An Empty House Doesn't Sneeze

An adorable little romp...up all night until I finished...—Virginia Adair

...most remarkable are the novel’s nuanced responses to the war, from heroic to pacifist, delivered in a non-judgmental and empathetic way, providing its intended young audience with a means of forming their own opinions.—BookLife

Richardson vividly delivers a stirring coming-of-age tale set in a time period preserved only in history books, handed-down family stories, and fictional tales. Family dynamics feel authentic, capturing a slice of life in all its mundane glory.—R.C. Gibson for Indies Today

...an absolute must-read for all who cherish nostalgia of ancient times and historical fiction...—Wajeeha Bashir for Book Nerdection

...Richardson skillfully navigates themes of loyalty, trust, and the moral complexities faced by adolescents thrust into adult dilemmas...—Carol Thompson for Readers' Favorite

...filled with both danger and self-discovery...a thought-provoking reflection on the consequences of war and how it can tear apart communities and individuals in unexpected ways. But ultimately, it is a story about hope and resilience, showing that even in the darkest times, there is always a glimmer of light and goodness to be found.—James B. for Authors Reading

A well-researched novel that captures an era really well...emotional enough to bring tears...—DJ McCready

Also by David Scott Richardson

River’s Reach: Coming of Age Amid the Fish War

1. Breaking the Blackout​

EVERY STORY HAS MANY plausible beginnings.  Where each starts depends on who’s telling the story and who’s doing the listening.  If this story was told by adults, they might say it began when Germany invaded Poland in 1939 or when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941.  War historians allege that the table was set for WWII with the Treaty of Versailles in 1918—at the end of the so-called war to end all wars.  Still others argue that it never would have happened if the Great Depression of the 1930s hadn’t intensified the storm clouds of conflict.  But none of that matters now.  The tendrils of history mingle, often weaving too tightly for us to unravel.

...which brings us to the present...

If WWII simply wasn’t, the Johannsens would probably be enjoying a peaceful evening gathered around the Philco, after which fifteen-year-old Scotty Johannsen (our storyteller) would retire to his room where he’d leaf through Life Magazine, learning what he could about the ways of women. 

But there is a war on, and Scotty is huddling with his family in their basement bomb shelter during a Seattle air raid drill.  This small story is nested in a much larger one that engulfed the world and raised mushroom-shaped clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.  Scotty will leave that part of the story to the adults and tell us instead what he experienced from his front door.

The battlefields were thousands of miles away, but the war settled into every pore of the country, including Seattle.  Automobile companies began rolling out tanks and designing army Jeeps.  Shipyards cranked out Liberty ships at a pace that boggled the mind.  Seattle revved up to meet the challenge, bustling with war activity that kept the Boeing aircraft plant humming around the clock.  New rationing measures restricted gasoline and groceries, compelling heroic adjustments from everyday people to maintain a semblance of normal at a time when things were anything but. 

Concern grew for friends and family members deployed in the military.  Neighbors eagerly devoured news from the front and anxiously gossiped about those who wouldn’t be coming home.  Posters urging the purchase of war bonds proliferated, and those blaring Uncle Sam Wants You were plastered nearly everywhere.  Luxury goods were particularly scarce, and local task groups formed to lead scrap drives and plant victory gardens. The country was on a war footing and people did their part, telling themselves, We’re all in this together. 

By 1943, Americans had done their best to adjust as shortages and rationing increased and nightly blackouts were imposed to protect cities from air raids and coastal shelling.  For the most part, they adopted Winston Churchill’s advice to Be calm and carry on, but there was an underside to this comforting picture of patriotism.

The flash flood of government money to fund the war was tempting, and many took advantage.  Graft wormed its way into military contracts, and a black market of rationed goods soon emerged.  Not everybody supported the war—some for political or religious reasons, some because they didn’t want to participate in humans killing humans, and others who were simply scared shitless at the thought of entering combat. 

Many initially believed the U.S. shouldn’t get involved in foreign wars.  Let them fight it out over there, they complained.  However, the attack on Pearl Harbor shook many out of their isolationism.  The government made accommodations for those who wanted to serve but eschewed combat roles.  Some were given conscientious objector status if they met certain conditions.  The vast numbers of men entering the military yielded opportunities for women to enter the workforce as never before, and thousands took jobs in factories, construction, and trucking. 

For Scotty Johannsen, the war spawned concern for everything and everybody he loved.  It also meant that good chocolate was scarce.  War games entered the fantasy repertoire he and his friends shared, and battles against the Jerrys & Japs replaced those between Cowboys & Indians.  Imagination primed, he’d find himself at the controls of a sleek fighter plane taking off from a carrier deck or looking through the bombsite of a B-24 while crossing the English Channel for a raid over Germany.  Playing his part in the fight, he always returned safely to base. 

He’d never considered the possibility of somebody not going along.  After all, everybody he knew was doing their bit to support the war effort.  He’d heard the rumors of spies in our midst, but he couldn’t conceive of anybody traitorous enough to set fires during the blackouts, risking the horrors of war invading the home front.  But Scotty would soon discover that there were such people, and that one of them roamed his own cozy neighborhood nightly. 

The firebug later said he’d never intended to hurt anyone, nor was he making a statement against the war, although many thought otherwise.  Why else would anyone light fires during the mandatory blackouts?  One fire might have been an accident, but several, all begun during a blackout, strained credulity to think they were unrelated.  When questions later arose, the authorities would say it didn’t matter whether there was intent to injure someone.  There was an intent to break the blackout, which was a serious crime.  More importantly, there was intent to commit arson, and the facts proved this beyond a reasonable doubt.  Arson is against the law, war or no war. 

Some were certain that the firebug planned every fire, but the truth was murkier—he operated primarily on instinct.  Thoughts of fire had long consumed him, like a siren call he found impossible to ignore.  Fire-riddled fantasies entered his dreams, roused his curiosities, and inevitably steered him to his next incineration.  Fire was like an unsolved mystery, and as an essential element of survival, he felt it was important to gain control over it.  It warmed the hearth, cooked the food, and helped forge things necessary for existence, including the implements of war.  Some believed they’d mastered fire, but flames weren’t so easily enslaved.  Fire had a mind of its own and could outwit the well-intended in a flash.  Sometimes, it was angry and unpredictable, and at others, it brought campfire comfort, keeping frightening creatures at bay.  Nothing could withstand the determination of fire for long, not even the rocks deep within the earth.

What distinguished this night from any other since the blackouts began was the crystal-clear sky and the firebug’s growing temptation, now at a fever pitch.  All in all, it seemed as good a night as any to let fire have its way with him.  Like a security blanket, the blackouts gave cover for the city to hide from the prying eyes of an aerial attack.  They likewise armed the firebug with concealment for his secret pursuits.  He was eager to put his stealth and planning to the test.

He’d waited patiently, enjoying the anticipatory thrill even before the fire was set.  When the setting sun gave the OK for the blackout to take full effect, he zeroed in on the task of starting his fire.  If he’d been asked what he expected to gain from his act, he wouldn’t have known what to say.  A vague answer lurked somewhere in his bones, but it was a secret he kept even from himself.  It was action, not words that drove him.  He’d light the fuse, and after a breath-holding moment, the fumes he’d come to know so well would ignite with an exhilarating whump. The beacon would be set to burning and he’d look back over his shoulder as he ran.  As his fires lit a path, he could do nothing but follow.

Striking a casual gait, he sauntered down the nearly pitch-black alley with a Mason jar half full of rationed gasoline, siphoned from a neighbor’s car.  His eyes darted from side to side, but nobody saw him on the lonely street lined with blacked-out windows.  The jar was secure in a jacket pouch that was probably designed for some sort of survival gear.  Caressing it, he thought how strange it was that something so cold could burst instantly into searing heat.  He felt no reluctance at what fire had asked him to do and was powerless to turn down its sinister invitation. 

There was always risk.  A chance the blackout wouldn’t keep his secret.  A few people were out and about—those with crucial tasks to complete, others without a care in the world, and those seeking escape from their cloistered homes.  Roving air raid wardens checked to see that everyone was in compliance: Were their windows covered?  Did they have fire suppression materials?  Did they have any business being out and about?

He’d walked this alley many times and thought he knew what to expect.  But the unexpected is the enemy of certainty; like gravity, it never sleeps.  Still, he played the favorable odds that he wouldn’t be seen.  He’d studied the routines of the authorities for weeks, and surprise was his ally.  The act itself would be quick, taking only several seconds.  He could always forgo accomplishment if the risk was too great, but as he got closer to the pile of splintered wood, a primal excitement rose inside him, like a prelude to a symphony.  He hadn’t seen anybody since turning into the alley, and light from the gibbous moon was nearly obscured by clouds.

