The Search for Joyful (18 page)

 
CONNIE'S WEDDING WAS approaching, and I'd written that I couldn't come. But she telephoned. I heard her ask, and I couldn't say no. I decided on the spot to borrow the money. After all, it was my sister.

The trip was accomplished over a weekend. I traveled, one of the few women, in a train jammed with servicemen on leave or posted to the west coast. The conductor put me up front where he could keep an eye on me, and I kept my nose in a book.

Mama Kathy was at the station. I recalled it later in almost snapshot highlights. Her arms around me made me remember the Kathy I had been. At the church I met Jeff and liked him. He was a big man, sandy colored. Hair, mustache, eyebrows all the same neutral shade.

It was just an impression because Connie was in the priest's private chamber. I stopped at the threshold when I saw her. Mama Kathy had made Connie's childhood dream true. The gown was the one she had described to us for years, the waist tucked with invisible stitches, the scalloped neckline, the filmy skirt cascading over satin. How often had I heard it described! The bouquet she carried, the orange blossoms for her hair—all matched the fairy tale.

I fastened on the beautiful dangling earrings Mandy had given me. The chords of the organ meant a final kiss, and I went with Mama to take my place in the pew.

It played out exactly as it was supposed to. It was her day. Twenty years later, and the groom and tiered wedding cake appeared as if by magic.

 
IT WAS AN unusually busy week. I must have passed and repassed the nurses' station a dozen times. Sister Ursula came looking for me. “Kathy,” she said, “Colonel Boycroft wants to see you.”

“What about?”

“It's Colonel Boycroft,” she repeated.

This was it. Colonel Boycroft was someone you saw when a complaint had been lodged against you, or you were brought up on charges. Even the room was oppressive, it seemed to close in on you. The colonel, from behind a massive desk, sent a keen glance in my direction. Nothing escaped him, not a strand of hair out of place or a pinned hem you hadn't had time to sew.

He began amiably enough. “Well, Nurse Forquet, you've done very well here. I understand you are in the graduating class. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir,” I said and waited.

“We've all watched your progress with pride.”

“Thank you, sir.” The more he went on the more nervous I became.

“The reason I asked you to come in is that something disturbing has transpired. Was it last May you did your stint at the dispensary?”

“Let me see, yes, it was . . . ,” I was saying on one level. On another I was thinking—It's caught up with Mandy.

“We have just inventoried our accounts and made the unfortunate discovery that the written record and the supplies on hand do not tally.”

“You mean some of the medicine is missing?”

“Drugs, Nurse Forquet. This is about drugs.”

My heart was pounding. “There isn't a possibility of a mistake in the records?” I asked.

“I wish there were. They've been gone over meticulously. Naturally suspicion falls on those that had access. Now, if you've any knowledge of this affair you'd do well to tell me about it.”

I shook my head.

“It's only fair to warn you that the matter is now under official investigation.”

“I didn't take the drugs, sir, if that's what you're thinking.”

“I'm not thinking that at all. However, everyone who had access this past six months is under suspicion.”

“I see, sir,” I murmured, because he seemed to expect me to say something.

“My personal belief is that the matter will turn out to involve some outside source.”

“Yes, sir,” I said briskly, and left his office with a more hopeful attitude. An “outside source” was none of us, but a vague phantom figure to pin the theft on. It seemed to me a good solution. And I turned my attention to my upcoming graduation.

I knew Mama had spent every cent she had on Connie's wedding. I knew they couldn't come, but I wrote anyway. I was glad Connie had her wedding. I remembered how dream-like it had seemed, but I knew Mama Kathy had worked behind the scenes to match it to Connie's expectations. Only Georges was missing from it. But he was showered with descriptions, as we all wrote blow-by-blow accounts. Connie enclosed pictures and a piece of wedding cake.

There were very few times in my life when I was reminded that I was poor, and even fewer that I cared. But for this occasion wouldn't it have been wonderful to send everyone tickets to come to Montreal? What a fine time I would have had showing them the city.

