Skywatchers Read online

  Also by Carrie Arcos

  Crazy Messy Beautiful

  We Are All That’s Left

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

  First published in the United States of America by Philomel,

  an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 by Carrie Arcos.

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  Philomel Books is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Visit us online at penguinrandomhouse.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Ebook ISBN 9781984812308

  Edited by Liza Kaplan.

  This is a work of historical fiction. Apart from the well-known actual people, events, and locales that figure in the narrative, all names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to current events or locales, or to living persons, is entirely coincidental.

  pid_prh_5.5.0_c0_r0

  TO MY FAVORITE STUDENTS

  (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE)

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Also by Carrie Arcos

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraphs

  Prologue

  1: Teddy

  2: Caroline

  3: John

  4: Bunny

  5: Eleanor

  6: Teddy

  7: Frank

  8: Caroline

  9: John

  10: Dr. Bill Miller

  11: Bunny

  12: Frank

  13: Caroline

  14: John

  15: Bunny

  16: Frank

  17: Caroline

  18: John

  19: Bunny

  20: Frank

  21: John

  22: Bunny

  23: Caroline

  24: Bunny

  25: John

  26: Frank

  27: John

  28: Caroline

  29: John

  30: Bunny

  31: Frank

  32: John

  In the Woods

  33: Teddy

  34: Bunny

  35: Gone

  36: Caroline

  37: John

  38: Teddy

  39: Bunny

  40: Frank

  41: Caroline

  42: John

  43: Bunny

  44: Frank

  45: Caroline

  46: Teddy

  47: John

  48: Bunny

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  However, in this new age in which hostile forces are known to possess long-range bombers and atomic weapons, we cannot risk being caught unprepared to defend ourselves. We must have a trained force of skywatchers. If an enemy should try to attack us, we will need every minute and every second of warning that our skywatchers can give us.

  —HARRY S. TRUMAN, JULY 12, 1952

  What do you want to be if you grow up?

  —JOKE TOLD IN THE 1950S

  PROLOGUE

  The boys always brought the cigarettes, matches, cards, and magazines. The matches served two purposes: fire for the smokes and currency for the games they played, mainly five card stud. In the winter, they would have lit the small stove in the corner. But it was late summer of 1952. And summer along the central coast of California meant warm days and nights, with a cool coastal breeze playing softly in the background like a Cole Porter song.

  For the most part, the magazines remained stacked in a small pile during card games, perused later, at leisure, in between lookout duties. They were a compilation of Popular Mechanics, Popular Science, Life, Amazing Stories, and the Saturday Evening Post—the latter being left over from the older couple, Mabel and Jim, whose shift was right before the high school club.

  The girls brought the snacks: usually chips and cookies, gum, sometimes small tuna sandwiches with pickles made by Eleanor’s mom, and a portable radio. They kept the music on low. Not that they would have gotten in trouble. No official ever came to their tower. But the red phone on the small desk by the window and the sign with the rules posted over it was enough to hint at the possibility of a swift reprimand from their supervisor.

  They were good kids. Rule followers.

  For the most part.

  While the boys played poker, the girls talked or practiced dance moves they learned from watching television. It was still swing, but low and smooth, with steps different from their parents’ swing. Caroline was the best, but she didn’t flaunt it. She went slow so Eleanor could follow, while the boys pretended not to watch out of the corner of their eyes. But they always watched.

  Growing up during World War II and now living with the reality of the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union, they were aware of how everything could end in a moment. In between shows like I Love Lucy and What’s My Line, they sat next to their parents on the couch and watched Senator McCarthy grill government officials, artists, and entertainers about their salacious personal lives, exposing communists among the elite. Communists, they were warned, lurked everywhere—a cancer to the American way of life.

  After the programs ended and the TVs glowed in the dark, their minds processed the world they lived in: unsafe and unpredictable. They balanced on the precarious edge of fear and paranoia, wondering if they’d even have a future of their own.

  For Teddy, John, Caroline, Eleanor, Bunny, Frank, and Oscar, the Skywatch club was their answer.

  The club was their chance to make a difference.

  Twice a week, at six in the evening, for a couple of hours during their shift, they tilted their eyes toward the open sky—watching, waiting for the future to drop.

  1

  TEDDY

  Teddy stood at the open window, his binoculars scanning the sky—a hazy blue gray with a hint of orange. It would be evening soon. He moved his binoculars down toward the ocean. The water was still, but, having lived his whole life in and out of the sea, he knew it was deceiving. Teddy’s dad was a fisherman, and so he spent most of his free hours working with his father, fishing the dwindling sardine population that was common to their area.

