I looked at Babs and gave her a full, wide smile. She snapped my picture. I looked back at the road even though I was temporarily blinded. “Just mention Auntie Flo’s visit.”
“How many times do you think I can use that excuse before he catches on?”
My vision started to clear. “About once a month.”
Babs laughed and I was glad to hear that carefree sound—and annoyed in the next minute when she said, “We’ll have time for shopping, right? And lunch at the Rike’s counter?”
I sighed. “I don’t know, Babs. It depends on how things go at the Sunshine Bakery.”
Babs turned on the radio—WBEX—and fished a cigarette out of her purse. She popped open the ashtray and lit her cigarette. When had she added smoking to her list of unladylike sins? “I just don’t see why it matters so much. What’s one little square inch? That far away? And when he’s so sick?”
“I don’t understand it either. But it matters to Will,” I said. “He’s been so blue ever since he got that awful form letter. I have to try to get it for him. I know it doesn’t make any difference in the long run, but for now…” My voice trailed off and my eyes pricked. I told myself it was from Babs’s smoke. “We’ll get to Rike’s if we can.” In spite of everything, a little part of me was eager to see what was new in the dress and hat and glove departments at Rike’s. But even with Miss Bettina tending Will, a bigger part of me wanted to get back home as close as possible to the end of Will’s school day.
Babs put a hand on my arm, gave me a little reassuring pat. “It’s OK if we don’t get to Rike’s.”
That was a somber statement coming from Babs. The general atmosphere, in fact, was too somber. So I gave the car a little swerve. Babs yelped. Her pat turned into a playful swat. “You did that on purpose!”
I giggled, immediately grateful for a moment of laughter. I was about to tell her that of course I had purposefully swerved Mama’s car—I was such a good driver by now that I could do little tricks like that without fear—when suddenly we heard a loud pop and the car swerved against my will, careening side to side. Babs—of course—started screaming. I took my foot off of the accelerator and slowly pressed down on the brake, easing the car off the road. At the edge of the road, I turned the car off, got out, and inspected the tires.
Babs rolled down the window; she was not going to get out of the car and let her hairdo go flat in the drizzling rain. “What happened?”
“Flat tire,” I said.
“Well, what do we do now? I’m sure not walking to the next town, not in these new shoes.” Babs had on red high-heel pumps, just like the peep-toes Jane Russell and Marilyn Monroe wore in their big dance number in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.
I poked my head in the car and looked evenly at Babs. “What we do is change the tire. There’s a spare in the trunk.” Daddy had had new tires put on Mama’s car, so I must have hit a nail or something sharp in the road. The spare was new, too. “All you have to do is hop out of the car and keep an eye out just in case another car comes along. The flat is on the front driver’s side, so I’ll be right by the road—”
Babs’s eyes widened. “What? You can’t do that! We should wait for some nice strangers to come along and help us.” She grinned. “Some nice, strong, handsome male strangers….”
Hank would kill her for even saying such a thing. Babs put her cigarette in the ashtray, then opened her purse and fished out a compact and her new Roulette Red Ayer’s lipstick. She opened her compact, then the lipstick, and peered in the compact’s tiny mirror to reapply her lipstick—just in case those handsome strangers came along to rescue us. I rolled my eyes. I knew better than to wait for rescue.
“Fine. You sit there, and try not to scream when you feel the car lifting up.”
Babs swiveled her lipstick back down, put on the lid, closed the compact, put both back in her purse, and glared at me. “You can’t change a tire.”
“Yes, I can. Daddy showed me how.”
Her eyebrows went up. “Well, you’re going to get filthy. And wet.”
“My butt’s already getting wet.” I started to pull my head out of the window and stand up.
“Wait!” Babs said. She pulled a clear rain bonnet, folded into a tidy little rectangle, out of her purse. She held the bonnet out to me. “At least protect your hairdo!”
I had spent a lot of time on the pin curls, trying to make my hair look like I imagined a lady reporter’s might. I stood up, unfolded the bonnet, and carefully tied it over my do. Then I opened the trunk, pulled out the jack, and positioned it carefully under the car.
