Sophie and the Rising Sun

by Augusta Trobaugh

  And the great crane standing at the base of the largest live oak tree, its white feathers like a mound of sunlit snow against the gnarled shades of moss and old velvet. It turned its head just the least little bit, to gaze at him full in the face.

  “Sophie?” he whispered, as if it were the only word he could find to utter.

  But the crane did not even blink its eyes at the sound of his voice, and so Mr. Oto and the crane stood, gazing at each other for long, silent minutes, until Mr. Oto blinked in the glare, and when he looked again, it was gone.

  On the next Sunday night, he walked back to the road—during darkness, of course—to find a cardboard box with supplies in it, left by Miss Anne, as she had promised. Canned goods and more kerosene for the lamp, a big box of matches wrapped in waxed paper, and clean, dry clothes that still smelled of the musty closet and that must have belonged to Miss Anne’s long-deceased father. And the weekly newspaper that came out every Thursday afternoon, so that he read every word of it over and over again, especially about the war. And the shaking of his hands echoed the flickering flame in the kerosene lantern.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Miss Anne said:

  Lordy, it was a hard time, sure enough. Maybe people today, who don’t really know anything about Pearl Harbor, don’t know what a terrible thing it was. Folks were all incensed about it. And scared, to boot. Makes for a bad combination, that does. And everybody looking at the newsreels at the theater in Brunswick, showing those goose-stepping Nazis—enough to curdle the blood, it was. And then showing all those Japs lined up in front of their planes and throwing up their arms in the air all at the same time and screaming in unison. And wanting nothing more than to kill us.

  And you know, I thought that telling the lie about Mr. Oto would get easier, but it didn’t. Deep in my heart, I knew there wasn’t one thing wrong with what I was doing to help a fellow American. But the strain of it was much more than I’d expected, and one day, when I went to the post office and saw that big poster of Uncle Sam looking so stern and serious, pointing his finger and saying “I want YOU!” I just about jumped out of my skin. Because no matter how right I was, I still felt funny about it. Way deep inside. And so very much alone with it. Carrying the secret around all by myself. It was hard!

  When I finally ran into Ruth in the grocery store, it was quite a difficult thing. She’d always been such a busybody, and I had dreaded seeing her. Not that she was ever evil—or even downright mean—or anything like that. Why, in over thirty years, she never missed so much as one single Sunday of church. Or so she said, at least. But I was enough like my papa to know that churchgoing doesn’t guarantee goodness in anyone. And Ruth certainly had a way of enjoying bad news. Or something like that. And wouldn’t you know, she lit right in on me about Mr. Oto.

  “Anne!” she yelled at me that day, and before I could even turn around all the way, she jammed her buggy right up alongside me and looked at me so hard with those bright little eyes—always did look like she was getting ready to say Ah-hah! Gotcha!

  “I’ve been wanting to ask you about that foreign man of yours,” she said. Well, she always did know how to get right at the heart of what she wanted to know. No polite chitchat for her, sure enough, just blunt and open questions without any warm-up whatsoever. I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, so God rest her soul, I guess.

  “I hear he’s gone away?” she framed it as a question, but it was a statement if ever I heard one. I tossed two boxes of Jell-O into my buggy and tried the best I could to look absolutely unconcerned. I also made a quick mental note not to buy some things I’d been planning on getting for Mr. Oto—more matches and several cans of beans. Such as that.

  “Yes, he’s gone,” I said, looking back up at the shelves and reaching out to take down a box of cornstarch, though I still had half a box in my pantry.

  “Where’d he go?” she asked.

  “Went back to his family in Canada,” I answered, tossing the unneeded box of cornstarch on top of the Jell-O.

  “Canada?” She said it as if she had never heard of such a thing.

  “That’s right.” I picked up a box of unflavored gelatin, which was simply the next thing I saw along the shelf.

  “Well, I expect you’re going to miss him,” she said. “He sure did leave sudden-like.’’

  “Yes.” I tossed the unflavored gelatin into the buggy. “My garden will certainly never be as lovely as it was when I had him around to take care of it.” There! I thought. How wonderful it feels to say something that’s absolutely true!

  The rest of her comment, I decided to ignore.

  “Well, to tell you the truth, your garden wasn’t the only thing he was interested in,” she said in a voice that dared me to ignore that deep pronouncement. I turned to look at her for the first time.

  Might as well, I supposed—or I was going to wind up with a buggy full of things I didn’t need or want.

  “Beg pardon?” I pretended that I hadn’t quite heard her.

  She leaned close to me and whispered, “I said your garden wasn’t the only thing he was interested in.” Her brittle little eyes sparkled behind the thick glasses. “He was interested in Sophie, too, so I hear.”

  Sophie? What on earth could she mean? I knew I had to be careful, because getting taken by surprise like that was likely to make me mess up the story I had rehearsed so carefully.

  “Sophie? What do you mean?” I asked.

  “Just that he’s been meeting her every Sunday morning down by the river—them all alone like that while decent folks are in church. Why, she hasn’t been to services in almost two months—and all because of him. And you didn’t know anything about that?”

  “Why, no.” I didn’t know what else to add, and what I really wanted to do was walk right away from her, but to be truthful, I was too curious to do that. Because after all, I thought I had noticed something or other in Sophie’s voice when I told her about him going off to Canada, and I’d been wondering and wondering about it ever since. But still, it just didn’t make a bit of sense. Sophie and Mr. Oto? How ridiculous!

  “They met every single Sunday morning... alone,” Miss Ruth hissed.

  “What for?” I asked, not thinking too clearly.

  “Supposed to be painting pictures, so I hear. But I think it was something more than that. And you know, of course, that she’s always been a little wild. But she’s got to be just as crazy as her Aunt Minnie to get mixed up like that with such a dark man. And a foreigner to boot! Especially these days, with us not knowing who’s a spy and who’s not!”

  Of course, I knew that Sophie liked to paint watercolors of the river, and I also knew that Mr. Oto sometimes did artwork, but I never thought about the two of them together. And what was that Miss Ruth was saying about spies, anyway?

  “Spies?” I felt something hot and alarmed creeping up the back of my neck.

  “Well,” Miss Ruth laughed. “You just don’t keep up with the news like you used to, do you? There was a rubber raft found on South Beach yesterday—and it all cut to ribbons and half buried in the sand. Sheriff thinks some spies came off a submarine in it.”

  “But what does that have to do with Sophie?”

  “Nothing... maybe. Except that maybe that Mr. Oto of yours was a spy, too. A Japanese spy pretending to be a Chinaman. But now the German spies have come, he could go on to a new assignment in Canada.”

  “But he was Chinese,” I protested.

  “So he said,” Miss Ruth shot back at me. “But who’s to know for sure?” Then she lowered her voice into a conspiratorial whisper, “She’s done it before, you know—had an affair.”

  “Why, Ruth! You’re just as wrong as wrong can be!” I rebutted her cruel words. “And besides, he’s gone now, anyway.” I spoke a little more softly—because after all, I didn’t want to protest too much, as they say. So I took down a package of paper muffin cups from the shelf and tossed it on top of the unflavored gelatin and the cornstarch and the Jell-O. The
n I gripped the handle of the buggy tightly and marched ahead.

  Ruth didn’t follow me, but in a couple of seconds, she called out from behind me, “What kind of recipe you using that calls for Jell-O and unsweetened gelatin? Better be careful! You’ll never be able to get your teeth through it, whatever it is!”

  All in all, I thought Ruth was quite crude in her gossiping, and maybe that’s what was on my mind more than wondering what on earth had been going on—if anything—between Mr. Oto and Sophie. And wondering why they would have been meeting like that. Still, that would certainly explain Sophie’s thinly veiled disappointment when I told her that he had gone to Canada.

