Juts started laughing. This set Louise off and then Henry Kissinger got to barking.
"What's all the racket about?" I opened the door. "Hi, Aunt Louise. Morning, Mother."
"Sleeping Beauty," Louise said.
"I don't know about the beauty part."
"Nickel, you're a pretty girl." Mom bobbed a Lip-ton's bag up and down in the hot water to hurry it along.
"Mother, I'm thirty-five."
"Girl, woman—hells bells." She shook the pan with bread in it and reached for an egg.
"Aunt Louise, you mentioned someone last night— Aimes. Who was that or is that?"
"None of your business." Louise took a determined sip of her coffee. "Juts, turn the flame on under the coffee, will ya?"
Julia flipped on the burner and cracked, "I'm not getting paid for this, you know."
"Come on, Aunt Louise, please. Ill buy you a piece of the true cross next time I'm in Italy."
"Blasphemer," Louise said without much conviction.
"If you don't tell me I'll go down to Orrie Tadia. She tells all."
"Ain't that the truth." Mother wielded her spatula.
"You've got a point there, kid," Louise agreed.
"Does she still dye her hair change-of-life red?"
"Ha!" Mom liked that.
"She favors auburn tresses." Wheezie pretended to defend her old crony. "How old is she?"
"Same as me, seventy-nine," Louise answered, "Seventy-nine, going on twelve," Julia offered.
"Me or Orrie?"
"Take your pick."
"You should talk." The promise of combat enlivened Louise, already flushed by considering herself a literary model.
"Come on, Aunt Wheezie, tell me about Aimes. It's not fair to bring something up and then not tell."
"Ask your mother."
"Mother?"
"You opened your big mouth, Sis. You tell her."
Louise glanced over to Julia. "How's the toads in the hole?"
"Are you making that, Mother?"
"Uh-huh." She flipped one over.
"Great. Come on, Aunt Louise, no changing the subject."
A flash of electricity leapt underneath those blued finger waves. Louise gathered herself, made sure she was the center of attention, then began in a low voice. "Aimes Rankin was our mother's boyfriend. They never married. They couldn't get married, although they would have. Let me be clear about that: red tape fouled things up."
"What do you mean?"
"Our father, Hansford Hunsenmeir, walked out when Julia was tiny and we never saw or heard from him again. So Mother couldn't extricate herself from that unfortunate marriage." She folded her hands, pleased with her choice of language. Immaculata wasn't all for nothing, she thought.
"Is that what you all were fussing about?"
"Living together out of wedlock is nothing to take lightly, missy." Here comes old-time religion. "You young people of today behave like rabbits. It's disgraceful, and mind you, the good Lord is writing this down in his Tablet of Tablets." Louise rapped her knuckles on the table.
"Almost ready, Nickel. Set the table."
I got up and counted out plates, utensils and napkins. "Don't look at me about this rabbit business."
"You're worse," Louise denounced. "You like men and women. You don't have the sense to pick one over the other."
"What happened to Aimes?"
"He died, like everybody else." Mother enjoys final-moment stories immensely.
"Back up a minute. When did this man live with Grandma?"
"Let's see now—I musta been around seven."
"I thought I was telling this story," Louise interrupted.
All the food on the table, Mother and I sat down. Mother makes the best breakfasts.
Louise broke her yolk, then continued. "Aimes came to live with us around 1912. He was a labor organizer, you know. This was just before the U.S. got in the Great War. All kinds of union activity then."
"What do you know about union activity? You were too busy watching The Perils of Pauline," Mother said with her mouth full.
"Julia, I did go to Immaculata Academy, remember? We were much better educated than you public-school people. Mrs. Van Dusen was keen on keeping us informed of current events—the war, temperance, unions, Knights of Columbus."
"Did you like Aimes?"
"Oh, yes. He was a kind man. I guess I liked him because I knew mother liked him," Louise said.
"I loved him," Julia added. "He was soft-spoken; not a rowdy man at all. I do think he loved our mother a great deal."
"What'd he look like?"
Louise reclaimed the floor. "He was stocky but not fat. You couldn't call him handsome, but once he started talking to you you thought he was handsome. He had a way about him."
"I remember a big broad mustache. Used to tickle when he kissed me." Julia got up to get jelly out of the refrigerator.
"Where did he organize? He sounds like someone I would have something in common with."
"With all your women's movement work, I guess you two woulda hit it off. He read those kind of books, too." Mother sat back down.
"He roused the men over at Rife's Munitions." Louise tried to sound historical.
"Rife Munitions, right on the Pennsylvania side of town?"
"Oh, yes. We had quite a bit of trouble in those days, don't you know. Even Celeste's factory had union organizers. Course, Stirling, her brother, accommodated them. Especially when the shoe business started exporting a lot during the war."
"How do you know all this? I don't know about Celeste's shoes." Julia poured more coffee.
