Amerikan Eagle

by Alan Glenn

  Sarah got up from the couch and came to him, a blue lace apron tied around her tan dress and slim waist. Her dark hair was cut in the over-the-eye look of Veronica Lake. Sarah one time said she thought she looked like the Hollywood actress, and in certain lights, her head tilted a certain way, Sam would agree. He had met her in high school, the oldest story in romance magazines and movie serials, she the head cheerleader, he the star quarterback.

  Now he was a cop and she was still at school, a secretary for the school superintendent, and they were among the lucky ones in town, to have reasonably safe jobs.

  A quick dry kiss on the lips and she asked, “Was it what they said when they called you? A dead man by the tracks?”

  “Yeah,” Sam said, thinking of what he had to say in the next few moments, wondering how that pretty face in front of him would respond to the news. “One dead man. No ID. A real mystery.”

  “How did he die?” she asked.

  “Don’t know yet,” he replied absently, still working through what had to be done. “Doc Saunders will probably let me know tomorrow.”

  Sarah said, “Sounds interesting. And Sam, I just saw in the paper, Montgomery Ward’s has a sale on, men’s dress shirts for a dollar forty-four apiece. Do you want me to pick you up a couple next time I’m downtown? With your promotion, you’ve got to have more than just two.”

  “Yeah, I guess … Look, we’ve got to talk.”

  He took her hand and led her back to the couch. He sat his surprised wife down and looked around, then turned up the radio’s volume. The thumping joy of some bigband orchestra grew louder, the trumpet piercing. Harry James, playing “I’ve Heard that Song Before.” He leaned over to her and said, “It has to stop, Sarah. Now.”

  Her eyes widened. “What has to stop?”

  His chest was tight, so tight it hurt. “The Underground Railroad. It has to stop now. Tonight. This instant. And we’ve got to empty out the basement of any evidence.”

  His hand was still in hers, and her fingers felt cold. “What’s wrong? Who found out?”

  “Damned if I know how, but the Party knows there’s a station operating here in the city. Marshal Hanson asked me to keep an eye open for any evidence. Pretty damn ironic, right?”

  “Sam, this could be a good thing. You could pretend that you couldn’t find anything, the heat would be off, and—”

  “No. Not going to happen, Sarah. It’s one thing to look the other way when you and your friends set the station up in our basement. But I can’t jeopardize my job, or you and Toby, by going along with a cover-up. It’s not going to happen. Promise me the station shuts down. Tonight.”

  She withdrew her hand gently. “I promise we’ll talk about it. All right? That’s all I can do right now.” Her cheeks were flushed.

  “Sarah, please. It’s been a hell of a long day.”

  She stood and reached over to snap the radio off. “I’m sorry to say, but your day’s not over yet.”

  In the silence that followed, he didn’t want to argue any more about the Underground Railroad. Sam didn’t know how much the Party suspected, but he did know the Party had amazing wiretapping abilities when they had the desire, and lately, they’d had plenty of desire. “How’s that?” He tried to keep his voice even.

  “Your ham loaf and potatoes are ready, but you need to talk to Toby first.”

  “Don’t tell me we’ve got another call from his principal.”

  “No, nothing like that. He just wants you to say good night to him. And Sam—he wants to know if he can get rid of the rubber sheet. He’s terribly upset about wetting the bed last week.”

  “All right. I’ll talk to him.”

  “And there’s Walter, Sam—”

  “Damn,” he said. “What now?”

  She rolled her eyes in the direction of the ceiling. “Said his sink is clogged. Wants to know if you can fix it before you go to bed.”

  “A clogged sink? Again? Can’t the man fix a damn clogged sink?”

  “He used to be a science professor at Harvard. How smart can he be?”

  “I don’t know. He’s living with us because you’re friends, so you tell me.”

  “Please,” she said. “Can we not get into that now? He’s paying us rent, we need the money, and he needs his sink unclogged. Can we just leave it at that, Sam?”

  He recalled what he had said to the snide young cop about knowing things. “Yeah, I guess so. Okay, Sarah—Toby first, dinner second, and Walter third.”

  Her mood changed suddenly; Sarah smiled at him, a welcome sight after their talk about the Railroad. “Care to think of a fourth, Inspector Miller?”

