Early Warning (9 page)

Frank asked the bartender for a gin and tonic. He took his drink to the sunny table and sat down. A new mixer, Bitter Lemon, masked the flavor of the gin almost entirely. He formed the name with his lips, and made up his mind to look for some. The first girl through the door caught his eye, gave him a big smile. She went to the bar, ordered a Scotch and soda, and made an elaborate show of walking past him, looking for a table, then walking past him again. When she finally settled herself, he looked over at her, lifted his eyebrow, and smiled. His smile, he knew, was irresistible. He was no less good-looking than he had always been, just sharper and harder.

This one was wearing a mouton jacket. The waist of her dress was cinched tight, and she had Jayne Mansfield tits, but Frank estimated that she had ten years on Jayne Mansfield. She got up and came over to him, not forgetting to sway her hips and let her eyelids droop. She said, “You from around here?”

Frank cocked his head, neither shaking it nor nodding. He gestured for her to sit down. She said, “You staying at this hotel?” She waved her hand to indicate the building they were sitting in. Frank kept smiling.

She said, “Yeah, well. Fine.” She smiled and took a sip of her drink. Frank felt himself get a little excited. There was a kind of run-down quality about her that he hadn't seen much of lately. He took his room key out of his pocket and set it on the table. She nodded, then smiled and said, “So I guess you aren't from around here. By the looks of you, you must be from Germany, maybe, but that's okay with me. I was just a kid in the war. Worse now, in a way, at least where I'm from—Allentown, that is, a little ways west of here.” She babbled on, confident that he didn't understand a word of what she was saying. She smiled at odd places in her discourse, he supposed to keep him interested. “So, anyway, they say New York's a big city and all, but it's just another small town. Me, I would like to go somewhere else, but I can never get together the dough.” Frank noticed that her right cheekbone was a little bruised, carefully made up. What got him a little more excited—the bruise itself or the care in hiding it—he didn't know. He moved to stand up. She said, “Okay, then, Mr. Schulz, yes, let's get it over with, since you ain't got much to say.”

They went out of the bar and through the lobby; he put his hand on the back of her waist and guided her away from the elevator and toward the staircase, which was shabbily elaborate, with a faded green silk rope and tassels looped along the pink-satin-papered wall. He pressed her up the stairs. He heard her say, “I guess it isn't enough to work all day, can't even take the elevator.” She probably didn't know that she had a magnificent ass, perfectly heart-shaped and outlined by the shiny material of her burgundy-colored skirt. He kept her in front of him, and handed her the key. When she unlocked the door, he pushed it open and pushed her through so that she stumbled, though she didn't fall. She said, “Hey!
Nein! Nein
with the rough stuff, Herr Schulz!”

Frank smiled and nodded.

He was gentle after that, but quick—he had a huge erection, hard and upright, throbbing against the belt of his pants. As soon as he was inside the room with the door shut, he stepped out of his shoes and dropped his trousers. Her eyes widened.

She set down her purse, stepped out of her own shoes. Her skirt had a side zipper, and it took her a moment to get out of it. She was wearing a pretty tight girdle, which was arousing, and after she took off her stockings (carefully, so as not to run them), it took her some effort to slip out of it. She kept her eyes on him, though—alternating between looking at his cock, which he was stroking and then slipping into the condom he had brought along, and his face.

He didn't give her time to take off her blouse, just sat her firmly on the end of the bed and then pushed her back. He was so excited that he had to close his eyes as soon as he entered her and think of Andy to calm himself down, Andy smoothing Pond's cold cream all over her face. Then he opened his eyes, and his face was right beside the face of this whore; her eyes were greenish gray, and you could see the bottom arc of the pupils above her darkly mascaraed lower lids. He had his hands on her perfect ass and he was tearing her apart.

Or so it seemed, but of course not. He finished thrusting and she gave an unconscious little sigh, waited a polite few moments, and then eased him off her and went into the bathroom.

When she came out, he almost forgot that he couldn't speak English, but he remembered at the last moment, and just took two twenties out of his billfold and held them out to her. He threw the twenties
on the bed and shrugged. She paused, then reached out and took them, putting them in her handbag without finding her own wallet. Then she pulled out a pack of Kents and a Zippo lighter and went over to the window, which she opened three inches. She said, “You know, stupid me, I gotta have a smoke first, even before I put my clothes back on. I been smoking since I was thirteen—can you believe that?—my brother got me going. He used to swipe my dad's Viceroys. My dad thought he was smoking four packs a day!” She laughed.

