Willow Run (9 page)

TO ARNOLD THE ICE CREAM MAN:

PLEASE DON’T LEAVE YOUR KEY ON TOP OF THE TIRE ANYMORE.

HIDE IT.

YOURS TRULY,

ANONYMOUS

Mom was gone. Wearing a red snood to cover her hair, and her best polka-dot dress, she'd left for the factory to ask for a job.

“You can stay alone during the day, can't you, Meggie?” she had said. “You're almost grown.” She ran her fingers over my hair, straightening my bangs. “And Dad will be sleeping in the bedroom if you need him.”

What had Eddie said?
“You'll be the only one home. … No more baby.”

“Oh, Meggie.” Mom had pulled me to her, hugging me hard, smelling like cold cream and Sweetheart Soap. “I have to do something. I just can't stay home all day and knit socks.”

Mouth dry, I had nodded. During the summer at home, I
spent my days wandering around Rockaway, hanging out with Lily, or Grandpa, or by myself, just watching the waves crash onto the beach or throwing bread to the seagulls. I'd slip into the kitchen for a quick cream cheese sandwich with chives when the church bells bonged twelve and slip out again ten minutes later. I never minded being alone.

But that was a different alone, a sunny alone. Even though it was hot today, the sky was gray, and thunder rumbled in the distance.

“Carpe diem,”
I whispered to Mom, trying to sound as if I didn't mind.

She put her hand on my cheek. “If only I could see Grandpa for two minutes,” she said.

Outside, