True Fires (20 page)

Ruth Barrows’s tobacco-raw voice answers abruptly at the first ring,
“Towncrier.”

“This whole damn town
oughtta
be cryin’ if what I just heard is true!”

“Just confirmed it with the County Registrar. Who told you?”

“The horse’s hind end himself. How the hell did this happen?”

“My best guess is a bunch of ballot stuffing in the Negro precincts,” Ruth tells her. “The very ones you’d think would vote him out kept him in. Any idea why?”

“Classic Fascism . . . fear beats out enlightened self-interest every time.” Lila says it bitterly.

“You think DeLuth fancies himself the local Il Duce?”

Lila hears the quick click of Ruth’s Zippo, the hungry pull on her cigarette. “No need to study the newsreels,” Lila says wearily. “Kyle’s nothing but a junkyard dog gone rabid on power. In someplace reasonable, they’d get a gun and shoot him, put us all out of his misery.”

39

Wednesday, the morning after the election, Principal Ed Cantrell’s in a piss-poor mood.

“May!” Cantrell groans, dropping the front section of the morning’s
Towncrier
on her desk. “What the hell’s wrong with the people of this county? Reelecting Kyle DeLuth Sheriff, plus Jim Gibbons and Sam Higginbotham to the school board?”

“Well, at least it was close,” May consoles him. “That’s progress.”

“They
won,
goddamnit,” Cantrell rages. “Four more years of idiocy!” he grouses, spilling coffee. He grabs a towel, does a lousy job of sopping up his mess, and barrels into his office. “No calls,” he snarls.

Minutes later, he hears the lobby door open, hears May call out from her desk, in welcome and in warning, “Why, Superintendent, Chairman Roberts! And
Sheriff,
good morning!”

Good Christ, now what?
Cantrell groans.

“Ed in, Miss May?” he hears Superintendent Larry Bateman ask.

“Well, sure,” May replies. “C’mon in. Get y’all some coffee?”

“No, thanks.” It’s Zeke Roberts, Chairman of the school board. “We won’t be staying.”

“Gentlemen,” Cantrell says, rising. Seeing the fourth man in his doorway, he adds, “May, another chair in here, please.”

But DeLuth, closing the door in May’s face, holds up his hand. “ ’S all right, Ed. My new deputy, Carl Paige.” He jerks his chin toward the new man. “We’ll stand.” Carl Paige’s look is rawboned, lanky, and vacant. But his clothes, Cantrell notes, are, like DeLuth’s, military pressed.

Cantrell sits. Across from him, Superintendent Bateman clears his scrawny throat, says, “Well, Ed—”, then stops. Instead, he reaches inside the breast pocket of his coat, pulls out a white Clark County School District envelope, slides it across the desk.

“What’s this?”

“Letter of resignation, Ed. We’d like you to sign it, please.”

“Me? You want
me
to sign it? Why? What for?”

Bateman’s Adam’s apple bobs like a float on a fishing line. A career bureaucrat, he eyes Zeke Roberts, then passes the buck. “The school board has directed me to ask you to leave.”

Big Zeke Roberts, Chairman, nods his jowled chin. “It was unanimous, Ed.”

“But, you haven’t told me why. What’s this all about?”
Should’ve seen this coming,
he thinks.

Behind Bateman and Roberts, DeLuth unfolds his arms, hitches up his uniform pants. “Oh, cut the crap, Ed. If you’d done your job in the first place, told them Nigger kids to take a hike the day they got here, the school board wouldn’t have its tit in the ringer over all this. If you’d kept your mouth shut in your Youth Group, ’stead of fomenting that petition, the whole damn country wouldn’t be readin’ about your foolishness in the Pinko Press. To my mind, you’ve either gone stupid or Red. Which is it?”

The man’s a goddamn lunatic,
Cantrell realizes, and drops his eyes back to Zeke Roberts. “What if I refuse to resign?”

“Then we’ll have to fire you, Ed. Blackball your record. You don’t want that.” Zeke’s big bulldog head sways as he threatens Cantrell with the end of his career.

Pencil-necked Bateman, at Roberts’s side, dips his head. “Ed, the board’s bein’ more than fair.”

Cantrell sits back, his swivel chair complains.
Think, THINK,
goddamnit!
“I’d like to think about this,” he says.
Should I call
an attorney? Who?

“Thinking time’s past, Eddie-boy.” DeLuth steps forward. “Sign it or not. We’re here to escort you off the premises.”

“Now?”
What the hell’s their hurry?

“Ed.” Pencil Neck hunches forward, apologetic. “No need to make this unpleasant. Principals and school boards part ways all the time. In your case, the board’s giving you the option to resign and go. Don’t make us fire you. Just go.”

Beside him, bulldog Roberts purses his lips. Behind him, the lunatic DeLuth fondles the ivory handle of his gun.

