Joan laughed. “How long has your husband been a POW?”
“I’m not married. My brother and … several friends died over there. Your husband?”
“Shot down in ’69. He’s in Hoa Lo.”
“I’m sorry, Joan. Kids?”
“Just one. A girl. Charlotte. She doesn’t remember her dad.”
Frankie touched the woman’s hand. They were about the same age, living very different lives, but the war connected them. “He’ll come home, Joan.”
A dark-haired woman in a black-and-white plaid pantsuit neared the table. “They put our soldiers in cages like that? Really? Where they don’t have enough room to stand up?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“What did they do?”
“Do?” Joan asked.
“To end up in cages. Are they like that Lieutenant Calley from My Lai?”
Stay calm. Educate, don’t annihilate. “They served their country,” Frankie said. “Just like their fathers and grandfathers, they did as the country asked in wartime, and they were taken prisoner by the enemy.”
The woman frowned, picked a nickel-plated bracelet out of the box, read the name on it.
“That’s someone’s son, ma’am. Someone’s husband,” Frankie said. “And they’re waiting for him to come home.” She paused. “This woman’s husband is in their prison.”
The woman pulled a five-dollar bill out of her worn billfold and handed it to Frankie, and then put the bracelet back in the box.
“The idea is that you wear the bracelet until he comes home,” Joan said. “To keep his memory alive.”
The woman retrieved the bracelet, fit it on her wrist, stared down at it.
“Thank you,” Frankie said.
The woman nodded and walked away.
For the next half an hour, Frankie and Joan handed out flyers, sold bracelets, and wrote letters. Frankie was halfway through her latest letter to Ben Bradlee when she felt Joan poke her elbow into her side.
“Incoming,” Joan whispered.
Frankie looked up, saw two men walking toward their table.
No. Not two men, or not really. A man and a boy. Father and son, maybe; the man was tall and thin, with graying shoulder-length hair and a mustache. He wore a black Grateful Dead T-shirt and ragged jeans and sandals. The boy beside him—sixteen, maybe seventeen—was pumped up with muscles and wore an ANNAPOLIS sweatshirt. He was clean-shaven and his hair was 1950s-short. They stopped in front of the table, beneath the DON’T LET THEM BE FORGOTTEN banner.
The older man stepped closer. “Still fighting for the cause, I see. Frankie McGrath, right? Coronado girl?”
It took a moment for Frankie to recognize the man she’d met at the protest in Washington, D.C. “The surfer psychiatrist.”
“Henry Acevedo,” he said, smiling. “This is my nephew, Arturo.” He turned to the young man. “You see those cages, Art? Take a good, long look.”
Arturo rolled his eyes, gave his uncle a good-natured nudge in the side. “My uncle is pissed I’m going to the Naval Academy in September. But my dad is thrilled.”
“My brother went to the academy,” Frankie said. “He loved it.”
“My husband, too,” Joan added. “It’s a great school.”
“I’m not in favor of a college that pumps out warriors and then sends them into harm’s way,” Henry said.
“Just be proud of him, Henry,” Frankie said quietly. “He’s making an honorable choice even if you don’t agree with it.” She pushed the box of bracelets toward the young man. “Five dollars if you’d like to help bring a hero home.”
Arturo stepped forward, looked through the bracelets. “Groovy. Do you know any POWs?” he asked Joan.
“My husband,” she said, showing Arturo her bracelet. He leaned in to read it.
“Nineteen sixty-nine,” Arturo said. “Whoa. He’s been there a long time…”
Frankie felt Henry’s gaze on her, but he didn’t speak. After a moment, he put an arm around his nephew. “Come on, future flyboy. Let’s let these beautiful women save their husbands.”
“I’m not married,” Frankie said, surprised to hear herself say the words.
“Will wonders never cease?” Henry said as he tossed two twenty-dollar bills on the table. “Keep up the good work, ladies. See you soon, Frankie.”
He led Arturo away, who pulled out from beneath his uncle’s arm, obviously thinking he was too old for it.