Phantoms in the Snow (11 page)

W
hen they arrived back at camp, Noah’s uncle collapsed.

Both he and the pilot were taken to the hospital barracks to be treated. Noah trotted along behind them, determined not to leave his uncle’s side.

“He has pneumonia,” the doctor pronounced after examining James Shelley.

Noah’s uncle tossed and turned, moaning loudly.

“His fever’s very high,” the doctor added, shaking his head.

Noah sat by his uncle’s bed, washing away the beads of sweat that were on his forehead. “He’s not going to die, is he?”

“I don’t know, son,” the doctor replied. “It’s a bad case, and your uncle is weak from his time on the mountain. They’re sending us a new drug soon called penicillin that someone developed to deal with pneumonia. I’ll give it to your uncle when it arrives and maybe it will help. But I’ve never used it before so I don’t know how he’ll respond.”

Noah felt as if he couldn’t breathe. He hadn’t prayed since his parents died. Now he prayed again. He prayed long and hard.

It couldn’t happen, he kept thinking. It just couldn’t happen to him again.

The fever raged on for three weeks. James Shelley thrashed around, throwing his limbs wildly from side to side. He muttered in his sleep, and in his delirium spat out incoherent words and strange phrases. Noah tried not to notice when the doctor left each day after checking on him. He had given James Shelley the penicillin when it finally arrived, but still his eyebrows were knit with worry.

Wiley, Bill, Cam, and Roger came to see him. Cam brought cookies his mother had sent, and Wiley told funny stories about things he’d heard people had muttered when they were delirious with fever. The stories made the others laugh, and Noah tried to join in but just couldn’t. They each offered to sit with Shelley while Noah got some sleep. Noah thanked them but did not take them up on their offer. He stayed right beside his uncle. If he was tired, he slept in the chair by the bed. Skeeter often slept in a chair beside him when his duties for the day were over.

Even Daniel came by, bringing hot food for Noah and sitting with him while he tried to eat. When Noah finished and Daniel stood to leave, he put his hand on Noah’s shoulder. “I told you he would make it.”

“But will he survive?” Noah asked in anguish as he looked at his uncle, so still and almost deathlike.

“Remember what I said in the barn, Noah,” Daniel reminded him as he left.

Noah looked back at his uncle. The man drank excessively sometimes. He was wild and boorish and hung out with questionable folks. But Noah knew he still cared about him, in spite of all that. And so he would do as Daniel said. He’d hold on to that hope.

A week later, Noah roused suddenly, his head having fallen onto his chest as he slept. The bed in front of him was empty!

Noah jumped from the chair, his heart thumping wildly. He looked around. The sick ward was empty, too.

Had his uncle died in his sleep? Had they taken his dead uncle’s body from the building without even waking Noah?

Then he heard the sound of a toilet flushing, and the door to the bathroom swung open. James Shelley stood unsteadily in the doorway, his face white and drawn.

“Did the pilot make it?” he demanded.

Noah almost choked with relief at seeing that his uncle’s fever had broken. “Yes, sir.”

A slight smile touched Shelley’s lips, replaced by a frown just as quickly. “Why aren’t you out training, boy? You go soft on me while I was recovering in here?”

Noah grinned. “My assigned duty is to watch over you.”

“I don’t need no darn babysitter,” James Shelley argued, but his voice was weak.

“General’s orders,” Noah told him. “You’re stuck with me.”

“Then what are you standing there for?” his uncle demanded. “Help me to the darn bed.”

Noah blinked back tears of gratitude, and silently prayed his thanks at the return of the surly man he had come to know and like.

Each day, James Shelley got better. Each day, he got grouchier. By the end of two weeks, he was back to his old self.

“I want a drink!” he roared at the doctor. “I just came down from the most horrendous ski of my life, and I need something to calm my nerves.”

