‘How did that happen?’
‘Pa was out on the tractor plowing a field. He went up a hill that he’d gone up hundreds of times and never had a problem. This time, he musta done somethin’ different ’cause that tractor tipped over and pinned him underneath it. Don’t know how long he was layin’ out there and don’t know how long it took him to die. When he didn’t come home for supper, Ma went looking for him. She found him flattened out in the field with his blood soaking into the ground. She built a fence around that spot and buried him right there. It was a peculiar service with the preacher and everybody else dressed in nice clothes trompin’ out over clods of dirt and through the furrows he’d dug ’fore he died.’ Ruth sighed. ‘Poor Ma. For a while she went out there every single day, rain or shine. Nowadays, she still goes most Sundays right after church. What about your pa? He died in a fire?’
‘When my aunt and uncle’s farmhouse caught fire, my brother and my cousin got trapped inside. My dad ran in after them even though everyone told him it was too dangerous. When they finally put out the fire, they found him laying face down on the floor with an arm around each boy. They said that they all died of smoke inhalation but for a long time I had nightmares of them catching fire and burning alive.’
We sighed in unison and sat silently for a while. We both clutched a needle and thread in one hand but neither of us worked on the popcorn garland. I was lost in my painful memories of the fire and I imagine Ruth was remembering the day her dad died, too. But when Bing crooned ‘Silent Night’ on the radio, Ruth broke the spell.
‘What are we doing here?’ she asked. ‘It’s Christmastime and we’re talking about dying. If we cry on the popcorn, it won’t be no good for stringing.’
‘Turn up the radio, Ruthie. I’ll fix us a pot of tea.’
The volume went up and just then the song we both needed filled the flattop with its perky rhythm – ‘Jingle Bells’ sung by Bing and the Andrews Sisters. We sang along at the top of our lungs. By the time the tune ended, our spirits were up and our fingers flying on the garlands.
On Christmas morning, I opened my eyes and started thinking about work before I even had time to yawn. The ultimate goal had troubled my sleep that night as it quite often did. I now was certain that an atomic fission bomb was the end result and wondered if it would end the war or just unleash a new monster on the world.
I pushed those thoughts away, remembering that it was Christmas and I was alone. No time for morose thoughts. I did have a tinge of regret that I wasn’t in the dorm on this morning. Most of the time, I loved my little flattop home but on this morning, I longed for the easy camaraderie of dormitory life, even though I was usually more of an observer than a participant.
I shrugged off the covers, ignored the warning of my frigid nose and slid out of the warmth of the bed. I slipped into my robe and slippers, and hurried out to the living room. I stabbed at the embers in the coal stove, and was delighted to see a core of glowing red. I tossed in more coals, stirred up small blue flames, closed the door and opened the flue a little wider.
The plywood walls of my home, devoid of insulation, provided little protection from the coldness of a winter night. I wrapped my arms tight around my body as I shuffled across the blue-green linoleum floor and into the kitchen. I daydreamed about a real cup of coffee as I tossed the ground chicory into the tin pot and turned on the stove. I warmed my fingers over the burner before sliding the coffee percolator onto it. I pulled a cup out of the plywood cabinet and set it down on the silver-specked white countertop. At first, I huddled close to the warmth of the stove as I waited for my hot cup of bitter brew.
Then I moved over to a window and scraped off a patch of icy crystals that had formed on the inside overnight. In the early morning sunlight, the ice-covered tree branches twinkled as if stars had fallen from the night sky and embedded in the bark, turning the frigid reality of the outdoors into the vision of a magical fairytale setting.
My nose scrunched in protest as I took the first sip of the harshly bitter dark liquid. I went into the living room and sat on the floor by the tabletop Christmas tree, a smile on my face as I recalled the tree-cutting adventure with Ruth a weekend earlier.
I’d deferred opening my Christmas packages until this morning to add a little festivity to the lonely day. Looking at the packages, I felt a flash of annoyance. The tattered, retaped edges bore silent witness that each one had been opened, inspected and rewrapped by a stranger’s hands before being delivered. It didn’t seem right that someone else had learned the secret of their contents before I did. They were my presents – not the government’s.