Frank couldn't stand this woman. She was perfect.

He was out of there by six and home by six-forty-five. It was still light, and Janny was playing with another girl from down the street—what was her name?—they were tossing Janny's Pluto Platter back and forth. Frank was in a good mood, so he didn't let their clumsiness bother him. He went through the gate, set down his briefcase, and said, “Hey, girls. Let me show you a trick.”

Janny approached him more suspiciously than the neighbor girl, who walked right over and handed him the disc. Janny stood off a step or two. He knelt on one knee and put the girl's hand on the front of the disc, then put his head next to hers and his hand over hers. Then he said, “Okay, now, you keep your hand flat and your thumb up and you watch the top of the Pluto Platter the whole time you're throwing it. You look at where you want to throw it until you let go. You want to throw it right where your thumb is, okay?” Then they tossed it toward the gate, and it landed on the walk right there, in front of the gate. The girl jumped away from him and said, “That was good!” She ran to get it.

Janny said, “I want to try it.”

“Okay, then. Come over here.” She nestled against him suddenly, as if her usual reserve had collapsed. The neighbor girl brought them the Pluto Platter. He kept his mouth shut, but Janny had been listening, and she arranged herself the way the other girl had and tossed the disc. It went right over the gate and into the street. He squeezed her shoulder and said, “Good for you, Janny,” then gently, ever so gently, pushed her away.

—

SPUTNIK HAD BEEN DISCOVERED
up there in the sky in early October. Now that Joe was beginning the corn harvest with his uncle John
and John's son Gary, he had plenty of time to stare west, imagining a just barely visible glowing plume rising over the horizon, and plenty of time to look east, wondering what was happening behind him. Of course, no farmers discussed this. The real mystery was that they hadn't thought about it in this way before. Yes, the Russkies had had the bomb for years now, but bombers took a while and could be shot out of the sky somewhere over, say, Canada. But missiles, like the one that launched Sputnik, took less than half an hour, it was said. Faster than a tornado, hardly time to head for the storm cellar. This year had been a good one for tornadoes, too—nine in May alone, and five more in the summer—though none had touched down as close as the one in '51, which took out most of that church up in Randolph and stayed on the ground for almost an hour, people up there said. Joe himself hadn't seen a thing that day—just been standing in the barn, fixing something, and looked up to see how green the sky was. Well, bombs and missiles would be worse.

These were not thoughts he shared with Lois or Minnie. It might be that Lois, who read only cookbooks and was bored by the news, didn't know what Sputnik was, though Minnie, because of her position at the high school, of course did. One of the first things she'd said about it was “Look out. More homework.” And she was right. A big deal was being made in the paper every day about whether American children were wasting their time in school reading
Dick and Jane
and learning addition tables—maybe they should be reading something more challenging and learning how to use a slide rule in second grade. According to Minnie, who did keep her ears open, they were going to put “missile silos” out west, in the Dakotas and Nebraska. Those would be targets, too.

The funny thing was, and he was reminded of this every day he harvested the corn, he had just bought a new tractor in the spring, an International Harvester 400, a huge thing, 48 horsepower, and he had spent the whole summer worrying about how and when he was going to pay it off. That Sputnik satellite got into his mind (they said you could see it passing over, but he hadn't), and he forgot to worry about the tractor, even though it was red, like the bull's-eye in a target.

They finished the row they were harvesting, at the far end of the north field behind his house, and he jumped down off the tractor. As they walked toward the back door, John, who was seven years older
than Joe but looked the same age, started talking about a combine he'd heard about that propelled itself. The tractor could be off doing something else. Gary said, “Like what, grocery shopping?” and they all laughed.

“No,” said John, “it's got these snap rolls to get rid of the stalks and the leaves. Then the ears go through the cylinder, and out come the kernels. You got good bins, you can let the kernels dry out right on the farm.”

“What would we do all winter, then?” said Joe.

Before John could answer, Gary said, “Fix the combine.”

They kicked off their boots, took off their jackets, stomped around, and brushed themselves down. Even though not much in the way of dust was rubbed away, they were only going into the kitchen. Lois wouldn't complain about that. As soon as they were inside and pulling out their chairs, she started taking dishes out of the oven. First came the green beans, then the roast potatoes and carrots, then the rib roast. This extremely appetizing piece of beef was from one of John's steers—he still kept five or six head in the hillside pasture he had up there, not a slope he wanted to plow, up, down, or sideways.

