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“I’m going out to the barn to check on that ewe.” Harold shoved back his chair and squinted in Addie’s direction.
“All right.” Would he accept her offer to help or get upset? Anything she suggested these days received a tart look at best. Better to wait. Later, he might welcome some hot coffee.
After she cleaned up the kitchen and knitted a while, she tucked a thermos under her arm and stole into the barn. In faint lantern light, Harold sat in a corner cradling a newborn lamb. His head rested at an odd angle against a couple of hay bales, and an old Coke bottle topped with a foamy black rubber nipple leaned against his knee.
The lamb, pink-nosed and healthy looking, snuggled into the crook of his arm. Not far away lay a motionless woolly gray mound—the mother. She must have died in the birthing. This loss would trouble Harold, but at least he’d saved the orphan.
Sleep mellowed the harsh lines of his face. In this quiet moment, Addie set the thermos on a bale and stared. The dim lantern light melted away the years and made him look like a little boy.
“Oh, Harold—this is who you really are.” Her whisper met the barn air, warmed by milk cows and sheep, whose quiet breathing made the only sound.
High above on a crossbeam, a barn swallow’s forked tail flicked in its cup-shaped mud nest. The old building creaked now and then, adding depth to its serenity. The lamb in Harold’s arm twitched its ear, but Harold slept on.
“You’re as headstrong as Orville and as tight-lipped as Berthea, but I know you’re hurting. You think of Joe all the time, somewhere out there in the Pacific.”
A bitter draft razed the dusky alleyway, stirring the dusty scent of oats in feeding troughs, a tinge of copper from the birthing, and the acridness of fresh manure. So far, the cold restrained the dead ewe’s rancid smell, but by morning, a stench would rise.
Harold shifted against the bale and snored, so Addie backed down the alleyway. “He might not hold me anymore like he does that lamb, but he’s consumed by the war. He’s loyal to Joe. Can’t think of anything else but the sinking of the Arizona.” Near the door, her bulky sleeve caught on a splinter and she wrestled it loose.
“In time, he’s bound to change. Doesn’t love believe the best and never give up?”
Her question bounced back at her. Though she wanted to help Harold into the house and to bed, she knew better. No, until the old Harold returned, she would bide her time and practice her own kind of loyalty.
v
“German U-boats sank an Atlantic Coast liner last night.” Riding the straight-backed wooden chair like a horse, Harold’s eyebrows flurried up and down like snow sailing in a strong wind. A few minutes later, he almost knocked himself and the chair into the radio.
“No! This cannot be!”
Addie grasped her mending needle tighter. If the wind hadn’t drifted the driveway shut, he would be driving the hog he butchered early this morning to the locker. Why did the weather refuse to oblige?
“They mock us. Our citizens watch our own ships burn and sink.” Harold flailed his arms in the air.
“That’s the worst news yet.” She rose and touched his shoulder, but he yanked away just as a small dark streak hurtled along the floor.
In his stocking feet, Harold leaped and stomped, shaking the thick curved glass frames of his grandparents’ portraits near the front door. He twisted in victory.
“Got him!”
Bile rose in her throat at his sudden glee. He poised his thumb and forefinger over the small, furry gray lump, lifted it by the tail, and swung the creature like a pendulum.
“You’re not glad to be rid of this little pest?” His eyes locked on hers.
She pushed on her chest to catch her breath. “Yes, I—I am. You move so fast—I’ve never heard of anyone catching a mouse that way.”
“You grew up in the filthiest house this side of the Rockies. Your dad didn’t do anything fast, much less chase mice.” A strange fire burnished Harold’s pupils. He glanced from the mouse to her. “I bet you caught more vermin than your dad did.”
She nodded without thinking.
“Then why do I have to handle them around here? With all your experience, you ought to take over the job.” He edged closer, suspending the limp animal like a shoestring.
“Harold, I don’t—”
“Don’t think you could measure up to my remarkable feats? The fellow who’s not good enough to fight for Uncle Sam, but can still be trusted to kill mice?”
Something about his expression sent an odd quiver through Addie. She backed against the crushed velvet davenport.
“Harold, please—”
But he swung the mouse so near that tiny teeth set against pink gums oozed a mineral scent. Addie’s heart pulsed in her ears.
“Maybe Harold Bledsoe ought to join the circus or a traveling show so everyone can see him and laugh. Maybe Jack Benny could use such an accomplished guy—maybe he could perform for the troops somewhere.”
Her teeth chattered under his smirk. He wouldn’t toss a dead—
But he did. She shrieked and spun away. The mouse tumbled to the floorboards and Harold’s rowdy hoot resounded.
“Oh, Harold, how could—”
“Easy, that’s how. I’m tired of throwing out mice. I’ll make you a new deal, just like that blistering Democrat in the White House. You set the traps and cart off the prey from now on. Harold the Great has better things to do.”
His legs bent like saplings in heavy snowfall as he slumped into his chair. The broadcaster droned on, as unremitting as winter.
“We have Kaiser Wilhelm, Queen Victoria’s grandson, to thank for creating the German Navy—Kaiser means Caesar, after all. Perhaps his asylum in the Netherlands will be his just deserts for his crimes.”
Addie stumbled to the back porch for the dustpan and her old broom. But when she returned, the tiny body had disappeared. Her skin turned to gooseflesh as she made a slow circle.
“You can figure it out.” Harold leaned toward the burgundy fabric of the speaker, his tone dull. “I only stunned the bugger—the remarkable Bledsoe fails again.”
In the corner, Addie tipped the magazine rack to check a trap they kept set year-round, but the wooden contraption sat empty. Aware of Harold’s eyes on her, she wavered.
