He looked at her quiet face, she nodded, an; he went on. ‘So Nikita puts missiles in Cuba, to give us a taste of our own medicine, and things take on a life of their own. Threats and counterthreats and blockades, our forces go on alert and then Cuba shoots down one of our U-2s, we retaliate, they retaliate, the invasion is on, and surprise, the Soviet army in Cuba has some tactical nukes, which they use on our landing forces. Once those let go and a couple of the Cuban missiles are fired and we lose a couple of bases on our soil, well, hell came to visit for a while that October.’
‘And the shame?’
He was looking at the other people around him, eating and smiling their way through a lovely Sunday morning. He wondered what ghosts visited them at night, wondered where they had been, ten years ago. Wondered if they thanked or cursed God for being survivors.
‘When it was over we had suffered a lot,’ Carl said. ‘We lost Washington, New York, San Diego, Miami, and some bases, but it was nothing compared to what we did to the Soviets. Every major city was hit, every airport, every rail station, anything and everything that had a possible military function was blasted and scorched off the face of the earth. We tore that country asunder and when we were done, we realized it had been a one-sided fight, a fight that never should have happened. It’s like having a bully in the neighborhood who tosses trash in your yard, and you respond by killing him and his family and burning down his house. That’s what that war was about, and that’s why we don’t talk much about it. We’re ashamed.’
It was quiet for a moment, and then Sandy said, ‘In the last three minutes, I’ve learned more from you than from anything else I’ve heard in this country. The Times certainly got its value from this breakfast.’
‘Bully for the Times,’ he said.
She leaned forward. ‘Carl, I have a proposition for you.’ Again, that smile that was so alive, so fresh, so unafraid. ‘A business proposition. Would you be my traveling companion today? There are some places in this state that I’d like to visit as part of my story, and I would be eternally grateful if you’d join me. You could answer some of my questions and make sure I don’t step on any toes, and in return, well, I could pay you a day rate, as a contributor. I do have funds for such matters. What do you say?’
‘Just one question.’
‘What’s that?’
He swallowed the last of the coffee, pushed everything else away in his mind—including the story about Merl. He was determined to make this day a good one. ‘When do we start?’
~ * ~
She insisted on using her rental car—or as she said, ‘her hire car’—which was a Lincoln that still had the new car smell. Soon they were driving out on Route 2, heading west. The road quickly became two lanes, riddled with bumps and potholes. The traffic was mostly trucks and buses. The leaves along the roadside were still in their fall splendor, reds and yellows and oranges, a riotous tumble of color and shapes. Sandy pointed them out and said, ‘It’s so beautiful here. Is it like this in the rest of the state?’
‘Pretty much,’ Carl said, enjoying the sure power and handling of the Lincoln, so unlike his Coronet. ‘And if you stuck around for a couple of months, you’d see the waist-deep snow that we’re also so fortunate to get.’
She laughed but then spotted something and said, ‘Your hand. What did you do to it?’
He saw how swollen and bruised his hand looked grasping the steering wheel. He wondered what to say and decided to tell her the truth.
‘Had a little tussle last night, right after I left.’ he said, trying to keep his voice light.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘I do hope it wasn’t someone from the consul’s office.’
‘No, not at all,’ he said, pulling behind a convoy of Army trucks. ‘It was a bunch of kids. An orfie gang, most likely, out looking for some thrills and excitement.’
‘There you go again. That’s another expression I’ve heard but don’t understand.’
Carl watched as a young soldier said something to another on one of the Army trucks, and the soldiers both laughed. Carl kept his eyes on them as he drove.
‘Orfie gang. Shorthand for orphan gang.’
‘You mean gangs of orphans? Are you serious?’
He spared a quick glance at her, and then looked back at the road. ‘I’m not saying they’re all orphans, but it’s a pretty good guess most of them are. Look. Ten years ago, the kids are in school. Right? Mom’s at home or at work, and Dad’s at the office, too. Then the Bison and Bear bombers come over the North Pole, along with a few Soviet ICBMs. Sirens start sounding. The radio and television interrupt their programming with bulletins. What happens?’
She paused. ‘Everyone seeks shelter, right?’
‘Sure, that’s what the Civil Defense pamphlets said, and every one of them was wrong. Let’s say your two kids are at school. Hubby’s at work. You’re listening to the radio. Your station goes off the air and next you hear the Conelrad message that tells you to seek shelter. What do you do? You do like millions of other people do, and you pick up the phone, thereby frying the national phone system. What do you do next? Head into the basement?’
Sandy’s voice was quiet. ‘No. I’d go to the school, to get my children.’
‘Right you are. And while the children are safe in the school shelter, their parents are on the roads, trying desperately to get to them, just as the bombs hit. So they never make it. A few weeks later, when the kids finally come out of their shelters, they’re orphans. There’s tens of thousands of them, maybe more.’
