She painted on each end of the house, CALIFORNIA ORANGES.

Thomas adored her. They were people of scant resources. Ruth helped her father fish. She could hear where the fish traveled beneath water so they had a more or less successful business. Her hands were hardened from the ropes and wires. Thomas worked beneath cars, adding parts, tightening screws, fixing tires. His nails were black. And she was tired. Her father had grown old. That, and he was called on any time of day or night to help people with their ailments. Her mother went with him but only to tell him if the man on the bed should have his leg removed because of diabetes or if it was something that Indian medicine could cure.

Not far from them was the Shaker church many belonged to, but not Thomas and Ruth who belonged to the age of Aquarius, as they laughingly put it when making love.

Sometimes at night they swam naked in the sea, plankton on their bodies lighting them when they surfaced. Thomas was a weak swimmer, but like his grandfather he could hold his breath for long times.

The young couple had no everyday routine except for work and that varied. Sometimes no one brought in a car. At times there were no fish. Even old Vince with his whiskers didn’t go out, unless he went to the deep sea.

Still, the war finally came to the village. It was on a day Ruth was wearing sea-blue. For some reason, they would both remember that. She looked like a mirage to Thomas.

“What?” she was surprised. “You have joined the army? You are going to boot camp and we’ve barely been married? Don’t you love me?” she’d asked him when he had enlisted. “Why? We’re just starting together!”

He loved her. He didn’t know why he enlisted. “We just all did it,” was his only reason. “Together,” he said. They’d been drinking, “the boys,” as she called them. They believed in America. They did. They were patriotic. “I’m not just an Indian. I’m an American, too.”

“You were drinking with them! That’s why.”

She turned her back to him so he wouldn’t see her cry. After a while she left the small bedroom in their rented place, the green walls and ceiling they’d once laughed about, that only paint they could find, which now seemed pitiful. And she put away dishes, quietly, carefully. He wished she would slam cupboards and silverware. Later he went to her, stood behind her and held her. She didn’t forgive him, not then. Not really until years later when she realized how men were so influenced by their peers and governments. This was something Ruth, a woman who could stand alone in the world, would never understand.

Thomas was sent away before the others.

He argued with the recruiter. “But the army promised us the buddy system. We’d go together. We were supposed to go together. We wanted to fight together for America.”