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THAT NIGHT, HARRY FELL asleep thinking about Lizzie, about Fin . . . about death.
* * *
BLINDING SMOKE. FLAMES. Can’t breathe! Ground rising beneath his feet, throwing him into the air. Harry’s eardrums rang. The smell of burning hair, his hair, filled his nose. He felt his way along the ground. “Fin!” he croaked. “George! Jack! Paul!” Where was everyone? “Sarge?” More shell strikes. Horses screaming. Flailing hooves narrowly missing his head. His fingers closing around an arm. He traced his way up to where a shoulder should be, a chest, a head—nothing. He pushed the arm away and scrambled backwards. A face half buried in the mud. He rolled the man over and felt through the haze for identification tags. Harold Joseph Barnes, Jr., Lutheran.
* * *
HARRY WOKE UP SCREAMING. His pajamas and sheets were soaked with sweat, blankets knotted from fighting. He slapped his hands up and down his torso. No blood, holes, or missing body parts. Everything was where it should be. He slid his fingers over his face, tracing the scar running up the right side and over his hollow eye socket.
His father was the first to throw open the bedroom door without knocking. His mother, Sweetie tight in her arms, and his aunt, were close behind. Harry turned away, slipping on his eye patch to hide the worst from his mother and aunt.
“I’m fine. Go to bed.” He dropped back on his cold, wet, pillow. “It was just a bad dream.”
Another bad dream.
“Really, Harry.” His mother sighed. “You have to stop this ridiculous screaming in the middle of the night. Sweetie’s shaking like a leaf.” She held her damned little dog close and cooed in its ear.
His father tried to shoo her out of the room. “Margaret, leave the boy alone.”
“Well, if you’re certain you’re all right, dear.”
“I’m fine, Mother.” And take that mangy little furball with you.
Aunt Caroline put an arm around her sister’s shoulders. “How about I fix a little treat for Sweetie. Do you think that would calm her?” She winked at Harry.
“What do you say, Sweetie? Should Auntie Caroline fix you a little midnight treat?” They left Harry alone with his father.
Harry let out a slow, exasperated breath and stared at the ceiling. “You can go back to bed, too. I’ll be fine.”
“My grandfather woke screaming many a night after he returned from the war back in ‘65. Went on for years.”
“You’ve told me.”
His father stared out the window, not paying the least bit of attention to anything Harry said. “I was young when they came to live with us, and I vividly remember lying in bed listening as my grandmother tried to bring him back to the present. It wasn’t an easy task.” He hesitated. “He actually struck her a time or two. He didn’t mean to, of course, but nonetheless, it happened.” At this admission he turned and gave Harry a long hard look. “You’re going to have to get a grip, Harry, before you marry that girl. I can’t have people whispering about any son of mine hitting women.”
“I’m not going to hit Alice. I promise. Now go to bed. I’ll be fine.”
“All right, then.” He nodded. “Good night, son.”
His father’s footsteps faded down the hall to his bedroom, followed by the soft click of his door closing. Soon after, his mother returned to her room.
“Poor, poor, Sweetie,” she cooed. “Did big brother Harry scare you with all his screaming?”
Only then did he dare get out of bed. He didn’t want anyone hearing and rushing in to check on him. He stepped into his slippers, tied his bathrobe tight, and, as quietly as possible, slid open the window. A blast of cold autumn air filled his room, raising goose bumps on his damp skin. He breathed in slow and deep. No smoke or powder, no burning flesh or decay, only the fresh smell of earth. No mortars exploding in the distance, only the rustle of dried leaves. Everything, everyone other than him, slept. He closed the window and slipped down the back stairs to the kitchen for a snack.
Aunt Caroline stirred a pot on the stove. “Have a seat.” She poured him a mug of warm milk.
Harry blew across the steaming surface and took a sip. “How did you know I’d come down?”
“I remember a couple little boys who always ended up in my kitchen drinking hot milk after a bad dream or thunderstorm.” She set a plate of cookies on the table, poured herself a mug, and joined him.
Harry reached across and squeezed her hand. “We could always count on you.” He took a bite from a chewy molasses cookie and groaned. “The best French pastries can’t compare to your cookies.”
“I wish you and Jack could find a way to get along the way you used to. You were inseparable for years. Then, all of a sudden, something changed. What happened, Harry?”
“We get along fine.”
“Not the way you did as boys. I blame your parents. Always pitting you against each other. Playing favorites.”
