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bunnies and duckies, an effective silencer for someone like Stan. Again, Becca
wondered how good a friend Samantha had been. On the college paper together,
he had said in passing. Had she gone from raise-the-
barricades cartoons to bunnies-in-britches?
A dark-haired child came running across the lawn of number 19, her chubby
cheeks spotty with the exercise. For a moment Becca hoped it was a Samantha
clone. Then she was followed by a second child, and a third. They ran into the
house next door. Becca sighed out loud.
"It will be good to get out and stretch," Stan said, mistaking the reason for
her sigh.
"Yes."
They were still retrieving their overnight bags, when the front door of number
19 opened, and a slim blonde came onto the porch.
(She would be blonde, Becca thought. And slim.)
"Stan!" the blonde called, waving.
"Well, hello stranger," Stan called back, pushing his glasses back up the
bridge of his nose. "Good directions."
"Some things I'm good at," Samantha said. Somehow Becca
Imew that was not all she was good at.
"And you must be Becca. Come on in. Have you had lunch? Linn won't be home
until seven, and the kids will eat early, but I saved out something for a
snack."
Becca felt a great grin spread over her face. Linn. No wonder
Samantha and Stan hadn't gotten together. "We've had lunch, thank you. What a
lovely house." She meant every word.
Linn was equally tall and had been blond once upon a time. He was now mostly
bald. After the requisite jokes about Linn and Sam and
70
Jane Men
parties at which no one could keep them straight, Becca confessed that she had
assumed Linn was the other half of a lesbian partner-
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ship.
"Me-gay?" Samantha had laughed at that, heartily seconded by both Stan and
Linn. A little too heartily, Becca thought. But the others didn't seem to
notice.
The children had eaten noisily, sparring through their own meal-
the chubby-cheeked girl and a boy still in that androgynous three-
year-old stage. But they were quiet through the grownups' meal, having settled
in front of the television for a Disney movie.
During dinner Samantha and Stan reminisced some, but mostl)
the talk was of politics. Linn was more conservative than Stan, anc they
argued in a mild sort of way about events in the Sovie
Dis-union, as Linn called it, and in the Muddled East. Samantha'
style was to potshot at them both, asking leading questions tha kept the
argument going, as if she enjoyed watching them go heac to-head. Becca was
uncomfortable and couldn't have said wh)
though she guessed it had more to do with style than substance, In the middle
of dessert-a truly delicious cr6me brCilee (somethin else Samantha was good
at)-with both children draped over h(
begging for bites, Samantha said suddenly, "Of course poor Becca waiting for
answers to all her questions. Otherwise it's a long way I
come for a meal. Let me put the monsters to bed, Stan, and yc explain."
Becca turned sharply to Stan and he put his hands up in a gestu of surrender.
"What she means is that she and Linn have inviti some of the Oswego people who
were living around here in t]
forties and may be able to remember stuff. Linn's been on the boa of the Fort
museum and Sam did some illustrations for their bi chures. So they are pretty
linked in with what went on back ther
Just then the bell rang and Linn got up. He opened the door a ushered in two
men and a woman, all in their sixties or seventi
Linn introduced them around and settled everyone in the livi room with coffee.
The tired-looking man, with a shock of white hair and poucl.
blue eyes that had been piercing before exhaustion paled th down to a watery
color, was Randolph Feist. He had been
Oswego high school teacher.
The woman, Marge Pierce, smoothed her hennaed hair do~
Briar Rose
71
not once but twice, before sitting. She commandeered the over-
stuffed chair, offering as her reason for doing, "Lived here all my life." Her
ankles were puffy and her feet seemed shoved into the tiny shoes.
Becca's attention was taken most by Harvey Goldman. Small, compact as a
runner, he had a face the shade of old parchment that had been written over
and scraped down too many times. What had been written, she guessed, had not
always been pleasant.
They passed a few minutes in small talk-the weather, the drive up, how Oswego
had changed over the years. "Not for the best,"
Marge offered. She repeated it immediately. "Not for the best."
In the middle of Marge's second opinion on the state of Oswego affairs, Becca
suddenly got up and went into the hallway where she had left the rosewood box.
She brought it back into the living room, cradling it in her arms as if it
were a newborn.
Stan was just finishing a summation of their reasons for visiting, when Becca
returned, saying, "So if we could know something of your ... involvement ...
with the refugees and the Haven. And perhaps if you could look at some
photographs."
Randolph cleared his throat. "I was one of the teachers who took the high
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school students out to the camp at open house .
"Not so open for us," Harvey interrupted.
"You see," Randolph continued as if Harvey hadn't spoken, "there'd been these
rumors He paused.
"What kind of rumors?" asked Becca.
"Well, silly rumors, really. But that the refugees-and there were nearly a
thousand of them-were living high at the taxpayers' ex-
pense. And this, of course, after all we had been put through because of the
war. The boys and girls had talked of nothing else for days, which meant of
course that their parents were saying the same things-or worse-at home. High
schoolers are like that, repeating their parents' arguments as if they are
their own. So Ralph . . ."
"Mr. Cornell," Marge put in, touching her hair again, "the princi-
pal. I was one of those kids. And you should should have heard some of the
things they were saying!"
". . . so Ralph insisted that the students go to see for themselves.
And one look at those bare barracks and the barbed wire .
'Barbs!" Becca whispered.
72
Jane Yolen
"Barbed wire?" Stan asked. "But these were refugees, not pri ers."
"Barbed wire!" Harvey said emphatically. "And this, mind, while the German
POWs in other parts of the country were 9
weekend passes!"
"But after we saw," Marge said, almost quivering with eagen
"some of us came every afternoon after school to bring candy stuff."
Harvey sniffed. "And you shoved it through the wire as i were animals in a
zoo." Glearly it was an old argument.
"Now, Harvey, you know the refugee children got to p school once things
settled down a bit," Randolph said. "And it a long time ago."
"Time does not excuse conscience," Harvey said shortly.
does not erase this." He unbuttoned his left sleeve and shove material back up
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