“Can’t they force us?”
He gave a wild look round the room, the radio going still, more static, another announcer, more failure, more hate, more fear, then strode over to it and flicked it off. In the next moment he was across the room lifting one of his rifles down from the wall and raising it to his shoulder to sight down the barrel. “I don’t know what they can or can’t do,” he said. “I don’t know anything anymore.” He leaned the gun against the wall, then lifted another down and hefted it in both hands. “But I tell you, anybody comes here to threaten us, whether it’s the U.S. Navy or the Japs themselves, I’m going to be ready for them.”
* * *
Christmas was dismal that year. All aircraft had been grounded, which meant that George wasn’t able to bring out the tree or supplies or the gifts they’d ordered for the girls (one headline, which she wouldn’t wind up seeing till well into January, read, “War Grounds Santa: Christmas a Bust on San Miguel Island”). The authorities were putting restrictions on boat traffic as well, imposing a blockade on all ships in the Western Combat Zone, extending out one hundred fifty miles from the coast, Mexico to Canada. No one stopped by, not even the Vails, who were under the same proscription as they. There was no mail, incoming or outgoing — no letters from friends and relatives, no magazines or newspapers, no Christmas cards. Even the Weather Service froze up communications. Herbie managed to fashion a wreath of ice plant, but the shade of green was all wrong and within a day the whole thing had turned yellow and begun to drip a colorless viscous fluid that ran down the front door in riverine streaks to puddle on the doorstep.
She did her best to craft presents for the girls — rag dolls, paper animals, necklaces of seashells — but supplies were limited, and Christmas dinner, while it did feature fresh-caught halibut in a sauce of flour and evaporated milk made piquant with a sprinkle of dried red pepper left over from the shearers’ last visit, was short on potatoes and fresh vegetables, and the Christmas pudding wound up being represented by an eggless, butterless and very flat vanilla cake sprinkled with raisins. Even worse, from Herbie’s perspective, was that there was no whiskey, the old trove long gone and the two bottles of Grand Sire that George had brought them at Thanksgiving drained to the last drop. About the only thing that made it seem like Christmas was a program of faint scratchy carols they were able to get on the radio, but even the radio signal was sketchy in those days and weeks after Pearl Harbor.
The two Navy boys — and they were boys, eighteen and twenty respectively — showed up on New Year’s Day. They came slouching up the road from the harbor carrying knapsacks and with a single rifle between them. A Navy gunboat had apparently dropped them off, but neither she nor Herbie had seen or heard it — the first indication she had that anyone was there came from Marianne. “Mommy, Mommy!” Marianne cried, dancing into the kitchen, “there’s somebody coming up the road!”
She and Herbie dropped what they were doing and went out to the gate to meet them, Herbie flicking imaginary dust from his epaulettes and she pushing the hair out of her face. For their part, the Navy boys seemed to be in no hurry, dawdling even, swiveling their heads right and left, looking pained and wary. City boys, she said to herself. The thought was automatic: she’d earned her bona fides, she was the pioneer here and they were the mainlanders, the neophytes — she wouldn’t be surprised if they’d never been farther than a block from a streetcar in their lives. Just look at them, creeping along as if they expected the sky to fall on them.
When they reached the gate, the taller one — an ectomorph with an Adam’s apple as big as a goiter — set down his bag and saluted Herbie. “Seaman First Class Reg Bauer,” he said, “at your service. And this here’s my shipmate, Seaman Apprentice Frederick Fredrickson.”
The other man — boy — had an amiable face and small soft girlish hands. His feet, in their now-dusty standard-issue shoes, couldn’t have been much bigger than Marianne’s. He doffed his cap and gave a brisk nod of his head. “Call me Freddie,” he said.
There was an awkward interval. Herbie was no help — he was bristling again, his hair mussed, the book he’d been reading dangling from the fingers of one hand. The girls, same as with Frank Furlong, just stared as if they’d never seen another human being before in all their lives, and that was something they needed to get over, this island shyness. It wasn’t right. They had to learn how to manage in society. Finally she said, “I’m Mrs. Lester — Elise — and this is my husband, Herbert. How can we help you?”
The first one let out a laugh. “Oh, no, ma’am, you don’t understand — we’re here to help you. We’re to be billeted here and keep watch for enemy activity. And, of course”—and here he tapped the rifle slung over his shoulder—“to serve as protection in the event hostile combatants do appear. Show up, I mean. The Japanese, that is.”
“Yes, we’ve heard of them,” Herbie said in a withering voice. “They’re those little yellow bastards with the buckteeth.”
“Yes, sir,” the other one said, trying out a smile now. She saw that he had acne spots on his face and throat and that his eyes were red, as if he’d been drinking, or — and here she made a leap of intuition — working through the dregs of a New Year’s Eve hangover. “The same,” he said. And then the smile was gone.
“Let me get this straight,” Herbie said, shifting his weight so that he was leaning into the gate now, as if to bar their way as he had with the men from the Interior Department. “You’re going to protect us from invasion — with one rifle between you? And an antiquated firearm at that? We used the Springfield in the first war, or didn’t anybody tell you that? They couldn’t even issue you the M1 Garand?”
“Well, no, sir,” the first one said, ducking his head, “that’s not possible at present. Captain Hill — he’s the one gave us our orders? — says we’re short of small arms and we’ve got to make do with what we have on hand, until we can, or they can—”
“Who can? You talking about rifle manufacturers here in this country gearing up for wartime production? Because if you are, it’s going to be a long wait, I’m afraid.” He shot her an exasperated look, then lifted his eyes to heaven as if to say, How can they expect us to suffer such fools? Out of the corner of her eye she saw the dog come trotting across the yard to investigate, then drop back on his haunches at a safe distance. The breeze came at her, cold and insinuating, and it carried the smell of the sheep. And then Betsy, her hair blowing round her face, sidled over to her father and clung to his leg, shifting back and forth to play peek-a-boo with these fascinating creatures who’d serendipitously appeared on her doorstep. “But you said something about being billeted here?” Herbie said.
“Yes, sir.” And here the one with the gun — Reg — saluted again. “Those are my orders, sir.”
“And who do you think’s going to feed you? Billeted, my ass. You think you can just waltz in here with that Springfield rifle and order us around as if this is some kind of military camp or something?”
The short one, Freddie: “You don’t understand, sir, we’re here to protect you — to serve you, that is. Your whole family. And to watch out for—”
“Suspicious activity?”
“Suspicious activity, yes, right.”
Herbie crossed his arms over his chest and cocked his head back as if he were examining them from a great distance. “Don’t make me laugh. You even know how to use that thing?”