Cantrell has the dizzying sensation of watching the room but not being in it, watching himself open the Superintendent’s envelope and read its brief paragraph. They’d have him resign for “personal reasons.”
Personal? The race of the Dare kids, a small part
Indian, is
personal
? The teenagers in his Youth Group, seeing right from
wrong clearer than most adults, are
personal
? Bullshit! What will
be personal is May’s face when she hears about this. And, Alice. Goddamnit. Alice’s face when she learns the split-level’s o f. The question is
how’s he to go? Resign or be fired? Flight or fight? Scapegoat or martyr?

Cantrell sees himself shake his own head to clear it, finds himself wondering what the squat, balding guy on his side of the desk will do.

“Well, boys,” he hears his voice, miraculously steady, say, “looks like you all need a fall guy, and I’m it. I’ll go,”—he sees himself lean forward, smiling—“but not without telling you you’re a bunch of goddamn dinosaurs. You’re trampling the law here, the very moral wall between right and wrong, to suit your own pathetic prejudices.” Cantrell sees himself sign the letter with a flourish, flick the signed letter across the desk toward DeLuth, the biggest dinosaur of them all. “Today, you’re getting away with it. Four more years, maybe a few after that. But not forever. Someday, your kind will be extinct. Schoolkids will study your bones, wonder how in the hell you were allowed to live.”

40

Wednesday midmorning, Lila, dressed in workshirt, pants, and heavy grove boots, steps off the porch and strides toward the far-off sounds of the picking crew at work in the southwest-corner grove.

This being early November, she’s bound for the acres of big, arching navel trees, where the crew has been working to strip the heavy limbs of their first-ripe fruit. This being the day after the election, the steel-gray clouds, threatening an afternoon thunderstorm, match her mood perfectly.

In passing, she studies the fragrant oval fruit on the long rows of tangerine trees; the larger, rounder Temples; the pouty-lipped tangeloes; and the freckled Parson Browns. All appear to be ripening nicely toward their January-through-March picking dates.
Though, God knows, I’ll be long gone by
then,
she remembers. “Won’t I?” she wonders aloud, casting suspicious eyes toward the darkening sky.

She charts a diagonal course through the orderly tree rows, across the thick sandy soil that grasps and battles each step, toward the throaty calls and sporadic laughter of the pickers, each on his own high ladder. Finally, she spots the big green grove truck and, standing beside it issuing pick tickets (one for each box picked), foreman Franklin Dare.

“Miss Lila.” He drops his chin in greeting, raises watchful eyes to meet hers.

“Well, he won the election. I guess you know that.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“But, he’s lost his support in Tallahassee. I just spoke with the new Governor and he’s definitely on our side.”

Dare says nothing. But a nearly imperceptible shake of his head reminds her they are not alone. All around them, the grove’s gone quiet as a graveyard.

Of course.
“Let’s take a walk, shall we?” she suggests and turns toward the secondary grove road behind them.

“Nate,” Dare calls. A dark figure descends a nearby ladder. Dare hands him the ticket book and the pen, says, “Thank ye, Nate,” and falls into step beside her. He has the smell of lye soap, leather work gloves, and something else—
cornbread?
— upon him.

“Sorry,” she tells him softly.

“Most of ’em don’t cotton to the Sheriff any more’n ye do, ma’am. But, this bizness ’bout my younguns . . . well, t’ain’t that mine are any better than their’n.”

“You’re right.”
What was I thinking?

“My younguns jus’ are what they are, that’s all. And cain’t nobody say diff’rent.”

Dare’s demeanor—as politely considerate of the Negroes on his crew as he is of her—reminds her of something his son, Daniel, said at the newspaper office. “Got hisself a Silver Star, a Purple Heart, and everythin’,” the boy said. And Lila knows, from a multitude of attended ceremonies, that the Army’s Silver Star is awarded “for gallantry in action against the enemy.”
What did he do?
she wonders.
Who did
he save, and at what cost?
Dare radiates the decency of a man who’d refuse to leave a buddy behind.
It’s an admirable quality,
but not advantageous, she thinks, against a viper like Kyle DeLuth. Kyle requires powerful reinforcement.

“Fortunately, the Governor-elect agrees with you.”

Dare stops at the road. They both do. He stands for a moment, hands motionless at his sides, eyes studying the approaching thunderclouds. “What’s that mean, ma’am, exactly?”

“It means, one way or another, you and your children are goin’ to get your day in court. But, I’m afraid you’re goin’ to need more evidence than you have. It might mean a quick trip back to North Carolina to collect some specific documents.”

“But the crop—”

“Will get picked, whether you’re here or not.” Her tone deliberately issues the order. She watches his resistance flicker briefly then retreat.

“Yes, ma’am,” he says, flatly, with all due respect.

