Island of Spies, page 4
Reed turned. He’d slicked his hair down, and shaved close. I studied his black suit jacket. My heart dropped. “Who died?”
“Nobody. But I did make a little effort. Thanks for noticing.”
“Faye isn’t home, if that’s who you dressed up for. She’s with Neb’s sisters, planning what to do if the Germans land.”
He snorted. “This war’s turning life upside down, and it’s not even here yet. Guys leaving, Ringers showing up to play ball, girls acting . . . different.”
“You don’t look right,” I said.
“Nervous, maybe.” Nervous? Reed’s never nervous.
“You’re a First Law of Motion Man,” I said, trying to settle him down. “Sir Isaac Newton’s first law of motion says objects in motion keep moving in a straight line unless something knocks them off course. That’s you. You like to go the way you’re going.”
“Yes ma’am, I do.” Schooner bolted ahead and flung his pudgy body into the air to snap at a rising gull. He landed with a gray feather on his lip. “Listen, Stick, is your father in a good mood? I need to talk to him about something important. It’s private.”
“It can’t be that private if you’re asking me for help. He looked happy enough last I saw him. Race you,” I said, and took off like wildfire.
I am an arrow of a runner—sleek, curveless, nose to the target. Reed has longer legs, but the tight jacket slowed his arm-action. We pulled up at our gate at the same time.
“Hold it,” Reed panted. He’d gone gray as old dishwater.
Mama says people show stress in different parts of the body. Faye’s stomach goes first. For me, it’s my ears. Sadly, for Reed, it’s his skin—the body’s largest organ. He put his hands on his knees. “Stick, does your father like me?”
“Since when do you care who likes you?”
He caressed Schooner’s ears and straightened up. “How do I look?”
“You look strange if nobody died.”
“Will you ask your dad if he’ll see me? And if he says yes will you sorta . . . disappear?”
* * *
• • •
“Papa, I’m home!” I shouted, blasting through the back door.
Papa stood shaving at the sink, his suspenders off his broad, dimpled shoulders. I hurled myself into his arms. The war disappeared, Otto disappeared. Unfortunately, so did Reed.
“Hey, Genius,” Papa said, kissing the top of my head. “How are Rain and Neb?”
“Fine. We’re gearing up for war, soon as we arrest Tommy,” I said, and sat down to watch him shave. I love the soapy brush against his face, the glide of the straight razor along his jawline, the swipe of suds. “We’ll be Spy Catchers—as in Dime Novel #59.”
Schooner barked on the front porch. Right. Reed.
“Papa, Reed’s here,” I said as Mama strolled in. “He’s slicked his hair and dressed funny. He wants to talk to you. He says it’s important.”
“Slick hair,” he said, glancing at Mama. “Sounds like business.”
“Ask him to take a seat in the library,” Mama told me, stirring a pot of tonic on the stove. Papa pushed his nose a little to the left and shaved in quick downstrokes over his lip. He has fine lips, thin and shaped just so. I have Papa’s lips, which Faye says is a waste.
Mama smiled, and suddenly I realized how much I’d missed her smile. “Air the library out a little, Stick. And don’t break the knickknacks.”
I shot to the front room, raised the window a tad, and ushered Reed in. “Have a seat. You can borrow a book if you want. I put the ones Rain and me wrote at eye level—prime shopping space. Don’t break the knickknacks.” I went for pleasant chat, which Mama says relaxes guests. “I’ve never seen you sweat like that. There are two kinds of sweat glands. It smells like you’ve activated your stress glands. Want me to take your jacket?”
He shook his head and closed his eyes, and I sprinted for the door.
In a flash, I stood outside beneath the open window. The dried hydrangea canes rustled as I pushed them aside to peep over the windowsill. Papa strolled in, hand outstretched. “Reed,” Papa boomed, toweling the last whisper of suds off his face. “How are you?”
“Fine,” Reed said, popping to his feet and pumping Papa’s hand. “Just fine.”
They stood a heartbeat longer than felt right. “Stick says you have business to discuss.”