  “I certainly do, Mrs. Miller, and look forward to it.”

  She slapped his rump and pushed him away. “Only if you get your boy to sleep and play plumber. So get to it. And Sam … we’ll talk about the other thing later. Promise.”

  * * *

  He went through the kitchen and past a new Frigidaire refrigerator, an anniversary gift from his father-in-law. He hated receiving something so extravagant from a man he despised, but Sarah loved getting rid of the icebox and the never-ending task of emptying the floor drain pan, so that had been that.

  He eased open the door to his son’s room. The night-light illuminated the narrow bed and a bookcase that held a cluster of books and toy trucks, one, he always noted with a smile, a police cruiser with Portsmouth markings. On the other side of the bookcase were a Gilbert chemistry set and a fossil collection.

  From the ceiling, model aircraft hung from black thread and thumbtacks pushed into the plaster: Great War aircraft like a Sopwith Camel and a Fokker triplane, and a German zeppelin and U.S. Navy blimp. All made from balsa wood and tissue paper, each one carefully pieced together with his boy on lazy Sunday afternoons.

  He sat on the corner of the bed and touched Toby’s silky brown hair with his hand. His boy stared up at him sleepily.

  “Dad.”

  “Hey, kiddo. Why aren’t you sleeping?”

  Toby yawned. “I wanna make sure you were home. That you were okay. That’s why.”

  “Well, I’m back. And I’m okay.”

  “Why did you have to leave?”

  “There was a case I had to investigate.”

  “What kind of case?” Toby rolled on the mattress, making a rustling noise from the rubber sheet underneath the cotton one. Just last week the boy had awakened screaming from a nightmare, having wet the bed.

  “A … dead man was found. I had to check it out.”

  “Was it a murder?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  “Oh …”

  “Toby, are you scared of something?”

  “I dunno. I worry sometimes about bad men. Spies, killers. Bad men hurting you. Hurting Mom. Stupid, huh?”

  “Not stupid,” Sam said firmly. “But I promise you: No bad men are going to hurt you. Or Mom. Or me. Ever.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yes. I promise.”

  “Dad … I don’t like this rubber sheet. It’s for babies.”

  Sam repressed a sigh. “Just a little while longer, pal.”

  His boy turned his head. “Dad, you’re sure about that? That there are no spies?”

  “There’s no spies,” Sam said firmly. “We’re safe, pal, you and your mom and me.”

  How many fathers out there had had the same talk with their sons hours before being seized, arrested, their families broken up, their children sent to state homes? Sam thought, Oh, there are so many bad men out there, how in God’s name can I protect you from all of them?

  Sam cleared his throat. “Now make us both happy and go to sleep, okay? And no more nightmares.”

  “ ’Kay, Dad.”

  “And keep doing good in school, okay? No more notes from your teachers, all right?”

  “I’ll try, Dad,” Toby murmured, already falling asleep. Sam kissed the soft brown hair, got up, and went to the door. A small voice said, “Dad? Can I listen to my crystal set for a w
hile?”

  The crystal radio set, made as a project in the Cub Scouts. Let him listen to music or a western or a mystery … or no, his bright little boy would probably listen to the news of the bad men butchering little boys in Manchuria and China and Indochina and Russia and Finland and Burma and—

  Sam felt adrift. What he really wanted to do was talk to his son, to tell him there was a time when the radio wasn’t full of news about wars overseas, that the President was someone to admire, that people had work and unemployment wasn’t approaching 40 percent. When newsprint wasn’t a rationed government resource. And that even though the country had managed to stay out of the bloody wars in the Pacific and in Europe, it now seemed to be endlessly at war with itself, with arrests and detentions and labor camps, all orchestrated by a man who wasn’t fit to inhabit the house once lived in by Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.

  But for tonight … “No,” he answered. “I don’t want you listening to your radio. You go to sleep now, okay?”

  “ ’Kay, Dad.”

  Sam closed the door behind him, softly.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The ham loaf had dried out, and the potatoes were cold, but he ate them greedily as Sarah sat with him and asked him about the body. He grunted in all the right places, trying to hurry things along so he could go to the upstairs apartment and fix the sink and get this long day and long night behind him. Once during dinner the phone rang—one long ring and three short rings—and they both ignored it. Their ring on this local party line was two long and two short; the other ring belonged to the Connors down the way.

