by Michael Smth
“’Course, back then you didn’t have much chance, except for the Victrola,” Carrie said. “You didn’t have records, but as I recall, Atilla Vlasik had a goodly number he moved from St. Louis, and he was agreeable to lending.”
“Good old Vlasik, rest his soul.” Jess turned back to Eva. “In the Thirties, The Metropolitan Opera of New York City started wireless broadcasts regular. That made it easier. Since I become sheriff, I regular spend Saturday afternoons in the office, cleanin’ up paperwork and listenin’ to the broadcasts.”
Eva took another sip of lemonade. “So you like the opera, listen nearly every week, but you’ve been to only one performance in your life?”
“Well, kiddo, you go see the opera if you live in Paris or New York, but in Hooker County you’re happy to listen on the wireless. That’s just the way it is.”
To Eva, not much had to be the way it is. She had never been to an opera, but in 1948, on Carrie’s and Jess’ wedding anniversary, she dropped in with a bouquet of zinnias and an envelope containing four tickets. “Stanley and I will take you to the opera. I sent for tickets from the company in Central City, Colorado for their Norma. We can travel together—Carrie, Jess, Stanley, and me.” She grinned. “Stanley complained about going until I tell him the other choice is staying home as nanny.”
That September, after leaving Cat and Françie with Carrie’s cousin Etta, the four piled into Stan’s new Plymouth and made tracks west. They stayed in a hotel and saw Bellini’s masterpiece sung in Central City’s grand old Victorian hall.
Walking back to the hotel after the performance, Stan said, “It’s a spectacle, all right. Just bothers me that Norma could offer up her life, knowin’ it’d mean leavin’ those kids alone.”
“But Stanley, she sacrifices herself for her children and for her people. To protect them. To save them.” Eva squeezed his hand. “You must understand—she had no choice.”
Stan grimaced as he held the hotel door. “Yeah. Just must’ve been tough on them kids.”
That night as he slipped into bed next to his wife, Jess told Carrie, “What a swell night, dearie. I’ll never forget it. Funny how it took knowin’ Eva Chandler to get us here.”
Eva brought magic to the whole county, too.
She gave French lessons to school kids Tuesday and Thursday afternoons. And in December every year, there was a Chant de Noël program she started. It became part of most county folks’ holiday tradition.
In January of 1947, Eva, with Carrie in cahoots, started cooking up something new. They wouldn’t say what it was, but a lot of cackling went on with the other women after church and on the telephone in the evenings. They were planning a Mardi Gras celebration.
When Stan approached the Garrity home as instructed after work that Tuesday night in February, it was cold and clear, the sky a sea of shimmering stars and just a dusting of snow on the ground. As he turned onto the limestoned drive, Stan saw a first clue that the night would be special—the billow of orange glow that loomed around each of the paper bag lanterns tracking the way in. That night candles flickered in every window of the two-story house and along the top of the fence out front—a magical scene. Stan parked the Plymouth. As he walked to the house, he heard the Yves Montand song Métro on the Victrola. Smiling, he whispered, “Eva.”
Miss Agatha, Carrie, Eva, and Jess were in the parlor, sipping plum wine. Eva was singing along with Yves, looking happy as a wren in springtime and sounding just as pretty. Soon other folks arrived. Two dozen of them. People, plum wine, cookies, tiny sandwiches with the bread crusts cut off, warm stove, flickering candles—Eva seemed to be the center of it all. It was a winter evening like none before in Hooker County.
As they drove home through the cold crispness, Stan told Eva, “You know, seein’ you in the spotlight tonight, I almost started feelin’ jealous.”
Eva slid close to Stan and slipped her arm into his. “Oh, Stanley you don’t need—”
Stan leaned over and kissed her forehead. “I started feelin’ jealous. Then I recollected the time in the hospital in Liege when you sang to all of us on the ward. How I looked around and saw what it meant to those GIs, some of ’em way more banged up than I was. How proud I was of you. That day I knew, if I ever hooked you, I’d be sharin’ you with the world and how that wouldn’t be so bad. And tonight, I saw it in the eyes of the folks at the party—what you’ve come to mean to them. I’m so dang proud of you, hon. So lucky.”
Eva looked at Stan. She didn’t let on she’d seen the tear in the corner of his eye. “I only follow my nature. It is you and this place that gives me what I can never before find. Here, I am finally myself. I’m the lucky one.”
