by Lois Ruby
“I slam my locker so hard that it flies open again and Rock Hudson falls off the wall. Thing is, she’s afraid when we go to Moundridge or Hesston for a game, that they’ll think our whole school’s turned red. Maybe friends should have to sign loyalty oaths.”
Now it dawns on me: pariah. It’s not a killer fish. It’s like when you’re the cheese standing alone.
“I’m getting the same cold shoulder from Connor and the other guys on the team.” Haven’t got the heart to admit to her, or anyone, that I’ve been kicked off the Pirates.
“It’s all so grossly unfair,” says Amy Lynn. “I am not one iota political. I couldn’t find the Soviet Union on a map if it was painted red and had flashing neon lights all around it! But then, Becky hits me with the blinding truth: ‘It’s just that, well, suspicion, it’s like measles. Nobody wants to catch it from, well, your father. What if he gives the feds my parents’ names?’ My jaw drops, and I can’t even think of a word of response.”
By now I’m reaching for the radio. Ever since Mom figured the house is bugged, if we want to discuss anything more important than an episode of Crusader Rabbit, we need the hi-fi blaring, or else we huddle in the bathroom where rushing water and flushing toilets muffle our voices.
“And here’s the worst part,” Amy Lynn says. “My father’s lawyer, Mr. Fein? He’s coaching Pop for his HUAC testimony. He actually is telling Pop to come up with a list of names—people he can call communists, to give the HUAC more to do and to get himself off the hook. Off the hook, what a terrible expression. It sounds like cow carcasses hanging in a meat locker.”
“It’s what they did to the Rosenbergs,” I say, nodding. “Not hanging them in a meat locker, but asking for names, which they wouldn’t give, even though Mrs. Rosenberg’s own brother testified against her to save his skin and his wife’s.”
“It’s all about loyalty, isn’t it? This whole circus.”
“And we’re the clowns.”
Amy Lynn begins washing the tower of dirty dishes (my job) and tosses me the towel while I tell her, “The latest is that the government promised Mrs. Rosenberg that they’d spare her life if she’d offer evidence against her husband. She said no. Said they were both innocent, so she had no evidence to give, even if she’d wanted to.”
“Oh, Marty, that is so beautiful. That restores my faith that love triumphs over all.”
“Yep.” Actually, it made me wonder what I would do to save my own neck. Hey, where did that expression come from? “Which do you think would be worse, Amy Lynn, dying in the electric chair, or hanging?”
“Ga-ROSS, Martin. How do you come up with such stuff?”
Here goes. “Those FBI guys, they came to our house and threatened my mom.”
This time she heard it. “They didn’t!”
“Yep. And they’re asking a bunch of questions. I haven’t told anyone but it feels like everyone knows, you know? Neighbors, teachers, even the guys on the baseball team.”
Amy Lynn links her soap-sudsy pinky through mine. Almost like holding a human hand. “Let’s face it, Martin Rafner, our parents are ruining our lives.”
♢
Mr. Sokolov, my bar mitzvah tutor, is visiting. He unsnaps his leather briefcase and takes out a twenty-pounder, a book that’s got gold pages and fancy red and gold and blue curlicues in the margins. Hebrew on the right column, English on the left. He points to the heading on the page: “Read.”
“Vayera. Hey, that’s my Torah portion!” Amazing, I recognize it.
“Excellent. Read.”
I’ve figured out that Mr. Sokolov loves a good, juicy discussion, and if I get him going, we’ll use up the whole hour in English instead my stumbling through the Hebrew. “So, I have a question. Here in Genesis 18, God threatens to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah because people there are evil, right? But Abraham has the guts to wheel and deal with God. Asks, would you spare the place for the sake of fifty innocent people? Sure, for fifty, God says. How about forty? Yeah, okay, for forty I won’t wipe out those two evil cities. For thirty? . . . And Abraham keeps bargaining with God until they get down to ten innocent people. Sold! Like it’s an auction.”
Mr. Sokolov gently closes the gold book. “Not exactly, but go on.
