Defiant Heart (13 page)

At the front of the hardware store, she took a deep breath. Then she pushed the door open and stepped in.

Walt was sitting behind the counter, but there was no sign of Jon. Fortunately, there was no sign of her father, either. That was a complication she was prepared for, but she was happy to avoid it. She walked confidently up to the counter, a bright smile on her face. As she did so, out of the corners of her eyes, she checked the aisles. Still no sign of Jon.

Walt gave her a desultory wave of his hand. “Hi, Mary.”

Mary looked at Walt carefully. His face was drawn, and his shoulders were hunched. He looked back at her through bloodshot eyes. She had known Walt all her life. He was invariably cheerful and talkative. She had never seen him like this.

“Walt, what’s wrong?”

“I’m not too happy with your father right now.”

“Why? What did he do?”

Walt sighed heavily. “He fired Jon.”

“He what?” She reflexively looked over her shoulder in the direction of the stairway, then back at Walt. “Why?”

“Something about the Jewish race. I don’t get it.” He shrugged. “It’s supposed to be complicated.”

Mary set her jaw. She tilted her head up and looked at the ceiling. “Is he here?”

Walt nodded.

“Well, we’ll see about that.” She whirled, marched to the stairs and climbed to the top, where she paused briefly in front of her father’s office door.

She was tempted to barge in, but she decided against it and knocked instead. She heard the muffled voice of her father calling out. She turned the knob and stepped into the room.

Her father had the telephone receiver to his ear. He motioned Mary to one of the chairs in front of his desk. She sat down heavily, folded her hands and stared at him.

He looked back at her with one eyebrow raised. “Sounds good,” he said to whomever was on the other line. “Listen, Burt, something’s come up here that I need to attend to. Will you be around later this afternoon?” He listened for a moment. “Ok, I’ll call you then.”

He set down the receiver and folded his own hands in front of him on the desk.

“Why did you fire Jon Meyer?” she asked, without preamble.

“It’s good to see you, too, Mary”

She would not be deterred. “Why did you fire Jon Meyer?”

He looked away for a moment, sniffed, then turned back to her. “It’s complicated.”

“Oh, no. That might work on Walt. Actually, I’m not sure it
is
working on Walt. But it’s not going to do it for me.”

“No, honey, it really is complicated. Let me explain, ok?”

She shrugged her shoulders angrily, but nodded.

“I haven’t told you this, because I didn’t want to trouble you prematurely. I’m planning to run for Congress next fall. And I have some very strong backing. The gentleman I was just on the phone with works for General Wood, the president of the America First Committee. They’re going to sponsor me.

“There are certain people,” he continued, “who are opposed to the AFC, people who want to see this country enter the war. One of the most powerful groups among them is the Jews, and the AFC has drawn a line in the sand. The Jews are on one side, we’re on the other. That’s just a political reality.”

“So what are you saying,” she interjected, “Jon’s the enemy?”

He shook his head. “No, that’s not it at all. It really has nothing to do with Jon personally. He’s sort of a, I don’t know,” he searched for the word, “a casualty, if you will. It’s the group of people he represents. And,” he raised a finger as she was about to interrupt. “And it’s about how others view that group of people. If I thought I could continue to employ Jon and not have it affect my campaign, I would. But I know I can’t. The AFC has done some polling, and a candidate who takes a firm stance against the influence of Jewish groups on the media and the government will likely win next fall. Like it or not, I have to be seen as that candidate.”

“Well, I don’t like it,” she said, angrily. “Come on, Dad, you don’t have to do this.” She pointed to the telephone. “Call them right now and tell them to get someone else.”

He took a deep breath. She could see his entire demeanor change. “This is something I need to do. I’ll never have another opportunity, and I am not going to pass this one up. You’re going to have to accept that.”

Suddenly, she felt very small, very helpless. It was as if she were six years old again. Her mother was gone. She was all alone, except for her father. And her father… what?

Her father didn’t care.

“Now,” he was speaking again, “I’m pretty sure you’re not going to like this either. But you’re going to listen to me, and you’re going to obey me.”