The next day, Stan had lunch with his uncle. Between bites of cherry pie, Jess admitted, “Bein’ dumb as a tenor, I’d never even heard of Mardi Gras before last night. Now, Lent I heard of, though I’m no disciple of whichever religion calls for it. But I tell ya, I’m sold on this Mardi Gras stuff.” Jess poked his fork toward Stan, for emphasis. “Any religion that puts self-indulgence first and self-denial second ain’t half bad.”
After that first Mardi Gras, word went from person to person about Eva’s party. About the candles, about the charm, about the pleasure of celebrating a moment just to celebrate it. The next year upwards of a hundred people wanted to come. Too many for the Garrity house. So Eva talked Father Lambert of St. Mary’s—she had him wrapped around her finger, too—into having it in the church hall. Besides Eva’s charm, the priest’s partiality to “a tiny drop of the spirit now and then” helped sway him.
Eva threw shindigs on subsequent Mardi Gras, and each was a paper lantern, a warm and glowing light in the frozen, featureless landscape of a Hooker County winter. Happening year after year, Eva’s celebrations made a string of lanterns guiding pioneer folks from their natural wintertime mentality to a springlike one.
Talking about those parties one evening with Jess, Carrie said, “That Eva! Leave it to her to show us a load made lighter loses none of its value.”
“Yeah. ’Round her ya reckon maybe optimism ain’t out of your price range after all.” Jess scratched his head. “Askin’ why not? is ’bout as important as askin’ why?” He took a sip of his rye and looked at the glass. “Gets me thinkin’, dearie. Strugglin’s like good whiskey—better drunk in ounces than in quarts.”
Carrie broke out laughing. “Now Jesse Garrity, that is a revelation, coming from you!”
A Heroine Surely
In 1950 the British celebrated the tenth anniversary of their victory over the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain. Life Magazine ran pictures of grand parades passing review stands lined with proud limey flyboys decked out in old uniforms and medals. It seemed worlds away in Hooker County until a letter from the British Embassy in Washington, DC came to Mayor Ostranec. A nephew of the king wanted to travel to Mullen to settle a debt.
The letter explained that this royal relative, a Lord Smithwycke, was a pilot shot down over occupied Europe in 1943. A Belgian partisan, one Eva Messiaen, snuck him past German patrols and into the underground pipeline. He’d promised himself that someday he would find that woman to thank her. When the British Foreign Office determined that Smithwycke’s Eva had come to Hooker County as a war bride, Mrs. Stanley T. Chandler, Smithwycke could keep his promise. The visit was set for October 16, 1950.
Dawn cracked clean and clear on the big day. Smithwycke and his entourage were due on the Burlington westbound at mid-afternoon. Stan took off from work at noon to fetch Eva and their girls, Cat and Françie, and drive them to town. A dais had been built for the award ceremony. Located at the main intersection in town, right in front of the general store, it was made of fresh yellow pine lumber. The platform was a yard above ground level, with a set of steps leading up from behind. There was a waist-high railing across the front with red, white and blue bunting. The Stars and Stripes, the Nebraska state flag, and the Union Jack were displayed behind the eight chairs on the platform.
Stan
thought it looked grand, and the girls did too, but somehow Eva didn’t seem all that pleased. “But what I did was really not much, Stanley. Many did so much more. Put themselves at risk. His Lordship should stay home in his castle, where he belongs.”
“Way I heard it, you did risk your skin for him,” Stan said. “That’s why he’s comin’.”
“I helped someone in need. That’s all. Others gave their lives. Gave their lives on principle. Mother—” Her eyes brimming with tears, Eva didn’t finish the sentence. When Stan squeezed her hand, she looked at him coldly. “Stanley, no good can come of this.”
Stan could tell she wanted her silence, but he couldn’t keep still. “I don’t know what it was like, livin’ those years under the Nazis, Eva, but I reckon, it took spunk just to scramble out of bed every day.” He held her hand in both of his. “Look, you’ll always find someone’s done more than you if you search hard enough. What I know is, this means a heck of a lot to a heck of a lot of folks in these parts. These last twenty-five years ain’t been easy round here, what with the Depression and them dusters in the Thirties, and then sendin’ the boys off to war and havin’ two of ’em not come back. Ain’t been easy and ain’t been much said about it. Well, honey, today some feller’s comin’ all the way from England to thank you for what you done. To thank one of us.” Stan squeezed her hand tighter. “Yep, it is a pretty big deal for Hooker County. Lots of folks stopped in at the store to tell me that, one way or t’other. You’ve come to mean a lot to people here. Remember that, honey.”