I was graduating six months earlier than originally planned. The ambitious program combining nursing with military training, casualty evacuation, army discipline, all that, had not been feasible. So the military part was postponed, to allow us to become nurses. After graduation we would report to Ottawa to receive a concentrated preparation for battlefield conditions.

The year and a half had passed, one day so like another. Routine melded it together. The faces changed, the names changed, but the cot numbers didn't. The work gradually became more specialized, more intensive, and the responsibility had grown, but it wasn't that different from my first days. Now graduation was only a month away. After that I had no idea what my life would be.

Mandy and I had long conversations on the subject. We agreed that we wanted a posting overseas. After our strenuous apprenticeship we thought it should pay off with actual combat service. Mandy was keen for the Pacific theater. She wanted to see coral sands and palm trees, and experience warmth in winter. It seemed a likely prospect, as the Americans were retaking island after island. But the European front was seeing some of the most hard fought battles of the war. One thing Mandy and I were determined on, we would stick together.

I had sealed up my letter when Mandy came in breathless and flustered. “I just heard, Kathy. They've apprehended someone. But it's all right,” she hastened to assure me, “the girls say he's an outsider.”

“You mean there really is someone?” I'd convinced myself that Boycroft had tossed that out as a cover for letting things drop. Apparently I had misjudged the situation, and he had no intention of letting it drop.

“Outsider or not,” I said severely to Mandy, “we can't let some innocent person—”

“It won't come to that. He's the wrong man. They'll discover that and let him go.”

“Maybe,” I said, but I knew from Papa Mike that the law could stumble as badly as the rest of us.

“Anyway,” Mandy concluded, “Boycroft wants us in his office.”

“What, again?”

“Trisha and Ruth too. And maybe some others.”

Trisha and Ruth were already there, looking scared and guilty. In real life, I thought, people play their roles backward. The more innocent you are, the guiltier you look.

“Now then,” Boycroft began, “it's been brought to my attention that you four were all on duty at one time or another during the tenure of Charlie Smith.” He was observing us closely.

Each in turn denied she knew any Charles or Charlie Smith.

“What about you, Kathy?”

“Charlie Smith? I don't know any Charlie Smith either, sir.”

“I thought you might. He's an aboriginal. Drives one of the trucks for the army vehicle pool.”

“Oh,” I said, breaking in on him, “
that
Charlie Smith. Yes, I know him. Surely he's not under suspicion?”

Boycroft tapped the surface of the desk with his pen. “You know what a private's pay is. He had opportunity and motive.”

“And he's Indian,” I finished for him.

“Now see here,” he said, suddenly flustered, but the next moment regained his composure. “That has nothing to do with it.”

“Yes, sir.” I saluted. The other girls were staring at me. “I'm glad to hear you say so, sir.”

This was the point at which Mandy would speak up. She would say something like, “It's Robert Whitaker II you want.”

She didn't.

She didn't say anything.

Boycroft dismissed us.

Mandy joined the other girls, forming a small knot in the hall. I ran past them to our room and got the wolf tail from the back of my closet.

“He doesn't have the right kind of name,” I whispered into the fur. “The one they call him by, Charlie Smith, won't stand up in court, it won't stand up against Robert Harley Whitaker II. They need to find a guilty party, close the case, get it off the books. A poor Indian called Crazy Dancer fits the bill. You've got to help him.”

I heard Mandy at the door and shoved my talisman back on the shelf.

She came in.

“What is the consensus?” I asked. “That the Indian did it?”

She didn't answer.

Without Mandy to back him up there was only Crazy Dancer's word, the word of an Indian.

And if I implicated Robert, put the blame where it belonged? But again it was a question of names, who he was and who I was.

“Mandy, you've got to speak up. Crazy Dancer did you a good turn. You owe him, Mandy. For God's sake, Mandy, you owe yourself the truth.”