“It’s only a mouse. There’s a war going on, woman.”
The curl of his lips propelled her toward the davenport to take up her knitting, but her skin still crawled. The wounded mouse might have sought refuge in the springs below her. Fifteen minutes crawled by before a sharp click came from the corner.
Immersed in radio chatter, Harold gave no sign he heard, so Addie crept over to peer into the shadows. The trap had fulfilled its purpose—no second wind for the little fellow this time.
Harold usually emptied the traps for the barn cats, but the floorboards announced him leaving. Addie couldn’t bring herself to remove the critter from the metal clamp. The porch door slammed, and though Harold wouldn’t approve this waste, she whisked the mouse, trap and all, into the dustpan. The cats would have to go without.
Out in the yard, metal scraped against gravel and concrete. Finally, the wind had died down so Harold could start shoveling. After scrubbing the corner clean, Addie checked her apron pocket and ran upstairs to the small bedroom at the end of the hall. Its blackened brass knob quarreled, but she rammed her shoulder against the hardwood until it gave way.
Dust floated up when she shoved aside some boxes and pulled open the heavy closet door. The frosty room echoed her sneeze, and with her thumb, she edged a bit of colored paper from the baseboard. We Fight Together splashed the bottom of a Great War victory garden postcard. A faded ink scrawl showed on the back.
October 1917
Dear Bea,
Thank you for writing. I’ll never forget our good time in your garden.
Friends always, G____
This must be Berthea’s. She had a good time with a friend? The concept seemed foreign, like Hitler’s radio speech cuts. Through the half-iced window, Addie glimpsed Berthea and Orville’s house. Maybe back then, she knew a soldier who called her Bea.
Even on such a freezing February day, natural light warmed this space. How could sunlight, through miles of sub-zero atmosphere, still produce heat? That was a Kate kind of question.
Hell-bent on getting to town, Harold demolished two-foot drifts piled across the driveway. At the same time, her dearest friend crossed an ocean peppered with Nazi submarines. The idea rendered Addie’s nerves like the iced electrical wires strung between posts along the roadside.
No use thinking about it. All I can do is pray. She pulled Kate’s first letter from her deep apron pocket, thankful she’d discovered the perfect hiding place—this little room at the top of the stairs. The day of their wedding, Harold declared it too small for anything but storage, and never came in here.
Even without an iron grate in this room to let in heat from downstairs, warmth flooded Addie as she bent over the letter that came from Kate before she boarded a ship from Canada. Just like her to begin with a puzzle, as she did in their junior-high note passing.
December 30, 1941
Dear Addie,
Hope this finds you well. Will embark from __ in a few hours (think Q as in question). Earning my way with a capital T, and glad I came here, since this wouldn’t have been possible from the U.S.
Did you hear that Winston Churchill addressed both houses of Congress two days ago? “Hope has returned to the hearts of scores of millions of men and women, and with that hope there burns the flame of anger against the brutal, corrupt invader. And still more fiercely burn the fires of hatred and contempt for the filthy Quislings whom he has suborned.”
There’s a new word for us—I think it’s taken from a Norwegian collaborator. Even Norway, with a history of shunning war, can’t help but get involved. Knowing we’re not alone in an uphill struggle means everything. I felt this the day we met—my first day of school in Halberton. When you came to sit by me in the cafeteria and turned those friendly dark eyes on me, I knew things would be all right.
Have you heard any more about Joe? Who else has signed up? Any change with Harold’s status? Daily, I pray for him to be accepted, and hope for an early spring there—less time for him to brood. And more for you to cheer on those recalcitrant hollyhocks. This summer is your time, Addie. Surely they’ll cooperate with you this year.
Love always,
Kate
Visualizing her friend aboard a ship the day this letter arrived, Addie had dusted off her interpretative skills. Kate sailed from Quebec, and by now her ship might be nearing British shores. Busy aboard could mean anything, but her capital T must refer to typing. The star pupil in their 10th-grade business class, Kate could type with her eyes shut.
That new skill provided release for her incessant ideas and facilitated her present search for Alexandre. The world beyond Halberton would now reckon with Kathryn Isaacs.
Having even this one correspondence from her meant so much—how many times had she trekked up here to refresh herself with her dear friend’s words? The west window gave a view of the frozen yard, and Addie’s breath cleared the pane enough to reveal her teetering wooden garden fence where her down-the-road neighbor Jane Pike’s hollyhock starts resisted growing last summer.
Though Harold refused to let her order seeds from Berthea’s seed catalog, Addie could at least dream. Come spring, she’d renew her efforts to camouflage that unsightly fence—she’d be more like Kate, and take matters in hand. Kate’s letter crinkled as Addie raised the edge of a heavy box enough to slip it underneath. Just in time, since Harold emerged from the barn and threw two massive pork quarters into the bubbletop. He might stop in for a cup of coffee before he took off—she never knew.
The good news was that in two weeks, shiny white meat packages would line Berthea’s new International Harvester deep freezer. No more long days and evenings spent stuffing sausage casings or cutting and wrapping roasts.
An uneasy place below Addie’s collarbone released as the engine turned over and the bubbletop left the yard. She shut the closet door and shoved several more boxes in front of it, then scooted down the stairs and through the back porch to the basement.
In the fruit cellar, full jars reminded her that by summer Kate might be back. And between then and now came the glories of Spring. She chose a few ingredients for supper, all the while listening for the mail truck. Surely George would stop by before Harold returned.
And he did, leaving another letter from Kate in the cold metal rectangle. Addie raced home and dropped into a kitchen chair without even removing her boots and coat.
