Rumors of Peace (2 page)

I
T WAS A WARM
, sunny out-of-place day in early winter. I was on my way home from Sunday school, loitering in the creek near the wooden footbridge. I had worked my way down to the edge of the torrent, which rushed through a fine dank smell of silt and decayed leaves. From the black branches above hung old birds' nests, soaked and raveled. The steep sodden banks glistened. I was throwing twigs into the torrent, where they bounced madly along like Ping-Pong balls.

Over the water's roar I heard something odd—shouting, but not the shouting of kids at play. It was a full-bodied adult voice, screaming out at a run. Swinging around, I stared up the bank at the trees. Whoever it was was running through the trees toward the footbridge, and suddenly, as my eyes widened, he burst into view and thundered onto the boards, a large man in full military uniform, swinging a rifle to his shoulder.

“Invasion!” he cried. “Seek shelter! Seek shelter!” And he fired into the air.

The report exploded through the gorge, jolting me from my feet. I felt a massive, icy engulfment, a deafening commotion, and when my head broke surface I was being shot downstream like one of my twigs. Thrashing, sinking, I was at once slammed into a knot of tree roots, where for a moment I hung on in total blankness. Then struggling
out, my good Sunday dress glued to my body, I fled terrified up the bank on all fours.

As in a nightmare, I was the only person outside, running down streets abruptly deserted. Everyone had hidden behind locked doors. Gray armies in helmets were blocks away, they were rumbling their cannons through Main Street, loping alongside with fixed bayonets. Pounding down the sidewalks, I could not grasp why they had invaded us or how they had come so fast, in just the snap of a finger since I had left Sunday school. I only knew, with the horrifying certainty of the exploding gorge, that they were here.

Our front door was not locked. My family had not run for shelter in the closets. They sat innocently listening to radio music. Panting in the doorway, I knew I must grab their arms, pull them to safety—but this thought sent a heat of confusion through my terror. They were the older ones, the ones who knew. I could not grab their arms and force them into the closet, knowing less than they. Yet this time I knew more. I knew so much that I buckled under the weight of such knowledge and ran crying to my mother, who, with everyone else, was hurrying over to me.

I cried in a passion while they questioned and calmed me. No, we were not being invaded, something had happened somewhere else, a long distance off, and as they spoke, a voice broke into the radio music. “We interrupt this program for further news of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor—it has now been learned that casualties were extreme—an undetermined number of ships has been sunk and aircraft lost—we will keep you informed on any further—” Someone turned it down.

“How far away?” I asked shakily.

Thousands of miles, I was assured, in Hawaii. Who had told me differently? Who had frightened me? How had I gotten wet?

“A soldier. He shot a rifle. I fell in the creek.”

Dad took my arm. “A soldier? He
shot
at you?”

“In the air. He was yelling and shooting.”

“Where?”

“Down by the footbridge.”

He went out the door. Mama, Karla, and Peter still stood around me. My hair was plastered to my skull; my muddy dress clung to me.
The creek was a forbidden place, yet there was not a word of exasperation. It would have been more normal, more welcome. They were too gentle, and though behind their gentleness I now sensed something severe, it had nothing to do with my bemired dress, but with something much larger and more terrible.

“It's ruined,” I wept, dishonestly, clutching my dress, narrowing all disaster down to this simple bedraggled garment.

Soaking in a hot bath, I pressed the washcloth to my swollen eyes. As a fearless tree climber, I was shamed by my terror, and by the fact that it persisted, in the form of a nervous intestinal knot. After I had dried my hair and changed into a clean dress, I put on a calm, interested expression as I returned to the front room.

Dad had come back with the news that my footbridge alarm spreader was old Hackman, a local alcoholic and World War veteran who had already been taken into custody by the sheriff. This soothed me for a moment, but the street outside was worrisome in a new way. No longer deserted, it now presented the unusual picture of all our neighbors wandering around in carpet slippers or aprons, gathering together in little knots, talking and looking around. Dad and Mama went out too. Through the lace curtain I saw them also talking and looking around. Inside, Karla was sitting in a temporary position on the arm of the sofa, leafing through the Sunday papers. Peter was stooped over the radio, turning the dial.

Suddenly there was a commotion from outside. A police car and a motorcycle policeman had screeched to the curb, motors running, radios blasting. The two men talked in shouts; then with a powerful kick of his boot the motorcycle policeman exploded the air and roared off, the car speeding urgently after.

With my calm and interested expression I turned to Peter. “Where did you say Hawaii was?”