‘Didn’t the schools take care of them?’
‘Most tried,’ Carl explained. ‘But there was such utter and complete chaos back then, Sandy, it’s still hard now to believe how bad it was. Kennedy was gone, Johnson was gone, a good portion of the Congress. Government was crippled. Phones and televisions and most radios were off the air. Gas and oil in short supply. Power grid down. Food deliveries stop. Let’s say you’re a teacher. How long do you stay on the job before your own family takes precedence? It didn’t happen everywhere but within six months of the war, you had thousands of kids in cities and towns foraging and fending for themselves. Ten years later, they still depend on each other. Oh, most have adjusted and are doing well, but there’s still some who haven’t. All they know is that when they were younger, they had a golden childhood. Plenty to eat, funny shows on TV, wonderful toys, and parents who loved them. One day they go into a school basement, crying from fear, and when they come out, their golden age is gone. They grow up knowing hunger, loneliness, and death. They rely on their gangs because that’s all they have.’
‘And last night one of those gangs accosted you.’
‘You could say that.’
‘How did you get away?’
He motioned to the trucks in front of them. ‘Some of my old training came back, that’s all. Once a soldier, always a soldier.’
‘I see. Orfie gangs. How terrible.’
In the truck in front of them two of the young soldiers were laughing and waving, and Sandy gave an embarrassed wave in return. More laughter from the troops, but even at this distance he could see the fatigue in their eyes. He thought about McGovern’s speech from the night before, the one on the television, and he wondered what stones these young troops were carrying.
‘Yes, how terrible,’ he said.
~ * ~
Lexington Common was ringed with roads but was still well preserved. Some old homes still circled the place where fighting had broken out almost two hundred years ago, during the first shots of the Revolutionary War between the British and the citizen militia. He and Sandy got brochures from a local tourist office and walked on the close-cropped grass. Dead leaves crunched under their feet. In the center of the Common was a tall flagpole, and the Stars and Stripes whipped in the breeze. He remembered serving in the Army, how seeing the flag flying would fill him with pride, knowing he was doing his duty for a young president who would do anything to save a nation. Now, it filled him with ... wh
at? A sense of loss? Of shame? He wasn’t sure. He just knew it wasn’t pride anymore. The country he had once sworn allegiance to under that flag no longer existed.
Sandy looked around and said, ‘It looks so small. Hard to believe a war started here, and that your outnumbered troops actually put up a fight. No doubt some of my ancestors were here, fighting some of your ancestors.’
‘Then you would be wrong. My ancestors were busy making other relatives of yours miserable in Ireland. They didn’t come over here until the turn of the century.’
She whacked him gently with a tourist brochure. ‘No hard feelings, I hope?’
‘Not at all.’
‘Then let’s go on to Concord, shall we?’
He walked with her back to where her rental car was parked, and halfway there, she looped her arm through his. Her touch was intoxicating.
~ * ~
In Concord they stood in front of the famous Daniel Chester French statue that showed a Minuteman, musket in hand, striding away from a parked plow. Behind the statue was a gravel path that led to a wooden bridge spanning the slow-moving Concord River. Trees grew on both banks, and high up on a hill across the river was a large house set in a grove of trees. They paused for a moment before the statue, and then walked to the simple bridge made of rough-hewn planks and beams.
‘Is this the same North Bridge?’ Sandy asked. ‘The one the poet Emerson wrote about?’
‘You mean “the rude bridge that arched the flood”?’ Carl asked. ‘No, it’s not. Back then it was just another bridge. It’s probably been torn down and rebuilt a half dozen times, and this one is just a guess at what the real one looked like back in 1775.’
‘It’s just like Lexington, so peaceful.’
He nodded in the direction of the far bank. ‘This time it was your countrymen who were outnumbered. The militiamen were on this side of the field and saw smoke rising up past the trees. They thought the Redcoats were torching the town of Concord, and they knew what had happened in Lexington. So they decided to march into town and defend it, and that’s when they met the British. The Americans and British fired at each other and then the Americans gave chase, and the Redcoats fled. Lexington was a massacre. North Bridge was a battle.’
She was leaning over a rough wooden railing, brochure in one hand, reporter’s notebook and fountain pen in the other. ‘You know your history.’
‘My military history, I guess,’ he said. ‘I’ve always been interested in it, especially when I was a kid. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I joined the Army. I wanted to see if I could live some of the history instead of just reading about it, and then maybe write about it if things came together. Become another Ernest Hemingway if I was lucky and talented enough.’
‘And did you?’
‘Hardly. I spent a few months being a military adviser in a little country in Asia that everybody’s forgotten about, until we were all called home after the war.’
‘Was it Laos?’
