Orphan Train

take care of me and feed me; they’re worried that I’m getting too thin.
     But I prefer to be on my own. I’m twenty-two years old now, and I’ve gotten used to
     living like an adult.
    As the weeks pass I am busier than ever, working long days in the store and volunteering
     in the evenings, running the metal drives and organizing shipments for the Red Cross.
     But behind everything I do is a low hum of fear. Where is he now, what is he doing?
    In the letters I write to Dutchy I try not to dwell on my sickness, the constant queasy
     feeling that the doctor tells me means the baby is thriving inside me. I tell him
     instead about the quilt I’m making for the baby, how I cut the pattern out of newspaper
     and then fine sandpaper, which sticks to the material. I chose a pattern with a woven
     look at the corners that resembles the weaving of a basket, five strips of fabric
     around the border. It’s cheerful—yellow and blue and peach and pink calico, with off-white
     triangles in the middle of each square. The women in Mrs. Murphy’s quilting group—of
     which I am the youngest member and honorary daughter; they’ve cheered my every milestone—are
     taking extra care with it, hand sewing in precise small stitches a pattern on top
     of the design.
    Dutchy completes his technical training and aircraft carrier flight deck training,
     and after he’s been in San Diego for a month, he learns that soon he’ll be shipping
     out. Given his training and the desperate situation with the Japanese, he figures
     he’ll be heading to the Central Pacific to assist Allied forces in that region, but
     nobody knows for sure.
    Surprise, skill, and power—this, the navy tells its sailors, is what it will take
     to win the war.
    The Central Pacific. Burma. China. These are only names on a globe. I take one of the world maps we sell in the store,
     rolled tightly and stored in a vertical container, and spread it on the counter. My
     finger skims the cities of Yangon, near the coast, and Mandalay, the darker mountainous
     region farther north. I was prepared for Europe, even its far reaches, Russia or Siberia—but
     the Central Pacific? It’s so far away—on the other side of the world—that I have a
     hard time imagining it. I go to the library and stack books on a table: geographical
     studies, histories of the Far East, travelers’ journals. I learn that Burma is the
     largest country in Southeast Asia, that it borders India and China and Siam. It’s
     in the monsoon region; annual rainfall in the coastal areas is about two hundred inches,
     and the average temperature of those areas is close to ninety degrees. A third of
     its perimeter is coastline. The writer George Orwell published a novel, Burmese Days, and several essays about life there. What I get from reading them is that Burma is
     about as far from Minnesota as it’s possible to be.
    Over the next few weeks, as one day grinds into the next, life is quiet and tense.
     I listen to the radio, scour the Tribune, wait anxiously for the mail drop, and devour Dutchy’s letters when they come, scanning
     quickly for news—is he okay? Eating well, healthy?—and parsing every word for tone
     and nuance, as if his sentences are a code I can crack. I hold each blue-tinted, tissue-thin
     letter to my nose and inhale. He, too, held this paper. I run my finger over the words.
     He formed each one.
    Dutchy and his shipmates are waiting for orders. Last-minute flight-deck drills in
     the dark, the preparations of sea bags, every corner filled and every piece in place,
     from rations to ammunition. It’s hot in San Diego, but they’re warned that where they’re
     going will be worse, almost unbearable. “I’ll never get used to the heat,” he writes.
     “I miss the cool evenings, walking along the street holding your hand. I even miss
     the damn snow. Never thought I’d say that.” But most of all, he says, he misses me.
     My red hair in the sun. The freckles on my nose. My hazel eyes. The child growing
     in my stomach. “You must be getting big,” he says. “I can only imagine the sight.”
    Now they’re on the aircraft carrier in Virginia. This is the last note he’ll send
     before they embark; he’s giving it to a chaplain who came on board to see them off.
     “The flight deck is 862 feet long,” he writes. “We wear seven different colors, to
     designate our jobs. As a maintenance technician, my deck jersey, float coat, and helmet
     are an ugly