He spread his world map on the floor and showed me. It was certainly very far from the streets of Mendoza, with the huge Pacific in between. But the knot in my stomach remained.

When Dad and Mama returned, they had no news. No one knew anything except what we had heard on the radio.

More bulletins flashed on. They were always the same. Ships sunk, aircraft destroyed, casualties extreme. I did not know what casualties were, and did not ask.

Once, looking through the curtain, I saw a man go by carrying a pistol. I bit my lip and said nothing. Through the lace, the winter sun filtered bright as spring. A wrong, twisted day.

In the afternoon I went out on the front steps and sat down with Peter, who was waiting for a friend.

“They're talking about war in there,” I said.

“That's right.” His eyes were narrowed against the sun.

“Why? What do we care about Hawaii?”

“Christ, Suse, Pearl Harbor's a naval base. They bombed an American naval base.”

“What does it matter if it's so far away?”

“Christ,” he said again. He was not allowed to say Christ, but in his familiar gray cords and white shirt, with his blond hair hanging as always like a brush across his forehead, he seemed suddenly his own grown-up person, excited in a stern, preoccupied way.

“You don't make an unprovoked attack like that and get away with it,” he said. “It means war.”

I smoothed my dress tightly across my knees. “You mean war
there,
in Hawaii.”

My words were drowned out by the honks of a jalopy pulling up, foxtail flying, sides scrawled with “What's cookin', good lookin'?” and “Hold your hat, here we go!” Peter's friend leaned out with a wry snort. “What a sitting duck, hey? Shell in our backyard? They'll wipe this poor old burg right off the map.”

Peter frowned in my direction. His friend went silent. Then he smiled. “Just a lot of rumors, snooks. Nothing to it.”

But I felt a bright, sickening hollowness, as if my bones had turned to air.

Karla had gone to the Sunday matinee with some friends. She came back within half an hour. The theater was closed. So was Dreamland
roller skating rink. It grew clear to me that the town was readying itself. From the radio came an announcement that all schools in the county would be shut the next day. I swallowed and said, “Good, I can sleep late.”

I was getting ready for bed. Mama had come in with me.

“I think it's been a bad day for you, Suse,” she said, sitting down on the bed.

“No, it's been interesting.”

“That man down in the creek wasn't right in his mind. I don't want you to go around brooding over what he said.”

“I'm not,” I assured her. “I know we're not going to be invaded.” And I cast her a sidelong glance as I took up my pajamas. “I know we're not going to be bombed either.”

My mother gave a nod, but it was indefinite. “Sit down here for a minute,” she said, and she took my hands. “You know, Suse, even if nothing happens, people have to be prepared.”

I nodded.

“A country has to take precautions, just in case.”

I nodded.

“It's possible that we'll have air raid warnings, because that's part of being prepared. But it doesn't mean that anything will happen. I'm sure it will never come to that.”

I nodded.

“So you're not to go around worrying.”

“I'm not worrying.”

“I hope not,” she said.

My mother's face was smooth, with pink cheeks. She had warm gray eyes, and unlike the rest of the family's, her hair was dark, and was secured with large hairpins in a bun at the back. She always wore a hat when she shopped on Main Street. She always wore her best dress on Sundays, whether we went somewhere or not. It was a dark blue dress with a square-cut neck. As she went out of the room, I felt I was looking at that dress for the last time. We would never see next Sunday.

It was late when Karla came to bed, turning on the little lamp that stood on her dressing table. In the dim light, on my side of the room, my bureau top was crowded with worn-out rabbits' feet, acorns, marbles, and the skulls of small rodents. Karla's side was neat and cozy. She was always after me to put my relics away where she wouldn't have to look at them. “You want to be a trapeze artist?” she would say. “Trapeze artists are very neat. They'd be shocked by this mess, Suse; they wouldn't let you into their union.”

Now, suddenly, I felt I would do anything for Karla. I would sweep my possessions into the back of the closet, no, I'd throw them in the garbage can. I wanted to make her happy, because she was going to die. All of us were going to die.

She rolled her hair up in her metal curlers, got into her pajamas, and turned the lamp out. “I guess you'll have a million questions tonight,” she said, climbing into bed.

I rolled over to her. “I'm going to clean my side of the room.”

“I don't believe it.”

“I will!”

After a long while, when I had not asked anything, she broke the silence. “Well, fire away.”

“I don't have any questions.”

The living-room clock chimed twice. I jerked awake. I had lain heavy-eyed, waiting for the sound of planes, until I could stay awake no longer. Now I woke to an ominous drone. After getting up, I went frozen-faced to the window and pulled the shade aside. It was a drone not of planes but of trucks, hundreds of trucks rumbling swiftly by, one after another, a few streets away.

