The Secret of Raven Point (13 page)

“Make sure it’s by 0700 tomorrow,” said Major Decker. “That’s when we start packing up. The front is in motion.” He turned to the nurses. “Ladies, say your good-byes to the bandaged boys.”

“All of them?” asked Juliet, thinking of Barnaby and everything she meant to ask him.

“Anyone who’s getting sent back into combat stays with us. And we’ve been ordered to hold on to Private Barnaby. Brilling wants him close, and the army wants him with Willard.”

“Then I move forward with you,” said Dr. Willard.

Juliet smiled in the dark.

In the delicate seam between night and day, the bugle sounded; surrounded by semidarkness, the nurses tugged on their uniforms, packed their musette bags, rolled their bedrolls, and soon lugged the entirety of their belongings outside. One by one they eased the tent stakes from the ground and watched their homes billow and flatten. All across the encampment, as the sun rose, the same was
happening, and soon the hospital looked to Juliet like the remains of a massacred giant—canvas skin strewn across the grass, a skeleton of wooden poles.

While the hospital staff loaded the dozens of vehicles, vague figures began to emerge from the hills. A swarm of women and children and elderly men soon descended on the camp, poking through the abandoned barrels and oil drums, the trash heap; any scrap that had been left on the ground was stuffed into a pocket or laid in the bib of a shirt.

As the morning shadows slowly lifted, the convoy of half-tracks and ambulances set off into the hills. Juliet sat in a truck with a group of nurses she did not yet know well, but when artillery rumbled in the distance, they began to sing, “
Over hill, over dale, as we hit the dusty trail
 . . .
” and the reassuring smiles that always bridged unfamiliarity across an operating table were exchanged. Along the road lay abandoned tanks and overturned trucks, heaps of torn and rusted steel. Everywhere, metal was strewn across the ground as though scattered by a tornado. It unsettled Juliet to think that this equipment might have been built from all those washing machines and car parts Tuck had gathered back home, the balls of aluminum foil playfully tossed around the scrap collection center.
Just give us the scrap. We’ll turn it into tanks. We’ll turn it into planes. We’ll turn it into jeeps. We’ll turn it into guns.
Such a boisterous effort had gone into building machinery they all believed would be indestructible.

Within an hour they had arrived in a two-acre field. Before the convoy came to a stop, Major Decker leapt from the lead truck and began barking orders. The assembly of the hospital, it seemed, was much more complicated than the disassembly. Climbing groggily from the truck, the nurses made their way to the ambulances to check on patients, while around them the engineers staked flags into the ground as they swept the field for mines, and the enlisted
men, moving close behind, hacked away at the overgrowth. By lunchtime, tarps were laid on the ground, where the nurses ate quickly, and when the ward men finished pitching the Recovery Tent, the nurses scraped their mess kits and carried in stacks of linens to make the ward beds. As they carefully transferred all the patients from their litters, Juliet arranged Barnaby on his bed; a downy layer of chesnut hair now covered his scalp. His neck had thickened, and a ruddy flush brightened his chest. “That’s it,” she said, arranging his feeding tube. “You’re on the mend.” But his eye remained closed, and he appeared lost in his silent slumber.

As the day wore on, Juliet, Glenda, and Bernice pitched their own tent, unpacked their bags, and hung mosquito netting at the entrance. Outside their tent Glenda attached a sign she had been carrying since North Africa:
Waldorf-Astoria
.

By the time the sun began to fade, dynamos whizzed to life, bare bulbs flashed on, stoves were lit; once again, the hospital began to glow and thrum like a carnival. Sweaty from the day’s exertion, Juliet searched out the shower house, an uncovered wooden room with benches on either side.

“Oh, no, what’s this?”

Glenda sat naked on a bench and from a large metal drum scooped water with her helmet. Juliet had grown unexpectedly fond of the perforated beer cans that dumped water when she tugged a rope.

“No showerheads until tomorrow,” Glenda explained. “The engineers had to go to the front for a mine sweep.” As she doused her shoulders, the water sloshed onto the wood planks and steam swirled from the wet timber.

Juliet unfastened her braids. The ends of her hair were dried and split, but her scalp was oily from lack of washing. Using her fingers, she worked through the tangles, tugging hard at several knots. “Birds could lay eggs in this mess,” she said.

“Wow, you look older with your hair down.
Womanly
. It frames your face real nice. You should let it hang long, put some curlers in.”

“The braids are easy,” said Juliet. “I’ve been wearing them forever.”

She peeled off her clothes, hanging them on a nail, and sat on the bench beside Glenda, who had begun intently soaping her breasts. Something in the way Glenda flaunted her body perturbed Juliet. It made her aware that she didn’t, or
couldn’t,
flaunt her own, that she was cursed with being awkward and demure.
Prudish
was the word; she was prudish without wanting to be. But growing up without a woman in the house, she never learned how to primp or prance about or even pluck her eyebrows. She feared her inexperience was feeding on itself: Was she too priggish even to be at ease near a woman who wasn’t?

“What do you think of Clifford?” Glenda asked.

“Dr. Lovelace? Well, he’s a lousy furlough driver, but he seems like an excellent surgeon. He did an amazing job with Barnaby’s face.”

“I mean
personally
.”

“I’ve only known him a few weeks!”

“But a girl gets impressions, feelings. . . . You seem observant. Don’t be stingy with your smarts!”

Juliet plunged her helmet into the bucket and doused her shoulders, rubbing at the dirt on her arms. “He seems like a good man.”

