Sarah said, “Sounds interesting. And Sam, I just saw in the paper, Montgomery Ward’s has a sale on, men’s dress shirts for a dollar forty-four apiece. Do you want me to pick you up a couple next time I’m downtown? With your promotion, you’ve got to have more than just two.”
“Yeah, I guess… Look, we’ve got to talk.”
He took her hand and led her back to the couch. He sat his surprised wife down and looked around, then turned up the radio’s volume. The thumping joy of some bigband orchestra grew louder, the trumpet piercing. Harry James, playing “I’ve Heard that Song Before.” He leaned over to her and said, “It has to stop, Sarah. Now.”
Her eyes widened. “What has to stop?”
His chest was tight, so tight it hurt. “The Underground Railroad. It has to stop now. Tonight. This instant. And we’ve got to empty out the basement of any evidence.”
His hand was still in hers, and her fingers felt cold. “What’s wrong? Who found out?”
“Damned if I know how, but the Party knows there’s a station operating here in the city. Marshal Hanson asked me to keep an eye open for any evidence. Pretty damn ironic, right?”
“Sam, this could be a good thing. You could pretend that you couldn’t find anything, the heat would be off, and—”
“No. Not going to happen, Sarah. It’s one thing to look the other way when you and your friends set the station up in our basement. But I can’t jeopardize my job, or you and Toby, by going along with a cover-up. It’s not going to happen. Promise me the station shuts down. Tonight.”
She withdrew her hand gently. “I promise we’ll talk about it. All right? That’s all I can do right now.” Her cheeks were flushed.
“Sarah, please. It’s been a hell of a long day.”
She stood and reached over to snap the radio off. “I’m sorry to say, but your day’s not over yet.”
In the silence that followed, he didn’t want to argue any more about the Underground Railroad. Sam didn’t know how much the Party suspected, but he did know the Party had amazing wiretapping abilities when they had the desire, and lately, they’d had plenty of desire. “How’s that?” He tried to keep his voice even.
“Your ham loaf and potatoes are ready, but you need to talk to Toby first.”
“Don’t tell me we’ve got another call from his principal.”
“No, nothing like that. He just wants you to say good night to him. And Sam—he wants to know if he can get rid of the rubber sheet. He’s terribly upset about wetting the bed last week.”
“All right. I’ll talk to him.”
“And there’s Walter, Sam—”
“Damn,” he said. “What now?”
She rolled her eyes in the direction of the ceiling. “Said his sink is clogged. Wants to know if you can fix it before you go to bed.”
“A clogged sink? Again? Can’t the man fix a damn clogged sink?”
“He used to be a science professor at Harvard. How smart can he be?”
“I don’t know. He’s living with us because you’re friends, so you tell me.”
“Please,” she said. “Can we not get into that now? He’s paying us rent, we need the money, and he needs his sink unclogged. Can we just leave it at that, Sam?”
He recalled what he had said to the snide young cop about knowing things. “Yeah, I guess so. Okay, Sarah—Toby first, dinner second, and Walter third.”
Her mood changed suddenly; Sarah smiled at him, a welcome sight after their talk about the Railroad. “Care to think of a fourth, Inspector Miller?”
“I certainly do, Mrs. Miller, and look forward to it.”
She slapped his rump and pushed him away. “Only if you get your boy to sleep and play plumber. So get to it. And Sam… we’ll talk about the other thing later. Promise.”
He went through the kitchen and past a new Frigidaire refrigerator, an anniversary gift from his father-in-law. He hated receiving something so extravagant from a man he despised, but Sarah loved getting rid of the icebox and the never-ending task of emptying the floor drain pan, so that had been that.
He eased open the door to his son’s room. The night-light illuminated the narrow bed and a bookcase that held a cluster of books and toy trucks, one, he always noted with a smile, a police cruiser with Portsmouth markings. On the other side of the bookcase were a Gilbert chemistry set and a fossil collection.
From the ceiling, model aircraft hung from black thread and thumbtacks pushed into the plaster: Great War aircraft like a Sopwith Camel and a Fokker triplane, and a German zeppelin and U.S. Navy blimp. All made from balsa wood and tissue paper, each one carefully pieced together with his boy on lazy Sunday afternoons.
He sat on the corner of the bed and touched Toby’s silky brown hair with his hand. His boy stared up at him sleepily.
“Dad.”
“Hey, kiddo. Why aren’t you sleeping?”
Toby yawned. “I wanna make sure you were home. That you were okay. That’s why.”
“Well, I’m back. And I’m okay.”
“Why did you have to leave?”
“There was a case I had to investigate.”
“What kind of case?” Toby rolled on the mattress, making a rustling noise from the rubber sheet underneath the cotton one. Just last week the boy had awakened screaming from a nightmare, having wet the bed.
“A… dead man was found. I had to check it out.”
“Was it a murder?”
“I don’t know yet.”
“Oh…”
“Toby, are you scared of something?”
“I dunno. I worry sometimes about bad men. Spies, killers. Bad men hurting you. Hurting Mom. Stupid, huh?”
“Not stupid,” Sam said firmly. “But I promise you: No bad men are going to hurt you. Or Mom. Or me. Ever.”
“You sure?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Dad… I don’t like this rubber sheet. It’s for babies.”
Sam repressed a sigh. “Just a little while longer, pal.”
His boy turned his head. “Dad, you’re sure about that? That there are no spies?”
“There’s no spies,” Sam said firmly. “We’re safe, pal, you and your mom and me.”
How many fathers out there had had the same talk with their sons hours before being seized, arrested, their families broken up, their children sent to state homes? Sam thought, Oh, there are so many bad men out there, how in God’s name can I protect you from all of them?
Sam cleared his throat. “Now make us both happy and go to sleep, okay? And no more nightmares.”
“’Kay, Dad.”
“And keep doing good in school, okay? No more notes from your teachers, all right?”
“I’ll try, Dad,” Toby murmured, already falling asleep. Sam kissed the soft brown hair, got up, and went to the door. A small voice said, “Dad? Can I listen to my crystal set for a while?”
The crystal radio set, made as a project in the Cub Scouts. Let him listen to music or a western or a mystery… or no, his bright little boy would probably listen to the news of the bad men butchering little boys in Manchuria and China and Indochina and Russia and Finland and Burma and—
Sam felt adrift. What he really wanted to do was talk to his son, to tell him there was a time when the radio wasn’t full of news about wars overseas, that the President was someone to admire, that people had work and unemployment wasn’t approaching 40 percent. When newsprint wasn’t a rationed government resource. And that even though the country had managed to stay out of the bloody wars in the Pacific and in Europe, it now seemed to be endlessly at war with itself, with arrests and detentions and labor camps, all orchestrated by a man who wasn’t fit to inhabit the house once lived in by Abe Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson.