The Summer Before Boys (12 page)

Steve, the night manager, was by the glass doors talking quietly with two staffers, a youngish guy and an older woman. I recognized them as trail guides.

Uncle Bruce was poring over the open maps and I noticed for the first time the tiny shapes of flowers and vines carved into the legs of the wooden table where he was standing. Not saying a word, like he was trying to remember something. Where was that steep drop? That crevasse that someone could fall into? Where was that one spot where the trail narrows and the colored markers are most faded?

• • •

The Korean War is called the Forgotten War because nobody seems to care about it. It happened right after the end of World War II and before the Vietnam War. When the Korean War veterans came home from their tour of duty, there were no memorials or parades, not much on the evening news, not even any protests or demonstrations. It wasn't even called a war. It was called a conflict. The Korean conflict.

But if you ask me no one cares about any war.

If it doesn't affect them personally, they can act like it isn't happening. If it isn't in their backyard or even within a thousand miles it might as well be a cartoon on TV or a boring reality show. If their mom or dad isn't over there eating sand, it hardly matters. No, it doesn't matter at all. How can you forget about something you never knew about in the first place?

Fifty thousand women were on active duty in Korea and even though women were not allowed in direct combat and still are not, army nurse Genevieve Smith died in a plane crash on her way to Korea. One navy nurse died when her hospital ship was rammed by a freighter, right off the coast of California. Eleven nurses died in a plane crash on the way to Japan. Vera Brown died in a plane crash and so did two other air force nurses. And maybe back home, their own kid was just eating dinner when it happened. Maybe right at the moment their mom or dad got
killed they were biting into a hot dog. Or pitching the ball in a kickball game. Brushing their hair. Staring at a pimple in the mirror and getting really upset about it.

You can't ever let down your guard. You can't ever stop remembering and paying attention or anything could happen. And then it really started to sink in.

This was my fault.

All of it.

Eliza heading off on the trail. The state troopers being here. The dogs burying their snouts in Eliza's pink sweatshirt and getting all excited, wagging their tails and turning circles on the colorful carpet in the grand tearoom. Mrs. Smith wringing her hands. Aunt Louisa pacing back and forth in the kitchen, looking out her window at the night pressing in, maybe even crying like I imagined she would be.

—The halogens on the roof lighting up the sky.

—Now the dogs barking and pulling on their leashes. (Dogs aren't even allowed at Mohawk.)

—Everyone out on the trails with flashlights and walkietalkies shouting out into the darkness. “Eliza! Eliza! Can you hear me?”

All of this for a boy.

All this for one kiss.

E
ven though nobody knew the trails better than Uncle Bruce, he was told to stay put.

“It happens every time.” The trooper held his wide felt hat in his hands and rubbed the brim with his fingers as he spoke to us. “We find the lost person and then we have to send everyone back out to find the family members who went out looking on their own. We call it double indemnity.”

We were sitting together on couches—me, Uncle Bruce, Steve, Pam, and Mrs. Smith—waiting, but I couldn't get my heart to settle down, not for one second. I tried holding my breath so that I would take in less oxygen, but I just felt lightheaded. I tried visualizing a calming waterfall, like I heard about on one of Aunt Louisa's talk shows, but I kept thinking of Eliza splashing around crying for help.

When my phone vibrated it took me a full second to realize what it was. It was another text from Michael.

I think I know where Eliza might be.

My heart went wild. I looked around the room as if anyone else could have heard it. I typed back.

What are you talking about? How could you know?

My cell phone buzzed back immediately.

Don't tell anyone. Meet me behind the stables. ASAP.

I flipped my phone shut and stood up. “I'm just going to the restroom.” I said out loud, but no one was paying attention to me anyway. After I had explained exactly where I last saw Eliza, there wasn't anything anyone wanted from me.

“Just don't go anywhere,” the state trooper told me.

