Free The Search for Joyful by Benedict Freedman Page B

tried to think which rule I had inadvertently broken as she bustled me out of the building.
    â€œNo need to be so somber, Kathy.” She burst into smiles. “We are embarked on an expedition to save the caterpillars.”
    â€œTo save the caterpillars?” I echoed, thinking I hadn’t heard correctly.
    â€œYes, in the park, right across from the elementary school. I fill in teaching the fifth grade part time and I learned to my dismay that the science class is coming tomorrow to collect caterpillars. They intend to chloroform them, stick pins through them, mount them—need I say more? I decided to get to the park first and hide them. And I thought . . . well, I chose you as my coconspirator because I know you have a kind heart.”
    I laughed until tears came into my eyes. This roly-poly little nun and I made quite a team.
    â€œTell me, Kathy, am I a good judge of character?”
    â€œThe best,” I assured her. And when Sister Eglantine, with a guilty look around, got down on all fours, I did the same. The hunt was conducted on hands and knees. We investigated grass blades, wildflowers, small branch stems, leafy shrubs. I made the first find, a lively black fuzzy one journeying along a sunflower stalk. Into Sister’s basket it went. Sister found the second and third. It was hard to see the green ones, but I saved several, millipedes I think they were, with so many feet you couldn’t count them. It was fun to outwit fifth grade science. It was May and the sun slanted in broad stripes along the grassy floor and, when I squinted, hung in prisms of color.
    I needed that day with Sister.
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THE NAVAL WAR had turned into a debacle. Wolf packs stalked our shipping in the North Atlantic, mostly sloops, World War I destroyers, carriers with obsolete aircraft, and, it was whispered, insufficiently trained crews. The way it worked, apparently, was that when a U-boat spotted a convoy, it would radio Brest or another French port the Germans had taken over, and word would go out to all the subs in the area. While the original wolf tracked the victims, the rest of the pack converged at high speed, often being refueled and resupplied on the high seas. The packs no longer limited themselves to cutting out stragglers or picking off isolated vessels. They engaged the cruisers and gave battle to the entire convoy.
    I read the lists of missing and dead posted in the window outside City Hall and listened when I could to the CBC shortwave in the lounge. It broadcast not only from London but the war fronts. From these sources it was apparent that the losses were dreadful.
    Human remnants of these engagements wound up on our wards. To cheer myself I concentrated on the cartoons in the Sunday supplement: a Mountie astride a sinking U-boat, another U-boat about to be devoured by a grizzly bear, and Adolf Hitler with a startled look running from a wild-eyed moose, who had just bitten out the seat of his pants.
    It was necessary to laugh when you could.
    I didn’t know how true that was until Ruth tested positive for TB. This was a test we had to undergo every six months, but it was looked on as routine. Ruth’s X ray, however, showed a lesion on her left lung. She was immediately isolated, and her roommate was moved out.
    Sister Egg roved the corridors shaking her head and muttering to herself. This was not an unusual sight. Whenever things didn’t work out as Egg thought they should, she could be seen roaming the hallways and arguing, whether with herself or with the Lord, no one was sure.
    First-semester grades were due to be posted, and, condemning myself for being so selfish when my friend wouldn’t graduate at all, I nonetheless kept checking the bulletin board. So far, nothing.
    I’d left a patient propped up in bed reading, so I returned to monitor his IV, and my heart pushed into my lungs. A screen had been placed around his cot. I became queasy—I knew what that screen