Prayers of Thanksgiving
September 1918
Westcliffe Eye and Ear Hospital, Folkestone, Kent, England
(Dispatches, Chapter 42: "By Any Name")
(Carl)
There aren't any pockets in convalescent blues. I don't really know why not. I asked Sister Graeme once and she said that it made them easier to wash, and I guess she'd know, but still, that hardly seems enough of a reason to make us go without.
It would be a great comfort to have just a little breast pocket, that's for sure. But after I asked, Sister Graeme made me a little muslin pouch that I wear around my neck, under my shirt, and that serves well enough.
Other than the lack of pockets, I don't mind the convalescent blues so much. Sister Graeme says they bring out the color of my eye. Mine are a bit too large and make me feel like a child in Jerry's unhemmed hand-me-downs, with the sleeves falling down halfway to my knuckles. Not that I mind! I'd wear a potato sack if it meant I didn't have to go back to the trenches. Well, no danger of that now. I'm grateful.
In fact, I'd say I actually like the blues. I suppose I could stay in pajamas all the time, but I like to get dressed and sit by the window in the afternoons, just because I can. I haven't needed complete bed rest since my first week at Westcliffe, when my face was still so swollen I could hardly eat and my head too heavy to lift. I still get headaches, of course, but not as many, and the doctors say there don't seem to be any lasting effects from the concussion. That's a relief.
Sister Graeme says I'm very lucky; the fragment that hit me must have ricocheted elsewhere and already spent much of its speed. She's not wrong. If it had been a more direct hit, I'd have lost half my skull, not just the eye. But I was lucky. Sister Graeme says that the scars are forming nicely and that I'll only need the bandages another week or two. After that, I can have an eyepatch if I want one. It will take some getting used to, but one eye is enough to watch bugs with.
The ward door clicks open and it's Corporal Lewiston with our mail. He's a friendly fellow, ginger-haired and chatty, but it is difficult to return his pleasantries when my guts are suddenly writhing with eels. There's usually something for me at mail call — Una and Rosemary see to that — and I hate to feel disappointed when my mail is only Glen news, because I appreciate every line they write me, really I do. But . . .
Corporal Lewiston spots me by the sunny window and hails me with a fistful of envelopes.
"Hiya, Meredith!" he grins. "Quite a few for you today."
I would chat, but I've spotted the red triangle on the top envelope under his thumb, the bright stamp that says "Passed by Censor" and is only affixed to military post. It's all I can do to keep myself leaping from my chair and snatching it from him. Luckily, Lewiston has other places to be, and leaves me to my letters.
I could tear open the envelope at once, like an overeager pup clawing for a scented treat, but no. The proper ceremonies must be observed. His own handwriting on the envelope: he is alive. Thank you, God. The postmark, August 27: he received my last letter and responded within a day or two. Thank you, God. The red triangle: whatever is in here got past censor #2236. Thank you, God.
I close my eye in gratitude, and savor this exquisite feeling of calm. Sometimes it feels as if I live from one of these moments to the next, this blissful interlude between receiving his letter and reading it, holding it safe and real in my hand, with the pleasure of opening it still ahead of me. I delay, delight, weighing it in my palm, tracing the edges with my fingertip, reading my own name in his hand.
I still remember the first letter he ever wrote me. Not even a letter, really, more of a note. It was my first day teaching at Harbour Head, and I stood in the empty schoolhouse at dawn, just staring at the bare desks. At that moment, I wasn't even praying that I would be a good teacher, I was just praying that I wouldn't do any irrevocable damage to the minds so absurdly entrusted to me. I pulled my testament from my satchel and right away I saw a bit of paper sticking out from between the pages. Precise black letters, clear and upright: You'll be brilliant. Tell me all about it on Saturday?
I knew his handwriting, of course. How many school assignments had we worked over together in the Ingleside garret or resting our backs up against the dike of the Methodist graveyard? How many of his essays had I proofread at Queen's while he shook his head patiently over my geometry proofs? But he hadn't written to me before. Why should he? We were so seldom apart.
No, that's not exactly right. We were apart my first year at Queen's, or it felt that way, even if we did see one another on weekends. We were only friends then, the year before swimming and kisses, but I was already doing my best not to think of him half as much as I did. It wasn't right. I shouldn't have been imagining him, not the way I did. I tried not to. I tried to focus on my studies and drank a lot of cold water and slept with my hands on top of the blankets. Nothing helped much.
I put that first note in my breast pocket and carried it there all week. It was a long week, meeting my scholars and taming my classroom and discovering how few ideals could survive their encounter with practical reality. But I don't think I told him much about all that on Saturday. At least it isn't the talking I remember.
