Face of the Enemy

by Beverle Graves Myers

  Dr. Wright grabbed his arm. “Let Shelton handle it—it’s his shop.”

  In the instant the professor hesitated, the blonde shrilled, “I can’t believe you’re showing this Jap crap, Arthur. You’re a filthy traitor! Someone needs to shut you down.”

  That’s enough! Oakley dove forward as Tiffy grinned malevolently, grabbed a glass of red wine from the nearest bystander, and hurled its contents. Oakley saw the dark liquid arcing toward “Lion.” A woman screamed. Masako’s voice.

  He was almost there. One more step. The professor yanked his wife sideways just as the wine hit Arthur Shelton square in the face, then splashed across the canvas behind him.

  Desmond Cox, Shelton’s assistant, grabbed Tiffy De Forest by the arm and hustled her through the astonished crowd. Oakley could see the snide grin on Fairchild’s face as he trailed behind. Coward, he thought, sheltering Masako under his arm. Getting a woman to do your dirty work!

  Arthur Shelton, of course, handled the situation with grace. He turned to his guests as if nothing awkward had occurred. “Looks like that was a No Sale, folks.” Everyone laughed. He made a small comic show of pulling the handkerchief from his pocket and mopping at his face. The jazz combo launched into an upbeat number.

  Crisis averted, Oakley thought. But no—what was this? Suddenly the floor was tilting. His head was spinning. Oakley sank to his knees. His fingers brushed the soft fabric of Masako’s kimono, and then he was flat on the floor.

  “Bob!” George Wright knelt beside him.

  Masako knelt on his other side, a vision in green so bright it hurt his eyes, her beautiful face transformed by shock and fear.

  “Robert!” He saw her mouth form the word, but his ears were ringing so loud he couldn’t hear her voice.

  Oakley took her hand and whispered her name. After that, nothing.

  Chapter Two

  Sunday afternoon, a week later

  “Jimmy Datillo bet me two bits a Kraut dies faster with a bullet in his head. I say his gut.” The dark-haired boy pushed his white paper hat forward and leaned over the counter of the Brooklyn candy store. “Who’s right, Miss H? You’re a nurse. You know this stuff.”

  “What a question!” Louise Hunter squirmed on her stool. “Yes, I’m a nurse, but right now I’m off duty. I came in here for an egg cream, not to talk about shooting people.”

  Gus Voskos frowned. “I gotta know. Jimmy and me, we’re gonna enlist soon as war’s declared. Well…Ma says I hafta graduate high school first.”

  The marble counter was sticky with dots of cherry syrup. Louise eyed the crimson stain on the sleeve of her baby blue dress. Oh, swell! Then she lifted her gaze to find Gus chewing his lip, staring at her intently. Behind him, chrome seltzer spigots gleamed. Louise wanted her weekly chocolate egg cream, and she wasn’t about to let war talk ruin her treat. Three months ago, fresh off a train from Kentucky, Louise had never even heard of an egg cream. Now she was addicted to them.

  She’d hardly even heard of Brooklyn, either, but, surprisingly, its brash vitality was beginning to grow on her.

  “If I sneak some ice cream in your glass, will you tell me?” Gus spritzed seltzer into the milk and chocolate syrup. His teasing manner was creeping back. Good. She didn’t want to think about this friendly soda jerk trading bullets with German soldiers.

  “No, thank you. No ice cream. Just regular is fine.”

  Cute kid, Louise thought, as she took her first sip from the foaming glass he’d slid across the counter. But why did boys that age have to be so keen on guns and blood?

  The bells over the heavy glass door tinkled, and three girls pushed their way through, chattering and giggling. “Helllllooo, Gussie,” cooed the one with the polka-dot hair bow perched in her golden curls.

  Suddenly, killing Krauts seemed to be the last thing on soldier-boy’s mind.

  Sipping slowly, Louise tried to relax the tension that had gathered into a knot at the back of her neck. She’d been on a private-duty case since Wednesday—four nights now—a crusty old Columbia University professor. Robert Oakley had driven his previous nurse away with his irascibility, but Louise had set him straight immediately. When his wife ushered her into the bedroom the professor had been smoking a briar pipe. Imagine. A pipe! With pneumonia! She’d plucked it from his mouth and doused it, hissing, in a basin of water.

