Home Front Lines

by Brenda Sparks Prescott

  Pepper, sitting beside her, scratched the inside of her elbow. Everyone knew the wiry mother of two got hives when she was anxious, but her big alto voice fluttered with amusement. “What you mean, Lavonia? I do believe Miss Betty Ann is here to take your dress order. Just add a couple of zeros onto the price of the last one.” As with one of her solos at the church on base, the chorus responded.

  “Um hmm.”

  “I know that’s right.”

  “Said she’s only sewing with gold thread from now on.”

  “Real gold, I heard.”

  “Ladies.” Lucy leaned forward from her perch on the table, her hands gripping its edge. “We can order our gold lamé dresses later. The kindergartners have an eleven thirty pick-up time.” Several women glanced at their watches and most straightened to attention. Time for the urgent matter, their postures said. “Betty Ann?”

  Betty Ann clasped her hands and held her pointer fingers to her lips. Her smile settled into a more somber look as she waited a moment before speaking. She then recapped their conversation from the day before. Tall Gladys gasped when Betty Ann said, “Everything’s live.” Twice jets roared overhead as if to underscore the urgency of her talk. When she finished, there was silence.

  The sideboard clock tocked four beats. On the fifth, as if released by a starter’s gun, the women all nattered at once. Betty Ann let the sound crest, then held up a hand. The room quieted. “Dorothy, what does Mac hear in the officers’ mess?” Her husband was a cook.

  “He does not speak out of turn,” Dorothy said.

  “Of course not,” Betty Ann said.

  Dorothy rapped on the window to get some child’s attention. She wagged her finger, no. “I did, however, happen to overhear him comparing notes with another cook. The other guy said we’ve lost a plane over Cuba.”

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” someone said.

  “Maybe it’s just a rumor,” Clara said.

  “Don’t count on it,” Betty Ann said.

  Clara ducked her head.

  “Okay, there are a couple of things we can do,” Betty Ann continued. “First, we must show faith in our husbands and our country. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” the women said in unison.

  “However, we must be prepared to act if the situation becomes dire. Agreed?”

  “Act how?” The crook of Pepper’s arm was scored red. “We’re just wives,” she said, echoing Lucy.

  “And mothers,” Betty Ann said. “Anything happens, we’re our children’s only line of defense, right?” Voices murmured. “Agreed?”

  “Agreed.” The word staggered into the air from many mouths.

  Betty Ann waited for a dissenting voice, but none rose. “So what are we going to do?”

  “How long would it take a missile to get here?” Dorothy asked.

  They all knew the answer: not long enough. But they had to hold onto something. They had to believe that their smart, beautiful president had learned the right Cuban lessons from the Bay of Pigs. They had to hope that if he couldn’t avert a nuclear launch, they still could do something to save their children, and so they planned.

  “We need some kind of early warning system,” Lucy said.

  “Does anyone have radio equipment?” Betty Ann asked.

  No one answered.

  “Even if we did, we wouldn’t know what to listen for,” Dorothy said.

  Heads nodded.

  Then Clara came through for them, in her way. She sat up straighter. “Manny supplies the specialty aircraft.”

  “Yes, we know.” Lucy spoke to keep Betty Ann from asking what that had to do with warning systems.

  “He always stocks the copters for the foreign ministers that visit the White House,” Clara went on. “He had to find special bottled water for that official from Algeria.”

  Betty Ann rustled. Lucy put a hand on her arm to still her. Clara could be easily derailed, and the women couldn’t afford a loss of focus. They needed every bit of intelligence on the table, relevant or not.

  “Anyway, have you noticed the Sea Kings on the apron of runway 31L, you know, at the end of Cedar Street?” Most of the women nodded. “Manny said that he had to put diapers and baby formula in one of them. ‘Diapers, are you sure?’ I asked. ‘Sure,’ he said. ‘Why?’ I asked.” She swung a look around the room and then took a sip from her coffee.

  Lord, help the poor, that girl could milk the spotlight, Lucy thought. She hoped her impatience didn’t show.

  “The supplies are for families of White House personnel if . . . you know.” Clara’s voice trailed off.