Wait, that isn't quite true. I do remember that he called me "Mr. Meredith" once and I shoved him into the pond. I could still do that then, when he was only fifteen and slender as a reed. He rose out of the water drenched and laughing; that is one of the pictures I carried with me to Flanders.
"Anything in your letters, Carl?"
Sister Graeme smiles sweetly over the tea tray in her hands. She shouldn't be bringing me tea, there are orderlies for that, but perhaps there had been an orderly and I had been too far away to notice. Sister Graeme sets the tray on the deep windowsill and leans against it for a moment, awaiting my answer.
"I haven't opened them yet," I say truthfully.
"Quite a few today," she says, nodding under her crisp, white veil.
I survey the small stack of letters I have not even bothered to examine yet. "Yes," I smile. "My family will have gotten the letter I sent when I arrived here, I suppose."
"You're lucky to have so many people who care about you."
"I know. I am."
I think Sister Graeme is one of them. She always has a kind word for me, and I wonder whether she might have a younger brother or perhaps even a son somewhere at the front.
"I'll let you get back to them," she says, patting me on the shoulder. "But don't neglect your tea. And there's some stale bread on your tray, as well."
"Thank you, Sister."
When she leaves, I slide my finger under the envelope flap and ease it open. Just one sheet, as always. Dear Kit . . .
That's as far as I've gotten and I'm already chasing after breath. A new name. An endearment. Coming from him, that's a lot. I read the salutation over several times, savoring it, imagining how it might sound spoken aloud or murmured not loud at all. Kit. Dear Kit. I feel for the pouch around my neck and read on.
I was very sorry to hear about your eye. But as sorry as I am over it, I am ten times gladder that you are out of the trenches and headed for home. I can't take down every German plane in the sky, though I am trying.
I was thinking that it will be your birthday again soon enough. Happy birthday, in case I don't get a chance to tell you. When things are grim here, I sometimes thing of your birthday in the Glen, and how Rilla springing out of the dark frightened me worse than any Fokker flying out of the sun ever has. It was worth it, though.
It certainly was. I push away the tormenting lines about chances and Fokkers and his deadly work. Closing my eye, that birthday comes flooding back, the memory washing away worry in a torrent.
The night I turned seventeen was silver-bright, a shiver of autumn in the breeze off the harbor.
"Where are we going?" I asked as he led me away from our usual hideout among the reeds.
He took my hand and grinned. "On a moon-spree, of course."*
I had told him once that the harvest moon always felt like mine. I was only five when Mother died, but I remember the story of my birth in her voice, how the bronze harvest moon watched over us, marking a season for storing up riches against the winter.** The year after she died, I looked to the gibbous moon on my birthday and could see only the sliver it lacked.
But it was at the apex of its fullness that night, lighting our way wherever it was we were going. Out from under the sheltering shadows of the valley, we dropped our linked hands and I followed half a step behind as he led me past the Four Winds light and to the rock shore beyond. I thought it was plenty far enough, but he picked his way over scree slopes and driftwood logs and I followed gamely not because I loved the chilly salt spray or the slick stones under my feet, but because I would have followed him anywhere.
When I had finally made up my mind to complain that really, did we have to spend all night hiking, he turned abruptly, seeming to disappear into the cliff face. I followed again, finding there a shallow cleft in the rock, tapering from an upper point to a pebbled floor just wide enough for two. I took my place beside him and unwrapped the parcel he produced from his haversack.
"It's a cake," I said, as if the scent of nutmeg and buttercrumb topping had not announced itself.
"I baked it," he said simply. "Happy birthday."
"You baked it?" I asked, though he managed to surprise me often enough that I should not have been surprised.
He blinked back with that maddening expression of imperturbable calm layered over a secret laugh.
"I bake very well," he replied, as if every self-respecting halfback at Queen's had a flair for pastry.
"I'll be the judge of that," I grinned, cutting a fragrant slice.
He did, in fact, bake very well.
Later, his mouth cinnamon-warm around me, I joked that baking was the least of his secret talents.
"Not talent," he smirked, pausing to look up at me. "Practice."
I was fairly certain he was wrong about that, but having neither sufficient experience nor sufficient breath to contradict him, I did not press the point. Aptitude or training hardly mattered as long as he didn't stop.
As the harvest moon slipped low over the sea, we leaned against the rock face, hands entwined. It is one of the moments I can still see perfectly when I close my eye, my moon laying out a luminous path to heaven and his spice cake reduced to crumbs and our feet stretched out before us, pointed off across the water toward some unknown shore.
"Do you think the war will last a whole year?" he asked.
I could only answer truthfully. "I don't know."
