A Simple Country Funeral Page 6

  The air smelled sterile, and everything seemed eerily still. Even with the sconces aglow along the walls, and the chandeliers overhead gleaming bright, a heaviness hung in the air as we made our way toward the back of the estate.

  “Right this way,” Mr. Rogers said, gesturing into a doorway down a side hall.

  It was a parlor of some sort, with shelves from floor to ceiling filled with books. The lovely, antique furniture had been haphazardly pushed up against the walls, some covered in white cloths to protect them.

  In the middle of the room were tables laden with packages similar to the ones we had brought, and nurses who were unpacking and sorting through them.

  One nurse looked up upon our entry, her face breaking into a grin. “Irene!” she exclaimed, hurrying around the tables, pulling the gloves she wore from her fingers.

  She threw her arms around Irene’s neck, standing almost a head shorter than her, and looking very slender compared to Irene’s wide hips and shoulders.

  “Hello, May,” Irene said. She looked over at me, her arm around the woman’s shoulders. “Helen, this is my cousin May. May, this is a friend of mine from the village.”

  “Nice to meet you,” May said, hurrying to me and snatching my hand, her eyes, grey just like her cousin’s, wide with excitement. Her pretty, auburn hair was tied up in a knot behind her head, and she wore a plain, white nurse’s bonnet on top of her head. “I’ve heard a great deal about you from Irene!”

  “It’s nice to meet you as well,” I said, smiling at her as she shook my hand.

  May spun around, her quickness reminding me of a rabbit’s. “Are those all the supplies you managed to acquire?” she asked, her eyes widening.

  “Yes,” Nathanial said, setting the stack of boxes down. “I hope it will be enough.”

  “Enough?” May said, zipping around to the stack of boxes, delight evident on her face. “This is wonderful! You have both, as always, gone far above and beyond anything we could have imagined.”

  Irene and I set down the things we were carrying, as well.

  “I managed to secure more blankets,” Irene said. “Helen brought some, as well.”

  “That’s wonderful,” May said. “Even though it’s the middle of summer, this cavernous house can be rather cool in the evenings. This was very kind, thank you.”

  “We also managed to bring more food,” Nathanial said. “We were careful the last few weeks and saved some of our rationings.”

  May and I both looked over at Nathanial, May with adoration, and me with shock. They had stretched their own food allowance so that they might help these men in need?

  It made me feel guilty at once for not having thought of it myself.

  “You both are far too kind,” May said. “You certainly have brought us enough to keep us busy. In the meantime, would you like to come and sit with some of the soldiers while we prepare their evening meal for them?”

  She led us back through the door into the hall, and continued on toward the front door. For a moment, I thought we might be heading outside. My mind filled with images of long, white tents outside, packed to the brim with soldiers lying in cots. Those thoughts were dispelled, though, as we turned down another hall where voices and coughing and some groans of pain could be heard.

  She took the first right into another room that was, at first, rather difficult to place. There was a large, stone fireplace at one end, which was roaring and bright, and a polished, wooden floor. There was no furniture, aside from a dozen or so beds that were spread across the room. Perhaps it was a dining hall? Or another parlor?

  My eyes didn’t linger long on the room as a whole, though. Instead, they fell upon the men stretched out in the beds, tucked beneath white sheets, with white bandages covering their hands, parts of their arms, or even their heads.

  “Good evening, gentlemen,” said May brightly, stopping in the middle of the room and spinning to look at each soldier in turn. “We have some visitors for you tonight. It’s my cousin and her husband, as well as her friend. So please, do me a favor and show them how hospitable you all are.” Her smile was contagious, and as she grinned at them each in turn, I saw her smile reflected, albeit far less energetically, in some of their faces.

  Nathanial was already on his way over to speak to one certain gentlemen whose entire arm was bandaged, as well as part of his other hand.

  “Don’t worry too much about who it is,” Irene said. “They’ll all be happy to have someone to talk to, remember?”

  With that, she made her way toward a younger man who was lying back in his bed, his arms tucked beneath his head, with a bandage over his eye.

  I swallowed nervously, looking around.

  There were two or three who were already asleep, even if the last light of day was still visible through the windows. Another had rolled away from us completely.

  There was a young man nearest the fire who was sitting up in bed, reading a book. He had a bandage peeking out from underneath his striped pajamas.

  He glanced up, likely feeling my gaze on him, and he smiled, his hazel eyes lucid and focused.

  I wandered over to his bedside, standing at the foot of the metal frame. “Hello…” I said.

  “Hello,” he said in return. He had a nice voice, soothing and clear. And he was good looking, too. He couldn’t have been older than twenty, maybe twenty-one.

  My heart constricted when I saw the bandage beneath his shirt, as well as the scar across his upper lip that looked as if it had just begun to heal.

  “My name is Helen,” I said. “What’s yours?”

  “Jim,” he said, smiling. “Jim Hopkins.”

  “Well, Jim,” I said. “Do you mind if I sit with you for a bit? Keep you company?”

  “Not at all,” he said, closing his book and setting it down on the small, metal table beside his bed.

