A Midnight Sun Page 13

  “Aunt Gail!” Smitty says and squeezes her before going into the parlor, a modest home with many collectibles and photographs. It smells of tobacco and furniture polish, agreeable and sweet. I notice she’s in remarkably good shape. Barely skipping a beat, she walks up the stairs where I presume her husband is waiting.

  As we sit in the open living room, I hear doors opening and closing above us, Smitty escapes into the kitchen and comes back with a pitcher of lemonade and some sweets on a shallow dish. The dish is dainty and delicate, adorned skillfully with flowers. He places it unceremoniously on the coffee table in the middle and sits with us.

  “Aunt Gail had it ready. Go on, eat some.” He offered dryly.

  Amistad and I say no thanks, and look to the stairs where a tall man with a mild limp appears. He is well dressed in clean slacks and a freshly starched shirt under a thin vest. “Well, hello there. I’ve seen you’ve made yourselves comfortable. But, don’t just too much. The missus and I made lunch for you. We’ll eat in the backyard when it’s ready, won’t we Gail?”

  “Yes, dear.” She says from the kitchen.

  He looks at Smitty for a long time without saying a word. He shies away and looks fearful, like he must have looked as a child when he took the candy or cookies from her cookie jar.

  “My name’s Roger Neumann.” He shakes both our hands and sits after pulling a small box from a drawer. When he opens it, I see a pipe and a small rectangle on top of it. He lifts a lid and stuffs the pipe with aromatic tobacco. “Hope this isn’t too bad.” He says before lighting the match and lights it up without waiting for our reply.

  In an instant, the whole house smells of it. It’s so strong I can’t smell my own perfume anymore. Amistad pulls a cigarette from her purse and offers one to Smitty.

  “No, young lady. No smoking in here.” He says without a hint of cynicism. Amistad looks at me bewildered before pushing the box back into her purse. “So, Smitty here tells me you wanted to meet about some research?”

  I’m hypnotized with the rhythm of his voice. It’s perfectly pitched and he enunciates words like he’s tasting them. It’s slow and his tone is deep and almost sensual, like smoking, a Caucasian Marvin Gaye. He crosses his legs just as slowly as he speaks, placing one on the knee of the other and rubs his leg absentmindedly.

  “Yes, sir.” Smitty says, his tone timid. “This is Mirim, and the other woman there is Amistad.”

  “What happened to the use of misses?” He replies dryly. “I thought I’d taught you better than to introduce young women in such bad form.”

  “My apologies sir. This is Miss Mirim Teasdale and her friend Miss Amistad Johnson.”

  He groans disliking the introduction. “I’ll take that, but we need to improve on the manners we were taught since we were children, don’t we?”

  “Mr. Neumann,” I interject, “you are correct. I’m trying to find out about somebody who might have been stationed in Pearl Harbor at the time of the attacks. I understand you were there?”

  “I was, and it was more of a bombing. I’d barely turned twenty.”

  “My apologies. So, how long were you there and were you present during the bombings?” I swallowed hard. My throat did not allow for the smallest amount of saliva, it seemed.

  “Not long before that awful day.” He rubbed his leg just below the chin. “I was badly injured and couldn’t continue my career with the marines.”

  “Just as well.” His wife says, bringing more coffee before she leaves again.

  “I met Gail after that, when I was working at the center in California. She always says how glad that makes her.” He smiled and his whole face crinkled outwardly, toward his hairline, like the love he felt for her spread wider than his smile could contain. I felt goosebumps.

  “That’s a sweet story to tell, I bet.”

  “Yes, it is. Some other time perhaps? Now, what do you know about this person you’re searching for?”

  “Only a name, and this…” I take the box out of a bag I had carried for the meeting and place it on his lap, careful not to put it too close to where he has rubbed. He places the pipe on a stained ceramic dish next to him to examine the box and the contents. As he does, I tell him the story, but leave out my fainting spells, the dreams, and the visions. When I finish, I say their names.

  “The man’s name, I believe, is Sydney Fischer Gaynes, more commonly known perhaps as Fitch. The woman is Parker McNamara, and I’m not sure they were married, but it’s likely.”

