• 24 •

IT WAS ABUNDANTLY clear to Constance that there was no privacy at camp, not even in the woods. If Hack and Clarence could find them, anyone could. And it was all too easy for the girls to be spotted returning to their tents after curfew. To avoid the appearance that any of them were sneaking around on their own, Constance insisted that they walk out of the woods with her. She could always claim, if asked, that they had merely extended their night patrol.

But Hilda and Fern trailed behind, and peeled off, unnoticed, from the group to make their own way back to their tents. It was their great misfortune to be recognized by Tizzy Spotwood, who was at that moment walking back from the latrines.

Tizzy was still stewing over the confiscation of the Victrola and the other privileges Constance had taken away from her and her friends. Constance had made good on her threat and relocated the girls to the very center of camp, which Tizzy believed to be an unfashionable neighborhood. As she was now situated right next to Constance’s tent, she didn’t hesitate to complain, loudly and often, about the injustice that had rained down upon her and her friends.

Constance regarded Tizzy as the kind of girl who was accustomed to being given the very best of everything. If she was put in inferior accommodations or given anything less than the very finest on offer, she assumed it was the result of neglect or incompetence on someone else’s part, and saw it as her duty to step forward and demand that to which she was entitled. In fact, she seemed to believe it to be a special skill of hers to go around finding fault, and took pride in doing it well, which is to say, loudly, frequently, and always within earshot of her friends. She liked an audience.

So when Tizzy spotted two girls across the campground, moving between the tents, she went directly to Constance, who was only just then returning to her own tent.

“I suppose you noticed those two on your rounds,” Tizzy said.

Constance straightened and looked around. She would not be intimidated by this girl. “I saw them.”

“Well? What are you going to do about it?” She jutted her chin out in the manner of a mistress berating a servant.

“You ought to be in bed,” Constance said.

But Tizzy wasn’t put off so easily. “They’ll have to have a demerit. They weren’t going to the latrine. No one else is permitted to be out after nine.”

“I’m aware of the rules, Miss Spotwood. Good night.”

Tizzy gave an aggrieved little tsk but went into her tent anyway.

The next morning, after breakfast, Norma caught up with Constance on their way to pigeon class. “Moving those girls next to us was your first mistake.”

“And what was my second mistake, and my third?” Constance asked.

Norma was so surprised to be asked that it took her a minute to compose a list. Before she could recite it, Constance said, “The least you could do would be to keep Fleurette and Roxie in the tent at night.”

“If they don’t sneak out while I’m putting the pigeons up for the night, they wait until I’m asleep,” Norma said. “I’m not in the habit of sleeping with one eye open.”

“I noticed,” Constance said. Norma’s snores were legendary. No one slept as soundly as she did.

“You’re going to have to punish Fleurette, and that Roxanna. I never did like that girl.” That Roxanna was the only way Norma ever said her name.

“Oh, but she speaks so highly of you.”

“There’s something out of kilter about her,” Norma persisted. “She can’t seem to make up her mind about where she comes from. Half the time she sounds like a southerner, but she claims to have grown up on Park Avenue.”

“She says her mother’s from Georgia,” Constance said. “I suppose that might explain the accent. But have you noticed how she handles a knife and fork?”

“No finishing school,” Norma said.

“Exactly. And she doesn’t have that walk.”

“Toe-heel, toe-heel.”

“It’s a ridiculous way to walk,” Constance said. “I don’t know why girls are taught it. But they all do it.”

“It’s so they can balance a book on their heads.”

“Well, I’ve already spoken to Fleurette and Roxie. We have an understanding.”

“You always have an understanding with Fleurette. What’s called for here is a punishment. You ought to cancel May Ward’s concert.”

“Doesn’t that punish the entire camp? You just don’t want Freeman Bernstein coming around.”

“Surely he won’t show his face,” Norma said.

“It’s quite likely he will. He’s May Ward’s husband and her manager.” Constance enjoyed taunting Norma with this possibility. Norma’s grievance against Freeman Bernstein was so massive and unyielding that she could’ve built a granite monument from it.

“He won’t set foot on my campground,” Norma said.

“If it’s anyone’s camp, it’s mine,” Constance said, “and I’m not going to call off the show. It would only bring unnecessary attention to . . . a minor infraction.”

Norma noticed her hesitation: Norma noticed everything. “You were out for quite a while yourself last night,” she said.

They’d arrived at the barn by then, as had most of Norma’s students. “They’re waiting for you,” Constance said, with great relief. She wasn’t ready to make a full confession to Norma.

Hilda and Fern were among Norma’s students. Constance took Hilda by the arm and motioned for Fern to follow. They came along eagerly, obviously expecting to hear daring new plans for their after-hours target practice.

“You were seen last night returning to your tents unaccompanied,” Constance said. “I warned you to stay with me, but you didn’t. I’m putting you on kitchen duty tonight by yourselves.”

“But it takes eight girls to do the kitchen after dinner!” Hilda said.