He’d experimented extensively with various ways to start fires.  He’d read about elaborate timing devices and planned to devise one in case it was needed in a difficult circumstance.  Tossing a lit match might work, but chances for success dwindled in the event of wind or rain.  Pouring a trail of gasoline and lighting it with a match would probably work, but gasoline was scarce, and he hadn’t been able to obtain much, even by illegal means.  He explored other methods, but they all seemed too complicated, unreliable, or risky.  Eventually he settled on a homemade fuse, which he’d light at a distance, using a match he’d stolen from his dad’s pipe-smoking supplies.  His practice fuses had worked flawlessly, even in rainy conditions, and he had no reason to believe tonight would be any different.  He didn’t need to toss the Mason jar like a grenade.  All he needed was to quietly douse the debris with a little gasoline, run the fuse away from it, touch a match to the fuse, and run.  If it didn’t light, it didn’t light, and the lingering smell of gasoline would be the only evidence of his failed attempt.  There would be other opportunities.  Neither the war nor the blackouts would end anytime soon.

2. Home Sweet Home (Seattle 1943)

WHEN MY FOLKS BOUGHT the house next to Ravenna Park it wasn’t for its luxury bomb shelter potential.  It was, they said, because it had such architectural charm, the right number of bedrooms, and, as I later found out, it was the right price.  I fell in love with it for the circular stairway that snaked up the castle-like tower, not to mention the possibility of finally having my own room.  Our backyard spilled into the park across an invisible property line that separated the world of wartime shortages and air raid drills from the forested wilds where I imagined war was too busy to visit.

Making sure we were prepared in the event the sky fell in the form of Japanese bombs, Dad converted our basement into a bomb shelter, doubling its duties as a haven for spiders and the occasional mouse.  As the local air raid warden, Dad took his responsibilities very seriously.  In one short week, the cold dark den of spiders was outfitted for basic air raid comfort.  He’d given little thought to how stifling it might become if the All Clear didn’t sound in an hour or so.  In the absence of a real air raid, the basement practiced sheltering our family of five from the prying eyes of Japanese aircraft. 

It was less than two years since the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and things weren’t going well for our forces in the Pacific.  Most adults assured kids that nothing like that would ever happen here, but most of us could tell they weren’t sure.  Even so, our bomb shelter gave us the illusion of a safe harbor when the sirens screamed and the sea rose in anger.  So far, the storms have remained distant. 

While the basement did its part to make us feel safe, my sister, Greta, and my older brother, Erik and I did our part by entertaining ourselves without too much of a ruckus.  This wasn’t always easy no matter how hard we tried.  Often a ruckus would erupt and take us all by surprise.  Greta said that the person who invented board games must’ve been thinking of life in a bomb shelter.  Just how many times can you play Chinese checkers and still care about winning?

Whatever the basement lacked in cozy decor, it made up for in sardine-can togetherness.  With our small, improvised dining table holding center stage, it was a tight fit, but each of us had carved out a niche.  Mine was near the old coal bin where Dad kept tools and wardening supplies and Mom’s was a worn-out chair in front of the pantry shelves.  She looked like she was guarding the hard work of last year’s victory garden.  Erik’s room had been in the basement since we first moved there, and it was more-or-less teenage comfortable.  It wound up being our makeshift living room whenever we had to shelter.  Recently, he’d even turned his Private. Keep Out! door sign around and rearranged things so Greta would have a comfortable place to sit.  Both Mom and Dad tried to lighten up these wartime gatherings, saying they were a family bonding opportunity that we wouldn’t have had in peacetime.  They’d say things like, When you look back on this, your hearts will warm with fond memories.  As it was, I thought I’d bonded quite well with everybody already, even limited as we were to the first and second floors of the house.  Bomb-shelter bonding left a lot to be desired.

I was the middle kid, in between Greta and Erik.  I answered to both Scott (Mom’s preference) and Scotty (Dad’s choice), as well as a few other names.  I didn’t particularly like being called Scotty.  Scott just sounded more dignified—something Mom said I should aspire to.  She said dignity was like a suit of armor that would carry me through tough times. 

A few of my friends called me The Hankie whenever I was a pain in the butt.  Mom usually made sure I carried a hankie, and my friends would sometimes pull out theirs and make like two foghorns blowing a duet.  We’d all double up laughing, and then I’d pull out mine to make it a trio.  We called ourselves The Hankies. 

Seattle and other West Coast cities initiated the blackouts and air raid drills about the time Pearl Harbor was attacked.  The goal was to make targets hard for the enemy to see from the air and to prevent ships from being silhouetted against city lights.  Windows had to be covered and outside lights turned off.  Train engines, and some cars, were even issued little eyebrows so their headlights wouldn’t shine upward, giving them away.  Not everybody took the warnings or penalties seriously.  Some dared to drive without headlights at night, giving parents yet one more reason to keep their kids from running around after dark.  My parents never seemed concerned about that though. 

