by Boyle, T. C.
* * *
The first night they invited Frank to pitch his tent in the courtyard, out of the wind, but by the second night he was installed in Jimmie’s room and frequenting the Killer Whale Bar with Herbie. Herbie took to him right away, once his initial suspicions were allayed, and even went out in the field with him when he could spare the time. She was glad of it. Herbie needed a little male companionship—Jimmie hadn’t been around in months and Bob Brooks’ visits were sporadic at best—and for the week and a half Frank was with them, his mood just took off like George Hammond’s airplane, and when George flew in the three of them sat out in the bar for hours, their voices running up and down the ladder and the sharp bursts of their laughter rolling across the courtyard till the windows rattled in sympathetic vibration.
One night after George had flown back home, she, Herbie and Frank were in the living room listening to the radio, the girls in bed and the wind blowing a gale. At some point the radio went out—the wind, Herbie said—and they sat by the fire, talking in low voices and listening to the wind-borne sand scratch at the windows. “Sounds like a thousand cats out there trying to get in,” Frank said, getting up to poke the fire.
“Where are the cats?” Herbie asked, turning to her.
“Mr. Fluff’s in with the girls,” she said. “The others are out prowling, I guess.”
“On a night like this?”
“Don’t worry, they can take care of themselves. And who knows, they might even catch a mouse or two. Did you know, Frank, that Herbie has a soft spot for mice, if you can believe it?”
“Mice? You’re not serious, are you?” Frank shot a look over his shoulder, the poker arrested in his hand. “I hate to say it, but they’re dirty animals. Turn your back a minute and they’re up on the counter getting at your plate. And believe me they’re hell when you set up camp and then you’re gone all day in the field. They gnaw, that’s the worst of it. Leave anything around, and I don’t care what it is—a hammer, your underwear, your toothbrush even—and they’ll chew it up.”
“Everything’s got a right to live,” Herbie said.
The fire sent up a burst of sparks. Frank prodded it again—more sparks—then propped the poker against the wall and settled back in his chair. “Yeah, I guess,” he said, “but the cat’s right seems to interfere with the poor mouse’s, doesn’t it?”
“The Law of Nature,” Herbie said. “People too. Look at the Japs. Or the Krauts. Or the Duce.”
“You look at them. It just makes me sick even to think about what’s going on in the world today. But you people—at least you’re protected from it.”
They all sat there a moment and thought about that, about how far out of the sphere of things you’d have to go, geographically and spiritually both, to be safe, truly safe. If it was possible even. After a while Frank said, “You ever get lonely out here—or depressed, I mean? With this weather. A night like this?”
“No,” she said too quickly.
“Sure,” Herbie admitted. “But it’d be the same thing anywhere, wouldn’t it?”
Frank shrugged as if to say, “Point taken,” leaned back in the chair and propped an ankle on one knee, exposing the underside of his boot. She saw that the heel was worn down to nothing and the sole rubbed so thin it couldn’t have provided much more protection than a sheet of paper and it made her think of all those hundreds of miles he’d tramped in desolate places, up granite mountains and across deserts strewn with cactus, through canyons and riverbeds. Things underfoot. The horizon receding. Can of beans and a fire of twigs.
“You know,” he said, “I got so low once—this was two, three years ago, when I was living in San Pedro and couldn’t get work and my wife was at me all the time and then I had this accident where I lost sixty percent of the sight in my right eye, just like that, pow—I really thought seriously about doing myself in.”
“I don’t believe it,” she said. “You? You’re one of the cheerfullest people I’ve ever met—”
He just shook his head ruefully. “I even bought a gun, a pistol, what they call a .38 Special? And I planned out how I would do it in the dunes someplace so nobody’d have to clean up the mess, let the gulls take care of it, you know? But I didn’t do it. And things got better between Marjorie and me, though that’s gone sour since, I’m sorry to say—and then I got this job up here . . . but here, let me show you—”
He got up then and left the room. A moment later he came back with something wrapped up in a scrap of stained cloth. He bent forward to set it on the coffee table so they could contemplate it a moment, then unwrapped it to reveal the gun itself, snub-nosed, blue-black and glistening with oil. “I’ve been carrying it around with me for years, telling myself it’s for protection when I’m out on a job someplace, but that’s just a lot of gas. I know what I bought it for. And I don’t want it in my life anymore.” He glanced up at Herbie, who sat there perfectly motionless, as if to move would be a violation of trust.
