Red Menace

by Lois Ruby

  Hey, Mom, baseball is all about winning and losing. Where’s her head? So, after the foaming spit, I feel like the biggest loser in the history of the great American pastime. Especially walking my sweaty self home alone after the game.

  Chapter 13

  Tuesday, April 28

  Welcome to the war zone, the Rafner dinner table. Mom and Dad start out in their separate fox holes, eyeing the enemy across the field of a spaghetti casserole and sending up trial flares.

  Mom waves a serving spoon like a band leader. “Creamed spinach, Marty?” A green blob splats on my plate like a lagoon creature. “Isn’t the suspense killing you, Irwin? It’s been two weeks since Julius and Ethel’s lawyers filed the third appeal. What’s taking the Supreme Court so long?” She drops a mountain of noodles on Dad’s plate, which he eyes suspiciously. Probably wonders if he should have a royal taster before he dares to take a bite.

  “They’re grasping at straws, Rosalie. What are the latest flimsy grounds? Something like ‘deliberate use of false testimony by the prosecution.’ It will not hold up.”

  “Have a little faith, Irwin,” Mom shoots back, and the battle’s on. She lobs the first grenade. “Dean Fennel turned a rare shade of purple talking to me about the loyalty oath debacle this afternoon. He’d better watch his high blood pressure.”

  Dad’s decided the spaghetti’s safe to eat, but only after I shovel a forkful in my mouth and don’t keel over. He twirls the noodles neatly on the back of a spoon. “You’ve backed Fennel into a corner, you know.”

  “Fennel won’t suspend me. Every summer I teach the poetry-writing class. It draws students from all over the country; it’s our signature summer course.”

  “You’re mistaken if you think you’re indispensable, Rosalie. Neither am I.” He takes a deep breath which he blows out like a contented stogie smoker. “That’s why you should sign, like I did.”

  “Traitor! Julius never did this to Ethel. You’ve betrayed me and everything we stand for!”

  Dad shoves his plate away. “The Rosenbergs are on Death Row. You and I are still walking around free to make choices. Aren’t you slightly overstating your case, Rosalie?”

  That’s the aggravating thing about Dad. The madder he is, the calmer he gets, and that sends Mom off into orbit with the space cadets.

  “I am not overstating it! That mealy-mouthed I-am-a-dyed-in-the-wool-American document is a travesty! They should use it to wrap fish.”

  In fact, the spaghetti is turning to worms in my stomach, plenty enough to catch a big mess of catfish. Wish I were fishing right now. Shadow Lake. Connor and me chewing beef jerky and waiting for a tug on the line, like old times.

  “I refuse to sign that statement, no matter how watered-down Sam Fennel makes it look. Demanding loyalty oaths is unconstitutional, un-American, anti-academic freedom—”

  “It’s necessary if we want to keep our jobs. There’s a high-stakes game going on, and Dean Fennel has all the cards.”

  Spaghetti’s hanging from my lips. I’m reeling and sucking it into my mouth at record speeds.

  “A game, Irwin? This is no game. We’re talking principle here. All ideas and beliefs are tolerated in a free country, remember? We shouldn’t have to prove that we’re loyal. I never would have believed you’d sell out so cheaply.”

  “We out of grated cheese?” I rattle the green Kraft can dramatically to derail this train, but it keeps speeding along the track.

  “I did what I had to do, Rosalie.”

  “As will I.” Mom turns into a stone wall. You can’t scale it, and you can’t get around it.

  He’s furious. I can tell by those indentations at the side of his head, which are beating like small drums. He swallows a mouthful of nothing but spit and takes a sip of water while Mom radiates ice vapors across the table.

  Finally Dad fires back, “How long do you think those FBI agents are going to let things ride before they strike? They will strike, Rosalie. We’re living on borrowed time here.”

  I ball up my napkin and toss it across the table. “I am getting acid indigestion and an ulcer and a goiter.”

  “Then leave the table,” Dad snaps.

  You think the Rosenbergs yell at each other in the letters they exchange?

  You’re never there for me, Julius!

  There for you? I’m locked up at the other end of the prison, for God’s sake. How there can I be?

  You’re always busy with your insect collection; no time for me wasting away in this cell.

