Secret Anniversaries

by Scott Spencer

  They’d hidden Joe’s car, a black Ford with runningboards and a back seat filled with books and film cans and blankets. The car was left behind a billboard on County Road 30, right at the turnoff to Camp Sunrise. The billboard showed a happy American family eating their steaming-hot farina— though this family was now peeling, torn in long strips by the clawing cold winds of winter.

  The path they walked on was narrow. Frozen treadmarks went down the middle of it. The hemlocks stood in a line like the pattern on a sweater.

  Caitlin walked behind Joe and Gordon. They were both city boys and their tread was at once arrogant and awkward; they walked too quickly and lost their balance. Their feet shimmied; they grabbed onto each other to keep from falling.

  “Will it be too cold for that camera to work?” Joe Rose asked. His eyes scanned the horizon and he patted his breast pocket, feeling for his notebook and pen. He was handsome, right up to the edge of beauty, without being precisely attractive. He had the air of a man who was always thinking too many things simultaneously, trying to balance too many conflicting ideas, and for whom things could not quite come together. Caitlin considered him a victim of his own intelligence.

  “How many times are you going to ask me that?” Gordon said.

  Gordon and Joe had been friends for a couple of years. They worked at Fortune together. Gordon looked up to Joe and they both had secrets, complicated memories, and a day-to-day life that for the most part excluded Caitlin. Yet today they needed her.

  “I don’t know,” Joe Rose said. “Maybe if you put the camera under your coat, gave it a little protection anyhow.”

  Joe and Gordon were not a natural pair. Joe was from Philadelphia; he was Jewish, the son of a successful lawyer. He was an edgy man and there was, even at the age of twentyfour, something mournful, wounded in his expression. He was pale, thin, and until recently he had had dark, wavy hair. Now he had had it cut short, straightened, and dyed light brown, to support the necessary fiction that he was a Gentile.

  Gordon was large, broad, with reddish skin, freckles, and dark yellow hair he combed back in a single, good-natured wave. He had been raised in Chicago—his father was a cop, and Gordon was one of nine children. He had learned photography from a mail-order course and now made a living out of sheer energy and a willingness to go anywhere or do anything to get a photograph. He had sold pictures of a walrus giving birth, of slag being dumped; he had followed a cop onto a ledge where a mother with a child in her arms was threatening to jump—and indeed she did jump, and that last image of her sailing toward the street with the amazed child looking up at the camera made Gordon’s reputation.

  Caitlin, Joe, and Gordon came to a thick, icy chain strung up between two giant hemlocks. On one tree a sign said, “CAMP SUNRISE—PRIVATE.” On the other tree the sign said, “BEWARE—AREA PATROLLED BY DOGS.” Beneath the sign, someone had drawn a cartoonish picture of a dog licking its chops, with exclamation points of saliva flying all around it.

  Joe gestured at the chain across the road, the signs on the trees, and Gordon took his Leica out from beneath his overcoat and took two quick photographs.

  “We never would have found this place without you,” Joe said to Caitlin. He patted her on the shoulder, and his eyes for a moment stopped wandering, stopped calculating, and he looked at her, showed himself, his frailty, his gratitude.

  She breathed in deeply. Joe was the bravest man she knew, had ever known, and it made her weak with happiness to have his praise.

  “What time does it get dark around here?” Gordon wanted to know.

  “Same time as it does in New York City,” said Caitlin. And she thought to herself: If these guys are going to save the Republic they ought to know what time it is.

  She was the local. It was her spotting the man named John Coleman that had brought Joe and Gordon up here. They thought they could force Coleman to answer questions, to admit he was a German agent, or to perhaps deny it in a way that would reveal something more, perhaps something they hadn’t even considered. And now it was Caitlin’s job to guide them around over the frozen back roads. Gordon and Joe were nervous in the countryside. The barns and silos and knots of cattle melting the snow with their body heat while they chewed on bales of hay seemed exotic and unsettling to the men. To Caitlin, these were merely oppressive sights. She enjoyed having Joe depend on her, but she wished it was about something else. Being the one who feels most comfortable in the sticks was winning a game she would rather not have played, like winning at who is the poorest, the most naïve.

