Secrets of the Red Box Page 3

  Bonnie moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue, and her face brightened as an image formed in her mind. “We were booked to make a record, but then the war…everything changed. So many of the musicians enlisted or were drafted. It was hard to keep things together. There was an open audition for a female vocalist with a band in New Haven. I wanted to try out, but I just couldn’t leave Jimmy. That was before we were married,” Bonnie added. “The night before he shipped out, he played me a song, a song he wrote just for me. It was so tender and sweet…it makes me cry to think of it now…”

  Christine sighed. “It sounds so romantic, just like in a movie.”

  Bonnie dropped her chopsticks on the tablecloth and her voice flattened. “Except he got killed and there was no happy ending. Movies are supposed to have a happy ending, aren’t they?”

  The women settled into a span of silence, their mood darkened by the gloomy image. Bonnie glanced around the restaurant and let her gaze settle again on the chopsticks. She sipped her water and smiled at Christine. “But enough about sad things,” she said. “Tell me about you.”

  Christine’s expression changed to one of awkwardness. “Oh, I’m afraid my life is rather tame, compared to yours. I’m just a small town girl who hasn’t done anything remarkable.”

  “Oh, come now, you’re just being modest,” Bonnie encouraged.

  “No,” Christine said, tracing the hem of her napkin. “I have two brothers and one sister. My parents are still alive. I’ve lived here all my life. I went to Omaha High School, then to secretarial school. I went to work for Johnson, Peck, and Sutter right after that and have been there ever since.”

  “But you know, there’s something to be said for that too,” Bonnie said with assurance. “You know where you come from, who you are, and where you’re going.”

  Christine huffed. “Where I’m going…that’s a good one. I don’t know where I’m going. I should have married Joe when he asked me. Maybe I could have had his baby, you know? He would have had something to fight for, someone to come home to…or at least believed he would come home to. Now I just feel sort of lost.”

  Bonnie suddenly grew rigid in her chair. She knew about rejection, about emotional pain. She felt her gaze harden and her fingers tensed around her napkin. “Whether you’d married him or not, you’d still be left alone. And as to having a baby, well, how much harder would it be for you to raise it on your own if he doesn’t come home? And what guy wants to marry a widow with a child? No, I think you were smart, really.”

  “Maybe,” Christine conceded. “But at least he would have known…” A deep blush crept up her neck. “Well, that he was loved.”

  Bonnie let go a brittle laugh, one tainted with contempt. “Oh, don’t you worry about GIs finding love. They find it every chance they get. Every port, every camp, with every girl who feels sorry for them.”

  Christine appeared shocked and couldn’t seem to find her tongue. Bonnie laughed with a mocking tone. Men are all alike—they use and then they leave. That’swhat they do…that’swhat they’re good at. Bonnie shook her head. “Don’t be so naïve. You don’t know what men are really like. You don’t know what they’re capable of.”

  “Well, I know Joe,” Christine defended, “and he isn’t like that.”

  Bonnie pursed her lips and nodded slowly. She didn’t want to say more. She didn’t want to tell Christine how brutal men could be, how ugly and hateful. She didn’t want to tell her how a man could knot his fist and beat a little girl into unconsciousness, how he could use his body as a weapon.

  The waiter placed a plate of sweet and sour pork in front of her. She peered at Christine and smiled. “It looks delicious.”

  ///////

  Bonnie got undressed and slipped into bed. She stared up at the ceiling, her eyes unready for sleep, her thoughts unsettled. She felt a heaviness pressing down on her chest, a domineering weight of darkness and gloom. It pushed the air from her lungs and seized her gut with its thick, probing fingers until she felt unable to breathe. Her lips parted and she inhaled deeply as though she could dislodge the weight, but when she exhaled it remained, pinning her to the mattress.