  Time’s what I have an endless amount of, Ethel.

  Until June 18. Fifty-one days from now.

  That should settle the argument.

  Suddenly I realize the whole house has gone deadly silent. Even the wheezy fridge seems to be holding its breath. But I’ve got to get to a game across town in—what?—forty minutes.

  My parents are now robots, switched off, frozen in place, and I’m sure not going to beg Connor for a ride to the game. Who’s left? Amy Lynn. She has her learner’s permit, she’ll jump at an excuse to drive.

  “Sure,” she says. “My parents are at a psychologist appointment on campus. Car’s in the garage. I’ll take you,” she says, her blue eyes gleaming fiendishly.

  Big mistake.

  Chapter 14

  Tuesday, April 28

  Amy Lynn handles her parents’ big Buick like a maniac. She went forty backing out of the garage without even glancing in the rearview. She slams on the brakes halfway into an intersection where an old lady’s crossing. If she’d stepped off the curb a second earlier, that lady would be flat as a sheet pressed through the wringer.

  The light changes, and Amy Lynn strips the gears and slams her bare foot on the gas pedal. My forehead hits the windshield. Might not live to warm the bench tonight.

  She says, “Do you realize how bad off Luke Everly is?”

  “Kind of zombied,” I answer, clutching the dashboard. “You oughta drive and not talk.”

  “Worse than zombied. You can’t get two words out of him.”

  “I did. We talked baseball. He’s a Phil Rizzuto fan.” True, I haven’t heard him say anything since that day, but . . .

  Amy Lynn runs a red light, and I shriek.

  “What? WHAT? Oh, don’t panic. There wasn’t anyone else at the intersection.” She leans toward me. “It’s so, so sad. Everything is, right now.”

  “You’re telling me. Especially if I don’t survive this car ride. Keep your eyes on the road!”

  “Oh, calm down. Listen, I can’t wait for you. Can you get a ride home?”

  “No problem.” So, I’ll be walking home alone again. Pitiful.

  ♢

  I’m getting to be a pro at shining the bench. Two more games, and I’ll wear out the seat of my pants and get splinters on my sorry butt. The game’s humiliating to watch. Castleman’s asleep at second when Shire lobs him an easy one. Larrimer drops his glove, then trips over it and eats dirt. Next minute, Bokser pitches a meatball, and the Newton batter slugs it for a homer—with the bases loaded. The whole game, Coach is howling like a deranged wolf. He should have put me in. I missed out on playing in the most embarrassing game of the season, one you’d tell your grandchildren about some spring training day.

  After the disaster’s over, Coach mutters, “All you dim bulbs pick up your gear and pile your sorry BEE-hinds into my truck. I’ll take you to Wee Wiley’s for a root beer and a slice of coconut cream. Just the guys who saw action in this pathetic game.”

  I’m the only one who didn’t see action.

  The guys slide around me while they pack up the bases and the chalk-marking machine, the ice chest and the bat bags, and toss all of it into the bed of the pickup. Coach starts to climb up into the driver’s seat when he spots me sitting there alone, smashed onto the center of the bench. Comes over and says, “What’s your plan, Rafner?”

  My mouth is dry; I can hardly push the words out: “Whaddaya mean, Coach?”

  “We got six more games before
school lets out, and it looks like it’s not working out with you and the other Pirates. Ya see that, don’t you?”

  Now the words are coming faster than I can stop them: “Oh, yeah, I see it. I see that you’re all a bunch of scumbags. Sportsmanship, oh yeah. Kill ’em, you bet!”

  I fall right into his bear trap, and now he snaps it shut. “Maybe it’s okay-dandy in your house to mouth off that way. Maybe communists talk to each like that because everybody’s pinko-equal. But me, I don’t take that lip, son. You’re off the team, starting yesterday.” He hitches up his pants and swaggers over to the truck.

  It’s a long, lonely walk home. When I get to Oxbow Road, I slink past Amy Lynn’s house, hoping she won’t see me looking like a sad old popped balloon. I plod up the block so slowly that the FBI guys back up the Studebaker and crawl along with me to watch me more closely. Like I could be passing commie propaganda to the sewer rats.

