Pandora's Closet Part 19

"Yes, royal blue satin with lace trim, which has yellowed a bit, but the garters are quite lovely. My grandmother said they, how did she put it, 'contributed to a memorable wedding... and wedding night.' She wouldn't let my mother wear them at her wedding, though, I remember someone saying..."

"So they really are old. Great. Um, how much are you asking?"

"A hundred dollars."

"s.h.i.+t. Sorry. That's a lot of money."

Rennie McCoy had listened to Sandy talk about her sister's wedding and her request, and they had haggled for a couple of minutes. Finally, he'd agreed to let them go for seventy dollars, s.h.i.+pping included. Maybe it had been a great deal, but now Sandy wished she had the money back.

She woke up with a hangover-it'd been a long time since she'd killed a six-pack by herself, and she vowed it would be an even longer time before she did it again. Looking at her dull skin and red eyes in the mirror over the sink, she decided to stay home and clean house before hitting the pavements to find a new job.

She got lucky and found work the next day, glad that Sh.e.l.ly from the Silver Dollar had not, apparently, said anything too awful about her to Kent, her new boss, who owned the Westerner. She still couldn't figure out what had gone wrong at the Silver Dollar, but none of the men at the Westerner paid her more than ordinary attention. Some harmless flirting, a couple of propositions from guys she expected to pour out the door at closing time-nothing unusual. Nothing weird.

Things went well until Friday. Kent had told Sandy that he wanted her to dress more provocatively on the weekends. "I can buy you gear if you need it, but go ahead and wear your own stuff tonight."

Sandy looked in the full-length mirror in her bedroom. She'd put her hair up and wore big silver hoop earrings, snug black tank top, bleached denim miniskirt, sheer black nylons, and s.h.i.+ny black stilettos. Maybe a little plain. She pulled one of the blue garters halfway up her left thigh, where it would be highly visible. Not bad, she thought. She wondered if guys would put dollar bills in it, the way she'd seen them do with strippers.

At the Westerner, Kent came across the room to greet her. "Wow. You clean up nice, Sandy."

"I don't exactly think of this look as 'clean,' Kent." She liked Kent.

"Guess not." Then he smiled in a way that made Sandy 's neck hairs quiver. "Well, we both got things to do, so I'll talk at you later."

Sandy nodded. Maybe it hadn't been that smile after all.

The evening went well, at first. Sandy 's tips were incredibly generous, which she figured was due to it being a weekend and more crowded. Then she heard one of the other servers complaining about her to Kent, telling him that Sandy was "doing something" because her customers kept asking for Sandy to serve them. Sandy figured she was just a better server, that was all. It wasn't like at the Silver Dollar. n.o.body had groped her. No fights had broken out.

But by ten o'clock, the Westerner was bursting at the seams. Nearly all the single women and couples had left, and the bar was starting to look like a men's club.

Feeling stupid, Sandy went into the ladies' room and took off the garter. She wrapped it in a paper towel and stuffed it behind the toilet tank in the back stall. Squaring her shoulders, she walked back out into the bar.

At first, it didn't seem to make a difference, but within twenty minutes Sandy saw fewer men staring at her. In an hour, enough men had left that couples could get in to dance to the live band that Kent brought in on weekends. Sandy 's tips went down, but her spirits rose.

She thought about leaving the garter where it was, but in the end she shoved it in her skirt pocket before she left. Kent, who had ignored her all evening, looked up as she crossed the room. He seemed to be thinking about saying something, but she waved and made it out the door before he spoke.

It was nearly three a.m. by the time Sandy got home. She kicked off her shoes, drank a big gla.s.s of water, flopped down on the couch, turned on the TV, and fell asleep.

She dreamed about her sister, Cheryl, but in the dream she turned into somebody else and found herself in a heated argument.

"He was gonna marry me, Nancy, and you knows it!" Sandy shouted with another woman's mouth. She felt small and worn out, and she looked down to see her hands folded on an obviously pregnant stomach.

The other woman, if sixteen years can make a woman, smiled slyly at her.

"Where'd ya put 'em, Nancy? Where?" Sandy felt a stabbing pain in her back and reached around awkwardly to rub her spine. Does pregnancy really feel this bad?

"Whatever do you mean, cousin Roseanna?" The blonde girl simpered and smoothed her pale yellow frock.

"I made them garters, and you knows it. I 'broidered his name and mine, and I done all the carryin' on like grandmam taught me. They're mine, and no good can come from your thievin' of 'em." Roseanna/ Sandy needed to pee. She felt hot and itchy. She needed to sit down.

In a very low voice, Nancy said, "I took your name off them garters, Roseanna, and st.i.tched in mine. 'Nancy and Johnse' is what them garters sez now." Her face glowed with confidence, and Sandy/Roseanna saw what a child Nancy still was. Big bosoms and a husband don't make you a woman.

