Pages of Promise (2 page)
Prosperity shifted the focus in American family life. People who didn’t have to worry about subsistence placed children and family life at the top of their priority lists, according to polls. The postwar baby boom was under way, and parents felt their destiny was to make the world better for their children. They were determined that their offspring would not suffer hard times as they had. Some sociologists define the fifties as a “filiarchy”—society was not ruled by the willful demands of the young but by indulgent, sacrificing parents. “Do it for the kids” was heard on every hand.
But middle-class conformity and social stability were also challenged, by swaggering antiheroes such as James Dean and Marlon Brando, by the nonconforming beatniks, then, from 1956 on, by Elvis “the Pelvis” Presley and the beginnings of rock and roll music.
In a world of prosperity and in turmoil, the grandchildren and great grandchildren of Will and Marian Stuart looked for a peace that is complete and enduring.
A
street-model hot rod screeched to a stop in front of the split-level suburban house, and the sound of loud, laughing voices broke the silence of the neighborhood. Across the street, Mr. Gunderson opened his window and stared out for a moment, then slammed it shut.
A shadowy form separated itself from the automobile. There were raucous calls, and a female voice cried out, “Be good, Bobby! Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
The car roared off with a screech and the smell of burning rubber. Two people in the house moved away from the window. The knob turned, and the door was opened slowly, as if to keep the sound down. Sixteen-year-old Bobby Stuart entered—then stopped stock-still when he saw his parents waiting for him. Shock ran across his face, but his devil-may-care air seldom deserted him. He stood in the open doorway and saluted his father, saying, “Private Bobby Stuart reporting for duty, Sir.” He squinted his eyes and grinned. “What are you two doing up so late? Don’t you have to fly tomorrow, Dad? Mom, you
never
stay up this late!”
Bobby’s sister, Stephanie, a year older, had sneaked down to the landing. She could not restrain a grin—she was glad that her parents could not see it. There was something irresistible about Bobby, and even though he was constantly in and out of trouble, there was a cavalier air about him, a bubbling exuberance for life that made it hard for anyone to be angry with him for long.
His father did not have that difficulty, however. “Young man, do you know what time it is?”
Bobby peered at his watch, holding it close to his face. “I believe it’s twenty minutes till two—or to look at it in a little better light, Dad, it’s one forty. I’m a little bit late,” he said cheerfully. “But I just forgot the time.”
Something about the way his son pronounced his words and the way he stood alerted Jerry. Bobby was speaking very carefully, pronouncing each syllable.
That’s the way drunks
do,
Jerry thought grimly. He stepped forward and—sure enough—holding his face a foot away from Bobby’s he said, “No point holding your breath! I can smell that liquor on you! You smell like a distillery!”
“Dad, I just had one or two drinks.” Bobby shrugged and grinned.
That grin was his undoing. Jerry slammed the door shut and shoved his son backward against it. He had never been very physical in disciplining his children—had rarely ever spanked them—so his action caught Bobby completely by surprise. Bonnie, Bobby’s mother, gasped and stepped back from them.
With his eyes barely two inches from his son’s as he held him against the door, Jerry spoke with careful emphasis through clenched teeth. “Don’t you ever again come in late and drunk. Never again! Is that clear?”
Bobby’s grin was gone. So was the alcoholic blear from his eyes. For a moment he’d believed his father might hit him. “Yes, Dad,” he said. But in the second before Jerry released him something else showed in Bobby’s eyes—resentment and an anger of his own.
Stephanie quietly slipped back upstairs. Richard, Bobby’s twin, was listening in the dark hall outside his room to the commotion downstairs. Stephanie paused outside her bedroom door and whispered, “He’s going to get it this time.”
“No he won’t. Mom will talk Dad out of it. She always does.”
“You couldn’t see from here. Dad nearly hit him! You wait and see, Richard, he’ll be grounded til the century’s over!”
Bonnie had not interfered in the confrontation between father and son. But as she and Jerry lay in bed later, they talked about what had occurred.
“I knew I should have stuck with keeping him grounded, but you said, ‘Oh, he’s only young once. Don’t make him miss out.’ I think he needs to miss out. Maybe it would get his attention,” grumbled Jerry, still angry.
“How could you attack him like that? I was afraid you were about to punch him!”
