“You know, you don’t have to be a jerk,” Caroline said to Frank, still hovering over him at the table.
Teddy turned back to the sky. Again his binoculars slowly scanned the horizon. A small speck came in range to the south of the tower. He focused the lens to be sure.
“Got one!” he yelled.
Caroline ran to shut off the radio, while the other two boys jumped to join Teddy at the lookout. Bunny and Eleanor stopped reading, but only Eleanor got up and walked over for a better look.
As the plane came into view, Teddy’s shoulders sagged. “It’s just a single engine passenger,” Teddy said, his voice flat with disappointment. It wasn’t that he wanted the Reds to attack, of course. But they’d been watching the skies for months now, and he longed for something to happen. Something more.
Their principal was the one who had started the high school’s Ground Observer Corps, which turned into the Operation Skywatch program earlier that summer, answering a civilian call President Truman issued to the country. Their country needed them to act as human radar, to detect the threat of atomic bombs, which would most certainly come from the sky.
But though the club was relatively new to the school, the rickety wooden tower that served as their base was not. It had been thrown together back in ’41, right after Pearl Harbor was bombed. A little off the coast, but with a full view of the beautiful rocky coastline and its tide pools, it had been used by the Ground Observer Corps to scout possible Japanese subs or aircraft. A few flaps of old green-and-brown cloth still clung to the wooden legs—remnants of its camouflage days.
Their training hadn’t taken long. At school, they had watched a video put out by the Air Force and practiced looking through the transparent plastic cards with circles of varying sizes to gauge the distance and altitude of observed aircraft. They learned how to identify commercial and military airplanes, how to call them in to filter centers, how to log their direction and speed. They were told they played an important and essential part in the defense against an attack from the Soviet Union. The Russians had detonated their first atomic bomb in ’49 and were currently creating a fleet of bombers that could devastate the country. An attack was imminent, the fear palpable. Diligence a matter of civic duty and responsibility.
The club wasn’t a tight-knit group.
Outside of the club, the friendships existed in smaller pairings. John and Teddy were friends through their fishermen fathers. Both had a sense of duty and loyalty, which guided their involvement in the club. Caroline and Eleanor were best friends, had been for years. There was also Frank, a science fiction devotee, and his protégé, Oscar, who loved science fiction almost as much as he loved to work on cars. Bunny was the only one not born there. She had moved to Monterey from New York last year. Teddy didn’t know much about her, and he suspected Bunny liked it that way.
He lowered the binoculars.
“Probably Mr. Stenoic again,” Oscar said, peering up at the small plane.
Teddy held up the transparent template that they used to gauge distance. The plane fit inside the five-mile hole, but he thought it might be closer.
“I’d say about four miles.”
Teddy logged the type of aircraft, the direction and the time, 6:54 p.m., in the book. It was the same book that everyone who manned the tower used.
“Mark it very high,” Caroline said behind him. She pointed. “See the trail of vapors?”
Teddy tensed his shoulders, but he made the note. He didn’t bother telling Caroline he already knew that. He also knew to pick his battles when it came to her or else he’d be there forever arguing about vapors. That was the thing about Caroline. She didn’t like to be wrong about anything. It’s why he never went for her. They’d be arguing every minute.
Because he was the one who spotted the plane, Teddy walked over to the red phone and called the filter center.
“Aircraft flash, Elliot 1234,” he said into the receiver.
After about thirty seconds, a woman’s voice responded. “Air defense, go ahead.”
“Aircraft flash. One multi high. No delay. Bravo Kitty 10 Black. West. Flying South.” Teddy read the information off the log that he had filled out.
“Check,” the female voice said. “Thank you.”
Teddy hung up the phone. Even though it wasn’t a threat, he felt sweat running down his back. So far, the most exciting thing that had happened since joining was when he got to report a single bomber—five weeks ago now. He had known by the noise that it wasn’t an ordinary plane—a small passenger or cargo plane. Teddy and Frank had been the only ones on duty that day, and Teddy’s hand had shaken as he called it in. Frank had to hold the log steady.
It had ended up being a false alarm. A simple training exercise. Not the enemy coming to bomb them. Not a nuclear attack. But Teddy knew an attack was coming. The whole country did, and it felt like each day was a step closer to this inevitability. Just this past April he’d been glued to the small TV in his living room, like everyone else he knew, watching the atomic explosion in a test site in Nevada on the network news. Even though the picture was in black and white, Teddy imagined the brilliant orange and red colors the mushroom cloud must have generated in real life. If the US had the ability to test a new atom bomb, what ability did the Russians secretly have? He’d heard from his history teacher at school that the Russians were working with former Nazi scientists. It’s why Teddy’s grandfather had built them a bomb shelter in the basement last year.
It’s why they showed the Duck and Cover film with Bert the Turtle in school. The film warned that the atomic bomb could come anytime and anywhere. Teddy doubted that putting his head under his desk would save him from an atomic bomb. Or that covering his body with a newspaper would offer protection. Once the flash hit, they’d all be poisoned with radiation. Or killed.
Their high school principal had been in World War II, so he took the threat very seriously. In the beginning, after starting the club, he even volunteered at the tower. At lunch, sometimes Teddy would see him staring up, searching for what could come at any moment.
Teddy thought his principal should have kept eyes on the teachers. The drama teacher, Mr. Valentino, had been escorted off campus the last month of school after being found a communist. It was illegal in most states to teach if you were one. Teddy wondered how many other commies were hiding in plain sight. Supposedly there were sleeper agents planted in high levels of government and even in small towns across the country, just waiting for the right time to be activated. The human threat was real.
The sky, though, had yet to give a sign of threat. It was always big, blue much of the time, or gray with the slow fog rolling in and out. For Teddy, it carried freedom and possibility. There was nothing he wanted more than to be up there one day, learn to fly. Teddy wanted more than smelly fish and a life on the sea. He wanted another world. The Air Force would give him that.