by Donis Casey
The propagandizing had begun modestly, with a single poster urging all citizens to be patriotic and not waste resources. But lately the postmistress had made it her mission in life to see that that every propaganda message the government issued found a place on the wall and remained there for the duration: a poster of a slavering ape in a pointed German helmet with the body of a limp child clutched under its arm; exhortations to join the Army, the Navy, the Red Cross; to sign the Food Pledge and the Loyalty Oath; to save sugar, corn, wheat, dairy, meat. A declaration that wasting food was “the greatest crime in Christendom” (which Alafair seriously doubted). It all made for a colorful, rousing, and rather frightening wallpaper effect that gave the viewer a dizzying feeling of doom, and yet diluted each individual message.
Today Nadine had cleared a space over the counter for a new poster. Alafair walked over for a better look, curious, since Nadine had gone to such trouble to be sure the message stood out from the others. A tall, muscular, young woman in a filmy gown strode forward, her outstretched arm pointing at the viewer, her face taut with purpose. Stitched on the brim of the cap covering her blond curls were the words I Am Public Opinion. Underneath her feet, the caption read :
ALL MEN FEAR ME
Chase Kemp was fascinated by the cubbyholes behind the counter, but when Alafair and Grace walked over to study the new poster, he asked, “What’s it say?”
Grace imitated the icon’s stance and scowl. “All men fear me!” she intoned. Alafair looked down at her, surprised. All those endless hours that Grace and Sophronia played school were paying off. Grace danced away and back before she looked up at Alafair, black eyes wide. “Why do all men fear her, Ma?”
Alafair hesitated an instant, composing an answer that would satisfy a four-year-old. “Because she’s a tattletale.”
Grace clapped her hands on her hips, her expression disapproving. “That’s not very nice.”
“No, it isn’t, punkin.”
The door to the sorting room in the back opened and Postmistress Nadine Fluke appeared behind the counter. “Oh, howdy, Alafair. I’m sorry to keep you waiting. Hello, Miss Grace. Chase Kemp! I see you eyeballing my mail slots. Come around here and pull out your auntie’s mail.”
Chase practically fell over his own feet running around the counter. While the boy retrieved the mail from the cubbyhole marked “Tucker, Shaw, West of town,” Nadine leaned across the counter on her elbows, eager for news. “How’s things, Alafair? Lots going on in town these days. Has Scott arrested any spies or black marketers lately?”
Alafair couldn’t help but smile. Nadine was an incorrigible snoop, and never failed to ask her what inside information Scott Tucker might have spilled to his kin. Alafair had assured her many times that Scott was pretty tight-lipped, even with relatives, but Nadine never gave up hope. The likelihood was that Nadine knew more about what Scott was up to than Alafair did.
“If he has, Nadine, I haven’t heard about it. I have heard, though, that the government is watching over foreign-born people more than the rest of us. And…and someone told me that back in California, folks with German names are getting beat up and burned out for no other reason! It’s an awful thing, scaring people that haven’t done anything.”
“I expect folks’ blood is just up,” Nadine said, “so you can’t really blame them. Only foreigners have had any trouble. You know some night riders trampled Miz Schneberg’s truck garden the other night. Left a sign tacked to her front door saying she ought to go home.”
“Poor old Miz Schneberg!”
Nadine shrugged. “Well, she does talk funny.”
Alafair had always liked Nadine, and more than once had found her to be a valuable source of information that she couldn’t have discovered any other way. But her attitude sent a shock of anger through Alafair. “I don’t think just being born in some other country means you deserve to have your property destroyed and be scared half to death for no reason, Nadine.”
“Most foreigners are probably innocent, you’re right.” Nadine was either unaware of or unaffected by Alafair’s sharp tone. “But they say that the Germans have been planting spies here in the U.S. since 1914, ’cause they knew we’d eventually get drawn into it. Now, you just know there’s somebody, even here in little old Boynton, sending secret messages back to Hindenburg. Maybe the vigilantes are pointing out the enemy for us. Maybe they know something that we don’t know.”