  Caitlin had worked for Congressman Stowe after leaving Windsor County and now Stowe was dead and she was back where she had begun. Joe Rose was keen to prove that Stowe’s death was not an accident but that he had been killed by the man calling himself John Coleman. Joe had come to her, had not even asked her to help, but had just begun giving her assignments—asking her for names, papers from Stowe’s files, phone numbers. He assumed her cooperation. It was not in his nature to court and woo. In that way, the times were perfect for him. When you are enlisting someone to help win a war, all you have to say is what you want done, you don’t have to say please and you do not have to be charming.

  And she had lost someone she had loved when Stowe’s plane turned into a throbbing, smoking ball of flame in a Virginia pasture. Her best friend, a woman named Betty Sinclair, had been on that plane, too.

  They walked in single file and the soles of their shoes made a noise like a dog chewing a chunk of charcoal. Dense pine groves stood on either side of the path. An occasional blue jay flitted between the snowy boughs. The snowdrifts were marked with a latticework of fallen pine needles.

  “Are you absolutely sure you saw Coleman in town?” Joe asked Caitlin. Furls of steam poured from his nose and mouth as he spoke.

  “He was sick,” said Caitlin. “Coughing. He walked around with a handkerchief rolled up in his hand.”

  Gordon suddenly stopped and aimed his camera at the tops of the trees, snapped a picture.

  “Now what?” Joe asked. His voice was irritated, raw. Caitlin wondered if impersonating an Aryan had affected his character, spoiled his gentleness.

  “The way the light was coming through the branches,” Gordon said, shrugging. He seemed to be used to Joe and all his permutations.

  “We didn’t come for that,” Joe said.

  “I’m an artist, a terribly sensitive artist,” Gordon said, putting his hand on his massive chest.

  “We just have to save film, is all,” said Joe.

  “Over that hill,” said Caitlin, pointing to a piny rise a quarter mile away, “there’s an estate called Locust Manor. My father knows the man who runs it.”

  “I always figured,” said Joe, “that everybody knows everyone in a place like this.”

  “There’s two kinds of people around here,” Caitlin said. Joe was at her side. They were the same height and now they had the same-color hair, too. “There’s the rich who live on the estates and then there’s us. And what we do is wait on them or make things for them or look after their children or milk their cows. But we’re fascinated by them. We think of them as gods. And we talk about them all the time. Gossip is what we do for mythology.”

  Joe smiled. “You’ve given this a lot of thought,” he said.

  Caitlin was a water witch when it came to the hidden springs of snobbery, and she realized that it was not an altogether good sign that Joe was impressed—it meant he had assumed she was dull. But still she could not resist feeling a little jolt of pleasure, an internal rise and fall such as she would feel going over a bump in the road.

  Her heart already knew that its destiny involved loving men who would not really see her very clearly.

  “Hey,” said Gordon. “We’re here.” He took the lens cap off his camera with the gravity of a man taking the safety off a gun.

  They had come to a trio of empty flagpoles. In the summer, when the camp was going full tilt and the outdoor fireplaces were pouring fragrant smoke, and
large, seriouslooking men in khaki shorts were cooking meat on the grill, and the lake was filled with the sharp laughter of Die Mädchenschaft, which was the affectionate name given to the youngest and fairest of the camp’s women, in the summer when the parade grounds were full of good earnest, hearty, Sieg-heiling marchers, these three flagpoles flew three banners—the orange-and-yellow flag of Camp Sunrise, the beleaguered flag of the United States, and the proud banner of the new Germany. But now the flagpoles were empty, skinned over with ice, and they stood in a perfect white field of snow.

  On the eastern rim of the parade grounds was the main house of the camp, which also served as a restaurant and an inn. It was an old Victorian house painted brown and white. It had a wide, circular porch, whose roof sagged beneath the weight of the snow. The shades were drawn, turning each of the windows into a mirror, most of them reflecting only snow and trees but those on the west catching the first rays of the sunset in the rippled glass.

  Two upward-angled, empty flagpoles were above the doorway of the main house, and beyond the main house were rows of modest, prim, well-kept cabins, each one sprouting an empty flagpole.