  She thought about Christine and her unremarkable life, her unremarkably normal life. She envied the woman for parents who loved her, for a home with walls papered in sanity. She imagined Christine sitting at the kitchen table with her brothers and sister, eating Sunday breakfast together as a family. She could see Christine’s mother smiling over a plate of pancakes and fussing over her children’s manners. She thought of Christine in high school, imagining her circled with friends, going to dances, giving parties. She thought about how Christine loved Joe, but let him go off to war without her heart.

  Christine’s life was so unremarkable that the thought of it stabbed Bonnie like a bitter reminder of how different her life had been. Bonnie yearned for a life so normal. Tears burned her eyes and she cursed the emptiness of her life, the ugliness, the dark shadows. Bonnie’s sobs became louder as she pulled the pillow around her face. Her throat tightened, her lungs heaved, but she could not dislodge the weight from her chest. It consumed her, swallowing her whole until she was lost in the blackness of her soul.

  She surrendered to sleep and dreamed about Christine and pancakes and Sunday afternoons.

  Chapter 3

  Italy 1945

  Corporal Glen Taggart plodded along a dirt road carved into the Apennine mountainside. Ahead

  of him walked fellow soldiers in single file or side by side as far as he could see. The rugged

  mountains were scarred with outcroppings of rock and clusters of evergreens. The deciduous trees

  had only begun to bud, their naked limbs rising stark and barren against the sky. To his left mounted

  several stone houses, centuries old, built staggered up the incline. To his right a broken cart lay

  abandoned alongside the road, one of its wheels missing. Two Italian men stood on top of a rock

  fence, watching passively as the American soldiers tromped through their tiny village. Glen’s feet felt numb after miles of walking, yet they continued to carry him forward. A heavy

  pack weighed against his back, and he shifted his rifle to the other shoulder to relieve his tired arm. He was filthy and exhausted after the month-long advance into northern Italy. His regiment had breached the Gothic line once again after an earlier attack in the autumn of 1944.As they marched

  toward Bologna, the Germans were in retreat.

  Glen ached for rest, his body drained almost beyond endurance. But as long as the men in front

  of him continued to move, so would he. Up the sloping road he pushed himself onward, praying

  they would soon stop for the night. He focused on the dull throb in his head, the one he felt so

  often now, right behind his eyes. He wondered if it would ever go away, waking with it every

  morning as if it were his parasitic twin.

  His throat was desert dry, his canteen nearly empty after the last time he’d sipped from it. He

  yearned for a shower and a clean change of clothes, for a real bed and a decent hot meal. But all the

  yearning in the world wouldn’t make it so. Glen pushed those thoughts aside and kept his eyes

  focused on the line ahead, charting the slow progress it made.

  He heard a scuffle of boots behind him and then his name. Recognizing the voice, he turned and

  looked back at his friend, Charlie Larkin. “Hey, buddy,” he croaked, his throat too parched to sound

  normal.

  “I’ve been tryin’ to catch up,” Charlie wheezed, coming in step with Glen. “I got behind on

  account of my blisters. I had to stop and change into some dry socks.” Charlie glanced up at the

  cloudless sky. “I hope we make camp pretty soon.” He paused and then added, “I heard rumors that

  we’ll get mail after we take Bologna.”

  “Yeah?” Glen didn’t care about the mail.
He had no one to write to, except immediate family.

  Letters from his father and his Aunt Irene were welcome, but it wasn’t like Charlie who had a wife

  back home. Charlie lived for her letters, and in a way, so did Glen. Charlie and Amy Larkin were

  young, barely twenty years old—newlyweds, in fact. They were still in that foggy haze of new love,

  when neither had a fault and could do no wrong. Glen hated to admit it, but he was jealous of the

  couple.

  The two men had formed a fast friendship during boot camp and had bonded as closely as

  brothers. In fact, Charlie reminded Glen of his younger brother, Sam who was serving in the Navy.

  He’d always felt protective of Sam, especially after their mother died when they were boys. Five years older than Charlie, Glen was a level-headed man, cool under pressure. His dark eyes

  rarely missed a thing, taking in the whole of every situation with his mind one step ahead, already

  calculating the next move. Whenever Charlie was ready to race ahead, Glen would clamp his hand on Charlie’s arm until the time was right. Glen had somehow made it his personal responsibility to

  see Charlie through this war, to make sure he returned home to Amy.