“I’m going to tell you the same thing I’ve told you every day this week, James Shelley,” the doctor said, unperturbed. “You’ve just pulled through pneumonia. You’re on medication, medication that doesn’t mix with alcohol. Now, unless you’re really determined to do yourself in, you’re just going to have to wait a week or two to have that drink.”

“A week?” James Shelley roared. “I have to wait a week or two?”

Later they set a tray of food down in front of him. He peered at it.

“What is this crap?” he asked. “Baby food again? I keep telling them I want a real meal, not this wimpy toast and tea. I want steak and eggs.”

Noah stifled a laugh.

“Come here, boy,” James Shelley called. “Run over to the mess hall. Get them to rustle me up some real grub. I can’t eat
this. I need more than toast and jam to keep this big body going.”

Noah nodded and left the hospital. Outside, the camp was foot-deep in mud. The snow was melting. Spring had fully arrived while Noah sat pent up with his sick uncle.

Skeeter came up beside Noah. “He can be a real pain when he’s confined, can’t he?”

Noah smiled. “Yeah, he’s been running me all around since he started feeling better.”

Skeeter laughed. “Don’t worry. I heard the doctor say another two days or so and he’ll be back training again. He’ll just have to stay on the medication for a bit longer.” Skeeter motioned with his head. “Why don’t you take a few hours off? I’ll go sit with him awhile.”

“Thanks. Do you mind getting him some food first, though?”

Skeeter laughed. “Sure thing.” He began to head toward the mess hall.

“Hey, Skeeter?”

Skeeter turned.

“Do you ever get confused between what a person says and how they act?” Noah asked.

“You mean your uncle?”

Noah nodded.

“There’s never only one side to anyone, Noah,” Skeeter said. “There’s a good side and a dark side in all of us. I suppose with your uncle it’s just easier to see both sides. Most people hide one side or the other.”

Skeeter sighed. “Nah, nothing in this world’s ever black and white. But, Lord, wouldn’t it be nice if it was?”

“Yeah,” Noah said. “Maybe then I’d understand how my uncle can be so tough on me sometimes and so nice to me at others.”

Skeeter smiled. “He’s a good man, Noah. And maybe that’s all you need to understand.”

A week later, Noah was back training with the boys. After a day of rock training, balancing his way across wet logs and huge boulders, Noah went to look for Shelley. He was hungry and excited to tell his uncle about the day. He’d beat everyone across and hadn’t fallen once, though Wiley had, more times than Noah could count.

“Have you seen Shelley?” he asked one of the boys passing him.

“Yeah. He was headed toward the general’s office.”

Noah took off in that direction. As he neared the general’s office, he heard raised voices.

“I can’t do it!” the general was yelling. “I really can’t.”

“You’ve got to!” James Shelley insisted. “We’ve got to find a way!”

Noah peered curiously into the general’s office. His uncle was sitting in a chair with his back to the door. The general was pacing back and forth.

“You shouldn’t have lied to me, Shelley,” the general said. “You just shouldn’t have.”

Noah’s uncle shrugged. “Okay, okay. I’m sorry. I know I never should have had Dana get me a fake birth certificate for the kid,
but what else did you expect me to do with him? Send him to an orphanage?”

“He could have been killed out there on maneuvers,” the general snapped. “That’s no place for a fifteen-year-old.”

“He’ll be sixteen in two months. Besides, he ain’t bad, is he?” James Shelley said, grinning.

The general sighed. “Yeah, he’s pretty good. Actually, he’s really good on the ropes, and his skiing is improving, too.”

Then the general started pacing again. “But that’s beside the point. We’re moving to Texas now. Our time may be coming, Shelley. The Germans have finally been pushed back into Europe, and the military wants us trained in the maneuvers every army unit gets, so they’re sending us to Camp Swift. Things will be different there, more serious, more rules and regulations. I can’t have a kid with us, not until he’s sixteen. He just can’t go. I can’t do it.”

Noah suddenly felt a lump in his throat. His head pounded.

Noah’s uncle was silent a moment. “You’ve got to find a way, General. I want that kid with me.”

