Butterfly's Shadow - Lee Langley [73]
Nancy had a school-friend who had married her childhood sweetheart and moved to Wyoming. The two had kept in touch – birthday and Christmas cards, an occasional letter. Hilary had often added a line to her cards: ‘Why don’t you and your boy come visit?’
Wyoming was outside the exclusion zone. Nancy made a call.
Hilary’s voice was bright with pleasure and the usual questions followed: how was Nancy? And her parents? And Joey?
And here the conversation left the tracks as Nancy for the first time gave her old friend the facts about her son. And then. ‘There’s a loophole. If he can find someone to take him, outside the military area, he’ll be allowed to go.’ She took a breath: ‘Hilary? Will you take him in?’
Afterwards Nancy wondered who was more wretched: she, with dashed hopes, or her old friend who closed the loophole; who explained that if it was up to her, of course . . . but local feeling was so strong the Governor (with re-election in mind) had announced that if any Japs were found wandering free in his territory they’d be hanging from a tree next day.
33
Only the twitchy speed of her movements showed that Nancy was frantic. Most of the time she managed to keep up her usual front of brisk efficiency. Now and then she dropped her guard, imploring Joey one more time to let her come with him to the station. Even now, though he was registered, she held on to the notion that if she could just get to speak to the right people they would realise that he should not be here; they would remove him from the list.
He rubbed his shoulder reassuringly against hers, like a cat, an old gesture from his childhood.
‘Thanks, Nancy, but I think I’ll stick with my people.’ Heavy irony on the last two words.
She noted with a pang that she was Nancy. No longer Mom. Understandable, since the Japanese mother was defining him now.
She packed the bag with quick, efficient movements. They read the instructions together: he was allowed to take only what he could carry ‘in his hands’, as the form put it.
How else would you carry something? he wondered. On your head, like an Indian porter, or on your back, mountaineer-style? (But of course the instructions were aimed at not-quite-civilised people, weren’t they; who could tell how resident aliens might carry things?) And what did a person take with him, when the duration of the trip was uncertain? On that at least the instructions were clear.
Evacuees must carry with them on departure for the Assembly Center, the following property:
a) Bedding and linens (no mattress) for each member of the family.
b) Toilet articles for each member of the family.
c) Extra clothing for each member of the family.
d) Sufficient knives, forks, spoons, plates, bowls and cups for each member of the family.
e) Essential personal effects for each member of the family.
NO PETS.
Two words to sum up a thousand moments of heartbreak: cats, dogs, canaries, white rabbits . . . to be given away or put down before departure.
‘Okay,’ Nancy said. ‘Clothes, spare shoes, soap, toothbrush, toothpaste.’ She picked out cutlery and found enamel plates – lightweight, unbreakable.
‘Books,’ he said. ‘I guess they’ll allow books – unless they think they’re in code and confiscate them.’ A few weeks later he found one of his textbooks being studied suspiciously, the camp bureaucrat puzzled by mysterious digits – ‘What are these here little numbers next to the words?’
‘Those are footnotes,’ he explained.
He had decided to take some coursework. Nancy approved: ‘That way, when you get back to college, you won’t have fallen behind.’ He doubted that he would be back in college before the course was finished, but he packed the books anyway. Also pens, ink, pencils, notebooks. A photo of Nancy and his father, the picture faded to sepia, the corners crumpled. What else? Nothing fragile, nothing precious – apart from a battered wooden toy, an old spinning top, tucked into a corner of the bag, alongside a pair of socks.
He was about to close the bag when Nancy handed him an envelope, the postage stamps oddly coloured, the ivory