“He’s going to make me a plaster cast for my alabaster elephant so I can ship it home to my momma in Texas.”

“That’s very sweet.”

“That’s what I thought. Beyond the call of duty.” Glenda nodded slowly, and the soap slipped from her hand. As she retrieved it from the wet planks, her bare bottom rose momentarily, and Juliet turned away in politeness. Glenda laughed and offered Juliet the bar. “Here, you’ll smell like strawberry shortcake.”

The soap slid smoothly across Juliet’s stomach, and she practically drank the fruity musk.

“Now, don’t forget to go down south.” Glenda gestured between Juliet’s legs. “You never know when a visitor might
drop by.”

“Ugh.” Juliet dramatically shuddered with disapproval. “Trespassers will be shot.”

“A girl should never waste her pink parts.”

Juliet vigorously soaped her arms and chest and waist—but avoided her thighs. Shrugging, Glenda yanked a bedsheet from the nail and loosely knotted it at her chest. Juliet doused the suds from her body and reached for her own towel. Taking in the last glimpse of Juliet’s nakedness, Glenda grinned.

“You know, sugar, if you won’t touch it, who else will?”

Juliet sat on her helmet on the ground amid a circle of nurses and doctors; the sky was black, the first night stars punching through the darkness. Her hair still wet, the air cool, Juliet clutched a blanket over her shoulders and sipped slowly at her “moose milk,” a pungent cocktail of medical alcohol and canned grapefruit juice. It surged through her head and tickled her scalp, but she was afraid to drink water since she loathed the makeshift latrine—a bucket encircled by a shower curtain. She’d been avoiding fluids all day, hoping to wait out the construction of the outhouse.

In the center, where a campfire should have been, sat a small radio. Dr. Lovelace crouched over it, fiddling with the dial. His shirtsleeves were rolled above his broad forearms. His wristwatch gleamed in the moonlight. He was trying to tune in to
Blind Dates,
a show in which women read letters to their sons overseas. Meanwhile everyone drank and stared at the sky, debating the names of obscure constellations. Another nurse, Avis, asked Juliet how she had survived the decampment; Avis swore Juliet would be able to single-handedly pitch a tent within weeks. Everyone talked to her, asked how she was settling in.

Almost all of the doctors except Dr. Willard were there; Juliet wondered if he was working, or if he didn’t like socializing.

The smoke from their cigarettes drifted toward the green tents beyond. Juliet was amazed by how closely this encampment resembled the previous one.

The radio suddenly blared as it picked up the end of Radio London, reporting on the landings at Normandy. Juliet and Avis leaned in, and then the broadcast cut to noisy static.

Lovelace checked his watch. “It’s only our gal Sally now.”

“Turn that crap off,” said Major Decker. Major Decker had carried a chair from his tent and presided over the group in a kingly fashion.

“But she plays the best tunes,” said Avis.

“I ditto Major Decker,” said Mother Hen, swigging a bottle of beer. “Morale is in the ditches.”

Juliet leaned toward Avis. “Who’s Sally?”

“An American who broadcasts for Radio Berlin.”

“She’s our enemy on the airwaves,” added Lovelace. “The nastiest, most pessimistic siren that ever spoke—with exquisite taste in music.” He turned the dial, and a woman’s voice, deep and smoky, crackled from the radio:

Well, fellas, this is Axis Sally talking to you Yanks in Italy. Why are ya here? We know why. You do, too. To fight for those Jewish bankers and Wall Street stockbrokers. That’s what for. To make a little money. You’re gonna die out here for that, ya know? Now that’s a silly thing for you to do, Yank, but you’re in a war for them now and you won’t make it one inch farther. But we’ll play a nice song for you now and listen to some of your favorite music. Remember those nights you sat in the evening with your girlfriend, those summer nights, she’d be in your arms and she’d say “I love you” and you’d say “I love you, too.” And you’ll never see her again. You’ll die here.

Then “Good Night Sweetheart” came on.

“The troops
listen
to this?” asked Brother Reardon.

“They can practically recite it,” said Lovelace, drawing Glenda
up into the middle of the grass. Glenda kicked off her shoes and rose to her toes and began sidestepping and twirling with sensual grace. Her hair was wet and loose, her mouth shimmering with lipstick. As “In the Mood” came on, and others got up to dance, she sashayed into Dr. Mallick’s arms. Juliet watched her move from man to man, eventually dancing happily alone at the edges of the circle, eyes closed, chin to the moon. Juliet slid back to make room for the dancers and quietly sipped her cocktail, tapping her foot to the song.

“It’s a sin to leave a beautiful young lady without a dance partner.”

Before Juliet could respond, Brother Reardon set her drink on the ground and drew her into the circle. An inch shorter than she was, he placed his arm stiffly around her waist. He moved almost athletically to the music, his feet shuffling out two to three steps for every beat. Juliet tried her best to follow; when she faltered, he pulled her close and loudly counted out his steps. She had never danced with a man before; she had never, in fact, been so close to a man for that length of time. It was nice.
Just my luck,
Juliet thought laughingly.
The chaplain!

They’d barely spoken since their first meeting. But she had watched him dart endlessly between patients; crouched at their bedsides, a Bible in his lap, he held their hands and anointed their wounds. Behind screens, he “specialed” men through their dying hours, and he spent several evenings with Barnaby, reading aloud psalms. She learned from the other nurses that he belonged to a Benedictine archabbey in Pennsylvania. He had been a monk for only one year before volunteering for the war effort. Was this dance just another act of charity? Although Juliet loathed the idea of being pitied, she was glad not to be left on the sidelines.