The tall one — and now he was bristling: “We’ve been drilled.”
“You betcha,” the other one put in.
“I’m sure we’ll all sleep better tonight knowing that.” Herbie turned to her, his eyebrows lifted in mock surprise. “Did you hear that, Elise? They’ve been drilled. What a relief, huh?”
* * *
They put them up in the shearers’ room just off the kitchen. The letter the boys carried with them from their commanding officer gave Herbie and her the choice of evacuation — which meant leaving everything behind that wouldn’t fit into one suitcase apiece — or submitting to the Navy presence. Everyone had to sacrifice in this time of need, Captain Hill went on to say, pointing out that the government was pressing all private aircraft into service and any number of seaworthy vessels as well, including passenger liners, tugs, tankers, trawlers and even private yachts, thus it was their duty as Americans and patriots to billet Seaman First Class Bauer and Seaman Apprentice Frederickson, who could be expected to assist with household chores as needed and to patrol the island on a regular basis in order to protect them from enemy infiltration and assault. Further, each man had been provided with ten pounds of rice, ten pounds of beans and a quantity of dried and cured meats, including but not limited to ham, bacon and chipped beef, to contribute to the general stores.
Herbie wasn’t happy about it, nor was she. There were strangers in the house and they weren’t invited guests or members of the Mexican-Indian crew who came out twice a year for the shearing and whom they’d come to know over time as friends and employees both. Where was their privacy? What did these boys expect of them and what were they to expect in return? From the very first night they felt constrained in their own home, but the country was at war and there was a quid pro quo at work here: billet the sailors and stay or refuse and be forcibly evicted. The government held all the power and now more than ever it would be a simple thing for some official to revoke Bob Brooks’ lease, making it an issue of national security, and no one understood that better than Herbie. If that wasn’t enough, there was the appeal to his patriotism. There was no one, not in Washington or aboard any ship still afloat in the Pacific, who could question his loyalty, that was how he saw it — and he let her know it, lecturing on late into the night, airing his grievances, pacing up and down the room flinging out his hands like a soapbox orator, as worked up as she’d ever seen him. “I’m a veteran, for Christ’s sake. I fought for my country and I’ll fight again, if that’s what they want from me. Patriotic duty. Don’t make me laugh. It’s an insult is what it is.”
By the next morning, he’d come around. He was unusually quiet at first, hovering over a cup of coffee and sitting there at the table staring out into the gloom while she stirred oatmeal and sliced bread to toast in the oven. He’d mumbled a good morning when he came into the room, but hadn’t said another word till finally, out of nowhere, he announced, “The Navy’s not the problem. I see that now.” He shifted in his seat, set the cup down and began tracing an invisible figure on the tabletop with the bottom edge of it. “Of course I do. It’s the Japs, the Japs are the problem. And we’ve all got to unite against them.”
It was seven a.m. and the sailors were asleep still — or that was her presumption, anyway. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe they were already out on patrol, trading the rifle between them.
“Still, it burns me up to think they’d send us a couple of idiots like this — babies, that’s what they are, probably cry for their mother the first time a shell goes off. And if they think they’re just going to laze around here like it’s some kind of rest home, they’re nuts. I want you to lay out kitchen duties for them — they’ll wash dishes and scrub this place till it glows, by Christ — and I’ll let them know what’s needed in the yard, wood detail, for one thing. We’re two more mouths to feed now, two more adults, and that means double the firewood, double at least—”
When the boys did come in — at quarter of eight — they looked even more subdued than they had the night before. Their uniforms — their blues — were wrinkled, as if they’d slept in them, but they seemed to have washed their faces and hands and their nails looked clean enough as they sat down at the table and she served out their bowls of oatmeal and set a platter of toast and a jar of jam before them. Herbie was already out in the shed, doing whatever he did on cold damp socked-in mornings like this, and that relieved some of the tension. The girls had already eaten and since the holiday was over, she had them in their room getting ready for school, which would commence as soon as she’d fed the sailors and gone out into the yard to ring the bell.
Reg, the taller of the two, the one with the caramel-colored eyes and the pink slashes of scalp showing through his crew cut, ate with the kind of four-square rigidity you’d expect of a military man — or boy — but his compatriot, Freddie, slouched over his plate and bowl as if he’d never had any discipline in his life, not even from his mother. After a good five minutes of silence, during which the only sounds were the metallic clank of the woodstove and the click of their spoons against the rims of their bowls, Reg spoke up. “I’m sorry to bother you, missus, but you wouldn’t have a little butter for the toast? Please, I mean?”
And now she was embarrassed in her own kitchen. Butter? She hadn’t seen butter in weeks. “I’m afraid you’ll have to make do with jam for now because, well, since Pearl Harbor we haven’t been able to get any regular supplies—”
“Really? We’ve got crates of the stuff back at the base, right, Freddie?”
“Yeah, we could’ve… if we’d known, that is—”
“It’s all right,” she said. She was standing at the counter, tidying things before going out to ring the school bell. “We’ve learned to make do. Not that it isn’t hard sometimes. This past month especially.”
There was a silence, then Freddie spoke up. “But what do you do out here normally — I mean, before all this started? For entertainment, I mean?”
She shrugged. “Oh, there’s plenty to keep us busy. You get used to the solitude after a while. There’re the girls, of course. And we play cards, read, listen to radio programs, I suppose, just like anybody else.”
She saw them exchange a look. “That sounds swell,” Reg said finally.
And then, because it was five of eight and she made a strict rule of starting school on time, she folded the dish towel across her arm, replaced it on its wooden rack and stepped to the door. “I’m sorry, but it’s time for school,” she announced. “You’ll hear me ringing the bell”—she checked her watch—“in exactly three minutes. You won’t mind cleaning up your dishes, will you? You’ll find the soap under the counter here.”
The Horses
For the most part, the Navy boys kept out of the way. They appeared regularly for meals — they never missed a meal, give them credit there — and the girls came to worship them as if they were celestial idols set down on the earth and given the power of speech and animation, but as the weeks went by she saw less and less of them. If they weren’t in their room leafing through comics and back issues of Herbie’s sportsmen’s magazines, they were wandering the island — aimlessly, she suspected — propped up by the single gun they shared between them. They never said a word about Herbie’s collection, which had grown to some thirty-odd firearms now, except to let out a few exclamations of surprise and approbation the first time Herbie led them into the living room to show it off — and if they resented the fact that a private citizen had an entire arsenal at his disposal while they went half-armed, they never let it show.