Chapter 46
From the Memoirs of Grace Bailey -
… Van's tossing, turning, and murmuring roused me from a shallow sleep. I hadn't dared try to wake him when he was in the grip of a nightmare since the night when he spread his arms and turned towards me while springing awake. Before he had realized what he was doing, he had elbowed my collarbone and left a nasty bruise there and on the back of my head where he knocked me into the headboard. The poor man felt terribly guilty. Fortunately, that was the extent of my injuries.
This time, I waited in my camp bed for him to wake. Even though I knew they were coming, his screams still frightened and grieved me. I held him in my arms afterwards and told him that he was awake. He wasn't in Spain anymore. He was home.
The next afternoon, he was waiting for me on the porch when I came home from CRNB. The weather was below freezing. Even wearing a woolen scarf and overcoat, he still should have been indoors. I could see my own breath as I asked him how long he had been out there turning into an icicle. He answered not too long. It was much colder at Teruel.
I sat down beside him and told him about my day. Mrs. Cramp expected to start searching for a replacement for me soon. She was actually nice enough to thank me for being willing to keep working into the summer so that she would have time to find someone good. Van was attentive, but I could tell that at least a little of his focus was on something else. I asked him what that something else was.
"Killing," he answered matter-of-factly. "It's funny. I was a con artist for sixteen years, but it wasn't until I started walking the straight and narrow that I ever killed anybody. It gets easier like anything else you do on a regular basis. The first time at Dead Mule Trench it rattled me afterwards to hear the fascist wounded screaming and groaning." For a moment, Van was lost in thought. "There was a fascist officer who was no further from me than you are when the patrol went wrong at Fuentes de Ebro."
"The one where Will was wounded?"
"Yes. I shot the officer through the heart and didn't feel anything except relief that he hadn't killed me. The horror of killing in war is that sooner or later, if you do enough of it, there is no horror."
I didn't know what to say to that. Van said nothing at all. I shivered from more than the cold. Not long after, Van spoke again. "I suppose I'm selfish like most human beings. I have nightmares about what the fascists did to me and my comrades, but I haven't lost a minute's sleep since Dead Mule Trench over what I did to them."
Having taken a moment to consider, I couldn't agree to that. "You are not a selfish person. Everything you've done since you quit being a con artist has been for others-going to Spain, looking after your men, giving me the moon and all the stars for Christmas." I took his hand in mine. "It isn't a good thing to kill, but the people you killed would have done the same to you and your comrades. even if you had surrendered. You have nothing to feel guilty about."
"Not even not feeling guilty."
"That's the difference between you and the fascists. They glory in not feeling guilty. Just think of their motto."
Van grimaced. "'Long live death.' You may have a point."
I won't deny that I was unsettled by what I had heard. Most of the veterans I knew didn't talk much about their war experiences. I was starting to think that I should be grateful to them. Still, I knew Van was a soldier when I wrote to him in Spain and when I agreed to recommit to our marriage. Like Jane Ace used to say on the radio, "you have to take the bitter with the better."
Van stared off into a horizon so peaceful with the sleepy warmth of the sunset that it was impossible to believe that somewhere beyond men were defiling the world with slaughter and destruction. His body was here. All his thoughts and part of his soul were back with his comrades in the dust and scrub and heat of a land so arid in the summer that sometimes the very sweat on their brows dried up. Sometimes the only other moisture in it was the blood they and their enemies carried in their veins and all too frequently spilled.
It may have been three minutes or five or fifteen that we sat together on the swing in silence. At some point, I took his hand in mine and felt his grip gently tighten on my fingers. I spoke first. "At least you're home now. You don't have to go back to all those horrors you dream about."
Van turned his head and looked at me. In his eyes were shame, guilt, and a hopeless resignation that sent an icy thread of fear creeping through my blood. I will never forget the words he spoke to me next. "That's just it, Grace. I do have to go back."
From the Journal of Maisie McGinty Apr. 28, 1938
… I could hear Grace screaming at Van halfway down the block. All the homework I had been doing at Lucy McGuiness' vanished from my mind. Thank heaven everyone on both sides of the street seemed to be indoors. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Van couldn't actually be bughouse enough to want to return to Spain and rejoin the International Brigades. As I bicycled towards the house, Grace was saying pretty much the same thing, only at the top of her lungs.
She also added that Van didn't love her. Van was protesting that he did. He went through hell for the right to come back to her. After that, Grace just stood there with tears spilling down her cheeks. I put my bike away and ran for the front porch. Van tried to comfort her, but she was rigid in his arms. As I walked up the steps, she told him that they should go inside. After we all reached the foyer, she asked me to go up to my room and give her and Van some privacy.
Next Week: Grace's fury. No walking away.