Runny03 - Loose Lips (30 page)

Juts didn’t bother to check out the airplane. She zoomed right in on the dancing. “He’s not dancing. He’s sitting next to his mother, the bitch.”

“He was dancing with his mother.”

“Boy, he must be loaded.”

“Looked okay to me.”

“Maybe she held him up. She thinks she’s been doing it for thirty-six years.”

“I’m telling you, he was dancing with his mother.”

Juts didn’t believe her. She changed the subject, which was what she always did when she wanted to avoid an argument or slide away from criticism. “I’ve a mind to ask the old battle-ax what’s the deal with Hansford? Wouldn’t you like to see her face?”

“No. I don’t care.”

“Ah, Wheezer, come on, he’s our father.”

“Some father.”

Julia shrugged. “I don’t guess we ever know what goes on inside someone else’s head. Maybe he had good reason.”

“His excuses don’t hold water. I don’t see why you waste time on him.”

“Because he’s the only father we’ve got, whether he’s a good one or a bad one, and when he’s gone, that’s the end of that. We’ll never know whatever it is he learned from life.”

“You’re on a learning kick.”

“Some people learn from books. I learn from people.”

“And what have you learned so far?” Louise challenged her.

“That everyone has their reasons, no matter how crack-brained they may be. People really think they’re doing the right thing. Adolf Hitler thinks he’s doing the right thing.”

“That’s ridiculous. You’re telling me that Hitler doesn’t know right from wrong.”

“He knows. He thinks he’s right.”

“I don’t believe it. Some people serve the Devil.”

“I think some people serve themselves—it’s the same difference.”

Louise wrinkled her nose. This was a new thought for her, and her first reaction was always to stiff-arm something new. However, she mulled it over. “I don’t know.”

They sat together, listening, the laughter curling up from below. Tears trickled down Julia Ellen’s rosy cheeks.

Louise noticed. “Juts, what’s the matter?”

“I don’t know.”

“Are you sick?” Louise got cross. “I know you drank too much. You always babble when you do.”

“I did not.” Juts stopped crying. “I feel funny, that’s all.”

“If you get sick up here in this tower I am not cleaning it up.”

“I’m not sick!” Her eyes flashed. “I feel blue, kind of. Louise, you can be a real turd sometimes, you know that? I don’t pick on you when you feel blue or have the mean reds.”

“I don’t get the mean reds.” Louise tucked up her chin.

“The hell you don’t.”

Ignoring this, Louise said, “What’s going on?”

“Chester hasn’t said a word about a baby since the results
came back from Dr. Horning. He said he needed time, but how much time?”

“It’s only been—well, a few weeks. Don’t pressure him.”

“I haven’t said a word.” She wiped her eyes. “Wheezie, maybe he doesn’t love me anymore. If he loved me he’d know this means the world to me.”

“He loves you. Being a father doesn’t seem to be as important to men as being a mother is to us. Leave him alone.”

“You think?”

“Men are like children, Juts. I don’t know why you can’t get that through your head. You treat them like a friend, and you can’t. Chester is a big boy so you think for him, manage him—you know.”

“God, Louise, that’s so much work. I want a husband who can go and do for himself.”

“Never happen.”

“Pearlie seems to do all right.”

“I make his appointments, I keep his books, run the house, I figure out big purchases—he’s too impulsive—I lay out his clothes each morning. What does he have to worry about? Not one thing. All he has to do is get up in the morning and go to work. It’s never going to change, Julia. Women have been organizing men since B.C.”

“No wonder we’re exhausted.”

In the depth of the night the only music left was provided by Patience Horney, who availed herself of the free beer. She lay sprawled on her back in the middle of the square singing “Sweet Marie” at the top of her lungs. Occasionally she varied this tune with a heartfelt rendition of “Silver Threads Among the Gold.”

Finally both the sheriffs converged upon the square. Half of Patience belonged to Pennsylvania and the other half belonged to Maryland. Patience was probably the only drunken person in the history of the United States to sleep smack on the Mason-Dixon
line. After a fulsome discussion as to where she should continue her slumbers, the North jail or the South jail, the two men reached a compromise and carried her home.

Staying awake pushed every Civil Air Patrol watchman to the limit. Sometimes Juts dozed off, then Louise would rouse her and vice versa. Neither woman noticed Chessy slip off with Buster after the party broke up. The only bad thing about neither Chessy nor Juts being home at night was that Yoyo went on a rampage. Usually Chessy could get home in plenty of time to repair the damage.