LATER, WHEN THE STORM BREAKS, Lila finds herself alone— Sissy’s gone out grocery shopping, and Violet’s retired to her bed “to nap.” No doubt, Dare’s got the crew in the shelter of the storage shed until the worst of the torrent passes.

Standing at the window of her father’s office, Lila watches the downpour, streaked silver by the frequent flash of lightning, struck mute by the heavy drum of thunder.

Dimly, as if across a great divide, she hears the Westminster chimes and thinks of London, the great green expanse of Bushey Park, the burst of buzz bombs, the confusion of fires and ambulances afterward. Again, the chimes, this time too near, too thin to be the real Westminster.
Good Lord, someone’s
at the front door! Who the hell’s out in weather like this?

She opens her door on the apologetic young officer—rainwater streaming off his cap, drenching his olive drab jacket—and recoils from the memory of that other young officer standing just there, just so, with the yellow telegram announcing Louis’s death. She notes the sharp planes of his cheeks and chin, the wariness of his eyes, the chevron on his shoulder sleeve. He’s not as young as she thought.

“Sergeant. Please come in.”

He steps inside bringing the scents of damp wool and military starch with him.

“What in the world brings you out in a storm like this?”

“Hand delivery, ma’am. Major L. Randall Hightower.”

“Really?” It was Jazz’s joke to address important mail with her middle name, sealed with Top Secret security tape.

“Is he here, ma’am?”

“He who?”

“The Major. No offense, ma’am, but this one’s marked Eyes Only.”

“
I’m
Major Lila Randall Hightower, Sergeant, Special Assistant to Lieutenant General J. P. Atkinson who, no doubt, sent me that case you’re carrying.”

The Sergeant’s eyes flatten. “Ma’am,” he says, striking a salute.

“At ease, Sergeant,” she tells him. “Do you have a pen?”

ALONE, Lila carries the flat, black attaché case back to the office, sets it in the center of the Judge’s desk, and stares at the label. Her name, in Jazz’s careful hand.

What are you up to?
she wonders. Knowing Jazz, it could be anything: an official memo or a
Stars and Stripes
cartoon, a Top Secret report, or the review of some new New York jazz club. Always, always there would be one message within another, one meaning overlaying the next. Like Art Tatum, his favorite piano player, Jazz could mentally riff, scat, jam on the surface, while underneath there was always an intense strategic intelligence at work, in tight, tactical command. Like Tatum, what others could only imagine, Jazz could envision and ruthlessly execute.

Ike had spotted him early—they’d been together in North Africa—and reeled him into Supreme Headquarters in London. At Bushey Park, Jazz had spotted Lila, not in person but by name on a series of Air Reconnaissance maps and their attendant analyses. He’d strolled into the W.A.C. map room demanding, “Where’s this genius named Hightower?” Then, he’d taken her to task for a number of small misinterpretations. Finally, he’d quietly had her transferred to G-2, Army Intelligence, authoring their daily reports to the Supreme Command.

He picked her, he claimed, because she had “the brains of a General, and the good sense not to blush, or back down from an asinine superior officer, like I was, the day we met.”

Their relationship was all business, until Paris, and the devastating massacre of America POWs at Malmedy—“Eighty-one of our boys with bullets in their heads; their bodies left to rot in the snow. Damnit, Lila, we knew those butchers in the Waffen SS were on the move! With better intelligence, we might have rerouted that battalion, instead of sending them in, like pigs to slaughter.” In the emotional maelstrom that was Paris, January ‘45, they sought solace in the smoky jazz caves off Rue de la Huchette, and found it, finally, at the Hotel Bonchasse.

He’d made promises then: “Soon as this war’s over, I’m out of this Army
and
my marriage.” Promises that Ike rendered impossible with their transfer, after V-E Day, to EUCOM. And her temporary assignment to W.A.C. Command for the Berlin Airlift, the most harrowing 328 days of her life. After Berlin, he’d promised her Virginia: “Just you, me, and half a dozen horses, kid.” Then General Ridgeway summoned them to Korea for Operations Thunderbolt, Killer, Ripper, and Piledriver, and the frustrating “armistice without peace.” Then Ike offered up the prestigious War College, the chance to set straight the Army’s next generation. The excuses were endless until, just six weeks ago, she’d dared to believe Jazz again: “This time I really mean it, HiLi. We are history!” And now he was Assistant Chief of Staff.

I can’t do this anymore, Jazz.
She eyes the package, her name in his hand.
It’s been too much, too long. I just can’t do it anymore.

But it won’t hurt to look, will it?
a part of her argues.
To hear
what he says, to see what he’s sent? Of course not.
She reaches for scissors and slits the Top Secret sealing tape. Inside, with no greeting or explanation, is a vinyl disk, a 45 record, with its label removed.

Curious, she switches on her father’s hi-fi, removes the record from its anonymous sleeve, and sets the turntable spinning.

