Catch You Later, Traitor

by Avi

  Bobby was about to say something else but Ma cut him off by turning to me and saying, “How was your day?”

  “Nothing special.”

  To Dad she said, “And your school, dear?”

  Dad talked about a college committee on which he served, some decision they were attempting to make. Except he didn’t seem to care. I was sure his mind was still on Bobby’s words. Why?

  Soon as he stopped talking, Ma jumped in, telling us about a problem student she was working with. “His father is fighting in Korea,” she said. “He had been in the Pacific during the war.”

  “That’s rough,” muttered my father.

  Ordinarily, that would have been Dad’s cue to start talking history, politics, General MacArthur, and Truman. He stayed mum. I didn’t think Dad was a secret Communist, but something Bobby had said about reds had bitten him. I tried to think of ways to find out what it was.

  Ma started to chitchat: Schedules, plans, who was doing what and when. She soon ran out of things to say and the silence was back, the kind of silence that gets louder every minute. I tried to find a way to get into Dad’s thoughts.

  Unable to stand it anymore, I finally blurted out, “Dad, if the Commies took over America, would you be sitting pretty?”

  Bobby and Ma gawked at me as if I were a Roswell alien.

  Ma touched my arm and was about to say something when Bobby said, “Why in the world would you even ask such an idiotic question?”

  Keeping my eyes on Dad I said, “Just want to know.”

  Dad cleared his throat, threw a glance at Ma, and said quietly, “Pete, where in the world does that question come from?”

  I said, “Coming home from school, Kat asked me that.”

  “What a dope,” said Bobby.

  “She’s not.”

  “Pretty stupid to ask that question.”

  “Smarter than you!”

  “Shh,” Ma said, “that’s enough.”

  Dad said, “Pete, what made Kat ask that?”

  Already sorry I’d spoken, I sat there, not knowing how to get out of it.

  “Pete?” Dad pushed.

  I took a breath. “Mr. Donavan said that you were a Commie. Said I was, too. Said it to the whole class.”

  That sucked the air out of the room. Dad looked at Ma. Ma looked at Dad. They talked that way sometimes, a silent, secret language.

  Bobby, leaning in, was gripping the edge of the table with two hands. “Donavan said Dad was a Commie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would he say that?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Something about Parents’ Night.”

  To Dad, Ma said, “You were there. Did something happen that night?”

  Dad thought for a moment. “I talked to Mr. Donavan about how he teaches history. I told him I didn’t think there was enough being taught about the history of Negroes or the working man.”

  Bobby said, “Why’d you do that?”

  “It’s what I teach my students,” said Dad.

  “Not too smart,” said Bobby.

  “Bobby!” said Ma sharply. To me she said, “Pete, it’s wrong of your teacher to say that to anyone.”

  “I know. Just asking if it’s true.”

  Bobby said, “That’s the goopiest question I ever heard.”

  “What’s wrong with asking?” I cried.

  Dad, paying no attention to him, said to me, “Let me get this right: Kat was asking if the Soviet Union—China, North Korea—Communists—took over the United States, would I be ‘sitting pretty’ ? ”

  I gave the smallest nod ever nodded.

  “Pete,” said Dad, “I’m not a Communist.”

  “Satisfied?” said Bobby.

  All I could think was, Donavan lied. The FBI lied. Next second I remembered how strongly Dad reacted to what Bobby said about Commies, so I wasn’t satisfied. Something was not being said. To Dad I said, “Then . . . what are you?”

  “Anti-Communist!” shouted Bobby.

  No one paid attention to him. Ma and Dad went back to eye talk.

  Dad turned to me. “Was there more to Kat’s question than you’ve said?”

  I sat there determined not to talk about the FBI. But I did say, “Donavan told Kat’s dad that you were a Commie.”

  Dad said, “How about you and I have a chat after dinner?”

  “Do we have to?”

  “You asked the stupid question,” said my brother.

  “Good Lord, Bobby,” said Dad, “there’s no such thing as a stupid question.”

