Spider Web (20 page)

Back in her room, I helped her into bed and arranged a white afghan over her legs. “I appreciate you talking to me, Miss Winnie. And I really appreciate what you did for our country. I know I’m not the first to say this, but you are a hero.”

“Oh, pshaw,” she said. “A lot of people sacrificed back then. It was hard, but you know, the main thing we knew is we were in it together. We had something to fight for. It sometimes felt harder when everyone got back home, truth be told. Women didn’t always know what to do with themselves. The fifties were hard to figure out. So many boys were injured, and I don’t just mean physically. Like my Frank, they were all jumbled up inside their heads from all the horrible things they saw and did.” She sighed, closing her eyes. “But we made it through, most of us, anyway, by just tending to our homes and families, putting one foot in front of the other. When I talked to the man upstairs, it seemed like the answer always was to get back to work. There’s comfort in good hard work. And remember that better times are coming. You mind that now, Benni. You and your nice husband. You’ll get through all right because you’re a hard worker and you don’t give up. Your mama would have been so proud of you.” Her eyes fluttered, and soon she was snoring softly.

“Thank you, Miss Winnie,” I said softly, touching her hand. Then I picked up the album and shut the door quietly behind me.

I was certain that Isaac would approve of putting Winnie Dalton and her story in the book. He’d have many picture possibilities with her. Maybe we could even go up to San Miguel, find the ranch where she grew up, if there was anything left of it, and take her photo there. I’d check it out first; see if it was possible to take her out there and if she wanted to go.

I drove back to the museum and locked the album in my file cabinet. Since the museum and co-op buildings had a security system, I figured it would be as safe there as at my home. First thing Monday I would see about scanning the photos and articles about the Angels of Bataan, as they were called in the articles. There was a historical society meeting next week. I had an idea that I hoped the members would like, a dual exhibit at the folk art museum and the historical museum honoring nurses throughout our county’s history. Winnie Dalton and her story could be a huge part of the exhibit. More people needed to know about these remarkable women.

Excited about this new idea, my mind was already starting to write the ad I’d place in the
Tribune
asking nurses to come forward and tell their stories. It would be wonderful if we could have interviews from nurses serving in all the wars—World War II, Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf War. I wondered if there were any nurses still alive from World War I. That seemed unlikely, but one never knew. Maybe I could convince a reporter to write an article about military nurses and as a sidebar ask any of them to contact the museum or the historical society.

I passed the historical society building, the old brick Carnegie Library, where I’d gotten my first library card when I was five years old, and noticed Dove’s little red Ford pickup parked in front. I swung into the side parking lot. I was excited to run my idea by someone, and Dove was the perfect person. She and Aunt Garnet were no doubt there getting the historical society table ready for the farmers’ market tonight. Wayne Burrows, my high school American history teacher, who’d retired last year, was staffing the front desk. He wore a brown and pink argyle vest and brown wide-wale corduroy pants.

“Hey, Mr. Burrows,” I said. “Is Dove here?”

He straightened some brochures and nodded toward the stairs. “Down in the basement. She and her sister are boxing up the materials we’re taking to the farmers’ market tonight.”

“Have many people asked about the Memory Festival?” The historical society had been one of the festival’s biggest sponsors, memories being their forte, so to speak.

“A fair amount of inquiries.” He rubbed a finger along the side of his ski slope nose. “The first time for anything is always a crapshoot. I have a feeling it’ll do real well, though, which will make next year’s more popular.”

I grimaced. “I don’t even want to think about next year. I just want to get through Saturday. Then we’ll talk.”

“Best laid plans of mice and women,” he said, chuckling.

“Robert Burns,” I called over my shoulder. “With some poetic license.”

“Good girl,” he called back.

Downstairs I found Dove and Aunt Garnet folding down the lids of two almost identical pasteboard boxes.

“
Hola, hermanas
Honeycutt,” I said. “Do you need me to carry those anywhere for you?”

Dove looked up and smiled. “No, thanks, honey bun. One of the men is just going to walk them over with a dolly.” Lopez Street, where the farmers’ market took place, was only two blocks away.

“We’re sharing a booth with the Paso Robles Historical Society,” Garnet said. “They’re setting up; we’re in charge of taking it down.”

“Sounds good. How are things looking for Saturday?”

“We’ve got our own booth for the Memory Festival,” Dove said. “But don’t you worry about it. We’ve got everything under control.”

“Glad to hear that.” I sat down on an office chair in the corner and spun myself around a few times, then stopped myself with my toe. “Say, did you two ever hear anything about the Angels of Bataan and Corregidor?”

“Oh, my, yes,” Aunt Garnet said, taping the top of her box closed. “They were famous. Back during the war, all the newspapers across the country wrote about them. We all thought they were incredibly brave and glamorous.”

“Bet they didn’t feel all that glamorous after eating weevil-infested rice and canned sardines for three years,” Dove remarked, not bothering to tape her box. “That’s if they were lucky, from what I hear.”

“I didn’t mean it in a bad way, Sister,” Aunt Garnet said irritably. “I just meant we admired them. They were very brave.”

“Yes, they were,” Dove agreed. “But it couldn’t have been easy coming back. After what they went through, which was more horrible than any of us could imagine, they paraded those women around like prize ponies. I bet a lot of them would have just liked to have gone straight home and take up their lives again without everyone asking them left and right what it was like, secretly itching to know all kinds of personal details they probably wanted to keep to themselves.”

Aunt Garnet’s face turned thoughtful. “I imagine you’re right. Guess I didn’t think about that. It was just such a special thing back then to see women being praised for their bravery. I think we all sort of wished a little bit that we’d been the ones celebrated.” She rested her long fingers on the top of the box. “They represented what we all hoped we could be: brave and resourceful in the face of evil.” She smiled at me. “I bet toy nurse’s kits were probably the most popular Christmas request for little girls the year the Angels were going around the country talking about their time as POWs.”