I squeezed his hand and said a prayer of gratitude that he was only fifteen and safe, no matter what the next harvest moon might bring.
"Any birds today, Meredith?"
I fold the unfinished letter and smile at Will Foster even though he can't see me. Gas-blind, the upper half of his face swathed in bandages under his cornsilk hair. His bed is beside the window and he likes to hear how the starlings are getting along.
"I'm just putting out the bread now." I narrate for his benefit, keeping my voice low so I don't startle the birds. "The kitchen must think I'm mad, asking for stale rusks. I'm opening the window. It's a bit cloudy today, but I don't think it will rain. The elm is starting to turn. The top leaves are going yellow and gold, but the underparts are still green. Oh, here she is! It's Two-Toed Sally first to the sill again. She's lovely and fat, all iridescent blues and greens and purples over her speckles. Do you have starlings in Toronto, Foster?"
"I'm not sure. I never noticed."
"They're not a native species, you know," I say, admiring the velvet midnight of Sally's plumage. "In Canada, I mean. Some daft Yank wanted to bring every bird mentioned by Shakespeare to North America. He released them all in Central Park in New York. Most of them died, but the starlings loved it and now they're a menace. They steal nests from native songbirds and eat up everything in sight."***
"What a senseless thing," Foster mused. He'd heard enough of my ramblings on the evils of invasive species to have a grudge against them himself, even if he'd never known an osprey from a oyster before. "It doesn't seem right that one man's whim should throw everything out of balance."
"No," I say, studying bright-eyed Sally as she pecks at the bread. "They're beautiful, though, these starlings. In their right place. I never saw one before I came here, except in pictures. And those don't capture them well. Pictures say they're black, but they're every color when the light hits them right."
"You don't have starlings on your Island?"
"We didn't," I reply. "Not when I was a kid, anyway. But I expect they'll have invaded the Glen by the time I get back."
"No keeping them out, is there?"
"No."
Two other, smaller birds have come to join bold Sally, pecking at the stale crumbs on the sill. One tips its glossy head in my direction, but hops away nervously when I extend a hand. The starlings are gorgeous, but they aren't as brave as our little chickadees at home, who will take peanuts and sunflower seeds from my hand, clutching my fingertips with tiny claws, the vibration of their wings humming as they entrust themselves to my benevolence.
"You have letters?" Foster asks.
"A pile of 'em," I say, sorting through the others for the first time. "Must have been a ship in from Kingsport. There's one from my father and Rosemary, one from Una of course, and our friend Mrs. Blythe, and one from Bruce . . ."
"Oh, read Bruce first!" Foster grins. "I don't suppose he'll offer any more delightfully honest descriptions of visiting ministers, will he?"
"Only one way to find out," I smile, slitting Bruce's ink-splotched envelope.
When the Glen news has lulled Foster into his afternoon nap, I shuffle back to the letter I didn't read aloud.
Are you really alright? he asks. You know you can tell me.
Can I? I hardly know what to say. That the birds here are strange, skittish things? That I'm grateful for Sister Graeme and Will Foster and letters from home, but that I miss him like a tide-stranded fish misses the sea? That every time I try to sleep I find myself pinned again under the crushing weight of that burning barn with Sergeant Donovan screaming just beyond my fingertips and flakes of fire raining down around me?
I could tell him that, though he hates it when I mention hell. Not because he fears it, but because I do. He never seems to fear anything. Not prison. Not hell. Not even hurtling through the heavens in a skiff of matchsticks and canvas strapped to a controlled explosion. How many times have I envied his unwavering confidence in his own sufficiency, his gift for being where he is and nowhere else? Unflappable.
At least, that's how I always thought of him. How else to explain the mastiff and his disregard for Section 202 and the calm in his kiss that long-ago summer? I thought he must never worry about anything.
I saw my mistake in Paris, the moment I stepped through the door with my bread and cheese and pears to find him undone. I had never seen him cry. Never. Had anyone? Maybe Susan, when he was small. But he stood before me agape, wreathed in cigarette smoke, his face as fragile as a blown eggshell.
Later, when he had showered and we had eaten, I wanted to explain what he had so clearly misunderstood. How could I make him understand that in giving himself to me, he had also given me back to myself? After two years of filth and terror, imagining myself anywhere but where I was, he had made me glad to inhabit my own body again. I had never believed his Whitman that the soul is the body and the body is the soul, but he might convert me yet.
But he had spoken first, and for all his philosophy, the fear he named seemed so simple, so childlike, that I swelled with an incongruous sort of affection, the same as I had felt for the little tabby kitten he had saved so long ago. Kit. If he likes. But I know him and could mirror the name back.
