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As evening comes on, Harder comes to fetch her He has a thermos of coffee, a pair of sandwiches wrapped in a British newspaper, and a piece of venetian blind slat wrapped in gauze and tape

“What’s that for?” she asks

“There are one or two things ly orderlies know that you medics don’t,” he says Then he dement of wrapped blind can be slid down inside her plaster cast, providing a gentle but outstandingly effective scratching tool

“My goodness, Harder, they should give you athat!” She unconsciously adjusts her vocabulary, which has begun to slip perilously close to the common soldier’s dialect A certain four-letter word for sexual procreation is often used as verb, noun, adjective, and adverb (oftenitself) So she consciously reaches for safe expressions, expressions an untainted Frangie would use Goodness My, my You don’t say Well, I never

Harder pushes her wheelchair along the ward, past cot after cot filled with colored soldiers It’s a cheerful enough ward since er and only waiting for bones to knit together, skin to close, dysentery and malaria to calm and recede Virtually everyone here will be back with their units within a feeeks

The air outside comes as a welcoht a blanket, which he tucks efficiently around his sister Evening is co the stars, so they seem to twinkle with unusual brilliance They push down the central line ofa sort of boardwalk that runs past identical long huts

It is all ie is used to An ambulance rumbles by, but there are no tanks or half-tracks, no antiaircraft batteries being hastily shifted, no jeeps loaded with self-important officers

It is far fro a vast field of reen turf But beyond the camp there is the forest, and beneath the line of trees are three fires burning, ca, or rolling As they get closer, with Harder struggling to push the narroheelchair wheels through ie sees that one of the fires has a distinctly darker-skinned couitar

“That’s Willie playing,” Harder says “He’s an orderly too If Bertha May is off duty, you’ll likely hear her singing Beautiful voice Like an angel”

There is so in his tone that makes her turn to look back at hiinary vision

“Bertha May, huh?” she prompts “I suppose she’s some ancient nurse”

?

??Bertha May? Ancient? Not at all,” he protests “Quite the contrary, she’s the ah But you’re wrong, there is no roree of conviction tinged with bitterness, a bitterness confirmed when he adds in a low mutter he must think she can’t hear, “More’s the pity”

Around the campfire are a dozen reeted aves or shouted greetings It’s clear he is liked, and Frangie finds this iuess what Harder’s life has been like these past years of separation, and her iination had led her to dark assumptions That he is respected and liked, here at least, relieves her mind

Willie is a picker, not a strue of wry humor, and he accompanies himself in a tenor that seems at odds with his rotund and ancient (by army standards) form