The Art of Keeping Cool

by Janet Taylor Lisle

  All that day, whenever we had a minute, Elliot and I listened to reports about rescue operations on the radio. We heard how everyone got off the ship in time, but then, since the boat was so slow to go down, the captain and first mate went back on board to save some equipment. In those few minutes, the ship suddenly rolled and sank, and they were lost. Worse, the German subs that did the damage—at least two it was thought—got away clean. It made you mad to think how those subs were probably lying out somewhere on the shallow sandy bottom off Cape Cod, waiting for the next ship to come their way.

  It made you nervous, too. Elliot and I weren’t the only ones listening to the radio. By evening, there probably wasn’t anyone in town who hadn’t looked to sea and worried what might be out there. That night, it was hard to go to sleep because planes kept roaring past overhead. Mom and I sat up for a while and watched the searchlights in Newport pan the sky for enemy planes.

  About 3 A.M., after we were asleep, the air-raid siren at the end of our lane went off. We all jumped a mile in our beds. Carolyn began to cry, and we were getting ready to run up to Grandma’s root cellar to take cover when the all-clear siren sounded. A wire malfunction had set the siren off, we found out the next day. That didn’t stop us thinking about it the next night, though, or the night after that. You get the willies when you wake up to an alarm like that, even after you know it wasn’t anything. Carolyn had to sleep in Mom’s bed for a week before she got over it.

  Grandpa must have gotten a jolt from that siren, too, because he began to talk to Grandma and Aunt Nan about making a bomb shelter. He’d refused to have anything to do with bomb shelters up to then, so this was a big turnaround.

  Grandma said the cellar under the house was the best place for it, and told Elliot and me to sweep the whole place out, which just about broke our backs because it was so full of ancient dust and spider webs. We put blankets and pillows down there, canned food and some crocks of water.

  “Now that we’ve got this blasted shelter, you can bet we’ll never need it,” Grandpa said. He was as glad to have it as we were though, and he began to be in favor of other security measures around our two houses.

  At night, we all followed the fort’s orders to curtain and even double curtain our windows, and everyone went to sleep with shoes and clothes laid out in case we had to evacuate fast. The fort had suggested that, too.

  We carried sandbags and chicken wire up into the attic side of Elliot’s room (our cottage didn’t have an attic), and lumped it in a way to deflect fire bombs in case any fell through the roof.

  “What about me?” Elliot said. “I won’t deflect bombs. Shouldn’t I sleep somewhere else?”

  “You?” Grandpa said. “You have legs, I suppose. You can run downstairs.”

  Because he was often out in the evenings on house calls, Grandpa painted the top half of his car headlights black to keep them from shining up into the air. All car owners in Sachems Head had been told to do this so enemy aircraft couldn’t identify our roads or places of assembly after dark. Some people said it was a long shot that German war planes could make it across the ocean to bomb us, but the fort didn’t want us taking any chances.

  The town practiced for air raids, too. When the sirens went off in a certain way, we were supposed to run inside and take cover. After the first few alerts, Elliot and I didn’t bother to do that anymore, but we were impressed when Grandma volunteered for Civil Air Patrol duty. Twice a week she went up the watch tower on Eavesville Road and spent an afternoon watching through binoculars for the approach of enemy aircraft.

  “I saw three seagulls today,” she’d tell us with a twinkly eye when she came back. Or, “An enemy plane approached and I notified headquarters. But it turned out to be that mothy old buzzard that lives down at the marsh.”

  Grandpa would frown when she made light of things like this, and stomp back to his office. He’d gone completely in the other direction by this time and become more serious about civil defense than any of us. From some closet in the house, he’d dug out an old star-gazer telescope that he kept trained on the bit of ocean he could see from his surgery window. He was as jumpy as anyone about spotting periscopes out there, and once called the fort to report an enemy sub that turned out to be Jimmy Potter raking clams in a rowboat off the point.