He fixed her with a stern look. “You will not have anything to do with Jon Meyer. I can’t afford a scandal. And, I’m sorry, but if my daughter were dating a Jew, I’d be dead before I started. That’s also a political reality. So you’ll leave that boy alone. And he’ll leave you alone.”

She started to say something, but he cut her off. “That’s not open to discussion. He’s already agreed to it.”

She sat back, stunned.

“Look,” he said, in a placating tone. “There are plenty of other fish in the sea. You’ll find a boy in due time. It just won’t be this one. So,” he continued, “do we have an understanding?”

She had an overwhelming sensation of being lost, as if she had fallen into a deep hole, with smooth, steep sides. The top was a long distance away, represented by a tiny circle of light. She couldn’t climb out. She couldn’t call for help. No one would hear her.

Slowly, she nodded.

#

Jon sat on the edge of his bed, disoriented, adrift. How long he had been sitting there he couldn’t really say. He barely remembered the walk home from the hardware store. His grandmother had not been at the house when he’d arrived, and he was grateful for that. He had not wanted to face her just then. The embarrassment was too great.

What, he asked himself, would he do now? Without the income from the store, he couldn’t contribute to the cost of his overhead. His grandmother would be upset. And it was happening just when she had started to treat him like something other than a deadweight.

He buried his head in his hands.

As bad as that was, it wasn’t even the worst part. Not by a long stretch. No, the worst part‌—‌the thing that was causing the ache in his stomach‌—‌was losing Mary. And even that thought made him feel foolish. How can you lose something you never had?

He had honestly believed, though, that there was a spark between them. She had given signals that she was interested in him, hadn’t she? Hadn’t she? And, even with the awful things happening at the school, he had held out hope that maybe…

What was he thinking?

But to be fired? Hadn’t he been doing a good job? Mr. Dahlgren had seemed pleased with his work. What had changed?

Mr. Dahlgren had seen him with Mary at the store. Had she told him about… well, about… the awful things?

Was that what this was about?

Was she laughing at him now?

He raised his head and looked around at the bare walls in his small room. He so desperately missed his home. He and his brother, Sandy, lying on their beds, with the old radio between them, listening to the broadcast of the Dodger game. His mother and father in the kitchen, talking about the day, sharing a laugh.

Suddenly, he had to get out, get away, go anywhere. He couldn’t stay in this place. Without thinking about it, he was up, down the back steps, at the door to the work shed. Then, before he knew it, he was on his bike, trees and fence posts a blur on either side of him, wind and tears stinging his eyes.

6

It was a Thursday, and, though it was still early, the weak afternoon sun was losing its battle with the coming night chill. The trees by the side of the road cast long shadows across Jon’s path. It was a reminder that, as October drew to a close, the days were getting shorter. He would have to start back soon, but he didn’t want to let go of his freedom just yet.

Over the past month, his rides in the countryside had become his refuge, an escape from the claustrophobic existence that awaited him back in town. As he formed that thought, though, he realized, with a little rueful self-deprecation, that it was perhaps a bit of an exaggeration. While his grandmother still maintained her distance, at least the hostility was gone. He had been pleasantly surprised when she had made no mention of the fact that his pay from the hardware store had stopped. She’d just never brought it up. Better still, even without the money, she was not treating him like a complete inconvenience.

School, however, was a different story. From the day word had gotten out that he was Jewish, Jon had been subjected to an insidious isolation. Apparently, members of the basketball team, led by Vernon, had decided Jon needed to be shunned. One day, shortly after the locker incident, he had tried to strike up a conversation with Doug Larson. Doug had been frank and to the point.

“I can’t talk to you. It’s not safe. I’m sorry.” To Doug’s credit, he did appear to be sincere about being sorry. But it didn’t matter. He still joined the others in giving Jon the cold shoulder.

As a result, Jon came and went without acknowledgment. He ate his lunch alone. And he endured a painful silence whenever school activities required that he be in proximity with fellow students.

Among the few people at the school Jon could talk to and who would talk to him were his teachers, with the notable exception of Mr. Spitzman, who appeared to have decided to join the students in freezing Jon out. That actually met with Jon’s approval. Better to be ignored by the man than to have to deal with his bullying.