I guess he was trained to notice things. I wonder if he suspected anything, if he knew it was all my fault. I nodded and as soon as I was out of eyeshot, I darted toward the back porch and down the steps. I took them two at a time, landed on the gravel with a thud, and took off running straight into the darkness.

“Julia?”

“Where are you?” I whispered back. I couldn't see anything. The smell of animals and hay and manure was strong in the night air. I could hear the horses snorting and shifting around in their stalls.

“Right here.” Michael's hand just barely brushed the back of my shirt, but I jumped. “It's just me.”

“I know,” I said. Finally I could see him in the shadows, but clearly. We were alone together again. It was only a few hours ago he kissed me but it felt like a hundred years. What had been the most important moment of my life was barely a memory anymore. The knot in my stomach had swallowed it right up, but if we could find Eliza maybe I could make this all better.

Maybe.

“So why do you think you know?” I asked Michael. “What could you possibly know?”

“I know all the hiding places,” Michael told me.

I knew Michael's dad was one of the staff, like Uncle Bruce, but Michael's family had housing right here on Mohawk grounds. It did make sense he would know something like that.

“Okay, so why don't we just tell someone?”

There was one bare bulb at the end of the barn near the wide doors. We headed toward it. “I thought maybe I could be a hero,” Michael said.

Being a hero sure sounded better than being the bad guy.

“And me?” I asked.

“Yeah, sure.”

Everybody loves a hero.

E
verybody loved Jessica Lynch. She was a private in the regular army. She got a Bronze Star, which is for “heroic or meritorious achievement or service,” and she got a Purple Heart, which is a medal for getting wounded (or killed) by the enemy.

She was part of a convoy of the 507th army maintenance unit that was ambushed by Iraqi forces. The Humvee she was traveling in turned over, and Jessica was badly injured but she lived and she was taken prisoner.

That was in 2003 and my mom hadn't been deployed yet, but we all knew it was coming. We just didn't talk about it. She had been in the National Guard for two years; already some of the other nurses she trained with at “summer camp” were in Iraq. A lot had been sent to Afghanistan. We just never talked about it.

The story of Jessica Lynch was all over the news that spring. They even had footage of the Army Special Forces breaking into the Baghdad hospital where she was prisoner, and taking her out on a stretcher. She had both legs in casts and a big bandage around her head. She looked scared. She was nineteen years old. My mom and dad and I didn't want to watch but we couldn't help it. Everyone was talking about it. Wondering what had happened to her. Was she tortured—or worse—because she was a woman?

Then we saw the video of Shoshana Johnson, who was also captured the same day, in the same attack, but she didn't get rescued for another twelve days. On the TV, one of her captors was holding a microphone right in front of her face and demanding answers. Shoshana looked terrified, her eyes darting left and right. Her terrible fear was so clear, so real.

It was like watching a really scary horror movie. Your brain had to remind you that this was not acting. This was a woman. Somebody's mother.

“She's just the army cook,” my mother told us.

We were in the living room watching the news. The dishwasher was turned on and humming in the kitchen. It had been my favorite time of the day. We are all content and stuffed from dinner. There is not enough time to start anything too big or too busy but it's too early to get ready for bed. My mom's usually too
tired to start bugging me about my homework. My dad doesn't watch much TV, so he just flips through the channels. Usually he puts on the news. That's when we saw Shoshana Johnson.

“How do you know?” my dad asked.

“One of the nurses at the hospital. She's in the Guard too. And she's from Texas. Like her, like Shoshana. She told us at lunch today. It's just terrible.”

On the screen they flashed photos of Shoshana from her childhood. They had some guy who had been a POW during the Vietnam War reliving his experiences. They talked about the seven other soldiers still being held and what their captivity might be like but nobody really knew. They talked about Lori Ann Piestewa whose body was found when they rescued Jessica Lynch. Lori Ann Piestewa was the first Native American woman killed in military service. So for a while everybody acted like they cared. Or pretended they did.

