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When she returned to Windward Hall, bearing the greetings and wishes for good health of at least six patrons whose names she’d quickly forgotten, Father, reclining in his usual chair, reached for the books eagerly. “Thank you, my dear, thank you.”
He held the volumes to his chest, breathing in the scent of them like they were one of his bouquets, and for a moment, Louise felt a tug of longing.
To care that much for books?
No, she realized, in some deep and persistently ignored part of herself, to be held like that by a loving father.
As she watched, a fit of coughing overtook him, and he doubled over, waving her away.
It was, as always, too late.
twenty-six
MARTINA
JULY 28
Martina rolled her shoulders and tried to push the exhaustion back enough to keep pace with the bustle of the core room. The words from her mother’s latest letter helped, and she repeated them in her mind with each mold she stacked on the conveyor belt.Your father was the hardest-working dockworker in all of Trieste, she’d written.He’d be proud to know a daughter of his could keep up with the men. You are stronger than you know, Martina.
And maybe it was true. She, unlike some of the other women, didn’t worry about the developing muscle tone that made narrow shirt cuffs hard to fasten. After all, she had no man around the home to impress or to avoid intimidating. She merely did her work, filling and hefting molds, some no larger than a shoebox, some more than fifty pounds, over the long hours until her shoulders and back ached with effort.
What Mamma would have written instead if she’d told her about Patrick’s being in town, Martina couldn’t say. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to make her mother worry, so it remained her little secret.
The ten o’clock bell startled her, indicating a fifteen-minute break. Martina leaned against her station, using her weight to stretch the muscles in her arms crying out for attention.
“Well, look who’s descended from on high,” Ginny muttered from the other side of their station. She, like many of the others, was staring at Mr. Hanover in his impeccable gray suit and shiny shoes that hadn’t seen the sandy scuff of the core room in months. Other than a brief interview, where she’d felt like a head of cattle pushed through with barely any inspection, Martina had only seen Mr. Hanover descend from his office at company war-bond drives.
His face was somber, and workers from other parts of the foundry streamed through the doors, led by their foremen, into the cooler core room.
A litany of fears and questions flooded her, and Martina no longer felt strong. Were they behind on production? Planning to close the foundry? Firing the swing shift?
But no, at the height of the war, every factory worker would be needed to keep production up. Their foreman, Mr. Devons, reminded them of that constantly.
Once Mr. Hanover was sure all had gathered, he said, “I’ll make this brief. I’m sure you have all been following the Pastorius trials.”
She hadn’t. Between work and caring for the children and keeping the trailer clean during a week of hard rains and mud, when would she have time to read newspapers or listen to radio reports?
“What is he talking about?” she whispered to Ginny as others around them muttered and nodded agreement.
“Two teams of Krauts popped up in U-boats off New York and Florida earlier this month on a sabotage mission,” Ginny whispered back. “One of them got chicken and turned the others in to the FBI.”
That’s right. Gio had told her something about it last month, but she’d been too tired to pay attention and hadn’t even realized it was a news story rather than one of those radio spy serials.
“...and in moments like these, our country’s fragility is revealed,” Mr. Hanover was saying, his voice more droning than the machinery. “The enemy may very well walk among us.”
A hush fell over the gathered workers, and Martina took great care to stare straight ahead, her breathing shallow. Were any of them looking at her, wondering? All because her former nation had let a man like Mussolini and his grand promises sway them into disaster.
“We expect all employees to increase their vigilance, on and off the job. Even a seemingly minor act of sabotage could set back production for weeks, destroying the most precious resources we have: time and man-hours.”
The speech concluded with the usual upbeat description of what their production meant to the war effort, though from the grim faces around her, Martina knew that no one was fooled into thinking the speech was a positive one.
“Hanover is full of it, I say,” Ginny said the moment the man was gone, expertly rebraiding her hair from where it had frizzed out of its plait during the shift. “If the Nazis are trying crazy schemes like that, it just goes to show they’re plumb desperate.”
She had to ask, as much as she’d rather not know the answer. “Those German saboteurs ... were any of them American citizens?”
“Two of them, I think. Why?” When she didn’t answer, Ginny frowned. “No, Marti, don’t even think it. People here know better. They know you.”
But did they? Other than Ginny, who had practically forced her to be friends, she’d said no more than a polite good-night to most of her fellow workers. Between their short breaks and the core room’s pace and noise, there wasn’t time for conversation. How many of them considered her the enemy?