  “You have a subconscious death wish, Professor?” she’d asked him.

  “You read Freud!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, everyone talks about his theories. I was curious.”

  Her patient had been a pussycat from then on. Mostly. Super-Nurse, Louise Hunter, RN. She chuckled briefly, stirring the remains of her egg cream with the straw, then she swiveled her stool a quarter turn and looked out the plate-glass window. Already a week into December, but sunny and pleasant. Her mother had gone on and on about New York City blizzards, howling winds, two feet of snow, but on a day that sparkled like this one she knew Mom had just been firing another blank in her relentless campaign to scare Louise back to Louisville.

  The Sunday-afternoon sidewalks were busy. A snappy green roadster pulled up to the curb; a soldier in dress uniform got out of the passenger seat and leaned over to kiss the girl driver. It was a long kiss. As she drove away, she blew him another. Instantly Louise felt a hunger in her heart that was almost physical. Dr. Preston Atherton—damn him. Damn him and his snooty family. The dark-eyed cardiology fellow had enticed her to New York—and then had second thoughts. Seduced and abandoned. It was an old, old story.

  Louise tossed her head, the honey-blond hair flying, and returned her attention to the street. She was done with Pres. She wouldn’t waste another thought on that worm. Right. She’d be just fine on her own, thank you.

  Across Flatbush Avenue, a Hasidic man came out of the kosher poultry shop with a plucked chicken, its head dangling from carelessly wrapped butcher paper. He went out of his way to sidestep an olive-skinned woman with long dark hair who was balancing a white cardboard baker’s box in the crook of her elbow. She shot him a Brooklyn sneer as she shepherded two little boys across the street. Just outside the candy store, a fat, red-faced man in a worn work jacket ambled past with a big portable radio balanced on his shoulder. The door tinkled open again, and Louise heard the radio blare the score of the Sunday afternoon football game.

  What a city! How could her mother expect her to scoot back to pokey old Louisville when this whole new world lay at her feet? Every time the boarding house phone rang, Louise flinched. Calls from home ended with hysterical pleas for her to hop the first train south. But, no, she wouldn’t. Louise nibbled at a fingernail as sidewalk dramas unfolded before her eyes.

  Outside, the man in the work jacket had stopped dead in his tracks, pressing the radio tight to his ear, an unreadable expression paralyzing his suddenly pale face. He looked ill. Louise half slid off her stool. Was he having a stroke? Did he need help?

  The man stood stock still, as if there had been a hitch in time. For a second or two, people pushed around him. Then he shouted several hoarse words Louise couldn’t make out, and everyone else on the sidewalk froze.

  “Gus? Do you see—” Louise pointed outside, then people started running, the door crashed open, and all hell broke loose.

  “They’re bombing us!” a boy’s cracking voice shouted. “Turn the radio on! The Japs are bombing us!” When Gus stared at him, motionless, the boy with the cropped blond hair scooted behind the counter and twisted the big Bakelite dial: Howie Schroeder, her landlady’s teenage son.

  A squeal of static blasted her ears, resolving into an announcer’s solemn tones: “We repeat: This just in from Washington—The Japanese have bombed military bases at Pearl Harbor—”

  “The Japs?” Gus exclaimed. “Jeez, everyone thought it would be the Krauts.”

  “And where the hell is Pearl Harbor, an
yways?” someone asked.

  “Out on Long Island,” squeaked the girl with the blond curls. “Hey, I bet we could see smoke from the roof.”

  “It’s in Hawaii, you blockheads,” Howie snapped. “Shut up and listen.”

  Everyone clustered around the end of the counter. Howie stood at attention, as if he were reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. The report crackled on, announcing the unthinkable. Air attacks, wave after wave of Japanese planes, Navy and Army bases taking heavy fire. Hundreds of servicemen killed.

  Hawaii. Louise pushed her soda glass away, suddenly sickened by the sweet smell, and glanced at her large-dialed nurse’s watch: 2:33.

  2:33 on a sunny Sunday afternoon, and nothing will ever be the same.

  Mr. Voskos clattered down the stairs, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, Sunday comics crumpled in his hand. Jamming the front door open, he yelled at Gus to turn the radio as loud as it would go. People poured into the small store to listen. Most of them were stunned into silence.

