Kneeling on a burlap bag, Dot dug her trowel into the black earth of their front yard, harvesting vegetables and clearing weeds. It was only the end of summer, but beets, carrots, onions, and almost everything else already needed to be picked and canned for the approaching winter. The squash and pumpkin had put out healthy vines for their fruit, and the potatoes, always the easiest thing to grow, edged two sides of the garden with bushy green leaves. She’d come back for those in a couple of weeks. Her first basket was full of perfectly ripe green beans, which she’d can this afternoon. Then she’d patch her father’s coat. And she’d knit. She’d probably make supper, too. Anything to keep her mind off what was happening around her.
Dot hadn’t asked for Dash’s help today, even though she thought a bit of digging might do her sister some good. Ever since Fred had been shot down at Dieppe—could it have been only two weeks ago?—Dash had been miserable. They all had, but Dash had never learned how to control her emotions.Dieppe. What a horrible disaster. She’d read that nearly nine hundred Canadians had died that day, and thousands morehad been wounded or taken prisoner. This was exactly the reason why Dot tried not to think about the war or those boys’ eager entry into it.
Fred had been impatient to fight in the Canadian Army’s first actual battle. He had written home just a few days before, saying he was tired of waiting. And now he was gone.
Everyone counted on Dot to be level-headed, but the fact of the matter was that Fred’s death was tearing her apart, too. She just didn’t want to talk about it. All talking did was haul her grief back to the surface, where she couldn’t manage it. Dot’s instinct had always been to keep her feelings inside. She didn’t like to tell anyone but Dash what she was feeling, and even then she kept some things to herself.
“Hello there, farmer.”
She lifted her gaze. “Oh, hello, Dad. You’re home early.”
“I needed to get some paperwork done, and the office was too noisy.”
He adjusted his glasses on his nose, and she noted the black rings beneath his eyes. He suffered from such awful headaches. She wished there was something she could do.
“I wasn’t in a mood for talking,” he added.
Neither was she. But so much emotion was building inside her, she feared she might burst.
“Are you all right, Dorothy?”
She hesitated. “I still can’t believe Fred is gone.”
“No. I don’t suppose any of us can. It will take a long time to get used to.”
They both lowered their eyes to the dirt, and she wondered if he could possibly be thinking what she was. She didn’t know if it was out of place to have this one pressing thought that wasnotabout Fred, but if anyone would understand, she thought it might be her father.
“I can’t stop thinking about Gus. We haven’t heard from him in months. We have no idea where he is. What if he…” She stopped, unable to continue. Fred’s death made everything so real. She couldn’t imagine living without Gus.
“I promise I’ll come home,” he had said to her and Dash at the trainstation on their last day together. “And I’ve never broken a promise to either of you.”
That was true, and Dot had clung to that promise despite his lack of letters. But the days kept marching on with no word.
Once upon a time, Gus had been a neighbour boy who barely spoke a word of English. A new curiosity. Then he had a chair at the dinner table and a bedroom of his own tucked in the back of their house. They taught him their language, and he taught them his. They’d understood each other perfectly. He was a part of them. A crucial part, it turned out.
In his first week at school, Dash had introduced Gus around. Dot had walked with them but only observed. The thought of voluntarily speaking with people, even the kids at school, had always terrified her. She avoided doing that at all costs. She knew that by not joining in, she was making her isolation worse, but it felt like an impossible barrier to cross. Besides, Dash was always more than happy to step in for her.
But when Dash wasn’t around, Dot’s timidity occasionally made her a target. One day, when the children were coming out of the school for lunch, one of the bigger boys had given her a shove. She’d landed hard on her knees and palms, skinning them. Stunned, she looked up at him, unsure what she’d done to deserve it, but she was too afraid to ask. Then Gus was there. He was younger and smaller than the other boy, but that hadn’t mattered to him. He pushed the boy down and stood over him.
“Only a bully pushes girls,” he said. Then he’d helped Dot stand, careful of her scratched hands. “Are you all right?”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“I don’t like bullies,” he told her.
When it had come time for Gus to leave to fight the Nazis, Dot had known it was the only thing he could have done. He’d never liked bullies, and the ones in Europe were much worse than the boys had been in school.
Dot’s father gave a weak shrug, and she knew he had been thinking about Gus, too. After all, he was practically his son. “He promised hewould return. That is what we must hold on to.” He eyed the garden’s empty rows then her two full buckets. “I think you have enough there to can for a week. I’ll carry one in for you.”
As usual, Dot had prepared everything in advance. The clean jars stood upside down on a towel, and the kitchen sink and pots were filled with water. She lit a burner then moved to the sink to wash the vegetables while she waited for the water to boil. Beans first, beets last, since they were the dirtiest. Canning was long, dreary work, but also rewarding, and much appreciated through the winter months. After the last jar had been filled, she reached up and stretched her aching back. That’s when she noticed Dash walking purposefully through the front door.
“Where have you been?” Dot asked. “I thought you were upstairs all this time.”
Dash hesitated, then she held out a blue and white pamphlet.
“What’s this?” Dot asked, taking it from her. The illustration on the front was of a smiling woman in a navy-blue uniform, and the banner on top said, W.R.N.C.S.Women’s Royal Canadian Naval Service. “?‘Join the Wrens’? Why should I—” Her jaw dropped. “No. You didn’t just sign up, did you?”
Dash didn’t answer, but she raised her chin a bit, prepared for battle.
