March 25, 1942
Dear Will,
Everything is good here except for how much I miss you. Miss Beasley she comes every Saturday after work when the library closes early. She brought me a spelling book and is helping me work on my writing so my letters are better. We play Chinese checkers and guess what else she has done. She has started the milk truck coming out here to pick up our milk and the price is up to 1lc a quart and 3Oc for a pound of butter and eggs up to 30c a dozen too and the driver takes them all for me...
27 March 1942
Dear Elly,
I shouldn't have written that last letter when I was in such a rotten mood. I dont want you worrying about me you got enough to worry about with the boys and anyway I'm better now and things are going along fine. Did good on my first aid class test but I drew KP this week and I dont care for that much. Rifle practice every day and you know its a funny thing about some of those backwoods boys that cant read and write they can take apart a rifle and put it together in the dark. Me and Red (that's what I call my buddy Otis) do good on that too...
Dear Will,
I wonder what your doing tonight. I been listening to the radio and they been playing The White Cliffs of Dover and I wonder if you'll be shipped to
England
...
11 April 1942
Dear Elly,
It's a good thing we get to send these letters for free I never thought I'd write so many letters in my whole life as I wrote since I been here. I got a one-day pass and Red and me went with a bunch who caught the recruit bus in to Buford and we went to a movie. It was Suspicion starring Cary Grant and Joan Fontaine and afterwards just about everybody got drunk and tried to pick up local girls but me. Only 19 days and I should be able to come home...
April 14, 1942
Dear Will,
I just don't know how the days could go any slower. I keep thinking about when you get here and how it will be. How long will you be able to stay? Will you take the train again? I got a surprise for you but I won't tell you till you get here. The boys got a calendar and they drew a big yellow star, on the day you get off, and they put a big x on every day just before bedtime...
Only six more days, green eyes!...
Dear Will,
How many quince pies you want?...
Dear Elly,
I don't know how to tell you this because I know it's gonna break your heart. I'd rather do anything than tell you this sugar but we just got orders and it looks like we are not gonna get our weeks leave like we expected. Instead we're being assigned to the New River Marine Base at
New River
,
Dearest Will,
I tried real hard not to cry because I know your the one whos doing the hard part and I held off till bedtime after your letter came but then I just couldn't hold the tears in any more...
3 May 1942
Dear Elly,
Well, I'm here at the new barracks and you can send my mail to PFC William Lee Parker, 1st Raider Rn., 1st Marines, New River Marine Base, New River, North Carolina, I got my gold stripe and had to pay Bilinski a buck to sew it on for me cause I'm so clumsy with a needle. Bilinski is this Polish butcher from
Detroit
who's in my outfit and always out to make a buck. So we call him Buck Bilinski. Me and Red got bunks side by side this time and I'm sure glad we din't get separated...
Dear Will,
Miss Beasley and I looked at a map and found
New River
and now I imagine you up there where the map shows that river poking into the land beside the ocean...
14 May 1942
Dear Elly,
I'm sorry I haven't written for so long but they've really been keeping us busy the whole outfit is wondering what they intend to do with us and when but it seems like soon and it seems like it'll be the real thing whenever we leave here because they got us in intensive combat training, even close hand-to-hand combat. I made up my combat pack so many times I could do it in the dark with my fingers glued together. Theres five kinds and we got to know what to put into each kind. The full field transport packs got everything in it down to the marching pack thats only got the bare essentials. They got us in the water a lot in little rubber rafts. Me and Red were talking the other day and supposing why they're drilling us so hard and whatever it is, we think its gonna be big...
Dear Will,
I know I ought to be brave but I get scared when I think about you going to the front. Your the kind of man who belongs in a orchard keeping bees and I think back to how I worried about you doing that and now compared to what you might have to do how foolish it seems that I worried about the bees. Oh my darling Will how I wish you could be here cause the honey is running and I wish I could see You out there in the orchard beneath the trees filling the water pans and taking off your hat to wipe your forehead on your sleeve...
4 June 1942
Dear Elly,
We're under orders now for sure but they arent saying for where. All they say is we got to be ready to ship out when word comes down...
Chapter 17
"
G
ood morning. Carnegie Municipal Library."
"Hello, Miss Beasley?"
"Yes. Oh, my goodness, Will—Mr. Parker, are you all right?"
"I'm just fine but I'm in kind of a hurry. Listen, I'm sorry to call you at work but I couldn't think of any other way to get word to Elly. And I have to ask you to do me the biggest favor of my life. Could you possibly go out there or pay somebody else to get word to her? We just found out we ship out Sunday and we got forty-eight hours' leave but if I take a train clear down there I'll have to turn around and come right back. Tell her I want her to take the train and meet me in
Augusta
. It's the only thing I can figure out is if we meet halfway. Tell her I'll be leaving here on the next train and I'll wait at the train depot—oh, Jesus, I don't even know how big it is. Well, just tell her I'll wait near the women's rest room, that way she'll know where to look for me. Could you do that for me, Miss Beasley?"
"She'll have the message within the hour, I promise. Would you like to call back for her answer?"
