The Art of Keeping Cool Read online

  “You remind me of him in another way. You’ve got your rights and you stand by them.”

  “I do?”

  “Yes. Your father was the same. It came out stronger the older he got. He and your grandfather didn’t get along too well over the issue of your father’s rights. I thought you should know.”

  “I guess I’ve already figured out they didn’t get along.”

  “Well, I’m glad,” Grandma said, turning her head to look at me, “because sometimes I worry. Your Grandpa has a temper. It’d be better if you didn’t stir him up if you could help it.”

  “You mean—”

  “I mean don’t let him pull you into fights, Robert. You step back, the way Elliot does.”

  “Elliot! He gives up everything,” I said in disgust.

  “Not everything,” Grandma said. “He’s a smart boy. You watch and see how he does it.”

  She stood up and shut the photograph of my father away in the bureau drawer.

  • • •

  Elliot was nowhere around when I came back from talking to Grandma. He’d gone to Abel’s, I was pretty sure. I hated it when he sneaked off like that and left me behind. I went home and lay around and read a book for a while. Then I remembered the thing I’d been wanting to do.

  The shoebox was there in its hiding place behind my mother’s clothes. I carried it outside, down to a shady part of the backyard where it was cooler. When I opened the lid, my father’s three new letters were sitting right on top, addressed to my mother, care of the farm, forwarded by the post office in Ohio.

  For a minute I sat there, taking in the familiar look of his steeply slanting handwriting. It was strong, confident writing, and made me think of the hunting picture Grandma had showed me, of how strange it was that my dad never had a gun at the farm. He’d never breathed a word that he could shoot. He could have taught me, too, if he’d just said something. A lot of kids I knew had guns and went hunting with their dads. I would’ve loved to learn.

  I picked up the first letter. It was dated in early May, written, like all the others, on a single page of thin airmail paper that folded up to make an envelope around itself. I opened the letter and read to the end without stopping.

  Dear Helen,

  We came through a tremendous battle this morning. German fighter planes ambushed us over the channel as we were heading home and shot down ten B-17s in our squadron.

  They came out of nowhere and we were bone-tired besides after a night of heavy bombing. Many good men went down. It’s hard on the base when it’s like this. Flight patrol is still out looking for wreckage but so far no word. Roger White is among the lost, the flyer from Indianapolis. We came over together.

  Our craft was damaged in the wing and the fusillage but worse our navigator was shot through the neck. We brought him home as fast as we could, but not fast enough. He died on the plane before we could get him off. I wish now I’d flown back low and taken the chance of some flak. He would have had more air. His oxygen mask was shot and not working right.

  It’s weighing on me if I did all I could. I can only say I flew like the dickens.

  I am all right otherwise. We fly at night under cover of dark, and though it’s hours of cold work we have good communication and know we are making our targets.

  I think constantly about you and the children, and the farm. Did the new wheat get in all right?

  Love, Kenny.

  My mother had read Carolyn and me some of this letter already, leaving out the part about his friend going down, and the navigator. She’d also left out the mention he made of the farm and the wheat getting in, as if she hadn’t wanted us to know he didn’t know where we were. So, what was going on?

  When I opened the second letter, I knew the problem wasn’t my father not getting our mail.

  Dear Helen,

  Are you still at the farm? Your last two letters have been post-marked IL, it looks like, or is it RI? They’re stamped all over. Probably the crazy war mail again.

  The rest of the letter was familiar, except for one description of flying a bombing run that must have frightened my mother too much to share with us.

  Light flak is a pretty sight coming toward you—green, white; red—like a waterfall upside down. But if it hits you, there is a rending of metal and then a tinkling of glass, and it’s time to get out of there. You don’t know what it is to be really scared until you’re up in the sky, your cover gone, and you see an ME-109 coming at you out of nowhere, guns blazing. My gunners are the best, though, and we shoot back as good as we get so you mustn’t worry.