  “He should know the answer,” Bobby threw back.

  We sat there, no one eating, everybody tense. Wanting to shove the talk in a different way, I said, “And another thing: From now on I’m a Giants fan.”

  “You’re what?” screamed Bobby.

  “A Giants fan.”

  “Since when?” asked my father. He looked bewildered.

  “Today.”

  “You know something?” Bobby shouted. “You’re a jackass.”

  “Well, guess what?” I threw back. “Season started today. Philly beat the Dodgers. Giants beat Boston. Guess who’s in first place? Giants!”

  “You are a total toad!” Bobby yelled back.

  I escaped to my room, threw myself on my bed, promised myself I was not going to talk about Commies and Reds anymore, grabbed my Black Mask, and started to read.

  Twenty minutes later, I was still reading when Dad poked his head into the room. “Okay, Pal, we need to talk.”

  12

  I didn’t want to, but I got up from my bed and followed Dad into the radio room. He grabbed the checkerboard, set it on the low table in front of the couches, and laid out the pieces. We always played checkers when we gabbed. Though I had no intention of talking, Dad said, “Go ahead,” and we began to play.

  After a bit he said, “How come you’re rooting for the Giants?”

  “Want to.”

  “That’s a major decision.”

  “Yeah.”

  “With Bobby and me for the Dodgers, there are going to be some arguments around here.”

  Sure baseball was not what Dad wanted to talk about, I didn’t pay attention to the checkerboard. So he pulled a triple jump and without asking, laid out the pieces again.

  I peeked up at him. “You sore about the Giants?”

  “Nope.”

  “Really?”

  Dad looked at me. “There’s nothing wrong with being different from your family.”

  “Like Bobby?”

  He grimaced. “Yeah, like Bobby.”

  “All he thinks is about himself.”

  “Teenagers have been known to do that.”

  The game went on. As I waited for Dad to say what he had on his mind, the clicking pieces reminded me of a time bomb.

  Finally I said, “Were you different from your family when you were Bobby’s age?”

  Dad had been about to make a move, but his hand hovered over the checkerboard like a stuck helicopter. His breathing deepened. His eyes were on the checkerboard, but it was as if my question had tossed him to another place, a place where I couldn’t follow.

  He fumbled in his shirt pocket, pulled out a pack of Camels, and knocked the pack on the back of his hand until a cigarette popped up. “Coffin nails,” he said, and then added, “Smoking stinks.”

  I said, “But you do it anyway.”

  “Black coffee and bad cigarettes kept me alive during the war. They’ll probably kill me in the end.”

  Head bent, Pete’s dad drew out a cigarette with his lips. That saved him from using his wounded arm. And from looking at Pete. From another pocket, he took out a dull metal Zippo lighter, the only thing he carried from his war years. He flicked a flame, lit his cigarette, inhaled, snapped the lighter shut. He blew smoke out of his nose, picked a tobacco scrap from his lips, and brushed it away. Then he put the lighter away and, with the back of a thumb, smoothed his mustache. The checkers game forgotten, he stared into his cloud of c
igarette smoke as if something or somebody might be there. Pete’s question hovered in the air, a ghost nobody wanted to see.

  Dad came back to me and said, “That question Kat asked . . . and what your teacher said . . . Communists and all. That get to you?”

  “Some,” I said, not understanding how his question connected to mine.

  “What did you tell Kat?”

  “Said . . . you weren’t a Communist.”

  “I’m not.”

  Remembering what the FBI guy said, I felt uneasy. “Then how come Donavan said that?” I might have asked—but was too scared to—the same thing about the FBI.

  “He probably thought my suggestion that he should teach more about the working man and the Negro people makes me a Communist.”

  “Why?”

  “These days, people who work for civil and union rights are often called Communists, and subversive.”

  “Subversive?”

  “Someone who’s trying to secretly overthrow the government.”

  “That what you’re doing?”

  “Of course not. That doesn’t mean America can’t be improved.”