She looked around for the nearest chair and fell into it. Nancy 's smooth brow creased. "You look awful red, cousin. Lemme go get your mama."

She was too tired even to protest. She whispered, "I thought I could make it right. I thought, 'cause I loved Johnse, that I could make everybody stop fighting. The magic worked on Johnse. He loved me." She sucked in air like there suddenly wasn't enough. "I thought I could work magic on his papa, Devil Anse. Maybe stop the feud." She felt herself sliding off the chair and came to rest on the hard mud floor, gloriously cool against her face. "I shoulda put the feud first, ahead of Johnse. It ain't never gonta stop now. That fool girl broke my magic, I don't know what'll happen."

Her ears rang, and she closed her eyes. The ringing continued, and Sandy woke to the answering machine taking a message from somebody selling something.

She sat up, blinking in daylight. Slowly she reached into her skirt and pulled out the wadded paper towel. She unwrapped the garter and set it on the coffee table. After a while, she went and got the other one. She examined them inch by inch, inside and out, but didn't find anything that looked like lettering, just a few tiny needle holes where, maybe, thread had fallen or been picked out. She grabbed the phone and called Blue Ridge Bazaar with a few questions for Rennie McCoy.

When she'd finished telling him about wearing the garters and about her dream, McCoy didn't say anything for a moment.

"h.e.l.lo?" Sandy said.

"You're pulling my leg, aren't you?" His voice sounded uncertain.

"I'm not a liar, Mr. McCoy." Sandy thought she was calm, but her voice shook.

"I'm sorry, it's just... Does the name McCoy mean anything to you?"

"Doctor, cla.s.sic Trek." She thought again. "And the real McCoy, whatever that means."

"Nothing else?"

She thought hard. "The Hatfields and the McCoys. Hillbillies. They didn't like each other much."

She heard a sigh, probably over the word 'hillbillies. ' Oh well, it's said now.

"In 1880, Roseanna McCoy and Johnson Hatfield acted out the Blue Ridge version of Romeo and Juliet. They didn't marry, though she was pregnant and that would've been the normal thing to do. A year later, Johnson did marry a McCoy-not Roseanna but her cousin Nancy. There was never a good explanation for why Johnse had switched women, especially after Roseanna saved him from being killed by three of her brothers."

Sandy looked at the garters, blue satin gleaming in the morning sun. She picked them up, so light, so lovely to be so dangerous.

"Over the next ten years, thirteen people died in the feud, including Roseanna's sister, four of her brothers, and Roseanna herself."

"What about the baby, Johnse's baby?" Sandy remembered being pregnant in the dream.

"Roseanna got measles and miscarried."

"And I've got her garters," Sandy said. She stroked the smooth satin and thought about Roseanna McCoy.

"Yes, I guess you do." She heard regret in his voice. "What are you going to do with them? I mean, it's none of my business, but if you don't want them, I'd be hap-"

"Well, I'll have to find something else for my sister, but I plan to keep them."

She heard McCoy sigh. "Just be careful."

Sandy laughed. "Worried that I'll use my powers for evil instead of good, Mr. McCoy?"

He didn't laugh, but she thought he might be smiling when he said, "Excuse me, your 'powers'?"

"I really don't know what use these things are, other than the obvious. I'll keep them safe, though." Sandy wondered, "Do you have any other family heirlooms in your store, Mr. McCoy?" Wouldn't it be great if he did, she thought. I'd love to see what else the McCoy women might have conjured up.

"Call me Rennie. I'm the last of my branch of the family, so I've inherited the lot. The stuff from my grandmother's house was what finally pushed me into opening this store. I wonder what other surprises there might be?"

Sandy thought fast. "I'm going to be traveling soon, and I might be coming your way. If there are other things Roseanna, or anyone else in your family made, things like the garters, it might take a woman to make them work." She crossed her fingers, hoping that he wasn't married. He seemed nice on the phone, but even if he looked like Quasimodo crossed with a muskrat, Sandy needed to see what might be in his store.

"Do you know when you'll be in Kentucky?" he said slowly. She definitely heard a smile in his voice this time.

"Not exactly. But you might want to keep an eye out for a woman in stockings."

SEEBOHM'S CAP.

by Peter Schweighofer.

Major Prentice Vance of St. Louis, Missouri, peered across the table at the supposed German spy. Headquarters claimed the man could betray Operation Overlord, but Vance couldn't tell how an ordinary army rifleman might have useful strategic knowledge about the impending invasion of Europe or how he could have transmitted it to Germany without detection.

And why would the man be foolish enough to carry around any evidence betraying his allegiance to n.a.z.i Germany like that cap?