“So, doesn’t the Lie-Mongering, Red-Baiting Carnivore—”
“Who, Marty?”
“McCarthy.”
“Ah.” Mr. Sokolov nods.
“He thinks everybody’s guilty. Wouldn’t you think he’d spare the rest of us for the sake of, say, ten innocent non-commies?”
“I see where you’re going with this.”
“So?”
“Very clever.” Mr. Sokolov smiles and opens the book to Vayera again. “Read, please.”
No word from Milgrim and Kluski yet. Waiting.
Chapter 17
Friday, May 1
May. I wonder if Mr. and Mrs. Rosenberg woke up this morning in their cells at opposite ends of Sing Sing and realized that it’s going to happen next month. Forty-eight days to doom.
It’s not even six-thirty, and there’s already steam coming out of Mom’s ears. Something to do with the newspaper open on the table.
Mom looks like a raving lunatic this morning. She’s undone her braid, and the hair’s flying all over in accordion ripples. It’s a lot grayer than I thought.
She slides the Palmetto Sentinel across the table so I can’t miss the letter to the editor that she’s boxed in red.
Just as language separates us from animals, it is the freedoms in this country that separate us from the tyrannical Soviet Union. Personally, I find it impossible to understand why a citizen loyal to the United States, if in fact that is what Rosalie Rafner truly is, would not uphold those freedoms by signing a simple declaration of allegiance. Refusal to do so leads a thinking person such as myself to conclude that Professor Rafner has communist leanings. Perhaps the College should inquire further into her background.
—An American Through-and-Through
“Aw, Mom,” I groan. This has gone way public. The newspaper!
“Not to worry. I’ve already composed my retort.” She hands me a typewritten sheet. “See what you think.”
Dear Through-and-Through:
You clearly do not understand the First Amendment. Try having FBI agents outside your door twenty-four hours a day, spying on you, and threatening you and your family, and then maybe you’ll understand how easily your rights slide away, one small toehold at a time.
—Rosalie Weitz Rafner, a Person of Principle
She gives me a hug; wiry hairs fly in my mouth. “I know it’s been rough, Marty. We’ll get through this. Stay with me on it, will you?”
“That’s asking a lot, Mom.”
“Signing the oath is the first step on the slippery slope, Marty. You understand what your father’s overlooked.”
That’s when Dad comes in, with his glasses buried in his tight curly mop. “I’ve heard this speech before,” he says wearily and pours himself a glass of tomato juice.
Mom hands him the newspaper.
“I read it. It’s cold and calculating. But you must understand this, Rosalie. You’re clinging to the Bill of Rights as a life preserver. It will fail you. We’re going under; we’re drowning.”
My rye toast is going to pop up in a second, and I’m forcing myself to blot out their voices and focus on the big decision—apricot jam or butter—when I see Mom’s shoulders sag. I stand in front of the open fridge, jam jar in one hand, butter dish in the other, as she lets it all hang out.
“I couldn’t bring myself to tell you this yesterday, Irwin. Dean Fennel put me on suspension. He gave my poetry class, my poetry class, to Ed Harvey, who hasn’t written a single lyrical word since World War I.”
Gotta give old Irwin credit. He resists saying I told you so and actually puts his arms around Mom and lets her beat her fists on his nightshirt.
Butter and jam, both, definitely. I’m way out of my league here.
Or why
not cream cheese? I’m tearing through the fridge looking for the silver package, slamming the vegetable bin drawer, knocking over a jar of pickles.
Mom’s never this vulnerable, and Dad? He’s actually rocking her and running his fingers through her loose hair.
This is too weird for me. I slam the refrigerator door and spear the rye out of the toaster.
I’ll choke it down dry, then go mow Luke’s lawn.
♢
Turns out Luke watches everything up and down the street, though he hardly ever leaves his lawn chair. I’m mowing, and he suddenly stands up and follows me, limping across the front lawn and shouting over the putt-putt of the mower.
“What . . . happened . . . with you and . . . your friend . . . up the . . . street?”
