Mare's War (27 page)

The CO says that just ’cause there are fewer folks don’t mean we don’t have to do the same amount of work. We still have to run mail for every U.S. citizen in the European theater—army, navy, marine corps, civilians, and Red Cross personnel. We still have got work to do.

After shift, I am walking to my bunk when out of the clear blue, Gloria Madden comes up to me and grabs my arm.

“Marey, can I talk to you?” Gloria is talking fast, looking around like she’s scared somebody will see her.

I move my arm out of her claws. “What do you want, Gloria?” I ask. “Don’t you have somebody to be looking down your nose at somewhere?”

Gloria shakes her head. “Shut up, Marey. Listen to me. I can’t find Pamela.”

I raise my eyebrow. “Peaches?”

Gloria sighs. “Peaches, Pamela, whatever. Have you seen her?”

I put my hand on my chin and pretend to think about it hard. “Well—let me think about it—no. Now scram.”

Gloria grabs my arm again. She whispers, “Marey, I think she’s AWOL.”

My stomach clenches, and goose bumps go up my arms. “AWOL? No, not her!”

Gloria nods, and suddenly her face gets blotchy and her eyes get red. “We had an argument,” she says, and she sniffs. “I was just telling her what was being said; I swear that’s all. How was I to know she would get so mad that Roger Johnson told everyone she was the kind of girl who didn’t kiss men? It’s just talk, that’s all! She didn’t have to get so mad!”

“Gloria Madden, you were carrying tales about Peach?” I ask, stepping in close. If she did, I will
slap
her face, here and now.

“I know what you think of me, Marey Lee Boylen, but even I’m not
that
low.” Gloria wipes her red eyes angrily. “Roger stepped out on Peach with some French girl when
she wouldn’t take him seriously, and he told his squad it wasn’t his fault, that she was a man hater. It’s just talk, and they all do that, and who cares? There’s plenty of other boys to go around, I say. Anyway, Pamela blew up at me yesterday, and I haven’t seen her since. She didn’t sign out in the pass book, she missed roll call this morning, and”—Gloria’s voice rises—“it’s all my fault!”

Lord. Peaches has done had it now.

“Did the CO say something to you?” Now I’m the one holding Gloria’s arm.

“She asked if anybody’s seen her. The MPs at the gate are waiting for her. She hasn’t shown up for her shift. …” Gloria sniffs. “Marey, you think something happened to her?”

“Peaches Carter doesn’t take any mess,” I say. “She’ll come back when she gets ready.”

“Maybe she went to meet somebody,” Gloria say, but I roll my eyes.

“I don’t think Peaches want to be bothered with a
man
right now, do you?”

Gloria says to tell her if I hear anything and she’ll do the same. I walk on, shivering.

Around base I ask everybody I know, but no one knows where Peach has gone. It looks like she really is AWOL, which means big trouble with a capital
T
. If it weren’t for the fact that the Germans surrendered, Peaches could be
shot
for deserting her duty in a time of war. My stomach hurts when I think about that. Peaches is gonna be sent home for sure.

The sun is barely thinking about coming up over the
horizon at 0400 the next morning when I meet Gloria just as she is going off shift. She shakes her head at me before I can ask.

“She missed her shift.”

My stomach is cold and heavy all morning long. I lose my place filing letters, like I don’t even know the alphabet. Then, right before lunch, I knock a whole stack of packages on the floor. Geneviève pats my arm when I start sniffling, but I am not crying over the stupid packages. Peaches has been my friend ever since we landed at the receiving battalion at Fort Des Moines. She rode me till I could make my bed and swore she’d charge me a nickel every time I said “ain’t” till I almost never say it no more. If I hadn’t let Gloria Madden bust us up, maybe she would have told me what was wrong instead of going off like she doesn’t have a friend in the world would worry about her if she was gone.

After dinner, Ruby finds me on my bunk.

“Marey, she’s back.”

I sit right up, fast. “Where is she? I ought to tell her a thing or two about going off and leaving me with Gloria Madden, of all people.”