Vance gazed at the cap in fascination. It sat limp on the vast table between him and the spy-nothing more than a crumpled piece of faded tan fabric with a bent visor and worn patches halfway down the top seams, and marks that seemed to indicate its former owner wore wireless headphones over it. A spattering of blood dried brown in the harsh desert sun dotted one side. Such a worn, mundane cap seemed out of place sitting on the highly polished ma.s.sive table, centerpiece of the palatial dining room in the countryside mansion the Office of Strategic Services had requisitioned from its British cousins.

Private Benedict Kelly of Culbertson, Nebraska, army infantryman and alleged German spy, stared at the cap as if it were some kind of malevolent demon waiting to pounce on him and consume his very soul. He craned his head as far back as the tall dining room chair would allow, his white-knuckled hands gripping the armrests. Vance couldn't tell whether the sleepless, bloodshot eyes and the sallow skin came from several days of imprisonment and questioning or from sheer dread of that cap.

Vance's a.s.sistant, Lieutenant Laura Jackson from Peekskill, New York, didn't take any notice of the cap and didn't display any discernible emotion at all. She sat in a chair pushed well away from the table, one leg draped over another just enough to show off her nicely turned ankle. Someone had pushed back the heavy curtains to allow light from the tall French doors nearby to filter through the sheers, casting a diffused light throughout the dining room and giving Jackson a deceptively angelic aura. She might only serve in the Women's Army Corps, but Jackson possessed an uncanny knack for disappearing on errands and returning at the right moment with exactly what Vance required (a baffling trait Vance secretly intended to investigate someday.) Jackson maintained her focus on the steno pad balanced on her leg, occasionally glancing up from her notes to size up Private Kelly and his reactions to Vance's polite queries-questions phrased more as conversation starters than demands.

"It says here you bought the hat from Private Sewell. Where did he get it?" Vance removed his steady stare from fidgety Kelly and casually perused the file set before him. His lithe fingers nonchalantly turned the pages as he gazed down his nose at the reports. Vance spoke with even tones, measuring his speech more as if they were having a relaxed tea than a military interrogation.

Kelly blinked a few times, shrugged his skinny shoulders, and stuttered. "I... I dunno. Uh, Africa, I guess."

Vance's fingers touched the pencil-thin mustache over his lips, drawing attention to the faint but friendly smile. "Surely Private Sewell mentioned something about the hat's provenance." He noted Kelly's perplexed expression-he wasn't much more than a gawky farm boy who more than likely dropped out of school-and corrected himself. "Where the cap came from. Didn't Sewell weave some fanciful tale bragging how he acquired the cap?"

Kelly made that exasperating shrug of his shoulders again.

"We could always send for Sergeant Mullen to refresh your memory." Vance's grin took a slightly menacing curve. Sergeant John Mullen of Moose Lake, Minnesota, took care of the heavy work during Kelly's earlier interrogations with the Military Police. "But I don't think Lieutenant Jackson would like that." Vance's a.s.sistant looked up, batted her eye lashes with a doleful look, and pouted her ruby red lips in a possibly mock frown, right on cue. Vance expected she'd reprimand him later for involving her in his mind games.

"No, ma'am," Kelly drawled. He allowed himself a glance from the cap to Lieutenant Jackson with a bashful smile, then glared at Vance. "I told them before, more than once, dammit, that Sewell got the cap in a battle in North Africa."

Vance's lips maintained their sinister curve. He smoothed his mustache before reaching across and closing Kelly's file. "Fine. Perhaps, then, you'd like to give us a firsthand demonstration of what happens when you wear that cap."

All color drained from Kelly's face. His hands gripped the chair, and his army uniform visibly trembled on his lanky frame. Vance thought a bit of drool leaked from Kelly's quivering lips. He recalled the reports in the folder. Kelly's unit occupied one of the sealed training camps in the south of England where troops waited to embark on the imminent invasion. Kelly's friends found him twitching on the ground near his tent, eyes rolled into the back of his head, his mouth spitting foam and frenzied words that sounded like German... all while wearing the Afrika Korps cap.

"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" Vance asked in fluent German. " Sind Sie Deutscher?"

Kelly controlled his tremors and shot Vance a befuddled look.

"Obviously not," Vance answered. "Do you have any knowledge of the imminent invasion of Europe?"

"Huh?" Kelly shrugged. "Sure, everyone's getting all ready for something big, but n.o.body knows exactly what or when. Come on, anyone looking around here knows something's about to happen. Why else would American troops swarm all over southern England, doing invasion exercises and practice drills?"

"Well, then, I think we're done for now. Sergeant!" Vance called. An army sergeant-not the bruiser from Kelly's earlier interrogations-entered the dining room through one of the tall, double doors and stood at attention. "Escort Private Kelly to the room we've prepared-not a cell, Kelly, but a real room-and make sure he gets something decent to eat. As I recall, the kitchens here are as well-stocked as a Chicago steakhouse."

