A Place We Knew Well (8 page)

“Sir, observation of base ops is strictly limited to
approved
personnel. Please return to your vehicle immediately.” The man's gaze was direct, his tone no-nonsense.

“Of course, Sergeant,” Avery said, and watched the E-5's eyes glide toward Charlotte in an appreciative once-over.

“Let's go, Kitten.” He took her arm, stepped back onto the asphalt, and headed toward the dairyman and his uneasy herd of onlookers.

“So what do you think, Dad?”

“About what?”

Charlotte gave him her
don't baby me
look. “All this…” She opened her palm toward the jam-packed runway.

Avery exhaled guilt. It was a mistake to bring her here; he should have insisted she wait in the truck. “Hard to say, honey.”

“But…”

They'd reached the dairyman, who, after accepting the binocs and Avery's thanks, observed, “Looks like Gen-rill-leesimo Castro's 'bout to get his clock cleaned, don't ya think?”

Avery shrugged.

Charlotte waited until they were out of earshot to ask, “He's right, Dad, isn't he? About Castro?”

“Maybe, maybe not, honey. The U-2s mean they're investigating something. But with their range, it could just as easily be the Panama Canal or somewhere in South America.”

They drove home in silence, Avery's thoughts darkened by dread. How in the world have we come to this? Why
now
? And why
here,
on Florida's front porch? Wasn't my war the one that was supposed to end all others?

A
VERY WAS WATCHING
TV
with Charlotte when Sarah limped in around eight-thirty. She was in stockinged feet, purse in one hand, both pumps in the other.

He rose to greet her. “You're a sight for sore eyes.”

“Sore
feet,
” she said, holding up her shoes. “
Very
sore feet.” She sounded hoarse, and looked exhausted, spent.

“Get you something?” he asked.

“If you don't mind, I'm going to bed.”

“ 'Night, Mom.” Charlotte waved, eyes intent on comedian Rip Taylor and
The Ed Sullivan Show.

Hobbling toward the hall, Sarah stopped and turned back. “Anyone remember to feed the birds today?”

“I did,” Charlotte replied. “Cleaned the cages, too, while Dad mowed the lawn.”

“Well…thanks,” Sarah said.

Avery nodded acknowledgment. After the unsettling discoveries out at the base, he'd attempted, for Charlotte's sake, to make the rest of the day as normal as possible.

The routine had calmed them both. But then the evening news announced that President Kennedy had unexpectedly cut his campaign trip short and returned to Washington. He'd caught a cold, a spokesman said.

A cold, my butt! Avery thought. More like a cold war turning hot.

“ 'Night, darlin', sleep tight,” he called to Sarah, relieved she was too tired to ask about their trip to the air base or his true thoughts on Civil Defense.

D
ragging with exhaustion from very little sleep, Avery dressed quietly so as not to disturb Sarah, and padded to the still-dark kitchen to make his own coffee. He took a fragrant mug out onto the screened porch that spanned the back of the house.

Already Sarah's parakeets were up and chattering to have their cages uncovered. There were only three left of the four birds she'd brought home last summer. Originally, she'd named them Dianne, Peggy, Kathy, and Janet after the singing Lennon Sisters on
The Lawrence Welk Show
—until the morning she found Janet pecked to death on the floor of their communal cage.

When the vet decided that the brightly colored sisters were, in fact, brothers and should be housed separately, Avery suggested they rename the aggressive trio Moe, Larry, and Curly; or simpler still, so that even he could keep them straight, “How about Green Guy, Blue Boy, and Yella Fella?”

Both his suggestions were flatly rejected as “all wet” by Sarah and “pretty dorky, Dad!” by his daughter. Instead, they'd settled on Adam, Hoss, and Little Joe. And Avery had been hard-pressed to explain, to either his wife's or his daughter's satisfaction, the predatory nature of males, even among parakeets.

Annoyed by the birds' insistent chatter, Avery stepped outside and made his way across the dark, dew-slick lawn to the family dock. He walked out to the wooden bench at its end and sat to watch the dawn. While Sarah had been attracted to the neighborhood's quiet maturity and the split-level's modern kitchen, it was Lake Silver's watery expanse, waves lapping gently against the dock's pylons, and the occasional jump of fish and splash of birds that sealed the deal for him. Born on a hardscrabble farm in Macon County, raised during the worst drought on record, he'd had a childhood framed by ankle-deep cracks in dried red clay and the constant choke of rusty dust. If heaven has a lake, Avery thought the first time he saw it, it looks like this.

