4. 1960
Growing up, Catherine Martin was required to follow exactly three rules:
Rule #1:Do what your father says.
Rule #2:Talking back regarding Rule #1 will result in swift and decisive punishment.
Rule #3:Please, Catherine, for the love of everything, just do it and stop arguing. Your father has a lot on his plate right now.
Since these rules had been established early in her childhood (one might even say they’d been established swiftly and decisively), it was to be inferred that her father always had a lot on his plate—which, as Major Gene Martin would have been the first to tell you, he did.
“Catherine Winifred Martin, at what hour do we breakfast in this house?” he asked the first morning of their first day of his new commanding post. It didn’t occur to him that since they’d arrived in Colville sometime after midnight, at which point Catherine and her mother had been forced to unpack the essentials and make up the beds, sleeping in would have been a welcome—if not necessary—treat.
“Oh-six-hundred hours,” she said, yawning behind her hand.
“And what hour have we reached at this precise moment in time?” he continued. Since they hadn’t yet made it to unpacking any of the clocks, she recognized this for the rhetorical question it was.
“Past oh-six-hundred hours,” she said. She plopped onto a red vinyl chair at the kitchen table and reached for the carafe of coffee before remembering how her father felt about young women drinking caffeine.
“Stimulants aren’t ladylike,” he always said.
“I’ll make us a fresh pot when he leaves, Catherine,” her mother always countered. “Just be patient. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
Catherine dropped her hand and allowed it to fall in her lap. Despite being late to the breakfast table, she was dressed in a yellow fitted sundress with a full skirt, her mousy-brown hair flared in a neat bob. Her mother was similarly dressed and coiffed, thanks in large part to the salon they’d both visited in Dallas before getting dragged to this rural outpost. From their Dazzling Coral lipstick to their low-heeled pumps, they were identical. The one exception was that her mother looked about as tired as Catherine felt, with heavy bags under her eyes and a tightness around her mouth that no amount of Pond’s Cold Cream could erase.
Not that Major Gene Martin would have noticed. Military precision was the only thing that mattered to him. As long as the cottons were pressed and the shoes polished, he was satisfied. The body inside the uniform was merely a means of transportation.
“I’m glad to see you up and ready to tackle the day,” her dad said. Since he followed it up by nodding at the grapefruit sitting in front of her, Catherine took it to mean she was being forgiven for her tardiness. “Are you heading into town to take a look around?”
“Am I ever,” she replied as she started sprinkling heaps of sugar over the top of her grapefruit. She couldn’t stand the dratted things, but her mom swore by their slimming effects. Fortunately, Catherine had learned that with enough sugar, anything was palatable. “I noticed the local library when we drove in last night. You know that cute little brick building across from the post office? I’m surprised they have such a nice one. I hope they have the new Shirley Jackson, but I’m not holding my breath. I doubt they even know who she is this far away from civilization.”
“We’re stationed in northern Washington, not the Antipodes,” her dad reminded her. “It’s much livelier than you think. My squadron alone has over a hundred and forty men.”
She recognized this as the reprimand it was. “Yes, sir.”
“It’s a highly coveted position and a great opportunity for our whole family.”
“Of course, sir.”
“I’ll take you on a tour of the base as soon as you and your mother are settled in. You’ll like that.”
Catherine grimaced, but it was easy enough to pretend her breakfast was the cause. “That sounds fun. Thanks.”
Truth be told, a tour of the 760th Radar Base sounded about as fun as stabbing herself in the eye with her serrated grapefruit spoon, but she wasn’t about to say so. Radar scanning and cryptography were all well and fine for people like her father, who thrived in an environment where seeking out enemy planes and missiles on U.S. territory was a tense, important business, but she’d never been one for technology.
Give her a good book, some lively company, and—oh, please, just one—cup of coffee, and she was content.
Her poor father. He’d always wanted a son to follow in his footsteps. One who was taller than he was, strapping in ways that he’d never be, and interested in things like vacuum tubes and SAGE systems. Instead, all he’d gotten was Catherine: short and slight, interested only in the newest Shirley Jackson, the taste of her morning grapefruit forever bitter on her tongue.
