Giant Steps Read online

  Bernie and Mother stayed home. While they waited for the men to return, they went into the kitchen. Mother was intent on cooking all of Nick’s favorite foods. She called Edna to ask if she could bring one of her chickens to fry. Next, she decided to add a ham to the menu. Mother had just put it in the oven when she said, “Macaroni and cheese. He loves macaroni and cheese. Should I bake a pie or a cake? Maybe I should make both.”

  Together Mother and Bernie cooked enough food for an army. They cooked because they needed to keep busy while they waited. They cooked because Nick was back safely under their roof where they could see and touch him. They cooked because they wanted to see him in his usual place at the dinner table. They cooked to convince themselves that Nick being home was not a dream.

  At supper time, Nick made a brave attempt to sit at the table and eat as though it were old times. Before long, however, he apologized to Mother and excused himself from the table after eating only a few bites.

  “Would you mind very much if I went up to bed now?” he asked.

  Ben picked up Nick’s heavy duffel bag, but Nick insisted that he could do it for himself.

  The family watched helplessly as he went upstairs, leaning heavily on the banister, his face pale and his knees shaking. Sheppie mirrored his demeanor. The dog’s nails clicked rhythmically on the wooden floor as he plodded up the steps following his beloved Nick.

  Mother rose from her place as though she meant to go upstairs, too, but Papa reached out and put his hand on her arm, “Let him go. He needs to be by himself for a while. It has been a very difficult day for him.”

  More than 4.7 million Americans served during the First World War. Of these, more than 200,000 were wounded, and more than 100,000 were either killed, missing in action, or prisoners of war. Like Jack and Nick, many who fought on the front lines were barely out of boyhood. (Photo gift of Rowland Allen (ambulance driver in World War I around Verdun, France), Indiana Historical Society Collections)

  After they heard Nick’s door close, they all sat silently and stared at their plates, heaped with food left untouched. It was then that Papa and Ben told Bernie and Mother what had happened when they went to the McClarty place.

  Nick had insisted that Papa and Ben wait outside for him in the automobile. He told them this was something he had to do on his own.

  Nick was only inside McClarty’s blacksmith shop a short time. When he came outside again he was leaning heavily on his cane, his limp seeming more pronounced than before. He was followed by McClarty, who waved a pair of tongs at him. McClarty’s face was as red as his glowing tongs as he shouted, “Now, I don’t have any son left to help me. You and your foolish war talk. I remember how you always was. From the time you was a little boy, you said you was going to be a soldier. Well, you got your war. You took my boy. You took my only son along with you to play your stupid games. I wish he never met you. Then he would still be here to help me. Who will help me when I get too old to work?”

  Mother buried her face in her napkin and her body shook silently with a grief too deep for sound or tears. Papa stood behind her chair and put a hand on each of her shoulders and leaned forward to whisper in her ear. Bernie looked away. She had never seen her parents like this.

  Ben threw his napkin on his chair and went out on the front porch. Bernie followed her brother. It wasn’t fair. Nick was home. They should not be so miserable. They should be having a party. Ben sat on the wooden railing and Bernie leaned against a post. She turned her face upward into the cool evening breeze, hoping it would soothe the pain. They were all together now as a family. This should be the happiest time in their lives, but she wondered if they would ever be truly happy again.

  That evening when she went to her room to do her homework, she picked up the envelope from Jack. She looked at the dirt smudges—dirt from France. He had written this on a faraway battlefield, perhaps the place where the young man from Indiana had died.

  Bernie opened the envelope. There was only one page. She smoothed the wrinkled sheet. It was not easy to read the words Jack had written. She seemed to be looking at them through crystal globes of tears that would not stop flowing.

  My dear, dear Bernie,

  Now I can write to you the words that I was never brave enough to say aloud, even though I wanted to. It is not courage that makes me write them now, because I know that if you are reading this, I will not be coming home to see the look on your face. Don’t feel too bad. I really did not plan to come home after the war anyway. There was no life for me there. I did not want to work in my father’s blacksmith shop. That was why I ran away to join the army. Nick always said he wanted to be a soldier, so it wasn’t too hard for me to talk him into coming with me. I hope your family, and especially you, can forgive me for doing that.

  I love you, Bernie. I always loved you and I always will. I know that you could never feel about me as I feel about you. Try not to be sad about this or about anything. I just hope you have a happy life and maybe think of me once in a while.

  Yours, Jack

  Bernie reread Jack’s letter several times. Had it really said what she thought it did? If what Jack wrote was true, it had not been Nick who had talked Jack into joining the army. Her brother wasn’t to blame for them running away. But why didn’t Nick say so? Why hadn’t Nick told this to Mr. McClarty?

  Bernie clutched Jack’s letter in her hand as she threw herself on her bed. She buried her face in her pillow so that she could scream with anger at the unfairness of it all. How could Jack’s father have acted that way? That awful man seemed to feel worse that he had lost a lackey to help him in his blacksmith shop than he did about the fact that his son had been killed.