Joe said, “Where're the kids?”

“Jesse's napping, and Minnie took Annie into Usherton for the afternoon. I think she is taking her to a matinee of some movie about a squirrel.”

Joe said, “I hope it doesn't scare her to death.”

But, really, what was the use of talking, when there was all this food to eat? He, John, and Gary dove in.

Joe said, “Granny Mary loves Burt Lancaster. She says he reminds her of a boy she once knew.”

Gary stared at him. Joe shrugged. Gary was twenty now. He was the only one of John's three to stay on the farm—and why wouldn't he? With John, they all farmed seven hundred acres between them, and no other relative—not Frank or Henry or Buddy or Jimmy or Kurt—had the slightest interest. Even Gary was iffy—he talked sometimes about joining the army. But someday he could have this, if he wanted it.

Lois sat in her chair with her elbow on the table and a smile on her face. In the summer, she'd won the pie contest at the county fair for the second year in a row. Dave Crest found some old variety of apples
called Spitzenbergs, and she made a pie layering thin slices of those with blueberries. But when she was trying out her recipe (ten pies altogether), she ate just a sliver of each. Joe knew Lois didn't love him anymore, and probably his love of her had flowered and faded, too, something not deeply rooted or lasting, like his old love of Minnie, but they all got along; on a farm, practicality ruled.

Love was for the children—Lois was especially good at that. She was responsible and affectionate, and she had a remarkable way of teaching them things. When she had to tell them something, she squatted down, took hold of a little hand, and looked the child in the eye. Then she explained, and they nodded, and they really did understand. How many times when he was a kid had Joe himself sworn up and down that he understood, just to get Walter or Rosanna to go away and leave him alone? How many times had he seen Frank nod agreement, flash his brilliant smile, and then go right back to making trouble once Walter was out of hearing? Joe let the kids crawl all over him, and he carried them on his shoulders, and he bounced Jesse on his knee. He mimicked animal sounds and bird sounds for them. When he told Lois how Lillian had once read books to Claire while Joe made the animal noises in the background, Lois loved that anecdote, so they tried it, and their kids loved it, too. He wasn't a good disciplinarian, but Minnie's expressed opinion was that strict fathers were too scary for small children. If there was spanking to be done, well, Aunt Minnie could do it, and Joe could stand in the background, frowning and shaking his head, and then Mommy Lois could hand out a cookie afterward and sit with the child, petting Poppy. Minnie had lots of opinions about kids and their families, as well she should, given the parade of kids through her office every school year.

Between them, Joe, John, and Gary ate almost everything on the table, and then John pretended to need Gary to pull him out of his chair. Joe said, “Say, John, what did you feed that steer? Meat's delicious!”

“Clover all up and down that slope.”

Nat and Poppy were sitting on the back porch when they came out, and full of burrs. Joe would have some brushing to do that evening, and probably there were ticks on the dogs, too, if they'd been in the burrs. In front of him, John said something that floated away in the wind. Joe smiled. Yes, he was. He was a happy man.

W
HEN HIS DAD
and his mom were going back and forth all winter about whether to move out of D.C. and if so where to go, Tim was against it. He had a group of friends, and he was the boss of those six guys, who ran with him on the playground and roamed with him in the neighborhood. Three streets in any direction, there were stores, parks, playgrounds, anything you wanted. But it was also true that, if he was going to get rid of Dean and all his crap, then they needed a bigger house. Somehow, no one was in favor of Tim's preferred plan, putting Dean and his stuff in the cellar, or his alternate plan, taking over the cellar himself. You got out of the cellar by going up a few steps and pushing open a metal door, and there you were in the side yard. That was a possibility until he and Brad Widger laid some boards around the floor of the cellar and then ran a line of DuPont Cement along the boards to a cherry bomb inside a tin can (he had poked a hole in the side of the can for the fuse to stick out of). When the bomb exploded, the bang was pretty loud. Debbie, who was reading on the couch, said that she was lifted into the air, and Mom almost fainted, because she knew that Tim and Brad were in the cellar, and she thought the furnace had exploded. The tin can had gone up the stairs, bounced against the door, and unraveled along its seams. Mr. Widger whipped Brad with his belt, and Dad had made Tim clean the walls of the cellar with a scrub brush.

