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“Junior. Is everything okay? Did something happen? To somebody?”

Funny how she didn't mention Granddaddy in particular. But she must've been asking about him. I shook my head. “I just have some questions. About my pop.”

“Axel?” She waved me in and pointed toward the easy chair near the window. “What about Axel?” She reached around the back of her waist and untied the apron she was wearing. Then she slipped it off and carried it into the kitchen. Maybe my aunt figured she had to be all gussied up to see me, but I was used to women wearing aprons with flour and food spills on them.

Aunt Lucille's house was toasty warm. And no wonder—it had an oil heater sitting in the middle of the living room. That thing wouldn't cool down in the night like our woodstove did.

“Now,” said Aunt Lucille, “what about Axel?”

All of a sudden I didn't know what to say. I stopped and started over a few times and finally I just blurted out, “Why did Granddaddy hate him?”

Lucille ducked her head a little and squinted as though I was some stranger come to her door, meddling in her family business. And in a way I was. But I was also her nephew, and with Pop gone, I figured if I wanted to know anything about his family I should hurry up and ask.

While she was making up her mind whether to answer my question we heard footsteps on her porch and then a knock at the door.

“My stars!” said Aunt Lucille. “That must be my sister.” She went to the window and peeked out. “Just as I thought. Lillian is dying of curiosity. She hasn't talked to me in two months. And now, three minutes after you show up, that woman is on my porch with a tin of fudge. If she thinks she can sweet-talk her way in this door, she has another thought coming.”

January 1942

Aunt Lucille's determination started to crumble the second her sister pushed the tin into her hand. She took a deep breath, and I could almost see the smell of fudge filling her up. She closed her eyes and breathed it in. Then she pulled herself together. “Lillian,” she snapped. “What is
this
for?”

Aunt Lillian laughed, and her voice went sweet as chocolate. But it had a bitterness too, like Momma's cocoa powder. “Lucy, have a piece of fudge.” She turned then and looked at me. “Why, Junior Bledsoe! Is that you? Do tell. Lucille, share some of my fudge with our nephew.”

Lucille held the fudge out to me and I took a piece.

“Have another,” said Aunt Lillian. She stepped inside and pushed the door shut behind her.

So there I was, with a piece of fudge in each hand, watching her and Aunt Lucille tiptoeing around each other. I tried to imagine them with Pop, playing together when they were all young'uns. But those two women
eyeing each other didn't seem like the kind of people who could have been small and childlike once upon a time. For one thing, they were both tall. And big-boned. Right now, Aunt Lucille's face was more serious than Miss Hinkle's in the middle of a handwriting session. Lillian was smiling, but I could tell she was all pretend—just trying to buy something with that fudge of hers.

Lillian sat herself down on the sofa. She patted the cushion beside her. “Sit, sister. And do taste the fudge. Tell me if I've lost my touch.”

Lucille frowned and then kind of shuffled over to a straight-backed chair on the other side of the room. She set that fudge on a side table and turned her head away—like she was trying to forget it was there.

But the smell of that chocolate was strong. I couldn't wait a second longer. I popped one of the pieces into my mouth.

“How do you like it, Junior?” asked Lillian.

“Mm,” I said. “Delicious.” I licked the melting chocolate off my fingers.

“You're just saying that, aren't you? It's so good to see you. But why aren't you in school?”

Lucille glared at Lillian, then at me—like she was warning me not to talk to her sister. But why shouldn't I? I wanted to know some things, and I wasn't convinced that Lucille would answer my questions.

“I was asking Granddaddy about Woodrow Wilson,” I said. “He started talking about the war and was real
angry about something—he said it was Axel's fault. But then he just quit talking.”

Lillian's eyebrows went up, like she was surprised. Then down, as if she was thinking. I had a feeling she knew something. She glanced at Lucille but didn't say a word.

We sat there quiet for a minute and then I said, “I got to thinking, maybe y'all would remember something.”

“Well,” said Lillian. Then she stopped.

“Yeah?” I said.

