“How can you stand yourselves or each other?” Francie asked. “How can two people like you get mixed up in such a filthy business?”
Stewart Jackson flushed. “You can skip that holier-than-thou attitude, Mrs. Aintrell. You believe in one thing. We believe in something else. If we were Russians working against the USSR in Moscow, you’d call us heroes. Betty and I just happen to believe there’s going to be a good spot for us when this capitalistic dictatorship goes bankrupt and collapses of its own weight.”
She saw some things about them that she should have seen before: the petulance, the chronic dissatisfaction, the intelligence which, though quick, was shallow. A pair of parlor pinks led, through their own dissatisfactions, into the headier world of action rather than talk. And exceedingly dangerous because of that quick intelligence.
Jackson leaned forward with a charming smile. “Come on, Francie. Cheer up. We both like you. And you should know that, as an individual, you certainly are not going to affect the course of world affairs by any decision you make. As a woman, you want your husband and your happiness. And I would like to see you have exactly that, believe me. So would Betty. The odds are that Unit 30 research will get nowhere, anyway. So what harm can you do? And the people I work with are never afraid to show gratitude. Certainly your Bob won’t thank you for selling him out, selling him into a labor camp.”
“There’s more than one way to sell Bob out.”
“Sentimentality masquerading as patriotism, I’m afraid. Think it over. How about the food, Betty? Join us, Francie?”
Francie didn’t answer. She stood up and walked down to the shore of the lake. She sat huddled on a natural step in the rocks. There seemed to be no warmth in the sun. She looked at the letter. In two places the pencil had tom the cheap, coarse paper. His hand had held the pencil. She remembered the marriage vows. To honor and cherish. A sacred promise, made in front of man and God. She felt as though she were being torn in half, slowly, surely. What were nations and boundaries and political theory compared with the ultimate reality of his arms around her? She knew that to violate the loyalty oath she had given would result in a lasting shame — and yet she could not hold an impersonal loyalty over and above her love for her husband. And she could not forget that he was in danger, and frighteningly alone.
From time to time she glanced toward Stewart and Betty. Once she heard them laugh. Francie wondered that their laugh should sound so utterly normal. A nice married laugh. That rapport between them which had seemed so pleasant to Francie now became an evidence of a disconcerting efficiency, a unified force that opposed her. They could work together and share their strength, and it made them too strong to resist.
She walked slowly back to them. “Is that promise any good?” she asked in a voice which was not her own. “Would he really be returned to me?”
“Once a promise is made, Francie, it is kept. I can guarantee that.”
“Like they’ve kept treaties?” Francie asked bitterly.
“The myth of national honor is a part of the folklore of decadent capitalism, Francie,” Betty said. “Don’t be politically immature. This is a promise to an individual and on a different basis entirely.”
Francie looked down at them. At Betty, with hair bright in the sun, with sturdy figure and pretty eyes. At Stewart, with the shaggy tweed jacket and blunt, good-humored face. You grew up thinking of agents as being squat and greasy and shifty-eyed. Not people like the Jacksons, who sat by gray rocks looking like an ad for a camera film, or for green picnic dishes.
Yet Betty had held her arm in a cruel grip, and even as Stewart smiled there was a glassy depthlessness to his eyes.
“Tell me what you want me to do?” she asked.
“We have your pledge of co-operation?” Stewart asked.
“I... yes.” Her mouth held a bitter dryness.
“Before we go into details, my dear Francie, I want you to understand that we appreciate the risk we are taking. Betty and I are not fools. We’ve watched you very carefully. We will continue to do so. If you ever get the urge to be a little tin heroine — at your husband’s expense, of course — please understand that we shall take steps to protect ourselves. We would certainly make it quite impossible for you to testify against us.”
Betty said quickly, “She wouldn’t do that. Stew,” and laughed shallowly.
Stewart picked up the soft pine block again and gently cut a long sliver of wood, paper thin. Such men, with their blunt, good-humored faces, had awakened and kissed their wives, and shaved and joked with the children before donning the uniform with its dread Gestapo emblem. Through history they had been indispensable to those who ordered inquisitions, and purges, and government by fear.
“Now, Francie,” he said softly, “I will tell you what you will do.”...
When they rowed away from her dock they waved a cheerful good-by to her. She went in and closed the door carefully behind her, knowing that doors and bolts and locks had become useless. Then she lay numbly on the bunk and pressed her forehead against the rough pine boards. Until at last the tears came. Tears of shame, tears of thanksgiving, tears of fear. She cried herself out, and when she awakened from deep sleep the night was dark, the cabin cruelly cold.
She awakened to a changed world. The adjustment to Bob’s death had been a precarious structure, moving in each emotional breeze. Now it collapsed utterly. She was again the bride, the Francie of the day before the telegram arrived. And as she moved about, preparing the gasoline lantern, heating water, laying a fire to heat the cabin, she began, in the back of her mind, to stage the scene and learn the lines for the moment of his return, for the moment when his arms would be around her.
She pumped up the lantern and carried it over to the table. She set it down, and then stood very still, looking at the object on the table. She knew it had not been there when she had come back from the picnic to take the long nap that had lasted until midnight. She stood with the breath cool and still in her throat.
There, on the table, was one of the plugs manufactured by the Jacksons. It was a gay red lure, with two gang hooks, with yellow bead eyes.
The doors were still locked. She tried to tell herself it was purposeless melodrama, the sort of thing a small boy might do. But the harsh white light of the lantern slanted against the hooks, and the shadows they made were barbed, distorted. The enameled body was the color of blood...
Monday morning she parked her car behind the lab and walked in and sat at her desk. The smiling guards at the gate had a new look. It made her remember a childhood Saturday of long ago when she had gone downtown with the Jensen girl — Helen, her name was — and Helen had stolen the candy bars from the five-and-ten. She remembered the way her back felt, so rigid, when she walked out with Helen, thinking that dozens of eyes were staring at them, that a uniformed man would be waiting on the sidewalk.
Clint Reese came out and gave her an impersonal good morning, and spun the dial on the locked file for her. She took the current Sherra folder from the drawer back to her desk, found her place, continued the transcription of notes that had been interrupted on Saturday.