The Search for Joyful (19 page)

She listened intently to her father's reply. He did not modulate his voice, and I heard enough to know his decision was final.

Mandy hung up and looked at me. “I hate you.”

“He isn't coming?”

“He is!”

Mandy walked away without another word.

I had nothing to say. I had answered the appeal in Crazy Dancer's eyes. What else could I do?

 
NEXT DAY MR. Brydewell arrived. He was the eye of the storm, a gentleman used to having his way. Jurors must have felt this and quailed before him—judges too. He came in, trailing an expostulating Sister who was explaining that there was an adequate waiting room on the floor below, and that gentlemen were not allowed. . . He paid no attention but demanded that we accompany him to the office of the Mother Superior.

Colonel Boycroft was already there. The size of the room and the opulence of the appointments, in such contrast to his own cramped quarters, seemed to diminish his authority. There was no armed guard at the door, but the nun who acted as receptionist was as formidable.

Brydewell was quite at ease in these surroundings. He neither threatened nor bribed. Addressing Reverend Mother with deference, he said how delighted he was to meet the head of an institution that his family had been connected with for years. He let her allude graciously to the gold perpetual donor plaque, and even managed a disparaging gesture.

Turning to Boycroft, Brydewell mentioned his own service in World War I, and dropped the names of a couple of majors and a general. When his daughter telephoned, relaying the salient points of this unfortunate incident, the first thing he'd done was inquire into the reputation of the officer in charge. And he could report quite honestly that he heard fine things about the colonel's integrity and fairness. At which point his mind was much relieved.

Brydewell accepted a cordial from the hand of Reverend Mother, and continued. Regarding the matter at hand, a confused and totally incorrect version had been bruited about. It misrepresented the circumstances grossly. Regrettably, his own daughter, while in the care of the good Sisters and on his, the colonel's, watch, had been abused and physically beaten into taking a part in this wretched affair.

Without mentioning the word
lawsuit,
the implication was there. He left no doubt he considered the hospital extremely remiss in its supervision. If not exactly
in loco parentis,
the institution had a responsibility for young people who volunteered to serve their country. The fact that the true criminal was a member of the hospital staff and most particularly an army doctor placed the armed forces in an awkward position as well.

Mother Superior listened attentively, offered no defence, gave no advice, and rendered no judgment. However, she radiated a benign atmosphere of reconciliation, so that at the end of the interview both men understood each other perfectly, set down their drinks, and shook hands with great cordiality.

I felt dazed. I didn't know exactly what had happened.

When I got back to our room, Mandy was packing. “They won't let me graduate. After all the work I put in. Isn't that the pits?”

I put my arms around her. “Mandy, you don't know how lucky you are.”

She shrugged this off. “My dad isn't going to do anything for Robert. He told me he deserves what he gets. The only good thing to come out of this is they're releasing Crazy Dancer.”

“The only charge they could have held him on was being an Indian.”

“Kathy, I wouldn't have let anything really awful happen to him. I intended to come forward if, well, you know, if things got worse.”

“I believe you, Mandy. You always were soft-hearted.”

“Soft-headed, you mean.”

“That too,” I agreed.

At lights-out, after the final bell, I heard her bed creak. I reached out my hand, but she wasn't there.

I sat up. I could discern her by the glimmer of moonlight. She pulled her skirt on over her head, got into her coat, and came, shoes in hand, to the side of the bed.

“I'm going home with Dad in the morning. And in the morning they'll arrest Robert. But it isn't morning yet.”

 
GRADUATION!

The day came at last. But neither Mandy or I would be seeing palm trees. I'd had an interview with Reverend Mother, in which she asked me, after I finished the three-week officer training course, to return to the hospital as nurse instructor. The position was traditionally offered to their top graduate, and she thought I would be of most service helping train the new crop of student nurses.

I didn't mind. With Mandy gone, the adventurous aspect was gone too. To me war was simply a vast ravening horror that mutilated and maimed. Where I confronted its carnage made no difference. If I was wanted here, here I would stay.

