One Summer (Thomas and Anna)

That spring when the apple and cherry trees were in bloom, about four months before Thomas’s scheduled transfer to his unit’s school of administration, a young army nurse named Anna arrived at the camp to begin her two-year tour of duty. A friend’s vulgar remark led Thomas to look for her when he was next sent to the dispensary. She was easy to single out: a nice figure and pretty in a place where prettiness was rare. She saw him looking and smiled at him and, blushing, he smiled back. He ran into her again a few days later after an autopsy room delivery; she introduced herself, he did the same, again blushing (which amused Anna), and he asked her where she was from. The South, she said; her father was an army officer stationed there. Thomas said he was from the North, a farm family, and they exchanged teasing remarks about the relative merits of their birthplaces. Her silvery-blond hair was braided and rolled into a knot on top of her head, and he was reminded once again how pretty she was, especially when she smiled.

Thomas lived in the men’s pale-green barracks outside the camp’s perimeter fence in the shadow of the tall chimneys, Anna with other nurses in a requisitioned house in the village, so, except when duties brought them into contact, they saw each other only at lunch in the mess hall at the men’s barracks. The men and women sat separately, but he and Anna often exchanged greetings across the hall with a wave, prompting more good-natured vulgarity from his companions at the table. Thomas grinned but felt a growing distance from them.