  “How interesting,” he says tapping the pipe and emptying its contents. He refills it and lights it up again. “I’m afraid nothing is coming to mind. Fitch…Parker…”

  Mister Neumann turns away and calls his wife to ask if lunch is ready. I see her come out of the kitchen carrying a tray with dishes and cutlery. When I approach, I see her face is covered in tiny droplets of sweat, which I assume is from the kitchen heat. She looks lovely in her disarrayed hair and stained apron. I offer help and she points her head to the counter where another tray sits with glasses and ice. When I lift the heavy tray the ice in the lemonade pitcher clinks. My mouth waters at the noise.

  I help her set a table under the shade of an enormous Ficus. The generous branches flow overhead like a canopy of green feathers caressing the sky. The sway gently in the wind.

  “Beautiful, ain’t it?” she asks. I nod and smile, blushing in embarrassment for being distracted. “I planted her long ago, when I was first wed, wishing it would cover this yard someday. My Roger built the deck, and I saw its shade grow over them. My children grew likewise, strong and gentle, from year to year and their playtime built around the tree at times was what made me feel the tree was kind of like a part of them, their lives.”

  “That’s a beautiful story. You should write it, like for a children’s book.”

  “You think so?” She grins and blushes. “If my Roger should hear you!”

  “I’m completely serious. I’m an editor and…well, not yet, but soon I’ll be an editor. If you are interested.”

  “My! That’s nice dear. I’ll keep it in mind. Is that why you’re here?”

  I thought about it a moment. I hadn’t really thought of it in the way she was offering, but I used the premise. “Sort of. I guess you can say I’m researching a story.”

  “A story you’re writing?”

  “Yes, I believe so…” Again, she made me stand back in recognition. Her line of questioning was proposing an idea I hadn’t fully seen until then. I feel for the story, the plot in my mind, and indeed see the workings of a good story. While I ponder this, a strong gust of wind flows through the branches of the trees. I also feel it in my hair and imagine it dries the dew I saw collecting on Mrs. Neumann’s forehead. I close my eyes and lift my face.

  The sounds around me peel away, and next I open them, I’m starring at a couple, sharing a tray of fruit with yogurt and pine nuts. She pours honey over it and laughs. My eyes glance over the table. It’s filled with other dishes and drinks. They must have eaten a feast!

  On the edge of his knee, a small cloth hangs. The breeze picks up and I see the cloth floating off, hovering slowly to the ground. Just as it hits the floor. I notice the print has tiny drawings on it of vegetables and fruit in bright colors. The corner of the napkin stands when the breeze blows on it and I see embroidered letters. S.F.G.M. and a date.

  A noise approaches and I look up. The couple looks up, too. A plane flies by, followed by more in rapid succession. Seconds later, I hear an explosion and see the image vanish, evaporating like a curtain of mist over an underground grate.

  “I don’t know, Roger. She was standing there talking to me and suddenly her face went flax and pale. I had to sprinkle cold water on it to get her to come to.”

  “Mirim, are you alright? Please, look at me!” Amistad was saying but I had to cover my ears because the planes were loud.

  “It’s so loud. Make it stop!” I scream, and Amistad just looks at me. Then, she hugs me and rocks me like a ch
ild, cooing gently for me to shush, until it subsided.

  After much insistence and a little fibbing on my part, saying I had been scared by a swarm of bees, I managed to have them settle again and we sat to have a long-delayed lunch. When we had been eating a while, Mr. Roger started talking about his time in Pearl Harbor again, and he started by saying how it felt like the heavens had decided to unleash hell on earth.

  “I heard my pal Howard, yelling from the corner of the ship. The USS Helena. He had somebody else in an arm lock over the chest and was dragging him. I went in to help him and we were both pulling at the guy when I heard a plane come by us again, and the next thing I knew, I was the one being pulled. My leg was in flames from the knee down and I couldn’t find Howie. I pulled on the guy’s pants to let me go and brought down pots and pans from the racks I held onto as he pulled. I kept yelling for Howard, but nothing. And, the ship started swaying to and fro, like a wave pushed it against the starboard. The seawall… The ship looked tilted, like it was going sideways. We slid a little some on the deck. Then, we come out of a hatch on an upper deck. My boots and pants were damp with seawater and my leg begin to ache with ugly fury. But I saw the hatch and crawled out in a hurry. The guy who had dragged me pushed me as I heaved. When I come out of the other side, I kneel forgetting the pain and pull him out. That’s when I notice the hatch was not on the ceiling but the side of the ship.