Her father finished up his breakfast and pushed back from the table. “I’d better get going. It’s a half-hour drive out to the base. I wouldn’t want to be late on my first day.”
He leaned forward and dropped a kiss first on her mother’s cheek and then on Catherine’s. Underneath this affectionate farewell, she could feel him practically vibrating with excitement. Even a post as small and isolated as this one was fun for him, what with the new systems to organize and people to order around. It was less fun for Catherine and her mother.
Her mother, because she was the one who had to do all the unpacking, and Catherine, because she once again found herself back at the start.
How am I supposed to build a life for myself if I’m constantly being shuffled from one town to the next? How do I make friends when I’m always the person who’s just passing through?
Fortunately for Catherine, half of that answer was easy. Towns would come and go, and so would the people in her life, but there was always a friend inside the pages of a book.
To the library she would go.
Catherine felt a little guilty for abandoning her mother to the work of settling in, but not so guilty that she was willing to forgo a morning’s exploration. Especially since she hadn’t been kidding about spotting the library on the way in. It was located just off Main Street in an area that included the sheriff’s office, the post office, and some other bland government building that she felt sure her father would later explain to her in painful detail.
“Your bike is on the side of the house,” her mom said as she tied an apron around her midsection and set about tackling the boxes labeled KITCHEN. “I made sure we pulled that out straightaway.”
“You’re sure you don’t mind my leaving?” Catherine asked, one foot already out the door.
Her mom laughed. It was a bright, tinkling laugh, and the best thing about her. Even her dad, with all his stern rigidity, was unable to resist it.
“If I said yes, what would you do?” her mom asked.
“I’d grab you an Agatha Christie,” Catherine promised. Like her, her mother preferred her reading to be grim, bloody, and as full of murder as possible—the only difference being that her mother had the wisdom to pretend otherwise. Catherine’s besetting sin—of which, if you were to ask her father, she contained multitudes—was that she’d never been very good at either wisdom or pretending.
Which was why, with a grin and a backwards glance, she added, “Two Agatha Christies if you’ll be a doll and let me stay out past lunch.”
Her mom waved her off with a dish towel. “Then let me see neither hide nor hair of you until three at the earliest.”
Catherine didn’t have to be told twice. She bustled out and found the bicycle exactly as promised. It leaned against the clapboards, the floral basket affixed and already holding a collection of her favorite tomes, just in case she wasn’t able to get a library card today.
The house they were living in while her father began his new duties as commander of the radar base was very large, very white, and very inconveniently located a mile from the town center. Such qualities might not seem like they were connected to one another, but Catherine had moved around enough times to know that those three things had been the top priorities for off-base housing since time immemorial. The size bestowed prestige. The color was a mark of distinction. And the location meant that they remained aloof from the general riffraff.
Fortunately, Catherine enjoyed getting out into the air, her feet pedaling gently as she took in the sights and sounds of what was to be her new hometown. Swinging her leg over the center bar, she veered a sharp right, her eyes taking everything in.
Unfortunately, the town of Colville was…not impressive. When she’d first heard the destination of their newest station, she’d actually cried. Sat down on her twin bed, dropped her head to her hands, and sobbed as though her heart were breaking. On a map, Colville was a dot in the middle of the forest, a nothing place surrounded by wilderness and trees.
Catherine didn’t like wilderness. Or trees. When your life was as small as hers—confined to home and family, dependent on the whims of the Air Defense Command and a man who’d dedicated his life to serving it—location mattered. In cities like Dallas and Grand Rapids, she’d at least had access to culture. Plays and the theater, the occasional opera or ballet. Out here, she didn’t have anything except a few hardware stores, a feed store, and a tiny speck of a grocer.
She did, however, spot a tiny art deco movie theater with posters for The Hound of the Baskervilles pasted out front. Catherine was so distracted by them—of all Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories to be made into film, that was her favorite—that she didn’t notice the car taking the corner at a clipping pace. She was just about to turn down the street that would deliver her to the library when a red Mustang convertible whizzed too close and set her skirt fluttering. The fabric caught in the spokes, and she was down before she even knew what was happening.
