Island of Spies, page 8
“Any suspects in mind?” Neb asked.
“Miss Agnes? Otto? The Ringers?”
Neb sighed. “Otto sat in school with us. The Ringers were helping down on the beach. Maybe you’re right to suspect Miss Agnes so hard,” he said as Rain topped the stairs. “She could have wrecked HQ during school. And who didn’t come to the beach last night? Who put gas in a car she doesn’t drive? Who sees every letter that comes to the island and every letter that leaves? Miss Agnes.”
“All circumstantial,” Rain said. “Besides, Miss Agnes loves Grand and Grand loves us.”
“Spies fall in love,” he said. “And sometimes they only say they did. Maybe she needs Grand for something . . . nefarious. Like Dime Novel #31: For Better or Much, Much Worse.”
The hair on the back of my neck stood up. Nefarious, from the Latin word nefarius. Meaning dead wrong.
Neb neatly splinted our chair’s broken leg, and set it up again. “I say we stake her out strong. If it’s not her, we move on. If it is her, we trap her—even if it breaks Grand’s heart.”
A silence fell inside me. With war at our door and Grand’s heart on the line, the stakes suddenly felt higher.
“We don’t want him to accidentally marry a spy,” he said, watching my face. “Plus, if we catch a spy, we get the FBI’s attention. President Roosevelt’s too. Maybe even his wife’s.”
Neb doesn’t look it, but he’s wily. I glanced at my self-autographed photo of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, who will one day invite me to the White House. “Right. I’m in,” I said, scooping my papers back into my desk drawer. “Rain?”
Rain taped her Cats in Jubilation back on the lighthouse wall. “I say we focus on our intruder first.”
“Who could have been Miss Agnes,” he pointed out.
“Or not,” she said. “Thieves are like mice. If they find a nibble, they come back for a feast. We need a trap. I like the one from Dime Novel #75: Ghostly Footprints. I believe it will prove Miss Agnes didn’t ransack our place. But I say we set the trap and see.”
“That’s fair,” I said, and Neb nodded. “Meet at the store this evening for supplies—and the radio news.”
“The news,” he said, going dreamy. “We might personally be unknown even to those who know us, but after tonight’s news, our island will be famous.”
* * *
• • •
Neb wasn’t the only one thinking that way.
By 6:30 p.m., villagers had packed the store, eager for the once-a-day broadcast. I could hear the jangled nerves in the howdy-do chitchat—a little too loud, a tad high-pitched. Neb strolled in with the sisters, Ruth and Naomi. Rain shot inside as her mother stood on the porch greeting her friends. Miss Jonah hates a closed-in space.
Grand scooped up a bag of flour and taped it closed. “Don’t see why you need it.”
“To catch a spy,” I said as he hurried off to referee a fight at the checkerboard.
Otto swaggered in behind his daddy. “Saw your mom outside, Rain,” he said. “She’s unique,” he added, sharpening the word into a weapon.
“All of God’s children are unique,” Reverend Wilkins said. “Evening, Rain.” He likes Rain and her mom. “Jesus says to welcome strangers,” he tells Otto, but Otto’s not buying it.
“What’s that?” Otto asked, looking at our flour sack. “Forget it, I don’t care. In a minute, the world will know what’s happened here. The navy will come, maybe build a base.” He shot his father a nervous look. “Listen, I hope you misfits didn’t misunderstand me the other day.”
“You mean when you tried to shake us down for protection money?” I asked.
“Is that how you took it? Look. We’re on the same team now. Right?” Now that you realize you can’t actually protect anybody, I thought. “We’re all Americans,” he said as Rain walked up. “Well, all except Jonah.”
Rain’s eyebrow crooked up—face code for Now what? “We’re Americans,” she said.
“Forgive and forget.” Otto stuck out his hand. It seemed suspicious, but maybe Grand’s right: Maybe war changes things. Rain shrugged, I nodded, and Neb shook his hand. Girls and women don’t shake hands on the island, but according to our dime novels, city women do.
Tommy barreled in. Polished shoes, nice slacks and shirt and . . . a tie? My eyes traveled its length. I nudged Rain as Otto headed for Tommy.