  I sat down in the nearby folding chair, the metal cold beneath my skirt. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your reading,” I said.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” Jim said kindly, that smile never leaving his young face. “The nurses would have come in soon enough to check my bandages, so I wouldn’t worry about it.”

  “May I ask what you were reading?” I asked, setting my purse down at the floor beside my feet.

  “A book by Martin Luther,” he said. “To be honest, I don’t exactly have the patience for fiction these days. I would much rather read something that is edifying, and can help me grow even as I have to stay here recovering.”

  “That’s admirable,” I said. “Are you unhappy to be here recovering?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, I didn’t mean it like that. I just know that it will likely be some time before I’m able to return home, so I thought I might as well make the most of it.”

  “I think that’s wonderful,” I said.

  “And what about you, Helen?” he asked. “Do you live here in Brookminster?”

  “I do, yes,” I said. “But I have only recently moved here.”

  “Ah, I see,” he said. “Where did you come from?”

  “I was born in Plymouth,” I said. “Lived there most of my life.”

  “Plymouth?”

  The voice was new, one I had never heard. The face of a man who couldn’t have been much older than Jim leaned forward in the bed beside Jim’s, curiosity written all over his pale face.

  “I’m from Plymouth, as well,” the young man said, laying a bandaged hand over his heart.

  When he told me what street he had grown up on, my own heart skipped. “That’s very near where my parents live,” I said. “We must have been neighbors.”

  “What an amazing coincidence,” he said. “My name is Frank Mead.”

  “Mead?” I asked, astonished. “Is your father Daniel?”

  The boy threw back his head and laughed. “Yes, he is!” he said.

  “My name is Helen Lightholder,” I said. “But my maiden name was Bennett.”

  “So then your father is James?”
he asked.

  It was my turn to laugh. “Yes, that’s right!” I said.

  He and I grinned at one another.

  Jim looked back and forth between the two of us. “My, what a small world it is.”

  “I was just thinking the same thing,” I said.

  We spent the next quarter of an hour sharing stories from back home. It seemed I had been there more recently than he had, and I told him all about how things had been when I had moved.

  “Old Mrs. Willard still sits out on her porch every morning, yelling at the children playing in the street,” I said. “Especially those Woolfard boys. They can be quite a nuisance.”

  “And what about Sammy Lincoln? Last I heard, he’d come down with some terrible sickness. And with his father serving in the army…” Frank said, his voice trailing off.

  “He was just fine when I left,” I said, smiling. “Seems he took a turn for the better just before Christmas.”

  The relief was clear on Frank’s face.

  Then color appeared in his cheeks, and he ran a nervous hand over the back of his neck.

  “And, um…what might you know about Emily Nichols?” he asked, not meeting my eye.

  A sly grin appeared on Jim’s face. “Is that the girl you’re sweet on?” he asked.

  “Shut it,” Frank snapped, his face reddening further. He turned his eyes up hopefully to me. “Is she doing all right?”

  I smiled at him, nodding my head. “She is in good health. My sister is very good friends with her sister, in fact. I know the Nichols family quite well.”

  Frank’s eyes widened. “You do?”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Jim asked, falling back against his pillows and laughing. “I’ve never seen you like this before.”

  Frank looked sheepish. “I…well, my plan was to propose to her…but then I had to leave for the war…” he looked sadly down at his bandaged hand. “My hope is that I’ll be able to return to Plymouth one day, so I can do what I planned to.”

  Jim grinned. “Now I know who you’ve been writing all those letters to in the dead of night when you think no one’s awake,” he said. “What’s she like?”

  Frank looked over at me, and a small grin appeared on his face. “Well…she’s wonderful. I’ve never met anyone else like her in my life. She is smart, funny, and has a singing voice that angels would long for. She is stunning, as well, with hair so blonde it reminds me of the moonlight, and – ”

  A blood curdling scream echoed from somewhere further inside the mansion, bouncing off the walls, and making the glass on the windows tremble.

  Everyone fell silent.

  My heart pounded, the blood rushing through my ears. Eyes fixed on the door, I realized I wasn’t breathing, either.

  The scream was followed by despairing sobs, which hung in the air, heavy and morose.

  “…I think that was Lance,” Jim said in a still, small voice, making me jump as he broke the silence.

  “Lance?” I asked.

  Frank nodded. He had swung his legs over the side of his bed so he could see Jim and me better. His gaze flickered out toward the hall. “His whole platoon was killed. He’s the only one who survived.”

  Guilt crashed against my soul like a wave breaking on the rocky shore. How had I so easily forgotten where I was, and with whom I was speaking? These boys had just come from the front lines of war. They had seen terrible things, witnessed atrocities that no one should ever have to…

  I let out a shaky breath, my heart rate beginning to slow. “I’m so sorry…” I said. “With all of this talk of home and familiar faces, I forgot that – ”

  “It’s all right,” Jim said, looking up at me with more wisdom in his face than men thrice his age. “We like to forget about it sometimes, too.”

  I gave him a sad, regretful sort of tight smile. “Is he…Lance, I mean…is he having nightmares?” I asked.

