In the Shadow of Blackbirds(49)

He nodded.

“Something funny, maybe?”

He nodded again, with more vigor.

“I’ll be right back.”

I left a cookie on his lap and sought out the Red Cross woman who had greeted me.

Society ladies were entering the building to start their afternoon shift of administering aid—a glistening, perfumed whirlwind of starched white blouses, feathered hats, waved hair, and jewels.

“Do you know if there are any books to read to the men?” I asked them.

A tall, spindly woman around Aunt Eva’s age beckoned with a manicured fingernail. “Over here, dear. How nice to see a young girl giving her time.” She led me to a battered crate shoved beneath a table and scooted the box out for me to see. “These were donated just yesterday.”

I knelt and thumbed through a dusty pile of clothbound books. Chaucer. Milton. Tolstoy. Melville. Hawthorne. Bunyan. None of them were right for men in need of cheering.

Down at the bottom, a lighter choice caught my eye: The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.

“Aha! That’s more like it.” I maneuvered Twain’s novel out from under the stack. It had a red cover and looked to be in fairly new condition.

“A children’s tale?” asked the society woman in a tone that told me she was wrinkling her nose beneath her mask.

“I don’t feel like reading anything somber.” I stood back up. “And I doubt any of them want to hear grim stories of tortured men and tragic women. Let’s give them Tom and Huck.”

I tucked Tom Sawyer under my arm, borrowed a spare chair from the poker players’ table, and returned to the side of the weeping curly-haired soldier.

“ ‘Chapter One,’” I read after I gave a comfortable sigh, “‘Tom Plays, Fights, and Hides’ …”

A collective silence hushed the poker table beside me. Knees turned my way. Heads lifted. Every single man nearby perked up his ears and listened to the “children’s tale.”

While the ladies glided around the room and poured tea into fine bone china without a single spilled drop, the soldiers and sailors leaned on the arms of their chairs and laughed at Tom Sawyer’s shenanigans. Their chuckles rumbled around me, growing richer with each chapter, and I thought, Maybe I am doing some good. Maybe Stephen would be pleased to know I’m helping people like him. Maybe Dad would be proud.

“‘Chapter Four: Showing Off in Sunday School’ … ‘Chapter Six: Tom Meets Becky’ …”

I read and read until my throat turned dry, and then I took a drink of water and read some more. The canaries and society women and that foul taste of suffering fell away, replaced by Tom’s aunt Polly’s house with the whitewashed fence, and the island where Tom and Huck pretended to be pirates.

“‘Chapter Ten: Dire Prophesy of the Howling Dog’ …”

Despite the good I seemed to be doing, however, the section of the room where the boy called Jones smoked in his armchair still weighed me down. He was like a dark stain on a delicate fabric, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from occasionally drifting his way.

It wasn’t until I had read nearly one hundred pages that I finally figured out why he bothered me so.

Jones seemed bright. The way he cracked an instant joke—as dark as the jokes may have been—demonstrated a quick wit. It indicated he could’ve been someone I’d enjoy as a friend if that brutal bite of bitterness wasn’t getting the best of him. Perhaps he had once even been gentle enough to have loved a girl. Maybe he held that girl close the day before he left for training and promised in a voice not fully sure of itself, I’ll be fine.

He bothered me because if Stephen were sitting in that chair instead of Jones, Stephen might have also stabbed my soul with the chilling stare of a person who now knew things he should have never learned.


AT FOUR THIRTY, I SAID GOOD-BYE TO MY AUDIENCE AND went to the door to fetch my bag.

My pace slowed as I drew nearer the exit. The same feeling of dissatisfaction that had pestered me at Mr. Darning’s studio turned my legs sluggish. I hadn’t accomplished one single thing for Stephen. I had worried too much about upsetting the men to ask them the questions baffling my brain.

My feet came to a halt.

I turned toward the person in the room who had spoken to me with the most honesty and marched in his direction.

“Ah, Aunt Gertie returns.” Jones twirled an unlit cigarette around with his fingers like a baton.

“You seem unafraid of honesty.” I stopped in front of him. “I need to ask you a question about the war.”

I could see his mouth harden through the hole in his mask. Clenching my fists, I fought off my fear. “What would you think if a soldier told you he was being tortured by birds over in France?” I shifted my weight from one foot to the other. “What would that mean to someone who’s been over there?”

Again he studied me with those watchful, penetrating eyes that didn’t seem to blink. “I’d say, ‘Keep your nightmares to yourself, pal. Those aren’t the things we’re supposed to be discussing with other people.’”

“You’d think they’re just nightmares?”

“If I mentioned out loud half the things that torture me in my dreams, I’d be put in a straitjacket faster than you can say crackpot. And I guarantee you every man sitting in this building feels the same way.”