A Place We Knew Well (16 page)

Her first thought—Of all the nerve!—was quickly followed by: Why didn't I see that coming? She jammed bare feet into her slippers, pulled on her robe, and pointedly ignored the insistent ringing of the phone—Edith, no doubt, calling back. In the bathroom, she scrubbed her face, brushed her teeth, and avoided her sad and drawn image in the mirror.

Shading her eyes against the light in the kitchen—sunshine filtered bright white by the fog over the lake—she made her way to the coffeepot. She dumped out the cold coffee left from Wes and started a new pot, then went onto the porch, where the birds cawed loudly for food and fresh water. Afterward, she stood for a moment staring out at the fog-draped lake.

It was a day like this—damply gray and still—they'd buried Robbie on the bluff overlooking the mist-covered Black Warrior River. At the church, he'd looked so small, so peaceful in his blue velvet Easter suit, the one that had so perfectly matched the color of his eyes. During the service, she'd imagined, it was as if he'd only climbed in there to take a nap. But later, seated graveside at the family plot, with the old willow oaks weeping long yellow leaves like tears, she'd panicked at the sight of the closed casket.
He can't breathe in there—we've got to get him out!
She'd squeezed her sister's hand so hard that Kitty yelped and yanked it away. When Mama turned, her face shiny with tears, sad eyes staring them both into silence, Sarah's chest had grown so tight that she herself could hardly breathe.
Horrible, horrible!
she was thinking when, just as the casket disappeared from view, she heard the whisper. In hindsight, Mama said, it was just the rustling of dead leaves beneath the funeral director's feet. But Sarah insisted she'd heard the whispered words clearly:
“I am too tender for this world.”
She didn't know then (and couldn't say for sure now) where that voice came from. Was it little Robbie's last good-bye to her? Or her own eight-year-old's heart, crushed by death's awful randomness and a great load of grief she'd been too young to comprehend?

“Well, I don't know,” Sarah said lamely to no one. She strode back into the kitchen, swiping off sudden tears with the cuff of her robe. No time for
that
! She stood, tapping long fingers on the counter, until the coffee was ready. Cup in hand, she moved through the living room, switched on the stereo to radio function, and tuned in WDBO too soon for the noon news.

In the dining room, she fingered Charlotte's white dress, unsure where to begin. Should she focus on the machine-sewn alterations, then hand-stitch the hem afterward? And why in the world had she finished up the red dress first, which was for Saturday night's dance, when Charlotte needed the white one for Friday's parade? She stared into her coffee cup, willing it to wake her up, wishing she could make it through a single day—just one—without feeling like a poor imitation of a previous self, someone she used to be. Though who that was, and whether
that
Sarah was worth imitating, was beyond her, lost in a fog that day by day took longer and longer to lift.

She chose, finally, to forgo the sewing machine until after the caffeine kicked in. Instead, she unhung the dress and moved to the other end of the table, where the light was better for hand sewing. She opened her sewing box, selected a needle, some white thread, her grandmother's small stork-shaped scissors, and her mother's silver thimble. Donning her reading glasses, she squinted, licked the end of thread, and poked it through the eye of the needle. She pulled it long, snipped it, paired the two ends between her fingertips, and rolled them into a knot. Whenever Mama did that, she'd quote President Roosevelt: “When you get to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on!”

“Oh, Mama, I'm trying,” Sarah said aloud, pushing the needle point in and out, up and down like a small boat through the white sea of satin, pulling the thread behind it in a thin wake.

But knots—she sighed deeply, hurting as she thought of it—like families, like dreams, like life, for that matter, can be slippery things, unwilling or unable to be held.

“O
nly
five,
Wes? You can't be serious!”

“But I'm flat-out empty with a
twenty-
gallon tank.”

“What's
next
—ration coupons? War bonds?”

Avery played the role of beleaguered businessman. We're undersupplied, he told them, with no assurances from the depot of any more gas anytime soon. Need to stretch what we have as far as we can.

Just after noon, hoping to cut down on complaints, he unearthed a pair of A-frame signs from the back room. Normally the signs hawked a seasonal promotion—
AUTHENTIC TOY FIRE TRUCK! ONLY $3.99 WITH FILL-UP OF TEXACO FIRE-CHIEF GASOLINE
—but today, Avery covered them with plain white paper and painted in large green letters:

LIMIT TODAY:

5 GAL.

PER CUSTOMER

He left room at the bottom for a line he suspected he'd have to add soon,
OUT OF ETHYL
—the name most customers called his mid-grade Fire Chief gas with, the red pump proudly proclaimed, “natural, no-knock additives.”

All the while, working on the signs, he mulled over the gap between good old reliable Wes, Rotarian, deacon, roadside Samaritan, and the man who'd just taken Kitty to the cottage, ostensibly betrayed his wife, and perpetuated a seventeen-year-old lie to his daughter.