  It was not uncommon for soldiers to write “just in case” letters to family and friends that would only be delivered in the event of the soldier’s death, much like Jack’s letter to Bernie. The soldiers here are from the American Expeditionary Forces, Company B, 316th Military Police, 91st Division. The picture was taken on August 31, 1918, in Montigny de Roi, Haute Marne, France. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LC-DIG-ds-04291)

  When her rage had worn her out, she lay quietly thinking about Jack. Jack was never coming back—Jack, who had always stood up for her and defended her. The memories from those long-ago times tumbled over themselves in her mind. She remembered how he had shared his food with her the day she had followed the boys out to the barn where they were building the plane. She remembered how he had followed her when she walked around the pond because he knew she was afraid of the dark. She remembered the day out at the old fort when they all looked for treasures, and she hadn’t found one until she looked in her bait bucket and saw the cobalt blue bead.

  She got up and went over to her desk. She opened one of the drawers and rummaged through it, until she came up with a small box. Inside was the bead still strung on a loop of fishing line. She slipped it over her head. It hung close to her heart.

  “I’m so sorry, Jack. I wasn’t always as nice to you as I should have been. I hope you will forgive me.” She stood staring out at the darkness beyond her window. She knew that Jack had been right when he said that she would never be able to feel about him as he felt about her. She was ashamed because she had failed to appreciate how gentle and kind he was. Alice had been right about that. Bernie knew that Alice had been right about something else—Bernie’s attitude toward Jack was snobbish. She wrapped her fingers around the bead and whispered, “You were too good for me, Jack.”

  She needed to talk to someone who could help her cope with this. It couldn’t be Mother or Papa or even Alice or Lizzie. She tried to frame her confused thoughts into a sentence, but the day’s events were too jumbled in her mind to make sense of them. Suddenly, Bernie realized that she needed to talk to Vincent. It wouldn’t be the first time she had turned to him. She knew she could trust him to listen to her deepest secrets, even though she was ashamed of them.
He would understand. Tomorrow she would ask Aunt Rose to drive her out to the Soldiers’ Home.

  21

  November 1918 to March 1919

  The Dinner Guest

  Bernie and her family kept a close eye on Nick that fall and winter. They longed to see him laugh and join in the life around him. As months went by with little progress, they each worried secretly in their hearts but tried to stay cheerful for Nick and one another.

  One evening after supper, as Bernie helped Mother clean up, she suggested a plan to help Nick. “Mother,” she said, “I would like to invite a friend to have dinner at our house.”

  “Yes, dear, who is it?”

  “It’s Vincent. He’s the soldier I visit at the Indiana State Soldiers’ Home.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “I’m certain. He has become a very close friend of mine. I want him to meet my family.”

  Mother paused and put the cup she was drying on the kitchen table. “You’re not… ” Mother said hesitantly, “You’re not planning to do anything foolish, are you?”

  “Whatever do you mean?” Bernie asked, knowing full-well what Mother meant.

  Mother sat down on a kitchen chair. “When you first asked permission to go out to the Soldiers’ Home, Papa and I were a bit—well, as a matter of fact, we were more than a bit—concerned that you might form an attachment to one of these young men.”

  “Do you want to know if I have a crush on Vincent?”

  “Yes, that is exactly what I want to know. It is easy to become fond of unfortunate people who are in his position. We wouldn’t want you to become involved romantically with someone just because you pity him.”

  Bernie was tempted to tease her mother by making her think that was indeed what she had in mind. Instead, she said, “Vincent is not the kind of person anyone should pity. It’s true that I am very fond of him. But you can rest assured, I am not going to fall in love with him. In the first place, Vincent has a girlfriend back home. I might even want to ask her to dinner if she comes to visit him.”

  “That would be fine,” Mother said, her face brightening with relief. “We’d be happy to meet her. Shall we wait until she comes? Then we can invite them both together?”

  “I think it would be a better idea for Vincent to come now.” Bernie waited a bit before she said, “I think Nick should meet him.”

  “I don’t know,” Mother said, turning back to dry the rest of the dishes. “It might be a bit soon. Having a wounded soldier here would just remind Nick of the terrible things that happened to him during the war.”

  “Nick has been home for several months now,” Bernie said. “He stays in his room most of the time, with his curtains drawn. It’s all we can do to coax him downstairs to eat a meal.”

  At first, Mother had insisted on taking a tray upstairs to Nick three times a day. She would load the tray with food that later had to be carried back downstairs, usually with little evidence that he had touched anything at all. After that, when he did come down and sit at the table, Nick fed most of his meal to Sheppie—until Papa put his foot down. The dog was no longer allowed to be inside the house during mealtime.

  After leaving the table, Nick often went outside to sit silently on the porch. If he saw a neighbor approach the house, he got up and went back upstairs to his room. It was almost impossible to get him to engage in conversation. Bernie had tried with disastrous results one evening. She had joined him on the porch swing, even though it was far too chilly to sit outside.

  She sat quietly beside her brother until she could stand the silence no longer and then handed him the letter Jack wrote. “Would you like to read it?”

  He shook his head. She began to read it aloud. He stopped her. “I don’t want to hear it.”

