Gail Godwin - Flora

“How was it strange?” I needed to know.

He didn’t say “don’t be rushing me, darling” this time, but gave it some thought. “It wasn’t a friendly smile,” he presently said. “It was more what you’d call a malevolent smile. Like there was something more to come that you weren’t going to like. Only I didn’t know yet what that something was.”

Flora, still rubbing her arms up and down, hung on to his every word.

“I told her my lung was healed,” continued Finn, “and that I was expecting to be sent back into combat: there was still the war to be won. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘well, I hope you see some action, if that’s what you want. Maybe there will be more jumping to do.’ Then she said she had a taxi waiting and a return bus to make and she was glad I had been spared. I was touched by her being able to say that just as I was extremely touched that she’d come all this way, and I must have made some move toward her, but she shoved the tin of baked goods into my hands and said, ‘He didn’t get to make the jump because their plane was shot down. A few of them jumped and then it was shot down. You could have been on that plane, waiting your turn to jump. Though maybe with your good luck you’d have been one of those first few who made it out.’ And then came that smile again and she said, ‘You know what I keep asking myself? Why couldn’t he have been as clever as you, getting yourself evacuated like that?’ And then she was gone.”

“Oh!” cried Flora, unclasping herself. “What a dreadful thing to say!”

“If I hadn’t been hugging that tin to my chest, the whole thing could have been something I’d dreamed,” said Finn.

“You must have felt awful,” said Flora, whose eyes were predictably brimming.

“I felt nothing, nothing at all. Instead, there were these important tasks I had to fulfill to set things right.”

“What kind of tasks?” I asked.

“Oh, very logical, orderly tasks. Or they seemed so to me. They presented themselves to me in a very logical and orderly fashion, one after another, hour after hour, day after day, and within a week or so I had crossed right over the line into madness, following my logical, orderly little list. First, I had to obtain the names, ranks, and serial numbers of every man in the stick—the eighteen paratroopers carried by each C-47 make up a stick. Then I had to ascertain the fate of each man: Did he jump or did he go down with the plane? And if he made it to the ground, did he survive and accomplish his mission or—Then it got more and more complicated and more and more specific. What was his mission if he lived and where, exactly, was he buried when he died? I can tell you, I made a nuisance of myself with the hospital staff. I required all this special information and I told them they had to go through the channels and get it for me quickly because lives were at stake. ‘Don’t you realize much of this stuff is still under censorship?’ they said. Until they started looking at me differently and saying, ‘Don’t worry, son, we’re taking care of it. In the meantime, swallow these pills and get some rest.’ But somehow I escaped back up that mountain we had to climb to strengthen our lungs. I don’t remember at all how I got there, they say I must have slipped out of the hospital during the night and hitchhiked. When they found me at the top of the mountain I was wrapped around a tree, starkers, covered with leaves. Just as well we were having a warm November. Not that I thought so when they found me. It took three of them to hold me down. They had aborted my final mission, you see. I was supposed to exchange myself for Barney.”

“What’s ‘starkers’?” I asked.

“Without any clothes,” said Finn.

“What happened then?” Flora asked.

“Oh, then, I found myself in another wing of the hospital, talking to mental doctors rather than lung doctors, and then one day last spring I found myself signing papers for a medical discharge. The thing about the medical discharge is that you still receive certain benefits—for instance the Army continues to pay for my visits to a psychiatrist, but other benefits, like education, are forfeited.”

“Like the GI Bill,” moaned Flora. “But Mr. Crump did say your father had pulled some strings and they might upgrade the discharge so you could get it after all.”

“That’s the plan,” said Finn, looking suddenly impatient with the whole subject. He chose one of my crippled cheese straws, bit into it, and pronounced it perfect, which I thought was going too far.

THE PHONE RANGwhile the three of us were having dinner.

“It could be my father,” I said, jumping up to take the call in the kitchen.

It was my father, unusually talkative. He went on and on about the huge complex they were building, going into minute details about the ductwork and the roofing and how he’d gone to the local jail to spring one of his crew who’d drunk too much and reportedly had a “dangerous concealed weapon” on him. “I had to explain to the sheriff that Willie was a roofer and the ‘dangerous weapon’ was a roofer’s tool for cutting felt.” He sounded so pleased with himself and was talking to me as an equal, only why had he picked just now to call? I stood on one foot, then the other. I leaned against the kitchen counter and studied my distorted reflection on the back of a dessert spoon. I could hear a hushed, intimate exchange going on in the dining room. Finn was probably telling Flora the parts about going mad that he had judged best to leave out when “the child” was with them. How perverse life was. Nothing came at the right time.

“You and Flora getting on all right?” At last my father was winding down, or so I thought.

“Oh, yes. You want to talk to her?”

“Not specially. Unless you think I ought to.”

Though it would be good to get Finn to myself in the dining room, what if Flora forgot and revealed that we were having company? My father would start off being prejudiced against Finn for violating the quarantine, which could put an end to my plans for the Starling Peake room.

“Not specially,” I said back.

“Where is she now?” my father asked.

“Probably working on her lesson plans or writing a letter.” I was speaking low.

“Flora’s letters!” My father snorted. “Mother spared us those, didn’t she? She couldn’t dispose of them fast enough. Who is left for Flora to write to?”

“That colored woman who lives with them. She writes to her every week, she…”

But my father was now attacking the next thing. “Lesson plans! How happy I’d be never to see the inside of a schoolhouse again.”

I was shocked. “But what would you do?”

“Oh, stay here at Oak Ridge. They’re turning it into a little town. The pay is good and there’s plenty of building left to do.”

“But what would I do?”

“You’d go to school, just as you do now. They’ve built a school here. We could have a little house. I wouldn’t have to live in a men’s dormitory if you were here. What do you think?”

I could hardly reply. “Are you joking, or what?”

“Maybe I am, maybe I am. I’m feeling light-headed tonight.”

“Where are you?”

“I drove out a little ways—can’t drive far with this rationing. There’s a nice lake where they’ll make you a sandwich with a pickle and you can rent a boat. If you were here, we might take a boat out.”

“But what about our house ?”

“I take it you mean Old One Thousand, the old death trap. We could sell the damn thing. Start a new life with no ghoulish emcun—cum— cum brances.”

Only when he messed up encumbrances did I realize they were providing him with more than a sandwich and a pickle at the nice lake.