“Perdu,”
the voice croons, an older, mellowed version of the young male chansonnier they discovered in Paris. “Lost,” he despairs, with a melancholy swell of strings. Beyond help, beyond hope, he feels like a king toppled from his throne, a priest bereft of his faith, a tenor robbed of his voice.
“Chérie
combien je suis perdu sans toi”
—Darling, I am lost without you.

Oh, Jazz, how many dark, down-the-alley record shops did you
have to comb to find this?
She resists the memory of young Charles Aznavour on stage in the Rue de la Huchette, light sculpting his impudent, ironic face, shadows cloaking the effect of his songs on the couples in the corner booths.
Oh, Jazz . . .
She wills her fingers to lift the needle, turn over the record.

The reverse is worse.
Did he know it would be?
Accompanied by a single, plaintive piano, Aznavour pleads,
“Reviens, mon
amour, ma vie”
—Come back, my love, my life. A miserable repentant, he admits his mistake, begs her forgiveness, entreats her to return, to lay her head once more
“au creux de mon
épaule”
—in the hollow of my shoulder.

This time, the pictures hold: The rain-soaked walks to the Hotel Bonchasse, the entwined rides up the ancient iron elevator, the shameless, shared shedding, begun in the dark hallway, of coats, clothes, zippers, clasps. Inside the shuttered room, on the small, swaybacked bed, Lila recalls, the knowing slide of his hand on her hip, the greedy glide of arms, legs, tongues—
oh, Jazz
—turning, twisting, teasing—
oh, you, oh
— until the swelling tide, bidden, the surging waves, ridden, broke—OH!—over them, on them, in them—
YES!
—heaving them apart, breathless, rolling them, softly, back together—
yes
—and afterward, always afterward, in the sighing ebb, the warm, safe settling into—
where else?
—the hollow of his shoulder.

The song ends. In silence, Lila drifts toward the window, stares out at the now whispering streams of rain. She has the sense that someone—Sissy, Franklin, and the picking crew— will be returning soon. And she struggles to regain herself.

Oh, Jazz . . .
What was it about him that had always pushed her past thought, past reason, into the abyss of all-forgetting passion? And kept her there, in the private heaven and hell of their nine-year affair?

In the early days, he’d seemed like some powerful planet pulling her into orbit around him. Like the moon to his Earth, or Earth to his sun, she’d surrendered, hungrily, to his greater gravity. But through the years, the endless circling had left her dizzy, the broken promises tilted her off course. She’d begun to wobble, and to wonder:
Was it his irresistible pull, or
my own aching need that kept us spiraling through time and space together?

Oh, Jazz . . .
Lila looks out at the rain, abating.
You and I
both know that you’ve never, in your entire life, been the least bit lost.
And I . . . well, I’m not exactly sure—not yet—but I am most certainly past
perdu
.

LATE THAT AFTERNOON, Lila’s outside settling up the day’s wages with Dare and the crew. Sissy opens the back door and calls, “Phone’s for you!”

“ ’Scuse me, Franklin,” Lila says and calls back, “Can you take a message, please?”

“Somebody from Washin’ton! Sounds important!”

“Franklin, sorry, will you finish up?” she asks, moving toward the house without waiting for his answer.
Jazz?
she gasps inwardly, putting on a mask of mild interest to get past Sissy and into the office, behind the closed door. At the desk, she sits, takes a breath, picks up the waiting receiver. “Hello?”

“Lila, is that you? It’s Myrt! Myrt O’Reilly. You are one tough cookie to get hold of. Sorry to hear about your father.”

Lila pictures Myrt’s broad, smiling face, her stocky frame, her ultra-efficient manner with the men loading and unloading the planes at Wiesbaden during their shared stint in the Airlift.

“Myrt, it’s been years! Five? Six? How in the world are you?
Where
in the world are you?”

Myrt treats Lila to the hearty chuckle she remembers. “I’m in D.C.—where you should be, dear girl—on Secretary Hobby’s staff.”

“
Secretary
Hobby! Bet
that
took some gettin’ used to.”

For Lila, and W.A.C.’s everywhere, Colonel Oveta Culp Hobby was their patron saint, organizer and first commander of the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps. They revered Hobby for getting the Army’s all-male Top Brass to accord female volunteers the full military rights they deserved as soldiers in the Women’s Army Corps. After the war, Hobby retired and went home to Texas. But early last year, Ike tapped her to become the first Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, the nation’s only female cabinet member.

“Well, we don’t have to salute her, if that’s what you mean,” Myrt says. “And, as you can imagine, I do
not
miss the uniforms!” Poor Myrt. She’d spent months complaining that neither olive drab nor khaki did a thing for her florid, freckled looks. “But, what about
you,
kiddo? Had enough sunshine? Ready to get back to work?”