Risks

I’d woken up at 5:00 am for 374 days ever since my boyfriend Walter left to go overseas. On that day, he’d come over to my house in the morning, right before he’d shipped out to somewhere in Europe for the war, to say goodbye. I’d woken up to pebbles being tossed at my window and rolled over to see the clock on my bedside table ticking its way to the fifth hour in the morning. 

I never walked anywhere in our drafty house without slippers and a robe on since my mother was always worried about my health, but I did that morning as I looked out the window and then sprinted downstairs in just my nightgown. I’d sobbed right into Walt’s arms. First, I’d had to watch my brothers leave in uniform, fading into the early morning light as they walked down the street to the train station, drab olive bags on their shoulders and then I’d had to watch Walter do the same only months later.

…

Back in the years before all three of them left, we’d played baseball in my backyard. We knew the rules. If you hit the ball into the Kraven’s yard, it was lost forever. But if you did so, it was a home run. Sometimes the Kravens would come out and yell at us for it, but it was well worth the risk because their yard was the most impressive distance away.

Today, however, I learned that risks weren’t always great fun and you didn’t only do them for the rush of adrenaline they brought when you survived. 

I was up at 4:15 am, pacing my room. Walter was due home today, and I couldn’t sleep. He’d written in his letter that even if he got home late, he’d take the next train home to get to me as quickly as he possibly could. 

The warm milk I had drank when first awake at 3:23 did nothing to comfort me, and I soon left it on my bedside table and turned to pacing. I’d been doing so for almost an hour now, and the milk was cold.

Suddenly, there was a soft tapping at my window and I raced over to it, looking down to see the one I was waiting for standing in my front yard. “Walter,” I breathed, and ran downstairs, not caring if my Ma heard me or not. “Walter!” it came out as a cry as he opened the door and caught me in his arms just like the time he left.

I heard my Ma’s bedroom door open upstairs and her hurried steps as they came down the stairs. I stepped back to let her hug Walt too and then we invited him in to sit on the couch, Ma heading to the stove to put on a kettle for tea.

I couldn’t stop looking at him. It was like a dream that he was here again. “Well, how are you, Walt?” I asked quietly as he sat staring back at me, his knee up on the couch in the space between us.

“Mary,” he whispered. He sounded sad, like he didn’t want to say something. Like it pained him to speak my name.

“Yes?”

“I have something to tell you.”

…

Sunday afternoon baseball games in our backyard ceased as soon as my brothers enlisted. My mother had begged and pleaded with them, but they’d told her they’d be on the draft eventually so they might as well just sign up. They were 21 and 19 when they joined up in 1941, just four days after Pearl Harbor. Walter followed in their footsteps right on his 18th birthday three months later. My heart had broken on both of those days. 

To deal with the grief of my best friends leaving, I spent my time with Ma working at the local Red Cross, helping with rubber and scrap drives, and organizing blood drives. I even spent more time on my studies than I ever had before, just to distract myself until the next letter from Rueben, Charlie, or Walter came. But especially Charlie as this was before Walter and I started dating.

I’d always had a hard time in school so Ma opted to keep me home to teach me there. Any time I didn’t understand what my lessons were saying, Charlie would help me, even if he had to stay up late to re-write the lesson as I fell asleep in the chair in his room or to explain it calmly while I tried not to cry over difficult math. He always made it better and I missed not having him around. Especially in these final years of high school.

That’s why it had been the best day of my life when Charlie had come home to visit for a weekend in June of 1942.

“I missed you,” I said against his drab olive uniform. It was stiff and itchy and I briefly wondered how he could stand to wear such a thing. “And you must take that thing off once we get home so I can see you again.”

He chuckled and swung me around to his side under one arm, into a headlock. “Whatever you say.” I giggled, feeling exactly at home again.

“Now, whaddya remember of old Walter, Mary?” he asked as we walked down the street arm-in-arm. I said I remembered a lot of him, of course. We were in regular correspondence. Charlie then looked down at me. “He’ll be home this weekend too, he told me. I figured we could all see a movie together if you’d like.”

I grinned. I liked it very much.