All of a sudden they found the perfect place—open house on Sunday, purchase agreement on Monday, then moving in two weeks later, March 1. It was expensive—forty thousand dollars (though Mom and Dad didn't know that he leafed through the papers on Dad's desk one day and discovered that). He also knew, from listening to them whispering in the kitchen, that Colonel Grandfather Manning Sir had left just about that amount in his will. The new house was on five acres, all on one floor, and had six doors to the outside, any of which Tim could get out of anytime, day or night, that he cared to.

He remained grumpy. There were only twenty kids in his new sixth-grade class, and as if that wasn't bad enough, the junior high was small, too—forty kids in that class. He felt stuck in the middle of nowhere. Until he met the Sloans.

Steve and Stanley were the oldest of eight. Steve was three months older than Tim, and Stanley was ten months younger. The Sloans knew the entire area like the back of their hand (or hands). Their dad was an electrician. Electricity was interesting, and by smiling at Mr. Sloan and paying attention, Tim got himself taken along when the Sloan boys had to work Saturdays, which was fine with everyone at home—Dad thought he was learning something practical, Mom thought he was making new friends, Debbie thought he was not pestering her, Dean thought he was not tormenting him, and who knew what Tina thought; she was always staring at him with her thumb in her mouth, even when it was painted red with iodine.

The Sloan boys were not exactly troublemakers, but that was because the Sloan parents' definition of trouble was a narrow one. Roaming far and wide, catching a fish or two, stealing strawberries or raspberries, swimming in the creek, swinging on branches back and forth across the creek—none of these activities were considered troublemaking. If there was a surplus of something, you could have some even if it didn't quite belong to you.

On their bikes, it took Tim, Steve, and Stanley about fifteen minutes to get to the new development, a string of one-acre lots where some contractors were building big houses. The house and the barn were way up a hill behind these lots; Steve said the people in that house sold the land because they were old and running out of money. All the lots fronted on Quantock Road, formerly dirt, now paved. A street went up the hill between the fifth lot and the sixth lot. This
was a new street, called “Harkaway Street.” There was a pond up by the old house, and a little creek ran from it down Harkaway Street and into a big pipe, carrying the water past Quantock Road, where it went back into the regular creek bed and down the valley. The pipe was fun to play in. Steve said that if you were in the pipe and there was a sudden flash flood, it would carry you out of the pipe in less than ten seconds, so it would be fun and not dangerous. Stanley said that this had never actually happened.

The other interesting thing about Harkaway Street was that big kids in cars parked there with their girlfriends and made out—sometimes, according to Steve, all night.

It was a Friday, after supper, not even very dark. Tim had eaten and then eased out the back door and found Steve and Stanley, who were on their own because their parents had taken all the other kids to see
Old Yeller.
Steve and Stanley had noticed a Thunderbird up there, facing into the valley, top down, lights off. Tim didn't know what they were going to do, but Steve and Stanley did. They rode their bikes past Harkaway Road to where the house was almost finished being built on the eighth lot. They left their bikes behind the house, then walked back to the corner of Quantock and Harkaway, went down the bank, and into the pipe. The pipe was dark, but Steve had a flashlight. They followed the pipe almost to the end, and when they got to the iron ladder built into the pipe, Stanley climbed it. He was so far above them that Tim couldn't see his feet, but Steve then climbed up three rungs. He braced himself against the rungs; way at the top, Tim could see a sliver of light where Stanley had pushed open the manhole cover.

Now there was a flash of a match when Steve lit a cherry bomb, which he passed carefully to Stanley, who tossed it or rolled it under the Thunderbird. Then he let down the manhole cover and he and Steve climbed down the ladder. Tim heard the bang of the cherry bomb going off. Then there was a faint scream, and after a few minutes, the Thunderbird roared away. Steve, Stanley, and Tim could not stop laughing. “We did it at midnight a few weeks ago,” said Steve. “Those guys were really surprised.”

“Why doesn't it blow the car up?” said Tim.

Steve said, “Just doesn't. A blockbuster might. We got a couple of those, but we just use cherry bombs for this, because they roll.”

When he sneaked back in the house later, his dad was in the kitchen. He spun around when Tim came in from the back, and said, “What are you doing? I thought you were in your room!”

Tim said, “I was getting a Coke in the garage,” and Dad said, “So where is it?” and Tim realized that he should actually have a Coke in his hand if that was his excuse, but he said, “I changed my mind.”

Dad stared at him, but let it pass.

Then Debbie came into the kitchen and said, “He was out on his bike. He's been out on his bike for an hour.”

Dad said, “Were you lying to me?”

And Tim said, “No, because you didn't ask me if I was out on my bike, you asked me what I was doing.”