During the blackouts, I sometimes met up with my friends after sunset and we’d discuss important teenage matters.  We fancied ourselves as authorities in the art of talking with girls who weren’t our sisters.  Some of us even thought we understood what kissing was all about, although reliable information from experienced participants was hard to come by.  In the absence of actual data and in the interest of science, we planned kissing experiments to test our hypotheses.  But even the most brilliant scientists among us never carried them out.

We’d joke that the blackouts were the best weapon the enemy had.  Every day we’d hear about someone who’d tripped, fallen, or crashed in the dark.  Some of these accidents ended up being fatal, so I guess it really wasn’t something to joke about, but gas rationing kept most sensible people at home and the death toll limited to single digits.  Kids knew what parents only suspected, that blackouts were made for mischief of every kind imaginable.  I won’t go into details.  Just trust me, I had nothing to do with any of it. 

Sometimes air raid drills occurred during school hours.  Teachers would yell, Get Out and Get Under, meaning get out and under your desk.  I was getting so big that it was hard to fit, and I entertained myself by imagining I got jammed in and would have to spend the rest of the day wearing my desk around, stuck on my back.  We understood the reasons for these drills, but after a while they made it seem like the adults just liked to cry wolf.

Not only had the Japanese nearly destroyed the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, but they’d established a foothold in the Aleutian Islands.  In a daring, submarine hit-and-run attack, they’d even shelled Fort Stevens down on the Oregon side of the Columbia River.  Who’s to say they didn’t have their sights set on the big Boeing aircraft plant running three shifts a day in preparation for what might be coming right here in Seattle?  The revved-up riveting at Puget Sound shipyards undoubtedly sent out a similar invitation. 

Maybe the British had the right idea by sending kids to the countryside so they wouldn’t get bombed in the cities.  Dad once threatened to send me to the English countryside—not to save me from a bomb, but just to get me out of his hair.  In reality, if we had to go anywhere for our safety, we’d probably end up with Mom’s folks near La Conner in the Skagit Valley.  If the British had the chance, they’d probably send their kids there too.  Except for missing my friends and not having Ravenna Park as a backyard, I wouldn’t have minded.  I loved my grandparents, and the farming country of the Skagit Valley did seem safer than the city and all its tempting targets.

​3. The Family Dungeon

AS BOMB SHELTERS GO, ours was hardly ideal.  Even if it was, nothing could protect us from the finality of a direct hit by a lonely bomb that took a shine to us.  People assured me the chances of that were one in a million, but when the lonely bomb thought snuck up on me, it grabbed on so tight I needed a major distraction to wrench free. I took some comfort that our neighborhood wasn’t a very juicy target for the enemy.  But my comfort dimmed when I considered how easily mistakes could be made on foggy or rainy days, the kind we have much of the year.  Frightened pilots might care less about accuracy than just unloading so they could get back to base in time for supper.  Sand Point Naval Air Station wasn’t that far away, and adults said the Japanese spies knew all about it.  I took pride in identifying planes by silhouette or engine sound, but occasionally, I’d hear one I didn’t recognize, and my stomach would tighten.

We had what was called a daylight basement, for the unsurprising reason that it let daylight in from one side where it opened up at ground level.  The other three sides were dug into the hill.  We’d boarded up the daylight side to prevent being showered with glass if a blast came from that direction, but what would’ve been a bright and cheery space was now dark and dank.  I suspected it was a little like being in a coal mine.  Seattle was short on sunlight anyway, and a dimly lit bomb shelter was like just one more cloud in the sky.

Initially, the security I felt when we were all together made it easy to ignore the vulnerability of having a thick cement foundation on only three of the four sides.  The basement wasn’t meant to be a bomb shelter though, and with one wall open to whatever the world had to offer, I still found room to worry.  Our coziness slowly faded, only to be replaced by the stress of squishing together in a space that was designed more for projects than getting to know each other in ways we’d rather keep to ourselves. 

The basement wasn’t designed for commodious living, especially for a family of five with some of us given to sudden bursts of grabbing each other’s stuff.  Greta and I were usually the guilty ones.  Feeling trapped and bored, we’d break into a commotion that eventually required parental intervention.  We’d get antsy, Mom said, and the ensuing hullabaloo would draw her ire.  I wondered if a hullabaloo was brewing inside Mom and Dad as well.