I stood up, picking up my purse. “Do you know Winnie Dalton was an Angel of Bataan?”

“I do,” Dove said. “That’s where I found out about how they were treated when they got home. She was proud to serve her country and tell her story, but she also told me that being asked to talk about it so much sometimes made it harder. Everyone expected her to always put on a brave face when all she wanted to do was go home, have about ten glasses of cold milk and take a long bubble bath.” Dove looked down at her hands resting on the pasteboard box. “But she did her duty again, speaking wherever she was asked to speak until people’s attention went to something else. Then the nurses were pretty much forgotten.”

“She gave me her photo album,” I said. “I mean, not me personally, but the historical museum. I was thinking we could do a special exhibit on nurses. All nurses in the history of San Celina County, but maybe military nurses could be the center of the exhibit.”

“Sounds good to me,” Dove said. “Once this festival is over, let’s talk about it.”

“Okay, I have to get going.” I started out of the room, stopping when I reached the doorway. “Say, now that I have you two together and there’s no one around, what’s the deal with fixing up Daddy? Why, all of a sudden, are you interested in finding him a woman?”

Dove and Aunt Garnet exchanged a look that was similar to one of our ranch dogs when they were caught chasing calves.

“What are you two cooking up?”

“We only want your daddy to be happy,” Dove said, crossing her arms across her blue chambray work shirt.

“He seems pretty dang happy to me,” I said. “At least he was until you two started putting him up on the auction block.”

“Now, we’re not that bad,” Aunt Garnet said primly, straightening a stack of flyers. “We merely introduced him to a select number of appropriate women . . .”

“And we’ve had to work darn hard at it,” Dove interjected. “He’s getting old. There’s not that many women around his age who aren’t married, dead or—forgive my French—loony tunes.”

“Or have questionable families,” Aunt Garnet added.

Tempting though it was, I didn’t comment on the
questionable family
reference, since there were those—okay,
me
—who thought that comment could very well apply to our family.

“He’s not old,” I said. “He’s only in his sixties.”

“Too young to be alone,” Dove said.

“Wait, I thought you said he was too old to find anyone . . .” Dove waved her hands at me impatiently. “Don’t you have somewhere to be? Don’t you have important things to do before Saturday?”

“That’s a subtle way of telling me to get lost.”

“See you downtown, honey bun.” She fluttered her fingers good-bye.

“Whatever,” I muttered to myself, ascending the wooden stairs. Actually, she was right. I did have somewhere to be. Home. It was almost five p.m. I needed to feed Scout and hustle over to the Memory Festival booth. Some of the other committee members had agreed to set it up, but it would open at six p.m. when the farmers’ market started with the blast of a loud air horn from in front of the Chamber of Commerce.

I brought in the mail, fed Scout and played ball with him for a few minutes, with promises for a longer session tomorrow. While grabbing a quick glass of orange juice, I glanced over the pile of mail I’d tossed on the kitchen table. Just the usual bills, junk mail, a couple of magazines and a white envelope with my name scrawled across it. I recognized Emory’s handwriting.

The envelope contained a single sheet of paper. A fuzzy photocopy of a Washington State driver’s license showed an unsmiling Linda Snider. I peered closely at her photo. It looked like her and it didn’t, like many people’s driver’s license photos. Her hair seemed darker in the photo, though it was hard to tell from the copy. Everything seemed to match—height five ten, weight 148. She certainly weighed less now, but who ever weighed what they said on their license?

Eyes—blue, hair—gray. Her birthday was April 14, one day before Emory’s. She was born in 1946. That made her twelve years older than me. She was born the first year of the baby boom. Closer to Gabe’s age than mine. She’d see life more like he did, remember the Vietnam War in a completely different way than I did. To me, the war in Vietnam had been a fleeting picture on the six o’clock news. I was seventeen when the last marines left Vietnam in 1975. Boys my age, including Jack, hadn’t worried about the military draft; it had ended two years earlier in 1973.

For some reason I thought of Winnie Dalton and the Angels. In a way, I understood what Aunt Garnet was trying to say in the historical museum, about being a little envious. Their courage had been tested, and they’d passed the test. Like men who’d never gone to war and would always wonder if they would have been a hero or a coward or something in between, I wondered how I would have fared had I been a POW like Miss Winnie and her fellow nurses.

Somehow, thinking about what Miss Winnie went through, what she survived, gave me hope that I could weather whatever life blew across my path.

Don’t give up, she had said. Put one foot in front of the other. Tend your home. Remember that better times are coming. Get back to work. These were things I could do.

CHAPTER 10

“Y
OU SURE COULDN’T TELL THAT A CRAZY MAN WITH A GUN was running wild in the city by this crowd,” Emory said later that evening. The farmers’ market had been open for an hour and a half. My cousin stood in front of the folk art museum booth gnawing on a giant barbecued turkey leg. He was right. The streets seemed more crowded than usual, and judging by the crowd’s carnival mood, no one seemed especially concerned that a sniper might lurk in the shadows.

“That thing looks positively radioactive,” I said, eyeing his juicy turkey leg. “No, that’s not exactly the right word.”

“Correct. It is not glowing.” Emory took another bite and groaned with pleasure. Only my cousin, dressed in loose khakis, a dark brown cashmere sweater and a blue chambray shirt, could look classy as a Saks Fifth Avenue ad while eating such earthy street food.

“Okay, it’s dinosaurian,” I said, straightening a pile of Memory Festival brochures. We had already gone through four bags of Hershey’s Kisses. They worked as a great draw to our booth. I just hoped the number of people who were willing to eat our free candy would translate into people attending the festival.