Rain gasped. “That’s Mr. Olsen’s missing tie pin!”
I rushed to Grand. “We got Tommy red-handed with stolen goods. Citizen’s arrest,” I whispered. I pointed to Tommy and mouthed the words Got you.
Tommy smirked. “Attention,” he called, sounding like his daddy. The crowd rustled still. “Friends, you’re the first to know: I’m joining the navy. Wish me luck.”
“What?” Otto gasped.
“No need to reward me,” Tommy said. “A guy down on the docks was so grateful, he gave me a tie pin. Said he found it.” He took it off. “Stick, I’ll leave it to you to figure out who lost it. That’s your speed.” He tossed the pin on the pool table.
Fish rot. Outplayed by Tommy Wilkins.
“I’ll miss this little place,” he said. He shook his father’s hand. “Otto, take care of things. Please pray for me, all of you. I’ll pray for you.”
“Liar,” I whispered as the place erupted. “He never prayed for anything except more.”
“You don’t know his prayers,” Rain said, very sharp. “I’d unthink that.”
Unthink it? Like thoughts are fish line you can reel back in?
Otto trailed Tommy out as a truckload of older kids pulled up. They swaggered in—most of them from our world, and two from another.
The Ringers!
Andy Gray peeled off his jacket. “Hey everybody, this is Carl Miller, from Richmond.” Carl bobbed his head and smiled. “The big guy’s his cousin Ralph, from the Louisiana bayous. Some of you met them. They helped with the rest of us after that ship went down last night.”
“Evening, everybody,” Carl said, like he’d known us all our lives.
I zeroed in on Carl’s slope-shouldered cousin—Ralph. Six feet tall. Strong. Thin brown hair, green eyes set in a quasi-reptilian face—triangular, hard cheekbones, flat stare. His shoes—maybe a size fourteen—looked huge beside Carl’s. The Ringers wore identical wristwatches, khakis, and scuffed brown belts.
The room went quiet. Grand had disappeared in back; Faye seemed frozen.
As the lone coherent family member, I stepped forward. “Welcome. I’m Stick, part-owner of this island-famous business establishment.”
“So you’re Stick,” Carl said, giving me a curious look. “Good to know.”
Good to know? Why? Has somebody been talking about me?
“You boys go back where you came from,” Reed interrupted, elbowing past me.
“Uh-oh,” Rain whispered.
Faye came to life. “Hold on, Reed. I’ve got this,” she said. “Welcome, Carl. You too, Ralph. Any friend of the Kinnakeet gang is a friend of ours—until baseball season starts anyway, and then we’ll pound you into the ground.”
Carl grinned. “Says who?”
“Says me—Hollywood Faye Lawson.”
“I’ve got a dollar says you’re wrong, Hollywood,” he said.
The crowd laughed and I relaxed.
Faye’s a lightning rod of a girl. She pulls the electricity out of a moment, sends it shooting out the soles of her saddle oxfords and into the earth. It’s a gift.
“Thanks for making us feel at home,” Carl said, looking around the store. “I haven’t been here since I was a little boy. An older gentleman ran it then.”
“That’s Grand,” I said. “He’s in back grabbing more salt.”
“Nice fellow, loved to talk about World War I. Quite a hero, as I recall. I remember your island’s lighthouse too, Stick. The most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”
“Glad you approve,” Faye said, and gave him the thirty-degree tilt. Reed walked over and slid his arm around her waist like he was claiming her. Interesting.
“Listen,” Ruth said, “did anybody see lights on the horizon early this morning?” The store went tense. “Just a few quick flashes. I just . . . Could have been a U-boat.”
Just like that, the current changed. Fear curled into a blade deep in my stomach.
I took a deep breath and held it, picturing the first elements of the periodic table: hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium . . . The blade faded away.
“The coast guard, maybe, looking for survivors,” Faye said, her voice edged with doubt.
Carl shrugged. “If it’s Nazis, they can go straight to the bottom of the sea.”
The chitchat shifted gears again. Miss Agnes squeezed in at the last second, goosing people aside. “Must you people smoke?” she demanded, swiping at the blue cigarette haze.
“Stick,” Grand said, putting the salt up. “Crack a window for Miss Agnes.”
