The Show (Northwest Passage Book 3)

by John A. Heldt

  When they exhausted their personal histories, they talked about films, food, and events that had occurred before 1941. Grace spoke knowledgeably about Japanese expansionism in Asia, early World War II history, and even the Great Depression, which she had experienced firsthand in the "dust bowls" of Luzon and Nanking. She also spoke knowledgeably about Mount Rainier and the Oregon coast and confidently about the future of public education and libraries.

  Grace did not speak knowledgeably and confidently about what she planned to do when she stepped off the bus – and for good reason. The matter, which had been on her mind since she left Helena, scared her to death.

  Grace had naïvely assumed that she would find Joel quickly and inexpensively. She had assumed that he would welcome her with open arms and immediately take care of her material needs. She had anticipated a relatively seamless transition from one world to the next.

  She had not considered the possibility that she might find herself stuck in a large city in the year 2000 with no friends, few dollars, outdated clothes, and skills and knowledge perfectly suited for the Big Band era. She had not, to put a fine point on things, considered failure.

  But as the bus rolled farther into the Montana night, she began to think of little else. The prospect of life on the streets was not just hypothetical. It was staring her in the face.

  Other concerns, including old questions, also came back. What if Joel had changed his mind and never left 1941? What if the mine had sent him to another time? What if he had returned to 2000, as planned, and wanted nothing to do with her? What would she do then?

  When she finally said good night to Penelope, shortly after midnight, Grace shifted her body toward the aisle, pushed her seat back, and thought about the coming day. She thought of speedy phone calls, joyous reunions, and a new life with the man she loved. She did not think about poverty, homelessness, and degradation.

  She instead allowed herself to dream of better times to come. For one more night, anyway, a happy ending was within her grasp.

  When Grace awoke around seven she was overwhelmed not by lingering fears but rather by blinding daylight, which spilled through windows as the motor coach rolled into the largest city in the Pacific Northwest. She rubbed her eyes open just in time to see the bus cross the Homer M. Hadley, a floating bridge that did not exist the last time she had seen Lake Washington.

  Grace watched in awe as thousands of cars moved across two bridges that connected Seattle with the bedroom community of Mercer Island. She glanced at Penelope, who appeared to be awake and alert, and then returned to the mass migration of automobiles.

  "I've never seen traffic like this."

  "It's like this every day," Penelope said. "Is this your first trip to Seattle?"

  Grace cringed as she pondered yet another simple question that required a not-so-simple answer. She wondered if she would ever be able to fully adapt to a world with so many surprises and vowed to catch up on the past fifty-nine years the next time she visited a public library.

  "It's the first time I've been to this city," Grace said. She looked ahead with wide-eyed wonder as the bus came into view of several tall buildings that seemed to kiss the morning sky. "You might say I'm a small-town girl."

  Penelope grabbed Grace's forearm and then patted the top of her hand.

  "That's quite all right, dear. We're all small-town people at heart," she said. "Did you say you came here to meet a boy?"

  "No. I came here to look for a boy – a young man, actually. His name is Joel. Joel Smith. He supposedly lives in Seattle, but I don't know precisely where."

  "Is anyone picking you up at the bus station?"

  Grace frowned and turned away. She could see where the conversation was going and didn't want to end it with a lie. Lying to Penelope would be different than lying to a stranger who picked up hitchhikers. She felt invested in this woman and felt obligated to give her the truth, even if the truth caused her unwelcome stress.

  "No one is picking me up."

  Penelope pursed her lips and looked at Grace like a mother who had correctly surmised the source of a problem that ate away at her child.

  "Do you have a place to stay or a means to support yourself?"

  Grace looked at the floor. She knew an offer of help was probably coming but didn't want to burden this woman or anyone else. If she were going to make it in the world of 2000, she would have to learn to fend for herself. It was the honorable thing to do, the right thing.

  But when she again reached into her coat pocket and did a five-finger inventory of her liquid assets, she became wobbly. The streets of a large city could be mean to a young woman without a roof over her head. They could be very mean.

  "No. I do not."

  Penelope smiled.

  "I didn't think so."

  The old woman seemed to come to life when she heard Grace's admission. She pulled her cane from the side of the seat, sat upright, and faced her companion with resolve in her eyes.

  "I have a small home on Fifty-Second Street, near the university, where I have lived semi-independently for more than twenty years. When I do require assistance, I call my daughter. She takes me to appointments, buys groceries, and does some of the cooking and cleaning."

  Penelope returned her hand to Grace's.

  "Doris lives a few blocks away. But she and her husband are in Europe and won't return for two weeks. If you're interested in filling in until she gets back, I will pay you three hundred dollars and provide you with a room. What would you say to that?"

  Grace tried to look at Penelope but couldn't. She didn't want her new friend to see the tears that had welled in her eyes, tears that had replaced the rugged individualism from a moment ago. When she finally pulled herself together, she threw an arm around her long-lost cousin and gave her a gentle hug.

  "I would say that my ship's come in."