  I went back to my original question. “But when you were a kid—were you different?”

  His face became tense. “Why are you asking that? Different in what way?”

  “Well . . . you know . . . like being a Commie . . .”

  Pete’s dad dragged deeply on his cigarette, and blew out smoke, laying down a thicker smoke screen. Once, twice, he coughed, then mashed the cigarette out in the ashtray. He lit another right away. The lighter snapped shut like a whip.

  “Was I ever a Communist?” he said. “The answer is, yes.”

  13

  Horrified, the best I could do was whisper, “You were? But you said—”

  “It was 1934,” he said quickly, as if wanting to get it out. “I was nineteen. I went to a Communist Party meeting and signed on.”

  Shaken, I said, “How . . . come?” I kept my eyes on his face. Far as I could tell, he was staring at the family picture. Then he turned back to me and said, “Clemenceau—he was a French prime minister—said, ‘Not to be a socialist at twenty is proof that you have no heart. But to be one at thirty is proof you have no head.’ ”

  “Socialist same as Communist?”

  He shook his head. “In a nutshell, Pete, socialism is a system where the community, the working people, own the businesses and factories, and they share the profits and the wealth made from what they produce. That’s the theory, anyway. Communism is the Soviet Union’s form of socialism. It’s not democratic. In fact, the Soviet Union is a horrible dictatorship. Murdering people who disagree with you isn’t my idea of socialism.”

  “And you were nineteen when you joined?”

  His eyes came back to me. “Right.”

  “You a socialist now?”

  “Yup.”

  “So, you’re a . . . socialist . . . anti-Communist?”

  “That would fit.”

  “Then why’d you join the Commies?”

  “Back then the Communists talked about how hard things in America were. That was true. They also talked about how great things were in Soviet Russia. That was false, though I didn’t know it yet.”

  I said, “Did anyone know you were a Communist?”

  “I never told my family. Of course, your mother knows. Now, you do. No one else.”

  I thought, The FBI does. I wanted to tell him, but Dad was acting so . . . so different, I couldn’t get myself to say it. He might even get mad at me for talking to Ewing.

  “Pete,” he went on, “I grew up during the Great Depression. People called it the hardest of hard times. It started in 1929. Twenty-five percent of the population out of work. That was the official figure. It was probably worse. There were huge problems. The Dust Bowl. Racism. Poverty. Illness. Lots more. The point is, for many, America had failed.” He squashed his cigarette into the ashtray, lit another.

  “My father was a toolmaker,” he went on. “A good one. Not that it mattered. He was out of work for five years, Pete. Five.”

  That was the first time I ever heard Dad talk about his dad.

  “What was your dad’s name?”

  “Tom. Here’s a fact about being out of work,” Dad went on. “The longer you’re out of work . . . the less likely you’ll find work. It’s the opposite of what you need.

  “My father couldn’t find work. My mother did. As a waitress. My sisters worked, too. Small jobs, when they could get them. You know, sweeping streets, handing out fliers. Cleaning toilets. Puny pay, but it’s like those signs poor people hold up: ‘Brother, can you spare a dime?’

  “It was my mother who kept us going. It didn’t matter if she was sick or felt bad, she worked twelve hours a day.”

  “Did you work?” I asked.

  Dad rubbed his bad arm, as if it was hurting, and stared into his smoke again. “No,” he said, as if talking to the smoke.

  “Why not?”

  “I wanted to be in school.”

  “That okay with your family?”

  He flexed his bad arm, and then said, “My mom, being a waitress, brought in some money, plus food. Hard times, maybe, but people left food on their plates.”

  Once again, he didn’t answer my question.

  “Out of work, my father was going nuts. He was depressed. Angry. Let me tell you something, Pete. It’s humiliating to be out of work when you have a family to support. Sometimes my father blamed himself. Or America. Or capitalism. He began to think the Communist system might be better.