"I haven't got time. My train leaves in forty-five minutes."
"There's more than one way to skin a cat, isn't there, Mr. Parker?"
"What?"
"If this doesn't get her off that place, nothing will."
Will laughed appreciatively. "I hadn't thought of that. Just tell her I love her and I'll be waiting."
"She shall get the message succinctly."
"Thank you, Miss Beasley."
"Oh, don't be foolish, Mr. Parker."
"Hey, Miss Beasley?"
"Yes?"
"I love you, too."
There followed a pause, then, "Mr. Bell didn't invent this instrument so Marines could use it to flirt with women old enough to be their mothers! And in case you hadn't heard, there's a war on. Phone lines are to be kept free as much as possible."
Again Will laughed. "'Bye, sweetheart."
"Oh, bosh!" At her end, a blushing Gladys Beasley hung up the telephone.
* * *
Elly had ridden on a train only once before but she'd been too young to remember. Had someone told her four months ago that she'd be buying a ticket and heading clear across
Georgia
by herself she'd have laughed and called them a fool. Had someone told her she'd be doing it with a nursing baby and changing trains in
Atlanta
, heading for a city she'd never seen, a railroad depot she didn't know, she'd have asked who the crazy one was supposed to be.
Before he'd left, Will had said women will have to do more for themselves, and here she was, sitting in a rocking, rumbling railroad car surrounded by uniforms and dresses with shoulder pads, and noise and too little space and what appeared to be a weeks' worth of squashed cigarette butts on the floor. Trains grossly overbooked passengers these days, so people were standing, sitting in aisles and crowded three and four into a bank of seats meant for only two. But because she was traveling with a baby, people had been kind. And because Lizzy P. had been fractious they'd been helpful. A woman with bright-red lipstick, bright-red highheeled shoes and a red and white tropical print dress offered to hold Lizzy for a while. The soldier accompanying the woman took off his dog tags and twirled them in the air to entertain the baby. In the foursome of seats across the aisle eight soldiers were playing poker. Everyone smoked. The air in the car was the color of washwater but not nearly as transparent. Lizzy grew tired of the dog tags and began crying again, grinding her fists into her eyes, then twisting and reaching for Elly. When the woman in the tropical dress figured out that the baby was hungry but Elly nursed, she whispered to her young lieutenant and in no time at all he'd rounded up a porter who cleared out a pullman unit and ushered Elly to it, giving her thirty minutes of privacy to feed Lizzy and change her diaper.
The
Atlanta
train depot was as crowded as steerage, a melee of people, all rushing, shouldering, bumping, kissing, crying. The loudspeaker and rumbling trains scared Lizzy and she bawled for the entire forty-minute layover until Elly herself was close to tears. Her arms ached from battling the bucking child. Her head ached from the noise. Her shoulder blades ached from tension. Frightening questions kept hammering the inside of her skull: what would she do if she got to
Augusta
and Will wasn't there? And where would they sleep? And what would they do with Lizzy?
The final leg of the trip was on an older train, so dirty Elly was afraid Lizzy would catch something, so crowded she felt like a hen being crated off to market, so noisy Lizzy couldn't sleep, no matter how tired she was. In a single seat a woman slept on a man's lap, their heads clunking together in rhythm with the wheels rolling over the uneven seams in the rails. A group of soldiers were singing "Paper Doll" while one of them strummed a guitar discordantly. They had sung it so many times Elly wanted to put a foot through the guitar. Men with loud voices told stories about boot camp, interspersing them with curse words and simulated sounds of machine-gun fire. In another part of the car the inevitable poker game created sporadic cheers and bursts of howling. In the seat next to Elly a fat woman with a mustache and an open mouth slept, snoring. A female with a shrill laugh used it too often. Periodically the conductor fought his way through and bellowed out the name of the next town. Somebody smelled like used garlic. The cigarette smoke was suffocating. Lizzy kept bawling. Elly kept wanting to. But, looking around, she realized she was no different from hundreds of others temporarily misplaced by the war, many of them hurrying to a brief, frantic, final meeting with someone they loved, as she was.
She wiped Lizzy's dripping nose and thought,
I'm coming, Will, I'm coming.
The train terminal of
Augusta
, servicing the traffic to and from countless military bases, was worse than any so far. Debarking, Elly felt lost in a sea of humanity. With Grandfather See's suitcase in one hand and the baby in the other, she struggled up a set of steps, swept along like flotsam at high tide, not knowing if she was heading in the right direction but having little choice.
Somebody bumped her shoulder and the suitcase fell. As Elly bent to retrieve it, Lizzy slipped down and somebody bumped them from behind, nearly knocking them to the floor. "Oops, sorry!" The private in the army green helped Elly up, snapped the suitcase and handed it to her. She thanked him, gave Lizzy a bounce to get her balanced and moved on with the crush toward what she hoped was the main body of the terminal. Overhead, a nasal, monotone voice announced as if echoing down a culvert, "The five-ten to
Columbia
,
Charlotte
,
Raleigh
,
Richmond
and
Washington
,