  CHAPTER 11: GRACE

  Seattle, Washington – Friday, June 2, 2000

  Grace put the last of the breakfast dishes in an under-the-counter device and laughed to herself as she wondered how people ever got by without machines that washed, rinsed, and dried their plates, glasses, and silverware with the touch of a button.

  The automatic dishwasher was one of several modern appliances she had learned to operate and appreciate since stepping inside the modest two-bedroom home on Fifty-Second Street on Tuesday. Two others could be found in the adjacent living room.

  Grace smiled when she recalled her introduction to the television. She had pressed a button on a small hand-held device and nearly jumped out of her skin when a baseball game popped onto the screen. Penelope Price liked baseball, the big league variety in particular, and had set her TV to a station that regularly covered the Seattle Mariners.

  Grace had had a similar reaction to Penelope's desktop computer, a contraption that worked with a screen, a printer, and a keyboard. The machine, connected to an electronic network through an obnoxiously noisy device called a modem, had allowed her to access photographs, news stories, and messages with the click of a mouse, a mouse that went easy on the cheese.

  She had been particularly drawn to the computer's research capabilities. Penelope had told her that the machine was capable of retrieving a world of information, including the names, addresses, and phone numbers of elusive young men who presumably lived in the city of Seattle.

  Finding the address and phone number of Joel Smith, lately of Helena, Montana, and the not-so-distant year of 1941, had thus far proved to be difficult. There were more than three thousand Smiths listed in the Seattle white pages alone and that number did not include all the ones that possessed devices that Madison of Montana had called a cell phone.

  Grace asked herself why she had not fallen in love with a boy named Abernathy or Torricelli or even Witherspoon. It would have made finding him so much easier. But few worthwhile pursuits were easy and the hunt for Joel Smith was no exception.

  Grace wiped the kitchen counter and then examined a shopping list on the refr
igerator door. Penelope wanted milk, eggs, onions, bread, and something called Mountain Dew. She had left her temporary caretaker thirty dollars in cash and instructed her to visit a large grocery store five blocks away while she played cards with "blue-haired biddies" at a nearby senior center.

  Penelope had been a gracious host and employer. She had introduced Grace to a seemingly limitless array of fascinating gadgets and generously shared her time and money. Perhaps just as important, she had asked precious few questions about a young woman who had come out of nowhere and knew surprisingly little about the modern world.

  Grace grabbed the shopping list and the cash and bolted out the door. She would get the milk and eggs and the something called Mountain Dew and make Penelope a wonderful dinner. She enjoyed taking care of her new friend and old cousin. But she would also do something else. She would pick up some candles, cake mix, ice cream, and maybe a little red wine. No matter what the cost or what the trouble, she would not allow this day to pass without some pomp.

  Grace Vandenberg was twenty-two years old.

  CHAPTER 12: GRACE

  Wednesday, June 7, 2000

  The exterior of the university library had changed little since 1941. Monumental stained glass windows, Gothic statues, and arches and buttresses made of terracotta, brick, and stone still greeted visitors as they approached the great center of learning, just as they had greeted Grace the last time she had worked a shift in the rare books section. That had been two weeks earlier – or fifty-nine years, depending on how one ran the numbers.

  The interior of the library was something else. While the building featured the same marble steps, stacks of books, and wooden carrels Grace had loved and remembered, it also offered modern lighting, a coffee shop, computers, and large machines that made copies of pages from magazines. Grace knew the lay of the land well enough, however, to find the periodicals section. She advanced to archived copies of the quarterly alumni magazine and began a journey that she knew would almost certainly end in sadness and tears.

  She started with the issue from the fall of 1941 and worked forward through time. Most of her closest friends and classmates had been important people in their respective fields and were bound to get their names in the university's journal of record at some point or another.

  Grace received her first dose of disturbing news in the spring 1943 issue, which reported the death of Army Lieutenant Thomas Alvin Carter. The only son of Mel and Sandy Carter had been killed saving eight comrades from certain slaughter in the Battle of Kasserine Pass in Tunisia, an act that had led to the posthumous awarding of the Distinguished Service Cross. The obituary listed Virginia Gillette, Class of '42, as Tom's fiancée. It made no mention of a marriage or children or a happy future that Grace now knew belonged to another man.

  Grace got another jolt when she turned the pages of the summer 1945 issue and learned that Navy Lieutenant Paul McEwan had died in a hospital in the Philippines after contracting malaria earlier that year. She had worried about her former fiancé's welfare since December 7 and had hoped that he had survived the attack on Pearl Harbor. The revelation that he had survived seemed ironic in view of what had followed.

  Linda McEwan Rogers, Class of '42, had survived her older brother and the war. She had apparently found a home in nearby Bremerton as the wife of naval aviator James Rogers. Grace's one-time friend, sorority sister, and rival for Joel's affections had begun the postwar era by teaching math and science in the city's public schools.

  Grace also found information on several other classmates, including Paula Caldecott, a fellow education major who had nearly blown Grace's cover on a date with Joel, and Betty DeConcini, a sorority sister who had. Each had married Army officers and had settled in Tacoma.