“I want you to have it,” Frank said. “For your collection. It’s not much, I know, but let’s call it my way of thanking you—thanking both of you—for all your kindness, for taking me into your home just like I was a member of the family. It’s meant a lot to me. It really has.”
The Japanese
Frank was gone by Halloween, so that it was just the family for dinner, doughnuts and apple cider, after which the girls—who’d both dressed as Snow White, the heroine of the only movie they’d ever seen—got a lesson in trick or treat. They went up and down the porch, rapping at each door, behind which Herbie had stashed a dish of sweets, and just when they began to get the hang of it he sprang out at them draped in a sheet, gyrating and moaning and stamping over the floorboards in full display. “I’m the ghost of Captain Waters,” he roared while the dog howled and the girls dissolved in shrieks, “and I’ve come to reclaim my own!” For her part, she drew exaggerated circles under her eyes with a stick of charcoal and came as the wicked queen, but it was Herbie who stole the show.
There was turkey for Thanksgiving, a dressed bird George flew out to them—“At least the foxes won’t get this one,” he said, “though I guess I’m depriving the goose of a playmate, isn’t that right, Herbie?”—along with all the trimmings. Herbie printed up a menu which began with “Cream of Celery Soup” and ended with “Apple Pie, Home-Brewed Beer, Pipe and Tobacco,” and they did their best to make the day festive. As for Christmas, neither of them had really had a chance to give it much thought when news came that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor and all bets were off.
She was sitting in the rocking chair out on the porch, knitting and listening to the Philharmonic broadcast, Sunday afternoon, a weak sun running to milk in the sky and the temperature tolerable because the wind was down. The girls were out in the meadow throwing a ball and playing keep-away with the dog, whose high joyous yips had been punctuating Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony—“The Pastoral”—for the past ten minutes, and Herbie was at the far end of the porch, dismantling the clock that had suddenly stopped working that morning. What was wrong with this scenario? Nothing. Nothing at all. It was a picture of domestic tranquility and the deepest indwelling peace, one more day in a succession of them, husband, family, home, the sky above and the familiar boards of the porch beneath her feet. And then the announcer came over the air and interrupted the broadcast and nothing was ever the same again.
They listened to the president’s speech the next day, trying to make sense of what had happened. It had been a sneak attack, premeditated, the Japanese ambassador in Washington as false as a three-dollar bill and the emperor’s fleet simultaneously attacking Malaya, Hong Kong, Guam, the Philippines and Wake and Midway Islands, spreading east across the Pacific. She couldn’t believe it. It seemed fantastic, like the Mercury Theatre broadcast that had caused such panic three years back, only the invaders were the Japanese this time, not the Martians.
Herbie couldn’t sit still. He twisted the dial. Paced the room. Muttered under his breath. All the while, the president’s voice came at them, humming, buzzing, fractured with static: Hostilities exist. There is no blinking at the fact that our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger. She tried to focus on the words, but it was as if the president were speaking from the bottom of a very deep jar, every syllable ringing and resonating till all she could hear was the phrase “a state of war,” but that was enough. More than enough. She got up out of her chair and went to Herbie, to her support, her pillar, and took his hand. “What does it mean?” she asked.
“What does it mean?” The look he gave her was savage. He’d fought in the war to end all wars, given his blood, his flesh, a full year and a half of his life, and here was the next war sweeping them up whether they liked it or not. “It means they’re going to try to evacuate us, that’s what—this is just the excuse they’ve been looking for.”
“But why? Certainly we’re not in any danger, not way out here, are we?”
