by Stephen Bly
“Josh is up here in the Seattle area doing a stunt.”
“He is?”
“Did you call Mark?”
“No, this is the week they were driving over to San Diego to see Amanda’s folks, remember? I was too embarrassed to call anyone else.”
“How about Kathy?”
“I can’t, Pop. I can’t call her. She’s mad at me dating Line… and now she’ll say… she’ll say I’m stupid and should have never gotten myself into this fix and I’m acting real immature. This is really something that an eighteen-year-old should know how to avoid. I really thought he wanted me to look at this guy’s car. Is that naive?”
“Probably. I’ll call Kathy. I’ll get you a ride. Try to find a shady spot to relax. You done good, kid. I’m proud of you.”
“I’m sorry I called up bawling like some junior high girl. I never cried one bit all night. But it was so great to hear your voice. As soon as you started talking, I knew everything was going to be all right.” Kit began to cry again.
After hanging up, Tony stared in the hall mirror. The man in the reflection reminded him a lot of his father, but he was thinking about a college girl who still needed her daddy. What in the world was he doing twelve hundred miles from home all summer long?
Lord, I need to be there.
By noon Tony solved the crisis. Kathy and a girlfriend were driving north on Black Canyon Freeway to pick up Kit.
Tony grabbed a Coke out of the frig and stepped out on the deck. Another morning of not getting any work done. At least, not much writing. However, he did accomplish something. He opened his notebook and flipped on the computer. Chapter eight appeared on the screen. He glanced down at the partial first line. “Almost a year before the bridge opened…”
Maybe he should have driven Barbara Mason to the hospital. Surely more peaceful than here.
Price found Barbara Mason in a too tight red linen suit, red heels, red lipstick and shell-shaped gold wire earrings. Price wore black bermuda shorts, white sandals, white short-sleeve blouse, and tied a black-and-white cardigan sweater across her shoulders. She couldn’t tell if she or Barbara felt more out of place. “I zipped over as fast as I could. Hope it will be all right to dress like this?”
Barbara apparently didn’t hear her as she wrung her hands. “I don’t know what to do. I just don’t know what to do. Melody should be here. Why isn’t she here when I need her? That girl hangs around in the way most of the time, then when I really need help, I don’t know what to do.”
Price tried to get her attention by peering into her eyes. “Do you know where the hospital is?”
“Yes, yes.”
“Well then, come on, we’ll talk on the way.” Price ushered Barbara out the door and into the white Oldsmobile.
The awkward conversation consisted of trivial topics and trite responses. When they reached the hospital, Price helped her sign papers, briefly had a word with a muddled and shaky Jessica Reynolds, then they retired to the hospital cafeteria. Sitting across an antiseptic smelling gray formica tabletop, both women stared at the steam rising from heavy porcelain cups.
“I’m not real good with this,” Barbara began, “but I really appreciate your bringing me to the hospital. I was close to an anxiety attack. Sometimes I can’t believe how much I depend on Melody. She’s a rock, the only rock in this family.”
“Did you ever tell her that?”
“She knows. She knows how I feel.”
“It must have been tough when she went to Tempe to college.”
“Those were four of the worst years of my life. But none of them have been too great.” Barbara stared with sad, tired eyes at Price until she felt uncomfortable. “How old are you?” she finally asked.
Price sat up. “Forty-nine.”
“That’s about what I figured. I’m fifty-three. And without this gaudy makeup, I look old enough to be your mother.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“No, it’s true. Maybe that’s why I hated you when I first met you.”
Price swallowed hard.
“Look at you. Sitting there all cute, thin, and tan. My legs haven’t seen the light of sun in thirty years. Nor will they. You look thirty-five, forty tops. You’re a successful professor. Married to a man who Melody thinks can walk on water. Leading an exciting life of travel, fame and success. You are exactly everything I ever wanted out of life and never got one ounce of. Every time I see you, I’m reminded of what an absolute failure I am.”
