Across a War-Tossed Sea (10 page)
It was the best Christmas present Charles could have.
22 January 1944
Dearest Mum,
It was a terrific Christmas, except for not seeing you, of course. We even had a proper snowfall on the 28th with FIVE INCHES of good packing snow for snowballs and snowmen. Freddy and I built a fort with escape tunnels. It was brilliant! Even the brothers said so.
The Ratcliffs were awfully kind to us this Christmas. I am far too grown up now for toys, so the Ratcliffs gave meThe Flickering Torch Mystery. It is the 22nd book in the Hardy Boys series. It is a cracking good mysteryâabout rare silkworms disappearing from a scientific research farm. Mrs Ratcliff said it was time I read some American books. I have nearly worn out the ones I brought from home. I hope you will not mind, I gave Freddy my copy ofThe Jungle Bookfor Christmas. He has no books of his own except some Uncle Wiggily adventures with the covers falling off that a lady from the Salvation Army gave him.
For Christmas, Patsy took us to seeLassie Come Home. Have you seen it? It is set in Yorkshire and stars a pretty little English girl named Elizabeth Taylor. (She is an evacuee, too!) Hearing all those British accents did make me rather homesick. Lassie is sold because her family is too poor to keep her. But she makes her way back to them through TERRIBLE danger all the way from Scotland. Charles got rather funny about it and wouldn't talk for the rest of the night.
Do you know there was a group of GERMAN POWs in the cinema? We spotted them as we left. Bobby had to hold on to Charles to keep him from shouting at them. I thought it frightfully strange. Freddy is not allowed in the movie house because he is a Negro. But they let in the Axis?
Oh, here is a news flash: In February, I get to go with Freddy to watch the launching of the aircraft carrier his daddy has been working on. Please stay safe and tell Hamlet he is as good as any old movie dog.
Your loving son,
Wesley Bishop
Dear Dad,
Happy New Year! I have made all sorts of resolutions for 1944. One is I shall never make fun of farmers again. I have certainly learned how hard their lot is, particularly in bad weather. We had sleet on Christmas Day and then a heavy snowfall three days later. The pipes in the barn's well froze and burst. I must have hauled a thousand pails of water from the creek for the chickens and the mules until we got it fixed. We had to shovel trails to the sheds. There was no just slogging through. Half the orchard trees split from the weight of the ice and snow. Mrs Ratcliff cried when she realised they would only get half the number of apples and damsons in the next few years as a result.
I have started plane-watching with Patsy for the Yanks' warning system. We stand in a tower and scan the sky with binoculars. Whenever we spot a plane, we dial up Civilian Defense and report what type and where it is headed. We have memorized the silhouettes of 54 planes, their markings, the number and placement of engines, the shape of their noses and tails, that sort of thing. I can now ID German and Japanese planes from a long distance, but we have only seen American aircraft, of course. There are more planes overhead here than you might think. The Richmond Air Base is only five miles away. We see them all the time at the farm. The trainees tend to return up the James and take a right turn over Curles Neck to approach the base for landing.
Identifying planes does make me feel like I am doingsomethingfor the war effort. But it is a joke compared to what I know the London skies have been filled with. The air force dropped sacks of flour on Richmond in a mock air raid to show what incendiary bombs could do. But splattered flour is not exactly a good replica of the flames of a firebomb. My mates would fall over laughing at the idea.
Did you make any resolutions for yourselves? I hope you have made one to let me come homethisyear. The Allies landed at Anzio today. Surely now we shall be able to beat back the Nazis in Italy, and then Hitler will have to shift his attention from bombing England to covering his own bum.
Keep safe and stay well.
Yours ever,
Charles
“J
iminy Cricket! Just like Daddy said!” Freddy crowed.
Wesley looked up and up and up at the gray sides of the USS
Ticonderoga
, docked within a massive labyrinth of scaffolding. He whistled. “Blimey! How big is that thing?”
Freddy grinned and recited the stats from memory: “Eight hundred, eighty-eight feet long, the length of two and a half football fields. It has eight boilers and four steam turbines. It'll carry eighty-two planes and three thousand, four hundred and forty-eight men. And,” he added proudly, “my daddy helped build it.”
“He sure did,” said Alma, patting Freddy's arm. “It's the sixth aircraft carrier your daddy has helped build in Newport News in two years.” She and Ed stood behind the boys, their hands resting on Wesley's and Freddy's shoulders to shield them from the push and shove of high-ranking dignitaries hurrying closer to the grandstandâa steady tide of naval officers in dress uniform, politicians in felt fedoras and heavy overcoats, and women in pearls, mink coats, white gloves, and Sunday-best hats.
“Thirty-four hundred men? That's a city of people!” Wesley murmured to himself, as he gazed at the ship towering over him. Bristling with antiaircraft guns, the carrier's control tower rose in tiers like a titanic steel wedding cake hanging on one side of its wide, pancake-flat flight deck.
