Against the Wind Read Online Free

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    Sean continued, “Great. And you, Louis—we’ll call you Louie, eh? I’ll have to get a second hat. To tell you boys apart.” He stooped low. “What kind of hat would you like, Louie?”
    Louis managed a crooked smile. He rubbed his upper lip where surgery had corrected a cleft palate. “Cowboy.”
    “Then a cowboy you shall be.” Sean placed large square hands on the boys’ shoulders. “But you mustn’t switch hats unless you tell your grandma and me, eh?”
    Murphy embraced his parents. We said tearful farewells, promising to come to America soon. Murphy took my arm, leading me toward the gangway. Had I ever known such emptiness as that moment?
    The ship sailed, and the great White Star Line passenger shed emptied out. We lingered as the crowd of well-wishers dispersed. Small sounds echoed beneath the vast shelter.
    The band members put away their instruments. Janitors swept confetti and crushed flowers from the quay. Members of the press—Murphy’s friends and colleagues—hailed him, then phoned in to their respective news sources the latest passenger list containing the names of great and small among the exodus of Americans from England.
    “You heard me, Mac,” one of Murphy’s colleagues said. “Yeah, No kiddin’! The entire clan of American Ambassador Joseph Kennedy has just been shipped back home to America.”
    “Shipped? It was more like a stampede,” Murphy said. “But who am I to point fingers? I send my kids home to my folks in Pennsylvania while Mister Ambassador Appeaser shivers in his bed at night for fear some stray Nazi bomb is going to land on the American Embassy. So Kennedy sends his kids back home to Hah-vahd. Bet he’ll skedaddle home soon hisself.”
    I resisted the urge to comment how much going home to Harvard sounded like “going home to Tara.” The world I had known as a child was quite gone with the wind.
    After two years of marriage to John Murphy, I had mastered American, which is quite different than the language spoke in England. “I want to skedaddle. Okay, Murphy. I know your mother will take care of our babies. Little Katie. Every day is something new with a baby. And the boys. Charles and Louis. Growing so fast. I must get my visa soon and follow to America or my heart will break.”
    Murphy and I remained on the dock of the White Star Line and watched until the great ocean liner vanished into a fog bank. Had we done the right thing? Sending our baby and Charles and Louis to America with Murphy’s parents? How long would it be before I saw them again?
    I said quietly, “Churchill thinks people who evacuate their children to America are cowards.”
    “We know better, Elisa. The idea is to get the kids out of range of the Nazi bombers.”
    “I was in line for ration books—fewer rations now that the children have gone. A woman behind me asked if I’d rather have my children bombed in England or torpedoed on the Atlantic.”
    “Cheerful soul. What did you tell her?”
    “I said I’d rather they celebrate Christmas on my husband’s farm in Pennsylvania, where there are no ration cards and we can churn our own butter. But, Murphy, I’m scared.”
    “Everyone in England is scared for their kids, Elisa, and with good reason.”
    I pressed myself against him and wept against his shoulder. “Oh, Murphy! Why won’t America grant me a visa? Why? First it was refugee quotas and now…”
    “Now there’s a war on. You came from Germany, Elisa, and the Nazis hate you and your family. I mean personally. You’re on a list. The kids need to be far across the water and out of harm’s way.”
    I whispered through my tears, “I know. I just wish I could be with them.”
    “You know the drill. But here’s the deal. My mother’s got six days on the same boat with Rose Kennedy. And Mom is a Murphy, as Irish as the Kennedys. Rosie Murphy, she is. That’s two roses on the same ship. Irish mothers stick together. No accident they’re on the same ship.