Chapter 8 - June through August, 1943
*Thanks for reading, everyone! Thanks are also due to PageLady for the lyrics to the Star Spangled Man with the Plan (altered for Stevie of course). The lyrics are available at PageLady's Wordpress blog.
*Who's strong and brave, here to save the American Way?*
Dear Bucky,
The Marinettes have given me a placement at last - with the USO! Now, don't look so shocked - I'm not a chorus girl. I mean, can you imagine? I'm just helping backstage with costumes and things. We're setting off on tour, so I'll be sure to send you some postcards.
Eventually we should go overseas to perform for the troops - who knows? We might even run into you!
Stevie closed with a sketch of a chorus line of beautiful women in star-spangled costumes, herself at the end - her old self; short, skinny and bespectacled - holding an American flag in each hand.
P.S. - You'd like it here. The skirts are very short.
Stevie
Stevie sealed the letter and dropped it into the mailbox with a sigh. If Project Rebirth weren't still classified, her letters would have been very different. She had actually written them on pages in her sketchbook - secret letters she could never send:
Dear Bucky,
I still have dreams about Doctor Erskine being shot. It all happens the way it did before - I watch him die and can't do anything. Sometimes in my dreams, you're there, and the spy shoots you, too. I hope you're safe. I worry about you so much.
Dear Bucky,
Sometimes I don't recognize myself in mirrors. When you get home, will you recognize me? I spent five minutes this morning hunting around for my spectacles, before I remembered I don't need them anymore.
Dear Bucky,
I miss you.
*Who's here to fight, give her all for what's right, night and day?*
The Senator - Senator Brandt, his name was - had made Stevie the star attraction in a travelling patriotic stage production. It was not a natural fit by any means: despite vastly increased lung capacity, Stevie's singing voice remained breathy and slightly off-key; and the first time she had tried to dance, she kicked a shoe into the mezzanine. There were no costumes for women in her size, so they had to alter a man's costume to fit her - bright blue tights and jacket, with a band of vertical red and white stripes running around her waist and a white star on her chest, finished off with red leather boots and gloves. It wasn't a short skirt and fishnets, but it was, by far, the most ostentatious piece of clothing Stevie had ever worn. The costumer had also presented her with a blue helmet that had little wings on the sides, but Sal - who was her manager, Stevie guessed - had nixed that.
"You got a face like that, you don't cover it up," he had said, making her blush.
Sal - whose snub nose and round, childlike features belied his keen instinct for show business - came to the rescue again with the suggestion that, rather than sing and dance, she just swagger out, deliver a rousing speech, and perform some heroic-looking feats as the chorus girls strutted, kicked and sang a ridiculous tune about her that began "Who's strong and brave, here to save the American Way?" and ended by calling her "The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart."
Despite all Sal's efforts, Stevie's first performance was almost a disaster. Stevie had never put on her own makeup, and it had to be fixed at the last minute by a sympathetic chorus girl named Doris. With five minutes to call, all the other performers gathered in the wings, she was still in the dressing room, hyperventilating.
"Whoa, whoa, are you okay?" Sal asked, when he found her. "You look a little green around the gills."
"I don't think I can do this," Stevie said. At that moment, she would almost rather be shot at again than go on stage. "I've forgotten everything I was supposed to say."
"Gimme a minute," Sal left and returned moments later hefting a kite-shaped prop shield decorated with the stars and stripes, a common motif for the performance.
"Your speech is taped to the back," he said. "Oldest trick in the book. But look out, it's made of solid oak and it's a little..." he trailed off. When the stagehands had to hang the shield on set, they always complained about how heavy it was; Stevie had lifted it in one hand as though it were made of cardboard.
*Who will campaign door to door for America? Carry the flag shore to shore for America?*
If Stevie hadn't been - enhanced - as she was, she would have found the routine incredibly grueling: four shows a day almost every day, sleeping on trains more often than in real beds. They crossed and recrossed the country, performing in all the places Stevie had heard of but never seen - Detroit, Chicago, St. Louis, Albuquerque - until Stevie could swagger and smile and say "bullet in the barrel of your best boy's gun" without even consulting the notes still taped to the back of her shield.
For Stevie, the journey was not measured in miles or days, but in the letters, postcards and random sketches she sent Bucky along the way - pictures of her fellow performers, of the Chicago skyline, of the mountain lions and bears she had seen from the train on her way west. The company had been touring for over a month and a half by the time Stevie finally received a letter back.
Dear Stevie, it said, in chicken-scratch handwriting that years of education had been unable to improve.
I really like getting your letters, please keep sending them even though I can't write back a lot. The guys over here think your pictures are great, especially the ones of chorus girls, ha ha. You'd like it here in [CENSORED] - it's full of all that historical stuff you used to read about all the time. Monuments and ruins all over the place. If you were here, you could tell me all about 'em.
But I'm glad you're not here. War isn't like I thought it would be. Sometimes I feel... The next few words were crossed out violently, and Stevie couldn't read them no matter how closely she looked.
Don't get into trouble while I'm gone.
Bucky
Stevie kept the letter tucked into her sketchbook, pulling it out to read over and over, until she was afraid it would fall apart.
"Is that from your beau?" Doris asked her one day as they were getting ready for yet another show.
Stevie had no idea how Doris had seen her reading the letter, hidden behind her sketchbook, when she herself was putting on eyeliner. Doris was a pretty blonde from the Bronx with a button nose, a mischievous grin and a keen ear for gossip.