I squirted through the crowd and raised a window. Outside, moonlight glinted off the roofs and silvery oaks. I leaned out the window. “Miss Jonah, we’ll crank up the radio for you.”
“Thank you, Stick.” She settled her cloak and sat on the porch rail.
Inside, Reed took over. “We’ll be top story tonight,” he said. “Hope they say how many U-boats lurk out there, and when help’s coming.”
Miss Agnes snorted. “Why would they? U-boats sit on top of the sea at night, with their antennas up, listening.”
“She’s right,” Carl said. “Why give our plans away?”
“Germans are as eager for news as we are, and mad for American jazz,” Miss Agnes added, sizing Carl up and moving on to Ralph. “Our government won’t tip them off.”
“Mad for jazz? How does she know?” Neb whispered.
At five till seven, Faye made a beeline for the cabinet radio—the only big radio on this end of the island. It runs off our wall of Delco batteries, in the warehouse, same as our lights. Radio signals shift with the clouds. You never know if a clipped New York accent will bank in, or a Southern drawl. Reed calls it the Crapshoot Radio System.
Faye zeroed in. “Hush! Here’s New York.”
“Tonight in sports news,” the newscaster began. “In Chicago, the Cubs will not—I repeat WILL NOT—light up Wrigley Field for night games, as planned, announcing today they would donate the building materials associated with the project to the war effort.”
“Afraid of enemy bombers, I guess. Here come the real headlines. We’ll be up first,” Faye said, and we craned closer. Only we weren’t up first.
Or second.
Or third.
We weren’t up at all. My hopes plummeted graceless as a sack of rocks. Faye clicked off the radio and the store went still.
“They invisible-ized us,” Rain said. “Like Dime Novel #3: Now You See Us, Now You Don’t.”
Reverend Wilkins walked to the door. “When your right hand offends you, cut it off,” he said, his voice sad. He walked away.
Neb’s eyes went big. “Cut your hand off? Aren’t things bad enough without that?”
“Bible verse,” Miss Agnes said. “He means the government doesn’t like the news from our island, so it’s cutting us off. Censoring our news. They don’t want Mainland America to know the U-boats have arrived. America’s scared enough after Pearl Harbor.”
Faye shook her head like a dazed boxer. “Then . . . we’re on our own.”
Miss Agnes eyed her. “You’re smarter than you look.”
“Faye’s smart, she just likes to hide it,” I said, crossing my fingers behind my back. I looked at Grand. Somehow the news had made him older. “Grand? What can we do?”
“Plenty,” Miss Agnes said. “Put blackout curtains over your windows, so Nazi bombers and U-boats can’t find you. Keep your eyeballs peeled. Locate your backbone—Stick, you’ll have no problem with that.” Surprisingly, her compliment felt good. “And don’t whine. I hate a whiner. There’s a civilian defense meeting in a few weeks. Be there.”
“Civilian defense wants men and boys,” Mr. Aikens called.
“Our world has changed. You’d be wise to change with it,” she said, and walked out.
Grand crossed to the door to watch Miss Agnes stalk away like a long-legged, over-ruffled bird. (See emu, Volume E.) “That Aggie,” Grand said, smiling. “She’s a spitfire.”
CHAPTER 8
A Time for Heroes
The next morning—52 degrees F, gusty winds—Neb rode Babylon to school and left her grazing by the bell. The morning smelled salty and rich as the black mud etching the sound. “The Matchstick Alert held last night,” he reported, swinging his dinner pail. “And I dusted our downstairs floor with flour—just enough to pick up footprints.”
“The trap is set. Now we wait,” Rain said, plunking down at her desk.
Wait we did. The days crawled by odd as a five-legged lizard—a mix of almost-regular and not-quite-right. Many ships sailed by, but the Norvana went down on the 21st as I flunked spelling again. (See coincidence, Volume C.) On the 24th, the Empire Gem and the Venore sank.
The sea burned, bodies washed ashore, oil smothered the waves. No one came to help.
“Helpless,” Neb said. He wasn’t the only one who felt it. Children went silent or deafening loud. Adults went ashen or high-blood-pressure red.