“Yes, sir. I mean, no,” he said, and Papa sat across from him. “That is . . . nice room. I’ve never been in here. Lots of . . . books,” he added. “Mr. Lawson, I don’t make a lot of money, but I fish, and build a couple boats a year.”
“I see,” Papa said in a tone that said he didn’t.
“I’d make Faye a good husband,” he said as Mama padded past the door. She stopped dead. “I’d treat her right. You have my word.” A person’s word is everything on the island.
Papa looked toward the door. “Ada, I believe Reed wants to marry Faye.”
Mama shot into the room. “Marry Faye? She’s only sixteen!” The look she gave Reed said, This had better not be a baby issue, plain as day.
“There’s no hurry, I promise,” he said, going red. “It’s just, with the war coming . . .”
Something bumped my leg. Schooner dropped a pinecone at my feet and peered up at me, his eyes dancing and his tongue lolling. He thrashed his tail against the hydrangea reeds. “Go away,” I whispered. He wagged harder. “Shhh!” I grabbed the pinecone, rose, and hurled it across the yard. A tingle skittered up the back of my neck. Danger.
Mama raised the window. “Sarah Stickley Lawson, get in this house.”
“No thank you,” I said, rising to my full five-foot-three. “Hydrangea blossoms change color depending on the pH of the soil. As a scientist, I need soil samples and—”
“You were eavesdropping. Don’t make it worse by lying,” Mama replied.
Fish rot. Fact: Mama hates eavesdropping unless she’s the one doing it.
I revised my strategy on my way to the parlor. “Thank you for inviting me. Did I miss anything important?” I asked, taking a seat. “Reed?”
He ignored me. “Miss Ada, Faye’s sixteen—old enough to decide for herself. But I’d love to have your blessing before I ask.”
Fact: Some truths are best unsaid.
Mama put her hands on her hips. “Faye’s too young to get married. Besides, Faye’s set on Hollywood.”
Papa laughed. “Ada, that’s a girl’s dream. Surely he could ask. She can always say no.”
A silence fell over the room. “Whether Faye goes to Hollywood or marries Reed, I’d enjoy having my own room,” I offered. “If that helps at all.”
“It doesn’t,” Reed said. “Miss Ada, couldn’t I just ask?”
Mama looked at him the way she looks at a hand of playing cards. “Only if you’re interested in a very long engagement. If she’s interested too, we’ll discuss it. Together. Faye hasn’t finished high school. I expect to see her in college.”
“College?” I gasped. “Faye?”
Reed smiled so sudden, I thought his face might split. “Yes, ma’am. There’s a dance club up the beach she wants to see. The Oceanside. I’ll ask her there.” He shook Papa’s hand and gave Mama a hug. “Stick? You and Schooner can be my best men—if things go my way.” The subtleties sometimes escape Reed.
“Thanks, Reed, I’ll walk you out,” I said, heading for the door.
“Sarah Stickley Lawson, freeze,” Mama said.
All three names. Again. Disaster.
I smiled. “I thought that went well,” I said as Reed shot out the door. “Faye’s too young, but if you’d said no and it got back to her, she’d elope with Reed tomorrow out of spite.”
Papa winked at me. Mama didn’t.
“Stick, if you like peeping through windows so much, you can wash ours. And since you eavesdropped on Faye’s business, you can work for her for one full day.”
“Give an entire day of my life to Faye?”
I looked at Papa. No help. Like I said, Mama rules at home, Papa at sea. I rule nothing but the curiosity buzzing through my head. Trying to tame it is like trying to stand on the back of a wild island pony as it gallops down the shore.
* * *
• • •
I washed windows for two days, sunup to supper. Rain and Neb tore in on the second day. “You’re lucky you know us,” he announced. “We’ve tracked the Ringers to their lair. Bedrolls, flashlights, and more Vienna sausage cans than you can shake a stick at.”
Vienna sausage. “They have money, then.”
“And binoculars,” Rain added. “Nice ones.”
I stopped scrubbing. “Why would baseball players carry binoculars? And who gave them permission to camp on our beach?”
