Forty Days at Kamas (3 page)

"Do you think we might be able negotiate a better price?" I asked.

"I doubt it. They’re talking to some of our competitors. They seem pretty confident that at least one of us will decide to take the money and run."

"Damned Euros! They see the Unionists come to power and now they think they have us on our knees. They’re certain that the president will go to Brussels, swallow his pride, and give special trade and investment concessions to the EU. It makes me want to—"

"Not so fast, Paul. If you’re right about the Unionists and they do put the economy into a coma, this may be the last offer you’ll see at any price. And if you have to liquidate, you could wind up buried under a landslide of unpaid bills and tax liens. The Unionists play rough with tax defaulters, Paul. You could be looking at federal prison."

"But if I sell, then what? This is the only business I know. I’m making a living in spite of it all. If I hang in, it’s possible the company could grow its way back to profitability somehow. If I sell now, and if there’s anything left afterward, where could I invest the proceeds and be able to live off the income? The only option I see would be to emigrate and start over—"

"Father says it would be crazy to emigrate now," Juliet interrupted with surprising vehemence. "His contacts in Washington insist this is a once–in–a–lifetime opportunity to buy assets at the bottom. And they also point out that when things get better—as they are bound to do eventually—anyone who emigrates will get a very chilly reception on his return.

"Paul, both of our families have been in Pennsylvania for nearly a hundred and fifty years. You wouldn’t really give it all up, would you?"

I had rarely seen Juliet so adamant.

Jeff spoke up before I could respond.

"Juliet, if you’ll remember," he said gently, "the Jews had been living in Germany and Poland quite a bit longer than a couple hundred years. The Jewish families who emigrated survived. Same with the Russian aristocracy in 1918. And the French nobility during the Reign of Terror. The risks—"

"Jeff, you don't honestly consider the Unionists to belong in the same category as the Nazis or the Bolsheviks?" she replied.

"You’ve heard their speeches, Juliet. A person is either with them or against them. To the Unionist mobs, you and I are class enemies."

"But we’re all Americans," Juliet protested. "Some of our neighbors are Unionists. They’re not bad people. I’m certain they wouldn’t do anything to harm us…"

"Maybe so," I interjected. "But how can we be sure there aren’t others who would stone our Volvo the way they stoned Sally Zimmermann's Lexus in Ambridge last week?" I asked. "Her children were inside, for God's sake. All the crazies saw was a shiny new SUV. Sally and the boys were lucky to get away with their lives."

Juliet put down her teacup. When she raised her eyes I could see that she remained unmoved. In matters like this, she still looked to her parents for leadership. Even after fourteen years of marriage… I let the thought drop.

"Paul," she addressed me in a conciliatory voice. "I hear what you’re saying. But if it’s a decision between emigrating and finding a way to make things work here in Sewickley, then in my mind the choice is clear. We both know life isn’t always easy. It was hard back in Washington’s day and in Lincoln’s day and during the Depression. If the wealthy and educated had emigrated then, America would have failed as a country long ago. I think we have a duty to stay."

I paused to refill my cup before responding and didn’t spare the rum.

"I know how you feel, Juliet. I don’t like the idea of cutting and running any more than you do. But deep in my gut I don’t trust the Unionists and I don’t want to put myself or my family at their mercy. Think about it: if we sold the business, we would have enough to start over somewhere—Australia, Ireland, maybe Costa Rica or some place in South America. It might be a little rough on the two of us, but the girls would do just fine. We could—"

"And walk away from all everything we know—the company, our house, our community, our parents? Could you really do that, Paul? I don’t know that I could and still look myself in the mirror. To become a displaced person, a refugee…?"

She lowered her gaze and her eyes seemed fixed on some frightful vision inside her head.

Jeff sighed, then let out a deep breath before looking to me for a decision.

"I suppose I can’t put it off any longer, can I?" I asked with a weak smile. "You both need an answer…"

Jeff nodded.

"The Germans want a response today. Should I schedule a meeting or tell them you’re not interested?"

