On Wednesday morning, Louise walked Arnie to the train station where he would take the train to Rovaniemi, a town almost exactly on the Arctic Circle, just fifty miles from Sweden and one hundred miles from Russia. Rovaniemi had been leveled by fire caused by the explosion of a German ammunition train during the fighting between Finland and Germany in the fall of 1944. Ironically, the ammunition train had been blown up by Finnish commandos harassing the retreating Germans. Just months before this, those same commandos had been fighting alongside those Germans to keep the Soviet Union out of Finland. One of the demands of the 1944 peace settlement was that Finland force all German troops out of Finland. That meant fighting those who just weeks earlier had been comrades in arms. This was harder on soldiers than it was on politicians.
The locomotive was nearly hidden in the steam condensing in the freezing air. Louise hunched into Arnie, trying to extract as much heat from him as she could through the coarse wool of his cross-country skiing outfit. His skis and pack lay at their feet.
She heard what she assumed was the “all aboard” in Finnish. Arnie, as usual eager to get going, reached for his pack. She helped him get it on his back, trying to contain the niggling worry that this might be the last time she touched him, marveling that he was intending to carry it over three hundred miles. She could barely hold it up as he struggled into the straps.
He bounced the pack up and down, settling it, and turned to her. “Send out the search parties if we don’t get to Kuopio by Wednesday, the twelfth.”
“Don’t even think it,” she said seriously.
“We’ll get there on Monday.” He looked skyward. “Given no major weather glitches.”
“And you’ll get there first,” she said. She turned her head up for a kiss. He awkwardly hugged her and gave her a quick kiss. She couldn’t hug him back because of the pack, so contented herself with one last feel of his shoulders.
He began to reach down for his skis, but she stopped him. “One more, for the winner.” She knew he was uncomfortable kissing in public but had fun teasing him. She also knew he wouldn’t resist. This time she held the back of his head, pulling him in, holding him to her. The last time they’d kissed at a train station like this was in Tacoma, Washington, when he’d shipped out for Europe after a brief leave. She’d been afraid it would be their last.
The whistle blew and Arnie broke off.
She watched his back as he made his way down the platform, remembering the first time she’d said goodbye to him at the train station in Norman, Oklahoma. They’d met her sophomore year on October 24, 1936, the weekend of the big game against the Sooners’ traditional rival, eighth-ranked Nebraska. Her date had gotten the flu. A sorority sister rescued her by getting her boyfriend, who as at Fort Sill, to bring a friend. That was Arnie.
It was clear from the first minute that this lean man, with dark hair she wanted to get her fingers into, wasn’t much good at chitchat. By the end of the weekend, however, it was clear that he was good at deep conversation, with just enough words. When she and her girlfriend put their two soldiers on the train, she’d stood watching it disappear until her girlfriend had taken her arm and said, “We can’t wait for them on the platform.”
Arnie hitchhiked to Norman every time he got leave, saving the train fare. But their yearlong college idyll was shattered in March of 1938, when the army promoted Arnie to first lieutenant and transferred him to Fort Lewis, Washington.
Louise graduated in June 1939 and took a job teaching first grade at Lincoln Grade School in Tulsa. When Arnie asked her to come out West over the Christmas break, Louise took the train to Tacoma, against her parents’ wishes.
She smiled at the memory of that parting.
Now, bouncing up and down against the cold, clutching the front of her coat, she was once again watching Arnie board a train. “Go Arnie! Go America!” she shouted.
He turned back, rolled his eyes, and disappeared.
She whispered, “Go with God.”
The train pulled out, steam venting from the pistons. She watched until the smoke from the boiler thinned to invisibility. Then she turned to begin the walk back to the empty apartment, feeling very much alone.
As she left the station, the tears started, laying small wet tracks that froze on her face. Her period had come that morning. Passersby would think she was mourning the departure of a loved one. She wondered how often she herself had mistaken the true cause of a woman’s tears.