Feathers

Tim stood on the train platform, trying to pretend he did this every day. Mum had offered to see him off, but he was fourteen, capable of walking to the station and buying the ticket himself. They’d said their good-byes at home, Dad shaking his hand, Mum and Audrey hugging him tearfully as though he was shipping off instead of spending the summer at his grandparents’ farm in Suffolk.

Since the war began last year, it seemed like everyone in Tim’s family had found a way to be useful. Dad was too old to join up, but he worked long hours at the munitions factory. Mum and Audrey had joined the Red Cross, rolling bandages and knitting socks. Audrey was even talking about getting a factory job herself once she turned eighteen in October.

Now it was Tim’s turn to do his part. His grandparents’ hired man had recently joined up, and Tim could surely replace him. He’d grown a lot this year, towering over Mum and Audrey. He was even a smidge taller than Dad, which seemed unfathomable. Sometimes when Tim looked in the mirror, he wasn’t sure he knew himself.

His thoughts were interrupted as a girl in a yellow dress strode towards him. She looked around Audrey’s age, but while his sister was always a bit rumpled, this girl was neat as a pin and had a confidence that Tim associated with teachers.

She walked up to him and pressed something into his hand, saying, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself, a big strapping lad not yet signed up! Do your duty for your country so you can hold your head up like a man.”

She stalked off, and only then did Tim look at what she’d given him.

A white feather.

He’d heard about the feathers, of course. They were given to men who were shirking their duty.

“I’m only fourteen!” he wanted to shout. But the girl was gone.

The train pulled up, and Tim got aboard, still clutching the feather, mind reeling. The girl had taken him for a coward!

Was he? Of course he wasn’t nearly old enough to be a soldier, but he was secretly glad about that. Audrey said the war would end long before Tim turned eighteen. When the war first started last summer, she’d said it confidently. Lately her words sounded both hopeful and slightly desperate.

Of course the war would surely be over by 1919, but with each month that passed, it seemed slightly more possible it wouldn’t.

Tim tried not to think about it. Some of his classmates couldn’t wait to fight, proclaiming they could whup those Germans single-handedly. Matthew Key wished loudly and fervently multiple times that the war would last long enough for him to join up, a wish that appalled Tim.

Surely he should feel appalled. Surely that didn’t make him a coward.

The train pulled into another station, picking up more passengers. Someone sat next to Tim. “Your first?”

Tim startled. His seatmate, a young man, was looking at the feather. Tim squeezed his fist shut, but the shaft bit into his palm.

“Sorry,” the young man said. “It’s none of my business, but you look a little shaken, and I know a bit about white feathers.” He motioned to one sticking out of his shirt pocket. “I’m Lawrence, by the way.”

“Tim,” he mumbled. “I’m only fourteen.” He said this last part louder, as though Lawrence was the one accusing him of cowardice.

He waited for Lawrence to insist he couldn’t be so young. Strangers had begun to do this frequently, as if they knew Tim’s age better than he did. But Lawrence just said, “Those feather-givers tend to think they know everything, even when they don’t.”

Tim felt a little buoyed by this sympathy. “Have you gotten many feathers?” he asked, uncertain whether he should have.

“I could probably cover a whole chicken with them,” Lawrence said.

“You’re…That is, don’t you…” He trailed off, unsure what he was trying to ask.

“I’m a pacifist,” Lawrence supplied.

“Oh.” Tim wasn’t sure he understood. “You don’t want to fight?”

“I don’t believe in war.”

Tim turned this sentence over in his head. War wasn’t like Father Christmas, to be believed in or not. It was real and terrible, blaring daily from the newspaper’s headlines.

“If everyone in England felt like that, we’d be ruled by the Germans,” Tim said, then felt his face go hot. Aloud, the words sounded as cruel and judgmental as the feather.

“If everyone in the world felt like I did, we could avoid war in the first place,” Lawrence offered. “But sadly I’m an outlier.”

“Suppose they conscript you?” Tim asked. The newspaper said conscription was coming now that the war was dragging on.

Lawrence sighed. “I’ll cross that bridge when it comes. In the meantime, I’m doing my part raising crops. People always need food, especially in wartime.”

“You’re a farmer?”

“Yes.”

Tim told him about going to his grandparents’ farm, which led to a lengthy discussion about crops and harvests. Tim had never felt more grown up.

But in the end his gaze traveled back to the feather sticking out of Lawrence’s pocket. “Why do you show it off?”

“It’s a reminder that no one can make me ashamed of myself or what I believe in. That I know myself, even if no one else does.” The train stopped. “Here’s where I get off. It was nice meeting you, Tim.”

“Likewise,” Tim said, shaking Lawrence’s hand. He still had the feather in his other hand.

Lawrence nodded at it. “Do you want me to take that for you?”

Tim shook his head. As Lawrence left the train, Tim slipped the feather deep into his pocket. He wasn’t as brave as Lawrence, couldn’t imagine wearing the feather for the world to see. Still, he liked the idea of keeping it close, a small reminder that he was starting to know himself.

Valerie Hunter teaches high school English and has an MFA in writing for children and young adults from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her stories and poems have appeared in magazines such as Cricket, Cicada, and Paper Lanterns, and anthologies including I Sing: The Body and Brave New Girls.