“I’m afraid you’ve romanticized mine. It’s not really that exciting.”
“Nope, I sized it up pretty good, and you know it. But I guess the thing that made me the maddest was when, last week, you evaluated my whole life in three minutes.”
Price relaxed as the dreaded confrontation finally emerged. “I truly am sorry I blurted out those things.”
Barbara burst out with a deep, hoarse, throaty laugh. “You sized me up to a tee, and I was mad as… well, do you know I haven’t had a drink since that day?”
“Really?”
“I guess I decided to prove you wrong.” Tears shined on the heavy makeup.
“I had no right to say those things to you.”
“You were honest. I don’t have one friend that has ever been honest with me. I won’t even allow that of poor Melody. Look at me. I can’t even control these tears when I’m sober.”
Price reached into her bag, tugged out a small pack of tissues and slipped them across the table.
Barbara roughly wiped her eyes and cheeks and sipped her coffee. “Mine’s cold. Can I get you a refill of hot water?” she offered.
“That would be great. Thanks.”
Barbara returned and poured four teaspoons of sugar into her coffee. “Should I call you Dr. Shadowbrook?”
“Please, everyone calls me Price.”
“Melody said that was short for Priscilla.”
Price nodded. “When I was a little girl my daddy called me his Priceless Priscilla. That led to Price, and it stuck.”
“Is your father still living?”
“Yes. He and Mother live in Yuma.”
“That must be nice.”
“Having older parents is both a joy and a challenge.”
“Mother’s a chore sometimes,” Barbara admitted. “Of course, Father left when I was very young. I wish I’d known him.”
Price took a deep breath. “Barbara, I know I’m really blessed to have a loving husband and caring parents still alive. But the most important relationship in my life is with Jesus Christ.”
“This might come as a surprise to you,” Barbara said in a slow, quiet tone, “but when I was young I was very religious. I prayed every night my father would come back.”
“I thought he was lost at sea.”
“Mother always said that. But I never believed it. I don’t think she did either. The two of them argued a lot when I was small. Father would go on long fishing trips to Alaska and be gone for weeks. When he was at home, Mother made him sleep on the divan most of the time. I was too small to know what it was all about. So, after he left, I prayed and prayed. In my dreams I would get a letter or a call from my father, that he needed me to come and help him. After years and years of getting no answer, I got tired of praying.”
“Mrs. Mason?” The tag on his green hospital gown read ‘Dr. Alan Crayn.’
“Yes?”
“I did the x-rays on your mother.” He looked at Price. “Is this your daughter?”
Price was relieved to notice a slight smile hiding behind the thick, red lipstick. “No, just a young friend.”
“Here are the x-rays.” He held them up to the fluorescent lighting of the cafeteria. “You can see where the fracture is. We feel there’s only a minimum amount of surgery needed, but we want to go in and take care of it right away. Your mother isn’t that old. We want her to be able to get around on her own for years to come.”
“Yes… well…” Barbara searched for Price’s nodding approval. “By
all means, go right ahead. Do what would be best for Mother in the long run.”
“Good. It’s certainly what I would do if she were my grandmother. If you ladies need to do any shopping or anything, it will be at least two hours before we’re through.”
“Thank you,” Barbara replied. “We’ll probably just wait here.”
As Dr. Crayn turned to leave, Price said, “Dr. Crayn, would it be possible to have a copy of that x-ray? I think Mrs. Reynolds’ granddaughter would like to see it.”
“Certainly. Stop by the lab. I’ll leave word.” Green face mask dangling around his neck, Dr. Crayn shoved open the swinging double doors and disappeared into the hall.
Price leaned toward Barbara. “You did fine.”
“Thank you, daughter.”
“It’s this Arizona tan. Fools them every time. I’m old enough to be his mother. Hope you didn’t mind, but I thought Melody would like to know about the injury.”