“Won’t we miss our —”

Constance put up a hand to silence Fern before she gave everything away. “This is going to be a good lesson to you. When you go to France, you’re simply going to have to follow the rules, and do what your commander tells you, whether you like it or not. And you’re going to have to learn how to keep your mouths closed and your secrets to yourselves. Word’s already going around this morning that you broke curfew. If anyone asks, you’re to confess that you were out, and say that you’re on kitchen duty by yourselves as punishment. Don’t offer any other explanation.”

“But —”

Constance wouldn’t hear their arguments. “If you can’t obey a straightforward command, then you aren’t in any way prepared to go to war.”

That was enough to put an end to the complaining. They were good girls who understood at once what was expected of them. They each gave a silent nod and returned to the class, with Constance on their heels.

Norma’s lesson that morning concerned the method for affixing messages to the legs of pigeons, and removing those messages when they returned to their loft.

“A bird has to be handled firmly, and with authority,” Norma was saying as Constance came back around to the other side of the barn. She sat next to Sarah, who was scratching away in her notebook with a stubby pencil. She was taking the subject of Norma’s pigeons far more seriously than Constance ever had.

“If you’ve handled a chicken, you know how to take hold of a pigeon,” Norma said, to scattered laughter from city girls who had only ever handled a chicken after the butcher had plucked and dressed it.

On a hastily knocked-together wooden table next to her was a wire cage holding four birds. Norma reached in and grabbed one from its backside, pinning the wings down under the palm of her hand, and held it out for the class to see. Its feet hung down uselessly and its head bobbed up and down, trying to stay level as Norma waved it around. Several in the class cooed at it affectionately: the creature did look small and helpless in a manner that inspired sympathy.

“You’ll each take a turn at handling one before we put the bands on,” Norma said, “but we’ll have to go inside the barn and close the doors to do that. I can’t risk any of them getting away. They might take it upon themselves to fly home. I need them here.”

“They wouldn’t fly all the way back to New Jersey, would they?” came a voice from under the eaves of the barn. It was Hack, who had wandered over to watch the class.

Constance bristled at this: the aim of the camp was to put women into classrooms by themselves, where they could learn without interference from the opposite sex. But she was in no position to go against Hack. She’d only just negotiated a truce with him and didn’t know how long their fragile peace would hold.

Norma didn’t mind, of course. Her purpose in bringing the pigeons was to attract the attention of the Army. There weren’t any generals around, as she’d hoped there would be. A private was better than nothing.

“It’s two hundred and fifty miles back to Wyckoff, more or less,” Norma said. “That’s an easy flight for them. You’d know the answer if you attended class more regularly.”

Sarah fought a smile. “She can’t help herself, can she?” she whispered.

“She thinks she’s being helpful by letting him know what he missed,” Constance whispered back.

“Can they really fly that far?” Hack asked.

“They can comfortably manage five hundred miles in a day. Our national pigeon racing club has been setting records in excess of two thousand miles,” Norma said.

Hack whistled. “Well, that ought to get them across France.”

“Correct. France hardly exceeds six hundred miles across in any direction, so they won’t have any trouble with it,” Norma said briskly.

Soldiers were accustomed to gruff treatment, so Hack wasn’t put off by it. “Supposing we turned them loose at the front,” he said. “Wouldn’t the Germans just shoot them down?”

“We took care of the Germans in our second class, which you also failed to attend,” Norma said. It didn’t appear, for the moment, that she had anything else to say on the subject.

Sarah took it upon herself to rise from her seat in the back and whisper to Hack, “They can fly as high as any aeroplane. In fact, they’ve been dropped out of aeroplanes before and they do just fine. From the ground, they’d only be a little speck in the sky. Of course the Germans would get a few, but with a cart this size, you could take a hundred pigeons to the front. You’d have plenty to spare.”

“A hundred in that cart?” Hack said, walking over to take a closer look. “Can you pull it with an automobile, or does it have to go by horse? Because I don’t think we’re fighting this war on horseback.”

Norma was losing control of her class. Constance thought about interceding on her behalf, but wasn’t this what Norma wanted — to demonstrate her cart for the Army?

“It can go by horse or auto,” Norma said, “but a noisy engine has no place in the French countryside. A horse is nearly silent. You wouldn’t be noticed.”

“Sure, but a horse can spook,” Hack said. “Say, we have an auto for bringing supplies back and forth. How about I drive it over here and we take this cart of yours for a ride down the road?”

There was such a flurry of excitement over the prospect of leaving the campground that every girl in the class jumped up and started talking at once.

“I don’t suppose we’re going to get around to banding any pigeons today,” Sarah said.

“I’d better make a round through camp,” Constance said. “Keep an eye on this business for me. I don’t want a single one of them late for their next class.”

THAT NIGHT, THE entire camp knew that Hilda and Fern had been punished for being caught out of their tents after curfew. Great whoops of joy came from the crew of eight who’d been relieved of kitchen duty so that the miscreants could take their punishment. When Constance walked back to the mess hall after dinner to check on them, she found Sarah, Margaret, and Bernice in the kitchen as well, helping Hilda and Fern scrub pots and wash two hundred sets of dishes.

“We’re a unit,” Margaret said, when she turned around and saw Constance watching them. “We stay together.”

Constance let them go on with what they were doing. Outside, under a vast and inky sky, she thought: We might’ve just formed an army.