T. Boyle - San Miguel

Though she had no idea of when she’d be able to post it, she wrote a long letter in reply, assuring her mother that everything was fine (though it wasn’t and never would be again till the Japanese crawled back into their holes and the Interior men filed their surveys in the wastebasket), and that she couldn’t imagine any life but this. Then she went on for pages about Marianne and Betsy and their accomplishments and how the peace and beauty of the island would not only see them through this war as it had seen them through the Depression, but that they’d be stronger, purer and more self-reliant as a result. She sealed the envelope, licked the stamp and almost believed it herself.

The weeks dropped by. Herbie, clacking along on the rails of an idea, indefatigable, unswerving, kept up a watch over the island whether it distracted him from her and the children and took him away from his chores or not — he was out at dawn, the binoculars dangling from his neck, a rifle slung over one shoulder and two cartridge belts marking an X across his chest, and he made the rounds again at dusk. Reg and Freddie, though, soon lost interest once it became apparent that the threat had dissolved and the days were as long as they’d ever been and the shore just as far away. They began to slack off on their chores, disappearing immediately after meals — reconnoitering, as they called it — so that Herbie had to lay down the law every other day it seemed. She saw the collision coming, both boys bridling under the whip, until finally Reg had had enough and spoke up in the middle of one of Herbie’s lectures on personal responsibility. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said, stroking the lump of his Adam’s apple with two tense fingers and shooting Herbie a look, “but you’re not our commanding officer—”

“Lucky for you.”

“And we do feel”—a glance for Freddie—“that we’re doing everything the U.S. Navy expects from us.”

“Yeah,” Freddie put in. “And more.”

They were at the table. Another evening. Another meal. The pans piled up in the kitchen and the grease hardening on the plates. The smell of woodsmoke, of ash, of the dog wet under the table. Herbie pushed back his chair and gave them a withering look. “If the girls weren’t sitting here at this table, I’d tell you in no uncertain terms exactly what kind of job you’re doing around here. And I swear I don’t know what the U.S. Navy might or might not expect, but I’m in charge of this household and you’ll work to my standards and like it. That woodpile is a disgrace. And I haven’t seen anybody touch a shovel out in the yard for a week — a week at least. No, listen, I’ll make it simple for you: you get up off your rear ends and get out there in the kitchen right this minute or tomorrow morning you don’t eat.”

* * *

Neither of them showed up for breakfast the next morning, the first meal they’d missed in the three months and more they’d been billeted on the island. They’d cleared up in the kitchen the night before but they were sullen about it and afterward they went out wandering and didn’t come back till late — she was awakened by the scrape of their footsteps on the porch, followed by the faint metallic sigh of the door to their room easing back on its hinges, and checked the clock at her bedside: 1:35 a.m. There was no firewood in the box by the stove when she woke and she had to go out to the woodpile herself to fetch enough to make breakfast. She saw right away that it had been neglected — most of what was left were the big pieces that needed cutting and splitting — and she made a mental note to take the boys aside at lunch and remind them before Herbie found out, but then they didn’t come in for lunch.

Herbie had spent the morning patrolling on foot, hiking up Green Mountain to glass the waters to the north and west, and he exploded when he saw they weren’t there. “The little crap artists,” he spat, and she had to warn him to watch his language even as the girls looked up from their plates and an indecisive April sun sketched a panel of light on the wall and then took it away again. “If they think they can defy me… Let them eat dirt, then, I don’t care. We’ll see how long they hold out.”

What she didn’t tell him, in the interest of peace, was that a loaf of yesterday’s bread had turned up missing, along with several chunks of lamb crudely hacked from the joint in the cool room, as well as the last of the basket of apples the Hermes had brought out to them. What she did say was, “Maybe you were too hard on them last night. They have their pride too, you know. Remember yourself at their age, what you must have been like?”

“Hard on them? Jesus! It’s amazing they have the energy to wipe their own asses—”

“Herbie,” she warned.

“Herbie, what? We’ve been through all this before. I’m fed up, that’s all.”

“But they’re here and they’re not going away, not as long as there’s a war on — and the war hasn’t been going very well for us, has it?”

“You can say that again.” He was mopping his plate with a crust of bread and he paused to glare at her as if she’d personally started the war and armed the Japanese till they were all but invincible.

“We just have to face facts — the Navy’s in charge now and they’re going to do whatever they want, not only here but up and down the coast. Just be thankful they didn’t send us fifty sailors.” She got up from the table and began clearing away the unused place settings, then paused to hover over the girls. “Girls, you’d better finish up and take your plates out to the kitchen — I’ll be ringing that bell for afternoon session in twenty minutes on the dot.” Both girls shoveled up their food — it was baked beans today, with two strips of bacon each and a can of creamed corn — picked up their plates and retreated through the door.

She watched Herbie a moment, his jaws working so that a hard line of muscle flexed on either side of his mouth. She let out a sigh. “I don’t like it any better than you do, but I say we all just try to get on as best we can, all right?”

“No, it’s not all right.” He glared up at her, his jaws still working. “I’m going to report them, that’s what I’m going to do — get somebody else out here, men, somebody who knows what work is. Hell, even Jimmie’s worth the two of those idiots combined.”

It was then that Freddie’s face appeared at the window — the uneven crop of his hair (engineered privately, in his room), the too-big forehead and dwindling eyes — and right away she could see that something was wrong. Her first thought, and it clenched her heart, was that the Japanese had come, but that wasn’t it at all. He gestured wildly, then pushed open the door, his breath coming hard. “It’s the horse,” he said. “He—”

Herbie jerked to his feet. “What horse? What are you talking about?”

“Buck. We were — Reg was riding him — and he turned up lame.”

“Riding him? I told you, I warned you — you don’t ride that horse unless I say so.”

“He’s having trouble — he’s just standing there on three legs, and we can’t get him to walk.”

The next question was where — up on the bluff at Nichols Point — and then Herbie was muttering curses and angrily thrusting his feet into his boots while she hurried out in the yard to ring the school bell. The girls had been in their room playing, and now they came slouching across the courtyard, looking put upon. “You said twenty minutes,” Marianne complained.

“Something’s come up. I’ve got to go with your father for a minute.”

She could see the fear seep into their eyes — they knew why Santa hadn’t come at Christmas, knew why the sailors were there and that the shells had fallen on Ellwood — and more than ever in that moment she hated the war and the constant tension and what it was doing to them all. “It’s nothing to worry over,” she said, and heard the falseness in her own voice. “Just one of the sheep. It’s nothing. And I expect you both to do your reading assignment just as if I were here — and I warn you, you’ll be writing reports the minute I get back. So no dawdling.”