• 32 •

THE NEWS THAT Constance had decided to put a stop to the late-night drills was met with strenuous objection by her band of soldiers-in-training. To a woman they were indignant, and insisted upon a fuller explanation. To that end, the six of them met one more time in the woods: Constance, Sarah, Margaret, Fern, Bernice, and Hilda. Fleurette and Roxie weren’t invited along and wouldn’t have been interested regardless, with all the preparations for May Ward’s performance under way.

It was a dark night, with low heavy clouds and no moon. There was a muggy kind of warmth in the air that foretold an early-morning storm, the kind that could send trickles of rainwater down the tent poles and make them all grateful to be sleeping atop a wooden platform — a luxury not afforded to the men in the trenches, as Norma liked to remind them every time they awoke to find themselves high and dry atop a mud puddle.

In every way their suffering was nothing like that of the men in the trenches. Only that afternoon, Sarah had another letter from Jack, remarking — but never complaining, he didn’t complain — on the endless chill in France, and the way they had all learned to stuff their uniforms with newspaper for insulation. “We fight over every issue of Stars & Stripes,” he’d written. “Wraps right around the legs, lasts a week or more in dry weather.”

Sarah was passing the letter around when Constance arrived at their meeting place, just after curfew. “He’s sleeping in what remains of an old kitchen,” she told Constance, “the roof half gone and a crumbling brick oven for fire. These villages hadn’t much to begin with, and now they’re entirely wrecked. There isn’t one intact house to be had for miles, so they bed down in any promising pile of rubble.”

“It’s unfathomable,” Constance said, looking over Sarah’s shoulder and deciphering his faint pencil scratch. Ink was impossible to come by at the front.

“What’s unfathomable,” Margaret said, “is the idea that we can’t so much as shoot at a target, when Jack has the Boche firing on him every night.”

“Not every night,” Sarah said, quaking a little at the thought.

“We simply can’t take a chance,” Constance said. “We’ve been overheard already. We’re sure to be found out, and that was our warning.”

“It doesn’t matter if we’re found out. I’m not afraid of a girl complaining to her mother,” Margaret said.

“It matters to me. I must do as I’ve promised and conduct this camp according to the program set forth,” Constance said. “I shouldn’t have let it go this far.” What she didn’t say was that she shouldn’t have allowed herself to be swept up in the excitement of it. To have her own militia, to teach them something of use . . . it had suited her so perfectly. She’d felt like her old self again, on those nights. But her duty was to the entire camp, not to the five of them.

“Then we’ll practice on our own,” Margaret said.

“With wooden rifles, you’re free to do as you like,” Constance said. “I’ve already told Hack and Clarence to put the guns away, and to keep a closer eye on their keys this time.”

“Oh, I could put my hands on those keys,” Bernice said, a little wickedly.

“Don’t you dare,” Sarah said. “If you haven’t learned to follow orders, you’ve learned nothing. Jack takes his orders without complaint, and without the benefit of a full explanation and an opportunity to offer up objections.”

It warmed Constance to have Sarah on her side. “I’m as sorry as you all are to see it come to an end, but I’ve bent the rules as far as they’ll go without breaking.”

Her troops showed little appreciation for how far the rules had been bent already. “I don’t see why we couldn’t go deeper into the woods,” groused Hilda.

“It would take us half the night,” Bernice said. “I’m not getting my sleep as it is.”

“You won’t get any sleep at the front,” Fern interjected, to laughter from the others. She did a fair imitation of Norma, answering any complaint with dire warnings of worse conditions overseas.

Their protestations were of no use: Constance was adamant. It occurred to her, in that moment, to think back on all the times Sheriff Heath had stood by the rule of law, the strictures placed upon him by county charter, and his obligations to the public. She used to plead with him for an exception — for her inmates, for the cause of justice beyond what any courtroom could deliver — but more often than not, he stood firm. To the extent that she ever defied him — and she did, more than once — she now regretted it. She was out of a job, and so was he, for that matter. What cause did that serve?

It made her sink a little in her boots to turn her attention back to the duties of chaperone and overseer of camp activities. There were bandages to be rolled, and carrots to be scraped into soups for the convalescent. It all sounded so dreary compared to their late-night target practice. But no one promised that war work would be exciting, or that anything more than a warmed-over vaudeville show would ever be offered up to relieve the tedium.