  “How the hell did Japs get halfway across the Pacific?” asked a man in a neat double-breasted suit.

  A woman in a plaid jacket grabbed her husband’s arm. “Bill’s over there, isn’t he—Sadie’s boy—in the navy.” The man nodded, face drained of color.

  Gus’ dark eyes gleamed. “To hell with high school. I’m enlisting tomorrow.”

  A hand squeezed Louise’s arm. She whirled to find Cabby Ward, her boarding house roommate, clinging to her as if they were the best of friends—instead of two thoroughly mismatched women enduring each other because of the prevailing housing crunch.

  Cabby never seemed to stop talking, and her Bronx accent grated on Louise like fingernails on a chalkboard. If the girl wasn’t recounting every sorry detail of her latest date, she was droning on about her editor at the New York Times who insisted on assigning her fluffy “women’s” pieces instead of the real news she aspired to report. And why the girl went by Cabby while she carried the perfectly lovely name of Catherine Joan, Louise had no idea.

  Cabby must have entered the candy store with the crowd from the sidewalk. In her round, dimpled face, under that hacked-off mop of dark curly hair, her eyes were wide with shock. For once her mouth was shut. Louise covered Cabby’s hand with her own, reminding herself how young her roommate was. Just because the girl had somehow, incredibly, landed a reporting job for the New York Times fresh out of college didn’t mean she was actually a grown-up.

  “We’re in it for sure now, Louise,” Cabby responded. “You know that, don’t you? This means war.”

  Louise nodded, barely breathing. If the enemy now flew across oceans, New York could easily end up like those devastated European cities newsreels showed before every film. War meant aerial bombing, U-boat invasions, sabotage at home. Maybe even fighting in the streets. What would happen to all these people? Images invaded her mind—brownstones in flames, Italian frame houses with their carefully cultivated rose gardens blasted to smoking rubble. What would happen to boys like Gus and Howie? To girls like Cabby? To her?

  “Filthy Japs!” It was Howie at Louise’s elbow, feverish with excitement. “I’m gonna get me a bunch of those sneaky little, squinty-eyed rats.”

  Louise gaped: how could a young boy spew so much venom? The only Japanese person she knew was Masako Oakley, her patient’s wife. And Mrs. Oakley was such a nice person.

  “Howie, you’re fourteen years old!” Cabby exclaimed. “They won’t let you enlist.”

  Gus sneered at Howie from the other side of the counter. Obviously the blockhead remark still stung. “Yeah, Squirt. You don’t know onions about war!”

  “I’m almost fifteen! But I—” Before Howie could say more, his eyes popped. “Ma?”

  “Vy you run out the house like that?” Helda Schroeder’s usual carefully modulated English slipped as Louise’s landlady pushed her way through the crowded store. “I vant you home vhere I can keep an eye on you—time like this! Ach du lieber!”

  “But, Ma!”

  Helda grabbed him by his collar. In spite of her agitation, the stiff blond curls that surrounded her plump, pretty face remained unruffled.

  “Ma! It’s war! Don’t you understand? It’s war!”

  “Jawohl, I understand—all too vell. And I vant you home now!”

  “Yeah.” Gus was leaning over the counter. “Run on home with your mommy, little boy. Us men’ll take care of the Japs. Go on now, shoo.”

  Howie glared, hands balled into fists.

  Cabby slipped her arm around the younger boy’s shoulder. “We’ll all go, Howie. No place like home on a day like this.” Five-foot-two with a curvy figure and a sassy mouth, she could almost have passed for a kid herself—almost, except for a certain wounded expression that occasionally crossed her face when she thought no one was watching.

  Surprised by her roommate’s tact, Louise slid a dime onto the counter. Not waiting for change, she followed Cabby and the Schroeders out of the candy store onto Flatbush.

  It was a whole new world, one that had abruptly taken on a somber hue.

  Chapter Three

  Something’s wrong with Helda, Cabby Ward thought, something even more than the staggering news of the bombings. Her landlady was gripping the edge of the kitchen counter so tightly her knuckles had turned the color of bone. Her eyes were unfocused, and she didn’t seem to realize she was muttering. “War comes…that devil Ernst…who knows where…vat to do…vat to do?”