My wife raised her head and I felt the burden of her gaze.

"Well, it’s a tough call. Very tough," I repeated, looking directly at my wife, then staring out past the trees to the rolling hills beyond.

"But in the end, I don’t see how I can run out on Washington, Lincoln, FDR, and a hundred and fifty years of venerable ancestors. As much as I’d like to tell the Unionists to drop dead, I suppose the principled approach is to stay and tell the Germans to drop dead instead."

Jeff rose without showing approval or disapproval, merely giving me a pat on the shoulder as he left his cup on the tea tray. Juliet smiled, palpably relieved, then rose to carry the tray back to the kitchen while I escorted Jeff to his car.

C
HAPTER
3

"Those who plot against us in the dark will vanish in the dark."
—Mohammed Taraki, Pro–Soviet Afghan coup leader

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 6

Claire Wagner removed her backpack and set it beside her on the long station bench. The train that had brought her to Heber, Utah, had rolled on toward Ogden a half hour ago and she was now the only person left in the double–wide trailer that served as the town's passenger railway terminal. The puffy–faced woman in the Amtrak ticket window glanced at her disapprovingly every two or three minutes as if to convey that she was ready to close the station and go home.

Claire wore the same navy corduroy trousers, white turtleneck, and navy sweater that she had worn to the Philadelphia airport a week earlier with her mother and eight–year–old sister, Louisa. Her clothes were no longer clean after a week of travel and her hooded red parka was torn in front where she had brushed against a nail on the train. But her outfit was warm and durable and she was glad that it had distinguished her from the bands of homeless children she had seen at each stop along her westward journey.

Claire's mind wandered and her soft brown eyes welled with tears as she tried to figure out for the thousandth time how she had become separated from her mother and her sister at the emigration counter in Philadelphia. She remembered clearly going through the emigration line ahead of them, handing the man behind the counter her ticket, passport, exit visa, and exit tax papers, then waiting as he stamped them and returned the ticket and passport to her.

Then she had told her mom that she needed to go to the bathroom. When she had finished, she went directly to the gate as Mom had told her and found a place to sit on the waiting room floor. But ten minutes later, when the ticket agent announced the start of pre–boarding, Mom and Louisa were nowhere in sight. That's when Claire started to worry and decided to search for them back at the emigration counter.

When she got there, the men behind the counter were not the same ones who had stamped her passport. None of them knew anything about her mother or Louisa. At Claire's insistence, they shuffled through the papers in their outboxes but her mother's and sister's papers were gone. She considered trying to board the flight alone but decided against it. She didn't know anyone in London; if her grandparents failed to meet her at Gatwick airport, she might be in even worse trouble than she faced now. She decided to stay at the gate and wait for her mother and sister to come looking for her.

A few seconds later a woman with a kindly round face, dressed in an elegant but threadbare camel's hair coat of the kind her grandmother always wore, knelt beside her. Claire saw the sadness in her eyes and sensed that the woman did not find it easy to speak.

"Please listen to me, dear, and don't say anything until I'm finished. I was in the line behind you and I saw them take your mother and sister into the security office. Please don't stay a minute longer. Leave the airport right away and go find some relatives or friends who can take care of you. Here—take this money for your cab ride. And don't bother about your luggage. Just go quickly and don't ask questions."

Claire had taken the woman's advice and the cab fare, too. It had been a lot of money, enough for ten cab rides to downtown Philadelphia.

That had been exactly one week ago. Since then, Claire had made her way to the Philadelphia train station, from there back to Pittsburgh and then to Cleveland before the long ride to Utah. Once she had known relatives in each of these cities, but now all of them had left the country. The only one who had refused to leave was her father. But all she knew about him now was that he had been in prison for a year and that a special court had sentenced him a month ago to five years hard labor at a camp somewhere in Utah.

