Dart is in port again, and today’s mail call yielded 14 letters, five of them from Dot. Dart’s letter today is one of his masterpieces, from gripping sorrow to exquisite description to playful teasing, and finally, romantic dreaming.
One of the letters he got today came from the mother of a childhood friend, Art Carle, bringing the tragic news that her only son had “given his life on a foreign shore” on December 28. It hit Dart extremely hard. He talks about the countless happy hours the two of them spent as kids living on the same street. He has already written to Mrs. Carle. “But what can be said by a boy who has lost a friend to a woman who has lost her only son? It’s so cruel, so outrageously true and permanent. Dot, those words ‘gave his life’ mean so much. They mean gave, for he received not one single thing in return for his gift. And it was his life that he gave. Not an arm, a leg, a mind, a chance for success, a chance for a girl to love him, a memory of childhood happiness, a chance for future happiness. No, not one of those things, but every one of them. Every one and many more. And to give one’s life in the service of Our Country. Humbug! I do not believe in it. If we were giving our lives to the service of God, there might be more hope that the gift would have better use made of it. It’s futile, and we’re all so utterly helpless to stop it. If only there were some other way…”
Wow! There’s a lot of emotion in that paragraph, and it’s followed by an absolutely poetic accounting of last night’s sunset and nighttime.
He climbed to the highest point of the tallest gun mount to watch “the most beautiful evening that I have ever seen close in around me.” He describes the breathless, sultry air and the glassy calm of the sea which reflected all the colors of the splendid sunset. The high, ragged clouds on the horizon looked like rugged mountains in some distant land and they served to hold up the dome of the sky, filled with brilliant stars. “I was spellbound, thinking so hard of you and wishing you were here.”
He finally went inside and hung out in an improvised darkroom to watch the work of hobbyist photographers as they developed their film and tried out their homemade enlarger. “Living in this huge, intricately complicated machine called a ship surely does bring out the best in the ingenuity of the crew. We’ll never be whipped as long as the Navy can have men like the Haggard’s crew. They improvise hotplates and coffee pots so that no one on watch need go thirsty. Tiny workshops where prodigious amounts of legitimate work goes on in the daytime are tucked away in all available spaces. At night, these are transformed into places where photo hobbyists can work on their pictures, where the writers can hide away with pictures of their loved ones and write, where the singers can wail and strum their guitars without bothering a soul. The skill of making the very most of what’s at hand seems to be a natural part of most Americans, and we’ll be on the winning side, as long as we keep that skill, and our senses of humor and justice.”
He admits to being bitterly angry now, and to have done his share of cussing today, but it would do no good to say more about it here, so he changes the subject and responds to some items in Dot’s recent letters.
He’s pretty impressed with the job she did on her bike. It sounds like the transformation he did on his a few years back, but now his brother Burke has let that bike go to ruin.
Then, he scolds her soundly about trying to censor his thoughts and words. If he wants to call her beautiful, if he chooses to think of her as sweet, charming, smart, or anything else, he’ll do just that. And there’s nothing she can do to stop it! As a student of good-looking women, he can attest that she’s one of the prettiest on Earth. “Maybe if you could see yourself as I see you, you’d think so too, but as it stands, you haven’t changed my mind.”
It’s obvious he’s not much like Dot’s father because he’s liked every hat he’s ever seen Dot wear. In fact, he greatly admires her taste in clothing.
Hey, what makes her think that her letters don’t give him the same thrill she gets from his? He thrives on every word and is profoundly happy and proud when she tells him those sweet thoughts she has about him. He’s decided it must be love.
They share some of the same ideas about that last night in Cleveland. “When I remember that wonderful evening and all that was said and done then, I wonder when we’ll ever be able to carry on from where we left off that night. I wonder if we could some way work this going-to-college-while-working-while-being-married arrangement. If I should survive this war long enough to be engaged to you, I want that engagement to be a short one, followed by the normal course of events following an engagement. But that’s so heart-breakingly far away now. Can we ever do it? I believe we can, IF. (You know what “if.”)
Dot writes a cute little rhyme saying she has nothing to write about and that Dart’s four letters today touched her heart.
I’m sure we’ll hear more from her tomorrow.