  Grace did not find information on Virginia Gillette, Katherine Kobayashi, or even Joel. She considered the possibility that Joel had fibbed when he had said that he had never spent a day in college. She considered the possibility that he might be a current student at this university, but she could not find proof to support that theory and, after two hours, decided to seek assistance.

  If there was one thing that working in a library had taught Grace, it's that reference librarians were top-notch investigators. They found answers to questions that eluded mere mortals and usually did so quickly. They were gateways to information she needed.

  Grace gathered her notes on Tom, Paul, and Linda and put the magazines away. Five minutes later she entered the reference section and approached a librarian sitting behind a desk. The woman, who appeared to be in her late twenties, wore dark glasses, tattoos, and a nose ring.

  "How can I help you?" the librarian asked.

  She straightened her posture and repositioned a lanyard draped around her neck. The lanyard supported a plastic-coated badge bearing the name Jennifer.

  "I'm looking for information, particularly contact information, on two women who attended the university in between 1938 and 1942 and a young man who may have attended it recently."

  "Have you checked the alumni magazines and phone directories?"

  "I have," Grace said.

  "Are you certain that the women went to this school during those years?"

  I am. They were my housemates.

  "I'm certain."

  "Is it possible that they are deceased?"

  Grace lowered her eyes. It most certainly was possible. Ginny and Katie would each be eighty. That was a lot of life even for the most healthy and spirited women.

  "I suppose it is."

  "What are their names and what can you tell me about them?"

  Grace handed the librarian two slips of paper.

  "I've written their names and a little about what they did when they went to school here. I know it's not much to go on, but it's all I have."

  Jennifer took the slips and gave each a look.

  "It's plenty," she said. "I should be able to find something."

  "Thank you."

  "How about the young man? What can you tell me about him?"

  "I know only his name and that he lives in Seattle," Grace said, wondering, and not for the first time, whether Joel had been honest even about his name and town. "His name is Joel Smith. I believe he is about twenty-two years old."

  The librarian jotted down the information on a third piece of paper and attached it to the other two with a paper clip. She looked at her watch, peeled a slip from the top of a small yellow pad, and affixed it to the stack. The slip apparently came with its own adhesive.

  "The biggest problem I see, assuming that the women are still alive, is that they are likely using married names. They may have also moved beyond the Seattle area. If they have, then this search might take some time. The alumni office has the addresses and phone numbers of all graduates but won't release them without the written permission of the graduates."

  Grace frowned and lowered her eyes. Joel could be a mile away. He could be in the next room. But until she learned more about him, he might as well be on the moon.

  "I don't mean to discourage you, Miss . . ."

  "Vandenberg. Grace Vandenberg."

  "I don't mean to discourage you. This will be a challenge, but I like challenges. I'll work on this over the weekend, if need be. Unless these people are living in a cave, I'll find them. I will need a way to contact you though."

  Grace tried to think of Penelope's number but couldn't. So she wrote down a street address that she now knew by heart. She gave the address to the librarian.

  "I'll send you what I find, Grace. One way or another, we'll get this done."

  Grace beamed. She didn't know if she approved of the tattoo or the nose ring, but she definitely liked this lady's style. She finally had some help – good help. All she had to do now was wait.

  CHAPTER 13: GRACE

  Monday, June 12, 2000

  Grace stepped out of Penelope's house and walked west along Fifty-Second Street. She hated leaving the woman alone. She loved her company, in fact. But after spending all day in t
he house cooking and cleaning, she decided that she needed to stretch her legs and see a few sights that she had not yet seen on her millennial tour of Seattle. So she did the dinner dishes and left.

  She felt less self-conscious than she had on previous walks, in part because she looked less like an extra in a forties movie and more like a contemporary college woman. She had a modern wardrobe now, thanks to two of Penelope's neighbors, recent graduates that Grace had met while watching them move out of their rental house. The coeds had planned to donate two boxes of old clothes to a thrift shop but gave them to Grace when she had asked if she could buy them.

  Wearing a short-sleeved top and a blue skirt, Grace walked a few blocks toward University Way Northeast, which was still called the Ave. She stopped in front of a vacant lot that featured tall weeds and a concrete foundation but not a lot more.

  Penelope had told Grace at dinner that a fire a few months earlier had claimed a two-bedroom residence that had once been the envy of the neighborhood. Penelope had known the house as the home of a good friend, who had been away for the weekend when her Christmas tree had caught fire and taken the house with it.

  Grace knew the place as something else. It was the house Joel and Tom had rented in the fall of 1941, the house Grace had visited one cold Thanksgiving night when she had first given her love to a man she had decided she could not live without.

  She paused to think about that incredible night and about the world she had so recently given up. She missed Aunt Edith. She missed Ginny and Katie. She missed the familiar trappings of a simpler time. But she missed Joel Smith more, a lot more, and she vowed that her attempt to find him would not be in vain.