"I was just that much older, so I paid more mind to the goings on."
"All I can remember is going to the movies with you once a week. I don't recall you getting political."
"Aunt Louise, who ran Rife Munitions then?"
"Brutus. Before him it was Cassius, who set the whole works up—that and the cannery, where Pearlie used to work before he started house painting."
"Brutus was kin only to Lucifer," Mother said.
"That's the truth, Nickel. And to look at him— well, he looked like a painting from Europe, all blond and pretty. Pericles—you know, Pericles Rife, who runs the business now—looks something like him."
"That's his grandson. Once Brutus departed this earth, his sons, Napoleon Bonaparte and Julius Caesar Rife, ran the business up through World War II." Mother filled in while Louise ate one bit of egg.
"Sounds like they never recovered from Latin class," I said.
Mother relished this tidbit, " 'Cept Brutus had two more sons besides Julius—Judas we called him, the son-of-a-bitch. Robert E. Lee Rife and Ulysses S. Grant Rife—that's the other two. Well, Runnymede had blocked bowels over that, I can tell you!"
"They didn't want to run the business."
"Robert E. Lee became a missionary. His mother got real religious, I guess to atone for the old boy's sins. Robert never came back. They say cannibals ate him. And the other one, Ulysses, shot himself at Harvard."
"Living in the midst of Yankee heaven drove him to it," I smarted.
"Shame. It was shame." Louise rose to her material. "The sins of the fathers."
"So Aimes took Rife on?"
"Yes, that he did." Louise sounded final.
"He won. The unions are here."
"He set it in motion, I guess," Mother thought.
"What happened to him?"
"That's the hard part," Louise said. "Here I've been talking so much my eggs got cold."
March 17, 1917
The Perils of Our Girl Reporters flickered on the screen. Louise and Juts crouched in their seats, breathless. Ten days before her sixteenth birthday, Louise Hunsenmeir began to notice boys. They noticed right back. Juts, just turned twelve, jammed her hand in a candy bag, miffed at Louise's primping. A cold, rainy March evening and her sister carries a frilly parasol. It was too much—Louise, who swore she'd never kiss boys. Juts fervently hoped the flicker would bring Lou to her s
enses so they could get back to the serious business of raiding Celeste's pantry when neither Celeste nor their mother was looking. Louise was breathless, all right, but not over the screen. Behind her sat Paul Trumbull, Pearlie to his friends. Seventeen, Pearlie'd already worked in Rife's Cannery for three years. Age rules bent like rubber around that place. Pearlie received a lower wage than a full-grown man but he made enough to buy himself snappy trousers, a crisp shirt, well-fitted jacket and dashing hat. A short, dark young man with a pleasant face, he strutted in the square with the rest of the young bloods in good weather. Tonight he had ducked into the theater as much to get out of the rain as to tremble for the fates of the girl reporters. Recognizing Louise, he positioned himself one seat off right behind her so he could study her features.
"Madam, would you please remove your hat?" Pearlie leaned forward so he could see Louise's face.
Chills shooting through her body, Louise quietly answered in her best big-lady manner, "Yes, of course, young man."
"Thank you."
"Yeck." Juts tossed a bad piece of candy on the floor.
Kaboom! The theater rocked. Louise screamed, along with plenty of others. A man yelled out, "Great God Almighty!" People began tearing down the aisles.
"Fire! Fire!" called an unseen man.
Louise yanked Juts up to her feet. Pearlie leapt over the seats to their row. "Wait, miss. I don't smell any smoke. You'll get hurt in the mob."
"Goddamit, Louise, you made me drop my candy, Piss ant!"
"Julia Ellen, mind your mouth!" Louise dropped her younger sister's hand. So many people crammed for the door that a few fell and were walked over. Juts observed this and forgot about her candy. Louise swooned because of the panic and because in his haste to help her Pearlie grasped her hand.
"Here, miss. Sit down."
"Pay her no mind, mister. She can piss up a rope." Pearlie ignored an unsympathetic Julia Ellen and fanned Louise with his program. In the dim light he made out her deep widow's peak and very feminine features. The mob crashed its way outside. He wrapped his arm around Louise's waist and helped her up the aisle. Although recovered, Louise wasn't going to pass this up.
"Brother!" Juts trudged behind, dragging her sister's prized parasol.
Outside, the three witnessed a raging blaze coming from a hill on the north side of town.
"Oh, thank you. I feel much better now."
"Please, let me buy you a beverage. Hattie's is only a block away."
Hattie's was the south side drugstore, right on the square.
"Me, too?" Julia asked.
"Sure," he said.
Julia decided to like this good-looking small fellow. Placing his hand under Louise's left elbow, Pearlie correctly walked on the outside. Careful not to be one hundred percent recovered, Louise tried to walk as slowly and gracefully as possible. People raced around them.