“Karla!” I hissed, putting my ear to the pane. Army trucks, filled with defending troops. The invasion had begun.

“Karla!”

She sat up, rubbing her eyes.

“Listen!”

“What? I don't hear anything.”

The sound was gone, as though it had never been. Shivering, I crossed
the room and got back into bed. The clock chimed three times before I finally drifted off.

I woke to a gray, foggy morning. Karla was seated at her dressing table, putting on her lipstick before the mirror. She pressed her lips together, sucked them out of sight, nostrils enlarging. This usually interested me.

“There were army trucks last night.”

“I didn't hear anything,” she said, lips reappearing, and patted her golden pompadour. “You dreamed it, honey.” Going to the door, she leaned down. “Go back to sleep, no school today.”

But I climbed from bed, sore with fatigue, and drew on my old pink chenille robe. Through the door came the sound of yet another radio broadcast.

I went tiredly into the living room and sat down with the others.

It was President Roosevelt speaking. His voice was slow, awesome.

“. . . We will . . . make very certain that this form of treachery shall never endanger us again. . . . Our people, our territory and our interests are in grave danger.”

My breathing came shallow. I crossed my arms over my chest, to hide its fluttering, and tried not to hear the voice.

Presently I was aware of silence. The president had stopped speaking. When he began again, it was with emphatic pauses, deep finality.

“I ask that the Congress declare that since this unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan . . . a state of war has existed. . . .”

I looked slowly around the room at the others. It had begun.

T
HAT NIGHT
the town was blacked out. I watched Karla and Peter clothespin blankets along the curtain rods. A few blankets were all that hung between us and the bombs. But by now I was too exhausted to care, I only wanted to sleep, and as soon as my head touched the pillow, I was gone.

The next thing I knew Karla was shaking my shoulder. Wary and sober, with no heart for dawdling, I got up to prepare for school.

I saw with surprise that everyone was running and playing as usual. I had expected something military, I don't know what, each class standing in formation maybe. Puzzled, I advanced through the fog.

Red-nosed, bundled up, Ezio came dashing over.

“We're at war!”

“I know,” I said, trying for enthusiasm.

He was husky, dark, with a home-knit cap pulled vigorously over his ears. He yanked it lower with both hands. “Lemme get at them Japs! Just give me a bunch of grenades and lemme go!”

“I guess they'll be coming to bomb us,” I said casually.

“Let 'em try!” he yelled, rushing off.

I joined some girls from my class swinging on the bars.

“My cousin's in the Coast Guard—”

“So what, my brother's in the—”

“We had to eat in the dark—”

“We hung up this canvas stuff—”

“We hung blankets,” I contributed, elbowing in and grasping the bars.

“Japs don't have eyelids, they can't close their eyes—”

“Who said so?”

“Japs are midgets—”

“So's Miss Bonder—”

A collective scream of laughter. Miss Bonder, our teacher, was so short that when she was on yard duty, you couldn't tell her from the rest of us except for her tall pompadour. Sometimes, when we were swinging from our knees, and our coats and dresses had fallen down around our waists, exposing our white cotton underpants, she would walk over and say, “Really, girls, have some modesty,” and reprovingly point her pompadour at us. I saw her coming now, frowning at those who hung upside down, and it seemed to me that if we were going to be bombed, Miss Bonder would not be concerned with such a small thing as underpants.

Having had her say, and pausing to give my early arrival a grim smile of surprise, Miss Bonder strolled on. A little hope began burning in me.

When the first bell rang, everyone assembled before the flagpole as usual. If the enemy were on its way to destroy us, this would be the moment to announce it, now, as the flag went sliding up with a rattling sound. But only the Pledge of Allegiance followed, after which the usual blithe disorder took over. For the first time in two days, I felt the knot in my stomach loosen. I felt my old warm craving to climb and stood eyeing the foggy handwalkers.

“Suse?” Miss Bonder said over her shoulder. My name, a variation of Susanna, was pronounced Seuseh by my family, and Sooza by everyone else, and now, for some reason, it had a beautifully familiar ring. Obedient, filled with the pleasure of temporary virtue, I followed Miss Bonder and the others into the building.

Class proceeded as always, pointless and boring. But I enjoyed my tedium, wallowing in Miss Bonder's monotonous voice as she went on about quotients and denominators.

