A Place We Knew Well (12 page)

“And women,” Steve added. “The most beautiful women.”

“Yes, of course,” Emilio agreed, with the flicker of a smile. “But then
Fidel
—” He turned to look for a place to spit. “Fidel rode out of the mountains with a white dove on his shoulder, calling himself a man of peace.
Peace!
” His pale eyes snapped angrily. “Overnight, our American friends were driven out and the Russians arrived to protect us from Yankee Imperialism! The thing is”—he looked out the window, remembering—“we all considered the Russians—with their World War Two airplanes and fifteen-year-old trucks—a
joke.
Those trucks were always breaking down. We'd see them parked by the side of the road for weeks, waiting for a part from Moscow. And now,” he said bitterly, “Fidel's let them turn Cuba into their launching pad, the queen of the Caribbean nothing but
dirt
beneath their
boots.
” He scowled. “We were up half the night arguing.”

“ 'Bout what?” Steve asked.

“About whether we should all go down and join the army.”

“The
army
?” Steve recoiled, ripe with a navy man's disgust.

“Or navy,” Emilio said hastily. “Or air force even,” he added with a nod toward Avery.

“What'd you decide?” Avery asked it quietly.

“Me?” Emilio shook his head. “I told them I didn't dare. My mother went through hell to get me out of there. She'd
kill
me if I came back!”

Avery blew out a pent-up breath.

Steve jingled his keys with relief. “We're thinking this'd be a good time to go see a lady about a suit.”

Avery reached over, punched the cash drawer open, pulled out the fiver that Emilio had just put in. “And bring back some Mister Donuts, would ya?”

Emilio flashed a grin, a glimmer of his usually sunny self. Although nothing in this country came close to Cuba's pineapple
pastelitos,
the teenager insisted, Mister Donuts toasted-coconut-with-banana-cream-filling were the next best thing.

W
HEN 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 himself 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.

S
ARAH 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?”