How could such a top-heavy, lopsided vessel keep itself aright on the sea? Wesley thought back to the boat he crossed the Atlantic in, how its pointed prow rose and fell in those massive waves, slicing the water in geysers of spray. He started to tremble, remembering the trip, remembering how quickly the sea could swallow something as huge as an aircraft carrier.
“You all right, son?” Ed patted Wesley's shoulder.
“Yes, sir.” Wesley rubbed his forehead with his scratchy woolen gloves to push the nightmare crossing out of his head. He'd gotten better at controlling his awful flashbacks by concentrating on something around him that was tangible and real.
So he shifted to looking at the crowd. Way down the length of the carrier was a small platform where a lady was supposed to shatter a bottle of champagne on the hull to christen it. Long streamers of American flags dangled from the ship's deck to the platform where sat admirals and captains and dozens of invited guests.
“Where's your daddy?” Wesley asked Freddy.
Freddy leaned over the railing and pointed to a lower dock right on the waterline. “He gets to knock free the under-timbers when the lady cracks the bottle on the hull. Here's how it goes: A lady the navy asked to do the honors will shout”âFreddy adopted a high pitched voiceâ“âIn the name of the United States I christen thee the USS
Ticonderoga
.'” He switched back to his own tenor. “Then she smashes the bottle on the bow to bless it. The ship's supposed to glide magic-like down the shipway ramp into the water, like the lady set it a-sailing with her little tap of a bottle. But it doesn't move until my daddy knocks free those timbers.”
Wesley peered at the dozens of men in work jumpers down below, packed together, waiting patiently. “Can you spot him?”
“No,” Freddy replied. “But I know he's there.”
As he spoke, more spectators crowded onto the docks. A white man smelling of tobacco and whisky knocked into Ed with a surly and sarcastic, “Excuse me.” He lingered behind them.
Ed stiffened and kept staring forward. He didn't turn around to acknowledge the man's presence or budge from his spot by the railing. Alma tightened her grip on Wesley's shoulder.
The man moved on, grumbling.
“Pay him no mind, son,” Alma whispered. “The Lord makes all sorts, even rapscallions.” Wesley wasn't sure, but he thought he heard Freddy mutter a bad word.
Before he could puzzle out what that was about, Alma's face brightened. “Look, boys. They'll be starting now.”
Way down the dock, elevated from the crowd on the platform, an admiral stepped up to a podium and began speaking. His words didn't carry all the way down the length of the ship to where Wesley stood. But he could hear the man's voice rise and fall. Then there was a ripple of hats coming off as a chaplain led a prayer. Finally, a small woman in a long fur coat and white orchid corsage stepped up to take a bottle hanging from a ribboned rope.
“Come on, little lady,” said Ed. “Crack that thing.”
“Amen,” murmured Alma.
“It's bad luck if the bottle doesn't break,” Freddy explained to Wesley.
The crowd waited, hushed. She pulled the bottle back and in a graceful little gesture tossed it. It bounced off the ship like a badly served tennis ball off a court net.
The crowd gasped.
One of the naval officers caught the swinging bottle and gave it back to her.
“Aw, maaaan. They shoulda let my mama crack that bottle,” Freddy muttered. “She'd have whacked it. That bottle not breaking is serious bad luck.”
“Shush, child.” Alma silenced him.
The young woman tried again. This time she hauled the bottle way back, guided by the officer, and threw her whole body toward the ship as she hurled the champagne.
SMASH!
Even where they stood, Wesley could hear the shatter of glass and see a spray of fizz from the exploding champagne.
The crowd cheered, whistles blew, the shipyards' sirens blasted, and the waiting tugboats tooted, as down below Freddy's father and his coworkers set the ship free. The
Ticonderoga
slid into the wide James River, parting the waters with a great wake of waves and hope.
“That was brilliant!” Wesley chirped, revisiting the excitement of the morning. They'd spent the afternoon with Freddy's parents and now waited on Washington Avenue outside the dry dock company's main gate for the bus that would take them home.
“You're darn tootin'!” answered Freddy.
It was just a few minutes before five o'clock. The round-the-clock shifts were changing. Even though he was a native Londoner, Wesley had grown so accustomed to the quiet of the Ratcliff farm, he was a bit overwhelmed by the ocean of workers on the street, surging to the dry dock company's gates or flooding out to catch the packed trolley cars going up and down the avenue.
Nearby a truck backfired. Other drivers laid on their horns. Against his will, Wesley started to tremble again. This time because Newport News's hubbub reminded him of the urgency of London at war.
Abruptly, the five o'clock siren sounded, signaling the end of the work day for some, the beginning of it for others. Most didn't react to the blaring sound. But Wesley flinched and stiffened. Being around big ships all day had brought back a lot of very bad memories. Now the siren's wail sounded like the alarm he'd heard over and over again back home when the Luftwaffe was coming loaded with hellfire.
The truck backfired again. It might as well have been a firecracker going off at his feet. The popping backfire, the siren's wail, threw Wesley back to London.