I doubted I’d care for whatever it was my mother had sent so I opened it first, saving the best for last. I felt a lot of guilt for that sentiment when I discovered a tin of coffee – real coffee! – inside the box. How did Mother get hold of that? She must have raided my stepfather’s supply; he would have never given his permission. He couldn’t have known about it at all. I’ll have to keep my thank you note vague to keep Mother out of trouble.
For a moment, I clutched the tin to my chest as I savored the anticipation of that first sip of the real thing. Then I jumped to my feet and hurried back to the kitchen. I poured the chicory drink down the sink and prepared a fresh pot of actual, real ground coffee.
I swallowed down the first cup too fast, scalding my tongue. But I didn’t care – it was so good, so right, so welcome. I poured a second cup and returned to the living room and the package from Aunt Dorothy.
Four different gifts awaited in that box: a copy of the new best-selling novel, The Robe by Lloyd Douglas I’d been wanting to read; a hand-knit cardigan sweater, which I slipped on right away – oh, so thick, so warm, so comfortable – a perfect gift for my living conditions; and wonder of wonders, a Fifth Avenue candy bar! I had thought it was impossible to get one of those unless you were a soldier shipped overseas, but here it was – chocolate, and it was all mine. Real coffee and real chocolate – all on the same day.
The fourth present in the box was wrapped in white tissue paper and had a note attached that read: READ BEFORE OPENING. I removed and unfolded it:
Dearest Libby,
I was shopping one day and discovered the latest in fashion for intimate garments. It made me chuckle. I asked the clerk about what I saw and she said that elastic was very difficult to procure. Thus, we have panties without an elastic waist. I thought you’d get a good laugh out of them, too. Is nothing sacred? No sacrifice too great to defeat the Fuhrer!
With Love, Aunt Dorothy
I unwrapped the package and there, lying in my lap, were a pair of panties with little tiny buttons on the side. I laughed as I dropped the ones I was wearing and pulled them on. A perfect fit, but how long would it take me to get used to the feel of the lump of thread on the back of the buttons rubbing against bare skin?
I went back into the kitchen for a third cup of coffee and got out a knife. I was careful not to damage the wrapper as I sliced a piece of it away from the chocolate and cut off about a fourth of the bar. I folded up the end sealing it shut with a creased fold to keep fresh for later. Curling up in the chair in front of the coal stove, I savored that chunk of chocolate, pressing it against the roof of my mouth with my tongue, allowing its delicious flavor to melt and ooze across my taste buds for as long as possible. I must have looked like a simpleton getting so much joy from that small pleasure but I didn’t care. That’s one thing war taught me – every moment was a gift.
When I finished rhapsodizing over my bite of chocolate, I noticed the unusual silence outside. The world was muffled by the ice but it was more than that. The bustle and noise of a place in a constant state of construction, I almost didn’t hear the cacophony any longer. But now the absence of it roared with a fury. It seemed louder than the rumbling trucks, squeaking cranes, pounding hammers, yelling voices. For the first time since I arrived here at Clinton Engineer Works, the world was still.
And that made me curious. A walk was i
n order. I left the house, bundled up against the morning cold, reminding myself to be cautious on the ice. Stepping out on the stoop, I pulled the wooden knob to shut the door. I instinctively reached for my dirt-caked galoshes, but then realized that cold had hardened all the mud, making it easier to navigate. If there was too much ice on the boardwalk, I could detour onto the street without the fear of sinking into the muck.
I walked past a temporary monument to our usual living conditions, a stuck car with its rear wheels mired in the frozen mud halfway up its hubcaps, the newest victim of the numerous potholes on the dirt and gravel road. Strolling through my community of flattops, I was surprised to see that there were dozens more of them erected since I’d moved in a week ago, although most of them still looked empty. They were bound to fill up quickly after the holiday. The sun had already started melting the thin coat of ice on the boardwalk. Where it warmed the bare wood, I could smell the scent of fresh sawn lumber still wafting up beneath each of my steps inspiring a feeling of kinship with the pioneers who headed west and built towns out of the wilderness. They, too, had sniffed that newness in the air, lived with the rawness, the mud and the downed trees of a new world being born. They coped with isolation and deprivation. The early settlers, though, did it without bulldozers, cranes and graders, without electricity or running water, without the government aid to meet their immediate needs. They did it all with their bare hands and a spirit of community.