  “Wait a minute,” Lucy said. Betty Ann cocked her head and waited a minute. At first Lucy imagined a mad dash of police cars and limousines through their neighborhoods. Then she realized that the copters would just take off for the White House lawn. “They’d fly over to the District.”

  Clara nodded.

  Lucy remembered Mr. Gorale’s Ford Coupe that she had passed every morning on the way into school when she was a kid. He was her dreamy fifth grade teacher who drove a fast car and had a pretty new wife. One day no Coupe sat at the end of the row where the teachers parked. Mr. Gorale never missed a day of school, but then his new wife was eight months pregnant. Lucy ran around the far corner of the school to peer across the river at the big brick pile of a hospital perched on the opposite hillside. Sure enough, she could just barely trace the outline of a Coupe through the winter-bare trees. It was parked at the end of the row on the side of the building that meant you were going to be there awhile. Other people must’ve owned black Ford Coupes, but observation met intuition and she guessed that the baby had arrived early.

  She gathered coins from the girls that loved Mr. Gorale as much as she did, and even from some of the boys who wanted to drive a car like his, and persuaded Mrs. Nelson to give her a discount on a cute little knit coverlet for the baby. When the Coupe was back in its customary place on Monday, she had the blanket all wrapped up and ready to give to him when he told the class about the unexpected arrival. She made her best friend take the present up to his desk, but the handwriting was hers, and he looked directly at her as he thanked them. Plus everyone said it had been her idea, but she never told anyone how she knew. Still, she knew before everyone else did, and all because she noticed a missing car.

  “So if those copters stay put . . .” A grin tugged at her lips as she slipped off her perch and waved a prompting hand in the air.

  “ . . . We stay put,” Pepper sang out. She rested her hand in the crook of her elbow.

  “We stay put,” others echoed. They had discovered a simple warning system, courtesy of the government.

  “Clara, you’re a genius.” Betty Ann sliced a cymbal-splash clap through the air. “Yes, ma’am.” She threaded a path to the dining table and slid the last piece of her coffee cake onto a saucer. She sidestepped around knees and stopped in front of Clara. “Sugar, I do believe you haven’t had any of my world famous iced-lemon coffee cake.”

  Closed lipped, Clara smiled, but she giggled when the other women clapped and cheered. Betty Ann curtsied as far as she could in the tight quarters and laid the saucer in Clara’s lap.

  The wives set up a schedule of patrols down Cedar Street and devised simple signals. The logistics came easily to them—the husbands would have been proud—but it was harder for them to decide what to do in case they discovered an empty apron at 31L.

  “Who’ll go with the children?” Dorothy asked from her post by the window. No one volunteered.

  Gladys, the tall one, stood. “I’d rather be with Ted, if I knew the children were safe, or at least in good hands.” The other women nodded.

  “My mom lives in Cincinnati,” Lucy said. “I know she’d take in anybody who had her grandbabies in tow.”

  It was also Dorothy’s hometown. “Yeah, and who would bother to bomb Cincinnati?” she said.

  Soon the women were all talking at once:

  “How many cars do we need to fit all the kids?”
>
  “Should they all go to one place?”

  “My family has a farm in West Virginia.”

  “We have a bunch of those big water jugs from when we were stationed out at Alamogordo.”

  “What do we tell our husbands?” Clara asked.

  Lucy and Betty Ann looked at each other as the room quieted.

  “Nothing,” Betty Ann said.

  “But—”

  “They have too much to worry about already, right? They take care of the world, we take care of the kids,” Lucy said.

  The women murmured.

  “Why bother them with plans for something that may never happen?” Lucy crossed the fingers of both hands.

  “We say nothing. Agreed?” Betty Ann asked.

  “Agreed.” The chorus was loud.

  Dorothy wanted to run a practice drill for getting the kids out of school. The guys always said that practice eliminates mistakes in combat. “Naw, wait a minute,” she said. She seesawed her head and folded her stout arms across her ample chest. “Someone might notice that all of the colored kids were gone and think we were about to riot. Won’t work.”

