Lovely War(17)

But that’s precisely where Aubrey’s going, if General Pershing can figure out what to do with a black regiment. Who’ll command them? Who’ll fight alongside them? It’s a problem.

America has finally joined the Great War. Germany’s torpedoing of American ships has awakened the sleeping giant, and the Zimmermann Telegram didn’t help matters any. Americans who’d wanted to leave Europeans to their own destruction now sing a different tune.

Aubrey enlisted in the regiment that spring, along with his pal Joey Rice and most of their friends. For music dreams, not dreams of soldier’s glory. He’d be paid to play ragtime with Jim Europe all over Europe (“they named it after me,” as Jim liked to say). Practically a professional musician! Of course, he’d have to shoot a rifle in the bargain, too.

Playing with the soldiers’ band sounded better than dressing like a toy soldier every day to operate the elevator at a high-rise office building in Midtown Manhattan. It had been the best job he could find after leaving school. But there are only so many times you can smile and wish “Good morning” to white men in suits who don’t answer, nor even look at you, before you start to question your own existence. If he stayed here, he might push elevator buttons for the rest of his life. Coming back as a veteran soldier—maybe even a war hero!—he’d have a future. And if he didn’t come back from “Over There . . .” Well, he just would. That was all.

There’s only one piano available for the concert on the green in Spartanburg, and Private Luckey Roberts is playing it. So Private Edwards doubles on percussion. Baritone Noble Sissle sings, all swing and eyebrows and charm, and the white ladies melt. He’s a handsome devil, but a black one. So they melt, but only up to a point, especially if their husbands are watching.

The 15th Army Band is a smash hit in Spartanburg. They might be insulted by shopkeepers during the day, kicked into gutters by town toughs, even threatened by mob attack from an Alabama regiment, but the 15th New York National Guard band’s music is just too good to ignore. Spartanburg can’t help clapping its hands and tapping its feet. Younger folks break out dancing, right on the green. They don’t want black musicians in hotel lobbies, but blowing a horn to Jim Europe’s up-tempo beat is fine and dandy.

Yet danger still hovers like a sparking storm cloud. Aubrey, who could drum blindfolded, sees pretty girls dancing. He’s been cooped up with men and only men for weeks, and he’d like to take a second look. In New York, he could, but here? No pretty face is worth swinging from a tree.

His mother’s letters are full of urgent warning. She grew up in Mississippi. She knows about lynching. Aubrey wonders if he’ll die in his country before he ever gets the chance to die for his country. Either way, he’d rather not.

The concert ends, and the soldiers march in perfect military form back toward their barracks. The crowd drifts home. Anger’s been appeased, but only for tonight. Another week, and tensions will overflow. The army, hoping to prevent a race riot, will decide there’s no good place in the States to put them, and no English-speaking outfit anywhere along the Western Front that will serve beside them. So they’ll hand them off to the French Army like a goodwill offering. No, toss them like a hot potato.

No, lob them like a hand grenade.





DECEMBER 1942


     Intersection





“NOT,” ARES SAYS, “that I would ever object to hearing a story about a soldier, but how did we get from a British girl and her soldier boyfriend to this piano-playing American recruit? Did I miss something?”

“Their stories intersect,” Apollo explains. “Soon.”

Ares shrugs. “I mean, not that it matters to me.”

Of course not.

“Want me to stick around, Goddess?” inquires Apollo.

“Certainly,” she tells him. “There’s so much more to tell. We’ve only barely begun.”





APHRODITE


     Royal Albert Hall—November 25, 1917





AT ONE O’CLOCK, Hazel Windicott went down to the street, circled the King’s Whiskers, and made for their doorway meet-up. In her stomach lurked a silent fear: James wouldn’t be there.

She almost missed him. He leaned against the doorway where they’d spoken before.

“Look at you,” he said.

“I can’t, unless you’ve brought a mirror,” she told him.

Somehow it was harder, not easier, to meet each other again, this third time together, now that they knew each other a little better. More wonderful, but more unsure; there were no more polite formalities to hide behind. No script at all. The poor darlings.

“Let’s get out of here,” James proposed, and Hazel seized his hand and dragged him down the street at a run. “Hold a moment.” He laughed. “You’re in better trim than I am.” She wasn’t, really, but between laughing and running, James could scarcely draw a proper breath.

He pulled a train schedule and a map from his pocket. “All right, then, Miss You-Don’t-Know-London-Do-You,” he said. “I’ll have you know that I’ve got matters all figured out.”

“Oh?”

“S’right. We’ll head up to the train station at Bow. From there, we’ll take the District Railway to Gloucester Road”—he squinted at his notes—“and we’ll take the Piccadilly Line one stop up, to Kensington High Street. From there, we walk to Hyde Park.”