I nearly whack a rose bush, I’m so surprised. I stop pushing the mower and mop sweat off my face with the bottom of my T-shirt. “It’s sort of complicated.” Yeah, like Connor’s steering clear of me, ’cause his family’s different, not pinko like mine.
Luke nods in that slow-motion way. His heart rate must be down to about twenty beats a minute. Then he says, “It’s . . . because of . . . the . . . communist . . . business, right?”
“Yeah, kind of.”
He’s flicking his way-long finger nails and frowning, with his eyes just dark slits. He’s mad.
“Oh, I get it. You think my whole family’s soft on communism, and that bugs you ’cause you were over there in Korea fighting the commies and got—messed up.”
Luke glares at me, then limps away. His war wounds are probably hurting him in all this soupy humidity. I start pushing the lawn mower again and hear him yell at my back, clear as sunshine, “If that’s what you think, kid, nothing I can do about it.”
I spin around. His whole sentence is a tease. I want more. But he’s already sunk into his chair under the basketball net, with that spacey-spooky look like he’s checking out the rings of Saturn with his naked eye.
Chapter 18
Saturday, May 2
A bucket of rocks has landed in my stomach, and they’re working their way up my gullet into my throat. By seven o’clock, I feel like I might explode if I don’t get some sympathy.
I pick up the phone, hold my breath, swallow gobs of pride, and dial Connor’s number. His father answers.
“Connor home?”
“D’jou see the American flag waving outside our house? Tells you something about us that’s different from you folks. I can’t have my boy hanging around with communists, which’ll get my own rear twisting in the wind at the College. So, best you don’t call here again. It’s nothing personal.”
Sure feels personal. You’d think Mr. Dugan would realize that I’m me, and my mother is somebody outside my skin, and just because she refuses to sign that stupid loyalty oath that’s gotten us in hot split-pea soup up to our pits, doesn’t mean my whole family is plotting to put the White House on a gigantic tractor trailer and move it to Red Square in Moscow.
These thoughts are dragging me down into a black hole. Mom and Dad are both working at the dining room table.
“Hey, can we talk?”
Mom whips around like she’s just been kicked. Can we talk is usually her phrase. “Sure, Marty, what’s on your mind?”
Dad puts down the manuscript he’s editing and caps his pen. They both wait for me to speak.
“Maybe it’s not the worst thing that’s happening to our family with all this—do I dare say the word?—pinko stuff that’s going on.”
Mom curls her lip.
“Coach kicked me off the team.” Saying it out loud makes it feel even worse and final.
“Because of your performance?” Dad asks.
I shake my head.
“Because of me?” Mom clunks the table with a thick Chinese dictionary. “That ignorant, tyrannical Neanderthal has no concept of—” She stops and leans over to put her arms around me. “Oh, Marty, I’m so sorry my stubbornness has hurt you this way.”
Is that what the Rosenbergs told Michael and Robby?
Dad reaches for my arm across the table. “You want me to talk to the coach?”
“No! I want all this to stop! It’s not just Coach—everyone looks at me differently now, including Connor.” I swallow back the details. “It’s not fair.”
Dad sighs deeply. “Rosalie?”
Mom clenches her fists. “I’m sorry about how this is affecting our family. Sorrier than you can ever guess. But I can’t back down now. Someday Marty, you’ll thank me for being true to my convictions.”
Yeah, sure.
Dad doesn’t waste a lot of time on sappy sympathy. Just turns on the radio to muffle the sound of our voices. “Martin, I think you should know what’s going on with the Sonfelters, in case Amy Lynn hasn’t given you the full story. Theo’s appearance before the HUAC in D.C. is next week.”
“I heard.”
“He has some options,” Mom says, and Dad looks annoyed that she’s butted in. “He can plead the First Amendment, meaning his right to free speech and free association with anybody he pleases.”
Dad pushes his glasses up into his hair. “The problem with that is, he could be held in contempt of court.”
“Meaning?”
“Maybe a year in prison.”
“Sheesh!”
“There’s a better option,” Mom chimes in. “He can invoke the Fifth Amendment, which is his right not to testify against himself. Husbands and wives can invoke the Fifth so they don’t have to testify against each other.” She glares daggers at Dad.