  Jim sighed heavily, exchanging a glance with Frank. “Well…yes, and no,” he said.

  “Lance is living his nightmares, in a way,” Frank said slowly. “There are several soldiers here who have essentially lost sense of themselves. When we go in to speak with them, it’s almost as if they don’t even hear you. They just lie there, staring at the ceiling, as if they are ignoring you…”

  “And then, every once in a while, they have these outbursts, just like that,” Jim said. “They believe they are back on the battlefield, and it doesn’t matter if they are injured or not, they will fight.”

  “We’ve heard glass breaking, and metal slamming…I guess it can be quite brutal,” Frank said.

  “Would it help if someone came to speak with them?” I asked. “Someone like myself, or the friends that I arrived with?”

  Frank shook his head, his eyes widening. “No, you wouldn’t want to go in there, especially not now,” he said.

  “Those men have attacked the nurses,” Jim said. “I even heard that Carlisle near put a knife in his own wife’s chest…he couldn’t recognize her. They believe they are still in the war. Their minds have gone. They believe that everyone else is the enemy, and they are just doing what they were trained to.”

  I swallowed hard, my heart aching. How terrible it was that these men gave up everything to protect our country…and this was the life they would have to suffer with in exchange.

  It wasn’t fair.

  “But that’s not the worst of it…” Jim said, his voice low. “One of the soldiers managed to escape.”

  “I wouldn’t have wanted to meet him in the darkness,” Frank said.

  “That was the doctors’ fear as well,” Jim said. “What if he attacked someone? He would stop at nothing to kill if he believed the person might have been his enemy.”

  My stomach dropped.

  “When, exactly, did this soldier escape from the hospital?” I asked.

  7

  Jim and Frank looked at one another. Frank’s brow furrowed, and Jim’s lips parted as he mouthed words, as if listing something in his mind.

  “Well, I cannot be sure of the precise date,” Frank said. “But it couldn’t have been more than a week ago.”

  “I think it was even less than that,” Jim said. “Five days at most, I believe.”

  My heart skipped.

  It was far too much of a coincidence, wasn’t it? These poor, delirious men…what if the one who had escaped had stumbled upon the Polish refugee, who had no place to go, and nowhere to hide? If so many other people in town had suspected he was German…how much more would a soldier without his wits believe it as well?

  “You look troubled,” Frank said. “What’s wrong?”

  “It’s – ” I said, wondering how much I should tell these boys. I decided it was best not to voice my theory just yet…not when I had so little information. It was far too easy to let the mind run away with its own fears. “What happened to the soldier?” I asked. “How and where did they find him?”

  “Well, I was awake the night it happened,” Jim said. “It must have been close to four in the morning when they noticed he was gone. The nurses were just finishing their shifts, and they always make the rounds to check on their patients before they retire for the evening. I heard whispers at first, but they became more frantic. Soon after, I heard a pair of them talking outside in the hall. They said one of the patients was missing from his bed. Well, that began quite the search. They were known to wander sometimes, but it was usually never far from their room. They searched the whole house, top to bottom, though, and were unable to locate him. It was then that they found the back door cracked open, someone having forgotten to lock it that day…”

  “It took them the better part of the next day to find him,” said Frank. “It seems he had wandered all the way down the road into the village. They found him passed out along the side of the road, covered in mud and goodness knows what else…it seems he injured himself somehow, as well, or reopened one of his gunshot wounds, because there was blood all over his hospital gown.”

&
nbsp; Blood. Just like the beggar, who was also covered in blood when they found him…

  “The problem is that they will never know what happened to him,” Jim said. “Or what he thinks might have happened. They’ve tried to ask him why he escaped like he did, but he can’t seem to understand their questions.”

  “Did they inform the police about all this?” I asked.

  Frank shrugged his shoulders. “All we know about what happened is what we have overheard the nurses and doctors saying. He’s now been confined to a room, and spends most of his day sedated. They’re hoping that once his wounds heal, and he isn’t losing so much blood, that they’ll be able to get someone in here to talk with him, maybe help open him up somewhat.”

  “I’m sorry you had to hear all that,” Jim said with an apologetic smile. “The rest of us are pretty decent chaps, though. We won’t mistake you for the enemy. I promise you that.”

  I smiled at him. “I know you won’t.”

  Soon after, Nathanial and Irene were ready to leave, not wanting to stay away too long while a neighbor sat at the house with their son.

  “Thank you, both, for such a pleasant time,” I told Jim and Frank.

  Frank beamed up at me. “Next time you write home, make sure you tell your sister to tell her friend to tell her sister that you met me.”

  I laughed. “I’d be happy to do so.”

  I shook hands with Jim, since Frank’s was bandaged.

  “Thank you for taking the time to spend the evening with us,” he said, and his earnest tone gripped my heart. He squeezed my hand. “It was nice to discuss something completely ordinary for once. Perhaps I will dream of more mundane things tonight.”

  “I know I certainly will,” Frank said with a laugh.

  I promised them both I would return to visit as soon as I was able, and left with Irene and Nathanial.

  We climbed into the car, my mind whirling.