Out of habit, he touched the deep scars on the left side of his face. They reminded him of furrows in a plowed field, still angry and red after all these years. The scars ran down his neck and across his torso. He always kept his shirt collar buttoned up tight and usually wore a bandanna knotted around his throat on the rare occasions when he went into town, but there was no hiding the scars on his face.
He followed a game trail deeper into a thicket, the brush closing in around him, the smell of musk rising from the damp earth beneath his worn boots. He emerged into a mountain meadow. He kept low, crouching, not wanting to spook the buck that he knew must be just ahead.
He scanned the meadow and caught sight of the buck. The deer stood on the far edge of the meadow, head dipped to graze on what remained of the green grass.
Deke raised the rifle to his good shoulder and put the sights on the deer. His arms were sinewy with muscle from hardscrabble farmwork, so that his aim held steady. It was a long shot, but Deke didn’t fret over that. He rarely missed.
All at once, the buck seemed to be alert to something. He raised his magnificent head, the antlers held high, catching the morning light. The broad chest turned to Deke like a challenge. Up here in this remote mountain meadow, there wasn’t much that this big buck in his prime had ever needed to fear.
Deke lowered the rifle. It had been an easy shot — there was no doubt that he could have taken the buck.
The buck held his eye, some primitive glimmer of acknowledgment there, then bounded away.
Normally Deke would have wanted the buck to be hanging from the big tree out back long before then, which would mean the difference between a hungry winter and a starving one. But where would they be spending the winter? Not on the farm. Not anymore.
The day had come and gone when they’d had to leave the farm. With nowhere else to go, the three of them had had to move into a boardinghouse in town, sharing a single room. For someone who had loved to roam the woods and fields, the cramped room might as well have been a prison cell. Deke slept on the floor, while Sadie and his ma shared the lumpy bed. The money that they’d gotten for the pigs and chickens had been enough to pay a month’s rent in advance — and that was all the money that they had.
He’d thought about joining the navy, like his cousin Jasper had done, but he hated to abandon Sadie like that. With no alternative, Deke had gone to the sawmill where his pa had worked and asked for a job. The foreman had been reluctant, saying that they didn’t have any work because the Depression was hanging on, but he had relented. It seemed like the least he could do, considering that the boy’s father had died in an accident at the sawmill.
And so Deke had worked there for almost a year now, the noisy mill being a long way from the fields and woods of the farm. He hated that place. It was too hot in summer, and bone-cold in winter. The relentless spinning blade was always present, as threatening as an insatiable monster, a reminder of his father’s death on the cruel steel.
Ma had passed that fall. The doctor couldn’t even say what her ailment had been. It was as though she had just given up and faded away.
But Deke and Sadie had to go on living. The days continued for Deke, each of them passing as miserably as the next, his pay barely enough to cover the rent at the boardinghouse. In his pain, feeling sorry for himself, he sometimes bought a pint of cheap whiskey and drank himself to sleep, hating himself for that when he awoke with an aching head the next morning, as miserable as ever. Sadie didn’t approve.
Then again, she had been too tired to do much about it, working herself to the bone as a maid for one of the few families with money in town. Each day she seemed to grow thinner, a shadow of herself.
Life in town wasn’t easy, and he felt like an outcast. The scars on his face that made people so nervous around him didn’t help.
Once, he had seen the banker who had evicted them driving by in a big car. He had glanced at Deke without any recognition, as if his gaze had gone right through him. In the banker’s eyes, Deke was not worth noticing. Deke balled up his fists at the anger that went through him. If you didn’t have money, it seemed like you weren’t worth anything.
Deep down, he knew that he was grieving for his parents — and for the farm, a way of life that had been lost to him and Sadie. He needed to get out, to do something different, but he felt helpless as a bug caught in the current of a mountain stream.
And then came the December day when the foreman had shut down the sawmill. This in itself was unusual, and the men had gathered around as a strange quiet settled over them. Beyond the mill, people filled the street, and he could hear excited shouts. It was clear to Deke that something big had happened.
“What’s going on?” one of the sawmill crew asked.
“The president just gave a speech over the radio. Congress voted, and we’re going to war,” the foreman said. “They’re setting up a recruiting station on Main Street, and I’m sure that some of you men will be signing up. Don’t expect to be paid for the time you’re gone doing it.”
Like everyone else, Deke had heard the news about Pearl Harbor the day before. He was worried about his cousin, who was stationed in Hawaii. He hoped that Cousin Jasper was all right, but for the first time in months, Deke felt a sense of purpose. If the United States needed soldiers, he’d be the first in line.
The big saw blade was still spinning silently when he walked out of the sawmill without saying a parting word to anyone.
He didn’t know anything about war or being a soldier, but he was about to find out. He enlisted the next day. Two days after that, Sadie was on a bus bound for Washington, DC.
Later he would realize that the war had saved him, and maybe Sadie, too, and started him on the greatest adventure of his life.
CHAPTER FOUR
At long last, the war seemed to have receded like the tide as the fight for Guam slowly came to its bloody end. It didn’t mean that the Japs were completely licked. Holdouts sheltered in the mountainous forests. From time to time, bands of Japanese troops still ambushed or harassed the soldiers.
But for the moment, the men of Patrol Easy weren’t concerned about a few stray Japanese soldiers. They had been designated Patrol Easy during their reconnaissance of Guam, and the name had stuck.
Now, for once, they were truly living up to that name. The men lay sprawled on the beach, enjoying some long overdue R & R. Although the war was far from over, with a large swath of the Pacific still in Japanese control, it had taken a respite in this corner of the world, and the men were taking whatever R & R they could.
“You know how I can tell this ain’t the Jersey Shore?” Philly asked. “Not a girl in sight, that’s how. There was this one time, I met a girl on the boardwalk named Wanda—”
“The other three times you’ve told this story, her name was Betty,” Deke interrupted.
Philly just shook his head, as he often did when he was buying himself some time to make something up. Deke had been around him long enough to know Philly’s tricks. “Sure, there was that time with Betty, under the boardwalk in Atlantic City,” Philly said. “Maybe three or four times, come to think of it. But I’m talking about Wanda now. Wanda was a whole different situation, let me tell you.”
Deke just shook his head and tuned Philly out, which was easy to do. That damn city boy—Philly was short for “Philadelphia”—never shut his mouth. Then again, Deke couldn’t help but smile at Philly’s stories. There was something comforting about hearing Philly talk, like listening to a familiar radio program.