She regarded me stonily.

Apparently Mandy and I had nothing to say to each other. And this was the friend I wanted to share a war with.

 
I MADE ROUNDS in a preoccupied fashion. If I gave testimony, I saw what the consequences could be. We were both Indians, weren't we? Probably in cahoots. For an army nurse to aid and abet was a serious offense. Was that what I had done? How? By putting ice on Mandy's cheek?

On my way to breakfast Sister Magdalena stopped me with the usual refrain, “Colonel Boycroft—”

“I know—would like to see me.”

The stiflingly small room held the same young women, but I was scarcely conscious of this. I focused with every sense in my body on Crazy Dancer. He was standing there, looking debonair, even genial. Boycroft, I'm sure, had been affable. And Crazy Dancer would have expanded on his answers. Especially when the girls came in. Had he told about doing a shaman dance? Poor, vulnerable Crazy Dancer. He had no idea how serious the white man considered this, and probably figured that since they were on a wrong tack, the whole thing would blow up in their faces.

Each of us in turn was asked to identify Mr. Smith as the private who delivered the medical supply shipments.

“Yes, he's the one.”

“It's him.”

I too nodded in the affirmative and uttered, “Yes.”

Surely Mandy—But looking at her, she appeared cool, restrained, and in perfect control. “I'd recognize him anywhere” was her contribution.

When it was too late, when a pair of uniformed MPs came in and took out handcuffs, I could see realization set in. This wasn't a game. These people were going to take him into custody, arrest him.

Up to now Crazy Dancer had avoided looking at me, afraid I would spoil his fun. Now, with a bewildered glance he sought me out.

My eyes fell before his expectant glance. His wrists were clamped behind his back, and he was marched from the room.

Mandy was waiting for me in the hall. “Don't worry about Crazy Dancer. It's just to throw them off the track, delay things while we think what to do. I know I can count on you, Kathy. I never doubted your loyalty.”

I pushed her roughly into the storeroom.

“As it happens, you're right. I am loyal. But my loyalty is to Crazy Dancer. If you think I'm going to let Crazy Dancer take the fall for Robert, you're wrong. It's Robert's mess, and one of you is going to clean it up. If you don't go back in there and tell Boycroft the truth, I will.”

“You're sticking by him because he's Indian.”

“There's also the fact that he's innocent,” I reminded her.

“That's why it isn't as serious for him as it is for Robert. For Robert it means court-martial—maybe even . . . You can't ask me to do it.”

“I'm not asking. I'm telling you, you have to.”

“I can't, Kathy. I simply can't do it.”

In a way I was proud of her not being able to. Of course she couldn't. She loved him.

“And what about me?” she went on. “If I tell on him, I'm dragged in.”

In spite of myself I almost smiled. I had never known Mandy to put herself second before.

“After all, I'm army too. What if I'm sent to prison? I'd die. My family would die. They would never get over it.”

“I think they would.” But mention of her family shifted my thinking, and I struck out in a new direction. I remembered the Brydewell plaque in the hall. We shouldn't leave her powerful, influential family out of the equation. “You've given me a clue. Your father's a lawyer. You've got to phone him, level with him.”

Mandy recoiled in genuine horror. “You don't know him or you wouldn't ask me to do such a thing.”

“It's the only way. I'll place the call for you.”

“You mean right now? I tell you I can't.”

“You can.”

“All right, I
won't.
I'd rather die.”

She had repeated that once too often. “If that's your decision, very well.”

Mandy shot me a wide-eyed glance. I could see she was struggling. But there was no question, we had to have help. And there was no one else.

“All right,” Mandy capitulated, “place the call.”

We went into a vacant office, and she guarded the door while I dialed the number she gave me and handed her the phone.

It was her father's office, and she was passed through a receptionist and a secretary. I stood beside her as she cleared her voice. She began by asking how everyone was, including the dog. Then in a rush of tears the whole miserable story poured out.