  Not all sightings were groundless, though. We were well along in June when the newspapers reported the real thing—four Nazi commandos posing as fishermen had sneaked ashore at night on Long Island. They’d brought crates of explosives which they buried in the sand. Their plot was to come back and get them, and start blowing up our railway lines. They went to New York and Washington, D.C. first though, and were arrested before they could do anything. Still, the idea that they’d landed at all and got away with it, came as a big shock to everybody.

  “How were they caught, did anyone say?” I asked Uncle Jake the morning after their capture had come out. He was eating breakfast at Grandma’s, where I’d gone to pick up Elliot for our walk to school. Elliot was taking forever as usual, probably cataloging his birds’ eggs or something.

  “The Coast Guard was tipped off,” Uncle Jake said, putting a spoonful of grape jelly in the center of his toast and smoothing it down.

  “By who?”

  “Somebody saw suspicious activity on the beach. A fisherman, someone said. But the Feds were onto them so quick, I think it could have been a code interception.”

  “You mean we intercepted a Nazi radio message?”

  “Well, I don’t know that officially, so don’t go talking it around.”

  “Is that the kind of stuff they do at the fort?”

  Uncle Jake cleared his throat and glanced over his shoulder. Seeing that Grandpa was nowhere in sight, he said:

  “There’ve been other reports about German agents trying to land, up in Maine, down in the Florida Keys. The whole coast is on the alert. Fort Brooks is active, I’d say. One of the most active, the reason being we’re in a particularly vulnerable position here in Sachem’s Head.”

  “We are?” I loved hearing this kind of thing.

  “Well look at us.” Uncle Jake took a sip of coffee. “We’re the most prominent point of land on the southeast coast, so close to the naval base in Newport we can almost touch it. Look at a map sometime, then think if you were the Nazi military command setting up for an invasion. Or not even an invasion yet—that would come later. Setting up for a secret agent or two to get ashore and pick up information. On our defenses, say, what kind of guns we have, where we have them. On the convoy ships, when they sail, where they’ll pass so a U-boat can be waiting. Sachem’s Head beaches would be the place to hunker down, it seems to me. It’d be the perfect place to set up a signal operation. You wouldn’t even need a radio. A high-powered flashlight would do it, and a knowledge of Morse or some secret code.”

  A heavy clump of footsteps told us that Grandpa Saunders was arriving for breakfast. Uncle Jake grabbed his coffee cup and stood up.

  “Gotta run,” he said. “There’s a stoppage over on Cold Pond Road.” He picked up his plate and bolted into the kitchen.

  Elliot still hadn’t shown up. I knew he wouldn’t come into the dining room while Grandpa was there. I got my books together and headed for the front door, thinking I’d wait in the yard. Grandpa spotted me before I made it.

  “I see that boy’s holding you up again,” he called out. I had to turn around and face him in the hall or it would have looked bad.

  “I guess so.”

  “I’d think you’d get tired of waiting for him after awhile.”

  “I don’t mind.”

  Grandpa stared at me. “Well, I’ve got to hand it to you, you’ve been keeping him on the path of order and reason lately, something nobody else around here seems able to do.”

  “I try,” I said, really feeble-sounding. It wasn’t true either. No one kept Elliot on any path he didn’t want to be on. I hoped he wasn’t listening.

  Grandpa came a couple of steps neare
r and looked at me through his spectacles, eyes like ice picks.

  “Ever thought of joining the medical profession?” he asked.

  That kind of stopped me. I couldn’t say anything.

  “It’s well-respected work, gets a steady income. Young fellow like you could do worse.”

  “I guess I haven’t thought of it yet,” I said. “I mean, I haven’t thought of any profession yet.”

  “Well you’d best start! You come on back to my office some day, have a look around.”

  “Yes sir. Thank you.”

  “Are you planning a college education for yourself? Or are you going to be one of those that runs off looking for hare-brained adventure and wastes his opportunities?”

  “Oh, college, yes, definitely.”

