• 7 •

THE HIGH AND distant note of the bugle insinuated itself into Constance’s dreams. Before she could yawn and stretch herself awake, Norma jumped out of the cot next to her and shook her by the shoulder.

“That’s reveille,” Norma said. “Jump out of bed like a soldier or I’ll turn you out.”

When Constance and Norma were girls, they shared a bed, and even then Norma liked to thump her in the ribs when the sun came up. Norma couldn’t envision such a thing as a leisurely start to the day: she greeted the dawn with the sort of smack one gives to a newborn baby to start it breathing. Constance sat up obediently, as there was no percentage in resisting.

Sarah was up already, brushing out her hair and wrapping it into a braid at the back of her neck. Only Fleurette and Roxie were still abed. Fleurette had one eye open, and kept it fixed on Roxie, who feigned sleep through the commotion with the practiced air of a girl who knew how to get her way by pretending. Constance could already see that Fleurette intended to follow Roxie’s every move, which meant that she would sneak an extra five minutes in bed if Roxie did.

Norma was having none of it. In one quick gesture, she pulled their blankets off and gave each girl a swat on the soles of their feet.

“Ow!” Fleurette scrambled out of her cot to get away from her.

Roxie stretched and rose at her leisure. “I hope that horrible trumpet means that breakfast is to be served.”

“Not until your calisthenics,” Norma said. “Get up. The whole tent earns a demerit if any of us are late.”

Constance lifted the tent flap just enough to see a pale strip of pink light along the eastern horizon. It was cold out, in that cruel and damp way that was particular to March. She didn’t dare complain for fear that Norma would deliver a lecture on how much more unpleasant conditions were in the trenches in France.

They’d draped their uniforms over the ropes that extended from the central tent pole, there being no other place to air a skirt and jacket. Constance suspected that most of the girls at the camp would be lost without wardrobes and chiffoniers for their clothing, but in her days as deputy sheriff, she had slept in a jail cell often enough that she knew how to organize her attire anywhere it could be hung.

The five of them dressed silently, their backs turned to each other, exchanging night clothes for uniforms as hastily as they could. As everyone’s uniforms were homemade, they resembled each other only superficially. Fleurette had sewn hers, Norma’s, and Constance’s from the leftover runs of light wool and heavy muslin she’d once used to make Constance’s deputy uniforms, and cobbled together what she could of sturdy buttons and warm linings from the scraps in her sewing room. Fleurette was fond of pleats and darts and put them everywhere, even on a camp uniform. She even managed to impose a waist on Constance, who disliked the constriction and preferred her garments to hang straight.

The skirts fell just above the ankles, with buttons down the front and deep pockets on the sides. The campers were permitted to wear men’s regulation riding pants under the skirts, both for warmth and for practicality, as some exercises were best performed with the skirts unbuttoned near the bottom. Constance wasn’t in the habit of wearing riding pants but was glad to have them: already a wind was whistling around the tent flap, and she didn’t like the idea of it rushing up her skirt before she’d even had a look at a pot of coffee.

“I wish the contingent arguing against skirts had won the day,” Sarah said. “I’d rather wear nothing but pants. Even a skirt like this is a hindrance in the field.”

“They weren’t going to put us in trousers, were they?” Roxie asked. Fleurette had stitched together a fairly respectable uniform for Roxie, by taking apart a brown dress and fashioning it into a skirt, and adding a collar to one of Roxie’s dingy shirtwaists.

For a Park Avenue girl, Constance thought, her clothes were in tatters, and her story about digging them out of the mending basket didn’t hold up. They weren’t worth mending: they were too cheap to begin with. She considered the possibility that Roxie had run away from home and purchased second-hand clothes along the way, but it sounded far-fetched. It was none of Constance’s business, anyway. What concern of it was hers if the girl had a secret to keep?

Norma, having dressed first, stood at the tent flap. “One of us will have to go out every morning to pump water,” she announced, taking up the bucket that had been issued to them for that purpose. “Since none of you have given a thought to that, I’ll do it today. Roxanna will go tomorrow, and we’ll follow the alphabet from there.”

