The Air We Breathe (18 page)

“One more thing,” Miles said, folding his sheet of newsprint. “I've arranged through a friend of mine who distributes films to have some special ones sent here, which I'm hoping will arrive in time for your next movie night. I trust you'll find them inspiring, or at least educational.”

“But we have pictures picked out already!” Lydia protested.

Miles, folding the papers into his elegant calfskin briefcase—when had he started carrying that?—shook his head, leaving Naomi to reply.

“But don't you know?” she said to Lydia and the rest of us. “Our Mr. Fairchild is suddenly a very important man. So important he gets to order me to drive him around on his errands. Or change the pictures you see, or—”

“That's enough,” Miles said sharply. “It's time to go, I have a meeting in the village.”

We watched in amazement as he picked his way through the circle of chairs and across the floor, his excellent shoes going
tik, tik, tik
while behind his back Naomi rolled her eyes and made a face but followed him.

O
N
M
AY 3,
Miles wrote this to Dr. Petrie—

He never considered the possibility of Dr. Petrie refusing. He himself had said yes the instant he was approached, sure this was the right thing to do and the only way, given his illness and his exile from home, to use his talents. He'd been repelled by the pacifists marching through Washington, white tulips in their hands, on the day the president went to Congress to ask for a declaration of war; then furious at the handful of senators and representatives who'd voted against the resolution. Fortunately it had passed despite them, and Congress was already debating a proposal to draft a vast army. If he was too old and too frail to join up himself, at least he could help make sure that the draft went smoothly and that the new soldiers had everything they needed to fight.

Which meant, he knew, a tremendous amount of work as well as constant vigilance. Overnight, the declaration of war had turned nearly a million resident German aliens into potential agents of the kaiser. Some might conspire with the Mexicans to take over California. Those in New York might help German submarines planning to attack the city. Saboteurs might already have infiltrated munitions factories as well as plants that made steel or acetone, felt or tool dies, anything needed for the war. The government had sent soldiers to guard bridges, reservoirs, railroad tunnels—but they could only do so much, and if it had not been, Miles thought, for the efforts of himself and Edward and thousands of other like-minded businessmen, quietly recruiting and putting into place the squads of operatives who'd listen and watch for trouble, anything might happen.

Suddenly there was more to do than he could have handled even back when he was healthy. Six hours lost each day to his cure chair; no choice, then, but to make the most efficient use possible of every minute he was upright. No more walks for pleasure, no more movies or card games or reading that wasn't essential. No more Wednesday afternoons with us. Anyway he hadn't enjoyed our last few gatherings; what difference could Einstein's theory make when the country was at war? Now he focused solely on his new duties, pushing aside his grief over Lawrence's death. Lesser pains—Leo's thoughtless rejection of his offer; Dr. Petrie's dismissal of his feelings for Naomi and, now, his surprising refusal to join in this work—he pushed aside too, although Naomi herself still managed to hurt him freshly every day.

His own feelings were puzzling enough. As for hers—crucial hours disappeared, if he wasn't careful, into trying to understand why she acted like this. Looking back, it seemed perfectly clear that she'd approached
him
and was responsible for the way he felt: she'd offered, back in October, to drive him on Wednesdays to Tamarack State. She'd sought him out, brought him extra desserts, listened to his plans for us with apparent interest, and once he'd seen that, once he'd turned and really
seen
her, he hadn't been able to turn away. She'd held his hand after Lawrence's death, when no one else thought to comfort him. Yet now she seemed to enjoy wounding him. Not once had she worn the necklace he'd given her for Christmas; not once had he seen her reading the book. When he'd first asked her to drive him on his new rounds, she'd balked as sharply as if she had no interest in either his company or in contributing to the war effort. Mrs. Martin, whom he'd been forced to ask for help, had reminded him that Naomi was only eighteen and a little nervous, as any young woman might be, at the attention of a slightly older man as powerful and successful as himself. He told himself that once she saw the importance of his work, she'd be proud to be part of it. Perhaps their bond would even deepen now that they shared their tasks. For the moment, though, she was painfully abrupt with him and whatever ground he'd gained during the winter seemed to be slipping away.

Grumpily she drove him to the hotel where, in the ballroom, he and the other two unit captains gathered with the village leaders to talk about bond sales, medical inspections, registration of transients, new train schedules, what the newspaper editors should print and what they should omit. A hundred details and hardly any time. Miles made lists, wrote letters, carried orders from door to door. Already, thanks to those meetings, the shops sprouted flags and loops of bunting but always there was more to do. Often he was late returning to his porch for rest hours and Naomi, who might have been so helpful, offered nothing but transportation.

On the Wednesday after Miles wrote to Dr. Petrie, he had Naomi take him to the post office. “I have to stay here for a while,” he said, getting out of the car. “To organize something. There's no sense in having you wait around while we do this—why don't you take an hour off, and come back and get me at three? If we're not done then, you can wait until we are.”