“And if we go overseas?” the general asked. “What then?”

“I’ll go back to his hometown while we’re in Texas, or I’ll talk to one of the military wives,” his uncle replied. “I’ll find someone to watch him while I’m there. He just won’t be in any orphanage, see, ’cause it won’t be permanent or anything.”

The general shook his head. “I’m sorry, Shelley, but you can’t. He can’t live in the barracks down there.”

“Then get me into married housing,” his uncle said. “They got kids there, don’t they?”

“Married housing?” the general hooted. “How do you expect to survive that, Shelley? You’ll hate it.”

“Just do it,” Noah’s uncle said, standing. “He’s the only family I got left, General, and maybe in the past that didn’t mean much to me. But I’m getting older, and it seems it does now. So, you gotta do it for me.”

The general stopped pacing and looked at Noah’s uncle. “You’ve really gone soft for the kid, Shelley.”

“I have not,” Noah’s uncle insisted. “He’s just family, like I said, that’s all.”

The general grinned. Then he waved a hand. “Okay, okay. All this incredible sentimentality from you makes me feel like throwing up. I’ll get you into married housing. I just hope that kid appreciates what you’re doing for him.”

Noah scrambled away from the door and around to the back of the barracks. He didn’t want his uncle to know he’d been spying on him.

He leaned against the side of the building, feeling the warmth of the wood, and thought about what he’d heard. His uncle had said Noah mattered. He was willing to give up his way of life for him. And that woman, Dana — if it wasn’t for her, Noah would have been sent to an orphanage long ago. All these thoughts crowded his mind.

He waited a minute or two and then came back around the side of the barracks. He was going to find his uncle. He’d tell him the truth. He’d tell him that he’d heard everything, and he’d thank him. His uncle deserved that. It was time he saw that Noah was truly grateful for what he’d done.

He could see James Shelley already ahead of him, striding down the road of the camp. Noah ran to catch up. But just as he reached him, a man on crutches stepped out from the door of the hospital. It was the pilot. Noah stopped in his tracks.

The pilot hobbled slowly up to James Shelley.

“Well,” Noah’s uncle said, “looks like you’re doing okay and ready for action.”

The pilot grinned and nodded. “Yeah. Thanks to you all I lost was a few toes and not my life.”

The pilot ran a hand through his hair. “Look. I want to thank you —”

James Shelley interrupted. “Stop, stop, stop. None of that now. I just did what I’ve been trained to do, that’s all. Go back to bed, soldier. You’re looking a little wobbly still.”

The pilot hesitated and then nodded. He stood straight and smartly saluted James Shelley. Then he turned and went back inside the hospital, closing the door behind him.

Noah stood and watched his uncle move away, farther down the road of the camp. Noah didn’t go after him. He didn’t know how to express to his uncle what he felt for him in a way his uncle would accept. How did he tell this reticent man that he had come to respect him and, in a strange way, care about him?

C
amp Swift was forty miles from Austin, Texas. And, Noah soon discovered, a million miles from Camp Hale. While their lives at Camp Hale had been hard from a training standpoint, the rules had been lax. But at Camp Swift, law and order were strictly maintained.

They were truly preparing for war now. On June 6, the Allies had hit the beaches in Normandy, driving the Germans deep into France. The tension and excitement over that victory were apparent everywhere at Camp Swift.

Noah and his uncle were housed with the married officers, and Noah was banned from training. Noah’s uncle grumbled every day. “Doggone, stupid idiots. It’s one hundred and two in the shade, and they got me in ties and shoes that have to be shined.”

Then he’d turn on Noah. “You know how lucky you are, boy? We gotta stand all day long in the heat. We gotta march up and
down and down and up. We gotta shoot rifles and dig foxholes in this confounded weather.”

Noah smiled. He remembered his first attempt at foxhole digging.

