Question by: Kamkats
"Which of our heroes would be a closet knitter? I'll be amazed if it isn't Carter!"
Just a Little Yarn
"Hold it taut, Carter," Corporal Peter Newkirk said quietly. "There you go." He wrapped the end of the blue yarn around his fingers and started winding it into a ball. Newkirk and Sergeant Andrew Carter were working efficiently, facing each other as they straddled a bench outside Barracks 2 on a cold but sunny December day.
The two men were into the rhythm of their task, ignoring the American football game and the chatter around them. Carter wanted socks. Newkirk could use socks too, and he was under strict orders from Colonel Hogan to keep his hands busy. Cigarette supplies had dwindled to almost nothing; he was down to two a day and was becoming a pest.
"We're lucky to have a nice big hank of yarn like this one," Newkirk said. "Hands apart, Carter, and hold it just tight enough, like that. I think we can get …ooh, at least six balls of yarn, so that'll be six pairs of socks." He looked down at Carter's feet. "Well, maybe only five if we have to make a pair for you. Unless there's another Red Cross shipment coming," he deadpanned. "God willing," he added, his mind suddenly returning to the shortage of fags.
"Your feet are bigger than mine," Carter jibed back. Newkirk grinned and kept winding. "Anyway, it's good timing," Carter continued. "I can smell snow."
Newkirk shook his head. "How can you bloody well 'smell' snow, Carter? I'll never understand what that means."
"Oh, it's easy, pal," Carter replied. "You see, the cold weather slows down molecular activity. So what's really happening is that you can't smell other smells, like dirty socks and sweat and pine trees and stuff…"
Carter was off and running, explicating the science of precipitation. Newkirk rolled his eyes out of habit, though he found Carter's babble oddly soothing and conducive to their trance-like work. He nodded along as Carter prattled on. "It's really the lack of the usual smells, not exactly the snow. But then there's the humidity, which you CAN smell…"
Another ball of yarn was gaining mass nicely when Newkirk spotted a pair of ruffians from Barracks 7 approaching. "Oh, blimey," he said. "Donnelly and Browning." Newkirk and Carter had tangled with Stalag XIII-C's resident louts before. They both sighed.
"Hey, look, Donnelly," Browning was saying as he approached the bench where Newkirk and Carter were working. "It's the knitting club." He addressed the residents of Barracks 2: "Lovely afternoon, ladies."
Newkirk and Carter didn't even look up. That was Donnelly's cue to chime in. He moved in closer and leaned over Newkirk's shoulder, taking the ball of yarn and making a show of examining it before returning it and giving him a push at the shoulder. Newkirk never even flinched.
"You're going to make some lucky guy a terrific little wife someday, Newkirk," Donnelly said. "Sewing, knitting – what else can you do?" He stepped back and waited for an explosion.
Carter was ready to spring to his feet and figured a nicotine-deprived Newkirk would be provoked into a reaction. Instead, he watched as Newkirk leaned back, looked Donnelly up and down, tsk-tsked, and returned to his work.
Donnelly looked a little unnerved by the silent treatment. "What?" Donnelly said menacingly. "What else can you do?"
Newkirk looked up and smiled. "I can measure you for a coffin just by looking at you," he said evenly. "It's the tailor's art, you see. You're… hmm. I'd say a 42-long. Bit thick through the waist, but not to worry. We can cover that up with a half-lid." He tilted his head and nodded approvingly as he visualized the funeral scene.
Donnelly was a fist guy, not a brain guy, and he started to sputter. What the heck had he stumbled into? He wanted a fight, not an argument.
"You're crazy, Newkirk, you know that? Crazy!" he intoned nasally. Confusion was written on his dimwitted face as Browning started to tug him away.
"Yes, I am, so don't tempt me," Newkirk said with a wave of his hand. "I haven't had a cigarette in four hours and I think you'll find I'm quite handy with a lot of things, including a tape measure, a saw and nails. Now, go on, you lot. Get lost before I have to sic Carter here on you. He's got knitting needles and he's not afraid to use them."
Carter chimed in enthusiastically. "Yeah, I could use them on your Adam's apple… your eyeballs… your jugular… your scro…" he was saying with a goofy grin as Donnelly and Browning scurried off.
Carter and Newkirk looked at each other and smirked. Newkirk shook his head, and softly said, "I can't believe you said that. No, I can't believe you thought that." Carter smiled amiably and shrugged, and the men went on with their work.
"Hey Newkirk," Carter finally said. "Why can you do this stuff, anyway?
