She saw his eyes linger on her hand, and instantly snatched it away from the bar.
“It is a long story,” she said, her gaze avoiding his.
Sam shrugged.
“I’m not in any hurry,” he grimaced.
The woman pursed her lips, undecided whether to stay or leave.
“This was a bad idea,” she decided. However, she did not move. “I’ll have that drink, maybe. But I’ll pay.”
Sam sipped his beer and had a good idea; the first that day.
He waved at a free table near the back of the bar and wordlessly, Judy followed him to it. Sam propped his guitar case in the corner. He always felt better when he had positioned the case protecting his faithful Martin somewhere well out of the way when he was in a bar. Especially, on Saturday nights although from what he had seen of it in the last week Bellingham — a quiet port, a God-fearing little town surrounded by the forests and mountains where folks came to retire or in the summer came on vacations — was not the sort of place which suffered regular riotous assemblies.
“I like long stories,” Sam chuckled.
Judy was viewing him over the rim of her glass. Her grey green eyes were intent and a little wary. There was a weary determination in her gaze, and a waning anxiety as she relaxed.
“I heard those guys talking about you after the fight,” she prefaced, catching the man unawares.
“I thought we were talking about you?”
“Later, maybe,” she rejoined, allowing herself to dance around flirting with the stranger. “They said your Uncle played with Glen Miller?”
“Great Uncle Saul. My Ma’s Uncle Saul,” Sam explained. “He must be sixty now. He’s still on the road. Somewhere, I don’t know where.”
“The guys who beat up on you said it was going to cost them a couple of hundred dollars to find somebody to play guitar and piano on their record next month?”
Sam Brenckmann’s guffaw was uncharacteristically scornful.
“Those guys are full of shit,” he caught himself, “if you’ll forgive my language, ma’am. They sold me this line about having this recording contract with some suit in Memphis who’d worked with Elvis. That was supposed to happen sometime after we’d played Vancouver and some place called Chilliwack,” he winced, “if there’s such a place…”
“There is. Chilliwack’s just over the border. About forty-five miles north east. An hour, maybe an hour-and-a-half by car at this time of year.”
“Oh, right. Anyway, we were supposed to be playing some club there tonight.”
“Chilliwack’s a nice place. A bit like Bellingham, but Canadian if you know what I mean.”
“Like your accent,” Sam observed, not unkindly.
Judy shrugged. “You think?”
“A little. In a good way.”
The woman might have blushed but the lights were low and it was impossible to tell for sure.
“My dad worked in Vancouver during the war,” she explained. “He was in Army Intelligence, I think. He never talked about it, of course. My Ma’s Canadian, she was born in the Fraser Valley, that’s just over the border. They moved to Montreal a few years back.”
“My folks are from Massachusetts. Well, from Germany on my Pa’s side, a hundred years ago, I guess. Ma’s folks are New England folk from way back.”
Judy held up her hand, highlighting her ring finger.
“Mike, my husband,” she declared, with an almost theatrically elongated sighing breath, “is in the military. He was in Germany last time I heard. The Corps of Engineers. I’m still friendly with Mikey’s sister, Heidi, she says he got promoted to Master Sergeant last year. He stopped writing me and sending money home two years ago. I’ve been waiting tables at night and working in the typing pool at City Hall most weekdays ever since. We’ve still got a mortgage to pay, you know how it is.”
Sam frowned mock bewilderment.
Mortgages, waiting tables, nine to five office jobs, paying ones dues were not exactly his stock in trade, or things about which he could claim any personal experience, or interest.
Judy giggled. “Okay, you’re a musician, so maybe, you don’t,” she admitted. “Anyhow, I wear the ring to stop guys hitting on me when I’m waiting tables.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes.”
Sam was noticing little things about Judy. For example, she chewed her finger nails to the quick and she did not go big on makeup. It was getting smoky in the bar, louder as it filled up. His Ma had waited tables and worked in a typing pool to help pay Pa’s way through law school in the thirties. How spooky was that?
“Do you accost every wandering minstrel who passes through Bellingham?”
Fuck! That wasn’t what I meant!
But Judy was laughing.
“No, you’re the first!”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean that to come out the way it probably sounded.”
Judy sobered a little.
“Honestly and truly,” she confessed, “I have no idea why I’m accosting you. Except I saw you at the bar through the window and you looked kind of lonely. And you didn’t try to hit on me at the diner. So I thought I’d, well, say hello, I suppose.”
“Hello, Judy,” Sam smiled.
It was a beautiful moment; the sort of moment that deserved a more serendipitous denouement than that which uncaring fate delivered, a split second later.
One moment the bar was gloomy, smoky, noisy and the next it was filled with painfully white light that seemed to, for a spasm of milliseconds paint everybody and everything in the room black and white down to their bones like they were sitting or standing in a giant x-ray machine.
Glasses dropped from numb hands, shattered on the bare boards underfoot.
One or two men cursed, most people were awed and shocked to silence.
“Get away from the windows!” Somebody shouted. “Get down on the floor!”
Sam Brenckmann was already on his way under the table, dragging Judy with him.
“What?” She mouthed, initially too befuddled to be terrified.
Sam had gone to a high school in Boston where the Principal, a Marine Corps veteran, had taken civil defence drills extremely seriously, much in the fashion of a religious rite and conducted morning-long exercises every month.
When the air raid sirens go off this is what we do, children!
Tonight there had been no warning sirens.
The first and most import thing is to get under cover as quickly as possible!
“Where’s the nearest bomb shelter?” Sam asked, cutting to the chase.
Your teachers will know where the nearest bomb shelter is located!
“Bomb shelter? I don’t know?”
You must not panic!
“That was a big bomb,” Sam said lowly, hissing almost in her ear. “That flash was the initial thermal airburst. Judging by the way it lit up everything in here anybody outside in the street who was looking directly towards it at the time it lit up is blind now. After the flash comes the blast over-pressure shock wave. That travels at the speed of sound. The longer it takes to get to us the farther away the bomb went off and the better our chances.”
Panic is unpatriotic and counter-productive and will not help to keep you safe, children!
Judy snuggled against Sam and he circled her in his arms beneath the table.