“Why wouldn’t they have binoculars?” Rain asked, swishing a rag in my pot of vinegar water. “You have a spyglass.” She attacked a window speck. “Nobody needs permission to camp in the dunes. God owns that land free and clear.”
Rain gives everybody the benefit of the doubt, maybe because she rarely gets one.
“They could be spies,” Neb said. “I say we run them off. Life Rule #31: When you have a chance to be a hero, be one. Seeing me as a hero will do Daddy good.”
I peeked out the window, at the empty boat landing by our apple tree, and the dark blue sound beyond. Mama was nowhere in sight. “I’m in. But how do we do it?”
“A Get Lost note,” Neb said. “It’s good for Reed’s baseball team, and if the Ringers are spies, we might save the island. The FBI will like that. Daddy will too.”
I scrambled for my composition book, and tore out the first blank page. “Help me.” I glanced out the window. “Quick. Here comes Faye.”
Neb started us off: “Attention Ringers, You’re in our territory. Get lost.”
Rain finished it: “Love, Anonymous.”
“Too hard to spell,” I muttered.
“Right. Love, The Great Unknowns. PS: We are watching you.”
I quick-folded the paper. “Leave this in their camp,” I said. “Don’t get caught.”
They bolted as Faye sashayed in. “What are you doing, Genius?”
“Washing windows,” I said. And maybe saving the island.
* * *
• • •
Saturday I touched up the windows to Mama’s nitpicky satisfaction, but that meant time spent with Papa and that made it gold. “We sailed north last trip,” he said. “This time I’ll load up over in Manteo and sell my way south, then buy for the store as I head home.”
I hesitated. “Is the war as bad as it sounds?”
“War’s always bad as it sounds,” he said, rubbing a streak. “If your mother says the word, move inland. I’ll find you. How’s your weather journal coming?”
A few years ago, Papa brought Faye and me leather journals from Charleston. My collection of raw data now spans years. She scrawled Dairy across her diary’s cover. Only Faye could misspell her own title. “I can read the clouds good as anybody, and my journal proves it,” I said. “It will get me in a university one day.”
“And I want to see you there.”
Fact: University science programs rarely accept women.
He changed direction. “What makes you think Tommy needs arresting?”
“I don’t think it, I know it. Things walk off when he’s around. He’s dripping cash. He slips into Buxton Woods twice a week. We say he’s stashing loot there and boating across the sound at night, to hawk it in Manteo. We figure the rise in the heart of the bog is his hideout.”
“Stay away from those woods, Stick. I mean it. If you catch Tommy red-handed going in or coming out with stolen goods, Grand will handle the arrest.”
Of course. Everything seems clearer when I see it through Papa’s eyes.
“Anything else I need to know?” he asked.
I stopped to consider. We’d covered war, my life’s work, citizen’s arrest. “If Grand marries Miss Agnes, I’ll throw myself off the lighthouse balcony.”
“Me first,” he said, and I laughed like I can’t laugh when he’s away.
“I wish you’d never leave me.”
“Just one more trip, Genius, and I’ll be home so long, you’ll hate to see me walk through the door. I’ll send postcards so you know where I am.”
“Deal,” I said.
Of course, some deals don’t pan out. They don’t pan out at all.
CHAPTER 4
Danger Takes a Second Look
January 18, 1942
Papa set sail Sunday morning. Mama herded Rain, Faye, and me up the shell-lined walk to our white clapboard church, which sits with its back to the water. A ragged trail winds to the sound, to the Revival Spot. Rain and me will be up for baptism at next year’s tent revival. Neb has gone agnostic—a Greek term meaning I flat-out don’t know anymore.
Faye looked at Rain and me. “Pull up your socks, both of you,” she said.
We ignored her.
“Please, girls,” Mama said. Mama’s settled when Papa’s gone and settled when he’s home, but the sailing-away days leave her frayed. I pulled up my socks and watched Papa’s red sails disappear over the horizon.
As the church door bumped shut behind us, Rain and me blinked like moles, adjusting our eyes—a trick from Dime Novel #76: Danger Takes a Second Look. The white plaster walls and pine pulpit took shape. Mama and Faye headed for our pew, on the right. “Find Miss Agnes’s signature rooster hat,” I whispered. “We’ll stake her out while the reverend preaches.”
