—
WHEN THEY RETURNED, Avery was outside under the canopy, collecting for a tankful of premium he’d just pumped into Charlie Novak’s brand-new cherry-red Corvette convertible.
Novak, generally a jokester, was complaining about “all this hand wringin’ and foot draggin’ over Castro! Ike shoulda taken him out years ago, day after he announced he was Red. Been a piece a cake then. Now, with these damn missiles stuck up our butt, it’s a helluva mess, ain’t it?”
Avery waved Novak away, his eyes on Emilio, who was cautiously easing The Admiral into Steve’s parking spot beside the truck. Steve got out of the passenger’s side, popped the trunk, and removed the black Belk-Lindsey suit bag.
“A perfect forty tall, Dahling,” Steve said with a wink. “No tailorin’ required.”
“What color was her hair?” Avery asked.
Steve’s gaze sobered. “Blond. French twist. Said she’d planned on ghoulish green, but things were scary enough without it.”
Avery nodded. Even Dahling was feeling the heat.
Emilio trailed them both into the office, handed Steve his keys, and offered Avery the box of Mister Donuts.
“No, thanks,” Avery said. “Eat what you’d like, then take the rest back to the camp, okay?”
“Thanks, Mr. A, Mr. Steve.” The teenager’s sea-colored eyes swam with a sudden wave of emotion. His first attempt to say what he obviously felt he needed to tell them failed. He took a shaky breath and tried again. “Somehow…someday…I’ll find a way to pay you both back.”
“It’s okay, son,” Avery said.
“Just wish we could do more,” Steve added gruffly.
Before leaving, Avery called the depot one last time, but the line was still busy. He’d stuck the levels in his underground tanks and was alarmed by the results. The two 8,000-gallon regular and premium-grade tanks were just under the 1,825 mark, roughly 23 percent full, and the 4,000-gallon mid-grade tank showed 1,095, or 27 percent. At current fill-up rates, they’d be out of gas in seventy-two hours.
“Hate to say it,” he told Steve, “but until that tanker arrives, I think we’d better limit sales to ten-gallon allotments.”
“Customers won’t be happy ’bout that….” Squinting out at the pumps, where activity appeared to have tapered off, Steve asked, “Start first thing in the mornin’?”
Avery thought about it and agreed. Steve would be opening, and neither of them felt right subjecting Emilio, who’d be closing alone tonight, to the first wave of upset customers.
Now ready to leave, Avery was surprised to see his wife’s LeSabre glide into view with Charlotte alone at the wheel.
“Hey, kiddo!”
“Dad…” She seemed out of breath. “Mom sent me to Publix. The twirls are coming tonight…to see my dresses and to show me theirs. We’re planning pizza, plus root beer floats, so Mom sent me for vanilla ice cream. I drove over there. But, Dad”—her eyes were enormous—“there wasn’t any. No ice cream, no milk, no eggs. Whole shelves empty. People have gone ape! I saw two ladies in the parking lot fighting over a box of Tide. It’s like Nowheresville over there!” She bored into him with her tell me the truth look. “Has the war started already? Is this…” Her voice broke. “…the beginning of the end?”
“Oh, Kitten.”
From the first moment he’d held her as a screaming, squirming infant until now, all he’d ever wanted to do was protect her. From harm, from unhappiness, from worry over dangers she was still too young to comprehend. But now? He hated the awful truth that the Russians had brought front and center—that the future was no longer a given, that our enemies were not to be trusted, that as long as those missiles remained in Cuba no one was safe. The news flew in the face of everything he’d brought her up to believe. And it broke his heart to see its effect on her. He reached in, gently lifted the lock of dark hair crowding her cheek, and tucked it behind her ear.
“Nobody—not even that crackpot Khrushchev—wants a war. You have to believe that, Charlotte. The President’s going to work this out. In the meantime, people get spooked and do crazy things. Who in their right mind picks a fight over a box of laundry soap?”
He could see in her eyes the struggle between her need and her reluctance to believe him. In kindergarten, she’d nicknamed him Happy Pappy, discerning, even at age five, his determined optimism. Her childhood drawings of him were always smiling. But clearly, the problems they were facing today were so much larger, and scarier, than he had the power to resolve. That realization—her recognition that all the positive thinking in the world couldn’t mask the fact that he was as powerless as she was—pained him no end.
