat with excitement when I read a heartfelt thank-you from a reader for lifting her up on a dreary day with my story. I get a heaviness in my chest because he’s not there to say, ‘I’m so proud of you, Jelly Girl.’ It’s then I get teary-eyed. I’ve kept myself under control until now, but this new revelation about Jeff jolts me. I debate whether or not to tell Lucy about the sergeant’s letter, but she has her own problems. Best to wait until I help her sort them out. The sad thing is, I have no one to share this news with. I need a strong cup of coffee to fuel my spirit. I get up to go to the observation car when—
A dizzy feeling comes over me.
I put my hand on the back of the seat to steady myself. I must appear strange to the other passengers, taking deep breaths, then I begin pacing back and forth in the aisle.
The conductor comes by, tips his cap. He’s the grandfatherly type. Curious, but nice. ‘Everything okay, miss?’
‘Yes. I’m going home for Christmas for the first time in years.’ I wipe away the mist around my eyes and put my red coat on, then tuck the letter into the deep side pocket as I sit down. I’ll put it back into my purse later. ‘Getting sentimental, I guess.’ I pull my veil down so he can’t see the wetness on my cheeks. I’m embarrassed by my weepiness so I ask him if we’re on schedule.
‘We should reach the Posey Creek station within the hour,’ he says, ‘though we have two more stops first.’
‘I’ve never ridden on a Christmas train before,’ I say, trying to change the subject.
‘There’s something magical about it that gets to my old bones,’ says the conductor, his eyes twinkling behind his wire-rimmed glasses. ‘Who knows? St Nick himself might show up.’
‘I saw the jolly old man during the war.’ I don’t wipe away the tear traveling down my cheek. ‘Pop dressed up like Santa back in 1943 when the troop trains came through on Christmas Eve.’
‘I remember that Christmas Eve, miss.’ The conductor takes off his glasses and breathes on them before wiping them clean with his handkerchief. ‘I was on duty that day and we had the most passengers ever in the history of the railroad.’ He takes a moment. ‘We had soldiers hanging out the windows and falling over each other in the aisles. It was a sight to remember.’
I laugh. ‘So was my pop dressed up as St Nick.’
How can I have forgotten that? Pop with his pillow-stuffed, red flannel Santa suit Ma whipped up from old blankets. The beard she made from scraps of sheep’s wool. Meanwhile, I sulked at home feeling sorry for myself. Jeff was off to training camp and I was so filled with despair at not marrying him. What a complete, utter fool I was. I tried so hard to be strong, brave. But I was young and at times I thought more of my own romantic wants and desires. I tried hard to remember that we were in this fight together and we on the home front were soldiers in our own way, but that day I lost control and cried my eyes out.
I’m embarrassed even now. I let my family down. I wish I could go back to that Christmastime and see Pop handing out the bags of Ma’s homemade cherry and nut candy and cookies to the soldiers eager for a piece of home. Ma bringing hot coffee to the boys. Frank Junior tossing a baseball back and forth with the servicemen, many of them boys themselves. Lucy twirling the bright holiday ribbon in her hair around her finger while she flirted with every soldier who caught her eye. I wish I hadn’t been so filled with my own problems, pining over Jeff leaving. I wish I’d been there with them…
But I can’t go back.
Then for some reason I can’t explain, goose bumps rise on my arms as I keep rubbing the buttons on my coat, ignoring the empty buttonhole, a strange energy crackling through my fingers. As if I’m wishing on a magic lamp. I’d give anything to go back and relive that day when Jeff left and the buttons on my coat shone golden. All six of them. I teeter back and forth in my mind, knowing what I’m asking for is impossible, but wishing it with all my heart. I’m caught in the collision of my past with what I deem isn’t a fair shake. I’d give anything for Jeff to have a fighting chance to survive. To warn him about the traitor. He was a good man, a valiant soldier. Doesn’t he deserve that?
I stand up. The compulsion to see Jeff is so strong, I can’t stop myself. My mind wanders off track and I stand there in defiance of the past. The more fired up I get, the more my pulse pounds. The unfairness of war, the slender difference between life and death. The fragility of freedom and how easily it can be taken away because of another man’s greed.
A deep grieving pain revisits me and I go numb.
When the train speeds through a deep, dark tunnel at a fast clip, jarring me, I refuse to back down.
I hear a terrible, loud noise. Grinding, piercing, making my ears hurt. A screech so hair-raising, my skin prickles. I don’t move when the whistle shrills and the sudden grinding of emergency air brakes sends numerous pairs of anxious eyes including mine in that direction.
My heart stops. My God, we nearly clipped the train stalled on the next tracks.
Then the lights flicker on and off and everyone gasps when they go out completely. In the next few seconds, a myriad of emotions run through me. Anger. A traitor killed my love. Dismay. I believed a lie all these years. Self-pity. I’ll never love again.
Terror. I’m more alone than ever.
A sudden determination rises in me to confront the past head on, do something to make my heart whole again and go on with my life. The rising up of such strength from deep within my soul fuels my wish. There’s no mistaking I break through a barrier.
That moment changes everything.
That stark realization is electric. Clashing with the past as I stand suspended between the two and a force springs to life and pulls me along on its flowing tide. An indignant chill permeates throughout every pore in my body, seeping into every bone, every muscle. I feel a tingling sensation from head to toe, as if the blood drains from my being, but something inside me urges me on. My knees buckle and a second jolt rocks me when the whistle blows and the train lunges forward.
This time, it knocks me off my feet.
Jeff, Jeff… where are y
ou? You didn’t have to die… if only…
Caught off balance, I reach out for something to hold onto as I stumble forward but there’s nothing there. I’m thrust forward, whirling through the air like a discarded ragdoll tossed into a toy chest and reeking of lost dreams.
I scream and go headfirst into the darkness.
7
I have no recollection of the train pulling into the Posey Creek station but when my head clears, we’ve stopped. I hear the engine snorting as it sits idle on the tracks. The air is hot and still. A foggy haze surrounds me, blurring my vision. The last thing I remember is being thrown off balance in the dark tunnel when the train slammed to a stop. I hit the floor hard – did I bang my head?
