Frost
on the Quince -all
rights reserved (This passage may not be used or duplicated
without the author's written permission)
CHAPTER
ONE
Maggie could walk
this trail blind-folded. The beaten dirt path led from the road down
beneath
the overarching fir trees until they blocked out the glow of the
evening sky.
The damned Pacific Northwest sky.
Evening settled
here so differently from the tropics. For six of the past eight years,
the sun
had settled into the Pacific and, like a light switch, night had come
to the
Agana Harbor on the island of Guam. Here, on Nootka Island that had
been her
childhood home, evening was a long, leisurely affair that started with
hints of
pink upon high, thin clouds. Golds, reds, and a hundred thousand shades
of blue
painted the sky each night.
She would often
climb this trail and pass up the gravel road to the rise where she
could watch
it to both the east and west. The islands to the west would become a
myriad of
black silhouettes etched against the brilliant golds. A dream wrapped
in a
celestial cloth of color.
And here she was,
after four weeks of travel. After tending the deaths the Japs had
brought from
the skies, like a sun of blood rising impossibly out of the west. After
the
life she had run away from had dragged her back home. Maggie now
trudged back
down between the fir trees.
The heavy strap of
her duffle bag cut sharply into her right shoulder from the hour-long
hike
across Nootka Island. She’d missed the last ferry, but a
fisherman had brought
her across the channel and dropped her on the narrow, rocky swath that
passed
for a beach in the Pacific Northwest.
Home. She blinked
against the darkness of the woods to little avail. She could see the
greater
darkness of the path before her. And the general shape of the arch her
father
had cut through the trees, but for a quarter-mile, her eyesight was of
no use
to her feet.
Home. Brushing by
her on the trail, a young girl, sixteen years old that day, long, lanky
and
near enough breastless, had scrambled up the trail in a similar
darkness. The
darkness of pre-dawn. When the head of the trail had been filled with
the pink
light of hope. Her shoulders, too, burdened with her worldly
belongings. Off
the island. Out of the state. All the way to San Francisco, where
she’d lied
about her age by two years to get into nursing school. And then the
Naval
hospital on Guam. As far from here as she could get.
The trail ended
with an abruptness that almost made her halt. But she didn’t
dare. Her father’s
orchard spread out before her. Row after row of trees. Over five acres
of
carefully tended, cultivated, cherished trees. Five acres of quince.
Even now she could
hear her mother’s voice slicing at the small, silent man as
he planted another
row. The gentle marine environment of the Pacific Northwest was one of
the few
places in all of the United States that could grow quince. And her
father, a
man of immense weakness in all other matrimonial matters, had insisted
on his
dream.
Where the trail
emerged, the younger trees reached to just her own height. She moved
down
through the years of quince plantings until they rose to twice her
height. All
tended and ever so carefully pruned. But they weren’t. It was
January and the
fall pruning that her father always started the morning after
Thanksgiving had
not been begun. It looked as if much of the fruit had been allowed to
rot and
fall. Even the prior year’s pruning was incomplete. Some
trees had suckers far
too thick for but one season’s growth. Others were half
tended and half left to
go wild.
Maggie’s feet
began to hurry down the trail for the first time. Her father was dead.
The
navy’s telegram calling her home from the life she had made,
the life she had
loved, had been succinct on that point. Arriving just three days before
the
attack on Pearl Harbor, it had saved her life. She’d boarded
ship from Guam to
Pearl on her way home the same day Pearl was attacked. Two days later,
as she
steamed into the disaster that had once been the pride of the Pacific
Fleet,
she heard the of the fall of Guam.
No one taken off
the beach. Four hundred and fifty marines dead or captive. Ginny and
the five
other nurses she’d left behind, also gone. And in the midst
of the blood and
the death, her orders had sent her home.
“Request for
indefinite Emergency Leave granted to Nurse Margaret Lawson effective
arrival
Seattle port.”
Fourteen words.
Fourteen words that was sending her back to the one place on the globe
she was
forever done with. Granting her a leave she didn’t want, but
had been forced to
ask for in response to fourteen words.
“Regret to inform
you. Father Silas Lawson deceased November 15th,
1941. Mother Ellen
ailing.”
The Navy was known
for its brevity. Every set of orders she’d ever received had
been fourteen
words long. Had the outbreak of war required more than fourteen? Were
there
teams of cipher people whose job was just to force every Navy order
into that
regimented pattern?
Maggie broke free
of the trees and ground to a halt. She’d forgotten Mt. Baker.
