Honey Suckle

Part 24

It was finally time for school start again, and I was eager to get back to teaching the children. I was eager to be with my terrific students. I got up bright and early, and hurried downstairs with my bag in hand. 

I looked over at the heavy wooden boxes of the new school books that I ordered for the children. I ran upstairs to Elizabeth's room where Christopher had been sleeping, and shook his awake. He  sat up, rubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes. "What do you want, Helen?" He asked crankily.

"I need you to help me carry the boxes over to the school." I told him, and he followed me down stairs at a much slower pace then normal. I felt bad for waking him because he hadn't been sleeping well since Elizabeth left. I wished I had been able to stop her from going but she was stubborn and ambitious and when she set her mind to something there was no way of stoping her.

As we carried the crates down to the school that was miles away, I wished that we had taken them down there the night before when we weren't tired and without energy. "What have you got in here? Stones??" Christopher said.

I guess I could of ordered less books but I needed to restock on books of every subject because the books we had before were old and torn to pieces, and they were donated from a private school up north several years before. When we reached the classroom finally we were out of breath and sweaty. Christopher wiped his forehead with the blue handkerchief that he kept in his pocket, I noticed the embroidery of two initials that weren't his; the initials were VD.

I hadn't know Christopher for long but there was one thing that I knew him to be was sentimental he kept every little thing that meant something to him or was given to him by someone he cares about. Christopher kept everything, he kept birthday cards from as early as his eighth birthday, cuttings of fabric, every letter his mother sent him when he was in the war, and even a rock that Elizabeth gave him from the day we went hiking. Christopher kept all of it in a small shoebox that he tucked away in the living room closet, he had shown the box to me one day.

Based on everything I knew about my friend Christopher Palmer, I knew that that blue handkerchief with the initials had once belonged to Vincent DeRose, the french solider that he fell in love with while in war. I couldn't bring myself to tell him the truth, the truth that Vincent was gone. Christopher was to lighthearted, to delicate, I just couldn't bring myself to tell him. Christopher had already asked the police and everybody if they knew of his whereabouts and there was no sign of him. No information whatsoever.

He was going to get hurt either way.

"Christopher." I said. I was going to do I had to. I had to before he found it out himself.

He looked up at with his young sweet completion, and I thought about what he'd say, how it would make him feel, and I couldn't do it. I couldn't tell him. "You should get going. The children will be here in moment." I said instead.

He nodded and made his way out of the door. A moment later the children came in and sat down at the tables. The students seemed happy, at the moment because we were back together in the classroom, but they were definitely not always like that because they had to deal with the fact that most of their fathers were off fighting at war or had already died. 

Over in the corner of the classroom where unfamiliar two young girls and a boy who was a little older. I stood infront of the children "Hello, there I'm Miss. Carter." I said. The new children to their seats and stood infront of my desk facing the familiar faces of the young ones. "Most of you are as lucky to have been here last year but today I have three new classmates that will be joining us." I said.

I walked over to the children in the back of the class where I had seated the new children. "What are your names?" I asked the boy who was the oldest.

"I'm Timothy." He spoke and pointed in the direction of his youngest sister, "That's Rose." And he  gestured to his older younger sister. "And this is Kennedy." He announced.

I nodded and proceeded to walk to the front of the class and introduce them. 

When I got home that afternoon Christopher was looking down at the newspaper that talked about the event that brought him here, the headline 'Millions killed! Not many soldiers left!', and the picture was of soldiers taking cover from bullets in the dirty gorges, them surrounded by the bloody corpses of fallen soldiers.

Corpses that might have belonged to husbands, fathers, friends, and maybe even secret lovers. Christopher was sitting at the newspaper with fear and pain and desperation. He was reliving it. I held Christopher, and laid his head to my shoulder and just let him cry. I didn't say anything I didn't try to calm him down, I just let him cry into my shoulder because crying was what he needed and crying wouldn't hurt.

When he had stopped crying he lifted his head off of my chest and he said to me, "He's dead isn't he?" His eyes were swollen from all the crying and my shirt was soaked with Christopher's tears.

I looked at him for a moment thinking about what I would say that would keep him from crying again, but there was nothing left to say. I nodded, and began to cry myself. "I'm sorry Christopher. Yes I think so." 

I waited for the tears to start coming out again but they didn't. Christopher didn't cry. 

He had gone numb.