At about 0400—Louise had taken to using military time—both sisters slept, sitting down, leaning against the side of the tower. Louise opened her eyes first. She heard a strange sound. She stared up at the sky and saw Prussian-blue cumulus clouds curling over her head. She knew there were airplanes up there—not one or two, but a squadron.

She shook Julia. “Juts, Juts, wake up!”

“Huh.”

Louise, on her feet, tried to catch sight of the planes coming closer now. She strained for a glimpse of anything through her binoculars but the clouds played peekaboo with her.

Juts scrambled up, strained to hear the sound, but it didn’t sound like engines to her, although there was something up there, sure enough.

“Hit the lights,” Louise commanded.

Julia hurried, rolled back the canvas, and turned on the great searchlight, but it took a moment or two to warm up. “Shit, this sucker’s heavy.” She trained it straight up in the sky.

“Can’t you move it around—over there.”

“Stop giving orders!”

“I’m the senior officer here,” Louise spat at her.

“Oh, balls.”

“If those are enemy aircraft up there you’ll have a lot to answer for!”

That settled Juts’s hash. Reluctantly obedient, she grunted and groaned as she swung the big light upward toward the noise.

“Stukas!” Louise shouted.

The black silhouettes in a V, high up, could have been the lean German dive-bombers used to devastating effect.

“The motors sound funny.”

“It’s the altitude—Julia, stay on the planes.”

“I lose them in the clouds.”

“Stay on them! I’ll crank the siren.”

“Shouldn’t we be certain before we blast everyone out of bed?”

“Better
we
blast them out of bed than the Germans.”

“Okay.” Julia steadied the light, her shoulders straining as she tried to tip the beam at a higher angle.

Louise turned the big wooden handle on the siren and the low wail, a sound of terror the world over, shrieked through the summer night.

“Louise! Louise!” Julia shouted, but Louise couldn’t hear her over the earsplitting howl. “It’s Canadian geese!”

People poured out of their houses in nightgowns and pajamas, pastel robes for the ladies as the siren split the night’s silence.

Juts tapped Louise on the shoulder. She stopped turning the handle for a moment. “Canadian geese!” Juts shouted.

“Impossible.” Her disbelief had some foundation, for those beautiful flyers usually migrate north in spring, returning for the fall.

Juts kept the beam on the geese, who soared in and out of the huge clouds. “Look for yourself.”

Louise watched as the V formation flew directly overhead. “Oh, my God.” She dropped her glasses. “Julia, Julia, you can’t
tell
anyone.”

“Jesus, Louise, we can’t have people thinking it’s the Germans. It will get all of Maryland in an uproar.”

“You can’t do this to me!” Tears rolled down Louise’s cheeks. “Canadian geese,” she cried out loud.
“Come on, Wheezer.” Juts thought and said, “Tell them it’s German geese.” She paused. “Anyone can make a mistake.”

“Not one this big.” Louise picked up the binoculars. “Oh, no.” Then she swung them down to look at the people. “Oh, God!”

People staggered out of back doors, shot out of front doors. A few, perhaps still feeling no pain from Runnymede Day, leapt out of windows.

Caesura Frothingham, in her nightgown, exposing more of herself than anyone needed to see, was screaming, “We’ll be killed,” just as Wheezie fired the antiaircraft gun in the air to pretend she was attacking the enemy.

Mother Smith pointed to the sky as Rupert knocked her down on the ground.

Verna BonBon, surprisingly calm, checked every house on her street. If she didn’t hear sounds of danger, she wasn’t going to lie down on dew-soaked grass.

After firing the perfunctory round, Louise again scanned the uproar with her binoculars. A tinny note crept into her voice. “Juts—Juts, look.”

The minute she handed her sister the glasses and pointed, Louise realized she’d made a horrible blunder. She should have kept this new knowledge to herself. Too late now.

Juts trained the glasses on the people below, then picked out what caught Wheezie’s eye. Chessy was running down the street from the North Runnymede side, Buster running with him. About half a block away she saw Trudy Archer standing in a lace nightgown, watching him run. Juts handed the binoculars back to her sister and lunged toward the big light. With all her strength she swung the beam from the skies down to the streets below, sweeping over Lillian Yost, hair in pink curlers, illuminating Runnymede’s finest in disarray.