“I was afraid so, too.” Jerry seemed to finally regain his composure. “I’m sorry I frightened you. But, honey, I’ve had it with him and his carousing friends. He has a terrific musical ability, just like my granddad. But there’s more to life than music.”
“You do realize, don’t you, that he’s just like you?” Bonnie’s voice sounded harsh in the darkness.
“He’s not like me at all.”
“Well, maybe you don’t remember your Cara Gilmore days, but I do.” She was angry—miffed at any rate—and turned away from him, emphatically ending the conversation.
Bonnie had rarely thrown Jerry’s wild youth in his face. Her doing so told him how deeply distressed she was. He lay staring at the ceiling and drifted off with painful memories of the beautiful, the exciting Cara who had so captivated him.
The next morning the household awakened to the sound of Jerry Stuart’s raised voice laying down the law to the now-sober Bobby. Jerry delivered a stern lecture not-so-privately, then announced at breakfast, “Bobby’s not driving the car until I give the okay.” Bonnie said little, but she looked upset and tired.
The three siblings went to school in the ’36 Ford that the boys had resurrected and owned equal shares in. Richard and Robert were twins, but they didn’t look all that much alike. Bobby’s hair was auburn rather than black like the rest of his family, and no one in his family had eyes like his, either, a cornflower blue.
The twins’ sister, Stephanie, was tall, a little over five feet nine inches, with the lean, athletic, California-girl look. She had the blackest possible hair, with enough curl so that she could try different styles. Her eyes were blue-green, or gray-green, or sometimes just blue or green, for they changed, like a chameleon, depending on what she put on. This pleased her, for in this respect she was unlike the girls that she grew up with.
Richard was driving, and taking his eyes off the road, he glanced at Stephanie, then at his twin, who was whistling carefully and appeared not to have a care in the world. Richard said, “Well, you’re grounded, are you?”
Bobby shrugged. “Aw, Mom and Dad are a little straitlaced, but it’ll blow over.” He then proceeded to tell them about the party. “We had a real good time. I played guitar, and Tim Roberts played the piano, and Hick Seastrum was on the drums. It was a real knockout!”
As they pulled into the lot in front of the high school, a tall, brick structure, Stephanie stared at the building with distaste. “Only another month and I’ll be out of this place!” They got out of the car and made their way up the steps. Inside, they separated, going to their classes, and none of them believed that Bobby would be grounded for long.
Stephanie’s much longed for graduation came and quickly was over. She’d attended the parties and events associated with it happily enough since they signaled the end of school. She hoped she’d like college better, but mostly she tried not to think about it. The family had its own celebration, in spite of the ongoing verbal conflicts between her father and her brother Bobby. Her grandparents, Amos and Rose Stuart, flew out from Chicago for a vacation to attend. They’d flown home a week ago.
A wide spot in the creek that lay past the rough dunes a half mile from their house had always formed a swimming pool for the three young Stuarts. Today Richard and Stephanie came in the midafternoon, without Bobby, and plunged in, splashing gleefully. For half an hour they swam and splashed water at each other, and Richard pursued Stephanie, threatening to dunk her, but she was a better swimmer than he. The pool was thirty feet wide and at the deepest part over six or seven feet deep.
Stephanie thought she saw a snake and squealed, scrambling out on the bank, but then Richard held up a piece of vine and laughed at her cheerfully, saying, “This is a bad old snake all right!”
Finally the two came out and lay down on the blanket, drying off quickly in the late June sun. Stephanie put on her sunglasses and put her hands under her head. She was wearing a black one-piece bathing suit. She murmured, “What day is it, today? The date I mean.”
“The twenty-fourth.”
“Saturday, June 24. More than a month since graduation. I’m so glad it’s all over.”
Richard was wearing a pair of faded tan cutoffs. He rolled over, rested his chin on his arm, and said, “You going to Chicago to work for Grandpa?”
“Oh, he’ll never give me a job. He wants me to go to college. I’d rather work for him, though.”
Richard flopped on his back, shaded his eyes with his hands, his fingers laced. The sun soaked into him, and he dozed off. He awakened sometime later when he heard Stephanie say something. “What did you say?” he muttered.
Stephanie was sitting up combing her hair. “I said, are you going to go to college?”
Richard sat up, rubbed his eyes, and blinked like an owl emerging from its tree. “Man, it’s hot today!” He thought about her question for a moment. “I don’t know, Steph.”