  “Well, good. That’s settled. You come back to my office. I’ll show you the ropes.”

  It was the last thing in the world I’d ever do. You couldn’t have dragged me into that office. Luckily, Grandpa was done with me, though. He turned and went on into the dining room. I flung open the front door and was just going through when Elliot appeared behind me, carrying his coat and books. We charged out together.

  “Where were you? I waited and waited!” I exploded when we got clear of the house.

  “I was there,” Elliot said, “waiting for you.”

  “No you weren’t. Elliot, don’t lie.”

  “Yes, I was. I was waiting in the back hall for you to stop talking to Grandpa.”

  “I wasn’t talking. He was.”

  “He was giving you the big sell,” Elliot said. “He wants everybody to be a doctor. Watch out. When he starts on that it means trouble. You better go see his office or he’ll be yelling and insulting you next.”

  “He can yell all he wants, he can’t scare me.”

  “That’s what I mean,” Elliot said, shaking his head. “Talk like that drives him crazy.”

  “He can’t hear me.”

  “Be careful, that’s all. He doesn’t only yell.”

  “He throws the fire tongs, I know. Listen, have you seen Abel Hoffman around lately?”

  “He’s around.” Elliot looked at me. “Why? Did Grandpa say something about him?”

  “No. Your dad was telling me that Sachem’s Head would be one of the best places for German agents to set up an operation. Because of our beaches, and being so close to Newport.”

  “So?”

  “So all you’d need is a flashlight, he said. You could send messages out in code to the German subs.”

  “And binoculars?” Elliot said looking straight ahead.

  “Yeah, I guess so.”

  “Some other people around here must have thought of that, too.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Abel Hoffman got beaten up last night.”

  I stopped walking. “How do you know?”

  “He came by our house about midnight and knocked on the door. Grandpa took him out back to his office and fixed him up. They broke his arm.”

  “Who did?”

  “Abel didn’t know. Or wouldn’t say. Some men jumped him in the road. He was coming back from somewhere and they were waiting in the woods near his place. It wasn’t like a fight. They were out to get him. He looked pretty bad when I saw him. His face was all puffed up.”

  “How did you see?”

  “I sneaked outside and watched through the window when they went into Grandpa’s office. I heard them talking. No one else knows he was here and I’m betting Grandpa won’t tell. He doesn’t want to be associated with him. Don’t you tell anyone either, okay? It might give other people ideas.”

  “You mean . . .”

  “Right, to beat him up again, or worse.”

  “Would they do that?”

  Elliot looked at me. “You’re the one who said it: Sachem’s Head is the perfect place for a German agent to set up operations. And who’s the only German in town?”

  “Abel Hoffman,” I whispered.

  7

  SINCE THE MIDDLE of May, my mother had received no letters from my father. She didn’t speak of it or show any sign of worry but, as the month of June wore on, I felt her need to hear from him growing more desperate.

  She would wake at night and go around the house doing odd jobs, washing floors, ironing clothes, figuring house accounts. One night, she sewed a white banner with a blue service star on it to mount in our front window. Other families in town had these banners and I knew what they meant—that a person who normally lived in that house was in the war, gone to fight for our cause. You were supposed to be glad to have a star (some families had two or three) but the sight of my mother’s gave me a sick feeling when she showed me and Carolyn the next morning.

  “Dad doesn’t live here, he’s never lived here, so why does he need a star?”

  “I think he’d be pleased to know we’re supporting him wherever we are, don’t you?” my mother said.

  “But, do we really have to put it up? I think its stupid. Everybody already knows who went to fight. Anyway, no one ever comes in this house except us. If no one can see it, why do we need one?”

  “I thought you’d be proud to have one.”

  “I am, but . . .”

  I wouldn’t tell her the real reason. A few weeks before, a boy in our class at school, Willie Vogel, had heard by telegram that his father had been killed in action in the Pacific. It was the first war casualty in our town and we kids took sharp notice of it. For a couple of days afterwards, Elliot and I walked the long way to school, past Willie’s house, to see what was happening there.