He looked nervously to the sky, waiting for the first whistling scream of a bomb falling through the air. He backed away from Freddy, not seeing him, only the rush of hurrying people, and waded into the stream of passersby. He needed to find the nearest shelter, quick!
Somewhere, far away, Wesley heard a voice calling him. Then strong hands reached past the crush of bodies and turned him around. “Where you going, son?” Ed guided Wesley back to the bus stop, just as a mud-splattered bus pulled up.
Shaking, trying to reel himself back into Virginia, Wesley let Ed hold him back while everyone else boarded. He, Ed, Alma, and Freddy were the last to step aboard. Rattled as he was, Wesley didn't pay attention to the fact that they walked all the way down the aisle, past plenty of empty seats, to cram themselves into already crowded benches in the back.
“I think you look a mite discombobulated, honey lamb. Better sit with us,” said Alma.
Of course he was going to sit with Freddy, thought Wesley; why wouldn't he?
The bus driver pulled the long lever to close the door and started to pull away from the curb. But a few more passengers rushed it, banging on the glass. He let them in. Wesley recognized the faces of two teenage boys who bounded up the steps. They'd been to the Ratcliffs' Halloween party. Behind them came the rude man who smelled of tobacco and whiskey.
As the bus left Newport News and headed toward Richmond along the country highway paralleling the James, Wesley shed his distressing flashback by watching the passing landscape. When dusk fell and he could no longer see much out the window, he and Freddy discussed the pros and cons of the planes the
Ticonderoga
would carry into battle. They speculated where the carrier might sail first.
Then, knowing Freddy loved jokes, Wesley repeated one the twins had told him. “Knock-knock!”
Freddy grinned. “Who's there?”
“Dwayne.”
“Dwayne who?”
“Dwayne the bathtub, I'm dwowning!”
The boys burst out laughing.
“Wait, I got one,” Freddy said. “Knock-knock.”
“Who's there?”
“Boo.”
“Boo who?”
“Don't cry. It's only a joke.”
The adults sitting around them chuckled. Even the bad-tempered man up front turned around and grinned at them. But only for a moment. He nudged one of the teenagers, who also looked back. They whispered together.
“Say, kid,” the teenager called. “Aren't you one of the Brits staying with the Ratcliffs?”
Wesley smiled. “Yes, I am.”
“I thought so.” The teen smiled too. He gestured for Wesley to come up front. “Come on up here and join us. You don't need to sit in the back of the bus.”
“Oh, thanks very much. That's very kind of you,” said Wesley. “But I'm fine right here.”
The teen's face clouded. “Really, kid, you should come up here.” His tone of voice was no longer so friendly. “You don't belong back there.”
Wesley was aware of a sudden tense silence in the bus. Ed and Alma seemed to have frozen. Freddy straightened his glasses. He was looking at Wesley with the strangest expression, like he was waiting for Wesley to prove something.
Freddy pointed to a large sign nailed into the seat in front of them that said
WHITES
on its front. For the first time Wesley realized that only white people were sitting in front of it. All the Negroes on the bus crowded in behind it. He was sitting in the “colored” section.
Wesley looked back to the teen. “Is there a law that says I can't sit here?”
Instantly, the man took his sincere question as back talk. He stood up, whacking the arms of the boys, who then rose out of their seats as well.
“Ed,” Alma breathed, nervously putting her hand on her husband's arm.
Suddenly, the bus swerved and pulled over to the side of the road. The driver turned around and opened the door. “No trouble on my bus, gentlemen. Sit down or get off.” He was a big man and his blue uniform strained against the muscles in his arms.
The teenagers plopped down immediately. The man squared himself. “You standing up for coloreds, Mac?” the man snarled.
“I'm standing up for my bus. There will be no trouble on it. Get out or sit down. We've got ten more minutes to the terminal. Your choice.”
“You gonna make me?” the man challenged.
The bus driver reached below his seat and pulled out a baseball bat. “I see now that you're drunk, mister. I wouldn't have let you on the bus in the first place if I'd realized that. Now sit down or get off before I blow my top.”
Grumbling, the man sat.
The rest of the drive the bus was eerily silent. When he pulled into the station, the driver told the man and the boys to get off first. As he stomped down the stairs, the teen who'd invited Wesley to join him turned around and pointed at Wesley. “I'll be lookin' for you, boy.”
“Better hang back a few minutes,” the driver cautioned Alma, Ed, Freddy, and Wesley. He waited with them as the teenagers and man disappeared down the street, and only then did the five of them step out onto the roadway. “My son is fighting in Sicily. He just wrote that a squadron of Negro pilots from Tuskegee has been mighty helpful there. Mighty helpful. I hope after the war things are different for you folks.”
He turned to Wesley and asked, “You ever seen a snapping turtle, son?”
“No sir.”
“Well, a snapping turtle is an ornery thing. Once it snaps and bites onto something it thinks is threatening it, it won't let go. A boy like that, who swallows his daddy's nasty attitudes, that kind of boy latches on hard to trouble. Watch yourself.”
The driver tipped his hat at Alma and left.