  When I’d finished reading my father’s letters, I returned them to the box exactly as I’d found them, and put the box back on the closet shelf. That night, I looked more closely at my mother than I had for a while, trying to think why she hadn’t told my father about Sachem’s Head. I couldn’t stand not knowing the reason for it, and decided to ask her straight out. She was just coming down from reading Carolyn a bedtime story when I put it to her.

  “Have you really written Dad about us being here?” I demanded. “You know, if he hadn’t been getting our letters since January, I think he would’ve said something when he wrote back.”

  My question caught her off guard. She stopped at the bottom of the stairs and gazed at me. For a minute I thought she’d seen through me and guessed I’d been into her closet. Then she sighed.

  “You’re right. I haven’t told him.”

  “But why? Are you afraid he’ll be mad we left the farm?”

  “Not that. Something else. I intended to tell him. As soon as we came, I intended to surprise him. But now . . . oh, it’s so complicated.” She came and sat down on the couch across from my chair.

  “I do still mean to write him. It’s just that every time I gather myself up to do it, I, well, the trouble is, I didn’t realize how distant he was from his parents. He never talked much about them at the farm. They lived so far away. I could see they weren’t a close family, but that’s not so unusual, is it? I realize now that more happened between them than he let on.”

  “What happened? Did you find out?”

  “That’s part of the trouble. No one will say.”

  “Can’t Aunt Nan tell you?”

  “I think she knows but she won’t talk about it. It’s the same with Grandma and Uncle Jake.”

  “Elliot knows. They must have told him,” I said. “But he’ll never say anything about family stuff. It was something between Dad and Grandpa, I think.”

  “Long ago,” my mother nodded. “A disagreement of some kind.”

  “And then Dad left and never came back.”

  “But it’s so strange! Why did he never tell me? He never seemed angry at them. How was I to know? And now, here we are in the last place in the world he would wish us to be, I suppose.”

  “It’s not your fault. Grandma invited you to come.”

  “Yes.” My mother shrugged. “I don’t understand it.”

  We sat without speaking while, outside, the sun sank slowly and shadow darkened the lawn. Daylight lasted until after nine o’clock during these long July days. Carolyn was nearly always asleep before sunset. As the room grew dimmer, my mother rose to pull the black-out shades so we could turn on the lamps.

  “Do we have to have those down tonight? Its so hot, even with the windows open,” I said. “Let’s leave the lights off!”

  My mother nodded, and went back to the couch. We both sat quietly as various dusk noises swam in through the windows, chirps, croaks, the beat of wings overhead. Beneath these came the mournful horn of the channel buoy in the bay off Parsons Lane. “Old Bull” I’d heard it called around town and it was true that, when you stopped to listen, a bull was what it sounded like, a sad and lonely bull left behind in a field when the rest of the herd had gone home to the barn.

  My mother must have been listening to it, too.

  “It’s not that bad here, is it?” she asked suddenly. “I mean, are you getting on all right?”
/>
  “It’s okay,” I said. “Don’t worry about me. The person who needs worrying about is Elliot.”

  “Elliot?”

  “Did you know that Elliot draws? He can draw anything, better than anyone I’ve even seen. It’s the only thing he cares about.”

  I wished I could tell her about Abel Hoffman, but I couldn’t. That would just get Elliot into trouble.

  “Elliot draws?” my mother said. “I didn’t know.”

  “Dad did. He sent him a book about modern artists last year, for his birthday.”

  “Yes, I remember. He was worried about Elliot. When he heard from Nan that they were going to move in with your grandparents, it worried him. I don’t know why.”

  My mother sat up. “I almost forgot. We had a notice from the fort. They’re going to fire off the big guns at ten o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow! Why?”

  “It’s another military exercise. The concussion will be severe. Were to leave the windows open on either side of the house so the impact goes through without cracking the glass. And put breakable china away. I’ll wrap things up tonight but tomorrow I’ll be at work. Will you stay and keep an eye on the house?”