Rain went up on her toes. The door opened behind us and a woman slammed into me.
“For mercy’s sake,” Miss Agnes snapped, straightening her hat. “Watch where you’re going.” She glared at me, her fold-up glasses down on her beaky nose.
Miss Agnes is a rectangular woman, solid and sharp-cornered as a new brick—a fact she conceals with avalanches of frills. She wears her short, dark hair in tense curls, and her eyebrows thin over her black, glittery eyes. She watches our village like a hawk watches a chicken yard. “Stand up straight,” she said, leveling my shoulders. “Is Titus here?”
Please.
“Grand enjoys a private breakfast with my late grandmother most Sundays, at her gravesite beneath our apple tree,” I whispered. “That’s where he first kissed her and where they fell in love. She was lush as a just ripened apple and he was dashing in his glory. She’s been gone years now, but he still adores her. You could join them, I guess. But it would go against social norms.”
“Two’s company, three’s a crowd,” Rain whispered.
“Lord save me from children like you,” she said, her eyes narrowing.
“Shhhh,” someone shushed from a couple pews away. As Miss Agnes slung her purse over her arm, its gold clasp popped open. A scrap of paper and a dirty handkerchief drifted to the floor as she sailed down the aisle.
“Rain, wait,” I whispered, picking up the paper and kicking the hanky beneath a pew. On the paper, a row of numbers in a flowery hand: 21212ish latest.
“What is it?” she asked.
“Repetitive prime numbers, more or less,” I replied. “We’ll study them at headquarters while we search for U-boats and the Ringers.”
As we settled in by Mama, Otto’s mom stage-whispered across the church. “Pray for our boys in uniform. Imagine how their mothers feel.”
I elbowed Mama. “Who do German mothers pray to?” Sometimes my questions make her smile. Not today. She closed her eyes and I knew she was praying for Papa.
Otto and Tommy settled on the front row, pious as monks. It’s odd, their daddy preaching and those two dwelling in a half-baked purgatory of cruelty and petty theft. Papa says preachers love to find the lost, and Otto and Tommy want him to find them. I say they take after their scheming mother, and being a preacher’s kid offers dang good cover.
* * *
• • •
After church, Rain, Faye, and me walked home, leaving Mama to chat. Reed chugged up in his rattletrap pickup. “Hey Hollywood,” he said. “You’re looking beautiful. You girls too.”
An afterthought compliment. Still. “Thanks,” I said.
“I’m scouting Kinnakeet’s team this afternoon. The Ringers are playing.”
Faye frowned. “Ringers?” The things that escape her could fill a prison yard.
“Players that play for any team, theirs or not,” Rain said. She loves baseball because if you’re good you’re good—no matter what. She’s a hawk-eye for talent, and Reed knows it.
“I’m in,” I said. He smiled, but even Faye knew it was Rain he wanted.
“I’ll come,” Rain said, and Reed popped his blue baseball cap on her head. Mercifully, he had no cap for me. Rain looks cute with a cap perched on her curls. Hats make my orange hair stick out like clown hair.
“Give us three shakes to change,” Faye told him, and I tore inside to slip into corduroys and Papa’s white shirt—aka my lab jacket—longing for one last hug good-bye.
* * *
• • •
Reed parked behind a dune. “There,” he said, pointing. The team had marked off a diamond on a wide sand flat. The Ringers swung bats to loosen their shoulders. Pale, slick Tommy Wilkins talked with a guy by first base. The guy paid him, put something in his pocket, and trotted onto the field. “What was that?” I muttered. “We need to get closer.”
We sped across the sand and up a dune behind center field as Reed dragged Faye along. We peered over the dune. The blond Ringer snagged a hot grounder and fired it to first, graceful as dancing. “Quick feet and good hands,” Rain said. The first baseman hurled the ball to the big guy, who juggled the ball and caught it. “The blond has a nice arm. They traded up there.”
“They’ll use him at second, I expect,” Reed said.
