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7

Cadence

1942

B ess and I woke and ran whooping down the hill to the beach, carrying the burgee Bess had made for the Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club. She’d sewn that little flag beautifully, the letters MVBB cut from Gram’s old floral calico apron and sewn with Bess’s Swiss boarding school–taught Breton stitches onto a triangle cut from a pink terry-cloth dish towel. We hoisted it up the rusty flagpole near the beach shack and then sat on Gram’s wooden folding chairs, close enough to the surf to wet our feet. It was our inaugural meeting, and our first book was The Song of Bernadette, since I’d found three copies in the Bayside Club lost and found.

I’d tried bribing Briar to come by promising some old Scientific American magazines I’d found at the dump, but she practically ran from me and claimed she had work. I was not surprised, since she called fiction “the scourge of all mankind,” but I knew she’d join us one day.

Bess and I agreed that we’d all vote by secret ballot for the books we would read in the following months and carefully vet any new inductees for compatibility and like-minded reading taste. But then Gram just invited a friend of hers from church, Margaret Coutinho, two years ahead of me in high school.

“She makes the best linguica sandwiches,” Gram said, as if that mattered for a book club. “And she has little family here to speak of, so it’s the Christian thing to do.”

Margaret’s Portuguese ancestors had come to the island during the whaling days, when the ships would stop in the Azores to add crew, and many of the sailors settled on the Vineyard. Her parents had gone back to Portugal to take care of her grandfather, and she lived with her aunt in Chilmark. She seemed pretty easygoing and worked at a drugstore, where she got free products sometimes, and she had a car with four good tires, which she was allowed to drive anytime, since she made deliveries. All of that qualified her in Bess’s eyes. Driving with Margaret rather than in Gram’s truck, we wouldn’t have to worry about Fred Leo—our policeman, ever alert for wasteful wartime joyriding—stopping us to ask, “Is this trip really necessary?” And I liked that Margaret could quote whole passages of Sense and Sensibility and referred to our house as Barton Cottage and to Briar and me as the Dashwood sisters , so she was in and joined us that day on the beach. If we counted Gram and Briar, we already had five members, a number Bess and I considered respectable.

A wave washed over my feet, and I sank them deeper into the sand. Nature’s pedicure.

“I’ve typed up some initial book-discussion guidelines,” Margaret said.

“We haven’t even read the book yet,” Bess said. “Let’s just play cards.”

Margaret leaned forward in her chair. “My cousin Sheila in Tewksbury is in a book club and says their credo is: We will make the world a better place by first being better ourselves by reading, then sharing what we know with others, simply and humbly. ”

Bess put on her sunglasses and leaned back in her chair. “Our credo is: We don’t ask what the credo is. ”

“At their meetings, they pass around a wooden spoon,” Margaret said. “Whoever has it is the one that may speak.”

“Sounds unhygienic,” Bess said.

“We should do something for the war effort,” I said, water lapping my ankles. “A New Bedford club is doing a book drive for the troops. It was in the Gazette. ”

“Hardly anyone can get new books right now,” Bess said. “I’ve been on the list for six months at the library for The Day of the Locust, and they say it may be another three. There are only old fishing magazines left on the shelves.”

Margaret nodded. “And if people have books, they’re keeping them.” She rubbed suntan lotion on her arms, from a bottle of Gaby Greaseless Suntan Lotion she’d nicked from work.

Not that Margaret needed it for her gorgeous skin that Bess and I were so jealous of, which she’d inherited from her beautiful Portuguese mother. Even in December, Margaret looked sun-kissed, and in August she barely burned, while we went lobster red.

We filled Margaret in on Major Gilbert’s visit to the farm the day before and what an ass he’d been.

“I’ve been collecting books here and there,” I said. “I’d love to give those to the troops.” I had my sacred Never-Lend collection of books, mostly ones that had belonged to my mother, but was always on the lookout for good titles for my “Up-Island Happenings” column giveaways.

“Major Gil would have a nervous breakdown if you just started handing out books to his men,” Bess said.

“Who cares?” I asked. “Let’s just drive up there and do it.”

“We can call it Books for the Boys,” Margaret said. “I’ll make bookmarks to distribute, featuring the book-club logo.”

Bess sent me a distressed look, clearly regretting not requiring a trial period for new members.

Just the thought of bringing books to the troops made me more optimistic about the world. It would make a serviceman’s day so much better, having a good book to come back to. Hopefully some kind souls were doing something similar for Tom, wherever he was. As a librarian, my mother would have loved the idea, since she lived to spread the joy of a good book. No one read as much as Emma Smith, and I was grateful every day that I’d inherited her love of reading.

I stood. “Why should we be cowed by Major Gil? If we can’t move heaven, we’ll just raise hell.”