The vow I gave him was sincere. I will never forget you. I had not known it needed to be spoken. It seemed impossible that he did not already know how constantly he filled my thoughts, that he was first in every prayer, foremost in every hope.
I suppose that's hypocritical. Surely I did not need to hear him say I love you to know it. Hadn't he told me a hundred ways already? Still, my heart leapt at his words and the scant inches between us were too much to bear. I would have crawled inside him if I could have, and been absorbed rather than parted.
We had only a day and a night after that, but I have lived in that day every since. He held my chin, our eyes locked fast, and for once we did not laugh. It was a fiercer joy that sealed those vows. Brimming with wine and wonder, I gave him back touch for touch what he had given me and found that somehow our debts only accumulated.
Just thinking it, my flesh begins to wake and I am suddenly aware of every touch. The convalescent blues falling over-long and rubbing the backs of my hands, the bandages snug over my forehead, the point of a tiny wing pricking my chest through the muslin pouch.
It's a risk, but Sister Graeme is elsewhere and everyone else on this ward is blind. I pull the little bag from beneath my shirt, silently tipping his wings into my hand, squeezing gently enough that they do not break, firmly enough that they leave their impression in my palm.
Are you really alright? You know you can tell me. I would rather know plainly how things are with you than get a cheerful letter unless you really mean it. You don't have to write about it. But you can.
I wish he were here, or that we were at home together, or in Paris. Then I could tell him or not tell him, but he would know how things are with me either way. There are rumors that the war will be over soon, with the Huns demoralized and depleted and the Yanks fresh and fit and howling at their door. Maybe it's true this time. We couldn't be home in time for my birthday, but maybe we could make it in time for his. He'll be twenty.
Until then, he has asked for the truth. I'll give it as best I can at this distance. Rummaging in the drawer of my bedside table, I find paper, ink, envelope, and set up in the windowsill beside the ruin of Two-Toed Sally's crumbs. I rub the brooch under my thumb, imagining that perhaps he can feel it, wherever he is.
Dear Shirley,
Be assured that I don't need to be reminded of the night Rilla scared you — it is one of my fondest memories and I have revisited it often these past four years. I can only hope we'll both be home in time to celebrate your birthday next spring . . .
I write of the hospital, the starlings, and Cricket left behind in France. It would be hard to explain about Cricket. About how it was very hard to be alone after Paris and that the tiny comfort of a warm little body in my pocket helped a bit. I leave that part out, along with my disappointment that the starlings refuse to touch me. It would be hard to explain, even to him. But I do put in the dreams and how hard it is to distinguish between the barn fire and Dante's inferno. He did ask for the truth.
When the letter is finished, I double-check my acrostic. BY ANY NAME. Thomas, Carl, Kit, what does it matter? I'll answer to anything as long as he's the one calling.
"Still up, Carl?" Sister Graeme asks over my shoulder. "You really do need to let yourself rest."
Her words are too gentle to be a scolding and the truth is that I truly am tired.
I give her a genuine smile. "I'll go back to bed in a minute, Sister. I just wanted to finish writing this letter."
"Which you have done, evidently. Why don't you address the envelope and I'll see it's posted for you. Then you can get back in bed."
"Thank you, Sister."
I do as she says, then check to see that her back is turned. It takes only a moment to press a kiss to the unsealed flap.
Later, under the covers, I wonder whether writing of the dreams will banish them. Perhaps it will just make them bolder. But I must try to sleep in either case. I cuddle the muslin pouch to my chest and say my prayers, repeating them until I fall asleep:
Merciful God, please protect Shirley and hold him always in the palm of your hand.
Look down on all of us, especially the 87th and all the other boys still out on the line.
Please protect Jem, wherever he is, and comfort Faith.
Merciful God, please watch over all my family. Please guide Una and let her feel your love always. Please encourage Father in his ministry, and protect Jerry and Bruce and Rosemary. Please comfort all the Blythes and give them strength. Please bring Jem home to them.
Please bless Sister Graeme and all the medical staff here at Westcliffe and shepherd them in their work. Please guard Will Foster and all the other wounded men and let them recover as best they can.
Thank you for all your mercies toward me. Thank you for my life and the love of my family. Thank you for sending me home.
Thank you for Shirley. Please let him come home to me.
*Rilla of Ingleside, Chapter 17
**Carl's birthday is October 3. The harvest moon on the night of October 3/4, 1914 was the first one to fall on his birthday since it fell on October 4, 1897.
***In 1890, a New Yorker named Eugene Schieffelin implemented his strange scheme to import every species of bird mentioned in the works of Shakespeare to Central Park. The initial population of 60 starlings thrived beyond anyone's expectations and soon became a massively destructive invasive species, colonizing most of the North American continent.