True Fires

by Susan Carol McCarthy

  40

  Wednesday midmorning, Lila, dressed in workshirt, pants, and heavy grove boots, steps off the porch and strides toward the far-off sounds of the picking crew at work in the southwest-corner grove.

  This being early November, she’s bound for the acres of big, arching navel trees, where the crew has been working to strip the heavy limbs of their first-ripe fruit. This being the day after the election, the steel-gray clouds, threatening an afternoon thunderstorm, match her mood perfectly.

  In passing, she studies the fragrant oval fruit on the long rows of tangerine trees; the larger, rounder Temples; the pouty-lipped tangeloes; and the freckled Parson Browns. All appear to be ripening nicely toward their January-through-March picking dates. Though, God knows, I’ll be long gone by then, she remembers. “Won’t I?” she wonders aloud, casting suspicious eyes toward the darkening sky.

  She charts a diagonal course through the orderly tree rows, across the thick sandy soil that grasps and battles each step, toward the throaty calls and sporadic laughter of the pickers, each on his own high ladder. Finally, she spots the big green grove truck and, standing beside it issuing pick tickets (one for each box picked), foreman Franklin Dare.

  “Miss Lila.” He drops his chin in greeting, raises watchful eyes to meet hers.

  “Well, he won the election. I guess you know that.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “But, he’s lost his support in Tallahassee. I just spoke with the new Governor and he’s definitely on our side.”

  Dare says nothing. But a nearly imperceptible shake of his head reminds her they are not alone. All around them, the grove’s gone quiet as a graveyard.

  Of course. “Let’s take a walk, shall we?” she suggests and turns toward the secondary grove road behind them.

  “Nate,” Dare calls. A dark figure descends a nearby ladder. Dare hands him the ticket book and the pen, says, “Thank ye, Nate,” and falls into step beside her. He has the smell of lye soap, leather work gloves, and something else—cornbread?— upon him.

  “Sorry,” she tells him softly.

  “Most of ’em don’t cotton to the Sheriff any more’n ye do, ma’am. But, this bizness ’bout my younguns . . . well, t’ain’t that mine are any better than their’n.”

  “You’re right.” What was I thinking?

  “My younguns jus’ are what they are, that’s all. And cain’t nobody say diff’rent.”

  Dare’s demeanor—as politely considerate of the Negroes on his crew as he is of her—reminds her of something his son, Daniel, said at the newspaper office. “Got hisself a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and everythin’,” the boy said. And Lila knows, from a multitude of attended ceremonies, that the Army’s Silver Star is awarded “for gallantry in action against the enemy.” What did he do? she wonders. Who did he save, and at what cost? Dare radiates the decency of a man who’d refuse to leave a buddy behind. It’s an admirable quality, but not advantageous, she thinks, against a viper like Kyle DeLuth. Kyle requires powerful reinforcement.

  “Fortunately, the Governor-elect agrees with you.”

  Dare stops at the road. They both do. He stands for a moment, hands motionless at his sides, eyes studying the approaching thunderclouds. “What’s that mean, ma’am, exactly?”

  “It means, one way or another, you and your children are goin’ to get your day in court. But, I’m afraid you’re goin’ to need more evidence than you have. It might mean a quick trip back to North Carolina to collect some specific documents.”

  “But the crop—”

  “Will get picked, whether you’re here or not.” Her tone deliberately issues the order. She watches his resistance flicker briefly then retreat.

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says, flatly, with all due respect.

  LATER, WHEN THE STORM BREAKS, Lila finds herself alone— Sissy’s gone out grocery shopping, and Violet’s retired to her bed “to nap.” No doubt, Dare’s got the crew in the shelter of the storage shed until the worst of the torrent passes.

  Standing at the window of her father’s office, Lila watches the downpour, streaked silver by the frequent flash of lightning, struck mute by the heavy drum of thunder.

  Dimly, as if across a great divide, she hears the Westminster chimes and thinks of London, the great green expanse of Bushey Park, the burst of buzz bombs, the confusion of fires and ambulances afterward. Again, the chimes, this time too near, too thin to be the real Westminster. Good Lord, someone’s at the front door! Who the hell’s out in weather like this?

