Angel Sister (10 page)

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The summer of 1917 was a time of miracles for Nadine. All across the country people were gearing up for war. Uncle Sam popped up on recruitment posters everywhere. Even in Merritt’s Dry Goods Store in Rosey Corner. Men between the ages of twenty-one and thirty were required to register for the draft, but younger men were lining up to go fight for democracy too. Factories were being converted into munitions factories. Farmers were plowing new fields. Victory gardens were sprouting in every backyard.

In spite of the dire reports coming in from Europe, enthusiasm and excitement blew hot across the country, fanning the patriotic fires. The American soldiers were going across the sea to save the Allied forces. Lafayette had come across the Atlantic to help America win her independence and now it was time to repay the favor. The song “Over There” echoed in the air.

Nobody wanted to think about the millions of French and English casualties. It would be different when the Americans got there. But first they had to be trained. State militias were mobilized and sent over to France early in the summer, but most of the new recruits needed training in the business of war, so the army began feverishly building training camps to turn men and boys fresh off the farm or out of the factories and schools into soldiers. One of those training camps was outside Louisville.

It was also a summer of love for Nadine and Victor. That too seemed a miracle. They married on the last day of May in Edgeville. Gertie and Wyatt stood up with them. Neither father bothered to note the day in any way.

Nadine had wanted to stand with Victor in the church that was like a second home for her and seek the blessing of the Lord on her marriage. She had also hoped for the blessing of her father. She and her father had been through so much together. Her mother’s death. Lean years at the church. Times of sickness. Nadine had dug potatoes out of the ground, picked beans, and killed chickens to put on their table. She caught rainwater to wash their clothes and heated irons on the stove to iron the wrinkles out of her father’s shirts. She brushed and laid out his black suit for him every Sunday. She mothered James Robert. She had carried the load of caring for the household on her young shoulders and done everything she could to seek the love and approval of her father. And even though she always seemed to fall short, she had never stopped trying.

So she swallowed her pride and cornered her father at the church early one Wednesday before prayer meeting to ask him to perform her marriage ceremony. She rehearsed her words all day until they seemed polished and sure. She even spoke them aloud on the way across the pasture field to the church where there was no one to hear but Mr. Archer’s cows.

And the Lord. She asked the Lord’s help not only in changing her father’s heart but her own as well. To give her understanding and not resentment. To help her accept Carla Murphy’s presence in her father’s life. To help her put away the pride that led to sin. To remember to honor her father as the Bible instructed.

Her heart pounded as she made her practiced speech. “Father, I apologize for my angry words about Miss Carla. I should have bridled my tongue and respected your decisions regarding your own life.” She stopped to pull in a shaky breath as a frown began growing between his eyes. She hurried on before he could speak. “I would also hope you might respect the decisions I make. I love Victor Merritt and he loves me.”

“A Merritt never loved anything but money,” her father growled as the storm grew in his eyes.

She held up a hand and was relieved to see it was not trembling as she said, “Wait. Please let me finish. I am old enough to marry, and now that I am almost out of school and you are married yourself and with the war, I don’t want to wait. It would mean so much to me if you would perform the ceremony for me and Victor.”

“So you’ve come crawling to me for my approval?” He took his reading glasses off and carefully folded them before he laid them on his Bible.

She clamped down on her resentment at his words. She had come across the field prepared to beg. If that was what he wanted, then she was willing to indulge him. “Yes.”

He looked at her for a long moment before he picked up his reading glasses again and rubbed them off on his shirt. With great care, he positioned them back on his nose and picked up his Bible. Finally he answered her. “You won’t get it. Not for marrying a Merritt.” He began reading his Bible again.

Nadine stared at his bent head. She knew she had been dismissed and that he expected her to accept his word as final and slink away. All her life she’d done what he said. He was not only her father; he was a man of God. But she had confronted him about Carla and not been stricken down by him or by the Lord. She stood in front of him and let the minutes tick away until he finally looked up at her again.

