Danielle R. Graham - All We Left Behind

‘Ladies,’ I greeted them but extended my hand to Donna Mae. ‘Would you care to dance, Donna Mae?’

Donna Mae tucked her chin down timidly and glanced at the other girls. ‘You’re a sweet one, Hayden, but you know I dance like a lame horse. Ask one of the other girls.’

‘Just follow me. It’s easy – like walking.’

‘I can’t walk all that well half the time either.’

‘Trust me.’ I pulled Donna Mae by the hand and spun her around a few times. She smiled as I ushered her across the grass in a Lindy Hop. Well, I was doing a Lindy Hop. She was doing more of a wounded Bunny Hop.

We danced for another song, then Joey cut in, which I knew he would. Donna Mae giggled as he spun her around. Chidori was watching me, but when our eyes met, she pretended to write in her journal. I shoved my hands in my pockets and casually strolled over to her stand. A customer beat me to the counter. After Chidori placed two cucumbers into the customer’s basket and collected the money, I leaned in and whispered, ‘Would you care to dance, Miss Setoguchi?’

Her face lit up at the invitation, but then she dropped her focus to the counter of the booth. ‘I should keep working, but thank you for asking.’

‘I think you should take a break. Just leave the vegetables out on the counter. You give most of them away at no charge anyway.’

‘Ha ha. You are quite the comical one.’ Her gaze met mine as she considered it, but then she scanned the fairgrounds and her forehead creased as something else crossed her mind. ‘What was the problem between you, Rory and Fitz earlier?’

‘It was nothing. I’m not here to talk about that. I’m here to convince you to take a break and have a little fun dancing with me.’

She smiled reluctantly with one corner of her mouth. ‘I have to admit you are a smooth dancer.’

I chuckled. ‘Thank you, but I’m still looking for the right partner.’

‘I see.’ Her eyebrow arched delicately.

‘Maybe you could give me some pointers.’

‘You seem to do just fine all on your own, Mr Pierce.’ She bent over to transfer apples from a crate on the ground and restocked a basket on the counter.

‘I’m surprised you noticed. I thought you were too busy to socialize, with all your customers and whatever it is you’re always scribbling in that journal of yours.’

She winked and tied raffia to make bunches of beets. ‘I am quite capable of doing more than one thing at a time.’

‘Good to know. Let’s dance one quick swing before I have to go meet my pop and your uncle Massey at the dock.’

She rolled her eyes in a subtle surrender and placed the beets on the counter. ‘Fine. One dance.’

I nearly jumped out of my shoes in joy, but as she stepped out from the stand, the band announced they were going on a break.

‘Wait!’ I shouted and ran across the grass lot to the edge of the stage to speak to the piano player, who also happened to be the butcher. ‘One more, please, Mr Cooke.’

‘Sorry, kid. We played all the songs we know. Besides, we’ve been at it all morning and I for one need something to eat. There’s a fresh-out-of-the-oven chicken pot pie over there calling my name.’ He hopped off the stage and headed over to the pot-pie table with zero concern for the disappointing predicament he left me in.

As I walked back towards Chidori, I shrugged with my palms facing skyward. ‘Sorry. I tried.’

She returned the gesture. ‘It’s okay. There will be other opportunities.’

I nodded to agree, but truthfully I was disheartened. ‘The Issei Sun is due in a few minutes. Are we still on for a walk later this afternoon?’

‘Yes.’ Her excitement flickered through her eyes first before it reached her lips. ‘Meet me at my house once you’re finished selling the fish.’

‘Dandy. I can’t wait.’

The oddly coupled rural Italian soldiers didn’t shoot me. Instead, they arranged for a farmer to hoist me onto a primitive wood cart pulled by a scrawny, malnourished horse. They hopped a ride on the cart, too, only half-heartedly pointing their guns in my general direction since I wasn’t in any condition to fight or run off.

It was a strangely emotionless purgatory to be neither safe nor in immediate danger. Possibly I was in shock from the pain of the burns, or maybe it was just such a peculiar circumstance that my body wasn’t sure how to react, but I felt detached from the reality of what was happening.

An hour into the bumpy journey, the Italian farmer’s cart hit a pot-sized hole on the bombed-out dirt road. The rough jolt threw me against the grasshopper soldier, who smelled like tobacco and dried sweat. He pushed me off as if I disgusted him and yelled at the farmer to instruct him to watch where he was going. I didn’t understand the words but the sentiment was evident.

Dusk fell as we finally passed several stone, thatched-roof farmhouses on the approach to a German-occupied Italian village. The buildings were mostly rubble from the bombings, but laundry lines hung beside some of the structures that still had partial roofs, and I could imagine the peaceful quaintness that must have existed before the war. The farmer’s cart jarringly bounced over cobblestone towards a central plaza, designed around what at one time would have been an impressive tiered marble water fountain. It was half destroyed and empty. The cart stopped in front of a town hall that had been converted by the German military into a Kriegslazarett , a makeshift battlefield hospital for Allied prisoners of war. Several Nazi military jeeps and an ambulance were parked outside the one-storey, wood-framed building. The Italian soldiers stood on either side of me so I could rest my weight on their shoulders as they assisted me inside to surrender me to the Nazis. A clerk took one look at my burns and directed the soldiers to haul me promptly into an office that served as a treatment and operating room. They hoisted me roughly onto a cold metal gurney and then made their leave.

A German doctor who couldn’t have been much older than Tosh examined my feet and shook his head with a gravity that translated loud and clear through the language barrier. I worried it meant amputation. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and, without applying any numbing agent, began the tedious and tormenting task of cleaning the wounds with a solvent and a sharp metal utensil. I couldn’t watch. And my body convulsed in an instinctual gag as the layers of charred skin fell off. My fingers gripped the cold metal table, and although I was on the verge of shouting out in agony the entire time, I cursed only twice – once when he peeled off the last fragile layer of skin, and again when he doused the raw surface with a pungent disinfectant. Holding in the pain made my heart race, the surface of my tongue dry into a paste, and sweat gush from every pore on my body.

A nurse entered the room and smiled at me with a kindness that made me momentarily forget the physical suffering. But then I ached for the comfort of home. Her dark brown hair was twisted into a bun with her white nurse’s cap pinned just above it. Rose wore her nurse’s cap the same way. The nurse was pretty – almost as pretty as Chidori. Almost. No woman I’d ever seen was prettier than Chidori. When we were growing up, strangers always commented on how she was as beautiful as a porcelain doll. And it was true, she did resemble the doll on my sister’s shelf, with her long eyelashes, peachy-coloured cheeks, and lips that seemed always ready to kiss something. I didn’t realize until I was much older how rare it was to be that striking in real life.

The doctor left and the nurse gently wrapped my feet with bandages. When she was done, she reached over to turn my hand. Her frown deepened because my palms were burned badly as well. With the antiseptic the doctor had used, she cleaned my hands, arms, and a burn that ran up my neck and jaw. I winced and bit my lip to prevent myself from cursing in front of her.