“I bet,” he said, grasping for something, anything, he could do for her, “if you go across the street and sweet-talk Mr. Hammond, he’ll give you enough ice cream for your party. In fact, c’mon, I’ll go with you.”
Avery opened the car door, took her elbow lightly, and escorted her across the intersection to the Rexall Drugs & Soda Fountain on the opposite side of the Trail.
On the surface, he was willing himself calm. But his mind was racing, conjuring up old, odd, unsettling images: a silent Gary Cooper escorting Grace Kelly down a deserted street; clock faces ticking toward a terrible confrontation; and somewhere out there, Soviet ships plowing east across the Atlantic toward the US Navy’s line of interdiction in the waters off Cuba’s coast.
The quarantine was set to start at ten o’clock tomorrow. “High noon on the high seas,” one newsman called it. In the movie, Gary Cooper’s six-guns triumphed over the evil gang of four. In real life, would America’s broadsides be enough to face down the Soviets?
Bo Hammond greeted them from behind his old-fashioned brass cash register. In his white pharmacist’s coat, pale pallor, and silver hair helmet, he never failed to remind Avery of a deep-water fish. “Ten floats, you say? What do you think, Connie?” he called to Connie Diggs behind the counter. “A quart? Half gallon?”
Connie nodded. Hammond turned tired eyes back to Avery. “Ice cream I’ve got. But first-aid kits, bandages, flashlights, transistor radios? All out. I don’t think I have a single battery left.”
Charlotte had wandered off to the magazine rack. She picked the one with a picture of Ozzie and Harriet Nelson’s handsome son Ricky on the cover beside the headline: LONELY TEEN IDOL, ARE YOU THE GIRL HE’S LOOKING FOR?
Hammond lowered his voice. “Wish I carried shotgun shells. Coulda sold a ton of those.”
Avery shook his head. A loaded shotgun was the poor man’s version of Civil Defense—perceived comfort, but no real protection against thermonuclear disaster.
“Here ya go!” Connie called, holding up the hand-packed container. “Put the ice cream in first,” she advised Charlotte, “it’s less of a mess.”
Back across the street, Charlotte asked Avery, “You heading straight home?”
“I was.”
“Great,” she said, handing off the ice cream with a smile. “I’d like to say hi to Emilio…long as I’m here.” Her eyes shifted toward the office; big smile for the guy behind the register with half a doughnut in his hand.
“I’ll tell your mother you’re right behind me.”
“Oh, and Dad…” He’d turned to leave, but the warning in her tone drew him back. “You should know…Mom’s really upset with me.”
“With you?”
“Two other boys asked me to homecoming. Todd Jenkins”—she made a face—“and Greg Lund.”
Avery arched a questioning brow. Lund was popular, the good-looking son of a local banker, and Edgewater High’s all-star running back. He was somebody Sarah, and even he, would deem a catch.
Had Sarah succeeded in getting Charlotte to change her mind? Avery glanced back at Emilio, now carefully wiping his hands and face with a napkin and moving toward the office doorway.
“Mom ’bout had a cow,” Charlotte was saying, “because…well…you know Greg. And the football team votes on the winner and all. But, Dad…” Avery braced him
self for bad news. “Dad, you’re not mad, are you? I told them both I already had a date.”
He’d been holding his breath, pulling, in this case, for the filly to outmaneuver the mare. And she had. He covered his guilt-ridden pleasure, and relief, with an amused chuckle. “Good for you, kiddo,” he assured her as Emilio approached.
Avery shifted the container of ice cream to one hand, and fished for his keys with the other. “She’s all yours, son,” he told Emilio. It was his standard exit line.
“Roger Wilco, Cap.” Emilio mimicked Steve’s usual reply.
Between them, Charlotte blushed bright red, suddenly shy.
Avery saw her and frowned, mock stern, at Emilio. “The station, not the girl. Ten-four?”
Emilio straightened. “Ten-four, sir,” he echoed, snapping off a recruit’s salute with a sideways smile.
Backing out, Avery watched them through his windshield, chatting eagerly, laughing easily with each other, so young, and for the moment—he felt the wrench in his heart—so normal.