But what I will always remember is that Lori Ann Piestewa was the first American woman to die in Iraq.

M
ichael and I moved as close as we could along the huge stone foundation on the far end of the hotel, behind the prickly shrubs and tall, thick hydrangea bushes so no one would see us. Every few minutes another staffer or two would walk by, a beam of light tracking back and forth across the walkway in front, calling out.

One kid we recognized as a busboy from the kitchen staff was singing hip-hop lyrics and clicking his flashlight on and off like a strobe. He clearly wasn't too worried about finding Eliza.

“Where are we going?” I asked Michael when the rapper had passed and seemed far enough away.

“Just stay close. And quiet.”

There was something about being told what to do by a boy that I liked and at the same time made me completely
annoyed. And I wasn't sure which would make me look better to Michael, saying something cute and angry? Or just doing what I was told?

Honestly, what did I care what Michael-what's-his-name thinks of me?

I heard one of the ladies in the tearoom asking Mrs. Smith if she thought Eliza had been abducted. Certainly not, Mrs. Smith had said. My stomach lurched again thinking of that.

“Just a little farther.” Michael didn't turn around but I saw his hand, his fingers reach out behind him. I took his hand. It was rough and warm and we broke into a run across the great lawn and into the night.

“Eliza, we know you are up there.”

“She is?”

I saw Michael shrug his shoulders at me as if to say,
I don't know but it's worth a try
. Then he lifted his head and looked back up into the tree.

“Eliza, come down from the tree,” he said.

It was not an ordinary tree and if Eliza were here, I couldn't believe that she had climbed up into these branches. I couldn't believe that she had never taken me here before. Michael had called it the elephant tree and now I could see why.

The trunk of this tree was thick and wrinkled, like the skin
of an elephant. The branches were low and tangled. They hung like hundreds of elephant trunks, dangling close to the ground and reaching upward into an intricate mass of steps and swings and balconies. In contrast to the massive form of bark and trunk and branches, its leaves were tiny and delicate, almost like little feathers. It was a tree meant to be climbed. To hide away in.

And then like magic Eliza's voice came down from the tippy top. “What do you two want?”

“Eliza! Is that you? It's you!” I picked up my head and shouted. My relief was indescribable. She was found and she was safe. I could tell by her voice, Eliza was all right. The weight lifted off my chest.

It took me only a few moments more to get mad.

“Eliza, everyone is looking for you. Don't you know that? Don't you know how late it is?”

Of course she did. It was way past dark, pitch-black in fact, and besides, Eliza had to see those lights on the roof of the hotel. She probably heard the dogs barking. She must have heard everyone calling out her name.

And she still hadn't come down from the tree.

She let everybody worry about her. She had to know what big trouble I was going to be in. Maybe that was her plan all along.

“We saved you,” Michael spoke up. “Now come down.”

Eliza's little voice shot back. “No.”

Eliza hadn't ever been lost; she was hiding, but Michael still seemed bent on being a hero.

“Well, you are going to come down and walk back with us or I'm going to start shouting,” he threatened. “And I bet Mrs. Smith comes over.”

I looked at him. “Are you going to pretend you just found her?”

“Well, it would look better for all of us, wouldn't it?” he answered.

I could hear rustling in the branches and leaves above, like Eliza was shifting around. Maybe ready to come down. Maybe not.

“I got scared.” Eliza's voice was closer but I still couldn't see her.

“Of what?” I asked.

“I never went up to the sky tower. I just waited until you were far enough away and then I went back.”

It was the first time I got to rewind the images in my head. Eliza was never lost in the woods, lying with a twisted ankle or fallen in some deep ravine. I could breathe. “So where were you this whole time?” Michael asked.

“I just waited. I waited in one of the gazebos. I think I fell asleep. I thought you'd come back, Julia. I thought you couldn't have just left me there. But you did.”

I listened.