Alafair gaped at her. Nadine knew perfectly well that Alafair had a German-born son-in-law, yet she either hadn’t made the connection, or she didn’t care what effect her words were having.
Grace piped up, eager to join in the conversation. “I don’t have to fear her, Miz Fluke!” She pointed at the poster.
Nadine leaned over the counter for a better view of the little girl. “And why is that, young lady?”
“Because only men have to fear and I’m a girl!”
The comment gave Chase a moment’s pause. His eyes appeared over the countertop. “Do I have to fear, Aunt Alafair?”
“You don’t have to fear anything, honey. Now hand me the mail and let’s get going.”
***
“Ma!” Grace shrieked, just as Chase said, “I didn’t do nothin’!”
Alafair jerked around in the buggy seat and withered the guilty party with a look. “Chase Kemp, sit down before I pinch your head off. Y’all be quiet.”
The children shrank into their seats in chastened silence and Alafair turned back around to see that the buggy was just coming up on Kenetick Street. On an impulse that she couldn’t explain to herself, she turned west.
Chase made a surprised noise, but was too recently quashed to ask where she was going.
Alafair couldn’t have told him, anyway. A detour. Kenetick was a long street, with some businesses close to town, thinning out into residences and small farms. She drove the buggy nearly to the edge of town, where the dirt street turned back north before it could peter out into a weedy field.
She knew very well that unless she went out of her way, she would probably never run across Rose Lovelock again. They lived in different worlds. What she couldn’t understand was why did she want to run across Rose Lovelock again? Sally’s behavior toward the fallen woman had gotten under her skin. The fact that her mother-in-law wanted to interact with Rose as one human being to another was one thing, but Sally had said that she had no agenda for doing so. She wasn’t trying to save Rose or change her. She was just trying to be kind.
Sally’s attitude had brought Alafair up hard against her own shortcomings. Alafair did judge Rose and her girls. She was afraid to have anything to do with the women, even for charity’s sake. She did very much care about what other people thought of her and her family. That was the wise and practical way to look at it, wasn’t it?
Then why did she feel vaguely ashamed of herself?
The big house at the end of the street looked deserted. The front door and all the windows were open on such a warm day, but no one was in the yard or on the porch. Alafair slowed Missy to a walk as she drove by, but there was nothing to see. Rose and the girls were probably still asleep.
“Hey, Miz Tucker!”
Alafair nearly leaped off the seat when she heard her name. She jerked her head around to see Henry Blackwood standing at the gate of the cottage directly across the lane from the bawdy house. She hadn’t even realized there was a house there. She felt her cheeks burning. “Henry! You live here?”
He sauntered up to the side of the buggy, his face alight with a grin, and ruffled Grace’s hair. “Howdy, children. Yes, ma’am. That is, my uncle Eric lives here and I’m bunking with him for a spell. What are you doing in town, Miz Tucker?”
Alafair pointedly did not look back at the bordello. Henry’s little cottage behind the fence seemed like a pleasant place, homey and neat. But because the relationship between the late Mrs. Bent and the working g
irls, Henry’s uncle, and probably Henry, certainly knew what kind of an establishment was operating ten yards from their front door. Of course, Henry probably didn’t suspect that Alafair had the slightest inkling, and she wasn’t going to tell him otherwise. “A friend of mine lives on this street up near town,” she said. That was true. “I figured I’d go home this way just for a change of scenery.” That was not quite as true, but it satisfied Henry.
He chuckled. “Well, yonder dried up field of buffalo grass and cockleburs isn’t much of a view, but I hope you enjoy it. And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m running late, so I better be off to work. My regards to your family. Goodbye, children.” He tipped his hat and headed down the road.
Alafair breathed a relieved sigh and felt a bit ridiculous about it. There was no reason to act like she had been caught doing something unsavory. She had every right to drive down this particular lane. She snapped the reins and turned Missy around the corner.
