Family album

“Thayer. Ward Thayer.” The name rang a distant bell, but she didn't know why and didn't really care. He smiled at her, and there was something cynical in his eyes. He had seen too much in the last year and she sensed that easily about him. “Are you hungry, Miss Price? You must be starved.” She had performed for hours, and had been touring the base, shaking hands, for three hours since. She nodded now, with a shy smile.

“I am. Do you suppose we should go knock on the C.O.'s door and ask if there's anything left?” They both laughed at the thought.

“I think I can dig something up for you somewhere else.” He glanced at his watch, as she looked at him. What was there about this man? There was something about him that kept making her want to reach out, to ask him who he really was, to find out more. There was something one couldn't know, and yet which one sensed about him. But he smiled up at her now, and he looked young again. “Would you be terribly offended if we check out the kitchen? I'll bet I can get you a real meal there, if you'd like that.”

She held up a graceful hand. “A sandwich would be great.”

“Let's see what we can do.” They headed back to his jeep, and drove swiftly to the long Quonset hut where the men's meals were prepared, and twenty minutes later, she was seated on a long bench faced with a plate of hot stew. It wasn't what she would have picked for a hot jungle night, but she was so hungry and it had been such a long night, that the steaming concoction actually tasted good, and Ward Thayer had a plate of it too. “Just like ‘21’, eh?” He glanced at her with his cynical grin again and she laughed.

“More or less … except it's not hash …” She teased and he winced.

“Oh God, don't say that word. If the cook hears you, hell be only too happy to oblige.” The two of them laughed again, and Faye was suddenly reminded of midnight suppers after school proms back home and suddenly she began to laugh harder as she looked at him, and he cocked an eyebrow over the handsome blue eyes. “I'm glad you're amused. This place hasn't struck me funny in well over a year.” But he looked happier now. He was enjoying her company and it showed, and nibbling at the stew, she explained it to him.

'You know … just like after the prom … when you have breakfast in some diner at five A.M. … this is sort of like that, isn't it?” She looked around the harshly lit room and his eyes followed hers and then searched her face again.

“Where'd you grow up?” They were almost friends now. They had been together for hours, and there was something about being together in a war zone. Everything was different here. Faster, more personal, more intense. It was all right to ask questions one would never have asked anywhere else, and to reach out in ways that otherwise one wouldn't have dared.

She answered him thoughtfully. “Pennsylvania.”

“Did you like it?”

“Not much. We were dirt poor. All I wanted was to get the hell out, which I did, the minute I graduated from high school.”

He smiled. It was difficult to imagine her dirt poor anywhere, and least of all in some hick town.

“What about you? Where are you from, Lieutenant?”

“Ward. Or did you forget my name again?” She blushed as he teased. “I grew up in L.A.” He seemed loathe to add more, and she wasn't quite sure why.

“You going back there after … afterwards?” She hated the word “war,” and by now so did he. It had already cost him a lot, too much, there were wounds now that would never heal, even if they weren't the kind she could see. But instinctively she knew that they were there.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

“Are your folks there?” She was curious about him, this sad, cynical, handsome young man, with the secrets he didn't want to reveal, as they ate their stew in the ugly, brightly lit mess hall on Guadalcanal. There were stiff blackout covers on all the windows, so the impression was that there were no windows at all. They were both used to that.

“My folks are both dead.” He looked evenly at her, something dead in his own eyes. He had said the word too often by now.

“I'm sorry.”

“We weren't close anyway.” But still … her eyes searched his again as he stood up. “More stew, or something more exotic for dessert? They tell me there's an apple pie hidden somewhere.” His eyes smiled and she laughed.

“No thanks. There's no room in costumes like this for apple pie.” She glanced down at the silver lame dress, and for the first time in several hours, so did he. He was getting used to her looking like that. It was different from Kathy of course … so different in her starched white … and eventually, the fatigues she wore….