“I feel it too,” I told Mama at supper. “I read the clouds but they feel strange and distant. Like the Nazis stole our sky.”
“We’ll get our bearings,” she said. “You’ll see.”
“Worry about something your own size,” Faye suggested, snagging a piece of lacy cornbread. “What’s Otto up to these days?”
Otto. “He never leaves his seat, but every blessed day—presto—Neb’s dinner’s in Otto’s dinner pail. Like Otto’s some kind of malevolent Houdini.”
Faye shrugged. “You’re the genius, kiddo. Figure it out.”
Grand says even a blind hog finds an acorn sometimes, and Faye had stumbled on a good idea. We put our stakeout of Miss Agnes on hold and shifted focus to mean-spirited Otto. With a solvable problem, life found its scale.
On Monday, February 2, as I left school, Miss Agnes bellowed out the post office door. “You, Stick! Postcard!” Papa’s scrawl grinned at me: Genius, leaving Wilmington for Charleston. PS: We invented the first submarine in Charleston in 1830. Bad idea? Love, Papa
I bolted home. “Mama!”
Old Miss Evans slumped at the kitchen table. Lately neighbors dropped by with odd pains. “Can’t shake this headache, Ada.” “Look at this rash?” “Feels like my prayers bounce off the ceiling instead of rising up to God.” Over and over, Mama made a salve, a balm, a packet of tea. People paid with a mess of fish, an armload of collards, meat from their smokehouse.
“We have to stop worrying,” Mama said at supper. “We’ll scare ourselves to death.”
“Little Hudson Aikens broke out in hives today,” I said, spearing a bit of sausage. “He’s first grade. He never worries.”
“He feels our worry. I’ll send a salve to school with you. Tell him not to eat it.” She buttered a biscuit. “On second thought, I’ll take it to his mother.”
Fact: Mama’s salve contains arsenic—a poison that smells like almonds. (Volume A.) Like many substances and some people, a small dose will cure you, a large dose will do you in.
“We can’t just sit here,” Faye said, passing the collards. “I hear spies come ashore in Wilmington to buy vegetables. They even go to the movies. Last week, a dead Nazi washed ashore with a movie ticket in his pocket.” She leaned toward us. “He went to see The Man from Dakota, which is mad.” She waited for the horror to set in. “It’s not even that good.”
“That’s your conclusion? He should have waited for a better movie? Here’s something more uplifting to think about,” I said, tossing Papa’s postcard on the table.
Mama grabbed it, her eyes shining. It felt good, bringing home a smile.
“By the way, we Dimes are pitching in on the war effort,” I said. “Rain’s watching the sea. Neb’s studying Morse code. I’m researching ways to dissolve oil. Too many creatures can’t survive an oily sea.”
“Kerosene dissolves oil,” Faye muttered, taking Papa’s card.
“You can’t pour kerosene on a sea gull.”
Even with the bit about the sea gull, our work sounded drab. I could hear Papa’s voice: Spice it up, Genius. “As you know, we have driven the notorious Tommy-Gun Wilkins off the island, but as you may not know, I’ve decided to major in Undercover Meteorology. The study of the relationship of weather to spy-craft.”
Fact: I just invented Undercover Meteorology.
I zipped mentally through Dime Novel #87: Book of Spies, for espionage terms: “Of course we’re on the lookout for bona fides—aka fake papers. Rain’s a gem there, with her art background. Codes—Neb’s a natural,” I said, warming to the subject. “And I’d love to have a music box—a shortwave radio. I’m pretty sure I can make one if I can get the parts. In fact—”
“Nix the tall tales, kiddo,” Faye said. “Use your so-called genius for something good.”
Invisible-ized by my own sister.
“We’ll be on a major stakeout starting Monday,” I replied, very cool. “Don’t wait up.”
* * *
• • •
“Stake out Miss Agnes today?” Rain said Monday morning. Babylon plodded beside us, Neb riding bareback as always, his schoolbooks and dinner pail clunking with each step.
“I know a strong stakeout was my idea, but I can’t,” Neb said. “Daddy’s coming home from Norfolk. From the doctor’s. We’re hoping for a good report.”
Rain and me skidded to a halt. “You didn’t tell us he’d gone,” I said.