  I ignore them. I’ve learned to act like the black car is a dead tree stump nobody’s chainsawed yet.

  Wonder what Mickey Mantle would think of me now. He’d lose all respect for me. Not that he ever had any. If anything ever called for a memo, this does.

  From the desk of

  IRWIN RAFNER, Ph.D.’s son Marty

  DATE: April 28, 1953

  TO: Mickey Mantle

  Hey, Mick, I know how you felt when they sent you down to the Minors, only worse. Coach kicked me off the Pirates because—get this—he thinks I’m a commie menace. I’m no commie, I’m a centerfielder, like you. After the game, all the guys piled in Coach’s pick-up and drove off. Just left me breathing their dust. Let me tell you, it still stung. No, it stunk. Stunk worse than a backed-up toilet.

  Your miserable friend,

  MARTY (The Red Menace)

  Chapter 15

  Wednesday, April 29

  Mom’s holed up in her office, which is the phone-booth size closet under the hall stairs, and she’s pounding out some oddball poem on a typewriter. Some of it’s handwritten in Chinese, because she spent a year in Kaifeng. Man, her poetry doesn’t even rhyme in English, let alone Chinese.

  In the living room I’m jiggling the rabbit ears on top of the TV to shake off the snowy interference on the screen. Nothing good’s on at nine-thirty in the morning, so I might as well work up some spit for the bugle. Commencement’s a few weeks off, and I keep forgetting to practice.

  The doorbell rings. It’s a loud clang, like somebody’s leaning on the button. I open the door to two FBI guys dripping rain on their shoes. If I slam the door, they’ll vanish. Ten minutes later, it’ll be just be a cloud of vapor on the porch, and the car across the street will be gone.

  No such luck. The taller guy says, “Special Agent Milgrim. This is Agent Kluski. Here to speak to your mother, son.”

  Mom pokes her head out, spots the dark suits and hats, and pounds her fist on the typewriter. All the keys jam together with a sick slurky sound. She comes to the door.

  “Yes?”

  “Are you Mrs. Rafner?” What, he doesn’t recognize her, after hunkering outside our house watching every step she’s taken for the past month? Sheesh, he followed her to the dentist last week and sat in the waiting room during her root canal.

  “That is I.” Normal people don’t talk that way; just Shakespeare and Rosalie, when she’s acting stuck up.

  “Can we ask you a few questions, ma’am?”

  “You can, but you may not.” More snotty talk.

  “Mind if we step in?” asks Dimple Chin—Kluski—shaking off his umbrella.

  “I do, yes. I can’t stop you. You’ve got all the clout.”

  Can they haul her off to jail for rudeness? She steps back, and the guys slither into our front hall like eels. I turn off the snowy television.

  The FBI guys sit, Mom stands, so they both stand up again until Mom drops to the floor with her ankles tucked under her. She’s doing a yoga meditation, either to keep her cool or to spook the G-men. It works, both ways. The G-men don’t know whether to join her on the rug, or keep standing like dwonks.

  “Mrs. Rafner,” says Milgrim, “we have some questions about your neighbor.”

  “Don’t tell me, let me guess. You’re hounding Theo Sonfelter, right?”

  “Well, hounding?” Kluski repeats.

  I have to hand it to Mom. She sits there with her dress flared out around her, her braid hanging over her shoulder, her arms outstretched, the thumb and middle finger of each hand pressed together.

  Milgrim tilts his head toward me. “Martin, could you excuse us for a few minutes?”

  Rattles me that he knows my name. But then, why wouldn’t he? They’ve been watching us for weeks. It wouldn’t surprise me if they dug up the grave where we buried SnookieCat last summer.

  Mom’s eyes are still closed, and her throat’s vibrating with a faint hum. “My son stays.”

  Yeah? I want to hang around to see what’s going on, but this is what my parents would usually call adult business, code for Get lost, kid. Mom explains, “I need a witness.”

  “Your call, Mrs. Rafner.” Milgrim plunks his butt in a chair, then barks, “Take a load off,” and Kluski drops onto the couch like he’s been shot.

  Milgrim says, “All right, just a few inquiries, and then we’ll be on our way. We’d appreciate your opening your eyes, Mrs. Rafner.”