“Girls aren’t supposed to do things like that!” Babs hollered as I jacked up the car.
I was already breathless, but I called back, “Girls aren’t supposed to do lots of things…but that’s never stopped you.”
“Oooh—you’re being such a bitch!” Babs laughed. “I like it!”
I used the wrench to loosen the nuts on the tires. “Enough to get out here and help?”
“Of course not,” she said. “I’m busy watching for some big, handsome hunks of male to come along.”
I was right; male rescuers never showed up. But I changed the tire just fine by myself.
Babs was also right—my coat ended up a smudged, tarry mess, and the hair bonnet was a good idea. My makeup smeared in the drizzle. I fixed that, though, in the parking lot of the Sunshine Bakery Company. And as soon as we were inside the lobby, I pulled off my coat and folded it so the stains didn’t show. I hoped no one would notice the run up my stockings, or the scuffs on my shoes.
Of course, as soon as Babs started talking to the receptionist, I knew that I should have realized that all eyes were going to be on flashy, outgoing Babs anyway. She confidently showed her press pass, and jabbered charmingly while I pulled mine out of my briefcase—Daddy’s old one, from his mill management days, that I’d found in the basement. Our photos had turned out a little blurry, but Babs said that was OK; the blurriness made us look older. Then she’d typed our fake names on the press passes—of all things Kelly Dare for me and Lolita LaPerone for her. I suspected she’d borrowed the names from her trashy novels. Babs confidently gave our cover story—that we were journalism interns from Ohio University, working at the Groverton Daily News, and doing a story on major Midwest businesses.
The passes and cover story and Babs’s unfailing confidence got us past the receptionist and into the Sunshine Bakery’s president’s office—but no further. Mr. Kincaid’s secretary, Miss Brewer, eyed us suspiciously, told us to take a seat and that we could wait if we liked, but Mr. Kincaid was in a meeting in another part of the building. Then she went right back to typing and answering the phone, seemingly forgetting that two young women were sitting on the leather couch in the waiting area.
I studied her beehive hairdo, her prim, tight lips. She couldn’t know, but just the day before, I’d pretended to be her on the telephone in order to obtain information Sunshine Bakery would soon wish I hadn’t.
“These magazines stink,” Babs whispered. We’d already been waiting a half hour, and she’d thumbed through all the issues of Bakery News on the coffee table.
“What did you expect?” I whispered back. “Vogue?”
“At least Good Housekeeping.”
Miss Brewer cleared her throat and glared at us over her reading glasses. She poised her hands over her typewriter’s keys to underscore her annoyance at the interruption in her typing. She sighed and pulled out a spool of correction tape, but by the time she was getting it in position, Babs had jumped up from the couch and rushed over to her desk. She smacked the typewriter with the offensively boring Bakery News.
“Look, I don’t mean to be rude here, but my colleague and I don’t have all day. After this little interview, we’re going shopping, and the stores close by five, which only gives us four hours if we want to have lunch at Rike’s counter, and—”
I groaned, jumped up, and rushed over to the desk, giving Babs the stink-eye—who was g
oing to believe we were really reporters if she talked about shopping and lunch?—while smiling at Miss Brewer. “What my colleague is saying, actually, is that we’re on deadline, so if you could please check Mr. Kincaid’s schedule and let us know when he might wrap up his meeting.”
“Is this some kind of college prank?” Miss Brewer demanded. She picked up the handset of her telephone and started dialing numbers with the eraser end of her pencil.
“Of course not,” I said. “We’re doing this series of articles about Ohio businesses for Groverton Daily News, and we’re interns from Ohio University, and—”
“I’m calling security!” Miss Brewer said, and started to dial another number.
I reached over the desk and pressed down on the button on the receiver cradle, cutting off her call. “You don’t want to do that,” I said. She gasped, pulled back, suddenly looking afraid as I held up Daddy’s briefcase, like a big fish I’d just caught, and shook it. “I have proof that the ‘One Square Inch of Alaska Territory’ promotion is a big hoax! Now, we can publish that story, and it will get picked up on all the newswires—I’m talking AP, UPI—without giving Mr. Kincaid a chance to respond to the evidence I have in here”—I gave the briefcase another shake, and Miss Brewer squealed—“or he can talk to us.”
