PROLOGUE
The boys always brought the cigarettes, matches, cards, and magazines. The matches served two purposes: fire for the smokes and currency for the games they played, mainly five card stud. In the winter, they would have lit the small stove in the corner. But it was late summer of 1952. And summer along the central coast of California meant warm days and nights, with a cool coastal breeze playing softly in the background like a Cole Porter song.
For the most part, the magazines remained stacked in a small pile during card games, perused later, at leisure, in between lookout duties. They were a compilation of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Life, Amazing Stories, and the Saturday Evening Post—the latter being left over from the older couple, Mabel and Jim, whose shift was right before the high school club.
The girls brought the snacks: usually chips and cookies, gum, sometimes small tuna sandwiches with pickles made by Eleanor’s mom, and a portable radio. They kept the music on low. Not that they would have gotten in trouble. No official ever came to their tower. But the red phone on the small desk by the window and the sign with the rules posted over it was enough to hint at the possibility of a swift reprimand from their supervisor.
They were good kids. Rule followers.
For the most part.
While the boys played poker, the girls talked or practiced dance moves they learned from watching television. It was still swing, but low and smooth, with steps different from their parents’ swing. Caroline was the best, but she didn’t flaunt it. She went slow so Eleanor could follow, while the boys pretended not to watch out of the corner of their eyes. But they always watched.
Growing up during World War II and now living with the reality of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, they were aware of how everything could end in a moment. In between shows like I Love Lucy and What’s My Line, they sat next to their parents on the couch and watched Senator McCarthy grill government officials, artists, and entertainers about their salacious personal lives, exposing communists among the elite. Communists, they were warned, lurked everywhere—a cancer to the American way of life.
After the programs ended and the TVs glowed in the dark, their minds processed the world they lived in: unsafe and unpredictable. They balanced on the precarious edge of fear and paranoia, wondering if they’d even have a future of their own.
For Teddy, John, Caroline, Eleanor, Bunny, Frank, and Oscar, the Skywatch club was their answer.
The club was their chance to make a difference.
Twice a week, at six in the evening, for a couple of hours during their shift, they tilted their eyes toward the open sky—watching, waiting for the future to drop.
1
TEDDY
Teddy stood at the open window, his binoculars scanning the sky—a hazy blue gray with a hint of orange. It would be evening soon. He moved his binoculars down toward the ocean. The water was still, but, having lived his whole life in and out of the sea, he knew it was deceiving. Teddy’s dad was a fisherman, and so he spent most of his free hours working with his father, fishing the dwindling sardine population that was common to their area.
Every day his father followed the same routine, like traveling a well-worn wooded path. Up before light. Down to the docks. Coffee and a pastry bought at the water’s edge from Harold’s. A prayer to the Virgin or to Saint Peter, the patron saint of fishermen. The casting of boats—half-ringers more common now than the large purse seines they used back when his dad was young—into the sea just as the sun cracks open one eye. Hours later returning with the day’s catch. In the evening, prepping everything to begin the work again.
Today Teddy was tired, having stayed up late worrying about his future. He had one more year of school left before graduation. The worry wasn’t about what he was going to do, it was about how he was going to tell his father. His father, who wasn’t very forthcoming with his affections and feelings, and who never spoke about his own time fighting in Europe almost ten years ago. There was an expectation always hovering over Teddy, a net that had been cast and threatened to snag him. A life on the water wasn’t so terrible, but Teddy had his sights on the skies. His plan was to graduate and enter the Air Force, with or without his father’s blessing. Joining the Skywatch club was his first step. Next month, when school started back up again, he would speak with a recruiter. He’d be eighteen by then anyway. He wouldn’t need his father’s permission, but still, he hoped for his blessing.
Teddy hid a yawn, kept his posture straight, his eyes alert. A plane could come at any moment. His body tensed, waiting. It was excruciating, never knowing when the Reds would send the bombs. Teddy knew two things: One, that one day they would send them. The second was that as a Skywatcher, he was most likely the first line of defense, and that was a reality he took very seriously—unlike others in the group.
Teddy turned his ear to the commotion in the room.
“Hit me,” Oscar said. He was playing poker with Frank at the small table in the corner, close to the door.
“You sure?” Frank said.
“Do it.”
Frank put down another card and Oscar pursed his lips.
“That’s what you get when you play with the big boys,” Frank said.
From the middle of the room, Caroline coached Eleanor through a new dance step to the music coming from the portable radio.
“Yep. Just like that. See, you got it.”
Eleanor tried to tap her foot and sway her hips at the same time, but she couldn’t get the rhythm right.
“Like this, Eleanor,” Caroline said, showing her the move.
Frank let out a laugh, making Eleanor stop. She hugged her arms across her chest.
“Knock it off, Frank!” Caroline said.
Teddy wondered if he needed to intervene. If Caroline thought Frank was teasing Eleanor, her best friend, she wouldn’t stand for it.
“What?” Frank leaned back in his chair. “Oscar just made a joke. I can’t laugh at a joke?”
Caroline walked over to stand above Frank, hands on her hips. “What was so funny?” She looked at Oscar, who stared down at the cards in his hands. “Huh?”
“He was just saying—”
“It’s fine, Caroline,” said Eleanor, cutting Frank off. She slid down against the wall next to Bunny, who was reading one of her novels.
Eleanor picked up Life from the top of the magazine pile. Teddy watched her trace Marilyn Monroe’s face on the cover with her fingers, down her neck, over the edges of the white dress. He almost felt sorry for Eleanor. She was always in Caroline’s shadow. Caroline was, well, she was the prettiest girl in school. And Eleanor was a nice girl—not a Marilyn like Caroline.