From The Bay
by Kim Taylor
In
June 1946, Monterey, California suffered from an unending bout of
fog. There was nothing particularly special about fog in June in
Monterey. But this fog crept under door jambs and slid its way into
closets. Clothes grew damp and then sullen and then defeated. Out on
the bay, the foghorn sounded every five minutes, lowing like a sick
cow. Even the ball game between Western Meat and Rowe Motor had been
canceled, as visibility dropped to two inches in the fifth inning and
nobody could find the ball.
Traffic
accidents were up three-fold from the year before - but of course,
a year before, the peninsula was nearly without men and traffic was
light. So, statistically speaking, one couldn't blame the fog, but
one could, if one were so disposed, blame the return of the men.
Along
Ocean View Avenue and Fisherman's Wharf, the fog worked its way
between the narrow alleys that led from the canneries to tiny bits of
shoreline. It curled itself around the piers that pushed into the
waters, and circled the hoppers out in the bay that had once
swallowed tons of sardines. Most of the piers and the hoppers were
useless now. Because right after Nagasaki, Monterey Bay ran out of
steam. The sardines that fertilized a country and fed soldiers in two
world wars and stunk up an entire community were gone. Into cans and
into the ground. No sardines, no nothing. Only piles of bleached fish
heads, bits of graying opalescent shell and buildings that yawned
with boredom.
The
big war - the Jap-killing, Kraut-hating, hero-making war - was
really and truly over. As were rations for food and gas and rubber
for tires. The men were home, some discharged after V-J Day, others
now back from the Occupation. Most had wanted three simple things: a
bar, their mother, and their girl. In 1945, dazed and victorious,
they climbed the steep slopes of New Monterey, or hopped a bus to
King City, or hitched a ride to Santa Maria. All the way, they
smelled the food from their mother's kitchen, the same scent of
cabbage or osso buco or fried clams they'd conjured up in trenches
or pup tents or holes in the ground. All the way, as their feet went
step by step up the steep cement sidewalk, or their backs and legs
went numb from the rattle of the bus, they could feel the soft skin
of cheeks and breasts and thighs of their girl, their sweetheart,
their wife.
And
the men's fingertips warmed and smiles went around and stories of
what would happen when they were alone (with Daisy, Kelly, Margaret,
Bea) grew and multiplied and became a song.
They
were the returning warriors, and Penelope was waiting at home. The
men shared pictures - crinkled, creased, torn at the edges. "That's
my girl," they would say. And all the girls looked alike in that
they were loved and remembered for an entire goddamn war. It didn't
matter if the men were in the Battle of the Bulge or cooking stew in
Texas. Didn't it matter if bombs made them shit their pants and
letters from home made them cry. These men were heroes. And they knew
there would be a parade and adulations and keys from the Mayor.
At
least the first men back found most of this to be true. There were
certainly parades, and a lot of keys to the city were handed out. And
at least some of the girls hadn't married someone else. At least
mom's cooking was the same.
But
that was 1945, and everybody loved a hero.
If
you came back later, it was something entirely else.
Kim Taylor is the author of two YA
novels, Cissy Funk (HarperCollins) and Bowery Girl (Viking). Cissy
Funk was the recipient of the Willa Cather Award for Best Young Adult
Novel. She is currently at work on The Bay, a mainstream novel, that
follows a group of men and women making their way in the post-war
world of 1946 Monterey, California. She hopes her agent will like it,
even though he thinks she's dropped off the face of the earth.
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