“This thing’s got disaster written all over it,” Sarah had said. He wished she were here now to see them. Those kids aren’t the disaster, he would’ve told her. We are; every one of us who saw this thing coming and didn’t do everything in our power to stop it.
—
SARAH MET HIM AT THE DOOR. “Oh, finally, you’re here!” She seemed flustered and genuinely relieved to see him, until she noticed the ice cream in his hands.
“Where’s Charlotte?”
“Right behind me,” he said, striding to the freezer, attempting nonchalance. “Be here in a few.”
He turned to find her backed up against the counter, arms folded. “Well, of course she went running straight to you.”
“It wasn’t like that, darlin’,” he said, softening his tone. “Publix was cleaned out—no ice cream, milk, eggs, anything. People in the parking lot were acting nuts. It spooked her. But fortunately, Bo and Connie at the Rexall had half a gallon to spare.”
Sarah pressed stiff fingertips to the center of her brow. “I was really hoping you’d be on my side this time.”
“Always,” he said pleasantly.
“No, Wes.” She dropped her hand, gave him a pained look. “Not always, not lately.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, there’s my side. What I’d call the side of reason, which says Greg Lund’s an ideal date for homecoming. Then there’s yours and hers, the side of—what, exactly? Pity? Charity? Romance?—that says, ‘Stick with the Cuban boy in the borrowed car and rented suit.’ ”
Avery bit back his thought—Emilio has a suit, and he’ll be driving one of the hottest cars in town, thanks to Steve.
“Fact is I’ve never understood what he’s doing here. Him and his twenty-four amigos. If they’d stayed with their own kind in Cuba, where they belong, fought against Castro and the Communists, maybe those missiles wouldn’t be there. And the rest of us wouldn’t be sucked into their mess.”
“He’s only seventeen, Sarah.”
“Yes, Wes. And how many seventeen-year-old American boys did you know lied about their ages to jump into the fight against Hitler and the Japs?”
“It’s just a dance,” he said calmly. “One and done.”
Sarah stiffened. “Homecoming is just a dance? And Civil Defense is just a bunch of government PR? And what would you call those missiles in Cuba, Wes? Just peashooters? And, and the Russian warships? Just t-target practice?”
All the color had drained from her face. She was bone white and shaking. Avery heard an odd sound that could only be her teeth chattering.
“Hey.” He stepped forward to touch her. “You okay?”
“Okay?” she echoed.
“You look a little…tired, darlin’. Why don’t you lie down for a few minutes, get some rest. I’ll pay the pizza boy. And Charlotte will be here shortly to set things up.”
“Oh, Wes, pizzas!” she cried, her eyes bright with terror. “You have to run to Tony’s and pick up the pizzas!”
“Pick them up? Tony delivers.”
“I don’t know. For some reason, he can’t. Please, go!”
“Okay…,” he said carefully, as she moved to the cabinet where she kept her pills. Tomorrow, he resolved. He would definitely call Doc Mike tomorrow morning.
Tony’s was a popular Italian restaurant conveniently located between College Park’s two high schools, public Edgewater High and Catholic Bishop Moore. Owned and run by the Virellis, Tony and his wife, Gina, it had two dining rooms: one for fine dining on pink tablecloths, and a second, brightly lit, with long wooden picnic tables for pizza. The family lived in a tidy concrete block home on the wooded lot behind the restaurant.
Avery entered the small lobby and was welcomed by the tantalizing smells of garlic and tomatoes and by Tony Virelli’s gleaming smile; white teeth tented by a trim Don Ameche mustache. As ever-present host, Tony’s role was to usher patrons irresistibly left or right through the appropriate padded red leather door. Behind him, a third door led to the kitchen, where Gina and their three daughters presided over both dining rooms’ food and table service. Normally, their son, Tony Junior, drove deliveries.
Virelli greeted Avery warmly with a two-handed shake. They knew each other from the monthly Rotary lunches held in Tony’s fine dining room.
“Tony Junior sick?” Avery asked.
The smile dimmed. “No, he’s here. Working in the back.”
“Not enough deliveries to keep him busy?”