Babs stared at me with surprise and frank admiration. But the determination I’d had—and still had—to get out of Groverton was only a fraction of the determination I had to make Will’s last wish, to get his deed, come true.
Miss Brewer reached a shaking hand toward her phone. “I can try to track him down for an appointment, later today, maybe after lunch….”
The door behind her opened. A middle-aged man with a gut that strained the buttons on his double-breasted suit jacket came out. “That won’t be necessary, Miss Brewer.” He gave me and Babs an amused smile. “I’ve heard the whole discussion through the door and I have to admit that I’d rather talk to two pretty coeds than keep poring over budget reports.”
Babs smiled at him playfully. I was starting to wonder if there was any man she wouldn’t encourage—even if he were old enough to be her father. I lowered Daddy’s briefcase.
“I am quite serious about this,” I said.
“Of course,” Mr. Kincaid said, so patronizingly that I wanted to smack him upside the head with the briefcase. He looked at Miss Brewer. “Keep holding my calls. And no need for security.”
A few minutes later, Babs and I were seated across from Mr. Kincaid’s desk.
“I have a letter, sent to a young man of my acquaintance. It is a form letter from your company stating that all the one-inch plots of Alaskan territory have been distributed,” I said, putting the letter that Will had received on Mr. Kincaid’s desk.
“Uh-huh,” he grunted, staring pointedly at Babs’s cleavage, even though it was partially covered with the bulky camera she wore on a strap around her neck.
“Given your advertising, I found this rather incredible. So I tracked down the deed office in the town of Tok, in the Alaska Territory.”
Mr. Kincaid pulled his eyes from Babs and stared at me, clearly surprised. His expression turned to concern that this wasn’t some prank after all. He had to know how hard it had been to locate the Tok deed office.
The day before, I’d missed school and gone to the Groverton library and found a reference book on real estate law and read everything I could find in it about deeds. From that I learned that deeds had to be filed with a county’s property records office. Since Groverton was our county’s seat, I went to the county building and the property records office. I said I needed some information for a school project and asked how I might find out the locations of deed offices in the Alaska Territory. The secretary—a customer of Miss Bettina’s who had heard about Will’s “blood disease”—took pity on me and made a few phone calls. An hour later I had the information that I should contact the Department of the Interior general land office in Sitka. I had a phone number and an address.
I knew it would take weeks to send a letter and get a reply, and I also knew I didn’t want to take that much time. So I swallowed my pride and asked for Jimmy’s help. That evening, while his parents were out, he took me to their home and let me use their private line to call the number. He said he’d come up with some explanation for what would be a huge phone bill. It took a while, but finally I was talking to an employee of the general land office in Sitka, and over the scratchy line I got my answer: There were several deed offices, but the deed office I wanted was in Tok, so I had the operator put me through to that number. When I reached the deed recorder, I pretended to be a secretary for Mr. Kincaid interested in acquiring more land for more deeds. That was enough to get me the basic information I needed.
“It turns out that your company, Mr. Kincaid, only bought two acres—enough for approximately twelve million square-inch deeds. That should have been enough…but of course, you didn’t put a limit on how many deeds each person could acquire—which is great for cereal sales, I’m sure, but not exactly fair.” I pulled a box of Marvel Puffs cereal out of the briefcase and tapped the picture on the back of the box. “Not only that, but the land you bought is just some rocky shore off the Tanana River, and flat land covered with pine, not exactly like the majestic mountains pictured here.”
I stopped. Instead of looking horrified, Mr. Kincaid looked tickled.
But I went on. “So…so…you’ve been misleading the public! You should have bought more land, or at least not led the public to believe there were endless square-inch plots to be had.”