The line of graduates, of which I was a part, straightened in anticipation as Mother Superior welcomed the audience, which consisted of the Sisters, a few ambulatory patients, and a sprinkling of friends and family who happened to be local. I was conscious of the gap beside me where Mandy would have stood.

Poor Mandy, no one spoke of her. They had reprinted the program, erasing her name. I rearranged the yellow roses in my hand as the line prepared to move. This hard-won day, the day I had looked forward to for a year and a half, was not the wonderful, exhilarating event I had hoped for. There was no one here for me. I hadn't expected there would be, but I felt a twinge thinking of Mandy, thinking of Mama, Connie, Georges. I had hoped Crazy Dancer would be in the audience. But he wasn't. The long line began to move.

Then I saw him. Crazy Dancer must be going on Indian time because he was late. This didn't embarrass him in the slightest. He came down front and took an aisle seat. People noticed and pointed him out; the drug debacle was fresh in everyone's mind. And the entire hospital was following the court-martial of Robert Whitaker II. The sentiment that predominated seemed to be: “I hope they throw the book at him.”

But that didn't happen. I'm sure that Robert was not the first young officer to stand before an army court, humbled and repentant. The fact that it was wartime loomed large in determining judgment. The accused was a surgeon. They needed surgeons. Especially in North Africa where Rommel was pounding away at Monty's Eighth Army. It was explained to Robert that there was such a thing as hazardous duty, and if he were to volunteer for it, that would go a long way toward squaring things.

Crazy Dancer appeared unaware that he was a subject of interest. He had come to see me graduate. And as I stepped up to receive my diploma from Mother Superior, I felt a surge of—not happiness, but joy. I was Oh-Be-Joyful's Daughter.

With a whoop I sailed my cap into the air, and Crazy Dancer caught it.

 
I DIDN'T SEE him until Wednesday, which was odd. He never came on a Wednesday.

I ran out to find out what was up. “It's Wednesday,” I said.

“A good day,” he replied, “to visit my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“Yes, I think it is time. She is a whirlwind of a woman, on the council, into politics, and, besides that, a recognized power woman. She will make the blanket ceremony over us.”

“The blanket ceremony? Isn't that . . . ?” I stopped, confused, wishing I hadn't started that sentence, hoping he would finish it.

He did, in a straightforward way. “Yes. It is the way we in the First Nation pledge ourselves to each other.”

“A marriage. You're asking me to marry you?”

“I am, and in all the ways possible: with Guiche-Manitou looking on, in a courtroom with a piece of paper, in a Catholic church with a priest.”

Crazy Dancer loved me. And I experienced the same joy I had when he showed up at graduation. Joy is a feeling that wraps you and lifts you like frosty breath in the air.

But now Crazy Dancer was saying something else. “I want to know that you are here for me when I come back.”

My joy bent like a stalk about to snap, and I waited, knowing, but waiting anyway.

“They called my unit up. We are being shipped out in two weeks.”

So this was the way it was to play out. I wasn't going overseas, but he was. I'd seen what shells and shrapnel did, I'd seen the pattern of abscesses under ulcerating skin, I'd dug out fragments of metal, probed for spent bullets.

Crazy Dancer said gently, “I see by your worry for me that you love me a lot. You do, don't you?”

“Yes. We traded souls when we sat on the moon.”

“And you will go with me to my mother's?”

“If that's what you want.”

“It's the way I planned it,” he confided. “I sold the car and bought two bus tickets. There's a short walk at the other end, a couple of miles. You won't mind, will you? Because it gives us the price of a dinner out and we can take in a movie.
The Great Dictator
with Charlie Chaplin, how does that sound?” he concluded happily.

I explained to Crazy Dancer that it would take a day to arrange things with the Sisters.