“Have I got him?”

“Bullseye!”

“Dead to shit,” Juts said through gritted teeth.

“You’d better swing that thing back up in the sky.”

“I want him to fry.”

“He will, but if you don’t swing that back up, Julia, we will, too.”

Juts, bracing herself by putting one foot against the tower wall, heaved the hot light back up into the sky. The sound of honking receded while screams below picked up volume.

The first person to the base of the tower was Fannie Jump Creighton, who had never gone to bed. Or more accurately had never gone to sleep. The young man at her side couldn’t have been a day over eighteen. On closer inspection it proved to be Roger Bitters, two years younger than his brother, Extra Billy.

“What is it?” Fannie yelled up.

“Stukas,” Louise yelled down, “flying at about ten thousand feet, I’d guess.”

“Okay.” Fannie ran toward the firehouse to get a phone. Harmon, doomed not to sleep tonight, stopped when she waved him down. She tucked her head in the window and told him what Louise had reported. He called it out on the police radio. Prudently, he kept his headlights off.

Bewildered people stood in the middle of the streets. Caesura remained crouched by her car, taking no chances. The amount of white cream slathered on her face would have absorbed flying debris with no ill effect to her.

Louise, with presence of mind after her initial gaffe, cranked the air-raid siren and gave the all clear.

As soon as she finished, Harper climbed into the tower. “What happened?”

Louise opened her mouth but it was so dry no sound came out.

Juts quickly filled in, “A squadron of German planes, at about ten thousand feet.”

“Could you recognize them?”

Louise nodded. “Stukas.”

Julia hastened to add, “We were lucky people didn’t turn their lights on once we sounded the alarm. The blackout saved us.” She heard a clamber below her and peeped over to see her husband hauling himself up the ladder. She picked up a thermos jug, aiming it right at his head. “You son of a bitch!”

Harper looked over the side. “Juts, he couldn’t help being asleep. Now, you calm down. The sight of an enemy squadron is enough to shake everyone. Good job, ladies.”

Louise smiled weakly but Julia had a mission: She was going to kill her husband.

She reached for the binoculars. Louise pulled them away from her. Juts took off her shoe, hitting Chessy square on the head.

“Julia,” he called, hanging on to the ladder. “I can explain everything.”

“Explain it to God.” She pulled off her other shoe.

She put two and two together with alarming speed: the shell earrings and Chester’s dancing with his mother.

A crowd had gathered below. Louise grabbed her sister by the elbow. “You have to understand. Julia is a fighter. She’s furious she didn’t get to fire the antiaircraft gun like I did. Aren’t you?” Louise couldn’t think of a better story.

Juts blinked. “Uh—” She focused on Harper. “We had ’em, Harper. We had ’em in our sights but the clouds messed us up!”

Chester neither ascended nor descended. People shouted from below. He turned his head, calling to them, “Hold on. Just wait a minute.”

Harper leaned over, cupped his hands over his mouth, and shouted, “German planes. It’s all right now. Go on home.”

“How do we know there won’t be more?” Millard sensibly replied.

“We don’t.” Louise leaned over the side as Pearlie raced up to the tower base with Mary and Maizie. “But we’re not their target.”

Popeye Huffstetler, sensing his big break, a wire story with his byline, shouted out so many questions from below that Louise finally yelled, “Popeye, I will answer all your questions but not until I make a full report to the head of the Civil Air Patrol. You all go on back home.” She looked straight down at Chester. “You’d better come along with me. Don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

She turned to Juts. “You need to make a report, too.”

“I will.” Juts’s lips quivered. She didn’t know whether to sob or kill.

As they made their way down the ladder, elbowing through the crowd to Harper’s waiting squad car, Julia wouldn’t let Chester touch her. Popeye followed in his 1937 Chevy.

Louise dutifully made her report to Hagerstown, waking up Colonel Froling. Then she and Juts answered Popeye’s insistent questions. Buster patiently sat by his mother’s knee. Chester stood behind the women. Louise had managed to whisper to Pearlie what happened with Chester so Pearlie stood by Chester—just in case. He sent Mary and Maizie home.

Millard Yost took over in the tower along with Roger Bitters, who volunteered to stay. The tower couldn’t be left empty at a time like this.