“The Pacific Fleet’s gone, Elise, don’t you understand? There’s nothing between the Japs and us. And you can bet they’re going to hopscotch island to island till they take Hawaii and then they’ll come for us, for the whole west coast, and we’re defenseless without warships.” He squeezed her hand—too hard, much too hard, almost as if he didn’t know what he was doing—then abruptly dropped it. “But I tell you, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Can’t they force us?”
He gave a wild look round the room, the radio going still, more static, another announcer, more failure, more hate, more fear, then strode over to it and flicked it off. In the next moment he was across the room lifting one of his rifles down from the wall and raising it to his shoulder to sight down the barrel. “I don’t know what they can or can’t do,” he said. “I don’t know anything anymore.” He leaned the gun against the wall, then lifted another down and hefted it in both hands. “But I tell you, anybody comes here to threaten us, whether it’s the U.S. Navy or the Japs themselves, I’m going to be ready for them.”
* * *
Christmas was dismal that year. All aircraft had been grounded, which meant that George wasn’t able to bring out the tree or supplies or the gifts they’d ordered for the girls (one headline, which she wouldn’t wind up seeing till well into January, read, “War Grounds Santa: Christmas a Bust on San Miguel Island”). The authorities were putting restrictions on boat traffic as well, imposing a blockade on all ships in the Western Combat Zone, extending out one hundred fifty miles from the coast, Mexico to Canada. No one stopped by, not even the Vails, who were under the same proscription as they. There was no mail, incoming or outgoing—no letters from friends and relatives, no magazines or newspapers, no Christmas cards. Even the Weather Service froze up communications. Herbie managed to fashion a wreath of ice plant, but the shade of green was all wrong and within a day the whole thing had turned yellow and begun to drip a colorless viscous fluid that ran down the front door in riverine streaks to puddle on the doorstep.
She did her best to craft presents for the girls—rag dolls, paper animals, necklaces of seashells—but supplies were limited, and Christmas dinner, while it did feature fresh-caught halibut in a sauce of flour and evaporated milk made piquant with a sprinkle of dried red pepper left over from the shearers’ last visit, was short on potatoes and fresh vegetables, and the Christmas pudding wound up being represented by an eggless, butterless and very flat vanilla cake sprinkled with raisins. Even worse, from Herbie’s perspective, was that there was no whiskey, the old trove long gone and the two bottles of Grand Sire that George had brought them at Thanksgiving drained to the last drop. About the only thing that made it seem like Christmas was a program of faint scratchy carols they were able to get on the radio, but even the radio signal was sketchy in those days and weeks after Pearl Harbor.
The two Navy boys—and they were boys, eighteen and twenty respectively—showed up on New Year’s Day. They came slouching up the road from the harbor carrying knapsacks and with a single rifle between them. A Navy gunboat had apparently dropped them off, but neither she nor Herbie had seen or heard it—the first indication she had that anyone was there came from Marianne. “Mommy, Mommy!” Marianne cried, dancing into the kitchen, “there’s somebody coming up the road!”
She and Herbie dropped what they were doing and went out to the gate to meet them, Herbie flicking imaginary dust from his epaulettes and she pushing the hair out of her face. For their part, the Navy boys seemed to be in no hurry, dawdling even, swiveling their heads right and left, looking pained and wary. City boys, she said to herself. The thought was automatic: she’d earned her bona fides, she was the pioneer here and they were the mainlanders, the neophytes—she wouldn’t be surprised if they’d never been farther than a block from a streetcar in their lives. Just look at them, creeping along as if they expected the sky to fall on them.
When they reached the gate, the taller one—an ectomorph with an Adam’s apple as big as a goiter—set down his bag and saluted Herbie. “Seaman First Class Reg Bauer,” he said, “at your service. And this here’s my shipmate, Seaman Apprentice Frederick Fredrickson.”
The other man—boy—had an amiable face and small soft girlish hands. His feet, in their now-dusty standard-issue shoes, couldn’t have been much bigger than Marianne’s. He doffed his cap and gave a brisk nod of his head. “Call me Freddie,” he said.