He dodges the sharp points. “That might have worked a few years ago, but nowadays everyone assumes you’re guilty—that is, you’re a communist—if you plead the Fifth. He’d be blacklisted, and no other college or industry would hire him.”
Mom mutters, “He’ll be lucky to get a job bagging groceries.”
Pretty grim. “Third option?”
“Well, when they throw him the central question—are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?—”
Like Milgrim did to Mom.
“—he can state clearly that he isn’t and wasn’t ever.” They exchange looks I can’t read. “You might as well know this, Martin. He could be lying.”
“He really is a communist?” What’s that make Amy Lynn? Is it something you inherit, like brown eyes, or do you catch it like the measles? Does she know?
Mom reaches for my hand and roughly rubs my fingers. “Then the HUAC will produce a witness, someone who swears he’s been at a meeting with Theo, or someone who fought with him in Spain, or almost anyone who’s willing to come forward to save his own hide, and he’ll testify that Theo is, in fact, a party member.”
“In which case Theo would be convicted of perjury and would go to prison,” Dad adds.
“You’re telling me he has a fifty-fifty chance of ending up behind bars?”
Mom says, “He’d get one year for contempt with the Fifth, or five years for lying under oath. It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out which is the better choice.”
“Amy Lynn’s father could rot in the slammer for five years?” I keep thinking of Connor saying, I’d rather be dead than red. Five years in prison would be like being dead, like living in an iron lung.
“Well, there’s still another option,” Dad says, “a way for him to get his job back at the College. He’d have to feed the committee names.”
Mom jumps to her feet and rips a dead leaf off her avocado plant. “That’s like throwing raw meat to sharks. And it would ruin so many other lives.”
I ask, “Yeah, but couldn’t he give them names of people the committee already knows are communists?”
Dad shakes his head. “The fact is, it doesn’t matter who he names. These hearings aren’t designed to get at truth. They’re designed to intimidate, to strike fear in the hearts—”
“—of patriotic American citizens like us!” Mom shouts.
“Sit down, Rosalie, you’re making me nervous.”
I’m sinking in my chair, practically at nose level with the table, as if the less of me that’s showing means less that can feel crummy about this whole sorry mess.
Sooner or later I’m going to have to come right out and ask: If Dr. Sonfelter’s a communist, and so are the Rosenbergs, Mom and Dad, are you communists?
Can you be a patriotic American and a communist at the same time?
Dad lowers his voice to a whisper: “There is one more option. Not a good one, but a possibility.” There’s a long, dicey pause. “Theo can go underground. Just . . . disappear.”
Chapter 19
Wednesday, May 6
The phone is ringing like crazy. I’m ninety-seven percent sure it’s not Connor calling. I snap the phone up on the sixth bounce.
“This the Rafners?” The man’s voice is familiar, but I can’t place it. It’s kind of muffled, like he’s trying to disguise it, the way they hold a handkerchief over the mouthpiece in the movies. “Feeling good about all the commies in your house?”
“Sir?” I glub down a huge lump in my throat. “Who is this?”
“A friendly word of advice.” He doesn’t sound at all friendly. “Pull down the ladder to the attic, the one right over your head.”
How does he know we’ve got an attic ladder in our front hall? And who is this guy?
“Get down a steamer trunk and start packing.”
My heart’s hammering. “We’re not going anywhere.”
“Sure you are, if you know what’s good for you. Julius and Ethel didn’t skip the country to Mother Russia fast enough before the feds nabbed ’em. So, my advice? Pack up quick and ride that Red Rail right outta town. Because if you don’t, there’s plenty of patriotic Americans with loaded shotguns right here in Palmetto who’ll be more’n happy to speed you along.” Clunk. Dial tone.
“Dad!” I barge into his office, shaking down to my toes.
He’s tilted back in the swivel chair behind the desk. The chair squeaks, which makes my teeth feel scritchy.
“Sorry to bother you, Dad. It’s this creepy phone call I just got.”