  The wives continued to make concrete plans for evacuation. It came naturally as they and their families were all veterans of military moves. Even the youngest children playing in the yard sensed that they shouldn’t get too attached to anything or anyone that didn’t fit in the family car. They had all learned to make friends quickly but not to love too deeply. Meanwhile, training dictated that thorough task identification and assignment and absolute trust in your comrades increased the chance of a successful mission.

  “How many of us drive?” Dorothy asked. She counted the raised hands. Lucy’s was not among them. “Six. Sure would make assignments easier if we had an even seven—each one could take a day of the week.”

  Betty Ann stared at Lucy, her face dimpled into a puzzled smile. “Hon, you didn’t raise your hand.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Yeah.” Clara touched the edge of her napkin to the corner of her mouth. “I just learned to drive last year and I’m doing it.”

  They all turned their faces to Lucy, waiting, but she could say nothing.

  “Dorothy, you go ahead while we get that other coffee cake.” Betty Ann nudged Lucy and then picked her way through the gathering. She accepted the empty cake platter that was passed to her while Lucy trailed her into the kitchen and felt the slight push of air as the door swung closed. She uncovered her cinnamon and walnut coffee cake and carefully folded the crinkled foil. Betty Ann rinsed and dried the knife before dropping it next to the cake. She backed up to lean a shoulder on the fridge. “So what gives?”

  How could Lucy tell her about her silent days? About not being sure she could keep her own two safe on her own, let alone shoulder the responsibility for other women’s children? She just wasn’t up to it.

  “Your husband,” Betty Ann said. “He came to me.”

  First Betty Ann ropes her into a scheme with Mrs. H. and risks her husband’s career because of an affair, then Betty Ann convinces her that they may be bombed out of existence at any moment, then Betty Ann expects her to blithely accept responsibility for taking a brood of children across state lines, and in the middle of it all, she brings up Sonny. The nerve. She trusted him, but Betty Ann could always take what she wanted. Lucy slid the cake onto the platter and attacked it with the knife. Each stroke ended with a dull thud against the dish, but the slices broke cleanly and stayed in a perfect circle.

  Betty Ann straightened and turned to examine the pictures and alphabet magnets stuck to the fridge. She touched a photo of Lucy and the kids in front of a rocket monument. “He wanted to talk,” she said.

  “Sure. That’s how it starts.” Lucy dropped the knife, which clattered into the sink.

  “I know, believe me, but not this time. He just asked me to keep an eye on you. Never said why.”

  Look at what happened between Betty Ann and that white officer. Quiet Lucy knew a thing or two about cutting, but this wasn’t the right blade. At most, its rounded tip and serrated edge would leave only a small, pretty scar and a good cocktail party anecdote. Some distant part of her was amused with herself for thinking in such crude terms. No, she needed a much more subtle weapon.

  “I’ll be there,” Betty Ann said. “You know I will. And if by some crazy chance I’m not, you’ll do what you have to. I know it.”

  Why did women have to be so complicated? In the midst of Lucy’s righteous anger, her friend had zeroed in on her darkness and had offered the one condition that could make it bearable. Besides, with each step, Betty Ann’s desires had left her vulnerable to betrayal, by the officer, by Mrs. H., and now by Lucy. Her best weapon was trust.

  “These women are counting on us. What do you say?” Betty Ann asked.

  Lucy picked up the platter. “Okay. Yes. For now.”

  “Now is all we have.” Her ally swung open the door and held it.

  Lucy followed through the opening. She bent to offer cake to tall Gladys, who took a piece and then took the plate to pass it to her right. Lucy returned to her perch before saying, “I’m in.”

  “Good,” Dorothy said. “An even seven.”

  Before wrapping up, the wives devised a rotating scheduled that ensured no one mother got stuck with a high target day like Sunday. Any woman could be chosen purely by circumstance to evacuate. During the entire meeting, not one comment or question came near to wondering about another woman’s ability to take care of the children. In the end, they even planned for a return.