Yesterday, he would have described himself in the plainest of terms: solid citizen, honest businessman, devoted husband and father. He might have even said that, despite the occasional bump in the road, he was living his version of the American dream.

But today? Even though nothing had happened, really, with Kitty, he felt guilty; his perfect record—in seventeen years, he'd never seriously considered another woman—sullied. Not that there hadn't been more than a few opportunities over the years. Marion Halden came to mind, the young and needy war widow who'd been their neighbor on Princeton for a while. And Vivian Whitley, his tenant on Harvard Street, who was periodically short on rent money and long on suggestions. More recently, there was redheaded Annie Flynn, a local divorcée who'd flat-out offered to trade him “regular service under the hood, yours for mine.” But in all this time, he'd never strayed, not once. Why was that?

First and foremost, fidelity.

After posting the completed signs at each entrance, Avery stared out at the traffic, and pictured the words—
First and foremost, fidelity
—written in Sarah's careful hand. Back then, he was still on Tinian Island and courting her in letters. Working up the nerve to pop the question, he'd asked her instead, “What qualities are you looking for in a husband?”

“First and foremost, fidelity,” she'd written in reply. It was several years later, after her father's very long, very emotional funeral—the eulogies went on forever, with more than a few female mourners weeping loudly and uncontrollably—that Sarah explained why she and her mother had sat stiffly through the whole thing in stone-faced silence. “Oh, Wes,” she told him. They were standing outside the church, scanning the departing crowd for Kitty, who never showed. “Daddy had affairs with half the women here. You can't imagine the hell he put Mama through for
years
!”

First and foremost, fidelity. Her need for fidelity had paired well with his careful nature (from age ten, he'd thought of himself as the careful son of a careless father), which made what happened today at the cottage all the more confounding. Certainly Sarah would see his helping Kitty—never mind his kissing her!—as a betrayal. He'd surprised himself by how simply, how easily, he'd done it.

Now, cleaning the windshield of Lee Vomac's pickup, he caught a whiff of spiced roses and bent his head in a quick, guilty sniff. The scent of her was trapped in the crease of his right inner elbow. He studied the skin there, so much paler than his suntanned forearm, and thought, This Kitty thing has to be contained! But how?

Moments later, clicking off the gas nozzle at exactly five gallons, something else clicked, though not audibly, inside his head. It was a signal, a mental alarm sounded by that back part of his brain tasked with sorting and filing, tasked with noting a curious link or worrisome connection, and returning it, with a silent click, to conscious thought.

Two mental images, from different times and places, surfaced simultaneously: Kitty handing him her card at the cottage, saying, “The number on the back is the Cherry Plaza Hotel”; and, earlier this morning, Sarah's note, retrieved from the kitchen floor and replaced beside the phone jack, reading,
WED: Cherry Plaza, 1:00.

The coincidence, and its potential consequences, set off a small tremor in his chest.

Within the hour, Sarah would be arriving at Orlando's Cherry Plaza, the very same luxury hotel on downtown Lake Eola where Kitty was staying! What were the chances of Kitty emerging from lunch in the lobby's lakefront restaurant just as Sarah arrived to check their public shelter supplies? Would the two sisters recognize each other? Of course. Would Kitty—who seemed as prickly about Sarah as Sarah could be about her—say why she was there, and what happened at the cottage this morning? Nightmare!

He checked his watch: twelve fifty-two. And felt a small ball of fear forming in his stomach. No doubt Sarah was already en route. It was too late to stop her. Should he try to reach Kitty instead?

He holstered the nozzle, collected $1.55 for Vomac's gas, then turned quickly toward the office. But Steve was already at the desk breaking for lunch. No way could Avery fish out Kitty's card and make that call in front of him. And—Oh, for crying out loud!—here came Sonny Geiger strolling in off Princeton.

Geiger was a fellow mechanic who maintained the fleet of trucks and tractors for Dr. Phillips's Granada Groves, the giant citrus packinghouse that abutted the train tracks behind the station.

“How's it goin', boys?” Geiger boomed, filling the office doorway in his usual plaid shirt, denim overalls, and green mesh John Deere cap. He had the habit of punctuating his sentences with an audible suck, like a small kissing sound, on his toothpick.

Steve turned half-lowered eyelids on Avery, barely veiling his contempt. Avery's return glance counseled patience. Geiger had a knack for showing up at exactly the wrong time. Like now, when Steve was eager to eat and play a bit of chess, when Avery needed to make a call to head off marital disaster.

But during the height of the citrus season, when his shop got backed up with work, Geiger sent them his overflow: usually heavy-lifting jobs like transmission replacement or an engine overhaul. Good money in the slow months after Christmas. And Granada's checks never bounced.