From time to time, we found evidence that rodents sheltered in our basement alongside us.  Dad joked that the air raid drills scared the bejesus out of them.  We didn’t remind him that they’d left their bejesus anywhere they felt like since long before air raids, wars, or bomb shelters.  For years, Erik had tried to negotiate a peace treaty, but with all of us cooped up as regular visitors, he was forced to take a harder line.  The startling snap of a mousetrap would send Greta into a tirade about how all animals had a right to live.  But when fresh signs of rodenthood appeared, she agreed to limit their rights to the outdoors.  As a precaution against being called a murderer by his own sister, Erik checked the traps when Greta wasn’t around and flung the beady-eyed cadavers into the ravine to feed and fertilize whatever needed them.  He claimed that a properly functioning mousetrap was instantaneous and not a bad way to go.

We all knew that spiders took over completely when nobody was there.  Greta and I were freaked out by even the tiniest creepy crawly, but Erik was fascinated by them.  He’d set out little spider snacks of dead insects, taking care not to damage the webs, which he never tired of gently jiggling, just to see what the spiders would do.  He always got their attention and convinced himself he could communicate with them on their terms. Nobody argued the point.  Once, he tried to expand the spider’s diet by sticking some precious cheese in a web.  What a waste of cheese, I thought.  Cheese was such a rarity it made sense that cheddar was yellow, like gold.  Months had gone by since we’d eaten any.

The only finished room in the basement was likely predestined for wartime togetherness long before sirens began ordering us around.  Erik’s bedroom included a fireplace, but the rest of the basement was bare cement walls.  Erik complained that the fireplace was designed to suck heat out of the room and freeze the occupants to death, so he cobbled together a cover for the opening out of old shiplap and cardboard.  It was hard to tell if it helped or not. 

A stash of extra light bulbs saved us from injury in the event of an indoor blackout, and candles sometimes made it feel like we were camping out, but aside from Erik’s room, the basement was essentially one large dungeon with an old coal bin off to the side.  Dad did his best converting the coal bin into a workshop, but all it was good for was storing a few tools.  Now it kept our extra cots, one of which I used during the air raid warnings, plus first aid supplies that Dad could grab quickly as his duties required. 

Erik and Dad built some racks to store our bedding and extra clothes, along with dry food and our canning harvest from the victory garden.  Tin cans were a rarity on the shelves, since most canned goods were shipped to the troops, but Erik finagled two cans of SPAM from somebody.  They’d collected dust for so long that I’d given up waiting for them to become SPAM fritters, which some considered a wartime delicacy.  We must have been saving it for a SPAM victory celebration when the war was over.

Erik decorated one wall of his bedroom with a poster reminding us to save grease so it could be used for making explosives.  On the opposite wall, he’d hung his all-time favorite defense bond poster, You Buy ‘em. We Fly ‘em!  Anything about airplanes was a hit with Erik and me.  As if the drills and blackouts weren’t reminder enough of the uncertain path ahead, Dad put up posters as well—Remember Pearl Harbor and The Walls Have Ears. 

Everywhere, especially in public places, war posters wagged their fingers at us, reminding all who passed to do the right thing.  Dad’s role as a warden gave him access to posters that others didn’t have.  Greta begged and begged till he brought home a Red Cross recruiting poster, which she promptly displayed on the inside of her bedroom door.  She insisted that if Mom and Dad ever let her grow up, she’d join the Red Cross and go to work helping our soldiers.  We all believed she would, but I hoped we wouldn’t need soldiers by that time. 

Mom didn’t much care for the posters plastered all over the place, but she often commented on the quality of the artwork, saying, People contribute to the war effort in different ways, and perhaps we could do more with a paintbrush than with a gun.  She ruminated over the inevitable destruction of irreplaceable art and speculated whether artists would be the ones to put us back together again when the war was over.

Erik was especially fond of one poster with a quote from President Roosevelt saying how the war effort took people from all backgrounds and nationalities.  I wondered if the quote really applied to everybody or if it was just for show.  It certainly didn’t apply to Japanese Americans—that was clear.  I can’t say much for the cartoony artwork though, which featured a gray army tank.  The washed-out design made me wonder if color itself was being rationed. 

We all admired President Roosevelt though, even before the war, and Mom had a special affinity for Eleanor Roosevelt.  She wasn’t simply the first lady, wife of the president—she was a woman of substance, with a mind and doings of her own, Mom liked to say.  Once, when Dad remarked that he’d like to have dinner with Winston Churchill, Mom accused him of secretly wanting to drink whiskey and smoke cigars with the British Prime Minister.  Mom would rather have breakfast or a mid-morning snack with Eleanor.  Most things worth doing get done by lunchtime, she jibed, repeating something that Eleanor had supposedly said. 

The previous owners of the house had upgraded the coal furnace to an oil burner and installed a cement