  She opens her door on the apologetic young officer—rainwater streaming off his cap, drenching his olive drab jacket—and recoils from the memory of that other young officer standing just there, just so, with the yellow telegram announcing Louis’s death. She notes the sharp planes of his cheeks and chin, the wariness of his eyes, the chevron on his shoulder sleeve. He’s not as young as she thought.

  “Sergeant. Please come in.”

  He steps inside bringing the scents of damp wool and military starch with him.

  “What in the world brings you out in a storm like this?”

  “Hand delivery, ma’am. Major L. Randall Hightower.”

  “Really?” It was Jazz’s joke to address important mail with her middle name, sealed with Top Secret security tape.

  “Is he here, ma’am?”

  “He who?”

  “The Major. No offense, ma’am, but this one’s marked Eyes Only.”

  “I’m Major Lila Randall Hightower, Sergeant, Special Assistant to Lieutenant General J. P. Atkinson who, no doubt, sent me that case you’re carrying.”

  The Sergeant’s eyes flatten. “Ma’am,” he says, striking a salute.

  “At ease, Sergeant,” she tells him. “Do you have a pen?”

  ALONE, Lila carries the flat, black attaché case back to the office, sets it in the center of the Judge’s desk, and stares at the label. Her name, in Jazz’s careful hand.

  What are you up to? she wonders. Knowing Jazz, it could be anything: an official memo or a Stars and Stripes cartoon, a Top Secret report, or the review of some new New York jazz club. Always, always there would be one message within another, one meaning overlaying the next. Like Art Tatum, his favorite piano player, Jazz could mentally riff, scat, jam on the surface, while underneath there was always an intense strategic intelligence at work, in tight, tactical command. Like Tatum, what others could only imagine, Jazz could envision and ruthlessly execute.

  Ike had spotted him early—they’d been together in North Africa—and reeled him into Supreme Headquarters in London. At Bushey Park, Jazz had spotted Lila, not in person but by name on a series of Air Reconnaissance maps and their attendant analyses. He’d strolled into the W.A.C. map room demanding, “Where’s this genius named Hightower?” Then, he’d taken her to task for a number of small misinterpretations. Finally, he’d quietly had her transferred to G-2, Army Intelligence, authoring their daily reports to the Supreme Command.

  He picked her, he claimed, because she had “the brains of a General, and the good sense not to blush, or back down from an asinine superior officer, like I was, the day we met.”

  Their relationship was all business, until Paris, and the devastating massacre of America POWs at Malmedy—“Eighty-one of our boys with bullets in their heads; their bodies left to rot in the snow. Damnit, Lila, we knew those butchers in the Waffen SS were on the move! With better intelligence, we might have rerouted that battalion, instead of sending them in, like pigs to slaughter.” In the emotional maelstrom that was Paris, January ‘45, they sought solace in the smoky jazz caves off Rue de la Huchette, and found it, finally, at the Hotel Bonchasse.

  He’d made promises then: “Soon as this war’s over, I’m out of this Army and my marriage.” Promises that Ike rendered impossible with their transfer, after V-E Day, to EUCOM. And her temporary assignment to W.A.C. Command for the Berlin Airlift, the most harrowing 328 days of her life. After Berlin, he’d promised her Virginia: “Just you, me, and
half a dozen horses, kid.” Then General Ridgeway summoned them to Korea for Operations Thunderbolt, Killer, Ripper, and Piledriver, and the frustrating “armistice without peace.” Then Ike offered up the prestigious War College, the chance to set straight the Army’s next generation. The excuses were endless until, just six weeks ago, she’d dared to believe Jazz again: “This time I really mean it, HiLi. We are history!” And now he was Assistant Chief of Staff.

  I can’t do this anymore, Jazz. She eyes the package, her name in his hand. It’s been too much, too long. I just can’t do it anymore.