Having established a protocol and offering no opportunity for rebuttal, Norma went out with the bucket. When she returned, the five of them gathered outside, behind the tent, dipping into water to splash their faces and then drawing up cups of it so that they might brush their teeth. All around them, the girls from the other tents were doing the same. There was quite a bit of thin, nervous laughter as the light came up in the sky and revealed them, in the middle of their ablutions, in the company of strangers, out in the open air.

For just a moment Constance thought she might know something of what a soldier felt on his first day away from home, awakening with a fine feeling of adventure in the unfamiliar surroundings of a military camp. Theirs was such a smaller kind of adventure — only six weeks away, and then what? A return home, for most of them, to their familiar friends and obligations. And for Constance — what waited for her? A Red Cross course, and then back to the farm to cut field dressings?

The bugle sounded again, but this time it was first call, which was to be their summons to calisthenics. All two hundred women (two hundred and one, including Margaret from Texas) trundled off at once, stumbling over tent lines and bumping into each other in the half-dark. Taken as a group, Constance couldn’t imagine that they’d ever look like any sort of military regimen. She wondered if they’d be marching in straight lines by the end of their training, or if they’d always bumble along like children on their way to a sledding party.

In a field just beyond their little city of tents waited Mrs. Nash, a walking-stick in hand and a whistle around her neck. The sun was now up over the horizon, and it shone just enough to warm them slightly. Constance hoped Mrs. Nash would have them running relays, or hopping up and down, or anything that might bring a little warmth. Instead, the first business of the morning was to organize themselves into four companies.

Mrs. Nash blew a whistle and started shouting commands that the group was not entirely prepared to receive. The idea was to count off by fours, and then for each group to arrange itself by height, with the tallest in the back. This gave Constance no trouble as she had only to stand in the very rear of her company. Fleurette readily took her place in the front. The rest of the girls had a great deal of difficulty in sorting themselves out, with many of them perching on their toes to stand next to a friend, or taking off their hats and mashing their hair down to get closer to the front. Mrs. Nash used her walking-stick to nudge the girls into line.

“We have only half an hour for our setting-up exercises, and we’ve lost most of it already,” Mrs. Nash called, but that only encouraged the girls to delay further.

At last they were standing at attention in their rows. Mrs. Nash shouted her commands from a drill-book she carried with her.

“Right, dress!” she called. Norma stood several rows ahead. Constance could see from her vantage point in the back that Norma was one of the few who knew what to do. Had she been marching and drilling behind the barn all winter?

They spent half an hour turning this way and that, heeding commands intended to get them in line and facing the direction in which they were to march. Constance saw little point to it, as the one thing they wouldn’t be asked to do for France would be to march in formation. Women might play a role, certainly, but it would be nothing as militaristic as this. She surrendered to the deflating feeling that the camp was more of an entertainment than a practical training ground.

At last came the mess call. The companies fell apart and rushed to breakfast. They were supposed to enter by separate doors according to company and stand at attention until ordered to sit, but there was such a scramble that Mrs. Nash’s instructions, barked out over the din, went unheeded.

Constance couldn’t help but feel a little pity for her. She was trying to impose order on girls who, for the most part, were accustomed to viewing life as a series of amusements — girls who would only follow a command if it was part of a game, and then only if they felt inclined to play it.

She was glad not to be in Mrs. Nash’s position. The last time she had charge of a group of women, they were locked in their cells and had little choice but to do what was expected of them. These girls were running amok.

They descended upon the breakfast that had been set out on long tables: boiled eggs and cold potatoes, bread and butter, and shredded wheat. A girl going around with pitchers of milk and coffee announced that they should’ve had bananas, but the truck had been waylaid. No one seemed bothered by it.

Constance sat next to Sarah. Fleurette and Roxie came dashing over, and Norma made her way to them eventually. Every company, it seemed, had dissolved and re-formed according to tent-mates and other prior associations.

“Norma’s without her cabbage,” Fleurette shouted over the racket in the mess hall. “If the ground starts to shake and opens up and swallows us all, it’s because my sister has broken with her most sacred of traditions and angered the gods.”

“We’re in a military camp,” Norma said. “Eat your rations.”

Years ago, Norma developed a peculiar habit of eating pickled red cabbage on toast for breakfast, and she had never since strayed from it. If the three of them had cause to stay in a hotel for a night or two, she would bring a jar of it from home and set it prominently in the center of the breakfast table like a fetid purple flower arrangement. But military order was all she cared about now. She couldn’t be bothered with her old routines.

