The summer night was clear enough to make out each wink in the Milky Way and to witness a star burst like corn from its kernel. Its lunar tail streaked the sky as it soared, and Elsie wondered if anyone else had seen the celestial flight. She walked with eyes cast heavenward to the mercurial constellations, feeling light and pain free for the first time in months. So stark and new was the sensation that she believed at any moment, she might rise up on hidden wings and join the angels. How nice that would be, she thought, and sighed to herself, knowing too few nights like this remained before winter returned. So she slowed her gait, relishing the warmth on her skin.
Her bicycle was parked beside a stack of rain-warped milk crates in the kitchen staff parking lot. She backed it out, but stopped when the wheel caught on something—or rather, someone. Doctor Meriwether.
“Oh! My apologies.” Her cheeks flushed hot.
“No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have snuck up on you.” He wore civilian clothes: a white, open-collared shirt and wide pleated trousers. Elsie thought she’d never seen a more handsome man in all her life.
“I was walking. Beautiful night. Moon’s out.” He pointed up.
The moon hung bold and glistening above, like a silver coin fixed in the sky.
“While I was over this way …” He scratched his head. “I figured I’d check in on you. Sergeant Lee said you were back at work.”
Elsie nodded. For one of the first times she could recall, she was shy for reasons that had nothing to do with fear.
“So how’re you feeling?”
“Better.”
“No complications after our visit? The bleeding stopped?”
Elsie nodded and looked away, his words astringent and the miscarriage still too raw in her body and memory.
“I’m glad to hear that.” He stepped closer.
Her heart sped up.
“Well, you look mighty improved. Not to say you didn’t look beautiful before.” His Adam’s apple bobbed. “Are you on your way home?” He gestured to her bicycle.
“Ja.”
“Being your doctor, I don’t think I can let you exert yourself like that yet.”
“It is very close,” she explained.
“That may be the case but still. How’s about you let me drive you? The medic jeep’s over there, and I got the keys.” He jingled his pocket. “I can fit your bike in the back, no problem.”
The jeep was parked in the R&R Center’s guest lot around front of the building. She could have ridden home in the time it took to get there and load the bicycle, but that didn’t matter. The ride would be a relief to her feet, and she liked being with the handsome Doctor Meriwether. He smelled clean of mint and shirt starch, scents that whispered of better days.
Their fingers overlapped when he reached for the handlebars. Elsie smiled.
“So,” Doctor Meriwether began as he lifted the bike into the trunk. “How did you and Sergeant Lee get introduced?”
Elsie pushed a loose strand back into her braid. “When the Amis—Americans came. He was outside my family bakery. We had bread that would go stale anyhow.” She shrugged. “I gave it to them.”
“Very big of you.” He swung open the passenger door and she climbed in. “Most people around here would’ve given the bread to the pigs before an American.”
“We don’t have pigs,” quipped Elsie.
Doctor Meriwether came round to the driver’s seat. “Fair enough.” He winked and sputtered the ignition. “So you’re the daughter of a baker?”
“Ja, and I am a baker, too,” she corrected.
They started down the road. “I’ll have to try your goods. Where I’m from, it’s most only skillet cornbread.”
Elsie had never heard of such a thing, but thought perhaps it was an English-German misinterpretation. “Where are you from in America?”
“A little state called Texas.”
A flash of lightning zipped from her navel to her chin. “Texas ovenbaked beans?”
“Yeah, you heard of ’em?”
While cleaning out Tobias’s crawl space, she’d found her secret items thoughtfully lined along the interior. Such trivial tokens of her childhood now took on meaning far beyond the material—because Tobias had guarded them, slept beside them, shared in them. She moved all the items, including the American advertisement, into a corroded cacao tin under her bed. The only thing missing was the Robert Frost book. She’d run her hands over every nook in the crawl space, but it was nowhere to be found. God is a poet, Tobias had told her once, and she believed.
“Made in the USA,” she recited. “You must be a Texas cowboy.”
“I guess so,” he said, then laughed so true and unbridled that she couldn’t help joining.
They drove faster down the lane. The wind whipped over their faces, smelling of nearby honeysuckle and glacier water. He turned down the wrong road, but Elsie kept quiet. They’d get home eventually. She liked being at his side. He made her feel more than she was, bigger than Germany or America or all the war between.
When they finally arrived on her street, Elsie had him pull up to the bäckerei doors.
“Doktor Meriwether,” she began.
“—Albert. Al,” he said.
“Al.” Even the sound of him was pleasant, like a music note. “I very much appreciate you …”
“My pleasure,” he said while unloading her bike.
“Not only for the ride.” Elsie looked down at her shoes. “I thank you for everything.”
“Elsie.” It was the first time he called her by her first name. It rolled off his tongue, slow and lyrical. “You and uh—Sergeant Lee. Is he your … I mean to say, are you two—” He stopped and gently kicked the bike tire with his toe. “Aw, never mind.”
Elsie faced him. His eyes sparkled in the moonlight. “No,” she said. The foreign word rang out open-ended. “We were but …” She shook her head. “It is difficult to explain.”
Robby embodied independence: strange, youthful, and exhilarating. But in the many months that she’d known him, she’d never felt the way she did in five minutes with Doctor Meriwether. With Al, she felt freedom, and that was vastly different from all that had come before.
A lazy breeze blew the overhanging bäckerei sign. It squeaked on its hinges, and they both looked up.
“Would it be all right if I came by tomorrow—to grab a bite to eat and visit a spell?” asked Al.
She knew her papa would never approve of this dark-eyed American, but not one part of her cared. She was being true to herself. The time for hiding was over.
Silhouetted under the starry sky, Al’s face was patient and earnest.
“I would like that very much,” she said and decided she’d make him sunflower seed rolls the next day. The first new harvest had just come in.
Chapter Forty-four
FORT BLISS
EL PASO, TEXAS
FEBRUARY 10, 1947
Dear Mutti,
Texas is a strange place. Different from Garmisch. The mountains rise naked against the blue and when the sun sets, it paints the sky every color you can imagine and many you cannot. It is never cold or dark. Even in the night, the moon is so full and bright you’d think it was the face of God. I like it, though I miss you and Papa most desperately.
We have settled into our house on the military grounds. Fort Bliss, they call it. I hope it lives up to its name. The people are friendly and help me around as best they can. There are no bäckereis or metzgereis in town. I heated canned baked beans every night for the first two weeks, but man cannot live on beans alone! My neighbor is from a place called Merry-land and she says that the women buy their meats and food supplies at “The Commissary.” She is taking me to this place tomorrow so I may buy flour, butter, and yeast. I plan to bake rolls as soon as I can. My stomach growls thinking about them now.