There was an awkward interval. Herbie was no help—he was bristling again, his hair mussed, the book he’d been reading dangling from the fingers of one hand. The girls, same as with Frank Furlong, just stared as if they’d never seen another human being before in all their lives, and that was something they needed to get over, this island shyness. It wasn’t right. They had to learn how to manage in society. Finally she said, “I’m Mrs. Lester—Elise—and this is my husband, Herbert. How can we help you?”
The first one let out a laugh. “Oh, no, ma’am, you don’t understand—we’re here to help you. We’re to be billeted here and keep watch for enemy activity. And, of course”—and here he tapped the rifle slung over his shoulder—“to serve as protection in the event hostile combatants do appear. Show up, I mean. The Japanese, that is.”
“Yes, we’ve heard of them,” Herbie said in a withering voice. “They’re those little yellow bastards with the buckteeth.”
“Yes, sir,” the other one said, trying out a smile now. She saw that he had acne spots on his face and throat and that his eyes were red, as if he’d been drinking, or—and here she made a leap of intuition—working through the dregs of a New Year’s Eve hangover. “The same,” he said. And then the smile was gone.
“Let me get this straight,” Herbie said, shifting his weight so that he was leaning into the gate now, as if to bar their way as he had with the men from the Interior Department. “You’re going to protect us from invasion—with one rifle between you? And an antiquated firearm at that? We used the Springfield in the first war, or didn’t anybody tell you that? They couldn’t even issue you the M1 Garand?”
“Well, no, sir,” the first one said, ducking his head, “that’s not possible at present. Captain Hill—he’s the one gave us our orders?—says we’re short of small arms and we’ve got to make do with what we have on hand, until we can, or they can—”
“Who can? You talking about rifle manufacturers here in this country gearing up for wartime production? Because if you are, it’s going to be a long wait, I’m afraid.” He shot her an exasperated look, then lifted his eyes to heaven as if to say, How can they expect us to suffer such fools? Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dog come trotting across the yard to investigate, then drop back on his haunches at a safe distance. The breeze came at her, cold and insinuating, and it carried the smell of the sheep. And then Betsy, her hair blowing round her face, sidled over to her father and clung to his leg, shi
fting back and forth to play peek-a-boo with these fascinating creatures who’d serendipitously appeared on her doorstep. “But you said something about being billeted here?” Herbie said.
“Yes, sir.” And here the one with the gun—Reg—saluted again. “Those are my orders, sir.”
“And who do you think’s going to feed you? Billeted, my ass. You think you can just waltz in here with that Springfield rifle and order us around as if this is some kind of military camp or something?”
The short one, Freddie: “You don’t understand, sir, we’re here to protect you—to serve you, that is. Your whole family. And to watch out for—”
“Suspicious activity?”
“Suspicious activity, yes, right.”
Herbie crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head back as if he were examining them from a great distance. “Don’t make me laugh. You even know how to use that thing?”
The tall one—and now he was bristling: “We’ve been drilled.”
“You betcha,” the other one put in.
“I’m sure we’ll all sleep better tonight knowing that.” Herbie turned to her, his eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “Did you hear that, Elise? They’ve been drilled. What a relief, huh?”
* * *
They put them up in the shearers’ room just off the kitchen. The letter the boys carried with them from their commanding officer gave Herbie and her the choice of evacuation—which meant leaving everything behind that wouldn’t fit into one suitcase apiece—or submitting to the Navy presence. Everyone had to sacrifice in this time of need, Captain Hill went on to say, pointing out that the government was pressing all private aircraft into service and any number of seaworthy vessels as well, including passenger liners, tugs, tankers, trawlers and even private yachts, thus it was their duty as Americans and patriots to billet Seaman First Class Bauer and Seaman Apprentice Frederickson, who could be expected to assist with household chores as needed and to patrol the island on a regular basis in order to protect them from enemy infiltration and assault. Further, each man had been provided with ten pounds of rice, ten pounds of beans and a quantity of dried and cured meats, including but not limited to ham, bacon and chipped beef, to contribute to the general stores.