  He pushed his chair back, kissed her cheek, and said, “Back in a bit, girl. Boy’s asleep and—”

  She started picking up the dishes. “Get along, Inspector. You still have work to do, and that boy had better still be asleep if you want to get lucky.”

  “Lucky is the day you said yes to me,” he said, making it a point to look down the front of her dress when she bent to reach for his plate.

  Another fleeting smile, and she moved her hand in a fluttering motion as if to shoo him away from leering. “You know what, Inspector? You are so right. Now make me proud and get to work.”

  “Hope it’s not all work,” he retorted, but she was already at the sink, running the hot water. It was if she was now ignoring him. That was Sarah. Sometimes bubbling with childish enthusiasm, sometimes quiet, and now silent, thinking of who knew what. Her change of mood was as though a window had been opened, letting in a cold draft, and he knew it had to be about the Underground Railroad. He couldn’t help himself, but he thought of Donna back at the Shanty, her eager smile and sweet body, and he remembered just … how simple Donna was. No, that wasn’t the right word. Donna was uncomplicated. That’s all. Just uncomplicated. Sarah … now, she was complicated.

  So why hadn’t he dated Donna back in school?

  Forget it, he decided. That was then, this is now.

  He went downstairs to the dirt-floor cellar, past the coal furnace and outside bulkhead, where he grabbed a canvas bag of tools from his workbench. In one corner, near the coal furnace, hung an old sheet. He pulled the sheet back. A cot was pushed up against the stone foundation. There was a pillow at one end and a green wool blanket folded at the other. He looked at the cot and thought, Well, that’s it for charity work. That was their private joke about this Underground Railroad station. But it was one thing to do what you could, when trouble was down in D.C. or Baton Rouge. It was another thing when trouble was on your front doorstep, especially delivered by your boss. What did Sam know about the Underground Railroad here in Portsmouth?

  A hell of a lot, he thought. A hell of a lot.

  Bag of tools in hand, he climbed upstairs, went through the living room and then outside. The rain had finally stopped. He went around the rear of the house, where an open stairway led up to the second floor. Up the creaking stairs he went, and at the top, he knocked on the door. He had to knock twice more before it opened.

  “Inspector Miller!” boomed the familiar voice. “So nice of you to make it here.” The door swung open.

  The apartment was even tinier than the rooms downstairs and really shouldn’t have been an apartment at all, but he and Sarah needed the extra income after promised pay raises for both of them fell through last year. Through a friend of Sarah’s at the school department—who was once a student of Walter’s—Walter Tucker had come into their lives. Blacklisted from a science-teaching position at Harvard University for refusing to sign a loyalty oath, Walter was in his late forties, heavyset, almost entirely bald. His fat fingers always clasped a stubby cigar. Tonight his eyes, behind horn-rimmed glasses, were filmy, and he was wearing worn slippers and a frayed red plaid bathrobe.

  The room had cracked yellow linoleum and had been turned into a kitchen of sorts, with a scarred wooden table and three unmatched chairs. There was a wooden icebox in the corner and a hot plate on a small counter. Off to the right was a bathroom with a toilet and the offending sink. Open doorways led to two other rooms: a bedroom with an unmade bed and an office that had a desk made of scrap lumber that bore a large typewriter. Everywhere in the apartment were books and pulp magazines and copies of Scientific American and Collier’s.

  A radio next to the hot plate was playing swing music, Benny Goodman, it sounded like. Sam went into the bathroom and sighed at the gray water in the sink. “What now, Walter? What did you do?”

  “Nothing, my dear boy. Just preparing my evening meal. Nothing out of the ordinary, but there you go. The sink overflowed, and I wanted to make sure it was repaired before it started leaking on your head.”

  “Thanks,” Sam muttered. “Do you have a coffee cup or something I could borrow?”

  “Absolutely.” Walter waddled off. He came back with a thick white coffee mug with a broken handle, and Sam started bailing the water out of the clogged sink. As he worked, Walter leaned against the doorjamb and lit a cigar. “What news of the Portsmouth Police Department?”