  Whenever mail found the men as they pressed through Italy, Charlie read his letters aloud to

  Glen. He talked about Amy incessantly, sharing his memories, his hopes for the future. It wasn’t

  long before Glen felt he knew as much about Amy as Charlie did. He knew where she was born,

  that she had three sisters, that she had a scar on her left knee from falling off her bicycle when she

  was eight years old. He knew she had light brown hair and soft brown eyes, and didn’t like milk. He

  knew one of her front teeth was a little crooked and that Charlie loved it that way. He knew they

  loved each other more than anything in the world. Glen only wished he had someone like Amy, had

  ever loved a woman the way Charlie loved Amy.

  Glen reached for his canteen and drained the last few drops of water from it. It wasn’t enough,

  but even the taste of the metal-tainted liquid was welcome. When he shook out the last stubborn

  dribble onto his tongue, he felt a nudge as Charlie handed over his own canteen. “Here,” he said.

  “Have some more. We’ll be stopping soon.”

  Glen felt a surge of fondness for his friend. He took the offered canteen and swallowed a long

  draw. “Thanks,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his dirty hand. “Your feet okay?” Charlie hunched a shoulder and grimaced. “I’ll live. Times like these, Iwish I’d joined the Navy

  or the Air Corp—a lot less walking, I’ll bet.”

  “When I get back to Omaha, I want to sit on the front porch for about a million years—not take

  one step.”

  Charlie nodded in sympathy. “When I get home, I want the biggest, thickest steak Ican find,

  with about an inch of fat all the way around.”

  Glen shot him a grin. As he turned his gaze back to the road, he noticed a medium-sized dog

  limping on his front paw. “Hey, look at that,” Glen said, pointing to the wounded creature. He had a

  soft spot for animals, and the sight of the tawny-colored dog in obvious pain was too much for him

  to ignore.

  “He looks pretty bad,” Charlie said. “Bet he stepped on something.”

  Shrugging off his pack, Glen crouched low and coaxed the dog forward with a soft, gentle voice,

  patting his knee. The dog paused, his injured foot suspended above the ground. “Here, boy,” Glen

  said, tapping his knee again. “Let me help.”

  The dog cocked his head and raised one floppy ear.

  “Venire—come,” Glen said in his limited Italian. The dog inched forward, wary but interested in

  the stranger. Glen reached into his breast pocket and took out a piece of hard candy, hoping he

  might entice the dog into thinking he had a treat. “Venire.”

  The dog scented the air, and Glen suspected the dog was too smart to fall for his ploy. He

  continued to hold out the candy, patting his knee. Gradually, the dog moved toward him, extending

  his neck, sniffing as he did. As the dog took a cursory lick of the candy, Glen wrapped his free arm

  around the dog’s middle. “Good boy,” he breathed, hoisting the animal into his arms. “You like

  butterscotch, huh?”

  Charlie stood at the side of the road with registered surprise. “Good job.”

  Glen gingerly lifted the dog’s injured paw to examine it. There was some dried blood matted in

  the fur, and the large pad of his foot had two deep lacerations. “Buona,” he murmured consolingly.

  “Good dog.”

  “Is he hurt bad?” Charlie asked.

  Glen shook his head. “Nah, I think we can help him.”

  “Maybe he lives around here?”

  “Who knows? With all the bombing and shelling, he could have run off from anywhere.” Charlie raised his hand toward the dog for him to sniff. “You’re okay now, boy. You just met

  the best friend you’ll ever have,” he said, looking at Glen with admiration.

  Glen offered the dog to Charlie. “Hold him while I get my stuff.”

  Glen replaced his pack, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and had the dog back in his arms in a

  matter of seconds. The dog wagged his tail and licked Glen’s chin. He laughed and turned his face

  from the dog’s slobbery tongue. “You’re welcome, and I like you too.”