“When
will
you be done?” She flicked her fingers against the steering wheel, refusing to look at him. Her white shirtwaist, he saw, closed with unusual buttons shaped like tiny silver pinecones. Weeks ago he'd seen her sewing these on and, remembering how often in the past few months she'd ornamented her everyday clothing with a sleek belt or a fresh embroidered collar, he told himself she did that for him and recovered his patience.

“I'm not sure,” he said. “Not earlier than three, but perhaps a bit later than that.”

“But you want me to show up anyway and
wait
?”

“If you would,” he said firmly. “I'll be very late for my rest hours by then, and I'd like to get back to my porch as quickly as possible.”

Inside, he found his two lieutenants near the loading dock. The mayor had taken him aside at their last meeting to whisper that, while the Selective Service Act was still being debated in Congress, the secretary of war, wanting registration to take place as soon as the bill passed, had secretly arranged the printing of the necessary forms. Forty million of them, he'd said, needed to register ten million men. The main post office buildings in Washington, where they were being stored, had overflowed before the printing was halfway done.

“So we've all been sent our share now,” the mayor explained. “Every town, every city. Ours came on the dawn train but we're supposed to keep them hidden until registration day is announced. I can't ask anyone for help officially, since we don't want the newspapers to get wind of this until after the act is signed into law. But I thought perhaps you and your squad…?”

“Say no more,” Miles had responded. Pleasant to have a concrete task, after all the meetings and the long hours discussing reports on suspicious people.

On the loading dock, he found rows of canvas mailbags, each stuffed to the top with the freshly printed forms and waiting for him to take charge. He opened one, releasing an inky odor so sharp that one of his lieutenants, standing a few feet away, turned with a startled look and the other said, “We'll have to be careful where we store those.” Together they went to look for a hiding place.

Discussions, measurements, more discussion; an argument over whether to unload the sacks or move them intact. By the time they'd arranged the forms in a small room on the second floor and installed a new padlock, Miles was feeling feverish. Down the stairs he went, looking forward to the sight of Naomi's face and the comfort of the car seat as they drove up the hill to her mother's house, but outside, there was no Naomi. He walked to one end of the block and peered down the cross street: nothing. Wearily he walked back and sat—why should he have to do this?—on the stone bench in front of the pharmacy. If she felt for him a trace of what he felt for her, she would never, he feared, keep him waiting like this.

WHILE HE FRETTED,
she was busy in her room. In the days since Miles had disrupted Irene's second talk, since he and her mother had ignored her wishes and forced her into this full-time driving job, her body had obediently managed the Model T but her mind had been seething. Why was nothing up to her anymore? Because Miles decided he was too busy for the Wednesday afternoon gatherings, she was cut off from them. Because she couldn't get to our gatherings, she had no chance to talk to Leo. Because Eudora was working with Irene every spare minute, she couldn't ask Eudora for help; everywhere she turned she was blocked. Blocked, blocked, blocked, blocked, half her time and more this past week wasted driving Miles here and there, watching him open doors and vanish inside and pop out again a few minutes later, each time climbing back in the car with his head sticking out from his chest like a chicken's. How could a man look like both a sheep and a chicken? He did, though; it made her sick to imagine him fussing self-importantly with the other men too old or too weak to be soldiers. He'd claimed he needed her specifically, rather than a man hired at the garage, because he had to have someone he could trust. Amazing that he thought he could trust her.

She'd left him at the post office, driven home, gone straight up to his room and stolen a shirt and, from the top desk drawer, some money. Not all of it—he'd stashed so much he probably couldn't be sure what was missing—but enough to help her. As they'd been arguing, what she'd threatened idly, so many times before, suddenly seemed both easy and obvious: she
would
run away, in a few weeks or a month. But not alone. In her room, crouched in front of the long, low cabinet beneath her dormer window, she snipped the buttons from Miles's fawn chamois shirt and replaced them with handsome bone toggles. Then she wrote a note—another note; the one in
The Kill-Gloom Gazette
had indeed been hers—to Leo.

A movie night was scheduled for Friday at Tamarack State, she knew. Eudora would be safely off with Irene, occupied as she always was, while Miles had earlier mentioned that he had a meeting that night. He was expecting her to drive him, but that wasn't much of a problem. Swiftly she finished writing and addressed an envelope with Leo's name and room number, forgetting in her rush to add “Tamarack State Sanatorium”—an omission that would stall her letter for two days while an irritated postal clerk checked the registration lists of the several sanatoria. With a little brass key she then opened the cabinet door, bending at the same time to block the wave of paper spilling out. Drawings, her drawings—far more than anyone, even Eudora, knew about. Sometimes she forgot, herself, how many there were. Carefully she selected the best of them: Leo smiling, Leo dreaming, Leo thinking, speaking, reading. She stacked them on a piece of brown wrapping paper and then added the book Miles had given her, which she believed Leo might like, and the refurbished shirt.