Willow Run (6 page)

Harlan nodded. “Good idea. That way we won't go to jail if we get caught.” He bit his lip. “If we get caught, we won't go to jail. Arnold the Spy will probably shoot us.”

Quickly I made two marks on the running board and shoved the key back on top of the tire. Then we ran as fast as we could, away from the truck, up the block, around the corner, to sit on the curb in front of Patches’ apartment and eat the pops.

The sweetness was on my tongue and in my throat, but somehow it didn't taste right. Then, a few minutes after we'd finished, Arnold the Spy walked by. I wished I had never taken the pop.

I'd pay him back the minute I got my allowance.

Patches and I were making up a code. One knock for
A,
two knocks for
B,
all the way through the alphabet. It took forever to get two words out.

It was the middle of the afternoon; I was hot as a biscuit leaning against the wall in that bedroom. And then suddenly, in my ear, Patches shouted, “Gotta go now. Have to buy school shoes. My mom says they're on sale.”

“But it's just the beginning of summer,” I yelled back. And then I realized: I could actually hear her, even though the noise was muffled. It was a bit of a disappointment after all that knocking.

From the kitchen, Mom called me in a loud whisper.

“Meggie? People are trying to sleep after working on the night shift.”

I took myself out on the stoop, seeing a million people walking back and forth, but no Harlan, then had to watch a column of ants carrying crumbs from one spot to another because there wasn't one thing in the world to do. If Grandpa had been there we would have done something, I knew that, even though I couldn't imagine what it would have been.
“The thing is to do
something,
Margaret
. Carpe diem.
”

I tried to remember what that meant. Seize the day, was it? Grandpa always said that.

The ants weren't carrying crumbs; they were dragging a dead Japanese beetle around. I wondered if they were going to eat it or bury it.

On the other side of me, the door banged open. Ronnelle came down the steps, Lulu straddling her hip, sucking her thumb.

“Ah, the flood girl.” Ronnelle came to a stop. “What are you doing?” Before I could answer, she snapped her fingers “Meggie, right?”

I nodded.

“You're doing nothing,” she said. “Come to the movies with us. It's air-cooled. Perfect for today.”

Lulu raised her hand. “Honey-doke,” she said, smiling at me with crooked white teeth.

“If we're lucky we'll be the only ones in the movie this early,” Ronnelle said. “Lulu can crawl up and down the aisle
playing hi-ho Silver, and I can watch Abbott and Costello in peace for two minutes.” She shook her head, yawning. “I work at night, and a woman a few doors down babysits while I'm gone. There's not much sleep for me.”

I stood up, waving at Lulu. Why not go to the movie? I thought.
Carpe diem
. I pushed open the kitchen door with one hand. Mom was fiddling around with stuff on the counter. “How about I go to the movies?”

Mom glanced over her shoulder, her mouth open, looking uneasy.

“Not alone,” I said quickly, “with Ronnelle.
Carpe diem
.” “You sound like Grandpa.” She smiled, reached over to the table for her tan change purse, and snapped it open. “Pay your own way.”

Outside we went down one block and up the next, all of them identical. If you ever got lost, you'd really be in trouble, I thought.

“We have to hurry,” Ronnelle said, lugging Lulu on one hip as Lulu leaned back to look at the cement, the street, and a sparrow winging overhead.

It was a relief to reach the movie, dark and cool, to sit halfway down with cups of hot popcorn—a thousand times better than sitting on the stoop watching ants hold a funeral service for a beetle.

“Ah,” Ronnelle said, putting Lulu on the floor. “My husband Michael loves the movies. He laughs and laughs.”

I could see the brightness in her eyes. “I miss him,
Meggie. I've known him since we were in high school. Six more missions! If only he's all right, then he's home, and we'll begin our lives again.”

I nodded. She wasn't much older than Eddie, I thought, but I was too shy to ask.

“Miss him, Honey-doke.”

There was something I did ask. “You have a lot of freckles,” I said, as if that weren't a bad thing, as if everyone wanted a million blots covering their face…as if I didn't mind that I had freckles.

Ronnelle laughed. “I used to think I looked horrible, but Michael …” She hesitated. “He thinks I look like that movie star, Katharine Hepburn.”