  “Elliot and I are supposed to work on Grandma’s hen houses tomorrow.”

  “I’ll speak to her tonight and get you both off. You can take Carolyn up there in the morning and come on back.”

  “Do I have to?” I asked. “If we don’t have to work, I want to be down closer to the fort to watch.”

  “Please, Robert? I’d feel so much better knowing someone was here. Then you’ll have the day off to do what you want.”

  I gave in and nodded. She went to tell Grandma while I sat on, watching the long beams of the searchlights play over Windmill Hill. I thought of my father, how he’d have to fly smart and fast to come through such lights to drop his bombs on the Germans; very smart and very fast to get past the guns waiting below to blast him out of the sky.

  It wasn’t very long after this that I realized I’d made a mistake. Whatever I’d just promised my mother, I wasn’t going to be here tomorrow, hanging around the cottage when the big guns went off. I couldn’t be. I had to be there, with them, down on the bay beach, watching.

  9

  I DRAGGED CAROLYN out of bed early the next morning and took her up to Grandma’s house.

  Since school had let out, we’d been getting up whenever we wanted, eight or even nine o’clock, long after my mother left for work at seven. I’d cook some eggs or a little bacon for us, and wash up after. Cooking and taking care of Carolyn were things I’d learned how to do at the farm. There’d been times when both Mom and Dad had to get out early for spring planting, or to bring in a crop that was threatened by weather. Carolyn was used to me being in charge, but that morning she was mulish. She didn’t like being woken up with no warning.

  “Why do we got to go to Grandma’s now?” she complained sleepily as we headed up the lane. “Anyway, I’m sick of being there all the time. There’s nothing to do. Let’s go to the beach.”

  “We can’t today.”

  “Why not?”

  “They’re firing the big guns at the fort this morning. After I drop you off I’ve got to go back to the cottage and look after things.”

  “But, aren’t you going to watch?” Carolyn asked me.

  “Watch what?”

  “The big guns.”

  “No, I’m not,” I lied. “Mom told me to stay with the house.”

  “You aren’t going to, though, are you,” Carolyn said, after a look at my face. “I bet you’re going to watch the guns.”

  “Why do you think that? I just said I was going home.” I glanced down at her. She’d turned six that spring and begun to think she was smart.

  “Well, I think you are because you got to,” Carolyn said coolly.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said, and walked her along faster. But a few minutes later, as we were coming up on Grandma’s kitchen door, I thought I’d better cover my bases so I said:

  “You wouldn’t tell on me, would you?”

  Carolyn shook her head. “I wouldn’t.”

  “I’ll do the same for you someday.”

  “Okay, and will you take me to the beach, too? I never get to go.”

  I promised I would when the right time came. We caught each other’s eyes and kind of smiled because it was the first real bargain we’d ever done together.

  My idea was that Elliot and I would go down to the bay beach together the way we had before, but:

  “I can’t. I’ve got plans,” he told me when I went up to his room.

  “I guess I know what they are,” I said angrily.

  “So what?” Elliot fired back. “I can do what I want.”

  He’d been spending more and more time with Abel Hoffman. It was beginning to get to me. Whenever I said anything though, he’d blow his stack and tell me I was against him like everybody else.

  “I’m not against you. I’m worried about you.”

  “You’re against Abel, too.”

  “I am not! I think it’s terrible what happened when he got beat up.”

  I really wasn’t against Abel in the beginning. I even went to visit him with Elliot a few times after that first time. I knew I shouldn’t do it, but Abel was a sort of fascinating person, and the forest around there was old and full of Indian arrowheads. I could fish or wade in the rocky brook that ran nearby. Or I’d lie in the sun watching Abel’s hawk dive on mice in the field. I’d never seen a bird hang around a person that way, though I’d heard about crows being picked up as babies and learning to depend on humans. Abel’s hawk wasn’t like that. He kept his distance and his own way of life, but he was attached somehow, I could see. He kept an eye on Abel, day and night. Once I asked Abel if he fed him to keep him around like that. He said no, it was all the hawk’s idea.