  From her seat at the long table beside Louise, Cabby shot her gaze around Helda’s roomy ground-floor kitchen. Late afternoon sunshine slanted through the windows over the sink, bright red cherries dotted the looped-back curtains, and the smell of the midday pot roast still hung in the air. Except for the shock on the faces of the women clustered around the white-enameled tabletop, it could have been any ordinary Sunday.

  But today was different. The world had been set on its ear, and most of Helda’s boarders had been drawn as if by some magnet of despair into the kitchen. What were they seeking? Simply the quiet comfort of their own fear reflected in another’s face?

  It would be different at home. Cabby knew exactly what obscenities her father would be bellowing at the radio in the cramped Bronx apartment. He hated Japs. But, then, he hated Jews, and Italians, and the Irish—and Eleanor Roosevelt and FDR. Let’s see—almost three o’clock. He’d be emptying his second quart of Schaeffer and reaching for his third. Her mother—well, her mother…She’d call her mother tomorrow—when the s.o.b. was at work. Right now, Helda’s kitchen provided all the comfort Cabby could hope for.

  She glanced back at the landlady and was relieved to see her release the counter, take a deep breath, and let it hiss out slowly between her teeth, a good, long, expressive hiss. Good. Helda was back in charge.

  “Coffee. Coffee. That’s what we need.” Helda smoothed her apron. She reached for the empty pot and whirled around to face her assembled boarders. “Coffee strong enough to walk on its own. Strong to buck us up, jah?”

  Several women nodded, but not even the perennially polite Louise made a move to get up and help. Cabby recognized something in her friends’ expressions—the same weary, haunted look as in wire photos of women driven from their homes by earthquake or flooding.

  Or bombing.

  I feel it, too, Cabby thought. After that first rush of terror in the candy store, her legs, on the short walk home, had turned to lead. Even if a Junkers 88 made a direct hit on Ebbets Field a few short blocks away, she wouldn’t be able to run now.

  Snap out of it, she told herself, stabbing fingers through her short curls. Look on the bright side; the men will all enlist and the Times will need every reporter they can get. Even the girls. Surely they would give her hard-news stories now? Yes! No more covering Women’s Club teas and bandage-rolling parties for Cabby Ward! She knew she should get herself uptown to
the city room right now, but somehow she remained rooted to her chair and could only watch wordlessly as Helda bustled into action.

  The landlady filled the pot at the sink, dipped her measuring scoop into the coffee canister, and called to her son, “Howie, bring more cream from the ice box. Get moving now!”

  The boy, who’d been sitting in sullen silence at the table full of women, hitched up his dungarees and slammed out the door to the back porch where the old ice box was kept.

  At the other end of the table, Mousie was the first to stir. “What should we do?” she whispered. Her beady gaze skittered from face to face, settling with a frown on Helda’s tight-lipped mask. “We can’t just sit here.” She was the new girl, the one who’d moved in last month, with straight dun-colored hair and a wardrobe right out of a home economics classroom. Cabby and Louise had dubbed her the Mouse, because neither her name nor her personality had yet registered.

  “Maybe we should go to church,” said Ruthie Boyle, chewing a painted fingernail. The brassy red-haired stenographer toiled in some big bank’s steno pool.

  Alicia Rosen snorted. Built along the lines of a clothes hanger, but tough all the same, Alicia was a hard-driving law student, even more ambitious than Cabby. “Church? You?” She and Cabby had heard Ruthie bragging about her plans to snare one of her gray-suited, sex-deprived bosses. Get herself pregnant. He’d have to marry her, wouldn’t he? She’d be on Easy Street for the rest of her life.

  “Why not? We could all go down to Holy Innocents.” Ruthie turned to the Jewish girl with hands on hips. “Light candles for everybody who died in the attacks. Would it kill ya?”

  “Everyone can pray for peace,” Louise murmured from behind a flowered hankie, her sleek fall of honey-colored hair nearly covering her cheeks.

  Now it was Cabby’s turn to snort. Talk about holy innocents—this transplanted Southern belle might as well skedaddle straight back home—too naïve for big-city life. Where was it she came from—Memphis? Or was it Nashville? Louisville, that was it. Louisville, Kentucky—where they ran that big horse race.