"What happened?" Pearlie called out to Theodore Baumeister, who'd just run the few blocks from his apartment over to the barbershop.
"Rife Munitions blown up!"
"My daddy works there," Julia piped up. "He's not really my daddy. We don't know what happened to the real one, but he lives with us. So he's more my daddy than my daddy."
"Quiet." Louise pinched her.
The light drizzle magnified the red sky.
Celeste and Ramelle rolled around in bed, carrying on like trash. The explosion vibrated through the whole house. Celeste, never at a loss for words, cracked, "I know the earth is supposed to move, darling, but this is ridiculous."
Another report got them out of bed. Curiosity won over pleasure. Standing to the side of the window, shivering without clothes on, Ramelle said, "My God, looks like the whole north ridge is on fire."
"The war! A Black Tom explosion like the one in New Jersey last year."
"Not yet, darling. A saboteur wouldn't last long in Runnymede and the Germans don't have a gun that shoots that far."
"Ramelle, it must be Rife Munitions. Dollars to doughnuts." Her voice rising, Celeste threw on her riding clothes.
"What are you doing?"
"Driving up to Cora's."
"Why?"
"Didn't you read tonight's papers?"
"You mean the revolution in Russia? 'Czar abdicates'? What's that got to do with Rife?"
"That's only part of it Didn't you read through the whole paper?"
"No, dear. If you will recall, we didn't even finish our dinner tonight." Ramelle smiled.
"In the left-hand column of the Trumpet there was an article about Wilson, Gompers and the Council of National Defense stepping into the breach between the railroads and the four brotherhoods—the unions."
"A strike?"
"Possibly. The important point is the government is intervening."
"We really are mobilizing for war, undeclared or not." Ramelle's voice lowered.
"Yes, but the workers at the plant see the handwriting on the wall. Darling, hurry, Aimes may be in this somehow. I've got to get to Cora."
She tore down the steps two at a time, picked the phone off the hook and rang her gardener. "Dennis, please bring the motor to the front door."
Then she went into her study and took out the beautiful high-caliber pistol, German made, Spotts had brought back from his European holiday. She checked it. Loaded and in good order. She strapped the holster around her waist.
Ramelle opened the door. Dennis sat in the driver's seat, a shotgun across his knees.
"Thank you, Dennis." Celeste made for the driver's seat.
"I'm going along, Miss Chalfonte," Dennis muttered through a plug of tobacco.
"You'll do nothing of the kind."
"Might be trouble,"
"I haven't got time to argue with you. In the back seat." The headlights barely dented the veil of rain. Celeste roared along, heedless of weather and road conditions. At the top of the hill, Cora's soft gaslight filtered through the windows. The two women got out of the car. Dennis stayed in the back seat, shotgun still resting on his knees.
"Cora." Celeste knocked at the unpainted front door.
The door opened. Inside, Ida McGrail wrung her hands.
"Where's Aimes?" Celeste asked.
"Out," Cora answered. She was worried, too, but Idabelle was on the edge, so she kept as calm as she could.
"My Rob went up to the munitions tonight with Aimes. I begged him not to go. I begged him," Ida wailed.
"Mrs. McGrail, did he tell you anything?" Celeste didn't want to push her too hard.
"Said they was gettin' even. Said Rife buying off all of Washington to stop the unions. His factory being part of war things. Unions gonna be unconstitutional." The poor woman's eyes gleamed, bloodshot.
"Did he say what they were going to do?" Celeste kept on.
Cora interceded for Idabelle. "Look outside."
"I was afraid of that." Celeste stuck her hand in her pocket.
"Who goes there?" Dennis's gruff voice could be heard.
Ramelle jumped. Celeste shifted behind the door and pulled her gun. Cora took Idabelle by the shoulders and sat her down.
"Rob—Rob McGrail."
"Robby, Robby!" Idabelle flew to the door. Her huge son stooped to get inside. Soaking wet and scratched from brambles, he was winded but unharmed.
"It's all right, Ma. I'm all right."
"Where's Aimes?" Cora tensed up.
"I don't know. I lost track of him when the factory guards chased me."
"Well, where did you see him last?" Celeste asked.
"We was running from the factory. We planned to split up if there was trouble. Two's an easy target. The guards heard us. I bumped into a loading cart.
I headed south. He headed north. They was shooting, but in the rain they couldn't see any better than we could. Maybe the explosion drew them back to the plant," Rob hoped.
"Didn't Brutus import some York boys for dirty work?" Ramelle asked.
"He did that. He knew Runnys wouldn't fire on their own. Not since 1861, leastways.
"
"Rob, you'd better leave town for a while." Celeste reached into her pocket and drew out a wad of carefully arranged money. Every jacket and coat she owned carried a small stash in it. It was one of her eccentricities.
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