“Funny,” said Adam. “Seems like I read it. But I guess I didn’t.” He rubbed his hand.
Chapter 52
1
That winter of 1917-1918 was a dark and frightened time. The Germans smashed everything in front of them. In three months the British suffered three hundred thousand casualties. Many units of the French army were mutinous. Russia was out of the war. The German east divisions, rested and re-equipped, were thrown at the western front. The war seemed hopeless.
It was May before we had as many as twelve divisions in the field, and summer had come before our troops began to move across the sea in numbers. The Allied generals were fighting each other. Submarines slaughtered the crossing ships.
We learned then that war was not a quick heroic charge but a slow, incredibly complicated matter. Our spirits sank in those winter months. We lost the flare of excitement and we had not yet put on the doggedness of a long war.
Ludendorff was unconquerable. Nothing stopped him. He mounted attack after attack on the broken armies of France and England. And it occurred to us that we might be too late, that soon we might be standing alone against the invincible Germans.
It was not uncommon for people to turn away from the war, some to fantasy and some to vice and some to crazy gaiety. Fortunetellers were in great demand, and saloons did a roaring business. But people also turned inward to their private joys and tragedies to escape the pervasive fear and despondency. Isn’t it strange that today we have forgotten this? We remember World War I as quick victory, with flags and bands, marching and horseplay and returning soldiers, fights in the barrooms with the goddam Limeys who thought they had won the war. How quickly we forgot that in that winter Ludendorff could not be beaten and that many people were preparing in their minds and spirits for a lost war.
2
Adam Trask was more puzzled than sad. He didn’t have to resign from the draft board. He was given a leave of absence for ill health. He sat by the hour rubbing the back of his left hand. He brushed it with a harsh brush and soaked it in hot water.
“It’s circulation,” he said. “As soon as I get the circulation back it’ll be all right. It’s my eyes that bother me. I never had trouble with my eyes. Guess I’ll have to get my eyes tested for glasses. Me with glasses! Be hard to get used to. I’d go today but I feel a little dizzy.”
He felt more dizzy than he would admit. He could not move about the house without a hand brace against a wall. Lee often had to give him a hand-up out of his chair or help him out of bed in the morning and tie his shoes because he could not tie knots with his numb left hand.
Almost daily he came back to Aron. “I can understand why a young man might want to enlist,” he said. “If Aron had talked to me, I might have tried to persuade him against it, but I wouldn’t have forbidden it. You know that, Lee.”
“I know it.”
“That’s what I can’t understand. Why did he sneak away? Why doesn’t he write? I thought I knew him better than that. Has he written to Abra? He’d be sure to write to her.”
“I’ll ask her.”
“You do that. Do that right away.”
“The training is hard. That’s what I’ve heard. Maybe they don’t give him time.”
“It doesn’t take any time to write a card.”
“When you went in the army, did you write to your father?”
“Think you’ve got me there, don’t you? No, I didn’t, but I had a reason. I didn’t want to enlist. My father forced me. I was resentful. You see, I had a good reason. But Aron—he was doing fine in college. Why, they’ve written, asking about him. You read the letter. He didn’t take any clothes. He didn’t take the gold watch.”
“He wouldn’t need any clothes in the army, and they don’t want gold watches there either. Everything’s brown.”
“I guess you’re right. But I don’t understand it. I’ve got to do something about my eyes. Can’t ask you to read everything to me.” His eyes really troubled him. “I can see a letter,” he said. “But the words jumble all around.” A dozen times a day he seized a paper or a book and stared at it and put it down.
Lee read the papers to him to keep him from getting restless, and often in the middle of the reading Adam went to sleep.
He would awaken and say, “Lee? Is that you, Cal? You know I never had any trouble with my eyes. I’ll just go tomorrow and get my eyes tested.”
About the middle of February Cal went into the kitchen and said, “Lee, he talks about it all the time. Let’s get his eyes tested.”
Lee was stewing” apricots. He left the stove and closed the kitchen door and went back to the stove. “I don’t want him to go,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I don’t think it’s his eyes. Finding out might trouble him. Let him be for a while. He’s had a bad shock. Let him get better. I’ll read to him all he wants.”
“What do you think it is?”
“I don’t want to say. I’ve thought maybe Dr. Edwards might just come by for a friendly call—just to say hello.”
“Have it your own way,” said Cal.
Lee said, “Cal, have you seen Abra?”
“Sure, I see her. She walks away.”
“Can’t you catch her?”
“Sure—and I could throw her down and punch her in the face and make her talk to me. But I won’t.”
“Maybe if you’d just break the ice. Sometimes the barrier is so weak it just falls over when you touch it. Catch up with her. Tell her I want to see her.”
“I won’t do it.”
“You feel awful guilty, don’t you?”
Cal did not answer.
“Don’t you like her?”
Cal did not answer.
“If you keep this up, you’re going to feel worse, not better. You’d better open up. I’m warning you. You’d better open up.”
Cal cried, “Do you want me to tell Father what I did? I’ll do it if you tell me to.”
“No, Cal. Not now. But when he gets well you’ll have to. You’ll have to for yourself. You can’t carry this alone. It will kill you.”
“Maybe I deserve to be killed.”
“Stop that!” Lee said coldly. “That can be the cheapest kind of self-indulgence. You stop that!”
“How do you go about stopping it?” Cal asked.
Lee changed the subject. “I don’t understand why Abra hasn’t been here—not even once.”
“No reason to come now.”
“It’s not like her. Something’s wrong there. Have you seen her?”
Cal scowled. “I told you I have. You’re getting crazy too. Tried to talk to her three times. She walked away.”
“Something’s wrong. She’s a good woman—a real woman.”
“She’s a girl,” said Cal. “It sounds funny you calling her a woman.”
“No,” Lee said softly. “A few are women from the moment they’re born. Abra has the loveliness of woman, and the courage—and the strength—and the wisdom. She knows things and she accepts things. I would have bet she couldn’t be small or mean or even vain except when it’s pretty to be vain.”
“You sure do think well of her.”
“Well enough to think she wouldn’t desert us.” And he said, “I miss her. Ask her to come to see me.”
“I told you she walked away from me.”
“Well, chase her then. Tell her I want to see her. I miss her.”
Cal asked, “Shall we go back to my father’s eyes now?”
“No,” said Lee.
“Shall we talk about Aron?”
“No.”
3
Cal tried all the next day to find Abra alone, and it was only after school that he saw her ahead of him, walking home. He turned a corner and ran along the parallel street and then back, and he judged time and distance so that he turned in front of her as she strolled along.
“Hello,” he said.
“Hello. I thought I saw you behind me.”
“You did. I ran around the block to get in front of you. I want to talk to you.”
She regarded him gravely. “You could have done « that without running around the block.”
“Well, I tried to talk to you in school. You walked away.”
“You were mad. I didn’t want to talk to you mad.”
“How do you know I was?”
“I could see it in your face and the way you walked. You’re not mad now.”
“No, I’m not.”
“Do you want to take my books?” She smiled.
A warmth fell on him. “Yes—yes, I do.” He put her schoolbooks under his arm and walked beside her. “Lee wants to see you. He asked me to tell you.”