Much of that same spirit lived here in this new outpost. Like the frontiersman of old we, too, struggled for survival. We didn’t battle with the day-to-day, hand-to mouth challenges that they did but we were in a battle for a way of life. If we did not stop Hitler in Europe, how long before he goose-stepped across the Atlantic? With their ally Japan applying pressure on the west coast, how long could we withstand the onslaught? How long would it be before the heel of oppression flattened our whole continent?
My dark thoughts were weighing too heavy on this special day. I shook them away and focused on my immediate surroundings. Ice glistened like tiaras on the branches overhead, icicles hung from the eaves of houses like icing dripping down the sides of a glazed cake, the spikes of frozen dirt rising up from potholes looked like jagged, forbidding mountains in a horrid nightmare.
Even the sounds of the place seemed enchanted on this day – the plink of melting ice falling to the ground like a gentle rain, the loud crack and rumble as warmed chunks of ice broke their grip on trees and buildings and plummeted to the earth below, the distant squeals of children at play. I moved toward the voices, walking into the area of the larger cemesto homes. The size of the home you were assigned was based solely on the number of people in your family, creating a diverse neighborhood where PhD scientists lived side by side with carpenters and other tradesmen. Not something you’d see in the regular world.
It was here I saw the first signs of human life this day – children bouncing balls, riding bicycles and tricycles or simply running aimlessly through each other’s yards. Although Santa Claus had provided them all with a lean year and parents had all seemed troubled by the restrictions due to rationing and inadequate supplies that meant fewer gifts under the tree, the kids didn’t seem to care. Doing without didn’t seem so bad when everyone else was just like you. And the older children seemed to embrace the spartan situation with patriotic fervor.
I walked past Ann Bishop’s house on Magnolia Road. Closing my eyes, I could remember the smells and tastes of the turkey, stuffing, gravy and pumpkin pie I had enjoyed the month before. Now, though, the house was dark – Ann and her family had travelled to her grandmother’s home in Nashville for the Christmas weekend.
At the shopping center, I peered into shop windows, blocking the light on either side of my eyes with curved hands. The shelves in the drug store looked sparse. In the market, the ‘no meat today’ sign still hung on the counter. Hunger pangs hit me then as I thought of the magnificent break from canned salmon and spam I had waiting at home. A small meatloaf made by Mrs Bishop – meat that Ann’s mother could have used for her own family and yet she gave it to me as if it were no big deal.
Although Ann and I had little in common she, like Ruth, had become a good friend. Ann couldn’t wait until the war was over and she could stop working, get married and have babies. For now, I couldn’t imagine that life for myself. After the war, though, would I feel differently?
Would the global conflict ever be over? Would the work that we were doing really make a difference? And if it did, would it change the world into an unrecognizable place? A place where marriage and children weren’t the normal condition of women?
I was so deep in thought, I started at the realization that I’d returned to my street without realizing it. And there was my little flattop with its flat roof, squatting like a toadstool on the rise. It was plain and square but it was a beautiful sight. I couldn’t wait to see how nice it would look in the spring when flowers were blooming and the trees crowned with green.
The thought of warmer weather to come made me shiver and quicken my pace. I had a coal stove to tend and a new book to start reading before it was time to heat up my Christmas dinner.
DECEMBER 27, 1943
‘A woman is like a tea bag: you never know how strong it is until it’s in hot water.’
Eleanor Roosevelt
TWELVE
I was glad that Monday’s work in the lab didn’t require any deep theoretical thought. I kept busy at the scales and on the mass spectrometer, weighing, extrapolating and analyzing data – making heavy use of the left hemisphere of my brain, skirting away from the store of the emotional issues that dominated the day before.