Other than the coach, Jon did like his teachers. He was particularly fond of Miss Tremaine and Mr. Hanson. She had a good heart and genuinely cared about her students. He was just an incredible educator, and Jon was learning a lot from him. Mr. Hanson had even taken to assigning Jon advanced problems, both in algebra and trigonometry, having realized early on that Jon was head and shoulders above the others in his class.

The interaction with his teachers, however, only went so far. It represented but a fraction of what should have been the normal intercourse with the people at his school. The vast majority of Jon’s day involved a careful navigation of treacherous waters, anticipating and avoiding as much as possible situations that could become tense or unpleasant. On his best days, it was merely inconvenient. Those days were few and far between. Most of the time, he lived in a fragile bubble that could be pierced at the drop of a hat, whether by a crass comment or simply a boorish turn of the head.

As bad as all of that was, though, there was still one more thing he had to endure. It was the thing that really hurt, that literally caused him physical pain when he thought about it. That thing was the impenetrable wall between him and Mary.

After the shock of being fired from Dahlgren’s, he had still clung to a desperate hope that she would somehow transcend the craziness, that they could nevertheless be friends. But, of course, he had been wrong to hold out that hope.

From the first day back at school after the firing, Mary had gone out of her way to avoid him. She hadn’t been mean about it, but her intentions had been unmistakable. Out of respect for her, Jon had, in turn, made it a point not to put her in the awkward position of overtly snubbing him. As a result, they traveled parallel paths, never actually coming in contact with one another, not an easy thing to do in such a small environment.

With no job and, therefore, time on his hands, Jon had taken to the road. Every day after school and on the weekends, he mounted his bike and set out down the various routes surrounding Jackson. He’d started his explorations within a relatively small radius around the town. As he’d became more familiar with the territory, he’d expanded the circuit, eventually traveling several miles in each direction.

His rides gave him a true appreciation for just how in the middle of nowhere Jackson really was. There was simply nothing around but farms, meadows and woods. The one exception, he found, was the river that flowed a few miles to the east of town. He had followed it downstream to a point where it passed through a gorge near the town of Middleburg, which, amazingly, was even smaller than Jackson.

On this Thursday afternoon, Jon had ventured to the west of town and had ridden further than he had on any previous outing. The road he was on meandered through a series of wooded areas, intermittently broken by open fields. At the moment, he was approaching a slight rise, so he picked up the pace in order to generate sufficient momentum to carry him over.

Just as he was cresting the rise, he was startled by a sudden noise behind him. It grew from a mild hum to a loud roar in the span of about three seconds. As it reached its crescendo, a large object passed directly overhead, no more than a hundred feet above him. The pace at which it was traveling was so fast that he scarcely had time to register its existence before it just barely cleared a line of trees ahead of him at a right-hand bend in the road, and it was gone, the sound diminishing from a roar to a hum, and then to nothing, in about the same three seconds it had taken to achieve its loudest point.

It was an airplane. That much was obvious. What kind, he couldn’t say. This one, he’d noticed, had an upper and a lower wing, a biplane, he knew. In the short span of time he’d had to observe, it looked to Jon as though the cockpit was open. He was sure he had seen a helmeted head poking above the fuselage.

The angle at which the plane had been flying suggested to Jon that it was in the process of landing. Anxious to see where, he stood up out of the saddle and bore down on the pedals. Shortly after the bend in the road, he spotted a track that led off to the left at a ninety-degree angle. He leaned into the turn and guided the bike down a narrow lane. It took him through a thick stand of trees. Then the left side opened up to reveal a large field.

Ahead, in the distance, he could see a pair of structures. As he approached, he realized that the building nearest him was a small house with a shingled roof and a chimney. Beyond the house, separated by a large open area, was what appeared at first to be an oversized barn. The door to this structure was on the side facing in his direction, and it was open, revealing an aircraft sitting on three wheels. This was not the plane Jon had just seen. It had only a single wing and a closed cockpit. It was also painted white. The one that had flown overhead had been yellow.