She nearly ran the buggy off the road when she saw the woman sitting on a stump by the side of the house, dressed in a plain shirtwaist, her face shaded by a straw bonnet. Her head was down and she was clutching her middle, rocking back and forth. Rose—the object of Alafair’s fascination.
Alafair jerked the reins and Missy halted with a snort of disapproval and a head shake that jingled the harness.
Rose looked up, startled. Her face was ashen. For an instant their eyes locked, the virtuous woman and the whore. She had been pretty once, Alafair could tell. But her expression was hard as obsidian.
“Are you all right?” Alafair said.
Rose shrank from Alafair’s gentle inquiry. “What do you want?”
Alafair was startled by her unfriendly tone. “You look like you’re feeling poorly and I wondered if I could help.”
“I ain’t sick,” Rose said. Alafair didn’t take the hint and leave. Rose’s brows knit, as though she were trying to figure out what strange foreign language Alafair was speaking.
It was such an odd expression that Alafair couldn’t decide whether to be insulted or laugh. “I’m Miz Shaw Tucker,” Alafair said. “I came by here the other day with my mother-in-law, Miz McBride.”
“I remember. Miz Sally has taken to recruiting missionaries from the bosom of her family.” Her tone was filled with sarcasm. “What did y’all think you we’re doing, coming by and bearing gifts? Trying to make Christians of us with a couple jars of jam?”
Alafair straightened. “No, I’m just trying to make a good Christian of myself.” Sally’s reason was better than her own.
Rose hesitated at this unexpected response. She regrouped quickly and raised a hand to her hip. “I’ll tell you what I keep telling her, lady. Leave me and my girls alone. I guarantee you ain’t going to save a one of us.”
“Look, Miz Lovelock, I don’t reckon either of us is going to convert the other. Now, what is the matter?”
“Nothing that concerns you. Your kin the sheriff come by to ask me questions about the night Win Avey died. I didn’t much enjoy the experience.”
“Mr. Avey, the Secret Service man that got murdered? Was he a friend of yours?”
The idea caused Rose to laugh. “A friend? I hated him. He was the bouncer for Star Karsten when I worked there, and he was cruel to us girls just for the fun of it. The world is well shet of him.”
“But…”
Rose didn’t give her a chance to continue. “You better get on before somebody sees you talking to me or my evil influence infects them children.”
Almost against her will, Alafair cast a look at the Bent house. Rose was right. It would do her no good to be seen in conversation with a madam. “All right then. Good day.”
There was no reply, just a hard stare. Alafair flicked the reins and moved on. They were a quarter-mile down the road when Chase leaned over the seat back. “Who was that lady, Aunt Alafair?”
“Just somebody I know, sugar. We don’t need to tell anybody that we stopped by to talk to her, all right? Now sit down.”
Chapter Forty
“Are you doing all you can?”
—World War I propaganda poster
Rising at four in the morning, even before his early-rising parents, getting himself the two miles into town, working a shift at the plant, and then coming home and working just as hard on the farm for the rest of the day was beginning to wear Charlie down. Considering the fact that he was sixteen years old and as energetic as a squirrel, that was saying something. Not that he would ever tell his mother and father that. After the fuss he made in the first place, he would just as soon fall over from exhaustion as admit defeat.
By the time he rose from his bed, ate a leftover biscuit, grabbed the lunch pail his mother had packed the night before, saddled his horse and got to work, the sky was light and the sun was just beginning to peek over the horizon.
The white-maned roan never gave him trouble in the mornings. It enjoyed the pre-dawn ride as much as Charlie did, just the two of them on the road in the relative cool before the July heat kicked in. Charlie came up on the brick plant from the south, and could see the buildings from quite a distance, peeking over the fence that surrounded the yard. He usually exchanged greetings with members of the early morning crew straggling up the road on their way to work, preening when someone inevitably complimented him on his fine mount.