“Why?” she asked.

He pretended to not know what she meant. “Why what?”

“Why do you hate the Merritts?”

His frown furrows got deeper. “A Christian man cannot hate. ‘He that loveth not knoweth not God for God is love.’ First John 4:8. So I do not hate. That is a despicable word.”

“Then what do you have against Victor?”

“I am only looking out for you, Nadine. Trying to keep you from making a mistake. While I certainly do not hate the Merritts, I do know them. I’ve lived with them here in this community all my life. Preston Merritt cares nothing for spiritual things, only how much money he can accumulate.”

“Victor and his father go to church. Every Sunday.”

“It takes more than sitting in a church pew to make a man right with God.” Her father pointed his finger at her. “Surely you’ve heard enough of my sermons to know that. The good Lord wants men to be committed to building up the kingdom of God instead of stepping on whoever is in the way to build up their own kingdoms.”

“Victor isn’t like that. He’s kind and gentle and loving.”

“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” her father said.

“Is it because they have money and we don’t?” Nadine sought a reason.

“I care nothing for monetary things. You know that. I trust the Lord to take care of our needs.” Her father peered at her over his reading glasses. “Now be off with you. I am deep in the Scripture, and there is nothing you can do to change my mind about saying the words to marry you to a Merritt. I will not do it.”

“You are a hard man, Reverend Reece.” She stared at him as she ripped free from her need for his approval. The wound hurt, but it would heal. “But neither will I change my mind. I am going to marry Victor whether you say the words or not.”

He stared back at her, unrelenting. “Then so be it. I will pray that you will not regret your decision, but not all prayers are answered.”

“My prayer has been.” Nadine would not let him beat her down.

Her father smiled in a pitying way. “Victor Merritt is no answer to prayer.”

“Perhaps not your prayer, but mine, yes.”

The wedding ceremony in Edgeville a week later was short. She and Victor stood side by side in a Reverend Barton’s parlor as he pronounced the words and proclaimed them man and wife. She and Victor joined hands and lives and didn’t go back to Rosey Corner. Wyatt took them to the train station where they bought a ticket for Louisville.

On the platform before they boarded their train, Gertie promised to take care of Victor’s mother as best she could. Victor hugged her and promised to write. Nadine stood outside their family circle and felt very alone. She had told James Robert goodbye the night before out in the garden as they knelt among the rows, pulling weeds out of the beans and onions. Beans and onions that neither of them would be there to eat.

Nadine had pushed the dirt up around the roots of one of the bean plants and then fingered the leaves. “These beans are from the same seeds that Mother planted. She loved growing things.” Nadine stared at the plant and felt near tears. “I still miss her so much. Do you?” She looked over at James Robert, who had stopped pulling weeds and instead was crumpling dirt clods and letting the dirt sift through his fingers.

“Every day. Was she as beautiful as I remember?” He looked up from the dirt at Nadine.

“Yes. You have her red hair.”

“I remember her eyes were blue like yours,” James Robert said.

“Do you remember how she used to sing hymns in the kitchen while she cooked?” She looked off across the yard toward the trees as she heard the echo of those songs in her head. “Sometimes she sang the same verse over and over again.”

“Yeah, I liked hearing her sing. After she died, I used to cry whenever we sang ‘Higher Ground’ at church.” He looked near tears even now at the thought.

“I know.” Nadine reached over and touched his arm. “That was her favorite.”

“Yeah. But you know what I remember best about her?” James Robert looked over at Nadine with a hint of a smile.

“What?”

“The way she laughed. How she could make us all laugh.” He looked away from Nadine down at the ground again. He picked up a small round rock that looked almost like a clod of dirt and studied it for a long moment before he threw it out of the garden. “Everything changed when she died. Everything.”

