Don Pendleton - Civil War II (20 page)

Michael Winston Oakland, March 10, 1999

CHAPTER 4

Claudia Sanderson was feeling vaguely disoriented on that Wednesday morning of March 10th. She had a Tuesday feeling, and the children of her fifth-grade class were exhibiting a Friday exuberance. She rechecked the calendar on her desk, then looked at the date on the stack of papers she'd graded the evening before.

An airplane had crashed a few blocks over from her house the night before. She had not been able to sleep the rest of the night. Leaping flames of the burning building it had fallen onto—the container factory—had filled her bedroom with a yellow glow and flickering shadows until the sun came up. Perhaps this was why she was still in Tuesday; she had not been allowed to consummate Tuesday in the usual routine. Claudia wondered vaguely how she would catch up to Wednesday.

She was drawn out of her thoughts by the solemn face of blonde Melanie, who had approached the teacher's desk and was now standing in quiet non-assertiveness at the edge of authority. "Yes, Melanie?" Claudia said, acknowledging the fair presence.

The ten-year-old mumbled, "It's nearly recess, Miss Sanderson."

Claudia's eyes darted to the wall clock. "Thank you for

reminding me, Melanie," she said quietly. "You go ahead."

The child nodded her head and went softly to the door, opened it and stepped into the hallway. Claudia watched' her disappear from view, and thought of the progress the shy little thing had made in such a short time. When Melanie had first come to Lake Charles, at the beginning of the second semester, the soberfaced little newcomer had hung back from the smallest participation in group activities. She had been shyly withdrawn to the point of a practiced anti-sociality, even in the important area of student-teacher relationships.

Claudia had made a project of the fair Melanie and she had broken through. Appointment to the important post of j "door monitor" had marked the break-through. The burdens of social responsibility often had a way of
subjugating personal self-consciousness. Claudia had witnessed the simple psychology work time and again, in a time-worn formula.

Her inward smile turned grimly at the corners.
Physician, heal thyself!
But where was a good time-worn formula for the distress of a twenty-eight-year-old unmarried schoolteacher? And especially in an age when the population balance of the world had gone haywire?

She had been reading some fascinating statistics concerning the population question. In the year of her I birth, 1971, the combined population of the world had been around 3600 millions, and forward-looking scientists | were then trying to figure out some way to outwit the population explosion which expected to see some 40% more people crowding the globe by the turn of the century. Well, the turn was here—and the explosion had been outwitted, all right—in
this
country. North America had "stabilized" scientifically—and
ughh,
what price stability? Nature was working her own balance in China, India and Africa—thousands and tens of thousands were dying daily of starvation and disease. Certainly that was tragic, and no sensitive person could think of such a thing without feeling terribly sad. But what about the method of balance in
this
country? Was it really any better? What in the world had the scientists
done
to the American men? In the matter of

balance—balance of the sexes, a subject near and dear to Claudia's heart, the American statistics were more.....

alarming than the death rates of Asia and Africa.

In the year of Claudia's birth, the balance of young adults was at about 98 males to every 100 females. This could be disconcerting enough thinking in terms of equal opportunity for a woman seeking a mate. One woman in fifty, in that era, would either go without or would be required to play musical-husbands with some of her sisters. But look at 1999! Yipes! One woman in
ten
was faced with this terrible truth ! What sort of sadistic balance was
that
Birth control,
si
—but, for God's sake—
male
control,
no\
It certainly was no world for the
shy
female. Natural selection, survival of the fittest, adapt or perish—these were primeval jungle conditions! Claudia—unsure, shy, retiring Claudia was certainly no candidate for survival.

She had ceased to care. Or, at any rate, she had ceased to be concerned. Except sometimes in the night. And sometimes in the early evening. And sometimes in the light of dawn. And then there were those embittered moments when she evinced a quiet anger with the male sex. What had they let happen to them? There had been a steady drop in the live-birth rate of American males for as far back into history as the records went. Why? Wasn't the male the primary determinant of sex in the conception of new life? What nefarious plot was this against the female, who wanted naught but a man of her own? Had the scientists done this? Or was it some twisted mechanism of the male psyche which was responsible? Did men resent this concept of female ownership? Had the female possessively screwed herself out of the possessive position? She smiled at the Freudian vulgarism suggested by that last structure, then blushed flame-red and looked up to see what her class was doing.

The class was gone! She realized with a wrenching start that the recess bell had sounded somewhere back there in her borderline consciousness; she had dismissed the class in one of those automatic rituals without even realizing what she was doing. How unforgivable! The State of Louisiana deserved at the very least a conscious teacher,

even at this meager salary. The children deserved more. Yes, the children—most of all—deserved more than this!

Claudia got out of her chair, smoothed her dress against the backs of her legs, and walked slowly to the window. The children. In God's name, would it forever be someone else's children? Would there never be a fair little Melanie, or a mischievious-eyed little Tommy for Claudia to tuck into bed at night? Would she never read a story to a child of her own?

She watched the pair through the window, Melanie and Tommy, noting their seeming obliviousness to one another and yet the obvious deep awareness each had of the other. Tommy was showing off, as usual, climbing the steel support of the zot-swings, haughtily and busily aloof to the mere girl below, the fair Melanie, the once-confirmed anti-sosh, now doggedly maintaining her position beneath the daring astrogator. Did children ever change, Claudia wondered, from one generation to another? The times changed, the toys changed, the styles of dress and speech changed . . . but did the children themselves actually change? Claudia believed that they did not The children represented the hopes of mankind. If somebody—some brilliant genius of a thinker or a scientist could figure out what happened, what went wrong, what slipped the track or jumped the cog, in that startling transition from childhood to grownup, and could figure some way to correct the deformation ... maybe the jungles could be left behind mankind once and for all. But, to Claudia, it seemed that each new generation of adults found some new corner of that vast and beloved jungleland to resurrect and re-explore. Wouldn't it be romantic if Tommy and Melanie were to grow up together all the way into adulthood, and marry, and produce more little Tommies and Melanies? Wouldn't that be so precious? And so utterly impossible!