His uncle leaned down off the bed and grabbed something running across the floor. “And they got these lizards here. And snakes, too. And Skeeter has poison oak so bad, he can’t open his left eye. How’d you ever stand it in a place like this?”

“I don’t know, Uncle Shelley,” Noah said. “This wasn’t exactly what I remembered.”

“So, your memory’s faulty, eh?” his uncle said, stamping toward the door. “Well, see you tonight.” He threw the door open. “If I survive the heat, that is.”

And he was gone.

His uncle was right. Texas wasn’t at all what Noah remembered. He had finally gotten what he’d wanted. He’d come home. He was only twenty miles from where he had been born and raised, but it could have been the other side of the world. Noah didn’t feel right at all.

He moved idly around the house. Two weeks ago, Noah’s birthday had come and gone. With sugar in short supply, there had been no cake. And with everyone training so hard, there had been no party. He had turned sixteen.

Still, he had not officially signed up of his own accord. So Noah spent his days alone, feeling at loose ends. They had a little house, one among thousands of rows of married housing. All the houses looked the same and were painted the same color, a
light pink. Oftentimes, Noah got confused and went into someone else’s house. He hated how everything looked the same.

There was a pool and a theater nearby and other kids, too, children of the enlisted married men. But he couldn’t bring himself to make friends with them.

Noah had changed. His mind was still in the mountains. At night, he dreamed of skiing, of rock climbing, of scaling a granite wall. And during the day, he just kept thinking of how hot it was. On the walls of his room, Noah kept pinups of mountains from the camp newspaper, the
Blizzard.
The paper was the joke of the army. While other military papers had a pinup girl in each issue, the
Blizzard
had a pinup mountain. Noah waited each week to see which mountain would be featured and was always elated when it was one of the mountains he had scaled or skied.

He ran. He ran ten to twelve miles in the hot summer heat. He ran up into the hills near the camp, and among the brush weed that surrounded married housing. When he came back from running, he swam two miles in the pool, while other boys near his age splashed and played beside him and ogled the officers’ daughters. He couldn’t seem to join in.

At night, his uncle would come and get him and take him back to join the others in the single men’s barracks. Noah had become a celebrity. Everyone was proud of what he had accomplished back at Camp Hale, now knowing that he had only been fifteen. Wiley, Cam, Roger, and Bill cheered each time he entered the mess hall. Even Daniel offered him a smile. It wasn’t enough. He missed being with them. He missed the unit. He
missed the mountains. At night, he would sit with the rest of the 85th, 86th, and 87th, watch color slides of alpine scenes, and wish himself back there.

Noah knew he wasn’t the only one suffering. They all were. But it was different for him. He was home now. It shouldn’t have felt so strange.

When he ran and swam, he thought. And his thoughts just confused him more. Who was he? The Texas farm boy who’d left Austin after his parents’ death? Or the mountain boy who’d found a passion he’d never thought he had?

Noah thought about what his uncle had said. How
had
he ever lived or felt comfortable here?

Then an idea came to him, a crazy idea, but one that might settle some questions for him.

It would be a long run, but he could hike part of the way. He figured it would take him all day, maybe even into the night. But Noah didn’t care. Just the possibility that he could find some answers filled him with hope and determination.

So one dry, hot morning, Noah picked up a few canteens and filled them with water. He packed a knapsack with food. He wrote his uncle a note, telling him where he’d gone and that he’d be back in a day or two.

Then Noah strapped on the rucksack and headed out of the house. He closed the door behind him. He was headed for home.

Noah could see the house from a distance, rising out of the tall grasses, the flattened fields. He was tired. It had taken him
longer than he had expected. He had spent the night on the ground.

As he neared the white farmhouse, he slowed. He could feel his heart pounding. At the bottom of the steps to the front porch, he stopped, hesitant to go farther. But the house was empty, the
FOR SALE
sign fallen to the ground.

Noah went up onto the front porch, pushed open the door, and walked in. His footsteps echoed through the halls and rooms. Immediately, memories came flooding back.