“I’m glad you mentioned that. I didn’t even know we could get an x-ray.”
“Comes from having a stuntman son. A mom learns a lot about x-rays that way.”
“Must be nerve-wracking. Sometimes I’m sorry I didn’t have more children. I’m an only child, and I swore I’d never put any kid of mine through the same thing. Strange how that happens.”
“Barbara, if you had your life to live all over again, what else would you do different?”
Barbara gazed around the sparsely filled hospital cafeteria amid the clank of trays and muffled voices. The aroma of homemade soup bubbled into the room and mixed with the smell of disinfectant. “My first thought was to say I should have never married Frank. But then, there would be no Melody. And she’s the most precious thing I’ve got. So, I guess if I had to do it all over, I’d have pulled myself together earlier, graduated from college, and gained some maturity before I married Frank. Maybe I could have been a better wife. And, if I could do it all over? I would never have started drinking.”
“What if I were to tell you with God you can have a fresh start?”
“Really? A fresh start? I think I’m ready. I’ve been on a dead-end street so long, it’s hard to imagine anything else. To tell you the truth, I don’t even know where to begin.”
“The doctor said it would be a couple hours before he could tell us anything. Why don’t we go sit out on the patio at one of those tables?”
“I’d like that.”
Price struggled with what to say next. She wished Tony was here. Lord, I’m not good at this. She didn’t want to sound like a schoolteacher waving a yardstick. Like she did with their last conversation. Maybe she should have stayed at home with the church ladies and let Tony bring Barbara to the hospital.
Tony dozed off and on at the table as he tried to sort through the towering stack of government papers he procured from the navy. Detailed, meaningless reports. He preferred to throw the whole pile away and get back to writing. He discovered nothing of value and even if there was, he wouldn’t know how to decipher it.
He pulled his eyelids open and stretched, then shuffled through the stack to a paper labeled “Restricted.” Handwritten beneath that were the words: “Restriction lifted: 7-1-1990.” He found another document entitled “Pearl Harbor Retaliation Plan #11: The Assassination of Emperor Hirohito.”
What?
A plan to assassinate the Japanese emperor?
Suddenly, his interest perked up.
For two hours Tony studied the paper stack until the touch of Price’s hands rubbing his neck and shoulders caused him to jerk around.
“Find something good?” she asked.
“Incredible!”
“I could say the same about what happened at the hospital.”
“Oh yeah, Mrs. Reynolds. How is she?”
“She came through surgery fine. But what happened to Barbara Mason is really remarkable. I’ll make coffee and we can sit on the deck.”
“What happened to Barbara?”
“The angels are rejoicing. But what did you find in those government reports?”
“Details on Harvey Peterson’s Japanese invasion.”
“It really happened?”
“Something did. Late in 1942 someone in the navy devised a plan for specially trained U.S. forces to infiltrate Japan and assassinate Emperor Hirohito. A captured Japanese submarine was brought into Puget Sound and a couple dozen men were trained to operate it. They learned to speak Japanese fluently and prowled up and down the Sound, practicing mock invasions.”
“So, what Harvey saw were U.S. troops pretending to be Japanese?”
“Exactly.”
“What do you think Harvey will say about these documents?”
“I’m not sure. It shoots down his theory, but you never know the reactions of conspiracy fanatics when faced with truth.”
“What happened? Did they try to carry out the assassination? I don’t remember anything in the history books about it.”
“Someone from the Pentagon got wind of the plan and scuttled the whole ‘Plan #11 for the Retaliation of Pearl Harbor.’”
“Makes you wonder what the other ten plans were.” Price scooted a mug of coffee in front of Tony. “Great material for our book.”
“It gets better. I found a second restricted report … on the cover-up of Plan 11.”
“Harvey was right? They did try to cover it up?”
“I guess until the mid-fifties the navy didn’t want anyone to know they ever plotted political assassinations. They tried to keep it secret.”