  But it won’t hurt to look, will it? a part of her argues. To hear what he says, to see what he’s sent? Of course not. She reaches for scissors and slits the Top Secret sealing tape. Inside, with no greeting or explanation, is a vinyl disk, a 45 record, with its label removed.

  Curious, she switches on her father’s hi-fi, removes the record from its anonymous sleeve, and sets the turntable spinning.

  “Perdu,” the voice croons, an older, mellowed version of the young male chansonnier they discovered in Paris. “Lost,” he despairs, with a melancholy swell of strings. Beyond help, beyond hope, he feels like a king toppled from his throne, a priest bereft of his faith, a tenor robbed of his voice. “Chérie combien je suis perdu sans toi”—Darling, I am lost without you.

  Oh, Jazz, how many dark, down-the-alley record shops did you have to comb to find this? She resists the memory of young Charles Aznavour on stage in the Rue de la Huchette, light sculpting his impudent, ironic face, shadows cloaking the effect of his songs on the couples in the corner booths. Oh, Jazz . . . She wills her fingers to lift the needle, turn over the record.

  The reverse is worse. Did he know it would be? Accompanied by a single, plaintive piano, Aznavour pleads, “Reviens, mon amour, ma vie”—Come back, my love, my life. A miserable repentant, he admits his mistake, begs her forgiveness, entreats her to return, to lay her head once more “au creux de mon épaule” —in the hollow of my shoulder.

  This time, the pictures hold: The rain-soaked walks to the Hotel Bonchasse, the entwined rides up the ancient iron elevator, the shameless, shared shedding, begun in the dark hallway, of coats, clothes, zippers, clasps. Inside the shuttered room, on the small, swaybacked bed, Lila recalls, the knowing slide of his hand on her hip, the greedy glide of arms, legs, tongues— oh, Jazz—turning, twisting, teasing—oh, you, oh— until the swelling tide, bidden, the surging waves, ridden, broke—OH!—over them, on them, in them—YES!—heaving them apart, breathless, rolling them, softly, back together— yes—and afterward, always afterward, in the sighing ebb, the warm, safe settling into— where else?—the hollow of his shoulder.

  The song ends. In silence, Lila drifts toward the window, stares out at the now whispering streams of rain. She has the sense that someone—Sissy, Franklin, and the picking crew— will be returning soon. And she struggles to regain herself.

  Oh, Jazz . . . What was it about him that had always pushed her past thought, past reason, into the abyss of all-forgetting passion? And kept her there, in the private heaven and hell of their nine-year affair?

  In the early days, he’d seemed like some powerful planet pulling her into orbit around him. Like the moon to his Earth, or Earth to his sun, she’d surrendered, hungrily, to his greater gravity. But through the years, the endless circling had left her dizzy, the broken promises tilted her off course. She’d begun to wobble, and to wonder: Was it his irresistible pull, or my own aching need that kept us spiraling through time and space together?

  Oh, Jazz . . . Lila looks out at the rain, abating. You and I both know that you’ve never, in your entire life, been the least bit lost. And I . . . well, I’m not exactly sure—not yet—but I am most certainly past perdu.

  LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Lila’s outside settling up the day’s wages with Dare and the crew. Sissy opens the back door and calls, “Phone’s for you!”

  “ ’Scuse me, Franklin,” Lila says and calls back, “Can you take a message, please?”

  “Somebody from Washin’ton! Sounds important!”

  “Franklin, sorry, will you finish up?” she asks, moving toward the house without waiting for his answer. Jazz? she gasps inwardly, putting on a mask of mild interest to get past Sissy and into the office, behind the closed door. At the desk, she sits, takes a breath, picks up the waiting receiver. “Hello?”

  “Lila, is that you? It’s Myrt! Myrt O’Reilly. You are one tough cookie to get hold of. Sorry to hear about your father.”

  Lila pictures Myrt’s broad, smiling face, her stocky frame, her ultra-efficient manner with the men loading and unloading the planes at Wiesbaden during their shared stint in the Airlift.

  “Myrt, it’s been years! Five? Six? How in the world are you? Where in the world are you?”

  Myrt treats Lila to the hearty chuckle she remembers. “I’m in D.C.—where you should be, dear girl—on Secretary Hobby’s staff.”

