“Whatever is this thing?” He stared at me with his head held on one side like a bird, studying me from the front and then from the side.
“Was old-fashion. To look like boy.”
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it works, if someone didn’t know to look. What an odd sort of fashion. Who’d want that?”
“Nineteen twenties,” I told him. “Girls want to look like boy. Want to do things did in war. Drive truck. Work.”
He laughed. “Who’d want to drive a truck?” he asked, and I could see I had so much to teach him about women.
“You dress,” I ordered, and he laughed.
“See, still bossy.”
As I pulled my brother’s clothing on over the corset, I watched Bill. It was odd to see him dressing in clothes that had belonged to my father and brother. Bill would have to be husband, father and brother to me now. I pushed away the thought before it made me cry, and went to return grandmother’s wedding ring to its hiding place and wash the blood from my quilt. When the bed was properly made again, we picked up our kit bags, and I gazed around my room carefully and seriously. He knew I was saying good-bye and gave me a moment, but not long enough to get emotional.
“I’m starving,” he said, and I realized I was too. In the kitchen we tucked into bread, cheese and sausage, packing more into greased paper, filling our kit bags to the top, only leaving room for metal water bottles.
“Hair,” I said.
“Hair,” he agreed.
I draped a towel around my shoulders and handed him a comb and scissors.
“I love your curls,” he said. “I hate to do it.”
“Cut,” I ordered on the verge of weeping myself.
As each lock fell, the shorter hair curled tighter to my head, and I found I liked the light feel of it. He stood back.
“I think that’ll do,” he said doubtfully. “I’m not much of a barber.”
“I go look.”
There was a mirror over the fireplace in the parlor, so I crossed the hallway and opened the door. In the half-light coming from the kitchen behind me, I saw a boy walking toward the mantelpiece. My hair was short, but not too short. It curled around my face. I looked very different, but not ugly, as I’d feared.
Bill came in and stood behind me, looking at our reflection.
“Boy?” I ask.
“A very gorgeous sort of boy,” he said, and twirled me toward him, seeking my lips again. I kissed him back, and then we broke away, knowing that unless we stopped now we’d be having to undress again.
“You’re still the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen,” he said.
“Boy!” I said firmly. “Now boy.”
He fingered a few notes on the piano—the wedding march—then swung himself onto the seat and played it, full and glorious, moving as if his body were part of the instrument.
“You play,” I said. “I listen while work.” He didn’t need persuading.
Back in the kitchen, I swept up every strand of my cut hair and burned it on the range, then washed our plates and cutlery. Bill’s music swirled around me, lifting me up. This would be our life together, filled with harmony.
When my chores were finished, Bill wrenched himself away from the piano to accompany me out into the twilit yard, where he watched as I milked the cow, fed the horse and pig and chickens, giving them all double rations. I touched the horse and pig and cow on their noses and whispered, “Good-bye. I’m sorry.” The Oily Captain would look after them.
In my mother’s bedroom, I hid the note I’d written her under the bedcovers, on her pillow.
Dearest Mama,
Bill and I have been married, properly married in church, and have gone north to try to make contact with father and Jan. Please try to be happy for me. I’m sorry for the extra work I’m leaving you. Please give Marek a big hug from me.
I love you,
Izabela King
It had given me such a rush of joy the previous night to write my name as Izabela King, even though I wondered if I was tempting fate to write it before the wedding. But now the marriage had taken place, and that was really who I was. I hoped she would be fooled by the lie that we were traveling north.
I’d also written another note, in German, for the Oily Captain, which I was going to push under the door of our nearest neighbor to the north, before we turned back and headed west. This one read,
Dear Captain Meier,
I have had a telegram to go to my aunt’s in Český Těšín. I hope you can take care of the farm until my mother and I return.
Izabela
I hoped that would buy us a few days.
Then we pulled on our coats and hats, shouldered our bags and blankets and headed out into the darkness.
Nine
Bill and Izzy had agreed to move by night and sleep in the day, but Bill wasn’t used to nighttime without streetlamps and found he had to walk quite slowly. Night in the countryside was darker than he’d ever imagined.
Izzy knew the area well enough to have planned where they’d hide for the first two days, and she led Bill from the road across an uneven field and onto the railway tracks, which would lead through Hranice and Lipník to Přerov. She was bubbling over with the thrill of it, but Bill thought they wouldn’t get far before the guards started looking for him, even with the false trail Izzy had left in the notes. The best he could hope for was to get her out of the path of the oncoming Russian soldiers, and deliver her safely to her dad and her brother.
The stars were often obscured by cloud, and Izzy sometimes lost the rhythm of stepping over the railway sleepers and tripped. Bill’s stride was longer, and he seemed to find it easier to set up a slow, steady rhythm to whatever song was playing over and over in his head.
Each time the dark shape of a building reared up beside the track, he would fall silent, and his heart would thump louder in his chest, as he listened for patrolling soldiers. This was worse than escaping with Harry. Now he was responsible for Izzy, and she was just like an excited child who wouldn’t stop talking. How hard she made it to keep her safe, he thought.
It was already becoming light when they left the railway tracks to find the farm Izzy was seeking. She’d told Bill there was only one woman on this farm now, and he thought it was true, judging by the disrepair of many of the outbuildings. Izzy pulled him into the disused stables and led the way up the rickety staircase to the old ostler’s quarters.
They pushed open the door, and a dust cloud rose to meet them. Bill was pleased. Nobody had set foot in here for years. The dust made them sneeze, but it was private and out of the wind, and there was even a bed. Bill wedged a chairback under the door handle, and Izzy was impressed because she’d never seen that before. He didn’t tell her how ineffective it would be against guards trying to break down the door. He had other things on his mind.
Slowly he stripped all the clothes from her, dropping them one by one to the floor. He unlaced her corset and lifted out each breast, then stood back to look at her in the light falling from a tiny dusty window. This time he was determined to make it last.
“Lie on the bed,” he said, pulling off his boots and socks, never taking his eyes from her. He turned to remove his shorts and fit the Johnny, then sat on the bed beside her.