  “Must be like the World’s Fair when all the flags are up,” Gordon said.

  “The World’s Fair if all that was invited was Germany,” said Joe.

  The house looked deserted. It had seemed unlikely that they would find John Coleman but there had been something compelling about the possibility. Coleman was in trouble in New York, in Pittsburgh, in Minneapolis—his name had come up during investigations of a bombing in a Brooklyn shipyard, an explosion in a steel mill, a fire in the offices of a small Farmer-Labor newspaper. Perhaps he did need a place to recover from some illness, a place where no one would look. Perhaps in this frozen landscape hid the man who killed with fire. Yet why would he be here? Why would he stay?

  “When you thought you saw him …” Joe said to Caitlin.

  “I did see him,” said Caitlin. She was looking at the house, seeing there were no lights burning, no car nearby, feeling certain it was empty and wondering if Joe would now think she had concocted the sighting to bring him up to Leyden, to make her life important again, as it had been when she lived in Washington.

  On the broad, circular porch there were two pairs of skis and a small stack of white-birch logs—enough for only a fire or two. Tacked to the door was a sign lettered in fierce Teutonic characters, red on black: SEE YOU IN APRIL.

  “Friendly,” said Gordon.

  “Photo,” said Joe.

  “Right,” said Gordon. He focused his Leica on the sign and photographed it.

  “Often,” Caitlin said, “caretakers leave an extra key above the door frame.” She got up on her toes and felt above the door. She found the key, long and cold. Its teeth were barely ridged; it looked like an equals sign. She held it proudly for Joe and Gordon to see but they didn’t seem impressed. They seemed to have expected as much from her.

  Joe took the key from Caitlin and tried to fit it into the lock. But his hands shook from the cold and nerves, and he kept missing the hole.

  “Reminds me of the night I lost my virginity,” said Gordon.

  Joe gave him what looked like a disapproving grimace but Caitlin was quite sure his frown expressed shyness. When she loved somebody she made up reasons for them.

  There was a high, raw noise. They all turned, alarmed. Blue jays. Five of them, squawking over husks.

  Joe got the door open. The darkness of the house was waiting for them, ever so patiently.

  It was not much warmer inside and the foyer smelled of cleaning solvent and disinfectant. They stood before the beginnings of an elaborately curved staircase, and on either side were closed French doors leading to dark, wooden-beamed rooms.

  “Oh, look,” said Caitlin, pointing up.

  Joe took a flashlight out of his overcoat and pointed it at the ceiling. There was a map of the stars painted on, with the stars of the constellations connected.

  “Hitler believes in astrology,” Joe said. “Astrology, mythology, bonfires, mass arrests. An interesting mixture.”

  “I’ll bet you Frank de Cisto did it,” said Caitlin. An image of de Cisto presented itself to Caitlin—a man on a motorcycle wearing dark-tinted goggles. He had been the muralist of choice for the better households. He had painted an arbor in the foyer of one of the Vanderbilt cottages, a view of the Parthenon for the Delanos, and the Flemings had asked him for a scene of New York Harbor.

  At the foot of the staircase was a small mahogany table upon which lay a neatly folded newspaper. Caitlin picked it up but Joe took it from her. It was the Deutsche Weckruf und Beobachter, in German but printed locally.

  “Well, well, well,” said Joe, with the pleasure of a boy who has found a nest of snakes beneath a rock. “The good old German Awakener and Observer.” He opened it with a flourish and showed it to Caitlin.

  Wedged between long columns of German text were advertisements in English, boxed off and strangely innocent, like uncomprehending children at a funeral. The ads were for Windsor Coal and Lumber, the New Harmony Restaurant, Sunnyside Duck Farm, Rankin’s Pond Rowboat Rentals. Caitlin felt queasy, but she would not say that she knew every business that had placed an ad in the paper.

  “I would say that amongst the locals the goals of the Bund are not exactly reprehensible,” Joe said.

  They were whispering.

  Joe turned the pages of the paper. They sounded like fire in the stillness of the house. “Here’s something about Grosser Filmabend,”Joe said. “Translation—Big Film Night.” He read rapidly in German to himself.