  “Secretary Hobby! Bet that took some gettin’ used to.”

  For Lila, and W.A.C.’s everywhere, Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby was their patron saint, organizer and first commander of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. They revered Hobby for getting the Army’s all-male Top Brass to accord female volunteers the full military rights they deserved as soldiers in the Women’s Army Corps. After the war, Hobby retired and went home to Texas. But early last year, Ike tapped her to become the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the nation’s only female cabinet member.

  “Well, we don’t have to salute her, if that’s what you mean,” Myrt says. “And, as you can imagine, I do not miss the uniforms!” Poor Myrt. She’d spent months complaining that neither olive drab nor khaki did a thing for her florid, freckled looks. “But, what about you, kiddo? Had enough sunshine? Ready to get back to work?”

  “Well,” Lila stalls, wondering how much Myrt knows, and from whom. “Rumor is, as the Assistant’s Assistant, I get a whole new cubbyhole.”

  “So I heard. But, hell, the only war going on now is over budgets between the Joint Chiefs. All the big action’s in our area.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Don’t they have newspapers down there? In Health, we’ve got a whole country full of children to vaccinate against polio. Hospitals, nursing homes, and treatment centers to build. In Education, ’cause our vets are populating like rabbits, we’ve got seven billion dollars’ worth of schools to build—in the next three years! And Welfare—the latest report is we’ll have ten million more Americans on Social Security before the end of next year!”

  “Somebody’s gonna be busy,” Lila teases, impressed.

  “Well, hopefully, one of those somebodies is you.”

  “What?”

  “Listen, Lila. On the Q.T., we’ve got half a dozen high-level posts to fill but quick! Like I told Secretary Hobby, you’d be a dream-come-true liaison for us with the boys on the Hill. Or, if you wanted something more specific, this school program’s a tiger in need of somebody to grab its tail.”

  “But General Atkinson—”

  Myrt interrupts, “Has kept your wagon hitched to his stars long enough, don’t you think?”

  “Well, I—uh—”

  “Will think about it, at least?”

  “Well, yes, Myrt, of course. Once my head stops spinning.”

  “General Atkinson—who was not happy to hear from me, by the way—says you’re due back to him on Tuesday, December first. Any chance you could come back a day earlier, meet with the Secretary and me?”

  41

  “District Attorney’s office.” A young woman, a girl’s voice really, attempts no-nonsense efficiency.

  “Yes, hello. This is Ruth Cooper Barrows, Lake Esther Towncrier. Hamp in?”

  “Please hold while I see if the District Attorney is available.”

  Okay, girlie, you do that, Ruth thinks, dragging on the last of her Pall Mall, considering if there’s time to light another. She pictures the District Attorney’s small Courthouse office wit
h its tiny reception area out front. Swivel ’round your chair, honey, and ask him if he’ll take my call.

  “Miz Barrows, I’ll put you through, now,” the voice decrees.

  Good, Ruth thinks, grinding out her stub, grabbing a pen.

  “Hamp Berry.”

  Ruth pictures the frat-boy handsome face, bores in. “Mr. Berry, I’m investigating a rumor that the Governor-elect has asked you to sue the local school board for denying the Dare family due process.”

  “Off the record, Miz Barrows, the Governor-elect has called me twice.”

  “And?”

  “Off the record, we’ve discussed the political ramifications involved in the Great State of Florida suing the Board of Public Instruction of one of its counties at this time.”

  “And?” Ruth shakes another cigarette out of its pack.

  “And, off the record, the Governor-elect has suggested an alternate, less inflammatory tack.”

  “AND?” Ruth asks, scanning her blotter. Where the hell is my lighter?

  “Off the record, the Governor-elect suggests a civil suit, a Bill of Complaint by the Dares filed against the Board and Superintendent Larry Bateman.”

  “Who’s going to do that?” She gives up on the lighter, tugs open her desk drawer in search of a matchbox.

  “Off the record . . .”

  “Oh, hell, Hamp, I heard you the first time. I won’t quote you.”