He was running a little behind his normal time this morning, and the road was deserted. He urged the roan to a trot and was just passing the outer fence when a movement in the gray light caught his eye. Something almost out of his line of sight. Someone was slipping through an opening in the fence, far at the back of the property where it backed up to the brushy clay hills.
Charlie reined in and squinted into the distance. Had he really seen what he thought he had? It looked like a skinny man in a tan Stetson with a high, uncreased crown. For a moment, he sat on horseback in the middle of the road, wondering if the viscous light of dawn was playing tricks on him. He didn’t have time to ponder long. The steam whistle blew, signaling the start of the shift, startling him and causing the horse to sidle. Charlie dug his heels into the roan’s side and headed for the gate. I’m getting too chary, he thought. It was probably only a deer.
Work was somewhat frantic that day, and between hauling and loading and packing rail cars, Charlie didn’t have time to form any theories about nefarious fifth-columnists sneaking around the plant.
Still, the image of the skinny man preyed on him throughout the shift. When the noon whistle blew, ending his half-day, he found himself watching the men clocking out and retrieving their gear from the hooks in the changing room. But he saw no tan Stetson with an unshaped crown.
The roan was settled in the stable along with the other workers’ horses, and wasn’t eager to leave his friends and head back to the farm in the heat and dust. Charlie spent a good quarter-hour wrestling on the bridle and bit and getting the horse saddled for the twenty-minute trip home. By the time he arrived, the family had started eating without him.
He threw the horse’s reins over the picket fence and left him standing unsaddled until after dinner, feeling resentful that the horse had made him late for dinner and that the family had not waited for him.
He washed up on the back porch before he went into the kitchen. Alafair stood up as soon as she saw him and filled a glass with sweet tea as he took his place at the table.
“You’re late today, son,” Shaw said. “Did the shift run long?”
Charlie reached for a piece of cornbread. “Nossir. Old Lightning Bolt just wasn’t of a mind to hurry home today.”
Sophronia chortled. Charlie changed the subject before she could comment. “There’s a carload of bricks for Fort Bliss going out soon, and Mr. Cooper nearly run us all off our feet getting the order stacked and loaded so it’ll be ready when the train comes through. I feel like I’ve been pulled through a knothole backwards.
I’m mighty hungry, too, Mama. I could eat a boot.”
The idea of a boot meal struck Grace as hilarious and Shaw had to raise his voice to be heard over peals of childish laughter. “You’d better save that knothole for bedtime, son,” he said. “Fort Reno is expecting fifteen harness-broke mules by the end of the month, so there’s a lot of work to be done to get them ready.”
“Sounds like the U.S. Army has reason to appreciate your hard work and diligence, Charlie Boy,” Gee Dub said.
Charlie spoke around a mouthful of rice and gravy. “I hope somebody does.”
The Liberty Sing
Chapter Forty-one
“I recognize the danger that arises from the slacker who opposes the country. I realize that every breeder of sedition is as great a menace to our homes and our freedom as are our armed enemies across the sea. I therefore pledge myself to report to the chairman of my school district council of defense or to my county defense chairman any disloyal act or utterance that I may at any time know of. I will stamp out the enemies at home whose every act or word means more American graves in France.”
— Oklahoma Loyalty Pledge, 1917
The special Friday Liberty Sing started out with a potluck picnic spread out over long tables that stretched along one side of the hall. The afternoon was hot and muggy, and everyone was milling about the grounds of the Masonic Hall, fanning themselves and talking too loudly.
There were a lot of people there that day whom Alafair didn’t know. Including a young fellow who came in with one of her least-favorite neighbors, Dutch Leonard. They parked their buckboard and got out, but they stuck together, eyeing the crowd, like they were looking for somebody. Alafair saw Trenton Calder go over to talk to them, but he told her later that they didn’t have much to say. Considering that it was Dutch, he expected the stranger had leftist tendencies and he meant to keep an eye on them. When he told her that, she cast an eye around for her brother. She was relieved to see that he was with Shaw and the boys. He took no notice of Dutch and his friends, and they didn’t seem to pay any attention to him.