“Daddy never fought in the war. And he blamed Axel for that.”

“Why?”

“Axel was having a hard time sitting still in school,” said Lillian. “He couldn't think unless he was fiddling with something. Daddy would stand over him while he was doing homework, rushing him and saying how he didn't have all night to do one arithmetic problem. That made things worse. So finally Axel just up and quit. He could be mule-headed that way.”

That sounded like Pop, all right. But what did it have to do with Woodrow Wilson?

Since Lillian was talking, I guessed Lucille wasn't going to be outdone. She grabbed up a piece of fudge and took a bite. Then she started talking. “Daddy took him to the mill and made him sweep floors. There was plenty of work there to keep him busy.”

“And hundreds of machines,” interrupted Lillian. “It
turned out, while Daddy thought he was sweeping up, Axel was studying the machines. And how they worked. By the time Daddy figured out what was going on, Axel was already helping to fix those machines.”

“But he wasn't earning any money for it,” said Lucille. “Daddy was all fired up about that—the boss man getting free labor out of his son.”

“Your granddaddy didn't mind his son sweeping floors for no money,” said Lillian. “After all, that was
his
idea, but fixing the boss's machines? That was another story altogether. But the boss refused to pay for Axel's labor. Said the law wouldn't allow him to hire a boy that young.”

“The whole time, war was threatening,” said Lucille. “And your granddaddy's draft number came up. Boy howdy—was he happy about that! He was all set to go and then he had the accident.”

“Oh. His hand?”

“His fingers got caught in the carding machine and he lost half his hand before they could turn it off,” said Lillian.

“Axel was the last person to work on that machine,” said Lucille. “Daddy said he did it on purpose.”

“Ridiculous!” Lillian declared. “Carding is dangerous that way. The machine has metal teeth to comb the cotton and separate it into fibers. If you don't watch yourself, it'll eat your fingers. Daddy must've been careless. On top of that, he didn't go to the doctor. Wouldn't let Mother
come close to it with soap and water. So it started turning black.”

Lucille nodded. “Gangrene.”

“Finally one day our neighbor brought him some whiskey and while Daddy was passed out drunk he had a doctor tend to that hand. But it was too late. He couldn't save it.”

“Thing was, Axel was the last person to work on the machine.”

“You already told him that.”

“The boy was only eleven years old. But Daddy said it was
Axel's
fault he couldn't play on the mill's baseball team anymore. And you know what made Daddy maddest of all?”

“What?” I asked.

“The war.” They both said it together.

“He couldn't go off and fight,” said Lucille.

“Oh, but he tried,” Lillian added. “He was determined that nothing would keep him out of that war. He'd go outside every single day and practice shooting with his left hand.”

“But the neighbors complained about the racket. So the police came and took his gun away.”

“Daddy was sure mad about that. Mad enough to start a war all by himself. And I guess you know who his enemy was.”

All of a sudden I felt sick to my stomach, thinking about my pop on the receiving end of Granddaddy's
wrath when he was just a young'un. Eleven years old.

Lillian stood and shoved that tin of fudge into Lucille's hand. “Eat some more,” she said. “It'll make you feel better.” Then she offered some to me too.

I took one for each hand. “I reckon I better be going,” I said. “But thanks for the fudge and for telling me about Pop.”

After that cozy living room, the cold air hit me in the face. But I let out a big sigh of relief to be away from those two aunts, and when I did, I could almost see that sigh hanging like a frosty cloud in front of me.

I spent the day walking around Brookford. The town was a couple of hills with little white houses lined up along them. They reminded me of train cars that had come unhooked from each other. I walked up Red Hill, where Granddaddy used to live before we moved him in with us. Somebody else lived in that house now. But I stood in the street and imagined Pop inside at the kitchen table trying to do arithmetic with Granddaddy standing over top of him.

No wonder he left school.

There were other buildings in Brookford—stores, a gas station, a pool hall, and a couple of churches. The redbrick cotton mill where all those people worked was big enough to set half the houses right inside it. I figured Pop knew that place inside and out, considering he'd swept its floors and fixed the machines.