  But I knew Sophie very, very well. And Mr. Oto, too—and I also knew with no doubt whatsoever that he was a true gentleman and that she was a true lady. So even if they were meeting, it was just as friends. Nothing more. I was sure of it. And I certainly hated knowing that folks in town were talking about Sophie. I mean, if Ruth was saying something about it to me, then she had probably already spread it all over town. Sophie was a real lady, and I didn’t like her being the subject of such gossip, especially the crude way Ruth put it.

  Poor old Ruth—she’s been gone now a long time. She got real senile in her later years, but not quite the way Sophie’s old Aunt Minnie did—by living in the past—but by getting downright dirty-minded about things. It was a strange thing to happen to her, but then we never really know how it’s going to be for us when we get old, anyway.

  I never did use all that unflavored gelatin or the cornstarch. Wish I’d bought extra sugar, though, instead of those things, because it wasn’t too long after that when we all had to start using rations for sugar and for meat... even for gasoline. Because of the war.

  Well, that was on Friday when Ruth said those things to me, and the next Sunday night was the last time I took supplies to Mr. Oto. Because everything started going wrong about then, starting out when Matilda called me late Sunday afternoon and said she wouldn’t be coming to work that week. In fact, that she didn’t know when she would be back at all.

  “There’s a bad storm coming,” she announced to me on the phone, using that solemn-pronouncement tone I knew so well. The same tone she used whenever she was sure that her cake would fail because the eggs weren’t fresh enough or that we were going to have rain by afternoon because her knees were aching. Funny thing was, she was usually right.

  “Big storms don’t come this late and when the weather’s this cool,” I argued, though I knew, even then, that I may as well save my breath.

  “Well, this one’s coming, sure enough. And before the next full moon,” she assured me. “And I’m taking my children and going to my mama’s over in Waycross. Inland. Away from the ocean. It’s gone be a bad one. You better take care, Miss Anne.”

  With that dire warning, she hung up, leaving me feeling strangely vulnerable and afraid.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Miss Anne said:

  That last Sunday night that I took supplies to the big palm tree for Mr. Oto, he was crouching behind the tree, waiting for me.

  Nearly scared me to death, he did, popping out of the dark like that at me, and of course, the fact that he had startled me led to all kinds of apologies and bows.

  “I thought you were going to stop that,” I snapped at him, though really, it was my being startled that made me angry.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, and bowed again. Honestly, he was just hopeless.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked, glancing up and down the road. Because anyone who happened to come along couldn’t help but notice us there, what with my car barely pulled off the road. And us right out in the middle of nowhere like that.

  “What’s going to happen, Miss Anne?” he asked, and I really didn’t know what he meant by it. And besides, I was intent on getting back home before someone saw us, so I certainly didn’t want to stand there and carry on a conversation with him.

  “Happen?” It was the only thing I could utter.

  “Yes. What will happen to us if someone finds out?”

  Well, that was the very last thing in the world I wanted to talk about, because it scared me to death. And like I said, when I get scared, I get angry. Always have. Always will.

  “Don’t ask!” I snapped at him. “Just don’t ask.”

  And even in the bare light created by the headlights of the car, I could see that his face bore all the proof of his concern. He was very drawn-looking and worn, as if he were grieving.

  “No one will find out,” I said, wanting to do or say anything I could to smooth the worried look in his face.

  “What you are doing for me...” he started, but his voice trailed off, so whatever else he would have said, I never knew.

  “I’m only doing what has to be done,” I said. “And I’m doing it for an American. That’s all that matters.”

  For a few seconds, neither of us said anything else, and I believe the words had comforted both of us. Soothed my conscience quite a bit, that’s for sure. But strangely, those very words that soothed me turned around and made me mad as fire all over again! And maybe part of that was the mere thought that any native-born American should have to be afraid! Right here in his own country!

  “What if someone finds me here? And what if they accuse you of harboring the enemy?” The voice was still soft, but plaintive.

  “No one will find you,” I said, but I certainly didn’t feel all that confident that I was right. Somehow, Ruth’s glittering eyes seemed to manifest themselves out of the headlights’ gleam.