Bess smiled. “Now, there’s a credo.”

—

After a quick dip in Copper Pond, the three of us drove up to Peaked Hill, the trunk of Margaret’s car weighed down with three cartons of books to hand out to the troops. I’d included a few pristine novels I’d found at the dump, probably discarded by summer people after they’d either read them or just said they did. In the mix was the latest title everyone was reading, The Moon Is Down , and lots of science fiction, and some good Faulkner I’d found at a thrift shop.

We showed our IDs and made it through the sentries easily once I told them we’d come at Major Gilbert’s request. Margaret pulled into the gravel parking area, and we stepped out of the car and took in the view. It was the highest point on the island, where we came as kids, long before the Army had claimed that spot. We called it Top of the World, since there were fewer trees back then and we played on the massive rocks, still there by the bluff. Wee Devil’s Bed. Stonecutter’s Rock. How quickly that base had become the nerve center of coastal defenses for the island.

We looked out over uninhabited Noman’s Land, an island the Navy used for practice bombing, and in the far distance Buzzards Bay on the mainland. We could see the entire North Shore of the island from up here, almost to Vineyard Haven, though I could not see our own house, directly below. I hadn’t expected the base to be so sprawling and efficient, uniformed men hurrying about. At the heart of the camp, sun bounced off a silver Quonset hut, and white canvas tents stretched out in neat rows beyond it.

I kept an eye out for Major Gilbert, braced to be thrown out of there the minute he discovered us. Had he seen my column? All over the island, readers were waking up to it that morning.

Two soldiers dressed in mechanic’s coveralls hoisted a massive truck tire by a chain onto a tripod of birch trunks, while others headed toward the largest tent of all, what must have been the mess tent, peaked like a circus big top. Tom was probably eating at a similar one that very moment, wherever he was.

“Mortar pits,” Margaret said, pointing out along the edge of the bluff. “Machine-gun nests.”

Are they expecting Germans on our shores any day? We went back to the car, and Margaret popped the trunk to reveal the three cartons of books. A few soldiers noticed us and headed toward the car from the direction of the mess tent.

“Let’s go, ladies,” Bess said, handing one soldier a T. S. Eliot book to consider. “I know. Cat poems. But they’re actually quite fun.”

Soon, soldiers crowded around the trunk, flipping through pages and skimming book jackets, as if browsing the aisles of first editions and leather-bound treasures at Argosy Book Store in Manhattan, which I’d seen in a magazine once.

I handed one private The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter. “This is one of my favorites. Starts slow, but stay with it.”

Others picked up their pace and ran toward the car, dog tags flapping against their chests. I recognized some of them as Major Gilbert’s Cape Cod Commandos.

Bess smiled at the men milling around us. “What an extraordinary sight. Every woman’s dream right now.”

“Choose your book,” Margaret called out. “Courtesy of the Martha’s Vineyard Beach and Book Club.”

“Have The Great Gatsby ?” one soldier asked.

“I’d like that one, too,” said another.

“Sorry, no,” I said. “But we have Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and Damned. A much bigger seller.”

All at once, Major Gilbert came striding from the direction of the Quonset hut and waved off the gathered men. He wore what must have been his training clothes, Army-issued shorts and a T-shirt, which fit him so well it was hard not to stare. Apparently, he trained alongside his men, and it showed.

The major stepped toward the trunk, about to slam the door down, but all three of us rushed to sit on the edge.

“I figured it was you when they called and asked if I’d allowed this,” he said.

“The men love them,” I said. “Not one asked for a comic book.”

“It disrupted their lunch. And may I remind you all that this is a military installation?”

I heaved the final box from the trunk and set it on the grass. “Well, they’ll have books to bring with them when they leave. Souvenirs of their time here.”

“Maybe you don’t understand what these men do, Miss Smith. They train to fight in combat. There’s no room in their packs for these.”

I clapped the dust from my hands. “Perhaps keep them as a lending library for the next group?”

“Maybe we also keep the local paper on display, so my men can find your column, which includes a derogatory mention of their ill-mannered commanding officer? Thank you most profusely for that. I received a call from Camp Edwards this morning, inquiring if I’ve been disturbing the locals.”

“Well, I hope you said yes to that one,” I said. “Have you read it?”

“I’ve had the unfortunate pleasure.”

“Then perhaps make amends with the locals and allow them to distribute the rest of their books. And stop running over their crops.”

Major Gilbert looked out to sea and then back at me. “If you don’t remove yourselves from the premises this minute, I will gladly have it done for you. And if you write another thing about me in that column or set foot up here again, I’ll requisition that whole bloody farm and send you all packing.” He walked off. “Is that clear?”