“I didn’t get to say boo to her. The MPs marched her straight to the battalion commander’s office.”

“Oh, Ruby. They are going to court-martial her for sure.”

Ruby shakes her head. “I just wish I knew why she did it, Marey!”

I slide down off my bunk and sigh. “I’d better go tell Gloria.”

Not a one of us talked to Peaches till she marched into the mess hall at lunch the next day. Gloria saw her and hesitated, but I stood up and went straight on over to her.

“Peaches Carter. You all right, girl?”

Peach look real tired, but she smiles. “Well, Staff Sergeant Hill ’bout tore a strip out of my hide, but I’m all right.” Peaches sit down at a table, and I sit next to her.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” Peaches said. “That’s what’s so dumb. Nothing happened at all.”

“What do you mean, nothing? We were worried sick!”

“Well, the MPs marched me straight to the CO’s office and made me stand at attention until Staff Sergeant Hill and Sergeant Scott were good and ready to see me,” Peach began, and I wince. All of us know that Staff Sergeant Hill has a humdinger of a temper once she gets going.

“I waited almost half an hour, standing stiff, and the MPs wouldn’t say a word. Then—
bang!
—the door flies open and Staff Sergeant Hill starts shouting. She says she’s going to see to it that I get a court-martial and get sent home. She says the Women’s Army has enough problems trying to keep the honor of the corps without girls like me going off and acting like floozies in Paris, making everybody look bad.”

Peaches is talking quietly, but almost everyone in the mess hall is leaning close, trying to listen. “Staff Sergeant Hill made me kind of angry, but Sergeant Scott was worse. She said she was disappointed in me. And then they took
me to Major Addams,” Peaches went on, “and I thought I was done for. She just sat there and stared at me for the longest time, and then she said, ‘Explain yourself.’ So I did.” Peaches swallows and looks down for a moment.

“I said that I was fed up with all of you girls and that I wasn’t meeting up with a boy or bringing dishonor on the corps. I told the major the truth—that I checked into the hotel and stayed by myself for two days.”

I open my mouth, hurt, then close it. Peaches means she was fed up with me, too, and I remember what I said to her last time I saw her. She had every right to be fed up with me.

“The battalion commander sent an MP off in a jeep right then to check my story. It’s a good thing that mademoiselle remembered me,” Peaches adds. “She told Lieutenant Scott that I checked in and I stayed put the whole time. Major Addams let me off the hook then. She said, ‘I understand, Carter, but don’t you
ever
pull a stunt like this again.’”

“And that’s it!?” My eyes are wide.

“Well-l-l, not quite,” Peaches says with a wry smile. “I got punishment detail. I’m gigged and have KP for four weeks solid after my mail shift, and I have all my passes revoked for the next thirty days. But no court-martial anyway. Staff Sergeant Hill is still fit to be tied about that.”

“I wouldn’t have even known you were gone, except Gloria came and said so,” I say finally. “You still mad at me?”

Peaches shrugs. “No more than I was with anybody else. I just got fed up, you know?”

“Yeah. I get fed up with all of us sometimes.” I sigh. “I
should have been a better friend to you, Peaches Carter. I do apologize for telling you off about George the other night.”

Peaches shakes her head. “This wasn’t about a thing you did, Marey Lee.”

“Wasn’t a thing I did to help you, neither.” I look over at Gloria’s table. Her head is hanging down low, and she is picking at her food. Though I have heard more poison coming out of that girl’s mouth than anything, I feel a little shamed at that pitiful sight.

“Peach. You gonna go talk to Miss Gloria?”

“I will. Later.” Peaches sighs. “I’ve got to eat and get ready to go on duty, even though they kept me up last night, then I’ve got my four hours of KP” She smiles tiredly, then lowers her voice, her expression mischievous. “It was worth it, though. You know they’ve got room service in the hotels in Rouen?”