  Caitlin could feel his mind working. She liked the expression of his face when he concentrated: his eyes seemed to darken, his lips pursed with solemnity, and the overall effect was one that combined selflessness with virtuosity, like the expression of a great violinist.

  “OK,” said Joe, “listen to this shit. ‘It was with hearts full of pride that we watched the great German martyr Horst Wessel, who died by the hands of a Jew while fighting the Communists of 1930.’I presume she means in 1930.”

  “Who’s the writer?” asked Gordon.

  “Some living doll named Henrietta Smith.”

  Caitlin had that feeling you get when you drop a dish.

  Joe continued to read, now in a high, absurdly proper, sentimental voice. “ ‘Who of us will ever forget the pictures of his saddened family, his brave brother in the SA—’ ”

  “Jesus,” said Gordon. “Let’s find her.” He glanced at Caitlin; he seemed to sense she knew Miss Smith.

  “ ‘This is a film reported to be Herr Goebbels’s personal favorite and it is no wonder,’ ” Joe continued. “ ‘It is also a film which the anti-Aryan forces in Hollywood have sought to suppress, and those of us who braved the bad weather last week to attend Big Film Night now know why.’ ”

  He put the paper down and grinned at Caitlin. Their friendship had begun with his constantly proving to her that people and life itself were far worse than she realized, and he kept at it. Yet most of his life had been much more comfortable than Caitlin’s. What gave him the right to treat her as if she were naive? Even his bravery was hitched to inchoate notions of career—one day soon he would reveal to America what he had learned about the groups he had penetrated.

  “I know Henrietta Smith,” Caitlin forced herself to say. “She taught me in high school.”

  “And just what did she teach you?” asked Joe.

  “Fascism 101,” said Gordon.

  “English,” said Caitlin. And she let it go at that. She didn’t tell them it was Miss Smith who urged Caitlin to go to college, who had brought her brochures from nearby schools where the tuition wasn’t overwhelmingly high, who had urged her to take summer jobs, apply for scholarships, and do anything but waste the talent for learning that Miss Smith saw in Caitlin. She was a bosomy woman, with curly auburn hair and round, surprised eyes. Her voice was a wavering contralto, and when she turned her back on the class they waved their arms
, made faces. It used to break Caitlin’s heart. Miss Smith hadn’t seemed as if she hated anyone. Her scorn was saved for split infinitives, illegible handwriting, and, in some general way, the twentieth century.

  “Are you all right?” Joe asked Caitlin. He touched her arm, furrowed his silky eyebrows.

  She put her hand on her stomach. She felt within her a hollow, churning dankness. Nerves? It was a pressure within, starting at her navel, radiating out toward her hips, sending a hard, corroded taste of itself up to the back of her throat.

  “I don’t feel well,” Caitlin said.

  Gordon was shining his flashlight through the french doors into the cavernous meeting room to the left. The long tables were pushed together and the chairs were stacked on top of them. Hanging from one of the exposed oak beams was a large full-color portrait of Hitler.

  “What a face,” said Gordon.

  “A headwaiter in a place where you’d never want to eat,” said Joe.

  “And the pictures along the walls,” Gordon said. He shone the beam at a line of eight-by-ten framed photographs: here and there, from beneath the burst of reflection on the glass, showed the face of a jowly man, a formally dressed crowd, someone coming smartly down a ski slope.

  “Are you sure you’re all right?” Joe murmured to Caitlin.

  “I’m OK,” said Caitlin. “I just need to go to the bathroom, if you must know the awful truth.”

  Joe blushed. “Then go,” he said.

  “Gordon,” said Caitlin, “can I use the flashlight?”

  Gordon clicked it off and handed it to her. In the sudden darkness she could not see their faces and it was like dying.

  Through the window, however, she saw the field of snow, blue in the twilight, and along the horizon a long flaming crack of orange, over which a rubble of clouds lay like a field of broken stones. The darkness was moving in, faster and faster, like an old workhorse hurrying those last hundred yards back to the barn.

  She turned the flashlight on again. It extended a long silver arm of light up the stairs, and she followed it, leaving the men in the darkness below.