  “We ran the length of it. I was propped on his shoulders like others were propped and were dragging shipmates. I saw all around us smoke and mayhem everywhere.” He stopped and his wife hugged him, then, went to bring back his pipe that was sitting newly stuffed on a tray. I wondered how many times he had told this story, how he felt the pain with each word, how he was able to tell us about it without relieving it in part.

  While Smith helps Mrs. Neumann, Amistad and I listen to the rest of Roger’s story. “The aftermath was crazy. We gathered near an infirmary but couldn’t get in. It was too crowded. People ran in all directions and shouted commands or yelled for help. I was young and lanky, but I managed to bandage my wounds with strips of my own pants. The guy who helped me –I don’t know who he was till this day, God bless him- we made it somehow…and Howard. I don’t know what happened to him. He was never found. No dog tags. Nothin’. Like other casualties, gone without a trace.

  “As you know, we went to war after that…and did to them worse than they did to us. I was discharged later the same week. And, honestly, I was glad. I couldn’t have faced myself in the mirror again if I had killed another man or woman. God forbid a child! If they had sent me to Japan, I’d have… Like Howard, too. He never hurt nobody, not even a fly in his life. Good as they come, the kid. And what happens to him? He gets killed by the same weapons we so defend as nothing else than our only means of defense. Do you see the irony of that?”

  A large plume of smoke ascended over his head, like a silent specter of all those he had mourned over the years, probably feeling a sense of guilt and shame for not being with them in battle, or for joining the service. It was impossible to understand which would be worse. I did see that the pain would be accentuated by the achy reminder on his lower extremity.

  “As to the people you’re searching for,” he continued, “It looks like he was possibly a navy boy, trained and studied on a fast track to aviation. I was Marines and most people I knew were like me –young and poor, but eager to battle an invisible enemy for a meal, a roof, or an education, like your young fellah. I mean, don’t know that he was, but it’s likely. Unless he came from a family of wet feet like my friend Howard.

  “If they were married, then he and the lady were probably stationed permanently on the base. He was likely an officer and ran his own house with his wife, and because the street was Liberty and Amistad, as you said, I can most definitely assure you they were well-off. If not remarkably wealthy themselves, at least their parents were. Now, her name is absolutely familiar, but I had no idea she lived in the base.”

  I bolted upright on the base. “Parker?”

  “Yes, Parker McNamara. She was in the papers a couple of times. An up-and-coming actress. Quite pretty, too. You sure it was her?”

  I run to retrieve the box from the living room and show him the letter.

  “I have a picture but she was quite young in it. Not sure you’d recognize her in the group photo.”

  “Hmm.” He was silent, only smoking his pipe and coughing a little. “I’m going to make a few phone calls to see what I can dig up, but I can’t promise much more than that. Most of the people are long gone by now and I only have a few connections left at the vets office.”

  “The vets? Do you mean the veterans?”

  “Of course.”

  “I appreciate that Mister Neumann.”

  “Anything I can do to help.”

  After leaving them my contact information, and deciding I liked the Neumann’s far better than I had expected, since they were related to Smitty, we drove back to the city and dropped him off in front of his brownstone.

  I was so tired, I forgot why I had woken up in Amistad’s couch earlier today, but it was something about my date, which I was already late for that evening.

