The Christmas Town by Elyse Douglas

Author:Elyse Douglas [Douglas, Elyse]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Time travel novel
Publisher: Broadback
Published: 2013-10-01T22:00:00+00:00

The house inside didn’t mirror the house outside. The living room was clean, with simple furniture, and a blue patterned carpet. In the corner stood a 6 foot Christmas tree, decorated with holly and several Victorian-type figurines. A stone fireplace offered a pleasant glow to the room and, on the mantel above, were black and white photos of her two men, dressed in their military uniforms. The father looked into the lens with a weathered, resigned face. The son had the firm, resolute face of a warrior. Jackie was surprised by the quality of several landscape oil paintings hanging in the living and dining rooms.

“My son paints,” Hazel said, as she watched Jackie study them. “He wanted to go to art school, but then this evil war pulled him away. He’s in the Pacific somewhere with the Marines. It was so hard for me to picture him in the Marines, because he was always a sensitive boy. But he took to soldiering, and he wanted to fight for his country.”

Jackie and Megan shrugged out of their coats and sat on a soft, olive green couch. Despite the girls’ protests, Hazel insisted on bringing cups of coffee and biscuits she had baked that morning.

“I still bake every day. It’s a pleasure and a habit I can’t break and, in a little way, it brings me closer to my men, because they loved my biscuits so much.”

Hazel talked of better times and about her husband and son and their lives. She said they’d barely struggled through the depression when the war hit them. Hazel’s weary expression and solemn eyes said it all.

“I pray every night for my men to come home safe. Sometimes at night, when I look up at the swirl of so many stars, I wonder if our enemies’ mothers are praying for their sons the same way I’m praying for mine, and then I struggle with my faith. But now I’m just blabbering on, and you didn’t come here to listen to an old lonely woman go on so.”

Megan and Jackie had listened, patiently, admiring Hazel’s courage and endurance, aware that she was terribly alone and frightened.

Megan thought Hazel must be like a lot of mothers, pacing the floor at night, praying for strength and guidance; praying unceasingly for God to bring their men safely back home. When she’d performed in Come Back Home, Johnny, the reality of the war was the reality of a musical. There was singing and dancing, along with some tender scenes between parting lovers and families. But it was, after all, just the enjoyable reality of a Broadway show, and not the sober reality of frightful anxious hours, emotional roller coaster rides of hope and despair, and the sharp agony of sacrifice, when the awful news comes that a loved one has been killed.

Jackie thought of Danny, who would be jumping out of airplanes, and she thought of Jeff, who would be flying bombing missions. What were their mothers going through? This was a time in American history of great loss and sacrifice, and she’d never known much about it.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.