  Every day his father followed the same routine, like traveling a well-worn wooded path. Up before light. Down to the docks. Coffee and a pastry bought at the water’s edge from Harold’s. A prayer to the Virgin or to Saint Peter, the patron saint of fishermen. The casting of boats—half-ringers more common now than the large purse seines they used back when his dad was young—into the sea just as the sun cracks open one eye. Hours later returning with the day’s catch. In the evening, prepping everything to begin the work again.

  Today Teddy was tired, having stayed up late worrying about his future. He had one more year of school left before graduation. The worry wasn’t about what he was going to do, it was about how he was going to tell his father. His father, who wasn’t very forthcoming with his affections and feelings, and who never spoke about his own time f
ighting in Europe almost ten years ago. There was an expectation always hovering over Teddy, a net that had been cast and threatened to snag him. A life on the water wasn’t so terrible, but Teddy had his sights on the skies. His plan was to graduate and enter the Air Force, with or without his father’s blessing. Joining the Skywatch club was his first step. Next month, when school started back up again, he would speak with a recruiter. He’d be eighteen by then anyway. He wouldn’t need his father’s permission, but still, he hoped for his blessing.

  Teddy hid a yawn, kept his posture straight, his eyes alert. A plane could come at any moment. His body tensed, waiting. It was excruciating, never knowing when the Reds would send the bombs. Teddy knew two things: One, that one day they would send them. The second was that as a Skywatcher, he was most likely the first line of defense, and that was a reality he took very seriously—unlike others in the group.

  Teddy turned his ear to the commotion in the room.

  “Hit me,” Oscar said. He was playing poker with Frank at the small table in the corner, close to the door.

  “You sure?” Frank said.

  “Do it.”

  Frank put down another card and Oscar pursed his lips.

  “That’s what you get when you play with the big boys,” Frank said.

  From the middle of the room, Caroline coached Eleanor through a new dance step to the music coming from the portable radio.

  “Yep. Just like that. See, you got it.”

  Eleanor tried to tap her foot and sway her hips at the same time, but she couldn’t get the rhythm right.

  “Like this, Eleanor,” Caroline said, showing her the move.

  Frank let out a laugh, making Eleanor stop. She hugged her arms across her chest.

  “Knock it off, Frank!” Caroline said.

  Teddy wondered if he needed to intervene. If Caroline thought Frank was teasing Eleanor, her best friend, she wouldn’t stand for it.

  “What?” Frank leaned back in his chair. “Oscar just made a joke. I can’t laugh at a joke?”

  Caroline walked over to stand above Frank, hands on her hips. “What was so funny?” She looked at Oscar, who stared down at the cards in his hands. “Huh?”

  “He was just saying—”

  “It’s fine, Caroline,” said Eleanor, cutting Frank off. She slid down against the wall next to Bunny, who was reading one of her novels.

  Eleanor picked up Life from the top of the magazine pile. Teddy watched her trace Marilyn Monroe’s face on the cover with her fingers, down her neck, over the edges of the white dress. He almost felt sorry for Eleanor. She was always in Caroline’s shadow. Caroline was, well, she was the prettiest girl in school. And Eleanor was a nice girl—not a Marilyn like Caroline.

  “You know, you don’t have to be a jerk,” Caroline said to Frank, still hovering over him at the table.

  Teddy turned back to the sky. Again his binoculars slowly scanned the horizon. A small speck came in range to the south of the tower. He focused the lens to be sure.

  “Got one!” he yelled.

  Caroline ran to shut off the radio, while the other two boys jumped to join Teddy at the lookout. Bunny and Eleanor stopped reading, but only Eleanor got up and walked over for a better look.

  As the plane came into view, Teddy’s shoulders sagged. “It’s just a single engine passenger,” Teddy said, his voice flat with disappointment. It wasn’t that he wanted the Reds to attack, of course. But they’d been watching the skies for months now, and he longed for something to happen. Something more.

  Their principal was the one who had started the high school’s Ground Observer Corps, which turned into the Operation Skywatch program earlier that summer, answering a civilian call President Truman issued to the country. Their country needed them to act as human radar, to detect the threat of atomic bombs, which would most certainly come from the sky.

  But though the club was relatively new to the school, the rickety wooden tower that served as their base was not. It had been thrown together back in ’41, right after Pearl Harbor was bombed. A little off the coast, but with a full view of the beautiful rocky coastline and its tide pools, it had been used by the Ground Observer Corps to scout possible Japanese subs or aircraft. A few flaps of old green-and-brown cloth still clung to the wooden legs—remnants of its camouflage days.

  Their training hadn’t taken long. At school, they had watched a video put out by the Air Force and practiced looking through the transparent plastic cards with circles of varying sizes to gauge the distance and altitude of observed aircraft. They learned how to identify commercial and military airplanes, how to call them in to filter centers, how to log their direction and speed. They were told they played an important and essential part in the defense against an attack from the Soviet Union. The Russians had detonated their first atomic bomb in ’49 and were currently creating a fleet of bombers that could devastate the country. An attack was imminent, the fear palpable. Diligence a matter of civic duty and responsibility.