Harry helped himself to a second cookie. “We grew up. We have different interests. Different futures ahead of us.”
She dunked her cookie in her milk. “Doesn’t mean you can’t get along. I heard you talking to him on the telephone earlier. What did he have to say?”
Harry set down his mug. “Lizzie Hudson’s got the influenza. She’s with Doc and Alice at the school. Looks bad for her.” Fin had been on his mind ever since Jack gave him the news. His first instinct was to go straight over to the school, but his mother threw such a fit he relented and stayed home. Truth be told, he’d had enough of hospitals. “She might not make it.”
“Oh, that dear child. Lizzie’s perhaps the sweetest girl in Pine Lake—not counting your Alice. I’ll pray for her.”
“Fin’s there, too. Hasn’t left her side.”
Aunt Caroline took a sip of her warm milk. “Iris told me Alice is a regular angel of mercy. She said there’s no way Doc could do this without her. You should be really proud of her.”
Harry poured the rest of the warm milk into his mug. Outside the window, bats darted back and forth across the moon, eating the last of the insects.
Aunt Caroline stepped up behind him and placed a hand on his shoulder. “You are proud of her, aren’t you?”
“To be honest, Aunt Caroline, I don’t like her being there. I don’t like it at all. She’s taking a risk with her life helping a bunch of poor farmers and their dirty children when she should be happy to spend time with me. Planning our wedding.”
She dropped her hand to her side. Harry recognized the cold stare she gave him. He was about to get a lecture, and he wasn’t in the mood. He set his half full mug on the counter and pushed past her to the stairs.
“You stop right there, young man. If you were still a boy, I’d take you over my knee right about now and give you a swat or two. But you’re not a child any longer, you’re a grown man. It’s time you start acting like one.”
“Aunt Caroline—”
“Sit down.” She pointed to his chair. When he didn’t move, she continued anyway. “Fine, stand, have it your way, but you’re going to listen. Alice Armstrong agreeing to be your wife is the best thing that ever happened to you. She’s perhaps the only person who will love you more than I do. You’d be a fool to turn your back on her. Especially since she so recently lost her parents. You’re all she has left.”
“She has Jack.”
“Jack? Is that what this is all about? Your brother is helping her keep the farm going without her father. Jack nursed her to health when Doc Peterson was the only other person safe to go inside her house. And she wasn’t his only patient. Jack is Alice’s friend and your brother, and he wouldn’t do a thing to hurt either of you.”
The stairs creaked behind him. “Is everything all right down here?” Harry’s mother stood at the bottom looking from one to the other. “Between Harold’s snoring, and you two arguing, poor Sweetie hasn’t been able to sleep.” She snuggled the dog against her cheek. “Have you, my darling.”
“We were just saying good night. Good night, Mother.” He gave her a peck on the cheek. Sweetie yipped at him. He glared back and the little rat dog hid her face in the folds of his mother’s arms.
“Good night, Harry.”
Harry pulled a chair up to his bedroom window, slid it open a couple inches, and lit a cigarette. So far, he’d been able to hide them from his mother buried in his closet. She wasn’t interested in anything to do with his time in the army. The lit end flared when he took a deep pull. He held the smoke in his mouth for a moment before blowing it out the window.
Perhaps Aunt Caroline was right. Maybe he was worrying about nothing when it came to Jack and Alice. She promised him she would give up nursing once the quarantine was lifted, and Jack told him the beds were emptying fast. Doc anticipated everything would return to normal in only a few more weeks. He was willing to bet she’d soon tire of all the sickness and dying. She’d be glad to be back in the home where she belonged, with him. He crushed out his cigarette on the sill, brushed the ashes out the window, and threw the stub out into the night. He’d find it and bury it in the morning, before his mother woke up. She never rose before nine, and after being up tonight, she was likely to sleep until ten.
He yawned. Aunt Caroline’s warm milk was beginning to work. He glanced at his watch on the nightstand. Two o’clock. Plenty of time to make sleep worthwhile. Harry took one last look up at the stars.
“Lord, you know, I’m not much of a praying man, but if you could see your way to sparing Lizzie’s life, I’d really appreciate it. For Fin.”
He pulled the covers up to his chin and felt his worries slip away, this time to be replaced with memories of Alice at the lake the summer before he left to fight. She was smiling at him, laughing, and Jack was nowhere to be seen.