Now that she was here, Claire was determined to find her dad and to stay close by him until he was free again. But from what she had learned on the train, there were dozens of labor camps in what was now the Utah Security District, and there were even more camps to the north, in the former states of Wyoming, Idaho, and Montana. Some people spoke of Utah as if it contained nothing but Restricted Zones, military bases, and labor camps. And what she had heard about the camps had terrified her. To think of her dad as a prisoner working outdoors all day in these Wasatch Mountains during the dead of winter made her desperately sad despite her lingering anger at him for having been arrested and having left her and her mother and sister all alone in Pittsburgh. For the hundredth time, she asked herself why she hadn't stayed in Philadelphia or Pittsburgh instead of buying the train ticket to Utah.

Claire was so preoccupied with her thoughts that she failed to notice the ticket lady approach and sit beside her.

"Excuse me, young lady, but it's time to close the station. Don't you have a place to spend the night? The next train doesn't leave until tomorrow morning and it's awfully cold out there."

"I'm not taking another train," Claire replied. "I'm staying right here. My father is in Utah and I've got to find him."

The woman furrowed her brow and gazed around the empty room before answering.

"Do you mind if I ask how old you are?"

"I turned twelve last month but my dad says I'm very mature for my age."

"Well, I'll be honest with you. Heber used to be a pretty nice town but I’m afraid that’s not so anymore. And it's certainly no place for a twelve–year–old girl in pigtails to be running loose. Do you have any money for food?"

"I had some, but I spent all of it getting here."

The woman frowned, then held out her hand to Claire.

"Come with me. There's a woman who sells food to the passengers. She has an extra room in her cabin that she lets out for the night sometimes. Maybe she'd take you home with her."

Claire slung her backpack across her shoulder and followed the ticket agent down the length of the passenger platform to an unmarked cinder block building. Inside, four lean and weather–beaten workmen in quilted coveralls shared a dinner of cold beans and rice.

At a counter nearby, a woman in an ankle–length down overcoat covered her wicker breadbasket with a checkered napkin and raised her duffel as if preparing to leave. A tartan scarf covered her hair and was knotted under her chin, babushka–style.

When the woman turned to the workmen to wish them a good night, Claire saw that she was not so old as one might have expected, perhaps only forty or so, like her own mother. Though not tall, her face was long and narrow, with a straight nose and a cleft chin. Her complexion was ruddy from the cold and weathered from wind and sun. She smiled at Claire and then at the ticket agent.

"Let me guess. Did you come here for the skiing? Or perhaps for a snowmobiling tour? March used to be a big month for tourists around here."

Claire said nothing but the woman continued to smile at her.

"Helen is joking with you," the ticket agent interjected. "The ski resorts closed years ago. And the last snowmobiles around here were handed over to the Army around the time of the Chinese War."

"Which is precisely your good luck," the woman continued. "Because the shortage of tourists means I happen to have some extra room over at my place. Now you wouldn't be looking for somewhere to stay, would you?"

"Yes, I would, Ma'am," Claire said.

"Call me Helen. And your name is…?"

"Claire. I don't have much money, though. All I have is…"

Helen waved aside the objection and picked up her basket.

"Don't let that trouble you. I don't have much, either."

Helen turned to the ticket agent and smiled.

"Dorothy, don't you worry about Claire tonight. We'll come by again tomorrow. Come along, Claire, we've got a long walk ahead of us and it looks like it's going to snow again. Good thing you're a strong–looking girl, because that backpack of yours may grow a bit heavy when we start up into the hills."

They walked silently in single file along the tracks toward the freight yard. In the distance Claire could see a string of vacant passenger coaches, including four unmarked sleepers at the far end of the yard. Men in shiny black helmets and dark uniforms shone spotlights at the cars, as if preparing to move in for a closer look.

Between gusts of wind they could hear bits and snatches of music played from distant loudspeakers—odd music that Claire found unnatural and disturbing. But before long they crossed the tracks to where the music no longer reached them.

"My cabin is in those hills beyond the pine grove. We're going to follow this path for a while, cross a road or two and, before you know it, we'll be there."