  Aside from the curtains being drawn tight, probably against snoopers like us, there wasn’t anything different. Nobody even looked like they were home. Then I noticed that the service star in the front window had changed color. It wasn’t blue anymore, but gold.

  “That means the person was killed,” Elliot whispered.

  “How do you know?”

  “I heard someone say it. You change to gold so everyone will know that the person gave his life in the war. Because you’d feel too bad to go around telling people out loud, especially if it was your father.”

  This was too much for me. If my mother was superstitious about boasting about my dad, I was afraid of his blue star from the moment I saw it. Whenever I walked home to our cottage, I’d put off looking at the window where my mother hung it. I’d wait till the last second, when I couldn’t help seeing it, scared stiff it had somehow changed. The thing was, that star made deadness seem too easy, a little matter of switching color while nobody was watching. It seemed that, just by having it, my father was bound to be killed. A few times, when my mother wasn’t home, I tried to get rid of the banner by knocking it behind the radiator or pushing it under the door mat, as if the wind had come through. She would always find it though, and put it up again. To her, it was something to hold onto.

  Sometimes at night, after I’d gone to bed, I would hear her go into the back of her closet and take out the shoebox of my father’s letters she kept hidden there. It was on a shelf behind her hung-up skirts and blouses. The clothes hangers made a scraping sound when she pushed them aside. I would hear her sit on her bed (the walls were so thin in that cottage) and take my father’s letters out of the box. The airmail paper crackled, then there was silence and I knew she was reading.

  I knew what she was reading, too, because I’d been in there myself, secretly, to find out what my father had to say about the war. Not the edited versions Mom read out loud to me and Carolyn at bedtime. Not:

  “Today I arrived at our new air base and had the first really good meal since leaving the U. S. three months ago: steak and potatoes and did they taste fine!”

  Not: “There are a lot of good fellows here. Tell Robert we play cards every night.”

  But: “Helen, last week I flew in the largest aerial assault on the enemy ever mounted by the RAF, over two hundred bombers. By now you’ll have read about the big German-run tank factory outside Paris that was destr
oyed. Our rear gunner was shot going in but the rest of the crew came through. Others didn’t fare so well, many good men went down. Best not to think too long on that score.”

  Also: “Dear Helen, I miss you tonight and am thinking of the farm. Thank God you three are safe back there. Our base was fire bombed by enemy planes. I am all right but our barracks was gutted and I lost much of my gear. This nothing compared to XXXXXXXXX”—the censor had marked out the town’s name—“nearby which was most horribly attacked. The cathedral I visited only two weeks ago is now a smoking ruin.”

  For an hour or more I would hear the airmail paper crackle. Then, on some nights, came the small, watery sounds that told me my mother had begun to cry.

  This I couldn’t stand. I’d never seen her cry, not at the farm or here except for the two little tears she’d brushed away at the table. I thought she had no right to cry by herself like that, alone in her room where no one could help her. It wasn’t fair, with my dad so far away. I would pull the pillow hard around my head and shut my eyes. I’d think about flying over Germany, dropping big ones, flak going off all around, or I’d be at the front line, mowing down Jerries with a machine gun.

  The next day, walking with Elliot to school, I’d boast about my dad worse than ever, saying how he was actually in the barracks when it blew up, and saved somebody from burning to death, things that weren’t complete lies, they might have been true, but they weren’t exactly in the letters.

  Elliot and I always walked to school in the mornings, but often in the afternoons we’d have different things to do, so we wouldn’t wait around if the other person didn’t turn up to walk home. As summer vacation approached, Elliot stopped appearing at all. One afternoon, though, he was waiting for me.

  “Do you need to go home right now? There’s something I want to show you,” he said, and I knew right away from his voice that something was up.

  “What is it?”

  “A place I’ve been going.”

  “Where? You never told me.”

  “I am now.”