  And that thought scared me so bad that I just shoved the box of canned goods and bottles of fresh water into Mr. Oto’s hands and went and got in my car and drove away.

  Left him standing there in the dark. And that was the last time I ever saw him.

  Chapter Twenty

  On the following Sunday, Sophie went to church for the first time since she’d begun painting at the riverbank with Mr. Oto, because she couldn’t bear the emptiness of the riverbank—and neither could she bear to stay at home, in the rooms where her mother’s voice kept whispering, Nothing lasts.

  Right on time, too, Miss Ruth noted, when Sophie came in. Now that heathen’s gone. Bad enough, it was, Anne harboring an infidel. But for him to entice Sophie away from the Lord!

  And she also noticed that Sophie was very pale and seemed to be distracted, in a strange kind of way. And that during the entire sermon, Sophie didn’t listen to a word, but gazed through the window.

  There’s something, Miss Ruth thought, once again. I’m sure of it. It has to be more than painting!

  For Sophie, the service seemed to go on forever, the sounds of the words lulling her, so that her eyes were drawn irresistibly to the window and beyond. To the green palm fronds and the blue sky. To the riverbank and the dank aroma of early morning. To the quiet sounds. The gentle whisper of the river sliding past the banks and the far-off calling of gulls.

  So that the sudden chord of the last hymn shocked her thoughts, and she twitched at its sudden intrusion. It took her a moment or two to discover that she was completely accustomed to hearing the music from a distance, in soft and muted tones. And before she could stop herself, she glanced over at Miss Ruth and caught the briefest glimpse of the little eyes glittering behind the thick lenses.

  The next week, Sophie passed by Miss Anne’s house nearly every morning, and her steps always hesitated, as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether to turn and go up the walkway or to keep on going.

  On Thursday, her feet made up her mind for her, and as she walked between the borders of the marigolds, she could almost imagine Mr. Oto’s strong hands working the soil around them. So that by the time she knocked on the front door, her heart was fluttering around inside her like a frightened bird.

  When Miss Anne heard the knocking, her first thought was that it was Miss Ruth coming to pry. So that when she saw Sophie’s face peering through the screened door, she felt almost faint with relief. />
  But when she opened the door and saw the lines in Sophie’s face and the worn look in her eyes, she knew right away that something was wrong.

  Of course, she thought. Someone’s told her about Ruth and nasty gossip she’s been spreading.

  And only after the two of them were settled in the big chairs by the front window did Miss Anne carefully start bringing up the topic of Sophie’s obvious distress.

  “Forgive me for saying so, Sophie,” she began as kindly as possible. “But you’re looking so tired, I’m worried about you.’’

  Sophie smiled at that, and just the simple act of smiling seemed to bring a bit of color to her cheeks. Miss Anne sat back in her chair and felt a little less worried. After all, if Sophie could still smile, then perhaps she wasn’t taking Ruth’s gossiping all that seriously.

  “I’m fine,” Sophie said. “Just haven’t been sleeping very well.’’

  “I certainly know what that’s like,” Miss Anne agreed, and of course, she didn’t add that she hadn’t had a night of good, deep sleep since the attack on Pearl Harbor and the conflicts it had created in the most private recesses of her own soul.

  “Miss Anne, why did Mr. Oto go off so suddenly?” The question was entirely unexpected and found Miss Anne unprepared to answer. She would have expected a question like that from Ruth, but not from Sophie. So that she stared at Sophie dumbly for several long moments before she could answer.

  “It’s just what he decided to do,” she said finally.

  “He didn’t say why?”

  Miss Anne noticed how carefully Sophie was speaking. Obviously, Sophie was wondering if that terrible gossip had made the quiet and gentle Mr. Oto so miserable that he had to leave. “No, he didn’t. It was just something he decided to do.’’

  “Oh.”

  “But I know what’s bothering you, Sophie,” Miss Anne said in an entirely gentle voice.