Today, however, watching the dawn finger-paint the lake and tattered clouds pink then peach then, inexplicably, bright red, he remembered his grandfather saying, “Red sky at morning, sailors take warning.” This quiet lake felt like a surreal juxtaposition of all those war birds parked wingtip-to-wingtip on McCoy's tarmac, and the anxiety—images of an entire world in Hiroshima-like ruins—that had kept him awake most of the night.

In the sandy shallows, green-black wings fluttered. He turned to see the black-tuxedoed night heron give way, with a harsh squawk like the bark of a small dog, to a stocky green heron. The new day bird fastened Avery with a sun-bright eye and cried a sudden, loud
kyou
followed by a series of more subdued
kuk-kuk-kuk
s.

Changing of the guard, Avery thought, and wondered: What other changes are afoot today? If the President is planning to wage war on Castro, won't he need to announce it first? And to explain why, after backing off at the Bay of Pigs eighteen months ago, he's charging ahead
now
? What could be worth the risk of ticking off the Soviets? And whatever Kennedy's reason, when the announcement comes, how will the American people and our local customers respond? He made a mental note to check the levels on his underground fuel tanks first thing and call the depot in Tampa for a top-off.

Behind him, human sounds drifted down from the house. He turned to see Sarah moving past the now lit kitchen windows.

Charlotte was at the dinette finishing up her Frosted Flakes while Sarah stood silently at the stove scrambling eggs. When a car horn out front announced her ride to school, Charlotte rose in a sudden flurry, grabbed her books, slid her cereal bowl into the sink, and, rushing past him, grinned. “See ya, Daddy-O, gotta make like lightning and bolt!”

Sarah brought him his breakfast without comment. She'd coiled her hair in a simple bun at the back of her neck this morning and applied makeup to the deepening circles under her eyes. He'd heard her tossing and turning throughout the night.

“Catch up on your rest?” he asked.

“Hardly,” she replied wearily, then added, “I gather you didn't talk to her?”

“Not yet.”

She froze her face against it, but he sensed her frustration. “The principal will announce the names this morning. I figure I'll take her shopping this afternoon—there's no time to make her a dress and she's going to need two: one for the parade and one for the dance. Guess I'll try talking to her then.”

Avery felt her disappointment wash over him. Rightly so. He'd agreed to speak with Charlotte, but his discoveries out at McCoy had crowded everything else out of his mind.

He got up from the table, and laid his hands gently on her forearms. “I'm sorry. I meant to, but…” Could he explain that, to him, Charlotte's choice showed character that reflected well on both her parents? Should he share what they'd seen, out at the airbase?

Sarah stepped back, freeing herself. “Nobody has better intentions than you do, Wes. But this…this was important….” She smoothed the sleeves of her blouse where he'd touched her. The words
to me
hung unspoken between them.

He watched her tread slowly out onto the screened porch, uncover the protesting birds, and speak softly to each one. She was the only woman he'd ever truly loved, the one to whom he'd eagerly “pledged his troth”—that fine old-fashioned vow he'd always interpreted to mean “to keep safe and happy.” And yet, in the events of this weekend, he'd failed on both counts. Her expression in profile was sadly bereft and, in his mind, he sent her the message,
I am sorry.

She turned, almost as if she'd heard him, and, for a long second, met his gaze steadily, as if each were seeing a regret that ran deeper than either intended to reveal.

A
T THE STATION,
A
VERY
worked alone—Monday was Steve's day off—sticking the tank levels, calling in his fuel order, counting up Saturday night's receipts, preparing the credit slips for today's bank deposit.

In one of the cash register's coin drawers, he found a note from Charlotte written on a small, black-and-white Steak 'n Shake napkin.
IOU for 4 Cokes 4 me & the twirls. XO, C!
Avery could only guess that sometime Saturday night, Charlotte dropped by the station, perhaps to introduce Emilio to her friends. Did her determined face-off with Sarah, later that same night—“I'm
going
with him, Mom. Let's just leave it at
that.
”—mean the boy had passed muster with the girls?

Also, in the twenties slot, he found his own note about Marjorie Cook, the young mother who'd promised to come back and settle up her gas debt on Saturday. He was surprised but not worried. In addition to being his customer, Marjorie was his tenant in the little house on Princeton that had been his, Sarah, and Charlotte's first home. Marjorie was a good egg, Avery thought, just overwhelmed by three kids and a husband who, as a long-distance truck driver, was rarely at home. Worst case, he'd remind her when she dropped off her rent check next week.