Eva was quiet for a moment. She looked forlorn, frightened. “Perhaps it’s true. If so, it may not be to the good. It may be more than I am, and people, even you, could end up feeling betrayed.” She looked off for a moment, then back. “I won’t have that, Stanley.”
Stan was still trying to figure out what she meant when a school bus drove by and stopped at the dais. Off trooped a dozen Thedford High School band members in cream-colored uniforms with gold trim and white plumes on their caps. Each carried a brass instrument. Cat and Françie jumped up and down and squealed that they wanted to see the band members up close, so the whole family headed that way.
Stan talked to the teacher, a gangly young man in a tan short sleeved shirt with a quarter-sized navy blue ink stain at the bottom of the pocket. The teacher’s knobby Adam’s apple would have had a supple throne in his red bow tie had it not been so busy, bobbing up and down with his jabbering. Eva and the girls chatted with the students. All they knew was that they’d be playing for some visiting foreigner, so Eva told them about Smithwycke and his heroics during the war. As she spoke, the students’ faces went from bored to excited, seeing themselves as part of an international and historic event. Eva didn’t even mention her own role.
When the teacher returned to the bus to fetch his jacket, Stan had the chance to study the band kids talking to his family. From down the street, the band members had each looked identical, like a distant herd of Herefords does. But up close, seeing one’s scuffed shoes, another’s pants too short, and a third’s frayed jacket cuff, the herd crystallized as individuals. There was the short girl with nose too big and spectacle frames repaired with cloth tape. She knew more about Europe than Stan did—and he had been over there. The boy with the battered trumpet, who cradled his beat-up brass like a baby but let little Cat give it a toot. The clarinetist with the clubfoot. Up close, it was clear—this wasn’t a herd, wasn’t some faceless band from a town down the road. Each member had a story. Stan wanted to tell them how swell they were, but Mayor Ostranec came over with Jess before he had a chance.
An hour remained until Lord Smithwycke’s train was due, but the mayor seemed jittery. He tapped Eva’s shoulder. “My dear, let’s take our place on the dais. Can’t keep his lordship waiting, now can we?” He turned to Jess. “Sheriff, herd the band into position next to the stage.” To the mayor, everything, even the trivial, was urgent. Carrie Garrity had it bang-on when she said, “Hillis Ostranec lives life like a man in powerful need of an outhouse.”
With the band in place beside the platform and Eva, Stan, and Mrs. Ostranec seated up top, the mayor asked Jess to go along with Brice Childers to meet Lord Smithwycke’s train. “You’ll be my official delegate.” He implied it was a step up from sheriff. Childers had pulled the Ostranecs’ old surrey out of their dusty barn and cleaned it up for the occasion. He’d hitched a pair of saddle horses to it, and they were giving him a dickens of a time. It seemed like a dumb idea to Jess, using the surrey with a balky team to transport guests the tenth of a mile from station to the platform, but the mayor took it a step further. “I’ve got it, Sheriff. When you fetch our guests, ride up front next to Driver Childers with a rifle at the ready, as if upon a Wells Fargo stagecoach cutting through Comanche country!”
At three on the dime, the Burlington pulled in. Off stepped a tall man with a long face. He wore a pinstriped suit and a pink tie with black polka dots, and his lapel sported a red carnation. Fancy as a cock pheasant. Four men followed him off the train, the last one toting a valise. A man with a monocle and a remarkable moustache—gray whiskers coarse as boar bristles—spoke for the group. “I’m Harney, of the British Embassy in Washington. Allow me to introduce Lord Smithwycke.” Jess shook hands with the dandy, first off the train. “This is Mr. Lansdale of your State Department and Mr. Aubliss, a photographer with Life Magazine.” He pointed. “The gentleman there, securing the luggage, is Marsh, Lord Smithwycke’s valet.”
Jess was glad he’d worn his good hat. He informed Marsh a car would take the luggage directly to the hotel, then he escorted the four others to the surrey. With the cattle pens next to the train station, they got moving without delay. To irk the mayor, Jess rode back as a passenger, sitting next to Lansdale.