But when she ended the lesson, she adjusted her rimless spectacles, which were attached to her blouse by two silver chains, and said, “I have an announcement to make. I want you all to pay very close attention.”

I was not surprised. It was as though I had known all along that my relief was stupid, shabby, and worthless.

“As you know, our country is now at war with Japan. Although we're probably in no danger, it will be necessary to make some changes in our routine. In a few minutes we're going to have an air raid drill. This is nothing to get excited about; it's only a precaution. When the bell gives three short rings, I want you to get down under your desks—without a hullabaloo, thank you—and remain there until the bell rings again.” She got up and went over to the windows. “No chatting, please. Let's just wait quietly.”

A few moments later the bell split the air. I was under my desk before anyone else, pressed hard against the iron curlicues of its side. The rest of the class followed with a cheerful din, while Miss Bonder, hem flying, sent the Venetian blinds crashing down one after another.

Moments passed, filled with whispers and muffled giggles.

“No talking,” warned Miss Bonder.

Silence descended. From behind the other curlicues, eyes brimmed with suppressed excitement. Down the aisle a hand stretched out, its fingers making elegantly grotesque movements.

When the bell released us, I climbed back into my seat, covered with shame, hoping that no one had noticed my premature dive. My classmates seemed suddenly older than I, joined in some cheerful certainty that left me outside like a sniveling infant. Yet, without disturbing this humiliating feeling at all, I knew absolutely that I was the oldest one, alone in my understanding of what was going to happen.

At noon I went home for lunch. Drinking milk from my blue glass mug with Shirley Temple's picture on it, I commented lightly, “At recess the kids said there were Jap planes over San Francisco last night.”

“I think it's all rumors,” my mother said.

“I do too,” I lied. I had never been a liar. Early in life I had found that lying was not for me; it was too bothersome, you had to stop and think all the time to keep stories straight, and they got mixed up anyway. It was much simpler to say everything just as it was; then, no matter what happened, you knew exactly where you stood with yourself and everybody else. But ever since Sunday I had been lying about this turmoil inside. Shirley Temple's dimpled grin seemed to come from another world, a vanished world.

“I guess Dad'll have to join the Army now?”

“At forty-nine?” My mother smiled.

“What about Peter?”

“Well,” she said, pausing for a moment. “Let's hope by the time he's old enough the war will be over.”

“How soon do you think it'll be over?”

“I don't know, Suse. Nobody knows.”

Going back after lunch, I passed the superintendent of schools getting out of his car. Mr. Grandison was a stout silver-haired gentleman known for his fine tenor voice, with which, at every assembly, he regaled us with “On the Road to Mandalay.” He was rosy-cheeked and smiling and always boomed a greeting when he saw you. Today he did not even nod but strode into the building with an ominous face. Maybe he was coming to tell the principal that all classes must be dismissed at once.

We were not dismissed, but we had another air raid drill right away. This time we were led in hurried lines down to the dim, cavernous basement. Afterward, back at my desk, I made a decision. I would run across the street to my house and be there with my mother when the bombs fell. If Miss Bonder tried to stop me, I would kill her. I liked her well enough, but if she tried to stop me, I would kill her.

During afternoon recess, new twists were added to the schoolyard talk. The bombers over San Francisco last night had been signaled by the Jap farmers in the valley, just outside town. They were spies and kept shortwave radios under their floorboards. Up in Seattle a Jap spy
had already been beheaded, and the Jap spies in the valley would be beheaded, too. But they had already sent enough lowdown for the bombers to come back tonight and wipe out Shell. I plodded to the girls' lavatory with diarrhea.

When we got back to class, Miss Bonder rapped her desk sharply. “I have heard nothing but idiotic talk down in the yard. You've been spreading empty and very ugly rumors, and I want it to stop. I would have thought my class was above that. No more of it!” And she started us on our spelling.

They were only rumors.

I had to return a library book after school
—The Black Stallion,
which I had intended to renew but whose fascinating contents were suddenly of no interest to me. The lights of the little library gleamed through the afternoon fog. I went inside and handed the book to the librarian. Next to her elbow lay a folded newspaper with three red headlines showing.

Japan Planes

Near S.F. 4

Raid Alarms!

I brushed my hair weakly back. “Could I read this paper?” I whispered.

“Certainly,” she whispered back.

It was our local paper, the Mendoza
Clarion.
I took it to a table and opened it to four smaller headlines, in black.

West Coast on Alert

All Bay Radios Are

Ordered Silent,

A Night of Blackouts

My eyes whipped down the columns of print.