I sat back watching, laughing as Abbott and Costello came onto the screen, fighting. Lulu called “Hi-ho” a half-dozen times, then climbed onto Ronnelle's lap to fall asleep. Ronnelle put her head back and slept, too.

For the first time I thought it might not be so bad to have those freckles, not so terrible that everyone in school called me Freckle Face.

The war news began: pictures of soldiers against a gray stone wall in a place called Sainte Mere-Eglise, tired, filthy, sitting there in the mud, heads bent, legs stretched in front of them as the rain poured down.

I remembered Eddie getting ready for his dates with Virginia Tooey, his hair slicked back, still wet, so you could
see the comb marks running through it. He spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror, while I banged on the door yelling that he was taking forever.

On the screen the scene changed and a line of soldiers marched along a road. They grinned at the camera, shoving each other a little. One of them had a wreath of daisies wound around his helmet.

Was it Eddie? I sat up straight, watching his back go down the road. Thin, like Eddie, feet slopping along in boots. My heart flip-flopped in my chest.
Could it be?

Ronnelle was awake now, pointing as the camera zeroed in on a huge basket of mail that was being hoisted over the side of a ship to the waiting sailors. “I write to Michael every day,” she said. “Twice a day sometimes. He writes me, too, but sometimes I have to wait weeks, then it all arrives in a bunch.”

I nodded as I watched a woman cook a pot of something she said was full of nourishment but didn't take a lot of rationed meat. That was what Mom always said about Spam with Grandpa's pickles. But this looked even more dreadful.

“Time to go, kids,” Ronnelle said, smoothing back Lulu's hair.

We marched out. I thought about the soldier on the screen with daisies on his helmet.

My brother, Eddie. Could it have been?

Dear Grandpa,

Thanks for the letters you keep sending. I'm glad your garden is growing. I miss fishing with you, too.

I may have seen Eddie in the movies.

Love,

Meggie

P.S. You asked about the salad garden. I haven't quite started it yet.

Notes for Hot-O Soup:

When the war is over
…

1. … we'll have a party with fireworks that will light up all of Rockaway.

2. … I won't eat Spam for the rest of my life. I'll try Hot-O Soup instead.

3. … I'll put real butter on everything, even a lump in Hot-O Soup.

4. … I will never take anything I should pay for.

I lay sideways across the bed. “Here.” I tapped on the wall with my fingers.

“Right,” said a ghostly voice from the other side of the wall.

“Meggie?” Mom called from the kitchen. “Why don't you go outside and get some fresh air?”

“Nothing to do out there.”

Sawing sounds came from the other side; I picked up my knife and began to saw, too, until there was a tiny hole.

“Watch out.” Patches’ voice was clearer now. “You're going to stab me with that.”

“It's just a butter knife from the kitchen. It doesn't even cut butter.” I leaned back. It might not cut butter, but
plaster was crumbling, the hole growing, and light beamed through from the other side. “Enough,” I told her. “You don't want the whole wall to fall down.”

Laughing, she stuck her finger through the hole and wiggled it around like a pale snake.

“Let me see,” I said.

She pulled her finger away and I peered through into her bedroom. It was exactly the same as mine but there wasn't as much stuff thrown around; her new brown school shoes were on the table next to her bed.

She leaned forward until I could see the flecks of green in her brown eyes. “This is going to be terrific,” she said. “We don't have to yell one bit, we can talk all night long if we want.”

Mom's footsteps tapped down the hallway, and I rolled off the bed, glancing back over my shoulder to be sure she couldn't see the hole.

“It's dark in here. Miserable.” Mom dumped a pile of clean underwear on my bed. “I want you to go outside, make some friends.
Do something
.”

I wondered if she could hear Patches breathing. “All right.” I shoved the underwear under the bed so Patches wouldn't see it. “I have to mail letters anyway.”

I skipped out the door, hearing Mom sigh, “I just washed all that.”

As I went down the street I looked back; there was a blue star in Ronnelle's window for her husband, and one in
ours for Eddie. I saw Patches coming as I turned the corner. I waved a pile of envelopes at her: a letter to Grandpa, four Hot-O Soup entries, and a quick twenty-five-words-or-less contest I had entered…
Why I Like Sparkling Blue
.