To the east, it
pushed ten thousand feet into the sky. A great cone of white glacier
rising
above the foothills, lost already to dusky blue and brown. Mt. Baker
glittered
like a torch, lit with hope long after the sun had left the face of the
San
Juan islands. Now gone from red to pink, she knew from ten thousand
sunsets,
the glaciers would soon turn a dusky blue and then darkness would layer
its
heavy blanket upon the land.
Between the
orchard and the water, a scant hundred feet of green grass spread
before her.
Waves splashed against the round boulders that made up the long stretch
of East
Beach. And to the left. She didn’t want to look, but could
not stop herself
from turning.
Crouched beneath
the unlikely redwood tree a thousand miles from where it belonged, was
home.
The log cabin her father had fashioned. Where he had lived and fought
for all
his wedded days. Gone before his time. Nagged into the grave at the age
of
sixty by the viper he had married.
She dragged her
eyes back to the mountain, but the sun had truly set beyond the horizon
and it
was fast fading into the dark night. The cabin remained, close, real,
the scent
of moss and wood smoke.
Wood smoke and a
crack of light escaped past the kitchen curtain. Her mother was home
and she
couldn’t walk the last ten steps of her four-week journey.
“Buck up, Maggie
girl.” The echo of her father’s rare advice was a
whisper to soft to reach even
the grasses before her. She could do this. She was an operating room
nurse. Had
helped amputate men’s legs. Had held young boy’s
hands, barely eighteen, whisper
her name as they died because they had no one else to call to. She
could face
one old woman.
She shouldered her
duffle which had slipped unnoticed to the ground. Leaned into the
strap, into
the pain, and headed for the cabin door.
# # #
“Don’t you worry
yourself, Kenny. This war will be over in just a few weeks.
That’s what that
young fool I pay too much to deliver the groceries said last week.
Doesn’t
matter that they won’t take you.”
Ken kept his mouth
shut as he fed a few logs into the big old woodstove. It tore him apart
that
they wouldn’t take him.
He’d applied to
the Navy first. After all, he had run the Nootka ferry since he was
fourteen on
the nights his father had been too drunk to drive the boat. And
he’d taken over
at eighteen just two years before the old man died by walking off the
wrong end
of a pier one night.
“Declined. 4F on
account of deafness in the left ear. Next.”
No sympathy. No
condolences. Damn it, no second chance!
He rammed in the
next log so hard it clanged off the back of the stove. He swung the
door to
before he could over fill it.
“Besides, Kenny,
if they did, who would be taking care about here. Certainly not that
useless
daughter of mine.”
Maggie. Well,
Maggie might be here if he hadn’t driven her off. Living
comfortably in the far
off South Seas. That is until the Japs dropped out of the sky and tore
up
Pearl.
And his second and
last attempt to join the services had been thwarted just this morning.
“Yes, we need
radiomen desperately, but not ones who can’t hear.”
The Army had
dismissed him more kindly than the Navy, but not much slower.
He’d worked his
amateur radio gear for years with only one ear. He’d
captained a ferry for
years with only one ear. Now the war was raging and he
couldn’t do a thing
about it.
And with those
wounds still smarting he came here to do his penance for driving off
Ellen
Lawson’s daughter.
The log cabin was
mostly this one room, two small bedrooms. Behind the kitchen wall was a
narrow
bedroom that had been Maggie’s. Beyond the far wall, Ellen
still lived, alone
now that her husband was gone. Though he suspected that Silas had slept
in
Maggie’s room since the day she’d left.
The main room was
a kitchen along one wall, a dining table that had seen many years of
use and
showed it, and beyond that two chairs and a tired sofa facing a window
that was
now covered in faded curtains that might have once boasted a broad red
and
white check.
And Ellen Lawson.
“You’re lucky,
Kenny. Stupid to go off about the globe like that.”
Lucky. He looked
about, but there was nothing to do here except listen to the woman carp
at the
world when she chose to speak at all. And tonight she was in rare form.
He felt sorry for
Bear. The old cocker spaniel lay on the rag rug that had been made
recently
enough to show the bright and cheerful fabrics that had been worked
together.
The only color in the room, it was the dog’s favorite spot on
the rough
wood-plank flooring. He aimed his sad eyes in his direction as Ken
sidled
toward the door.
Not tonight. No
sad dog eyes. He was going to go home and whimper in silence. Kids
barely
turned eighteen, old drunks in their forties who couldn’t do
a decent day’s
work, brightly polished young men dropping out of college were all
rushing off
to the war and being accepted right and left.
Even Maggie. She’d
gone off on June 15th, 1933, the day after her
sixteenth birthday.
The day after Ken had been so stupid.
Now just Ken and
the old women were being left behind. There were a hundred or so others
on the
island, but they were the old and the young. And Ken the deaf.