Somewhere down there on the river was a swinging
bridge. Once, when I was six, Pop took me to see it. I still remembered how scared I felt up so high and how the bridge rocked with every step we took. But Pop held my hand real tight and told me to hang on to the cable with the other hand. “Don't look down,” he said. “Keep your eye on where you're going and you'll make it across just fine.”

Someday, maybe I'd go looking for that bridge, but for now I wanted to get back to the school and sneak onto the empty bus that parked there during the day. I knew I could stay low until it was filling up with noisy young'uns. By then the driver wouldn't even notice me.

My plan worked. Even Ann Fay didn't ask questions, so I figured she hadn't missed me at school. In fact, playing hooky was so easy I had half a notion to try it again.

I never thought I'd be the kind of person who would do such a thing. But now, I felt like I could even
quit
school if I wanted to. Maybe there was a law saying I had to go. But nobody seemed to care enough to enforce it. My old pal Calvin Settlemyre was proof of that.

January 1942

“I assume you were sick yesterday?” asked Miss Hinkle.

“I've got a lot on me right now,” I said.

She peered over her glasses at me and started to speak. Then stopped. Then started again. “Yes, Junior. I know you do,” she said. “But now you
also
have to catch up on the work you missed.”

She'd taught a lesson on metaphors and similes, it turned out. And today she was teaching oxymorons. She wrote
oxymoron
on the blackboard and drew a line under it. Then she wrote
two contradictory words or ideas used together
. Under that definition she wrote
awfully pretty
. “That is an oxymoron,” she said, “because
awful
and
pretty
contradict each other. It's essential, when writing or speaking, to always choose the right word.”

She asked us to each think of an oxymoron, to write it on the blackboard, and to use it in a sentence.

It didn't take Janie Aderholt two seconds to think of one. She raised her hand and went to the board and
wrote
pretty ugly
. Then she turned to Miss Hinkle and said, “The war is getting pretty ugly.”

Next thing I knew, there was a list of oxymorons on the blackboard.
Sad smile, small crowd, only choice, loud whisper, sweet sorrow
.

The only thing I could think of that contradicted itself was
holy terror
, which I didn't figure she would count since I'd be stealing it from Granddaddy when he used it on Christmas Day. The other idea that came to my mind was
neighborly teacher
. And I sure wasn't going to write that on the board.

“Junior Bledsoe?”

Good grief! Did she have to call on me? I headed toward the blackboard, but I didn't have any idea what to write. I picked up the chalk and felt the grit of it between my fingers. Then it hit me that I had a perfectly good oxymoron.
Good grief
, I wrote. Only problem was I couldn't think of a sentence. I turned to the class and said, “Good grief!” And that's all I could think of.

“Excellent!” said Miss Hinkle.

Really? That was excellent? I couldn't believe it!

I saw Dudley's hand go up. Miss Hinkle gave him a nod. “Yes, Dudley?”

“He didn't come up with a sentence.”

“Actually,
good grief
is often used by itself, as a sentence. Now it's your turn, Dudley.”

I have to say I enjoyed watching Dudley's face go
from a smirk to a scowl. He dragged himself out of that chair and slouched his way to the blackboard. He stood there a long time and finally he wrote
cat fish
. Then he turned and faced the class. “The catfish meowed.”

The whole class busted up laughing when he said that, and even Miss Hinkle couldn't help but crack a smile. Much as I hate to admit it, I laughed too. Dudley tried to smirk at me on the way back to his seat, but mostly he just grinned and strutted like a fighting rooster.

Marilyn Overcash went to the board and wrote
worst enemy
. Then she turned around and said, “If someone is your worst enemy doesn't that mean he's your best friend?”

“Very thought-provoking,” said Miss Hinkle.

Worst enemy. Best friend
. That didn't make any sense. By now, I figured I should be used to things not making sense. But I wasn't. I was as confused as ever.