The last weekend in August, Ruby and me go on leave, and George takes us around Rouen to meet his farmers. We ride in a car with a driver, a “chauffeur,” they call him, who has two little old kids sitting up there with him. I gave them some of the sugar cubes I carry, just like I used to give that scallywag Miss Victoria. George sees me giving the little ones sweets and asks me if I like kids. Ruby just about pokes a hole in my ribs with her elbow.

Bob has been writing Ruby and wants to know should he join back up or wait for her. Ruby says she doesn’t know what to say, but I say she does. I hope next time Bob asks her if she likes kids.

George comes to see me every week. Peas are out of season now, so he brings me carrots, which are real pretty on the top. Ruby say my eyes will get real good in the dark if I keep eating George Hoag’s carrots. Miss Ruby May Bowie had best keep her funny little comments to herself.

“Marey!” Peaches comes screaming into the mess hall while I am mopping. “Marey!”

“Hold up, Peach. Don’t you track up my floor,” I warn her. She runs through the wet and leaves footprints anyway.

“Marey Lee Boylen,” Peach say. “I don’t care two figs about your floor. Guess what?”

“What?” I say, mopping around her feet.

“Guess,” Peach says, and now she can’t hardly stand still. “We’re going to Paris!”

I just about drop my mop. “Paris? Peach, not again!”

“I told you! I told you we’d go! We’ve got our orders. The CO just posted them, and Ina told me the news. We are going to Paris, France!”

And this time, Peach has got it right—we really going to Paris. Who would have believed it! I guess just about anything in the world can happen now!

Somewhere in my dreams, I am mopping around the Eiffel Tower when Tali’s voice finally penetrates through the fog.

“Octavia! Wake up!”

“Mmmph?”

“C’mon, Tave, get up.”

“What time is it?”

“Um … after four.”

I scrub my face on my pillow and turn onto my side, trying to hold on to my dream of Paris. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Get up.”

I blink quickly as Tali turns on the light in the bathroom. She is standing next to the door, dressed. “Where are you going?”

“Just down to the car,” Tali reassures me. “I need to do something.”

“Okay,” I say, still murky with sleep. “Why do I need to wake up?”

“Because you’re going with me.”

“Oh.”

It isn’t until I am out of bed and buttoning my jeans that my brain clears itself from the last little bits of my dream and I start to think. What I think doesn’t make me happy.

“Tali. We’re not … You’re not going to do something stupid like leave Mare, are you? Because I am
so
not going with you if that’s what you’re doing.”

Tali sighs heavily. “No, stupid, I don’t have a death wish. We’re not going to leave Mare. I’m trying to help you. Mare’s going to make you drive today. You need some practice.”

“What? Tali—”

“We’re not going to leave the parking lot. I swear. And she
gave
you the keys before she went to bed, didn’t she? She practically said to practice.”

Wide-awake now, I groan and pull on my sweatshirt. I have a feeling this is going to be a very, very long day.

Last night, Mare told Tali to phone Mom and Dad and let them know how the trip was going. Mare stood right in our room while she did it, so Tali pretty much had to tell our parents the whole story about the Kahlúa, even though she told Mare it was “not that big a deal.” Well, Tali was wrong. Dad just about had a full-grown cow when he heard, and after he got done yelling at Tali, he told Mare to put Tali and me on a plane home immediately. Then Mare took offense, and they got into this huge argument where Dad accused Mare of being a bad influence on us with her drinking and said that she should just come home and try to act like a woman her age for a change, and then
Mom
got on the other
extension and said we all needed a time-out before unforgivable things were said in anger, and that she trusted Mare to discipline her grandchild, and that she’d see us all when we got home. Then she made Dad hang up.

I thought, from the expression on her face, that Tali figured she’d pretty well gotten off the hook, except that Mare handed me the car keys and said, “Well, since your sister won’t be needing these tomorrow, I guess I’d better give them to you. Get some rest.” And she’d gone to her room and closed the door.

It went quiet after that. I sat on the bed with my mouth open in shock. Tali locked herself in the bathroom, and I immediately tried calling Mom again, but the call went straight on to voice mail. Nothing was settled by the time I went to bed, and I was the most unsettled of all.