He reached the
door after offering Bear a scowl that didn’t bother the dog
in the least and
would have added to his sense of guilt if possible. He pulled it open.
A ghost stood
outside the door.
A beautiful ghost
from a distant past.
Brown hair no
longer down to her waist, instead cut short, even sassy, about her
ears. And
streaked by the sun like a breath of fresh air.
Her eyes, such a
dark blue. Sometimes almost black, like now.
Her hands at her
side. A duffle bag slung over one shoulder.
Maggie Lawson
blocked his escape.
Only now he didn’t
want to walk away as he had a moment before.
The Navy had
turned him down yesterday.
The Army today.
But Maggie had the
drop on them all, she’d done it eight years before.
He really didn’t want
to walk away from her again.
He wanted to run.
# # #
Ken Johnson.
His eyes wide as
if he’d seen a ghost.
She’d forgotten
about Ken.
He stumbled
backward as a brown and white blur came rushing up and passed between
his
knees. He fell backwards, landing hard on the floor.
She’d have laughed
if the dog hadn’t blasted against her in the next instant and
sent her
backwards into the night that had fallen as she contemplated the old
oaken
door, unable to knock or turn the knob.
He jumped off her
only to leap back to clean her face and bark and lick her some more.
“Bear?”
She’d left behind
a young puppy, barely a year old. Her one regret at running away from
home.
His half brown,
half white face bobbed in and out of her field of vision as he raced
forward
and back in greeting. And barked again.
“Shush you silly
beast.”
He collapsed into
a pile at her side so suddenly she had to laugh. Someone had popped the
balloon
that had sustained him.
“First person he’s
ever listened to. Pays me no more mind that you ever did. Two of
kind.”
Maggie looked at
the old woman in the doorway. Small, hunched, gray. Gray hair, gray
eyes, gray
skin. Yet she knew this person. Knew the faded blue bathrobe with red
roses
long gone pale pink. Long fine hands that could have been her own
except for
the age spots and wrinkles. Knew as surely as she knew her mother was
barely
fifty, yet this ancient woman was the same who had given her birth.
“Didn’t know I’d
been gone so long.”
Her mother crossed
her arms over her sunken chest.
“Not long enough.
Didn’t ask for you. Didn’t want you. Then or
now.” She turned and might have
slammed the door had not Ken been lying half across the threshold.
Instead she
stalked out of view and a moment later Maggie heard a bedroom door
slam.
Ken.
They scrambled to
their feet at the same moment. Well, she tried to, but the strap of the
duffle
was still over her shoulder and she only made it halfway before falling
back
much to Bear’s amusement. He again sprang to his feet and
tried to clean her
face.
Ken reached out a
hand, which she took and ended up toe-to-toe with the man. Man.
That’s what
he’d become. Instead of the second brightest, gawkiest kid in
the class, Ken
Johnson had filled out to have broad shoulders, a square jaw, and big
hands.
Big hands that had lifted her easily. So different from
Conrad’s fine surgeon’s
hands. The two couldn’t be more different. One capable of the
finest movement.
The most delicate and precise incision. Always under perfect control.
Ken . . . he could
crush something without even noticing with those hands. Something
large. Like,
perhaps, an oak tree.
“Uh, hi, Maggie.”
She extracted her
hand from his and he nervously backed away.
“What are you
doing here?” She bit her tongue but it was too late. Ken
Johnson always brought
out the worst in her. They had battled constantly in high school. When
she’d
made valedictorian, literally by a coin tossed by the teacher at their
request,
he hadn’t let up. Everything with him was a battle, and
clearly eight years had
not broken her of the habit.
“Just . . .,” he
looked about, but his support was stomping back and forth as loudly as
possible
behind her closed bedroom door.
“ . . . leaving.”
He grabbed a heavy
leather jacket, combed his thick, dark hair back from his light brown
eyes, and
shuffled past her. Somehow he managed to get by her without contact and
was
gone into the night before she recovered. If she could think of what to
say,
she’d call after him. But she couldn’t. And
didn’t.
She shooed Bear
into the house and closed the door. It was smaller than she’d
remembered, and
she hadn’t remembered it large. The quilt over the sofa back
was worn with age.
The four chairs
around the table were now three, and none of those looked too
promising. The
shuffling pace of her mother’s anger at long last stopped.
Maggie held her
breath, wondering when the door might open. Instead, after an
impossibly long
time, the bedsprings creaked as the old woman crawled beneath the
covers.
Home.
She dropped into
the corner of the sofa that had been hers when the weather was too
awful to
escape into the woods. Bear set his head upon her knee as she stared at
the
faded curtains. She
was home, not a
place she’d ever wanted to be.
