The Spirit of the Corps » Band of Brothers

114: Sorry About the Mess

The only train ticket Charlie had been able to get at such late notice left early on Christmas Eve morning. She spent the entirety of the train ride stuck inside her head, gnawing on her lip and fiddling with her hands as she fretted about every possible thing she thought could go wrong.

But she couldn't go back now. And she certainly couldn't spend the rest of her life wondering about Floyd and where he was and what he was doing and whether he was still thinking about her. It had to be now, and this had to be the end of it. If he was there and didn't want to see her, or if he wasn't and had run away, then it would have to end here. She couldn't keep waiting for him as she had been without even consciously realising it.

It was early afternoon by the time the train pulled into the station in Kokomo. Charlie made quick work of pulling on her gloves and fastening her coat, and adjusted her bag on her arm just to give herself something extra to do. She was filled with nervous energy, an anxious buzz of anticipation flooding through her veins, and when she stepped out of the train and onto the platform she was grateful for the cold, for her shaking could be easily explained as shivers.

Charlie found the driver her parents had organised for her waiting outside of the station. He dipped his head in polite greeting when she approached. "Miss Lancaster," he greeted her, somehow recognising her without needing to be told. "Would you like me to take your bag, ma'am?"

"No, thank you, sir," Charlie replied with a polite smile of her own. She followed him to the shiny black car he had parked out front and slipped into the backseat as he held the door open for her. While she waited for him to start the car she busied herself with adjusting her pillbox hat so that its netted veil fell in a nicer way over her right eye.

"Do you have the address?" Charlie asked the driver once he had closed his door behind him and turned the engine on.

"Yes, ma'am," he confirmed. "Your father gave it to me over the telephone. Is there anywhere you'd like me to stop off at along the way? It'll be a half an hour's drive, or thereabouts."

"No, thank you, sir," Charlie answered him.

He nodded and with that they were off.

Kokomo was a landscape filled with farmland, Charlie found, and her eyes were stuck gazing out of the window. There were no animals out in the fields, not with how cold it was, but the fences and farmhouses made it clear what the land was used for.

Pale grey clouds looked idly down on the world. Charlie wondered whether it was going to snow. Back home in Lancaster it had been snowing when she left, but she hadn't anticipated it being quite so cold down here.

The half an hour's drive flew by quicker than Charlie would have liked, and she still hadn't decided on what she intended to say when the driver announced they were turning onto their destination street. But it was too late to worry about it now, so Charlie turned her eyes out of the window and took in the lines of houses on either side of the street, each of them packed so tightly together she thought everyone's neighbours must have been able to hear each other speak.

"Here we are, ma'am," the driver declared as he slowed to a stop outside a house in the middle of the line on the left. He turned off the engine and got out of the car, then made his way around the back of the car to open Charlie's door for her.

"Thank you," she told him as he gave her a hand out.

The house Charlie had been sending all of her letters to was white and quaint. Small, yes, but it looked cosy, with a row of Christmas lights hung across the triangular roof of the porch, waiting to be lit up when night arrived. There was movement in one of the front upstairs windows but gauzy curtains kept her from seeing who was inside.