“She didn’t want it to,” Nadine said softly. “She wanted us to keep being happy. Do you remember how she had us all come in by her bed the night she died? She made you and me and Orrin Jr. all put our hands on top of hers on her heart and promise that we would take care of one another and never forget how much she loved us.” Nadine reached over and took his hand. It was rough and strong and so much bigger than it had been that night so long ago.

He looked from her hand to her face. “I’m fourteen, Nadine. I’m not a little boy anymore. You don’t have to take care of me now.”

“I know.” She tightened her hold on his hand. She didn’t want to let go. She was afraid she might never see him again. “You’re like our mother, you know. Sweet-tempered. Kind. Loving.”

“I don’t laugh as much.”

“None of us have laughed enough.”

He put his other hand on top of hers. “I’m glad you’re marrying Victor. I like him.”

“I’m going to miss you so much, James Robert,” Nadine said as tears began to gather in her eyes.

“We’re not dying,” he said, a little embarrassed by her tears.

“No, not dying,” she agreed. “Do you remember the baby? Essie?”

“Essie?” He frowned. “You mean Mary?”

“Mary was her burying name. Essie was her living name before she died.” Mary Reece was what her tombstone read. Their father hadn’t named the baby until her burial. But that wasn’t her name. Nadine had named her Essie for her mother, Estelle, and she’d never seen any reason to change it just because of some letters chiseled in stone.

“I hated her. I know she was just a little baby, but I hated her, and then after she died, I felt like maybe I’d caused it by hating her.” He looked worried as he asked, “I didn’t, did I?”

“No, of course not. She was just too little. She needed more than I, more than all of us, could give her after Mother died. And you didn’t really hate her. You would have loved her if she had kept breathing.” Nadine blinked away her tears as she managed a shaky smile. “She would have been six this year. Sometimes I see her playing out in the yard. I mean not really. Just in my head.”

“Do you want me to stay here? Not go to Indiana?” he asked.

“No, no. You’ll like it with Orrin Jr. and Arabelle. You’ll have fun being Uncle James Robert to their two little ones.”

“I’m thinking of telling people my name is J.R. when I get up there. What do you think?” His cheeks turned a little red. “Sometimes people want to call me Jimmy Bob when I tell them my name is James Robert. I’m not a Jimmy Bob.”

“No, definitely not.” Nadine tried out the new name. “J.R. J.R. Reece. Sounds important. I like it.” Her smile was steadier as she pulled his hand up with hers until she held it over her heart. “No matter what happens to us, never forget how much I love you, J.R. You’re my brother.”

There on the train platform in Edgeville watching Gertie and Victor hug and say their goodbyes, Nadine again felt the ache of tears building up in her eyes, but she didn’t let them spill out. As James Robert had said, nobody had died. They were growing, stepping toward their destinies.

So she hadn’t cried then. She hadn’t cried until the train went through Rosey Corner and there was James Robert standing out in the field by the track, waving at every passenger car that passed to be sure not to miss her. She leaned out the window to wave back, and her tears could no longer be denied. Victor hadn’t been upset. He simply held her and whispered promises of love in her ear.

______

The Louisville train station was bustling when they arrived. Soldiers stood on the platform telling their loved ones goodbye. Piles of crates waited for somebody to haul them away. Horses placidly flicked away flies with their tails as they stood hitched to carriages waiting to carry people away from the station. Men in suits hurried about, their steps sure and certain, while other men looked as if they’d just arrived from the country and were as lost as Nadine. She’d never been farther from Rosey Corner than Edgeville.

Victor had. He’d often come with his father to Louisville to buy stock for the store. So he wasn’t overwhelmed by the crowds, and Nadine was glad to put her hand in his and let him lead the way. He slung his canvas bag over his shoulder, picked up her valise, and promised the boardinghouse Graham Lindell had told them about wasn’t far. Graham had stayed there the year before when he was in Louisville with his grandfather for some kind of political event.