He nodded. ‘Very good. But, no, a place nearby. South Vietnam. There were several thousand of us there and by the end of ‘62 we were all out. By the next year there was just one Vietnam.’
She finished scribbling in her notebook, closed the cover, and said, ‘Amazing, isn’t it, how wars and empires can change because of a few incidents over the course of a single day. After Lexington and Concord, look what happened. All stemming from that park and this bridge.’
‘That’s true of all wars,’ he said. ‘One Cuban dictator and one ambitious American president and one scared Russian premier later, look where we are.’
Sandy tilted her head a bit. ‘Still one more place to go.’
‘It’s a long drive,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to eat along the way.’
‘You promised.’
‘That I did,’ Carl said, walking to her parked car. ‘That I did.’
Sandy insisted on stopping at a Howard Johnson’s for lunch. ‘Oh, come on, Carl,’ she said when they had spotted the familiar orange roof. ‘I’ve read so much about your fast-food culture. I’ve got to experience it firsthand.’ So he gave in to her entreaties and when she went in ahead of him he parked the car. A man came up to him in the lot, dressed in patched jeans and wearing three or four shirts. His beard was steel gray and his eyes were wide, like he could not believe he was in Massachusetts.
‘Spare a quarter?’ he asked. ‘A quarter for a refugee?’
Carl passed over the coin. ‘Where you from?’
‘South Florida.’
He whistled. ‘You’ve been on a long trip. Why did you leave? Must be warm there.’
The man leaned forward. ‘’Cuz I got the word, that’s why. Next couple of weeks, we’re all gonna be killed. Every last one of us. That’s the secret plan, and I learned all their secrets.’ The man chortled and walked toward a tractor trailer-truck that was pulling in. Carl shook his head and went inside the Howard Johnson’s, remembering a book he’d read back in high school, Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, All those Okies fleeing the dust bowl and heading west, and Steinbeck was there to tell their stories. Now, refugees still fled from the desolate areas near where the bombs struck; most now running away from demons in their minds.
Inside he had a cold hamburger and Sandy gamely worked her way through some fried lumps that claimed to be fish and chips. On the highway again later, she said, ‘All right, I’ve learned my lesson, as indigestible as it might be. Always listen to your native guide.’
‘Be thankful I shan’t charge you extra.’
‘Just try.’
~ * ~
Now they were in the town of Hyannisport, walking across a shaggy field that had once been one of the most famous lawns in America, where parties and touch football games and politics ruled. The pillared gates were in disrepair and the NO TRESPASSING signs were defaced and scribbled over. The shrubbery had grown wild and Carl thought about what this place might look like in another ten years. The wild things would take over. There was a lot of rebuilding going on but he doubted anyone would do anything here. The land was haunted, it was taboo.
‘Well,’ Sandy said, stopping, sounding almost out of breath. ‘There it is.’
Before them was a pile of rubble and beams, broken windows and doors, shattered walls, and burnt wood. A wire fence had been put up around the destroyed home but it was rusting and torn in places. The ocean was near, the sky was overcast, and the wind had picked up, chilling Carl. He glanced over but Sandy looked fine. From the way the wind was blowing, it might have even come from her home country, so perhaps she was feeling right comfortable.
She started writing in her notebook. ‘It’s hard to believe that I’m actually here, at the famous Kennedy compound. It always seemed such a romantic place. Politicians and movie stars dropping in, swimming and sailing and football. Very elite, very special.’
He looked around at the desolation, feeling melancholy. Damn it all to hell, it shouldn’t have happened. All that fighting to build a country two hundred years ago, and for what? So that a couple of newspaper scribblers—one a well fed and well-dressed foreigner—could pick through the bones of America’s once royal family? ‘Not much romance here.’
‘Yes, I can still feel it. I spent a summer once in Rome, and I felt then as I do now, among the ruins. A sort of bittersweet thought of what was, and what might have been.’
Carl said carefully, ‘As a citizen of this nation of ruins, I’m not sure I appreciate the observation.’
She brushed a strand of hair from her face. ‘Are you cross with me? I didn’t mean to offend you, Carl, honestly I didn’t.’
Take it easy, he thought. ‘I’m just not sure if you’re a reporter or a romantic.’
She said, ‘Ah, I told you before, Carl. I became a reporter to become a better writer. I want to write great novels and essays and historical works. And before that happens, as a reporter, I will do whatever it takes to get the story. No matter who gets in the way.’
He looked at the beautiful
face and slim figure underneath the coat and noticed the flash of steel behind her eyes. ‘Anybody in your way today?’
She laughed, and the look in her eyes softened. ‘No, of course not. Now, I’m going to tell you a little secret, and you must promise not to laugh. Hardly anyone at home knows it.’
Resurrection Day Page 11