In between bites of bread, butter, and smashed egg, Sarah said, “Are any of you taking the first-aid course this afternoon? I’d rather practice on someone I know.”

“Oh yes, I’ll be there,” called a girl at the other end of the table who introduced herself as Tizzy. “I’m to learn first aid and hospital cooking. There’s a group of us girls in my building back home who want to volunteer in the hospitals as soon as the men start coming back. A pretty face is the best medicine.”

“I’m entirely certain that medicine is the best medicine,” Norma said, “and we haven’t sent a single man overseas yet, so I don’t know why you’re already expecting them to return home injured. Isn’t there something you can do now, while the French and the British are in the trenches on their own?”

“Well, we get together once a week and do our comfort bags,” Tizzy said.

“I’ve seen those bags go out by the barrel at the train station,” Fleurette said. “I always wondered what went in them.”

“Oh, you know. Handkerchiefs and soap, toothbrushes, cards and little games. But it’s the notes from America that mean the most. We tell them that we’re proud of them for fighting, and that we admire their bravery and think of them every day. They love hearing from American girls. Some of them write back. It’s a fine entertainment to open their little notes and try to read past the censor’s marks.”

Fleurette looked puzzled for a minute, as if she might be trying to work out in her own mind whether anything a soldier might say about the war should be considered an entertainment.

“Well,” said Sarah briskly, “what about the Kopp sisters?”

Constance looked to Norma, who had taken the responsibility of enrolling them in classes.

“Fleurette goes to plain sewing class, of course,” Norma began, but was quickly interrupted.

“That’s a perfect waste of my time, unless I’m to teach the class.” Fleurette sounded appalled, and Constance was appalled on her behalf. What could anyone tell Fleurette about making a uniform or knitting socks?

But Norma was unmoved. She cut her toast into little triangles, buttered them along the edge, and said, “The Red Cross is very particular about its bandages. If anyone can learn them quickly and teach others how to do it, it will be you. I’ve no doubt you’ll be bored, but only after you see what’s required and settle on the best way to get them done.”

Fleurette sighed and surrendered to it. “Bandages.”

“I will take the signaling course,” Norma continued, “as it is not entirely unconnected to my work, although I hardly see the point of standing on a hill and waving flags around when we can send a bird with a message.”

“A bird?” asked Sarah, who, having only been a tent-mate of Norma’s for a night, was not yet acquainted with her ideas on messenger pigeons and was still under the impression that Norma was to teach a class on raising and dressing small birds and game.

Constance, eager to cut off this line of discussion, hastily put in, “What about you, Sarah? What do you hope to do for the war?”

Sarah looked up brightly and said, “Ambulance work. I want any kind of first-aid training, and a course on driving and mechanics.”

“Why would we drive them around in ambulances?” Fleurette asked. “By the time they’re sent home, aren’t they ensconced in a hospital and out of trouble?”

“Oh, I won’t drive it here in the States,” said Sarah. “I’m going to France. The American Field Service isn’t going to wait for Mr. Wilson to go into the war. They’re already running ambulances, and —”

“You’re going to France?” Fleurette said, nearly spitting her coffee across the table. “Right now? Before we’ve even sent the Army, or — or — anyone?”

Sarah took a little breath and touched a napkin to her lips. She looked at some spot in the air between them and said, “It isn’t true that we haven’t sent anyone. My brother volunteered in January. He couldn’t wait. He’s driving an ambulance at the front now.”

They were a little island of silence in the middle of a noisy mess hall. The last corner of toast stuck in Constance’s throat.

“He’s my twin,” she said, smiling bravely into a platter covered in broken egg shells. “We’ve never been apart. I’m going to follow him.”

Fleurette turned bright red and Roxie’s mouth formed a little oval. For once in her life, Norma didn’t utter a word.

At last Sarah turned and put a hand on Constance’s wrist. “What about you?”

“Me?” She was still imagining Sarah’s twin, slight and brown-headed and quick to smile like his sister, driving an ambulance in Verdun or the Argonne because he could not wait to go and serve. She felt very still and strange all at once.

“Yes, you. You look like a woman who has something to offer her country. What is it?”