Mr. Kincaid’s eyes had already wandered back to Babs’s camera-covered cleavage. “This has been an amusing diversion,” he said. “But I really don’t think your raising this fuss in your little article will get much notice. Especially not with a strike going on at the company that makes our boxes—the strike is much bigger news. The simple truth is, if you look closely at the fine print on the bottom of the box, our advertising does state ‘while deeds are available.’ And beneath that wonderful picture of the mountains is more fine print—‘Not actual land; representation of Alaskan territory.’ So I don’t think you have much of a story. So you’ll have to tell the little boy who tipped you off on this scandal”—he paused to laugh—“that he should do as the letter says, and watch for the next promotion—”
“Not just a little boy!” Babs snapped. Her expression had hardened with fury I’d never seen her express. Her voice pulled Mr. Kincaid’s eyes up to her face, and he looked startled. “Her little brother. Who was really looking forward to that deed to one square inch. And found out that he wasn’t going to get it”—I was shaking my head at Babs, No, no, please don’t drag Will’s illness into this. There has to be another way, even if I just beg Mr. Kincaid for a sample copy of the deed from the advertising department…or break into the Bakers’ house and steal theirs, but she was staring down Mr. Kincaid, who suddenly sensed danger and was turning red—“right after he found out something else. That he has cancer. Lymphoblastic leukemia.”
Babs leaned forward, her breasts almost spilling out from her bra under the camera. But Mr. Kincaid didn’t even seem to notice. “So you’re going to buy up another tract of land and make sure that all the kids who thought they’d get their square inch of Alaska actually do—including my friend’s little brother.”
She tapped the box I was still holding with her perfectly polished fingernail. “If you don’t, my daddy, who is editor of the Groverton Daily News, will write a scathing editorial about your misleading advertising practices and how they feed the dreams of little boys, only to destroy them when it suits your bottom line.”
A smile slowly filled Mr. Kincaid’s face and he narrowed his eyes. He got a distant look like he was suddenly getting a fantastic idea—fantastic to him, anyway.
A chill crept slowly over my skin.
But Babs had gone back to her usual self and didn’t seem to realize that Mr. Kincaid’s smile wasn’t for her. She smiled right back at him and a
dded, “And Daddy always does what I want.”
Chapter 23
Two nights later, October 22, Will stood next to Sergeant Striker by the makeshift podium that had been set up in the lobby of Groverton Daily News. He looked completely miserable.
Sergeant Striker was being played by Hugh Garvey, the actor from the radio show, whose career had suffered when his part was recast for television. Mr. Garvey wore the identical costume to television’s Sergeant Striker, except that his hat was ridiculously large, his suit was too tight, and his smirk a blight on the character.
Will himself all but disappeared into a pinstriped, gray flannel suit Grandma had insisted on buying two sizes too big at Rike’s Department Store. Maybe she didn’t understand that acute lymphoblastic leukemia was not a growth opportunity. Although everyone, even Will, now knew the name of his disease, no one had been blunt enough to translate: terminal.
Indian summer had arrived in Groverton, making the lobby close and stuffy, the weight of the flannel unbearable to Will. I was wearing the homecoming dress I’d made from Mama’s wedding dress, modifying it one more time for this event, taking the hem up from floor length to mid-calf, and even though it was sleeveless, I felt suffocatingly warm, standing at the front of the pack of people crammed in the lobby, most of whom were watching newspaper photographers and even television crews from WLWD in Dayton and WCPO in Cincinnati capture the event, rather than the event itself. As for me, I focused on Will, his big blue eyes holding me, begging me to get him out of there, my gaze telling him, You’ll be OK; just a few more minutes.
I wished I’d insisted that he wear a comfortable short-sleeved shirt and pants. I wished I’d never agreed to this event in the first place, seeing how small and miserable Will looked in his suit, between the smirking “Sergeant Striker” and the podium, where Mr. Kincaid rambled about how he and Mr. Denton (who stood on the other side of the podium) were so inspired by “this brave young man” that they’d decided together to buy not just one more tract, but two, of Alaskan territory so that the square-inch campaign could continue.
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