I enjoyed the movie more than I thought I would but I attributed that to having seen it with my brother. Charlie told me to look away during the newsreels, however, once he saw that I was upset by them. “It ain’t all that bad over there, Mary, now really.” But I saw the look he shared with his friend that said otherwise as their faces twisted with remembrance at the moving pictures of men overseas.

I was already scared for all three of them but this weekend made it worse. Charlie, the strongest person I knew, who always protected me from danger and grief, woke up screaming from the terrible dreams war gave him. The first time this happened, I bolted upright in bed at it. It scared me at first as I thought it was my own nightmare, but once I realized it was coming from down the hall in Charlie’s room, I ran to his door, pushing it open to see him curled in his bed, shaking, tears streaming down his face. I was alarmed. I ran to his bed and slid to my knees beside it. “Charlie?” I whispered, feeling panicky. “Charlie? Charlie, what’s wrong?” I reached for his hand but he yelped and withdrew. I gasped, my breathing picking up. I didn’t know what to do. Tears were forming in the corners of my eyes.

“It’s terrible,” he moaned. “Get it out…no…please. help me.” He sounded like a helpless child. I needed to help him somehow, so I forced myself to calm down. This time when I touched his hand, he let me stay there, so I crawled into bed beside him, hugged him, and rocked him, murmuring soft words for comfort until he fell asleep again, his breathing returning to normal.

It was the first time I’d comforted him instead of him me.

The next morning, he didn’t say anything about the night before, he’d just gotten embarrassed I suspect, that his kid sister had had to see him cry over a nightmare.

“Want to get some ice cream, Charlie?” I asked this afternoon, wondering when he’d say something to me. 

“Sure, Mary,” he answered, looking at me for the first time that day. I smiled at him and his face melted into gratitude.

It happened again that night, but this time I was ready, sitting outside of his bedroom all night in case he needed me. I learned much about the gruesome details of war through these experiences and it often made me cry in my own room at night after Charlie left, wanting him to come back so he didn’t have to suffer anymore. I didn’t want my favorite brother and best friend to suffer any longer.

Walter started helping me take my mind off of Charlie every with his lighthearted letters and I quickly found myself falling for him. More than anticipating letters from Charlie, I’d started running out to the mailbox to check for letters with Walter’s name on them. We became official over paper, and I was excited to be someone’s girlfriend. 

The fact that I’d immediately wanted to tell Charlie about it quickly flew my mind, so he beat me to it, telling me that Walter had told him and then half-joking that he wanted raspberry cake for the wedding. It sounded like he was pained through his writing. Like he was sad I hadn’t told him. And I felt bad that I’d forgotten.

Slowly, though, Charlie’s letters started to dwindle from once a week to maybe twice a month. Then, I was only getting a response once a month. I understood that we weren’t as close as we used to be with Walter between us, but I didn’t think that meant he would stop sending letters. I asked Walt about my brother once and he said that mail was only slowing down and things were getting rough over there. Then I stopped getting letters from both of them altogether.

It seemed that every day I was waiting for the telegraph boy to cycle up to our front door and hand me the note that would change my life forever. But it never happened. Somehow, that was more worrisome than getting no news at all.

Finally, after two months of waiting, I found a letter from Walter for me sitting on the kitchen table after I got home from going out with my friends. It was a short note saying he’d be home two days before Christmas and that he would see me soon. He said that he’d take the next train even if it was as late as two in the morning when he got here.

But it was 4:15 when he arrived and was finally sitting on my couch two years since he’d enlisted with my brothers.

Somehow, a human telegram is worse than a paper one. He looks at you with pity in his eyes and says your brother has died. That he’ll be gone forever no matter how hard you wish or how much you cry. That even though he was the best thing that ever happened to you, he got stripped away from your life in the cruelest fashion before you’d even graduated high school. And you didn’t even get to say goodbye, that you were sorry you’d forgotten about him.

He said that my brother died because of risk. Like hitting the baseball into the Kraven’s yard. Knowing he would get in trouble but he did it anyway because it was worth it. Because it saved people. “Your brother died while saving people,” they would say later. “That’s the best kind of hero.” But I wouldn’t believe them. Ever. 

He was more than a hero to me.