                   
Air raid alarms sounded on both coasts last night . . . all army and naval stations were placed on the alert . . . raid alarms on the Pacific coast started at 6:45
P.M.
, at which time there were official reports
of hostile aircraft . . . in San Francisco, police sirens wailed through Market Street, and all lights went out as searchlights swept the skies . . . the Golden Gate City abruptly became reminiscent of London and Rotterdam . . . in Seattle, more than 1,000 people roamed the streets, smashing windows of stores burning lights . . . revealed at daybreak was a gruesome reminder of the night's madness: a beheaded Chinaman, apparently mistaken for a Jap. . . .

With trembling fingers I turned the page. There was a new feature there, set off by two furled flags.

Contra Costa County in the War

                       
We of Contra Costa County, especially those of us living in Mendoza and other bay towns, are situated in a prime target . . . antiaircraft units have been installed on both sides of the bay, military guards have been placed at refineries and plants, sandbags have been banked around the sheriff's office . . . highways have been cleared of all but necessary traffic . . . throughout the night of the seventh, hundreds of army trucks passed through town en route to various locations, carrying ammunition and supplies. . . .

My army trucks. My dream, Karla had called them. My teeth against my knuckles, I looked at another new feature.

Sheriff O'Toole Reports:

                       
Until an air raid siren has been installed, raids will be announced by an emergency warning of 11 fast beats of the fire bell. Turn off all lights. In the event of a raid it is advisable for citizens to retire to their basements. In the event of bombing, it is advisable to lie prone on the floor with the face down.

                       
Keep cool. The enemy wants you to run into the streets, create a mob, start a panic. Don't get excited!

Old Hackman had gotten excited. But he knew. Seek shelter! Seek shelter! Tonight all of us would be lying facedown in our cellars.

I returned the newspaper to the librarian and went slowly outside. Across the street on the firehouse roof, men were hammering a stand together. People stood below, watching and talking. I went up and listened. The stand was for an air raid siren . . . Nagai's flower shop would close . . . the Philippines would fall . . . it would be a long war . . . it would be a short war . . . either way Mendoza was no place to be . . . men were on the courthouse roof with binoculars . . . crazy, what can they see in the fog? . . . Well the Japs can't see either. . . . Laughter. I walked on, down Main Street, and at Nagai's flower shop I looked through the plate glass window. Mr. Nagai was sitting behind the counter. He returned my look impassively, slowly crossing his arms. Going on, I tried to fit him in with the Jap bombers and the Jap spies in the valley, but he was Nagai's florist's between Buster Brown shoes and Sparacino's market, had always been, and could be nothing else. Anyway, my brain was tied in a knot like my stomach.

Someone ran directly into me from behind, knocking me off-balance. It was Mario, beaming from under a too-small aviator's cap with the flaps hanging down.

“Wanna go to Port Chicago?”

He always asked this, and if you said yes, and you always did, he was stunned with pleasure, tripping over his trouser cuffs and yelling, “I go get my car!”

But today the confident, feebleminded face angered me. “No, I don't want to go to Port Chicago,” I snapped, and walked on. He tagged along. I suffered him silently for a few moments; then I said, “You're always talking about your car, but you don't have a car. You don't have a car, and you will never have a car. You'd better get it through your head.”

But Mario enjoyed being addressed seriously, like a real person, and he walked along with a slack smile of enchantment. I turned to him. “Just because you're a moron, everybody's got to be nice to you.”

Not my words, but my tone penetrated. His squinty eyes moved uncertainly to my face.

My own eyes dropped. I took hold of his warty hand and watched his face as it passed back to contentment.

It was going on four o'clock, already darkening. “I'm going home. You'd better go home, too.”

We walked in silence, passing the three-story union hall, completed a year ago and already streaked with rust. “I climbed up there once,” I told him, pointing.

He looked appreciatively.

We walked on. “I feel sick. Every minute I feel worse. You're lucky.”

At his house I let go of his hand. With a wave, he went up the steps and opened the door.

“I hope we'll see each other again,” I said as the door closed.

That night when Karla came in and turned on the lamp, I cautioned her.

“You shouldn't. We don't have blankets up in here.”

“Well, they can't expect us to go banging around in the dark. Anyway, it's a dim lamp.”

I waited impatiently as she opened her jar of Sta-Bak and dipped her comb into the green goo. Combing a strand, she carefully rolled it up in a metal curler. She dipped the comb again. I began to seethe that she didn't go faster, yet at the same time I felt a pity well up for her, for her innocence. She knew nothing. Finally, the last curler was pinned in place. The lamp clicked off.