Just then a ball whizzed by me so fast I could feel the breeze lift my hair.

Harlan: filthy shorts, scabby knees, the World's Fair pickle pinned to his striped shirt, and a white bag under his arm. “Can't you even catch?” His sweaty face was streaming. He raised his shirt and swiped at his chin, leaving a sooty mark across the stripes.

Sparkling Blue makes your clothes white, even Harlan's,
I thought, grinning to myself, and then I got a better look at the bag in his arms. So did Patches, who had just caught up to me, her bare feet as filthy as Harlan's shirt. “You stole more ice cream, Harlan Tucker.”

“Did not,” he said. “I come from a family of heroes, not thieves.” He put the bag down on the ground. “I'm going to show you two something.” He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket, as filthy as his shirt. “This doesn't count as money, of course. I'd never spend it in a million years. My uncle Leo gave it to me before he went overseas.”

Patches leaned forward. “The one who was…”

“Shot. Right. This is all I have left of him.”

Patches and I took a quick look at each other; neither of us knew what to say.

“He won't be coming home to Detroit. He wanted to
start a hardware store there when the war ended,” Harlan said. “He said we could be partners and I should hold on to this dollar bill until he got back.”

Like Eddie with the envelope. I raised my hand to brush back my bangs.
No, not like that at all
.

“I'm going to have a hardware store myself someday so I can remember him,” Harlan said. “I'll never use this dollar, though. Never.”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Anyway,” he said. “I dug six scratches into Arnold the Spy's running board. I'll pay the whole thing back someday. That's what Leo would want me to do.”

“Six?” How could he have done that? I was terrible at math; I couldn't even figure out how much money that would be.

“Yup. Two each. It's going to be a scorcher today.”

My mouth watered, but at the same time I felt a lurch in my chest. What would Grandpa say? What would Eddie say? And Lily Mollahan would never steal ice cream, even though the ice cream man might be a spy.

All my fault. I should never have told them about the key. If only I hadn't done that.

Harlan held out the bag. “I don't think…,” I began, then sighed. “I'll take the strawberry.”

Patches shook her head. “My mother made icecube pops.”

We sat on the curb eating two ice creams each, and then we ate the ones for Patches, too. I could feel an uneasiness in my stomach. “They taste stale or something,” I said.

“I wouldn't put it past him,” Harlan said. “Secondhand ice cream.”

“Don't be ridiculous,” Patches said. I could see she had no patience for Harlan.

Harlan wiped his mouth with his shirt again. “That's done,” he said. “Now what?”

“Mailbox,” Patches said.

Harlan took the envelopes from my hand and fanned them out. “What's this stuff?”

“You're not supposed to read other people's mail,” Patches said, looking over his shoulder.

“Contests,” I said reluctantly. They'd probably think I was crazy.

“No,” Harlan said. “This one. Josef von Frisch?
Von?
”

I hesitated. “My grandfather.”

“A Nazi?”

“No.” I shook my head. “Certainly not.”

“Sounds German to me.”

I took a breath. “Mongolian.”

“Where's that?” Patches asked.

“Australia,” I said.

Harlan bent down to scratch a mosquito bite on his leg. “The mailbox is a couple of blocks down.”

I nodded. I had no idea where Mongolia was. Geography was harder than math. I had gotten a D on the last map quiz just before school closed.

I followed them down the street, past a long line of apartment houses with rows of trailers between them, metallic gray and round, like turtles dozing on logs, and dropped the envelopes in the mail, crossing my fingers over the entries.

We wandered back toward my apartment, passing the ice cream truck.

“He moves the truck every day or so, looking for top-secret secrets, I guess,” Harlan said. “He probably keeps them frozen inside the truck somewhere.”

“It's going to take us a hundred years to get back to the apartment if we keep stopping every two minutes,” Patches said.

They began to argue, but I was thinking. What could I do about Arnold the Spy and paying him back? How could I ever ask Dad for the money? What would he think if he knew I had stolen two—no, three, ice creams, and because it was my fault, if you really counted them all it was eight or nine.

Patches began to say something else, then stopped walking. I nearly bumped into her.