  “But you need to hear it.” Bernie persisted. “Among other things, Jack wrote that it was his idea and not yours to run away and join the army. Why didn’t you tell us? Why didn’t you tell Mr. McClarty? Why are you being so stubborn?”

  “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “You might be surprised how understanding I can be. I learned a lot while you were gone.”

  Nick sat with his lips clamped together tightly before he said in a quiet voice. “Jack was my best friend. I was with him when he died. I didn’t want anyone to know it was his idea to join the army. It seemed disloyal to his memory.”

  Bernie heard the pain in Nick’s voice. She touched her brother’s arm. “You were a good friend to him. I wish I had been.”

  Nick got up and started to go into the house. Bernie asked, “Is it okay if I show Jack’s letter to Papa?”

  He paused before answering, “Do what you think is right.”

  By definition an armistice is a temporary halt in fighting, a cease-fire. At 11 a.m. on the eleventh day of the eleventh month in 1918 the final armistice was announced, effectively ending World War I, which at the time was known as the war to end all wars. When people found out about the armistice, celebrations broke out in the early hours of the morning and continued all day. The Treaty of Versailles, signed on June 28, 1919, in France formally ended the war. (Collections of the Allen County–Fort Wayne Historical Society)

  When Bernie told Vincent about this conversation and asked what he thought she should do, he replied in almost the same words Nick had used. That was when the thought occurred to her that he and Nick might have something in common.

  That was why Bernie now pressed Mother to invite Vincent to come for dinner. “I think Vincent might help Nick find his way back to us. Vincent knows what Nick went through on the battlefield.”

  Mother didn’t answer right away. She went over to the window and gazed outside for a while before saying, “You may be right.”

  “It’s worth a try,” Bernie said. She walked over to the window and hugged her mother.

  Even though Mother had doubts about inviting Vincent to dinner, Bernie was proud of the way she had handled the situation. Ever the gracious hostess, Mother took her prized embroidered tablecloth and napkins from the cedar chest and put them on the table. Mother set out her best china and silverware. She called Aunt Lolly at the farm to see if there were any early daffodils in bloom. Mother was able to fill a crystal vase for the center of the table.

  Bernie surveyed the scene. “Mother, everything is lovely, but you do remember that Vincent has very little eyesight. He probably won’t see much of it.”

  “Perhaps not, but then again perhaps he will appreciate it. He can smell the flowers. He can touch the china and silverware. As your Grandmother Epperson says, ‘Quality things feel better to the touch.’”

  Bernie began to feel nervous as Aunt Rose drove her out to the Soldiers’ Home to get Vincent. What if Nick refused to come downstairs? He had behaved so terribly on November 11th when the Armistice, or ceasefire, had been announced. Everyone else was so jubilant. Church bells rang out all over town at 11 o’clock in the morning. People poured out into the streets waving flags to celebrate the end of the war. Bernie had been wild to be part of it. After school, she had knocked on Nick’s door.

  He had growled, “You go on and celebrate the end of the ‘war to end all wars,’ but leave me out of it.”

  Remembering his attitude that day, Bernie asked, “What if Nick refuses to come down? Or, what if he comes down and is rude to Vincent?” She remembered her very first meeting with Vincent and what a struggle it had been for her to get through to him.

  “It will be all right,” Aunt Rose said. “No matter what happens this evening, Vincent will understand.”

  By now, the bandages were off of Vincent’s eyes. Although he still could not see much, he could get around fairly well with the aid of his cane. Bernie had learned how to assist him with his walking. She bent her arm, and he slipped his hand under it as they made their way out to the auto where Aunt Rose was waiting.

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nbsp; “I’m looking forward to a good home-cooked meal,” he said.

  “I promise you the food will be good, but as I told you, I don’t know what to expect from Nick. My brother has been less than pleasant lately.”

  “It’s all right,” Vincent reassured her. “I’ve been through that myself. I just hope I don’t upset your folks too much. Eating with the men at the Home is one thing. Table manners don’t count for much there. I hope I don’t make a mess of things.”

  Once inside the Epperson dining room, Bernie knew that Vincent had made a positive impression on Papa with his gentlemanly ways. It soon became evident that he had charmed Mother as well. Vincent took a deep breath and said, “The daffodils smell wonderful, Mrs. Epperson. They remind me of home. Are you a gardener?” Mother admitted she got them from the farm and then went twittering happily into the kitchen to check on the roast beef.

  Bernie didn’t know how he did it, but Ben had managed to convince Nick to join them at the dinner table. She sighed with relief when she saw that her brother had shaved and was wearing a decent shirt and jacket. He took the seat next to Vincent. Bernie tried her best not to stare at the two of them together. As she bowed her head for Papa’s prayer, she added a silent one of her own that the evening would go well.

  Vincent ran his fingers lightly over the raised pattern on the linen napkin and wanted to know who had done such fine embroidery. Bernie couldn’t stop grinning with pleasure. After that the conversation flowed easily. Even Nick managed to add a few words now and then.

  “Where are you from, young man?” Papa wanted to know. When Vincent replied that he had grown up in a small farming community just south of Indianapolis, Papa wanted to know if Vincent knew a certain friend of his. He didn’t, but he did remember when his high school basketball team had played the school here in town.