  “Back then, during the Great Depression, there were lots of news stories coming out of Communist Russia about how great it was there, that jobs were easy to get there. My dad wanted the whole family to go. My mother refused.”

  “Why?” I said, wanting to make connections between the things he was saying and not saying.

  “She wouldn’t go to a Communist country. And no surprise, my parents’ marriage turned bad.”

  “Was your dad a Communist?”

  “Not at all. Just desperate for work. People like to forget, but back then, thousands of Americans, ordinary people, went to Soviet Russia to find work. Sure, some went because they believed in Communism. Most went for a job, to live.”

  “What happened to them?”

  “Things worked for a while until Stalin started putting them in labor camps. Or killed them.”

  I think my mouth dropped open.

  “Here’s a story for you. Once, Stalin gave a speech. When he was done, everyone stood up and the applause went on for eleven minutes until some guy finally sat down. That night the guy was arrested. Disappeared.”

  I said, “Did your father go to Russia?”

  Dad just sat there.

  “Dad . . . what happened to him?”

  “I think he died.”

  “When?”

  “In 1935, 1936. Not certain.”

  “Where?”

  Dad stared at his cigarette, and then stubbed it out. The smoke spiraled up, then disappeared, like his answer.

  How could he not know what happened to his father?

  He remained silent. His silence was like a wound he didn’t want me to see. I didn’t see the wound but I sure saw the bandage. Which meant I was sure he was not telling me everything.

  He lit another cigarette. If cigarettes were coffin nails, he had become a full-time carpenter.

  “Anyway,” he went on, “with my father thinking the way he did, I told myself that maybe the Soviet Union—and socialism—was the answer. I also believed in unions, civil rights for the Negro people, equality for women. Not that you have to be a socialist to believe in those things. But lots of politicians who were opposed to civil rights, unions, and women were saying the Soviet Union was awful.

  “There’s an old saying, ‘My enemies’ enemy is my friend.’ Not necessarily so. In fact, it’s bad history. But I came to believe the Soviet Union was a good place, partly because the Communists in A
merica supported many of the things I believed in, and partly because lots of people who stood against the things I believed in were also, like I said, against the Soviet Union.”

  “Were you right?”

  “No. Dead wrong. The Soviet Union was awful. But before I learned that, I joined the Communist Party.”

  I said, “What was it like being a Communist?”

  “I only went to one meeting. It was boring and not what I was looking for. I never went back to another.”

  “But you signed up.”

  He nodded. “I was a teenager, Pete. Nineteen. Looking for action against those hard times.”

  “You sorry you joined?”

  “Pal, it’s a cliché, but in life’s journey, if you don’t take some wrong turns, you aren’t going anywhere.”

  “You mean, like how you feel about me rooting for the Giants?”

  A smile broke through. “You got it.”

  “Can I tell Kat what you told me?”

  He shook his head. “Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  Dad hesitated. “Ever hear of the McCarran Act?”

  I shook my head.

  “It’s the law. President Truman said it was a bad law and vetoed it but Congress overruled his veto. The McCarran Act does many things, among them, allowing the government to make a list of people they believe are subversives—troublemakers who want to disrupt our government. If there’s a national emergency, subversives can be rounded up. Put in prison camps.”

  “You on the list?” I cried.

  “I have no idea. I don’t want to be, but it’s possible.”

  “But you only went to one meeting.”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I’m asking you not to tell anyone—not even Kat—about what I’ve told you. It’s not safe.”

  “But you’re not—”

  “No one needs to know. Look, Pete, I’m a historian. I study the past. But these days your past can mean a bad future.”

  I could almost see Ewing standing there. It made me sick.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said. “I’m small potatoes. I doubt they’re interested in me.”

  Knowing that the FBI was interested, that Dad was in trouble, really scared me. I was also worried that if I told Dad about the FBI, the way Ewing instructed me to, things might get worse. Add in my feeling that Dad wasn’t telling me everything—about his father, if he was on that subversive list, why his family didn’t want him to go to school—and I didn’t know what to do.