“Don’t try to get up,” a low, gruff male voice said as Catherine struggled to get out from underneath her bicycle, the wheels spinning almost as hard as her head. The back of her skull ached, and there was a stinging on her palms that felt as though skin had been scraped clean away, but that was as far as she could assess her own damages.
“You went down hard,” the man added.
“That’s because you ran me over,” she murmured as he lifted the bike off her as though it weighed no more than a matchstick. As she watched him gather up her scattered books, she put a hand to her head and, despite his warning, tried to get up. “Do you always take a street corner like you’re in the Grand Prix?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he pulled out a handkerchief and handed it to her. The white square of fabric was clean and smelled like a combination of soap and pine needles, so she didn’t hesitate to start dabbing at her hands with it.
She also peeked up to make a better assessment of the man who’d run her over. If he was any indication of the population around here, then she was in for a much more rustic time than she’d anticipated. Not only was he dressed as though he’d just come down from a six-month stay at the top of a mountain, but he looked more like a bear than a person. His shoulders were wide and his chest shaped like an oil drum; a patchy growth of hair scraped across his jaw. He was a far cry from the men she was accustomed to, the clean-shaven boys of the military, all of them baby-faced and—in her father’s squadron, at least—more interested in science and technology than physical strength.
“Do you feel woozy?” he asked with a grunt.
“No.” She started to tenderly test her limbs. “I feel like I just got clipped by a reckless driver with no regard for the safety of others.”
He reached for her again. “Here, let me—”
“No, don’t,” she said, feeling anger starting to replace the shaking fear that had been holding her dazed. As much as she enjoyed reading about damsels being butchered on street corners and evil spirits that went bump in the night, she liked to keep her real-life body parts intact. “You’ve done enough already. I can get up on my own. It’s just a few scrapes and bruises.”
“Your bike looks broken. If you want, we can put it in the back of my truck and I can—”
“What?” She laughed. “Drive me off the nearest cliff at full speed? Thank you, but I’ll take my chances on two broken wheels.”
He rocked back on his heels and studied her with a lowered brow, his expression so quelling that she wondered whether she should scream for help while she still had the chance.
“Your blood coagulates beautifully,” he said.
She gave a start of surprise. “I beg your pardon?”
He rose to his feet and nodded down at the bloodstained handkerchief. “You can keep that. Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Of course I’m sure,” she said, but with a kind of dazed detachment that made her suspect she bumped her head harder than she’d thought. Had he really just said what she thought he’d said?
“You might want to stick to side roads from here on out,” he said. He took a moment to right her bicycle and fiddle with the gears before stepping away. “Colville is a small town, but some of the drivers here still think they’re in big cities.”
It was then and only then that Catherine realized that the vehicle pulled off to the side of the road was neither red nor a Mustang convertible. The black Ford truck was covered in dust, and the bumper showed no signs of having recently clipped a bicycle. She was just about to call out to him—an apology? her thanks?—but she bit her tongue to stop herself.
She might have still been befuddled from her fall, but his words from before were starting to echo somewhere deep inside her brain.
Your blood coagulates beautifully… Your blood coagulates beautifully.
“Did that mountain man just quote Hemingway at me?” she wondered aloud. Since he was already sliding into the driver’s seat by that time, he didn’t hear her—not that she’d have expected much by way of reply. Whatever he’d said was probably a fluke, a random combination of words not unlike a room full of monkeys on typewriters eventually churning out the full works of Shakespeare.
But something about the way he’d said it, and the way he’d been so careful to gather up her books…
Catherine shook her head and forced the entire interlude to the back of her mind. Whatever the man had done to her bike had turned it operational again, so she was able to swing a leg over and gingerly begin picking her way the last block toward the tiny brick library.
Even if she had been the type of girl to dwell on every chance encounter with a man, what she saw would have pushed all thoughts of him into oblivion. There, propped up in the front window, was a sign—and not just any sign. The white cardboard and black block letters spoke directly to her heart.
NOW HIRING. INQUIRE INSIDE.
She gave a small squeak as she propped her broken bicycle against the front wall. Even with the stiffness in her step and the stranger’s handkerchief still tucked in her hand, she lost sight of everything but that sign as she bustled up the library steps.
How could she care about something as silly as a man when the books were what she’d really come to see?