  Whatever I ended up doing at Abel’s, Abel and Elliot would be doing their art. This was mostly a matter of standing around looking at Abel’s paintings, I found out. The German had a big ego and liked to show off. Elliot would completely fall for this. He’d listen all afternoon without realizing that Abel hadn’t said one word about him or his work. He only talked about himself and his crazy ocean paintings.

  I noticed other things, too. Abel wasn’t always such a polite and friendly guy. He had dark moods when he wouldn’t talk or even look at us when we came. He’d just go on painting or cleaning brushes or stretching his canvases. If we got in his way, he’d be angry, and once he cursed at Elliot in German, and sort of spat at him.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Elliot told me later. “He gets pent up when he’s trying to do something that isn’t working.”

  “So he spits at you?”

  “He spits at whatever’s near him. He hasn’t had the easiest time, you know.”

  It was the excuse Elliot always brought up to defend Abel. I didn’t agree with it, though I could see things were hard for the man. He was alone most of the time. His boat-studio was ingenious, but no substitute for a house. When it rained, the place got sodden and smelly. On hot days, it was like an oven. All kinds of bugs lived inside. Most of the time, Abel lived outside, eating sandwiches and fruit. He didn’t like to cook. Fire smoke damaged his paintings, he said.

  He was always worried about his paintings. He stored them in a shed he’d built a bit away from the boat. He was terrified they would get injured somehow—wet by rain, chewed by mice, mildewed in the salt air or dried out by the sun—and he’d thought up all kinds of ways to keep them safe.

  He’d added layers to the shed roof, made gutters, built special racks for the big paintings so they wouldn’t lean up against each other. The smaller paintings he wrapped in blankets or burlap, but then he’d get nervous and unwrap them to see if they were still okay. You didn’t want to get too near him when he was in one of these unwrapping fits. He’d scream at you to get away. Just scream, like a lunatic.

  “You kn
ow why he acts like that, because he’s drunk,” I said to Elliot one day.

  Elliot shrugged. He knew. We’d both smelled the stuff on his breath.

  “Well, you should watch out,” I said. “Abel could forget who you are and hurt you.”

  “Watch out for yourself,” Elliot shot back. “You’re not my babysitter.” After that, he went to Abel’s without me. I didn’t say anything. There were plenty of other things I could do with my time.

  With all this, I guess I shouldn’t have been so surprised that Elliot wouldn’t come with me to watch the big guns. But I was surprised. And hurt. The firing of those guns was an event of special importance to me. I stormed downstairs, where Grandma finished me off by saying she had a meeting to attend at the church that morning. She couldn’t take care of Carolyn till after lunch.

  “Now you’ll have to take me with you!” Carolyn said, as we plodded back down the lane to our cottage.

  “Where?” I was in a frustrated rage by this time.

  “To see the big guns fire. You have to take me, right?”

  “You can’t go there.”

  “Yes I can!” Carolyn shrieked. “You promised! I said I wouldn’t tell and you promised you’d take me to the beach when the right time came.”

  I looked over at her.

  “You promised,” Carolyn said. “I could tell on you otherwise.”

  “Not if I don’t go.”

  “But you’ve got to go!”

  It was bad, I know, but I agreed to take her. No being scared, I said. She’d have to lie down when I told her. We got some wadding cotton off the roll in the bathroom cupboard for her ears and, after we’d opened the cottage windows, we set off.

  By 9:30, we were already turning into the swampy thickets that grew between the road and the bay beach. We hadn’t gone very far in when Carolyn’s cheek got scratched by a thorn bush and began to bleed. We went back to the road.

  “It doesn’t hurt,” Carolyn said. She was afraid I’d send her home.

  We used her cotton to blot up the blood. The cut wasn’t really so bad. She still had plenty of cotton left to stick in her ears. For fun, she stuck it in right then. A soldier riding by on a bicycle saw her do it and laughed.