The boardinghouse lady, Mrs. McElroy, was a large round woman who laughed as she took their money and pointed them to the attic room. “You’ll have a bit of privacy up there, and you’re young so the stairs won’t be a hindrance to you.” She leaned a bit closer to them and winked. “Plus the man in the room below you is deaf as a post, so you can bounce around on the bed all you want. Being newlyweds and all.”

Every inch of Nadine’s skin burned red at the woman’s words. Of course she’d wondered about her wedding night, but only in a vague, dreamy way. What little she knew about love came from poems and stories. The actual act of lovemaking was not something a proper young preacher’s daughter was supposed to think too much about, but now as she looked at the amused glint in Mrs. McElroy’s eyes, she felt unprepared and too young. She wanted to get back on the train and go back to Rosey Corner to ask Gertie for advice.

Mrs. McElroy laughed louder and smacked Victor’s shoulder with the flat of her hand. “Your little woman’s face is about to catch fire. You two are sure you’re married now, aren’t you?”

Victor smiled back at the landlady, not minding her bawdiness a bit. “Yes, ma’am. Had the knot tied proper and all this very afternoon by a Reverend Barton.” He put his arm around Nadine’s shoulders and pulled her close against his side.

Mrs. McElroy’s face changed, became wistful. “I remember being a bride. Seems a lifetime ago when I think about it. Ah, my Quinn McElroy was a fine figure of a man. He’s been gone these many years now. May the good Lord bless his soul.” She reached over and laid her hand on Nadine’s cheek and looked straight into her eyes. “Don’t you worry about a thing, dovey. When you’ve got love, everything happens like magic, and it ain’t a bit hard to see the two of you got love.”

The landlady’s words proved true. Their wedding night turned out to be a magical time of love. Victor was as innocent in the art of lovemaking as Nadine, but that didn’t matter. The two of them shared poetry of the soul and body. Nadine remembered how the Bible said a man should cleave unto his wife and they would be one flesh. That’s how she felt lying beside Victor, skin touching skin, breath intermingling. No longer would it be Nadine alone or Victor alone. It would be Nadine and Victor together through whatever the days and years ahead held for them.

Victor had no problem getting a job. The army was hiring all comers to get Camp Zachary Taylor built as fast as possible. The work was hard, the hours long, but though he came home sunburned and dirty, Victor got stronger every day and more at home in his skin away from Rosey Corner.

He hadn’t enlisted. He planned to do that in August. That gave them two months. Two beautiful months. Two enchanted months. Two miraculous months. Nadine refused to think about August, about Victor being sent overseas to fight. The news of the war wasn’t good. German U-boats were sinking ships every day. The French army was near collapse. The German artillery was pounding the Allied soldiers. The Russian czar and his family were being held under guard in their palace as the government in that country was overthrown. Sometimes when Nadine read the newspapers, it seemed as if the whole world was falling apart.

August was mere weeks away, and Victor was determined to step up to the recruiting table and answer Uncle Sam’s call. Yet in spite of this and the dire news of the war, Nadine rose up every morning with a song in her heart. A song Victor knew every word to.

“You’re living in the moment, dovey,” Mrs. McElroy told her. “A fine way to live, it is. Fact is, I might go so far as to say it’s the only way. Not that I’ve always made a practice of it, but that don’t make it any less so. Even the good Lord told us that in the Bible. Live today. Pray today. Let the Lord take care of tomorrow, seeing as how he knows more about it than we do anyhow.”

Mrs. McElroy had taken Nadine under her ample wing. The first two days after Victor started work, Nadine stayed cooped up in the attic room. She read the books she’d brought in the bottom of her case all the way through twice and devoured the newspaper Victor had bought for her. She’d written James Robert, Gertie, Victor’s mother, and considered writing her father but decided against it. It would do no good. She could almost see him stuffing it, unopened, in the drawer of the table by the door.

