“It’s so strange with everyone gone,” said Alice, putting seeds into the wrong piles. “All the original crew. It makes me feel ancient.”
“We should have the new people soon.”
“Yes, and they’ll probably be all young and cheerful and not have any idea how anything is done and they’ll make fun of us for being so shabby. . . . And goodness knows it’s crowded enough here as it is. There’s never any place to think, even if we could hear ourselves think with all the shelling,” added Alice resentfully. Of all of them, Alice minded the raids the most. “There’s not even any place to have a good cry without someone asking you what you’re sniffling about. And then they just try to jolly you. . . .”
Emmie’s head popped up. “Have I been jollying you?”
“What? Oh, not you. It’s Nell, mostly. And Anne. They’re both so relentlessly cheerful,” said Alice despairingly.
Emmie wasn’t quite sure she would have put it exactly that way. Anne was actually something of a worrier, she worried away at things, single-mindedly, until she got them done. Nell was full of a coiled sort of tension that might be mistaken for gaiety, but wasn’t really. Emmie had been determinedly cheerful enough herself to realize the sort of insecurities it might hide. “They probably have their own demons. Everyone does.”
“Do they? They both have such—such a sense of purpose. I can’t imagine there’s anything that bothers Anne that she couldn’t just hammer away. She’s got those boys making shelves for their new social center, and all the girls sewing curtains. . . .”
“Yes, and you have three trucks that you somehow keep running. Alice?” Emmie wasn’t sure where the idea came from; it just sprang on her out of nowhere. “There’s been something I’ve been wanting to ask you. . . .”
Alice paused in her seed sorting, looking deeply wary. “Yes?”
“Would you be willing to teach me how to drive?” The second she said it, Emmie knew it was an awful idea, but she plowed on regardless. “You’re our best driver—and I’m afraid the others would make fun. I’m horrible at anything mechanical. And you know when someone says go right, I always go left. Never mind. Maybe I shouldn’t try. We don’t have enough trucks to be worth risking my wrecking one.”
“No, no,” said Alice, setting down her seed packets. “You can’t possibly do any worse than Red Cross Dave. And why should it matter about your right and your left? I’ll tell you what to do, and we’ll just follow the road—but not near the ditch.”
“Are you sure? I really don’t want to be a bother. . . . And we do have so many seeds to deliver. . . .”
Alice straightened, adjusting her collar. “Yes, I’m sure. We can start now.”
“Now?” asked Emmie apprehensively. “Now as in now?”
“We won’t waste any extra essence that way,” said Alice, suddenly brisk. “I’ll show you what everything is and what you do, and then when we find a straight stretch of road on our way to drop off the seeds, we’ll swap.”
Emmie wasn’t entirely sure that her definition of a straight stretch of road and Alice’s coincided, but if Emmie stalled the truck three times on the first attempt, at least she could tell herself it was all in aid of making Alice feel better. Alice was endlessly patient, explaining the same things over and over, without reproach. This was a very different Alice, an assured, confident Alice, not the Alice who simpered and tittered and always chose the absolute worst sort of hat.
“You’re really very good at this,” said Emmie as Alice directed her around a pothole.
“My father always said that I was the son he never had,” said Alice. She grimaced. “My mother said that if I wasn’t pretty, at least I could be useful. Not like my sister. . . . Look, Emmie! You’re driving!”
“Wait, I’m—what?” Emmie turned, forgetting that she was holding the wheel. The wheel turned with her. So did the truck.
“Not the ditch.” Alice lunged over her to grab the wheel, wrestling them back onto the road. “But there, you see? You did it! You weren’t even thinking about it and you drove the truck a good half mile.”
“I drove the truck?” She knew she’d been sitting there, holding the wheel, but she hadn’t quite equated that with the magical act of mechanics that the other girls were capable of accomplishing.