  As he rejoined the progression of men, Glen felt his mood lighten. Rescuing the stray had given

  him a sense of renewed energy. It was good to know he could aid the little dog, especially since he

  could do so little for so many of his wounded and dead comrades. It might have been a small thing,

  but to Glen, it felt like he’d accomplished something wonderful.

  After they made camp, Glen untied the dog from the tether he’d attached to a tree and picked

  him up. “Now let’s see what we can do, huh?” he said into the dog’s floppy ear. “We’ll have you

  good as new.”

  The dog licked his cheek and Glen chuckled. “Okay, okay.”

  Glen sat on the ground beside some things he’d readied, including his helmet full of water and

  some bandaging and ointment he’d begged from the medic. He’d told the medic it was for his sore feet. The sun was fading quickly over the shadowed mountains, so he had to work fast. As a diversion, he’d opened his ration of beans and offered it to the dog, holding the can in one hand while he lowered the dog’s injured foot into the helmet of water. The animal lapped at the beans,

  barely taking time to chew, and didn’t seem to care about his foot.

  Glen stroked his wetted fingers down the dog’s leg to loosen the dried dirt and blood. He spoke

  softly to the animal as he did, shaking the beans forward in the can. “Hungry, aren’t you, boy? Sure.

  I’ll bet you’re pretty far from home too. So am I.”

  When the dog had emptied the can, Glen lifted the paw to see how it looked. The lacerations

  were deep and raw and probably would have benefited from a couple of stitches. He was fairly

  certain he couldn’t beg the medic for sutures, so the salve and bandages would have to do. Carefully, Glen tipped the dog onto its back and cradled him in his lap. He was surprised at how

  complacent the animal seemed, relaxing against Glen’s legs and blinking sleepily at him. “That’s it,”

  he murmured. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Glen set to work. He dried the foot, then gingerly applied the ointment. It was amazing how the

  animal remained prone, didn’t try to struggle or growl. As Glen began to wrap the foot securely wi
th

  the gauze bandaging, he couldn’t help but think that maybe the dog was as tired of the war as he

  was. Maybe, for a moment at least, the two of them felt safe together. Glen realized how good it felt

  to hold something alive in his arms. He couldn’t count the number of soldiers he’d cradled in their

  final moments of life, how many men he’d watched die beside him. Now, this simple demonstration

  of trust filled his eyes with tears.

  Glen placed the dog carefully on its feet and stretched out on his bedroll. Turning onto his side,

  Glen patted the empty space beside him. The dog took a tentative step, suspending the injured paw

  in the air, then curled up beside him and rested his head on the crook of Glen’s arm. Glen stroked

  the animal’s dusty fur and scratched behind his floppy ears.

  Charlie lowered himself beside Glen and gave a brief smile. “Looks like he’s going to be all

  right.”

  Glen nodded, the fading light slipping into inky darkness. “I think so.”

  “You kind of reminded me of my mom,” Charlie said, leaning back against his bedroll. “I mean,

  the way you were taking care of the dog just now. She sure fixed me up plenty of times. Did yours?” “Did mine what?” Glen asked, stroking the dog’s head.

  “Your mom. Did she patch you up when you got hurt?”

  Glen didn’t answer right away. It always upset him to think about his mother. “Sure, I guess. She

  died a long time ago. My Aunt Irene pretty much raised me after that.”

  Charlie stretched out on his blankets, the stray lifting his head as a cautionary measure. “It’s

  okay, boy,” he said to the dog. “I’m just getting settled.”

  There was a moment of silence between the two men, though around them were muffled

  conversations, occasional bursts of laughter, the sound of spoons clanking into cans of beans.

  Charlie clasped his hands behind his head. “How’d she die?”

  Glen felt the oppressive weight of guilt settle on his chest. “She fell and broke her neck.” Even in the dusky light, Glen could see Charlie’s eyes widen. “Gee. That’s awful. How’d it

  happen?”