By noon on the third day, the small attic room felt like an oven. Even the air coming in the narrow window that Nadine propped open felt as if it were blowing off a fire. She wandered downstairs, where Mrs. McElroy pronounced her a girl in need of something to do, shoved a broom into her hands, and pointed her toward the porch. Nadine took the broom gratefully. She had little experience with idleness and no comfort with the idea, since her father always preached that idle hands were an invitation to the devil.

Maudie McElroy cut their rent in exchange for Nadine’s work, but she treated Nadine more like a favored daughter than hired help. She never asked her to stir the sheets in the boiling pot of water out behind the boardinghouse, but she did let her gather dry sheets off the clotheslines.

“A little sunshine will do you good, dovey,” she said. “You’re altogether too pale. You wouldn’t be in the family way already, now would you?”

Nadine blushed. “That’s not something you can know after only a week, is it?”

Mrs. McElroy laughed as if Nadine had told the best joke ever. “Not all girls have a ring on their finger before they do some kissing and cuddling. While kissing and cuddling don’t exactly make babies, it can lead to that what does.”

“Oh.” Nadine’s eyes opened wide as she realized what Mrs. McElroy meant. Mrs. McElroy was what the kinder ladies at church had always called earthy. Still, in spite of the way she could make Nadine blush, Nadine enjoyed the woman-to-woman way Mrs. McElroy talked to her.

That was something she’d never had. No one back in Rosey Corner would dare say the sort of things Maudie McElroy said to Nadine. Not to the preacher’s daughter. But here in Louisville, Nadine wasn’t the preacher’s daughter. She was Nadine Merritt, Victor Merritt’s bride, and she refused to think about how fast the days were passing to August.

She kept telling herself perhaps the war would be over before Victor enlisted, or if not by then, before he was trained and ready to be shipped overseas. She said a prayer every morning and every night that there would be peace. That the Central Powers would surrender. That the Allies would prevail now that America was throwing all her resources behind them and General Pershing was on his way across the ocean with the first American troops.

But the battles went on. More ships were sunk. More men died. More artillery shells exploded. Neither side seemed to make any gains as they hunkered down in the trenches that snaked across miles of the French countryside.

Yet even as men were dying across the ocean in this war, she and Victor were blissfully dancing to their song of love. She and Maudie were laughing in the kitchen as they peeled potatoes for the night meal. Old Mr. Benson, the hard-of-hearing boarder, kept on complaining about the summer heat as he sat on the porch and whiled away the hours fanning himself and swatting flies. The neighborhood kids still rolled hoops down the street in front of the boardinghouse. And the days passed even as Nadine tried to cling to them and make them linger.

On the Fourth of July Victor had the day off. The city celebrated the day with a parade and a street fair. Early that morning Maudie helped Nadine pack a picnic lunch.

“Grab all the fun you can, dovey,” she told Nadine. “Because nothing lasts forever.”

“Love does,” Nadine countered.

“You could be right. I still carry the love for my Quinn in my heart, but his time here with me didn’t last near long enough. Ah, the two of us should have gone on more picnics, but the good man was working and I had the little ones.”

“You have children?” Nadine had never heard Maudie mention children.

“Five boys. One died as a wee child. The others are off seeking their fortunes in the West. The youngest promises to send for me as soon as he strikes it rich, but I won’t be holding my breath waiting for that to happen.” Maudie wrapped a ham sandwich in newspaper and put it in the basket. “Ah, but it would be nice to have some grandbabes climbing around on my lap.” She looked up at Nadine. “I’m sure your mother feels the same way.”

“My mother died in childbirth when I was just a girl,” Nadine said as she stuck a couple of apples down beside the sandwiches. She kept her eyes on the basket and felt the familiar stab of sadness. “The baby died too. A little girl.”

“Ah, some hurts never fade. The same with my little Leslie. Four years old he was. A pot of boiling wash water spilled on him. I would have laid down and died on the spot if it would have kept him breathing.” Maudie put her rough hand on Nadine’s shoulder. “But we can’t change the things that happen. We just have to keep going. And your sweet mother is surely smiling down on you because you’re so happy. She wouldn’t want to put a shadow on the day, and neither do I. You two children go and have fun.”