"What 'stuff,' Carter?" Newkirk replied. "Care to be more specific?" Blimey, the English language had lost some of its precision on its way to the colonies, hadn't it?
"Sewing and knitting," Carter said. "I mean… most guys …. At least where I come from … well, most guys don't." His ears were turning pink as he posed the question, knowing it wasn't entirely polite.
"Cor, Carter, now you sound like bleeding Donnelly," Newkirk replied. He couldn't hide his irritation. Peter Newkirk was good with his hands, and wasn't used to having his masculinity questioned, and needed a cigarette NOW. But he knew as well as anyone that most men did not, in fact, sew or knit.
"Self-defense, Andrew," Newkirk finally offered grudgingly. "Simple as that."
It was Carter's turn to look confused, though he wore the expression with an appearance of inquisitiveness, not the sheer stupidity that Donnelly imbued it with. Newkirk understood. His mood softened, and he continued.
"What I mean is, if I wanted nice clothes, I had to learn to mend them and make them, didn't I? And I didn't want to go about in rags, so I learned," Newkirk said quietly, his head down as he continued to work. Then he looked up at Carter and put the latest ball of yarn down.
"My mum always said, 'We might be poor, but we're not destitute.' She had a lot of us to take care of, mate," Newkirk continued. "I learned to help out when I was young. First mending clothes, ironing them, taking a hem up or down. Eventually I learned to cut and tailor a proper suit. Like I said, self-defense." Explanation over, he dipped his head back down and resumed his handwork.
Carter studied his friend. Newkirk rarely revealed much about his life, and Carter was hesitant to prod, but he was curious. Carter himself had grown up in the lean years of the Great Depression and he understood need. His family certainly wasn't well off. His clothes were nothing fancy, but once he started school they were mostly store-bought, arriving by parcel post from the Montgomery Ward catalogue, except for the occasional home-stitched shirt. He had a few hand-me-downs from neighbors, and if he ripped a hole in his knees, his mom fixed it. The Carters had their worries, but having meals on the table or clothes to wear weren't among them.
Finally, Carter ventured another question. "Defense against what?" he asked.
Carter couldn't see it, but at that simple query, Newkirk's mind swam with memories of growing up poor in the East End. The judgments. The comments. The assumptions. Accepting handouts and enduring more than a few nights of gnawing hunger. He shook his head and could feel his face flush.
"Defense against … well, being helpless, I suppose," Newkirk replied. "'Heaven helps them what helps themselves,' my mum always said." Peter Newkirk wasn't a religious man, but he felt sure there was some truth in that aphorism. After all, his mum was a wise woman, he thought, feeling a little surge of pride in his upbringing. Poor or not, his family was respectable. Mostly. His mum tried, anyway, and no one could take that from him.
Carter came to the end of the hank of blue yarn as Newkirk wound up the ball. "Right-o, that's six," Newkirk said cheerfully. "We're all ready to start making them socks. Yours first, mate?" he asked Carter. "The pattern's pretty easy—you'll pick it up fast." He stood up, gathered the balls of yarn in the crook of one arm, and flung the other arm around Carter as they headed into the barracks to get started on their project.
"That'd be great, Newkirk. My big toe is sticking out of the ones I've got, and the heel's worn pretty thin too," Carter said. "I'm already developing some blisters. You know, I read one time that if you get blisters, they can get pretty bad, maybe even blood poisoning, 'cause…"
Carter suddenly stopped as he noticed something dangling from the hand over his shoulder. "Hey, what's that?"
Newkirk pulled his arm back as he pushed open the barracks door and grinned broadly. "What, these? Just some smokes for us, Carter. Donnelly'll never miss them."
H=H=H=H=H
Author's Note: Donnelly and assorted other louts from Barracks 7 are characters from my work-in-progress, "Poker Face." This question was asked and answered on Feb. 27, 2015. My original response:
"Surprise, it's Newkirk! We've seen Carter trying to darn his socks, and he's not too good at it. Newkirk, on the other hand, is very good with his hands. He needs something to keep him from fidgeting so much. And when he tries to quit smoking (which doesn't happen too often, admittedly) he takes up knitting. Plus, he's practical. If he wants socks, he's going to knit them. My theory is that's how he learned to sew - he wanted to look good, so he figured out how to make clothes. (In this, I am inspired by a soldier-friend of my dad's who is now in his 80s and can both sew and knit. As he told me once, he grew up poor and he learned how in self-defense. If he wanted decent clothes, he had to make them.) By the way, soldiers recuperating in field hospitals in both world wars (and maybe since) were often encouraged to knit as a way to keep busy and productive. The British soldiers have a proud tradition of quilting and knitting."