  Chapter 28

  Marquee

  Mark Is a Serial Dater but Only When He’s The ‘Asker’ Not The ‘Askee’

  Seattle, January 27th, 1990

  The little tavern where Mark brings me is noisy and smells musty. I imagine the liquor barrels beneath the wooden floors, stacks and stacks of these spilling liquor, the fumes carrying the scent upward and drifting in the confined space. The fireplace is roaring and it’s filled to capacity, so it feels warm but uncomfortably so. I believe it an awful first date choice but I don’t say so. I only smile and follow the protocol for the expected polite banter of a first date –the commonplace where did you grow up and how did you decide to go on a date with me, and so on. We go through a fast meal of bread slices and cold cuts, cheese arranged on a platter, and an assortment of questionable vegetables that came from a jar in the stuffy kitchen. I can see lines of these from where I sit over the chef and his vapors. With my fork, I push them aside and settle for the bread and cheese with sundried tomatoes and a sweet marmalade I have to admit is more palatable than I had expected. The cheese gratin with caramelized onions instantly becomes my favorite part of the meal, so Mark lets me have most of it, a gesture I noted and thought made him a gentleman.

  Mark is completely and utterly well-mannered. I noticed he dresses neatly and is mostly outgoing and charismatic, but today he looks shy and sort of unpolished. He seemed different the day I met him. This night he has been hurried in his speech, careless, kind of insecure, and keeps playing with a handkerchief in his pocket. I figure it is his security blanket of sorts, the safety he brings on first dates to assimilate the experience –or perhaps his hands sweat when he is nervous. He wipes sweat from his upper lip and a smile quivers on them. I can’t help but notice he seems more concerned with the door than me, but he is attractive, unconventionally so, and I want to ease his nerves, to see if he might want to go further in our interest of each other. He sits across from me on a barstool and at some distance.

  “You look different,” I shout over the loud music and from behind a waiter who blocks my view. He has a tray on his shoulder and I’m scared for Mark. The martini and wine glasses he’s holding on them tip dangerously onto his head.

  “Say what?” His eyes avert mine when he speaks.

  “I said, you look DIFFERENT!” I shout louder and the waiter examines me aghast. Sorry, I mouth and point to my ear. He nods disapprovingly and walks away.

  “I don’t…don’t think so…you think so?” Mark says.

  “Yes, you REALLY do.” I cup my mouth to speak. “Are you waiting for somebody, Mark?” I try. He snaps his eyes back to me.

  “No, I’m just…looking at the…uh, would you like more wine.”

  “I’m good. Thanks.” I stand and move my barstool closer to his. “Better. No
w I won’t have to shout for you to hear me. You seem nervous. Is it nervous?”

  He produces a wan smile which fades as quickly as it came.

  “Why?” I ask and touch his leg, just above the knee and I feel his muscles move at my touch. He moves away from my hand and freezes. “I’m sorry…I just…I don’t know but something is different with you today.”

  “No, I’m sorry. I am nervous. I was looking forward to our date and we’ve had a couple of conversations since last…uh…”

  “Monday.”

  “Yeah, and you’re really cute and well, I don’t know…” He holds onto the barstool for an added measure of security, I surmise. I lean toward him and stare trying to make something out of what was happening.

  “What are you doing?” He says sounding and looking uncomfortable.

  “Nothing,” I say feeling like an idiot. “Tell you what, I need to take a ‘lady break’ to freshen up my makeup and ‘tinkle’.” I have a sensation go up and down my entire body. It has just gotten a few degrees hotter. Did I just say those phrases and actually air quoted them? “In the meantime, I’ll let you request the check so we can go for a walk outside.”

  I wait to see his reaction but he is silent. I have somehow made it worse, I fear. “I think it’s this tavern. It’s quite loud and so freaking hot, don’t you?”

  His response is, unsurprisingly, a silent nod. I pat his back and move toward the ladies’ room.

  At first, I can’t find it in the dark hallway where I had seen some women take a sharp left turn, but I hit a long line leading into a hallway. I whine and stand behind a woman with broad shoulders. She partially blocks my view but I can see the length of the corridor. A flashing light flickers at the end, like a strobe light at a club, giving the narrow hallway an eerie feel. The line moves slowly forward, and so, I take a step. The air feels stagnant in here, dank and somehow aging, like mold spores are in it. I keep thinking of the barrels in storage and wonder if that is the reason why they keep the place so warm. I take off my sweater and wrap it on my waist. I have a feeling like it gets hotter the deeper you go into the cavernous building.