“Just breaking for lunch,” Avery answered. “You eaten yet?”

Geiger held up a freckled ham of a hand. “Just did. Y'all go right ahead.” Then, leaning his bulk against the jamb, he asked, “Seen any familiar trucks roll by?”

“Army, you mean? More'n I care to count.”

“No,” Geiger said, sucking his toothpick. “I mean…any of
our
trucks.”

“Granada trucks? Not really. But it's hardly the season.”

“Good thing, too.” Geiger suck-kissed his pick again. “ 'Cause we'd be up crap creek without a Sears catalog.”

“What's the story, Sonny?” Steve growled.

“Well”—Geiger crossed meaty forearms over his ample gut—“you know Howard, our plant manager? Late Sunday night…we're talking one o'clock in the morning here…night before the President's speech, remember? Ol' Howard got a call…at
home
…on his
unlisted
number. Man said he was from Ryder Truck Lines…said he was calling—on behalf of the
US
gov'ment—to instruct ol' Howard that he needed to make our semi-trucks and flatbed trailers available, with drivers ready, to be gone for an
indefinite
length of time.” He paused to let the news sink in. “Man said the trailers had to have steel floors and had to be a certain height from the ground…said Heidrich Citrus up the Trail was already in for three…said they expected Howard to be in for
five
! Well…” He tongued his toothpick to the other side. “Who the hell knows how
they
knew what kind of trucks we have…and exactly how many…but Monday morning, our five and Heidrich's three took off for
parts unknown.
By the looks of things, I figure they'll be rolling back by any day now. Appreciate your keeping an eye out.”

Steve looked askance at Avery.

“True story, Sonny?” Avery asked.

Geiger removed his pick, stabbed it in the air for emphasis. “Yessiree Bob! And you heard about DefCon Two?”

“Two?”
Steve was aghast.

“One phone call short of war,” Geiger insisted. “And I guaran-damn-tee ya the marines'll take Castro down in no time a-tall,” he added with a smug suck-kiss.

“Who told you?”

“Officer out at McCoy called Howard break-a-day this morning…said they were at DefCon Two, which means all aircrews are camped out on the tarmac…eating and sleeping under their planes, ready to take off at a moment's notice…asked if the base sent over a pickup, could we fill it with oranges for the boys stuck out under the wings? We had to roust a picking crew to grab some early tangerines…guy from the base just left with 'em 'fore I came over.”

“DefCon Two,” Steve said quietly, and turned to stare out the window.

Avery thought about all the fighters he'd seen parked wingtip-to-wingtip out at McCoy. He tried to imagine their crews—two to five men apiece—camped out on the tarmac. All were waiting for a war that, once started, would mean the end of everything. He wrapped up his untouched sandwich and dropped it back in his lunch pail.

J
UST AS
G
EIGER LEFT,
there was a rush of business at the pump and in the service bays. Sally Michaels, waitress at the Cassandra Hotel, a popular honky-tonk up the Trail, drove in on a flat tire with a now bent rim. Normally a Chatty Kathy, she stood outside the service bay, chain-smoking one Pall Mall after another, staring bleakly at the convoys rolling by.

Dragster Jimmy Cope rumbled in with his younger brother Jerry in tow behind him. Jerry had apparently bungled the installation of a new Hurst shifter in his '57 Chevy Bel Air. Jimmy smirked disgust. “I told him he was a fool to try and install it himself.” Jerry shrugged sheepishly. “Kinda hopin' to race it Friday night.” To which Jimmy added darkly, “If there
is
a Friday night.”

Avery and Steve went through the motions, attempting to service their customers as if everything were normal. But the signs were everywhere that normal was on vacation: Car radios were tuned to tense-talking newsmen providing the latest non-update on the Soviet ships headed toward the US Navy's quarantine line; a sobering convoy of military ambulances and medical trucks slowed traffic on the Trail; and some kind of air maneuvers were being flown above the cloud cover.

Just after two, with no word from Sarah or Kitty, Avery began to wonder: Had
that
particular disaster been avoided? Or, if the two sisters
had
run into each other, what would happen next? It wouldn't be Sarah's style, he decided, to come to the station and confront him in front of Steve or anyone else. Like her mother, she abhorred a public scene. Most likely, she'd retreat to the house and wait till he got home. What Kitty's style was, he hadn't a clue.

He was desperately trying to decide what he would say to Sarah—what
could
he say to her?—when he heard, behind the station, the startling clatter of an
empty
northbound train. Within minutes, a second train, also empty, followed.

Empty trains could mean only one thing: northbound shipping of Florida's commerce in cane sugar, citrus, vegetables, cattle, lumber, and phosphate had been suspended. The military now monopolized the rails.