“Private Farlane,” the doctor said after examining him. “You have yourself a broken hand. When did this happen?”
“A few weeks ago.”
The doctor pursed his lips. “I suspect that when you first injured it, there was just a fracture. The bulk of your problem is that you let it go and kept working through it.”
Tom withheld an I told you so.
“Just soldiering on, sir,” William replied. He winced in pain as the doctor began wrapping it.
“There’s soldiering on and there’s stupid, son. I admire your effort to stay in the game. But you’ll be no good to anyone if you let things like this go in the future.”
“Yes, sir. It’s not something you’ll send me home for, is it?”
At the beginning of training, Tom knew that most boys would have gladly taken an injury that was just bad enough to send them home and just good enough to have no long-term consequences. He’d originally had that impression of William. But the Airborne weeded out the boys from the men, and by the time they’d arrived on the shores of England, they were a band of brothers, toughened and determined to stay in the fight. He was proud of William for how much he’d grown.
The doctor grinned. “I like your spirit, Private. Don’t worry. You can resume some duties with the cast—not jumping, of course—but if you treat it properly, you should be doing much better in a few weeks and you’ll be good as new in a few months.”
Tom watched a mix of emotions wash over William’s face. Months seemed like a long prognosis, but the good news was that William could stay. Sobel might try to send him elsewhere, but Tom was confident that Dick Winters would stand up for him and find work in some capacity. William had trained hard and by the time they were called up, he’d be ready.
If he took care of himself. Which Tom and John would insist upon.
The doctor left them, saying a nurse would be in to complete the cast.
The sun was growing low through the window, and Tom hoped that their team had made it to Swindon.
“Well, looks like I’m going to need a little help.” William sighed, lying back on the cot.
“Just as long as you can shower and piss by yourself. But anything beyond that, yeah, I’ll help.”
“Ha-ha, Tom. Very funny. I mean writing to Margaret.”
Tom nodded. For the couple of letters William had written to the girl in Brooklyn, he had dictated and Tom had volunteered his handwriting. He’d also drawn the teasel flower on the first letter and a primrose on the second. Now he seemed to have established a pattern—one she might be looking forward to—and he wondered what he might find to sketch today.
“What day is it?” asked William.
“Friday.”
“That means there’s a mail plane leaving tonight. Can you help a chap out and write again so that I don’t have to wait another week to send a letter off to Margaret?”
“Chap?” Tom smiled. “Sure, ol’ pal. I’ll ask the register nurse for some paper.”
Tom stood up, but William grabbed his arm with his good hand.
“Tom? Promise me no matter what that Margaret always gets letters. She’s a nice girl and she deserves it.”
“I promise.”
* * *
The register nurse didn’t have the sort of paper needed for international mail, so Tom walked to several of the offices until he found one that could oblige. By the time he got back, William’s cast had been set, but his friend was sleeping soundly.
He put the paper aside, but then reconsidered. William had been adamant that the letter go out tonight rather than waiting a week. And, knowing what letters from home meant to the soldiers, he imagined that Margaret might also be eagerly awaiting the next one. He and William lived the same details of the same days. Surely he could conjure up what his friend might want to say.
Dear Margaret, he began.
Though he’d written the words several times before, a liberating sensation came over him. The chance for this to be his own, as if he were writing in a diary. Which he might as well have been. Margaret was just a name on paper—faceless to him. Anonymous, save for her brother’s stories and her compelling observations in the few letters that William had received. Tom felt like he could say anything to her.
It was not as if they would ever meet. It was not as if his name would be signed at the bottom.
I didn’t know until coming to England that fog has an ever-changing personality. It can be thick as oatmeal, nearly suffocating you when you step into its opaque mist. It can be translucent, distorting your vision of reality. It can be dangerous—our planes were grounded today. And yet, in the right circumstance, I can see how it has crafted for itself a permanent place as a character in old-time British novels.
I’ve learned that you can’t light a fireplace in such weather—the heaviness of the fog acts as a closed flue, sending smoke into a home.
I imagine that war is a similar entity. Difficult days surely lie ahead of us. And yet, it has also bred friendships unlike those I have never known before. The men I’m serving with—I would die for them. And they for me.
Today’s weather has lifted at last and the sun has set so low that all that remains is a purple glow through which the small buildings surrounding me look like silhouetted dots. Fickle thing that fog is, tomorrow morning is expected to be clear and sunny and excellent for flying.
That is how I have to think of the future. As a sunrise, full of promise.
Tom laid the pen down and reread the words, surprised that there was an almost poetic tone to them. He’d earned high grades in his literature classes at University of Virginia, but not until now did he realize how the lyrical writings of the classic books he loved could permeate a man’s thoughts when they were bent toward such musings.
He thought again that there was such freedom in this exercise. The favor to William was a gift to Tom as well, and he was almost envious that his friend had this outlet of writing to the girl in Brooklyn. Maybe Tom would find a pen pal of his own as soon as William had recovered enough to resume his correspondence.
Tom looked at the large clock on the wall. Ten till seven and the mail plane left at seven-thirty. He scribbled Your friend, William at the bottom, disappointed that there was no time to ask her how she was doing. Surprised that he would really like to know.
He thought about the garden around the Browns’ house and sketched a quick water violet at the bottom. They were nearly all white, so he could make it beautiful without the benefit of the colored pencils he had back at the house.
He addressed the envelope, having memorized Margaret’s address from the previous letters.
Satisfied that it was the best he could do for William, he hurried out of the medic’s office and dropped the letter in one of the mailbags just as they were being loaded onto the propellered plane.
Chapter Eight
November 1943
Margaret had been working in the engraving department for several weeks when a new letter from William arrived at her house.
Her mother had begun to notice the air mail letters that arrived with frequency. And that they put a smile on Margaret’s face. Although not the smile, as her friends had pointed out. In fact, the discussion at Gladys’s apartment had caused her to scrutinize her facial reactions ever since. To their credit, she became aware that the movement of muscles was a symphony unto itself. And that indeed, the very word smile was a rather generic term for something that had endless variations.