Traffic was unusually brisk for a Monday, and the morning and early afternoon went fast. Normally, he enjoyed the rhythm of solo work out at the pumps—taking the order, setting the nozzle, checking the oil, water, and fluid levels, washing the windows, plus a quick look at the tread and inflation of all four tires. But today, even his regular customers seemed a bit off-kilter.

When Maggie Hayes, the postmaster's wife, came by in hair curlers and no makeup, he knew the car but hardly recognized her. “Don't bother with the windows,” she told him despite their obvious need for a wash.

“Pete says the oil is fine,” Ginny Howard insisted, though they both knew her husband, a county commissioner, couldn't tell a dipstick from a Popsicle stick.

It wasn't until his neighbor Valerie Gilbert, whose husband, Bud, was an administrator at the county schools, drove in to ask, “Top 'er off, Wes?” that the pattern occurred to him.

“Weren't you just here on Saturday?” he asked.

“Yes,” she replied, “but Bud called from work. He wants it full.”

Avery heard the flutter like a trapped moth in her voice. “Really?” he said, inviting further comment.

Valerie shot him a wild-eyed look and waved her list. “He wants the water jugs, the gas tank, and the pantry full, all full by the time he gets home. I'm headed to Winn-Dixie next.”

When the pump clicked off, Avery holstered the nozzle and walked around to collect forty-seven cents for a gallon and a half. Valerie handed him two quarters and drove off without change or saying good-bye.

Hands on his hips, he watched her go, picturing the faces of all the other women who'd driven in today with knit brows and strained smiles asking him to “just make sure the tank is full.” He noted the jobs held by their husbands: Postmaster Hayes, County Commissioner Howard, School Administrator Bud Gilbert; plus the wives of the school superintendent, a guy from the mayor's office, and a couple of city councilmen—all government employees. What do they know that the rest of us don't? he wondered.

At two o'clock, he turned up his transistor radio for the news:

“Presidential press secretary Pierre Salinger has announced that President Kennedy will speak on television tonight at seven p.m. Eastern Standard Time. Salinger said the topic will be ‘of the greatest national urgency.' ”

Avery pressed grim lips, adjusted his belt buckle atop his now churning gut. Here we go.

S
ARAH PARKED IN THE SCHOOL'S
side driveway, checked her watch, and made her way to the open door of the band room. It was fifth period, band director Charles Beauchamp's planning period, so the large room—smelling of valve oil, Brasso, and musty sheet music—was uncharacteristically quiet and empty. She veered left at the small forest of chunky black music stands awaiting sixth-period band practice and knocked on the open jamb of Beauchamp's office.

Beauchamp looked up and smiled. “Why, Mrs. Avery, how very nice to see you!” He rose to walk around his desk and shake her hand. “I suppose you've heard our happy news?”

“Charlotte? Yes.”

“And Barbara, too. For once, the cheerleader stranglehold on Homecoming Court is loosed—by not one but
two
majorettes!” The band director was beaming with pride.

“It does seem quite a coup.”

“A coup? Yes, exactly! And of course,” he said with a broad conspiratorial wink, “I'm hoping for a major-ette upset!”

Sarah chuckled. While some of the Band Parents—the dads, mostly—found Beauchamp a bit over the top, she thought him charming and his enthusiasm infectious.

“And that's why I'm here. Charlotte needs a new gown—well, two actually—and I was hoping to snag her early for a bit of shopping. If you wouldn't mind, that is.”

“Not a-tall. In fact, since neither she nor Barbara will be marching this week, I've already excused them from sixth period. They're working on the floats down at the Ag Barn.”

“Oh, okay,” Sarah said blankly. She glanced down, wishing she'd worn different shoes.

Beauchamp followed her gaze. He put a flat hand to his chest. “Please, permit me to send a runner.” He picked up his phone, and dialed someone, Sarah wasn't sure who, to request that Charlotte Avery return to the band room as soon as possible.

“Thank you.”

“No problem whatsoever. And, as long as you're here, let me give you a copy of the week's schedule for the bonfire, the parade, the big game, and so forth, if”—he returned to the other side of his desk, frowning at the mess—“I can remember where I put it. Please, have a seat.”

Sarah sat in the empty guest chair while Beauchamp riffled through the stacks of memos, sheet music, marching diagrams, competition applications, and grade books. As his search widened to one desk drawer, then another, then to the top of the credenza behind him, he began to hum quietly to himself. It was a slow, rather mournful tune that took Sarah by complete surprise.