On the short ride from the station, Smithwycke leaned toward Jess, looking like a little boy who’d just caught his first fish. “Sheriff, great-grandfather made a safari on the American plains some time in the 1870s. Not sure precisely where he ventured, but he shot birds, bison, and bear. Could have been your Hooker County, don’t you say?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “On the train today, watching fields of prairie grass kowtow to the wind, I was reminded of his travel log’s frequent mention of its ubiquitous blast.”
Jess pushed his hat back. “Ubiquitous. Now there’s a six-bit word for ya. Lucky for me, it shows up pretty regular in the crossword puzzles. Yes sir, bison we sure had back then, and wind we still got. Pretty dependable, the wind in these parts. One time it quit blowing and I seen a whole herd of cattle tip right over.”
Smithwycke wasn’t sure what to make of that until Jess winked. Then he laughed.
The surrey turned the corner, and the platform came into view. The crowd—there must have been eighty people—all turned to watch the approach as the band lurched into Cheer Boys Cheer, the old Civil War ditty.
Lord Smithwycke craned his neck and jumped up. “It’s her, Harney. I’d never forget that face.” He sat down and dabbed the corners of his misty eyes with a silk handkerchief. “It seems eons ago. My gracious, who could have imagined a reunion in such a remote clime.”
As they approached the platform, Jess heard a commotion at the back of the crowd. He guessed the source and was glad for the cover of the band’s booming—the visitors didn’t seem to have picked up on the ruckus. Jess slapped the back of the driver’s seat to get Brice to slow and bounded off the surrey. As he hustled to the rear of the crowd, he could make out the tirade. “Brit bastard. Goddamn King George can kiss my ass. I’ll strain shit with my teeth before I bow down to no limey king. Hey, I lost my brother for your sorry hide, and you repay me like this? Givin’ a tinny medal to a foreigner just like you? Where’s my medal?” The ranter was who Jess figured—Harry Scurfman, the sawed-off, white-haired drunk.
“Scurfman, one more word from that dirty yap of yours and I’ll have you in the clink before you can hatch a second one.” Jess rested his hand on his holstered revolver to show he meant business.
“It’s a free fuckin’ country, Garrity,” Harry replied, “case you ain’t heard.”
Jess went at him. “Not when you’ve been warned about disturbin’ the peace. Not when you’re messin’ up Eva’s big day.” He grabbed Harry’s right hand and jammed it behind his back. Then he pushed him toward the jail in the rear of the county building two doors down. All this time, the varmint was cussing—it made Jess feel like jamming the arm higher. Give the SOB something real to holler about. But he didn’t. He shoved Harry through the sheriff’s office and into the single jail cell in the back.
As the cell door swung shut, Jess said, “In here no one can hear you, so say whatever you want. It’s a free fuckin’ country, you know.”
He slammed the office door and walked back to the ceremony. Smithwycke and the other visitors were on the platform with Eva, Stan and the Ostranecs. Lansdale finished his remarks on the friendship between NATO allies. Then Harney rose to introduce Lord Smithwycke. He called him “aviator, hero, scholar, diplomat, and statesman.” And he termed his pilgrimage “a testament to Britain’s long memory for her friends.” Then he invited Smithwycke to the fore.
As Smithwycke came forward the band began their assault on For He’s a Jolly Good Fellow and cheers, applause, and whistles filled the air.
The band tailed off, and Lord Smithwycke cleared his throat. “Ladies and Gentlemen, let me begin by thanking you for coming today. By doing so, may I say, you join me in honoring one of your own, Mrs. Eva Chandler.” Smithwycke turned and nodded to Eva.
“Back home this year, we celebrate the decennial of one of the grandest chapters in the history of the British people, the Battle of Britain. Perhaps you are familiar with Mr. Churchill’s praise for the gallant men in their Spitfires and their Hurricanes who took to the nighttime skies in 1940 to intercept and repel the winged forces of darkness over the English countryside. He famously said, ‘Never was so much owed by so many to so few.’ And it is true. Later when I flew with Bomber Command over occupied Europe, on my ninth mission, returning the fire that Mr. Hitler’s minions had visited on London, my Lancaster was disabled. Here, I suppose you would put it that my steed was shot from under me.”