“Tried?”
“A fisherman from Fox Island stumbled onto the cover-up.”
“Who?”
“Hubert Reynolds.”
Price slammed her cup down on the counter. “Melody’s grandfather!”
“Yep.”
“How do you know? What does it say about him?”
Tony retreated to the dining room and returned with a photocopied paper. “Listen to this: ‘June 15, 1948, Hubert Reynolds of Fox Island and Alaska, was paid $8,000 for his cooperation in keeping confidential the contents of this report.’”
“It’s that plain? They really word it like that?”
“Here it is.”
“June 15? He disappeared right after he got the money.”
“Yeah, maybe Barbara was right. Maybe he just took off.”
“Remarkable. Do you think we ought to tell Melody?”
“Sooner or later. I’m not ready to disturb Jessica, but maybe we ought to tell Barbara, too. What do you think? Will this bum her out even more?”
“It will be tough, but I think she can handle it now.”
“What happened?”
“God’s amazing grace.”
“What did you do?”
“Nothing.” She beamed. “‘It’s man’s part to trust … and God’s part to work.’”
Chapter 9
In the early 1880s, Alexander Graham Bell’s amazing talking telegraph made its way into businesses and homes of cattle barons in the frontier town of Cheyenne, Wyoming Territory. Much later, it reached some of the residents of south Puget Sound. If the building of the bridge was the golden ring to forever unite Fox Island to the mainland, the advent of telephone service in October 1956 was the wedding present to allow the residents something they never had before … instant contact with the rest of the world.
The value of that contact is still debated by Island old-timers.
“Liz called while you were at the store,” Price announced the minute Tony walked into the house.
“Did she want me to call back?”
“She was headed to New Hampshire for the weekend and said to call her Monday.”
“Weekend? It’s only Wednesday.”
Price closed the sliding glass door behind him. “That’s what she said. Have you noticed the rolling fog is getting chillier every day? I wonder if summer is about done?”
“We’ve got a book about done, Dr. Shadowbrook. I figure on finishing chapter nine tomorrow.”
>
“Did you look at my version of chapter five?”
“Yeah, I’ve been meaning for us to sit down and talk about it.”
“We need to sit down?”
“Listen, babe, we can’t leave out that whole section about the dogfish packing industry and the early connection between the Fox Island economy and Puget Sound fishing.”
“As I recall, I didn’t leave it out at all.”
“But you condensed it to a mere paragraph.”
“That’s what editing is all about.”
“That isn’t editing, it’s amputation.”
“I would rather read about little Sheila McComber’s harrowing ride on a raft of timber logs across the Narrows than a detailed description of what the fish packing plant smelled like.”
“Well, I wouldn’t. How do we know the story about McComber is true? One of the old-timers thought the McCombers ran the store on McNeil Island, not Fox Island. So how can we be sure that one letter is authentic?”
Price brushed her light brown hair back with her hand and felt a tightness in her neck. “How do we know any of this research is authentic? Maybe every book we’ve ever read has been a lie.”
“Hyperbolic statements to the contrary, we can’t make a big deal out of one undated letter, Priscilla.”
“Hi, guys!” Melody bounced into the room in a teal green sweatshirt inlaid with a liquid gold material. She stopped and her brown eyes danced. “Priscilla? Whoops, another chapter five day, huh? I’ll come back. I just wanted you to see this picture.”
“What picture?” Price snapped.
“Hey, if you guys want me to, I’ll be happy to write chapter five for you.”
Tony waved his arm in a wide, sweeping movement. “We can work this out just fine by ourselves.”
“Yeah … well … sure. I thought you might be interested in this picture I found in People magazine at the dentist’s office, dated last spring. There was this big celebrity golf tournament at the Riviera Country Club in L.A. It has some photos of different groups of golfers. Look at this one.”
Tony took the magazine and glanced at the black-and-white photo. “Davidian?”