And then Dad did the thing he always did, which was to laugh, and Debbie said, “He goes out on his bike at night a lot.”

And Dad said, “Maybe that's my business rather than yours, young lady.”

Debbie set her bowl, which had greasy unpopped popcorn kernels in the bottom, in the kitchen sink, then turned on the water, elaborately washed and dried it, and wiped down the sink. Tim knew she was doing this to him, showing off. She often informed Mom that things were out of control, and Mom always said, “Goodness, you are just like your grandmother, right down to the ground.”

Tim said, “Hey, Dad. Did you hear the one about the two morons who were building a house?”

His dad smiled.

Tim said, “So—the one moron, he would take a nail out of his pocket and look at it, then sometimes he would nail it to the house, and sometimes he would throw it away. So the other moron says, ‘Hey, you moron! Why are you throwing away all those nails?'

“ ‘Because, you moron, they point the wrong direction!'

“And the second moron starts laughing and laughing, and says, ‘What a moron you are! The ones that point the wrong direction go on the other side of the house!' ”

His dad laughed and ruffled his hair. They walked toward the TV room, and his dad said, “Stay in at night, Tim, okay?”

But Tim knew that he didn't really mean it.

—

LILLIAN FELT THAT
she had the place pretty well organized. What had it taken, two months? The living room, which was off limits for the kids, had beige wall-to-wall, pale-green armchairs, a pinkish sofa, and their Chinese prints from the old house. The family room had sturdy rattan furniture, and sort of an oceanic air—it faced right onto the swimming pool; since it was May and hot, the sliding glass door was always open, and towels and face masks and snorkels dribbled in, along with trails of pool water. Tina had spent three months—from the first day they knew they would be moving here—learning to swim at the Y. Lillian had been so nervous that she checked the gates to the pool area twenty times a day, but now Tina was swimming—well, dog-paddling—all the way across the width of the pool, and Lillian was no longer waking up nightly (in their own pale-gold bedroom with pale-olive drapes) listening for tiny splashes.

The new kitchen was big; Lillian bought a range and a new refrigerator. There were two windows in the kitchen that looked out onto the pool, so she could cook, talk on the phone, wash up, and still see everything. She had given up on supervising Timmy—he was out of the house and gone before breakfast. Debbie had a sixth sense of what trouble he was into and always reported, so she let herself rely on that. Deanie, for all his size and hockey ability, was just as happy reading a book (so like Arthur!)—she didn't worry about him. And Tina was a cautious child; the kindergarten teacher reported that she watched the other children and did what they did, which was not surprising in a fourth-born.

If there was someone to be worried about, Lillian knew that it wasn't herself—she was as pleased with the new house and the new neighborhood as she had thought she would be the first time they went through the place. But the new house was closer to Arthur's office, and no matter how secretive he had been at first about the address, colleagues from the office had begun to stop by for a drink on their way home and keep on talking about business. Five acres in the country and a child-free overstuffed living room were perfect for quietly deploring this and that subversion, coup, mistake, and then falling silent if anyone (like Lillian herself) came into the room.

There were five of them, most of the time—Arthur, Larry, Burt, Jack, and Finn. They entered through the front door and went to the liquor cabinet and helped themselves. Lillian, who was the one who
stocked the liquor cabinet, noted they they liked Grant's Stand Fast the best, though the levels of the Gilbey's and the Noilly Prat steadily diminished also. Arthur's business was full of partiers; for one thing, most of them knew each other from Yale or St. Paul's. Lillian had been to her share of parties, given her share of parties, and she got along with the Vassar girls well enough (though, while she was navigating this world, the ups and downs of North Usherton High School were never far from her mind). But these get-togethers were not parties. All through Spring Training they talked about baseball, and Arthur pretended to be a Braves fan, but when they were talking about the office, there were a lot of long faces and meditative sips. Lillian came to understand that the days they gathered in her living room were bad days. Arthur told her almost nothing about why they were bad days.

Arthur got everyone out by seven, and he was good about sitting at the dinner table and asking the kids what they had been doing all day, but on the bad days, he just pushed his food around on his plate, even if it was sirloin steak, his favorite. Then, after he had joked with Timmy, listened to Debbie tell him everything she had done (by the minute, it seemed), spoken some French with Dean, and asked Tina about words that started with “b” or “t” or “n,” he would get up, veer ever closer to his office, then, finally, close himself in there while she did the dishes and watched TV and put the kids to bed. He reserved his one hour's worth of high spirits for the dinner table.