  The Man with the Spanish Shoes 1

  RAMÓN DIDN’T WORK well with his hands. He had finished school in the States but returned with more interest in comfort than in hard work. “What will he do?” the Monteros wondered back when Rosita accepted his proposal. He knew numbers, Rosita said, and that was that. They gave him a job as manager at one of their tanneries. He kept the books and rode herd on the workers. Though he never bared his arms or stirred the stinking potions, he learned to thwart the tricks men tried to make factory life easier. He understood, but he didn’t let his tender feelings get in the way of production. The Monteros thought he managed well. What their employees thought didn’t matter. At first, more experienced workers threatened him, but Guillermo, his older brother whom he hired as soon as he could, planted his feet and balled his fists. Soon the workers sulked but left Ramón alone.

  Lucky for him, the Revolution rewarded his skill in curtailing unacceptable behavior by giving him a prominent position in the local Committee for the Defense of the Revolution. Neighbors grew to fear his knock on the door, as fellow citizens suffered dire consequences from his reports. He sighed and apologized while he crushed dreams and splintered families. He came to be known as the Velvet Enforcer. No one called him that to his face, but when he found out, he was pleased with the respect (non-existent) he assumed was for one considered a ruthless man. Meanwhile, his friends and family continued with clandestine activities to move valuables and eventually themselves out of the country. Even he had possible plans. Or rather, the Monteros did, and he was one of them. He saw no irony in the punishment of the less privileged for activities his own people pursued. Things had always been done that way.

  The business about Tomasito was too bad, but his hot-headed brother-in-law had been about to make trouble for the whole family. Yes, Ramón had arranged his disappearance, but it was only to prevent the ultimate disappearance against the wall if he hadn’t interfered. He made sure Tomasito was sent to a work farm in the province of Sancti Spiritus that had a better reputation than most. It was the one thing he couldn’t tell Rosita about. He hated to see her so forlorn when he told her there was no word from his CDR connections, but if he had told her the truth she would’ve blabbed to those sisters of hers, and then no telling what they would do. He was thinking only of her in his silence, but he missed her full-throated laugh.

  The days crept by as Ramón attended the repetitions of summing figures and
yelling at the workers. Then he received terrible news. A typed envelope from Sancti Spíritus arrived for him at the office. He closed the door and sat at his neat desk to open it. Inside, a terse letter informed him that Tomasito had died from an infection that set in after he injured himself through his carelessness with a farm machine. There were no words of apology or condolences, just the fact that his body had already been buried. He panicked at first, wondering what he would tell the family now. And what awful deeds had been shoveled under with a quick burial? Were there bullet holes in the body? He shuddered and rummaged in this desk for a bottle of clear liquid he had taken from a tanner. His eyes watered as he drank, but the sear of homemade liquor helped him to focus on this latest catastrophe.

  Slowly he calmed as he reasoned that he couldn’t possibly feel responsibility for Tomasito’s death—that boy had brought it on himself with his unpatriotic activities and careless ways. Perhaps his hasty burial was for the best, as he had now truly disappeared. Another gulp of fire decided him. One day he might relieve Rosita of the burden of uncertainty, but for the time being he would keep quiet. And he would find her a treat, maybe some perfume he’d confiscated from a smuggler and had been selling at a good price. He could spare a bottle for his wife. Yes, that’s what he’d do.

  Once he made the decision, he busied himself with work details and put all the unpleasantness out of his mind. Early that evening, when his crisp white shirt had long gone gray, he made his customary rounds of hidden spots where workers relaxed for a snooze. Behind the big boiler, in the cool pocket of air beneath the grueling heat, Ramón found Guillermo curled around a bottle. Not much rum was left, and he could tell from his brother’s bloodshot eyes where most of it had gone.

  Ramón slumped down against the cinderblock wall and shook his head. His brother roused to flick his eyes at him, then went back to staring at nothing. His mouth worked, spittle at the corner, but he said nothing. Even in this recess, the stench of dead flesh and sharp chemical odors assaulted the nostrils. Ramón noticed his drunk brother’s shoes. Fine brown leather, Spanish, not from the factories down the street or the cardboard fakes the Russians passed off as footwear. Only a large wad of cash could secure such a luxury on the black market. An illegal transaction, or an even darker crime had bought those shoes.