He remembered dinners together, he and his mother and father always sitting in the exact same chairs every night. He remembered Saturday night checkers games with his father and summer afternoons drinking lemonade in front of the fan with his mother. He remembered waking to the sound of his father’s tractor.

And he began to feel good again, safe and warm. He remembered what it was like to have a home. And in the stillness, he could hear his voice and his mother’s and father’s, all laughing together. It seemed wrong that the place was so abandoned.

Noah walked around the house and then stepped out back. The sun blinded him for a minute, and then he saw his parents’ gravestones, standing just as he remembered.

Noah picked some wildflowers and laid them at the base of the stones.

“Hi, Ma,” he whispered. “Hi, Pa.”

The wind whistled through the grasses. Noah felt his parents there, with him now. He sensed they were close. He felt sure in
that moment that they could hear him, and that they wanted him to speak.

“I’m okay,” he said aloud, feeling a bit silly. “Uncle Shelley’s been taking real good care of me.”

Noah sat down. He reached out and let his fingers brush his mother’s name, carved in stone.

“Ma?” he whispered. “I’m real confused, about this war, about fighting. And about how someone like Uncle Shelley, who’s so different from what you taught me to be, can be such a good man. Because he is, Mama. He really is. He’s a good man.

“And Pa,” Noah continued, turning to his father’s stone, “I wish you could help me with what kind of man I should be, because I just don’t know. I just don’t know who I am or where I belong in all this.

“I just wish you hadn’t gone. I wish I knew why it had to be time for you both to go,” Noah finished.

Noah felt something heavy on his shoulder and turned to find his uncle standing behind him. In the driveway, Noah could see a jeep. He hadn’t even heard the vehicle pull in.

“Jeesh, boy,” his uncle said, “you scared the living daylights out of me, leaving that way.”

“I had to come home,” Noah said.

“Yeah,” his uncle replied. “I can see that.”

Noah looked up at his uncle. “Uncle Shelley, I’m real confused.”

His uncle nodded. “I know, Noah boy. I heard you. You don’t know where you belong now, and I know that feeling ’cause I’ve been there. It wasn’t easy when I left home. I wasn’t sure I’d done
the right thing. Even now, I’m not sure if I did what was best. But I’ve learned something from you, Noah.”

Noah looked at his uncle questioningly.

“Look around,” James Shelley commanded.

Noah did. He saw the grasses and the flatness and the sameness of it all.

“This here,” his uncle said, “this is your childhood, safe, secure, predictable.

“And the mountains,” he continued, “they’re your future. ’Cause you know, boy, life ain’t flat and plain. It’s convoluted, with twists and turns and dangers that no one can know. But at the same time, it can take your breath away, it’s so darn beautiful.”

“But how come I feel funny here now?” Noah asked.

Noah’s uncle sighed. “Because it’s behind you, Noah. Just like my past is behind me now, whether it was right to leave or not. But don’t worry. It’s still a part of both of us. And it always will be. It’s what gives us the strength to face the mountains, Noah. It’s what will give you the foundation to face life.”

Noah turned and looked out over the fields. A hawk rose high in the air, turning and spiraling.

Noah turned back to his uncle. Skeeter was right. “Uncle Shelley,” he began.

His uncle held up his hand. “Aw, come on. Please don’t say it. I’m not an idiot. You’re my biggest fan now. I get it. Let’s leave it at that, okay?” He began walking back toward the jeep. “Come on. I’ve got to get back.”

Noah sighed. He would never be able to tell James Shelley he cared about him. But Shelley knew, and maybe that was good
enough. Noah looked one more time at his parents’ gravestones. He guessed he had his parents’ answer. They had sent his uncle to him yet again. And Shelley was right. Wherever he went, his life in Texas would be a part of him. But it could no longer be all of him. It was time to move on.

Noah stood up and headed toward his uncle and the jeep, knowing that in taking those last steps away from here, he was finally letting the past go.