She thought of Melanie, Melanie the golden, walking into a CAC with a warmth in her thighs and an ache in her heart, and Claudia nearly cried.

Well, she told herself, perhaps that would be preferable to the solo accomodation Claudia had made for herself. Who could say which was the lesser of two evils? An evil is

an evil, and none is lesser nor greater, an evil is an equal thing.

Perhaps, some day, Qaudia herself would go
into New
Orleans with some of the girls and see for herself what
this
man-woman thing was really all about. After all, she'd given up the dreams, hadn't she? Why not accomodate the reality? But she knew that she was kidding herself. She knew that she would never visit a CAC, not in New Orleans or anywhere else. There was one right there in Lake Charles. Why go clear into New Orleans? The evil is in the doing, not in someone finding out.

Claudia knew, however, with the logic that is a woman's heart, that the only accomodation truly required by every woman was the abiding presence of a man of her own. Sex yes, but sex with love, with affection, with
caring.
All else was imitation. It was defamatory, the expansion and perpetuation of bitterness. And Qaudia Sanderson desired an application of sweetness to a life already edged with the bitter.

She brushed away a tear and swung away from the window just as Dorothy Brannon, the Principal, entered the room. The usually bright and grandmotherly Mrs. Brannan had a peculiar look about her on this visit. Her face was drawn in tight lines of suppressed emotion as she told the teacher, "Claudia, come here."

Claudia went to the door like a sleepwalker. She had expected something unpleasant today. She hadn't shaken Tuesday yet and she was utterly unprepared for Wednesday. When a person eked out a lifetime on a day-by-hopeful-day basis, these things became important. Somehow Qaudia knew that Dorothy Brannan was the bearer of a terrible unpleasantness.

The older woman moved her hps close to Qaudia's ear and spoke in a half-whisper. "We are dismissing classes for the day. Go and help bring the children back inside so we can get them on their way quietly and orderly."

Qaudia's heart flopped painfully and she gasped, "Wh-what has happened?"

"The Governor and most of the government at Baton Rouge were murdered in their sleep last night. Something is

going on in Washington, also. Andrew has the tel-ed switched over to FBS if you want to come into the office after the children have left. But hurry, Claudia. Let us get these children into their own homes where they belong." Mrs. Brannan's composure was rapidly leaving her. She fought trembling hps and told the teacher, "For God's sake, Claudia, don't go to pieces now. Remember the children."

The elderly woman hurried out, leaving Claudia wringing her hands in stunned confusion. Then Claudia pulled her hands across her face, using a trick her father had taught her many years earlier, and as the hands slid away, a bright and smiling face was revealed, like the sun breaking through a dark cloud. She opened the outside door, marched calmly into the play yard, and began calmly and methodically rounding up the little mavericks and sending them into the old corral.

The playground was about emptied, some minutes later, when young Cecile Greene, the first-grade teacher, came running up. "I can't find Jimmy Hartman!" she cried, dancing about in a near panic.

Claudia placed a steadying hand on the younger teacher's shoulder and told her, "Go on back to your class. I'll find Jimmy. Look in on my gang, will you? Make them behave."

Qaudia watched Cecile spring back towards the building, then she rounded the corner by the zap-ball court in search of strays. A little girl of about seven collided with her. "Say, you're supposed to be inside," Qaudia told her. "Didn't you hear the bell?"

The dimpled doll gave Qaudia a con-girl smile and declared, "I didn't have time."

"Well you go on in. Do you know Jimmy Hartman?"

"Nope I don't."

"Well have you seen a little boy out here any place where he should not be?"

"Yes'm I did." She leaned far to the right, as though compensating for the perverse obscurities of geometric objects, and tried to point around the building, the corner

of which was several yards beyondoutstreyched hand "Talkin' to a chok-lut man."

Claudia pantomined a gross reaction to a stretched

truth, patted the littie girl on her bottom, and sent her on

her way. Then Claudia went looking for the boy who talked to chocolate men.

And she found him, talking to a chocolate man. Claudia did not realize at once that this was indeed the truth of the matter. She could see that there was a soldier involved in Jimmy's AWOL status. He was a large man, kneeling in front of the boy, an automatic weapon slung onto his back, muzzle down, his helmet riding loosely at the back of his neck, and he was talking earnestly to the six-year-old.

Somehow the sight of military virility and the armed jeep which stood at the curb just beyond was not nearly so disconcerting, nor did it seem so unusual to Claudia's mind on this particular morning as it would have been on, say—Tuesday morning. Somehow, what with her failure to properly discharge Tuesday, and with the incomprehensible disclosure by Dorothy Brannan such a short while earlier, the military seemed quite fitting and entirely proper. Even if they were, indeed, "chok-lut." Claudia could almost, in fact, have passed her hands back across her face and wept in the sudden joy of released responsibility.

Claudia was one of those rare whites who actually
missed
the black presence in Louisiana. One rarely saw a soldier and there were but two black towns in the entire state—no one went there. She found herself gazing at the soldier with a welling sentimentality. He looked
good,
by golly, no matter what anyone said—black
was
beautiful.

Jimmy Hartman's chubby little hand was placed trustingly upon the cheek of the soldier, and Jimmy was staring into the soldier's eyes with that unpaintable gaze of childoood fascination.