  “Had a body out on the railroad tracks tonight. By Maplewood Avenue.”

  “A suicide?”

  “Don’t know right now.”

  “How fascinating. Maybe you’ve got a real murder on your hands, Sam.”

  Sam paused, the mug slimy in his hand. “What are you doing, Walter? Research for a detective story?”

  Walter studied his cigar. “No, son. Detective stories are a tad too realistic for me. You know what I write. Science fiction and fantasy. That’s where my degraded tastes have led me. Stories about rockets and robots. Evil wizards.”

  “Speaking of which, rent’s due on the fifteenth. Just so there’s no misunderstanding.”

  The older man grinned. “No misunderstanding. I received a check from Street and Smith yesterday and expect another one shortly. The rent will be paid in full and on time.”

  “Best news I’ve gotten today.” The sink was empty. He squatted down and said, “Can you get me a saucepan or something?”

  “Certainly.”

  Minutes later, Sam undid the U-joint with a wrench, and brown water rushed into the pan. He reached in with his fingers and winced in disgust as he pulled out the clog, greasy lumps of potato peelings. He dropped them in the saucepan, put the piping back into place, and worked the wrench, then stood up.

  “Don’t peel your potatoes in the sink, please, Walter. Do it someplace else, okay? It just clogs the sink. You did the same thing last month.”

  “My thanks, Inspector, my warmest thanks.”

  “You’re welcome, Walter.” Sam dropped his tools into his bag, saw a worn leather valise on the floor nearby. He never saw Walter without the leather valise, in which the former professor carried letters, manuscripts, and God knew what else. On the table was a stack of magazines with names like Thrilling Wonder Stories and Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories. He picked up Astounding Stories, studied a garish spaceship, fire spewing from its nozzles. There were three names on the cover, and he was startled to see one
he recognized: Walter Tucker. He set the pulp magazine down. “How’s the writing gig going?”

  “It’s a living of sorts. I’m sure the overpaid and quite cowed professors at Harvard would turn down their noses at what I do, but it can be a lot of fun, frankly. You have to tell a story quickly and to the point. Actually, I’ve learned an extraordinary amount the past few years. About astronomy, biology, atomic theory, and archaeology. Among other things. Anyway, once you’ve been blackballed, that’s it. Even industries that need workers with a scientific background won’t touch me. And the secret satisfaction of science fiction and fantasy is that you can also write about forbidden topics without worrying about censors and critics with handguns and nightsticks.”

  Sam was silent, thinking about how tired he was.

  “If you write a story about a suppressed group of knights who are working hard to overthrow a king from a swampland who has usurped the throne from the rightful king, who was murdered before his time, and how this swamp king has put his lackeys into places of power around the kingdom … and how they fight to return the kingdom to the old and free ways … then it’s just a fantasy. A tale that no overseer or censor will worry about … a tale that won’t get the author into trouble.”

  “Or into a labor camp.”

  “Exactly,” Walter agreed, dropping the magazine back on the table. “Speaking of labor camps, how’s your brother?”

  The second mention of Tony in one evening. Must be a record. “Got a postcard from him last month. Seems to be doing well.”

  “Glad to hear it. And I’m glad he has a brother who’s handy with tools.”

  “I’ve got to get going. Remember, no potato peels in the sink.”

  “Duly noted. No peels in the sink. Thanks again, Inspector.”

  “You’re welcome. And make sure that you—”

  “Yes, yes, I know. The rent on the fifteenth.”

  * * *

  Outside, the night air was damp and chilly. The lights from the shipyard reflected yellow and white against the low clouds, and he could now make out the faint sounds of workmen putting together the latest class of navy submarines. He stood there, seeing a place that had built ships for a century and a half, a place his father had worked after his service in World War I and a place his brother, Tony, had worked until … Sam again felt that flush of embarrassment of a law officer having a brother who had been arrested three years ago and charged with illegally trying to unionize the shipyard workers. A quick star-chamber-type trial, and now Tony was serving a sentence at a federal labor camp near Fort Drum, New York. Besides the shame and concern for his older brother, there was also anger, for he was certain his brother’s arrest had very nearly sidetracked his promotion to inspector.