“No, and it’s not the car, or the gas, either,” he confessed glumly. “It’s Gina. She’s scared to death that when the bombs fall the family won’t be together. Until this blockade business is settled, she wants all of us under the same roof. She didn’t even want to let the kids go to school today. Thank God Bishop Moore is just up the street.”
One of the daughters, pretty dark eyes with a cloud of dark hair not unlike Charlotte’s, elbowed her way out the kitchen door carrying three pizza boxes.
“For Avery?” Virelli asked, with a rich rolling of the r.
“Yes, Papa.”
“Gratzia, Nina,” he told her. He took the boxes and handed them over. “For your trouble, ten percent discount.”
“Tony, that’s not necessary.”
Virelli frowned, made a gesture as if tossing a ball from one hand to the other. “Da cosa nasce cosa,” he said. “One thing leads to another.”
Avery thanked him, paid, and walked out, surprised by how swiftly the pale twilight had dropped off into dusk. Up the street, the lights were on inside the sanctuary of St. Charles, the ultramodern Catholic church adjacent to Bishop Moore High. A large illuminated sign invited passersby to PRAY FOR THE PRESIDENT, OUR NATION & THE WORLD.
Through the open doors and etched-glass windows, Avery caught the flicker of candles, the shapes of shoulders and bowed heads, the movements of a burly, white-robed priest. He was certain it was Thomas O’Meara. Ordinarily, the man conducted evening Mass, then picked up Emilio and several of the other Cuban boys to take them home to the retreat center where they lived.
Somehow, Avery was relieved that Catholics all over the country, maybe the world, felt profoundly connected to President Kennedy and were praying for him, for everyone, that night. But as he passed his own darkened church and those of the Methodists and the Episcopalians, also dark, relief turned to letdown. Where was everybody else? Why weren’t the Protestants out in droves as well—praying that God, or somebody, would turn those Soviet ships around, swerve them off tomorrow’s showdown with the navy?
Entering his own neighborhood, Avery slowed to pass the towheaded Moyer kids darting across the street in a wild game of Kick the Can. He saw the teenage Tobin boy sneaking a smoke behind his mother’s hibiscus hedge; and his neighbor Bud Gilbert out with a hose, filling the dirt wells around his roses. On any other evening, these events would have brought him comfort, a bit of normal affirming his sense of community and surprising good fortune. Bu
t not tonight.
Tonight, for more reasons than he could comprehend, Avery felt cut off from normal. And terribly, inexplicably, alone.
It reminded him of when his father died. Five years younger than Avery was now, his father had been crushed by a failed hydraulic tractor jack. A careless mistake—he’d trusted the jack and neglected to set protective blocks—that cost him his life. Avery, only ten at the time, came home from school to a farmhouse crowded with neighbors from their rural community. As word of the tragedy spread over the next few days, the number of mourners doubled, then tripled, spilling out of the house onto the lawn, the barnyard, into the barn itself, its dirt floor still darkened with his father’s blood. Avery had wandered among them feeling lost, forgotten, and desperately alone.
Only his grandfather had been able to reach him. Overhearing a local churchman tell Avery “this was God’s will,” Old Pa had pulled him aside, among the jar-filled shelves of his mother’s pantry, and told him firmly, eyes blazing, “God had nothing to do with this!”
Turning into his driveway, Avery saw, with an audible groan, that all ten of the twirls were already there, their cars parked chocka-block in his way. He parked on the street and walked in with the pizzas. The girls greeted him at the door in a floral-scented female rush.
“Hey, Mr. A!”
“Mmmm, pizza!”
“Great! I’m starving!”
Most were in lovely long dresses, a few with elbow-length gloves. They fluttered and squawked and hopped around him, calling to mind the flock of long-legged white pullets his mother used to raise.
But instead of his mother’s cheerful chiding, it was Sarah kneeling on the floor, strawberry-shaped pincushion on her wrist, hemming stick against the bottom of Charlotte’s red dress, who called rather sharply, “Hush now. Settle down! Nobody eats till we’re done.”
The twirls fell silent, their bright faces dimmed with discomfort. Charlotte’s eyes flew to Avery’s. He shot Sarah a look that he hoped counseled patience. Maybe even an apology?
A Place We Knew Well Page 10