She smiled at him affectionately. “Is this Streak Stuart I hear talking, sought after by half the colleges in the country?” She called him by the nickname his friends often used, for he had run the fastest hundred-yard dash in a California high school that year. He had received several offers of track scholarships for college, but all the time he had said very little.
“Still a year away,” he muttered. He stood up, stretched, and said, “You know what I’d really like to do?”
She looked up and admired the lean, muscular form of her brother. He was just an inch under six feet and looked like a sprinter, although taller than most. “What?” she asked, putting her comb into her bag and rising to face him.
“I’d like to do what Superman does.” He laughed, a little embarrassed, and said, “You know, keep the world safe for democracy.”
“You idiot!” she said, affectionately. “I mean, what are you going to do for a living? That job doesn’t pay much. Besides, Superman’s already got it sewed up.”
“Don’t forget Captain Marvel, and now there’s Wonder Woman and Batgirl. You women are always trying to help save the world. What I wish you’d do is learn to cook.”
“Well, you be Superman, and I’ll be Lois Lane, girl reporter. Lois doesn’t have to cook.” They grinned at each other, for they had always been very close. They piled into the Ford and made their way back to the house.
Richard took his shower first, while Stephanie stayed downstairs and helped her mother prepare supper. Bonnie Stuart had black hair, like Stephanie, and it hung like a waterfall down her back, without any curls. She had enormous dark blue eyes and an olive complexion, a legacy of her Spanish mother.
Stephanie had just come downstairs after her shower and Richard was setting the table when their father came in the front door. Jerry Stuart was a tall man of forty-nine with dark hair going silver at the temples and eyes the same blue-green as his daughter’s. He had a quick spirit about him, which was as it should be in a flyer. He had piloted fighters in World War II, and he’d stayed in the military for a while after the war trying to make a career of the air force. But military life was too structured and restrictive for someone of his personality, especially someone who’d flown daredevil aerobatics in an air circus. He’d tried commercial aviation for a while, but that, too, had grown more and more restrictive. With his father’s financial help, he’d bought two surplus military C-47 cargo planes and started a business hauling freight. He didn’t fly aerobatics any more, but he was the boss.
“Just in time, Dad,” Stephanie said. “We’ve got your favorite—” She looked at his face more carefully and said, “What’s wrong?”
“Haven’t you heard the radio?” He looked over at Bonnie, who came in wearing a white apron over her dress. His voice was oddly tense as he said, “The North Koreans have invaded South Korea.”
Richard asked quickly, “What does that mean, Dad?”
Jerry tossed his hat on a side table. “It means there’s going to be a war,” he said.
“Oh, no, Jerry! Maybe not!” Bonnie spoke with a touch of fear threading her voice.
“I think it’ll have to be.”
Bobby came home in time for supper and heard the news. After supper they watched grainy images flicker across the television screen of North Korean soldiers wearing rumpled, bulky uniforms and odd-looking hats. Then the newscasters began to interpret it, and Jerry listened, his face stiff and serious. It was already Sunday the twenty-fifth in Korea. The attack had come in the early morning hours.
“Will there really be a war, Dad?” Richard asked.
“I’m afraid it’s likely.”
Richard was quiet for some time, then he said, “I want to join up.”
Bobby’s head swiveled almost comically. “You’re only sixteen years old!” he said in disgust. “It’s against the law for you to join the army, isn’t it, Dad?” he said, turning to Jerry. Bobby and his father had hardly spoken a civil word to each other in weeks, but this was an extraordinary event, and a truce was in force.
“Bobby’s right. You’re not old enough, Son.”
“I’ll be seventeen next year. That’s not too young.”
Stephanie watched her parents exchange glances. They seemed to have some language, unspoken, that they used at times like this. Her glance went to Richard’s face, and a fear seized her.
He’s too young to go!
She thought of him out on a muddy battlefield, shot and bleeding—and dying. She had a very vivid imagination, Stephanie did. Their father, she knew, had been through some hard times during World War II but had come out intact. She remembered when he’d come home from overseas. But no one had attacked America—she didn’t understand this war. It had exploded like a land mine beneath them and it frightened her. She went over and sat beside her father, leaning against him as if for some sort of assurance. He turned to smile at her affectionately. He smoothed her curly black hair where it had fallen across her forehead and said, “We’ll just have to trust the Lord, like we always have to do.”