A Star for Mrs. Blake Read Online Free Page A

up on his own, about to succumb to the frigid air. And why he’d risk his life for a mick, Sheriff Lundt couldn’t comprehend, going on about “people from away” coming into their waters and stealing traps, shooting at local fishermen.
    “They don’t belong here,” he said.
    Nine-year-old Sammy couldn’t stop shivering, but his intense blue eyes were defiant and his fists clenched.
    “Patrick’s my buddy,” he told the authorities, right to their skeptical faces. “You always go back for your buddy.”
    “He’s your buddy?” mocked the sheriff. “What about your mama? What about the heartache you caused her?”
    Cora straightened her back. “I’m proud of what he did,” she said. “I think he showed fast thinking for a boy his age.”
    Sammy didn’t look at her, but she had her hand on his shoulder and could tell that he was glad she’d said it.
    The doctor advised warm liquids and bed rest. They got up to leave and at the door he said, in a sympathetic way, “It’s not your fault, Cora. A boy needs a man around to discipline him.” It left her with a sick feeling, as if it really were her fault, going all the way back to the choice she’d made, against everyone’s expectations, to raise the boy with her parents and sister—without the husband, who obviously wasn’t here to give her son the whipping he deserved.
    Sammy didn’t understand all that, but he did feel the rebuke aimed at his mama.
    “I hate them,” he murmured, his eyes drooping with fatigue. “I’m leaving and never coming back.”
    Cora told him that was fine, after he had a hot bath.
    The shadows moved. Her knuckles ached from the dampness of the creek bed, and she realized it was late afternoon. Leaving the cemetery, she resolved to have him buried overseas, but not without a sharp stab of doubt that she had betrayed something else, deep within. She’d have nothing in her hands of him. This was truly the “final sacrifice,”as the papers called it. She’d given up the baby that had come from her body, and the yearning to protect him and keep him close, no matter what. She couldn’t have said such a thing out loud without embarrassment for both her and her son—and yet, she felt she had surrendered something in favor of what was more important. Important to whom? To the country, she told herself emphatically.
    She went back to Eaton Road. Elizabeth had the sausages all wrapped, plus a nice chunk of cranberry bread. Her mother was at the table, slowly picking at crumbs. Cora hurried back to town. Not the sort of person who liked to waste time, she went directly to the post office and sent a telegram to the War Department, giving them permission to inter Sammy in an American military cemetery overseas.
    When she was done, she stepped outside the post office and took long calming breaths of salt air. A man wearing a hunter’s cap came out of the grocery and stopped to read the notices posted in the window. Seagulls cried and a lady went by on an old-fashioned bicycle with wooden wheels. Cora took in the untouched rhythm of the village, safe from harm because of young men like Sammy. She felt almost giddy with relief; righteous and blessed. Blessed by Teddy Roosevelt.
    Now that she’d sent the official notice, gears and levers went into action in Washington, D.C. Orders conveying Mrs. Blake’s wishes were telegraphed to the colonel in command of the Graves Registration Service in France, which several months after the war was still recovering bodies. They sent back the Record of Disinterment and Reburial that had gone into Sammy’s folder. It listed the nature of the original burial (“Earthen grave”), condition of the body upon disinterment (“Decomposed, unrecognizable”), and means of identification (“Identity tag attached to cross”). Also noted were “Teeth 14 and 29 missing before death.”
    A few weeks later Cora received a form letter titled Disposition of Body, which gave the location of Sammy’s new