Kelly didn't budge. "When can I go back to my unit?"

"Oh, I doubt you'll be returning to combat, though that should prove a relief," Vance said with an understanding grin. "Not after all you've gone through. I'm sure they'll put you on the next s.h.i.+p home. Oh, don't worry about your patriotic duty. You've done your part, soldier, that's for certain, and there's no disgrace in what's happened. If I'm right, you might have delivered to us a valuable weapon in the fight against fascism."

Kelly pulled himself out of the chair and stumbled over to meet the sergeant, never taking his terrified eyes off Vance and the cap.

Vance knew Kelly wouldn't really go home to Nebraska. He'd most likely enjoy a lengthy stay at St. Elizabeth's, the hospital in Was.h.i.+ngton where the OSS and other government agencies sent "mentally ill" psychiatric patients-devoid of any right to habeas corpus-to languish in guarded isolation for the duration.

With all he'd seen, and would see, Vance wondered if he'd end up there himself before war's end.

"Should I tell Colonel Donovan we have a spy on our hands?" Jackson asked, looking up from her notes.

"Of course not," Vance replied. The head of OSS wanted straight answers, not conjecture, before he made any report to General Eisenhower. "Kelly's just some country b.u.mpkin from Nebraska. Doesn't know a d.a.m.n thing. Looking over his file, there's no possible way the Germans could have recruited him either in America or during his service in Italy, and he seems to have no means of communicating any intelligence to them, certainly not from a sealed camp with rigorous security restrictions. Besides, Kelly wouldn't know good intelligence if it came up and kicked him in the pants.

"But he knows about that cap."

Vance stared a moment at the cap, brow furrowed with curiosity, his fingers caressing his mustache. The crumpled cloth sat there lifeless, the German eagle patch emblazoned on the front, a ghostly aura of dust settling around it on the veneered tabletop. The hat's former owner obviously belonged to the German Afrika Korps, which had ranged across the deserts of North Africa until General Montgomery had begun beating him back from Egypt at el Alamien and Patton drove him from Morocco and Algeria in Operation Torch. Defeating Rommel there led to a swift invasion of Sicily and then Italy, but the Allies needed another foothold in Europe from which to strike at the heart of n.a.z.i Germany.

Who was the Afrika Korps officer who wore that hat? By the worn marks midway along the fabric, Vance figured the fellow wore headphones a lot, meaning he served some function in communications, possibly with a wireless company or as a radioman with a mobile reconnaissance unit. His glance followed the trail of dried blood tracking up one side.

Soldiers always picked up souvenirs of their experiences, badges of courage proving they had partic.i.p.ated in particular battles and had come away alive once more. Why was this cap special? Vance leaned forward, enthralled by the potential power of this simple, crumpled hat.

"Where do we go from here, sir?" Jackson asked, a glint of suspicion in her eyes.

Vance leaned back in his chair, the opulent dining room suddenly coming back into focus and diminis.h.i.+ng the cap's presence in his mind. He turned to Lieutenant Jackson with a charming smile. "Why don't you contact our British cousins and track down this Sewell fellow. Kelly was with the First Infantry Division stationed near Poole on the southern coast of England. Follow his deployment to determine when it came in contact with any British units. Probably some element of that British army division stationed around Southampton. I want to know exactly when and where Sewell found that cap."

"Should I forward any recommendations to Colonel Donovan?" she asked.

Vance peered back at the cap. "Not at this time," he replied. "This situation calls for a bit more investigation on our part before we make any concrete recommendations."

"General Eisenhower can't wait," Jackson noted. "They're deliberating even now whether to launch Overlord in the next few days."

Simple strategy for invading the continent dictated an amphibious landing with the shortest crossing from England to France at Calais, not a longer, riskier crossing to Normandy. All intelligence from agents behind the lines pointed to Hitler expecting an invasion at Calais given the deployment of his armies. German army wireless traffic intercepted and deciphered by the British code breakers at Station X confirmed the field reports. But even they could only provide a small view of the overall picture.

"They have more intelligence to corroborate than we can provide," Vance countered. "At this point, with British and American forces poised to strike after months of planning, Hitler's armies deployed somewhere along the Atlantic wall, and Eisenhower watching the weather reports, Eisenhower's taking as low a risk as he can get."

"I don't think SHAEF would quite see it that way," Jackson countered.

"Well, we have nothing conclusive to give them until we uncover more about that cap." Vance walked over to stare out the window over the carefully manicured English gardens outside.

Jackson closed her notebook and collected Kelly's file. "Do you want me to lock that up in the vault?" she asked, nodding at the cap.

Vance didn't interrupt his examination of the light rain falling on the gardens and a few visible portions of the great old manor house. "Just leave it there," Vance said. "I'll take a closer look at it in a few moments, thank you, Lieutenant."