"Bucky's not my 'beau'," Stevie said. "We grew up together; he's all the family I've got." She folded the letter carefully and put it back. "He's a sergeant in the 107th."
Doris nodded. "I have three brothers," she said, smiling a little sadly. "A matched set - Army, Navy and Marines."
The other girls chimed in; most of them had someone overseas - a brother, a cousin, a fiance. They saw what they were doing as a way to help the people they loved. A way to keep them safe. Stevie knew that this work was important; she would never tell these women otherwise; but she couldn't help feeling that she was meant for something else.
"Alright, get over here," Doris said, interrupting Stevie's ruminations. "It's time to fix you up. You know," she continued, outlining Stevie's eyes in black pencil, "you should really learn to do this yourself. It isn't hard."
"It isn't hard for you," Stevie said. "I follow your instructions to the letter and I still look like a demented clown. And I can't get that darned pencil near my eye without twitching and ruining everything."
Doris chuckled, "Practice makes perfect. Now hush; I'm going to do your lips." She used a little brush to color Stevie's mouth a crisp red. "I should give you homework," she put on a dry, nasal, teacher-y voice. "Lesson one, lipstick. Lesson two, nylons."
The other girls jumped in. They all found Stevie's lack of charm endearingly hilarious.
"Lesson three - walking in high heels!"
"Lesson four - flirting!"
"Why flirt," said Stevie, as Doris pinned her hair back, "When I can just carry a man off under each arm?"
And that, of course, was when the stagehand came to tell them it was five minutes to call.
*She's giving us a head start - The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart!*
Stevie was surprised the first time she saw herself on a recruiting poster, mounted next to a recruiting station in Duluth. Her doppelganger gazed out at passers-by with an enigmatic half-smile; behind her a billowing American flag, and over her head the question "Are YOU a girl with a Star-Spangled Heart?".
"Oh my God, it's you!" Doris shrieked. "What a gas!" She looked from Stevie to the poster a few times, and giggled. "You should take it, just for kicks. Send it to that boyfriend of yours."
"It's military property, I can't just take it," Stevie countered. "And, for the last time, Bucky's not my boyfriend."
"Killjoy," Doris muttered.
After that, Stevie became accustomed to seeing her own face smiling out at her from the strangest places - comic books, trading cards, advertisements. Apparently Senator Brandt had been wheeling and dealing while Stevie was out touring, and had made her into the face of the American war effort without her knowledge. He even got her into film strips and shorts to show before movies - she strode at the head of columns of men, carried soldiers bedecked with ketchup bloodstains, and knocked out German generals with a telegraphed punch to the jaw. It took her ages to remember not to look at the camera while they were filming.
"It ruins the illusion," the director said patiently.
"Sorry," Stevie muttered, and took her mark for what felt like the fiftieth time. At least on stage she only had to do everything once. Well, once per show.
*Who waked the giant that napped in America? We know it's no one but Captain America!*
One day, Sal hauled Stevie down to his office during a break between shows. Sal's New York office was a repurposed broom closet, but it beat working out of train cars and hotel rooms.
With all the exposure she was getting, Sal said, he had realized she had to have a name.
"I have a name," Stevie told him. "Stephanie Grace Rodgers. Can I go now?" Stevie was standing in the doorway because they wouldn't both fit in the room at the same time.
"Har har," Sal replied. "You're a hero now - you think Wonder Woman would introduce herself as," Here he put on a ridiculous falsetto and batted his eyes, "Stephanie Grace Rodgers?"
"No," Stevie said. "Because her name is Diana Prince. And my voice is not that high!"
"Quiet, I'm thinking." Sal paced as well as he could in the tiny room, basically turning around in place. "Lady Liberty is taken. And you'd have to wear a bedsheet. Liberty Belle?" Stevie groaned. "You're right, no puns...hey, you're a lady reservist right? You have an actual rank?"
"Senator Brandt made me an honorary Captain."
Sal snapped his fingers. "That's it! Captain America! What do you think?"
Stevie shrugged. "Sounds great. Can I go now? Call is in a half hour and I haven't had lunch."
*She'll tear the Nazis apart! Their evil plans she will thwart! The Girl with the Star-Spangled Heart!*
Stevie started to be recognized. People she didn't know would stop her on the street for autographs. After shows, they wanted to shake her hand. She knew she should feel proud, satisfied, but all she felt was frustration buzzing in her chest like a wasps' nest.
Dr. Erskine didn't die to make me a glorified chorus girl, she thought as she lay in another narrow hotel bed, unsleeping. Any actor could do what I'm doing, probably better than me, too. I should be saving lives, not selling war bonds.
But there was nothing she could do, not yet.
So Stevie kept smiling at Senator Brandt, smiling at the audience, at the photographers, smiling, smiling, smiling until she thought her cheeks would crack. And she remembered what Peggy had said to her before she left.
Don't give up.
Thanks everyone! In Chapter 9, Stevie will be in Italy!
Historical and Plot Notes:
Stevie's shield isn't made of steel, because it's ridiculous to waste metal on a stage prop when people are collecting whatever scraps they can scrounge up from junkyards for the war effort. Oak is heavy, solid and can still be used to brain people.
Bucky is writing to Stevie from Sicily. The Allies landed there in July 1943. They didn't make it to mainland Italy until September.
The "Girl With the Star-Spangled Heart" is a real WW2 propaganda poster and can be viewed at the Library of Congress website. The model on the real version looks nothing like Stevie.