It was a beautiful day. The sun was bright and hot, but a nice breeze kept the flags rippling and the red, white, and blue banners flapping. Everywhere they walked they could hear a band playing “Over There.” Nadine and Victor found a spot in the shade near the courthouse to eat their lunch. Later, after the parade, they strolled hand in hand through the park. As evening was falling and they turned back toward the boardinghouse, Nadine couldn’t keep her mind from counting the days to August.

“You don’t have to enlist in August,” she said. “You don’t have to sign up for the draft until you’re twenty-one. The war might be over by then.”

He didn’t say anything or even look at her. Just kept walking along, but she felt him pulling away from her even though he still held her hand. Where a moment before the absence of words between them had been comfortable and right, now it felt tense and wrong.

She tightened her grasp on his hand and said, “I’m scared for you to go.”

He stopped and pulled her to the side of the walk. He stared down into her eyes. “I know. I’m scared to go, but I have to.”

“Why?”

“Because it’s the right thing to do. The only thing I can do. Can you understand that?” He peered down into her eyes.

“But we’re so happy here.”

“You wouldn’t stay happy married to a coward who didn’t step up and answer the call of his country to fight for freedom. I have to go.”

She stared up into his face, oblivious to the people passing them on the sidewalk. Finally she said, “I know. I love you, Victor Merritt.” It was the first time she had ever told him she loved him without his saying the words first.

A smile broke out on his face, and he wrapped his arms around her and kissed her right there beside the sidewalk.

A woman passing by them said, “Young people! No sense of decorum.”

A man’s voice answered her. “Oh, let them be, Wilma. They’re in love. It’s a good day to be in love.”

On August 1, Victor signed up for the army. He reported to Camp Zachary Taylor two weeks later. Nadine stayed at Maudie’s until he climbed aboard the train a month later to go east to ship out to France. Then they were one of the couples trying to cling to each moment before the war ripped them apart.

“The war can’t last long now.” He stood very close to her, their legs touching in the midst of the swirling confusion of the train station.

She was trying very hard not to let the tears welling up behind her eyes come out where he could see them. “Why is that?” she asked.

“Those German Boches will take one look at this new doughboy and lay down their guns in surrender. It’ll be Victor the Victorious.”

She smiled just as he’d intended. “You will be careful.”

“As much as any soldier can be. But better I’ll have your love as a shield to protect me.” He stared into her eyes as if he could see to the depths of her soul. “Every night I will look up at the stars and tell the brightest one in the sky how much I love you. All you have to do is look up at the same star and you will hear those words in your heart.” He touched her chest above her heart.

“The echo you hear in return will be my words coming back to you.” In spite of her best efforts, a few tears were spilling out.

He kissed the tears off her cheeks. “Be brave, my beautiful Nadine, for nothing can keep me from returning to you. You are my love, my joy, my life.” He placed his hand on her belly. “And if we have made a baby, my hope. Now give me a smile to carry away with me.”

“How can I smile when you’re leaving?”

“I think bravely might be the best way.”

“I’m not that brave.”

“Oh my Nadine, how wrong you are. A braver heart I have never known, and I will carry that heart with me, but I must also have your smile.”

The train whistle blew and panic swelled inside Nadine. How could he expect her to smile now? She clutched his sleeves and turned up her lips as best she could.

“Sadly won’t do,” he said. “You want me to stand on my hands and wiggle my toes in the air?” He started to pull away from her.

She grabbed him and laughed. “Don’t you dare.” It was a trick he often did in the morning to pull a sleepy smile from her. The train whistle blew again. “You don’t have time to take off your shoes, and with your shoes on, I couldn’t see whether your toes were wiggling or not. Besides I’d much rather have a kiss.”