At lunchtime, I rushed to the hospital to see Ruth. The guard was still there but he no longer blocked the entrance. He sat in a chair by the open door and nodded when I walked past. Ruth was groggy and nothing she said made a lot of sense.
She asked, ‘Did Irene make it home?’
I patted the back of her hand. How many sedatives had they pumped into her? ‘Don’t you worry about Irene right now, Ruthie. We just need to get you home first.’
Ruth drifted off and when her eyes popped back open, she asked again, ‘Did Irene make it home last night?’
‘Sleep, Ruthie. I have to get back to work now. But don’t you worry about a thing.’ I stopped at the nurse’s station on the way out to ask about Ruth’s prognosis and was told, ‘We have no more orders for sedatives from the doctor.’
‘Could I take her home after work?’
‘I’ll find out from the doctor, but as long as she won’t be alone tonight, it’ll probably be all right. We’ll let you know what the doctor says when you come back.’
Walking to the hospital at the end of the work day, I was tired but satisfied with what I’d accomplished in the lab. I’d made good use of my time even though the production line was still shut down. I was worried about Ruth and hoped she remembered the tragic events about Irene now.
I stopped at the nurse’s station and received the go ahead to take Ruth home. The guard was gone now and Ruth was sitting on the edge of the bed in her street clothes. She looked alert but was still very pale.
‘I didn’t think you’d ever get here, Libby. They told me you’d be comin’ by for me two hours ago and I’ve been edgy ever since. Nobody will tell me nothin’ about Irene. I’ve gotta call Ma but I don’t know what to tell her.’
‘Let’s get out of here first. Then we’ll try to figure it all out.’
Outside of the hospital, Ruth said, ‘Thanks, Libby. I can make it back to the dorm by myself.’
‘I’m sure you can. But we are going to the dormitory together to get your things.’
‘Get my things?’
‘Yes, you’re coming over to stay at my place.’
‘But what if someone comes with news about Irene? I need to be there for her.’
I doubted that anyone would bother, but bit my tongue. No sense in being more pessimistic than necessary. ‘We’ll leave a
note.’
‘I don’t know, Libby.’
‘I do. I know. The nurse said that you needed to stay with someone tonight.’
‘OK, Libby. You’re probably right. I’d just drive myself crazy in that place all alone,’ Ruth said.
Arriving at the dorm, we found the door of Ruth’s room hanging open. The linens on both beds were disheveled. Drawers looked hastily shoved closed but not completely shut.
‘She’s been here,’ Ruth said. ‘Irene’s been here. Look at the mess she made.’ Ruth looked under her bed. ‘And she took my Jack Daniels, too.’
I so wished that was true but I couldn’t let that falsehood stand. I owed Ruth honesty. ‘The police took your bottle and they searched your room. It wasn’t Irene. We saw Irene under the bleachers – remember?’
Ruth’s shoulders slumped. ‘I guess I just wanted to forget …’
‘I know,’ I said, feeling a sympathetic lump of pain in my throat.
‘Why did the police search my room? Will I be in trouble for the Jack Daniels? Why did they have to make such a mess?’
‘Just grab a bag and throw together the things you’ll need. And I’ll make the beds, OK?’ I finished with the beds, then pulled a piece of paper out of the desk and wrote a note. ‘To whom it may concern: Ruth Nance is staying with Elizabeth Clark at 384 East Drive.’
‘Look OK to you?’
Ruth nodded her approval and I stuck it between the door and frame as we left. On the boardwalk, I asked, ‘What happened after I left you at the bleachers?’
‘First a police officer came and told me I had to get out of there. I was just laying there next to Irene, holding her hand. I ignored him. Then he yelled at me saying he’d come in and get me if I didn’t get out of there right now. So, I did. Then he told me I had to go to the police station with him. And I said, “I will not. I’m not leaving my sister here on the ground.” Then, two jeeps full of soldiers pulled up. One of them was a colonel. And there was a guy in a suit who pulled up in another car. They told me to come with them. I told them I would as soon as my sister was seen to. Then it got really strange. The soldiers all lined up so I couldn’t see Irene and that man in a suit told me that Irene wasn’t there and I needed to go home.
Scandal in the Secret City Page 9