N
ine

THAT NIGHT, THE night before I was to get married, I tried to remember—did he actually say, Will you marry me? Did I answer, I will? I smiled and held my talisman against my cheek. This was the last night I would go to bed alone in a narrow virginal white cot. From now on there would be someone beside me, someone waking up with me. I didn't think it would seem strange, because it was Crazy Dancer, and I felt at home with Crazy Dancer.

I was drifting into sleep, and in my dream there was a feeling of loss, as though I had misplaced something. At first I thought it was Mandy I missed. Suddenly, the hairs of my guardian seemed to crisp and stand erect, as they processed a recollection I didn't want . . . making his cot up with hospital corners, settling another patient into it, answering the bell that had been his and no longer was. . . .

Elk Girl said very distinctly into my ear, “What about the onyx ring?”

“It's a keepsake,” I said to Elk Girl. “He said so himself . . . a war trophy, like a German helmet.” In the same breath he'd said, “I'm in love with my nurse.” We kidded about that, they were all in love with their nurses. We took care of them, talked to them, listened to them. Of course they loved us.

My dream shredded into the calm gray fields of sleep. Some time later I looked into thoughtful gray eyes. Elk Girl laughed a harsh laugh.

“It didn't mean anything,” I told Elk Girl.

“That's good,” Elk Girl said. “Because it wouldn't be very smart to marry one man when you're in love with another.”

“It would be a terrible thing to do,” I said indignantly. “And I am not in love with an enemy soldier. What kind of girl would fall in love with a German?”

“An Austrian, a gray-eyed Austrian,” Elk Girl reminded me.

“I was glad,” I told Elk Girl, “when they moved him to the prison ward.”

Elk Girl regarded me skeptically.

I reached out my hand to her, knowing it wouldn't touch anything. “It's Crazy Dancer we should be talking about. It's Crazy Dancer. Ask the forces you talk with to look out for Crazy Dancer. They're sending him overseas. Don't let any harm come to him.”

Elk Girl continued to regard me with that same unnerving look. “He's in danger all right, but not from enemy fire. Friendly fire is more deadly. It is you yourself who will wound Crazy Dancer and kill his spirit.”

“Never! I'd never do anything to hurt him.”

“You're marrying him, aren't you?”

Elk Girl faded. She wouldn't stay and listen. So it was Crazy Dancer himself I told. The next morning in the parking lot I said not hello but, “I love you.”

His eyes shone, and the spirit in him shone. I set down my suitcase and showed him the guardian wolf tail.

“He travels with us?” Crazy Dancer asked. “Good. He will help us find our way between worlds.”

When he kissed me I realized again how far joy is past happiness. Joy is a whole new ball game.

We had a chicken dinner at a colonial-looking restaurant. Afterward we went to the Chaplin film. At first I laughed along with the rest of the audience as I watched Chaplin and his Hitler mustache go through the silly antics of a buffoon. But the laughter dried up. I resented Hitler being portrayed like this, whacky and nutty. One was thrown off guard, no longer afraid. Yet we must be afraid; I was afraid. This fool had reached into the life I was beginning with my young husband, and . . . and God knows what would happen. Separation, that was for sure. He didn't seem to worry, but I did. The thought of being injured didn't bother him. To him bodies, like jalopies, could always be fixed.

Sometimes they could. Sometimes. The film was still flickering on the screen, when I whispered, “Can we go?”

“You want to go?” He was amazed. He'd been having a good time.

Once we were outside the theater I attempted to pass it over, “Instead of watching other people's lives, I want to get on with ours. I want to meet your mother.”

“I'll tell her you prefer her to Charlie Chaplin. She'll like that. She says movies are a drug they feed the people, like the old Roman circuses.”

“She must be quite a character.”

He nodded, agreeing with me. “She's small and her voice is gentle. But she has the soul of a warrior.—Tell me,” he added, squeezing my hand, “why in God's name are we talking about my mother?”

We traveled most of the night, and slept sitting up in the bus, holding hands.

Starting a day with Crazy Dancer beside me brought it home. Someday, when the war was over, that was the way it would be.