  Like she’s coming out of a coma, Mom lets her eyes flutter open slowly.

  Kluski clears his throat. “Have you noticed anyone suspicious going in or out of the Sonfelter domicile?”

  Mom fakes this sweet (killer) look and says in the gentlest (killer) voice, “Gentlemen, I am an English professor at Hawthorne College, a poet, a wife, and the mother of this supreme son. I have neither the time nor the inclination to observe who goes in or out of my neighbors’ houses. You’re paid to do that, not I.”

  So then Milgrim gets a little tougher. “To your knowledge, does Dr. Theodore Sonfelter or any member of his family have an association with persons known to advocate the overthrow of the United States government?”

  The guys stare down at Mom on the floor, and I start to fidget. I’ve got an urge to bite my nails, which I haven’t done since one got infected in third grade.

  “To my knowledge,” Mom begins, so calmly that you can hear the air thrumming, “Theo Sonfelter has a constitutional right to associate with whomever he pleases, and I have no idea who or what pleases the man other than arcane mathematical formulae. I suggest you double-check the Bill of Rights, which you’re trampling.”

  Milgrim fires off the next question: “Is he a communist?”

  “I couldn’t say.”

  “Are you a communist?”

  “I wouldn’t say.”

  Whoa, wouldn’t say? I don’t like the sound of that. Does it mean she is a communist but won’t admit it? My mom? Man, that’s a game-changer that would plunk us in hot water.

  Milgrim asks, “Have you ever read a book called Salt of the Earth?”

  Mom motions around the room, which is rimmed in messy book shelves like every other room in our house. “I have read approximately sixty thousand books.”

  “Ri-i-ght.” Kluski says it like the more books you read, the more suspicious you look. “Have you or any members of your household ever attended a Pete Seeger concert? A Paul Robeson concert? A Weavers concert?”

  “Ah, has the government now outlawed popular music? We should have been notified out here in the hinterlands of Kansas.” Mom rolls her eyes like Amy Lynn does. Makes me wish I’d known my mother when she was fourteen.

  Kluski spins his hat on his finger. “A friend of yours, Mrs. Rafner—we’re not at liberty to say who—mentioned that you attended meetings of the American League for Peace and Democracy while you were a student at Stanford, is that correct?”

  Mom rises like a Siamese cat in one smooth upward curl, puts on a frosty smile, and says, “I appreciate your stopping by when you have such pressing government business to attend to.”

&nbs
p; She gives the guys a sweeping bow that ends with a motion toward the front door. “Good day, gentlemen.”

  “Well, we thank you for your indulgence, and you can be sure we’ll be in touch.”

  I whoosh out a deep breath of relief when they’re out in the rain. Didn’t even realize I’d been holding my breath. I know it’s not true, but I say it anyway: “Guess that’s the last we’ll hear from them!”

  Mom sinks into the scruffy recliner, and I notice that her eyes are misted over. She’s working her hands like she’s soaping them, but they’re so dry they whistle.

  I kneel beside the chair. “You were terrific, Mom, you didn’t tell them anything.”

  She ruffles my coconut hair. “I didn’t have to. They’ve got bugs all over and know everything about us, Marty. It’s just a matter of time until they use it against us.”

  I’m telling you, it’s like a jagged razor drops in my gut. I am sliced.

  Chapter 16

  Thursday, April 30

  Amy Lynn taps the kitchen door, then bursts in. “Guess what, Marty. I’m a pariah.”

  “One of those killer fish? I don’t get it.”

  “Everybody at school, even the teachers, think I’ve been dyed red since my father’s under suspicion. Anybody who dares to knock on our door can’t miss the FBI spies across the street.”

  “They’ve been to my house, too.”

  But Amy Lynn’s so steamed that she doesn’t hear. “Becky? Who used to be my best friend? Write her off. Okay, we’re at our lockers, and she’s peeking into mine, like she expects to see some communist propaganda taped to my back wall. Her shoulders sag when she sees it’s a poster of Rock Hudson.”

  What, no picture of me?

  “So, she says, ‘Um, I was wondering, Amy Lynn, you planning to stay on the cheerleader squad?’ and I tell her, naturally, why wouldn’t I? Becky’s squirming around and whispers, ‘What about other schools?’