  The club wasn’t a tight-knit group.

  Outside of the club, the friendships existed in smaller pairings. John and Teddy were friends through their fishermen fathers. Both had a sense of duty and loyalty, which guided their involvement in the club. Caroline and Eleanor were best friends, had been for years. There was also Frank, a science fiction devotee, and his protégé, Oscar, who loved science fiction almost as much as he loved to work on cars. Bunny was the only one not born there. She had moved to Monterey from New York last year. Teddy didn’t know much about her, and he suspected Bunny liked it that way.

  He lowered the binoculars.

  “Probably Mr. Stenoic again,” Oscar said, peering up at the small plane.

  Teddy held up the transparent template that they used to gauge distance. The plane fit inside the five-mile hole, but he thought it might be closer.

  “I’d say about four miles.”

  Teddy logged the type of aircraft, the direction and the time, 6:54 p.m., in the book. It was the same book that everyone who manned the tower used.

  “Mark it very high,” Caroline said behind him. She pointed. “See the trail of vapors?”

  Teddy tensed his shoulders, but he made the note. He didn’t bother telling Caroline he already knew that. He also knew to pick his battles when it came to her or else he’d be there forever arguing about vapors. That was the thing about Caroline. She didn’t like to be wrong about anything. It’s why he never went for her. They’d be arguing every minute.

  Because he was the one who spotted the plane, Teddy walked over to the red phone and called the filter center.

  “Aircraft flash, Elliot 1234,” he said into the receiver.

  After about thirty seconds, a woman’s voice responded. “Air defense, go ahead.”

  “Aircraft flash. One multi high. No delay. Bravo Kitty 10 Black. West. Flying South.” Teddy read the information off the log that he had filled out.

  “Check,” the female voice said. “Thank you.”

  Teddy hung up the phone. Even though it wasn’t a threat, he felt sweat running down his back. So far, the most exciting thing that had happened since joining was when he got to report a single bomber—five weeks ago now. He had known by the noise that it wasn’t an ordinary plane—a small passenger or cargo plane. Teddy and Frank had been the only ones on duty that day, and Teddy’s hand had shaken as he called it in. Frank had to hold the log steady.

  It had ended up being a false alarm. A simple training exercise. Not the enemy coming to bomb them. Not a nuclear attack. But Teddy knew an attack was coming. The whole country did, and it felt like each day was a step closer to this inevitability. Just this past April he’d been glued to the small TV in his living room, like everyone else he knew, watching the atomic explosion in a test site in Nevada on the network news. Even though the picture was in black and white, Teddy imagined the brilliant
orange and red colors the mushroom cloud must have generated in real life. If the US had the ability to test a new atom bomb, what ability did the Russians secretly have? He’d heard from his history teacher at school that the Russians were working with former Nazi scientists. It’s why Teddy’s grandfather had built them a bomb shelter in the basement last year.

  It’s why they showed the Duck and Cover film with Bert the Turtle in school. The film warned that the atomic bomb could come anytime and anywhere. Teddy doubted that putting his head under his desk would save him from an atomic bomb. Or that covering his body with a newspaper would offer protection. Once the flash hit, they’d all be poisoned with radiation. Or killed.

  Their high school principal had been in World War II, so he took the threat very seriously. In the beginning, after starting the club, he even volunteered at the tower. At lunch, sometimes Teddy would see him staring up, searching for what could come at any moment.

  Teddy thought his principal should have kept eyes on the teachers. The drama teacher, Mr. Valentino, had been escorted off campus the last month of school after being found a communist. It was illegal in most states to teach if you were one. Teddy wondered how many other commies were hiding in plain sight. Supposedly there were sleeper agents planted in high levels of government and even in small towns across the country, just waiting for the right time to be activated. The human threat was real.

  The sky, though, had yet to give a sign of threat. It was always big, blue much of the time, or gray with the slow fog rolling in and out. For Teddy, it carried freedom and possibility. There was nothing he wanted more than to be up there one day, learn to fly. Teddy wanted more than smelly fish and a life on the sea. He wanted another world. The Air Force would give him that.

  “Okay. My turn,” Caroline said, her eyes sparkling with excitement and the unspoken words that said he’d better hand over the binoculars.

  Teddy reluctantly gave them up, but instead of joining Frank and Oscar at the card table, he took Eleanor’s place against the wall next to Bunny. She didn’t even look up from her book as he sank down next to her. Strange girl, Teddy thought. She reminded him a little of the actress Audrey Hepburn with her brown pixie cut and the way she usually dressed in all black. It was probably the style in New York, but here it made her stand out like a sore thumb.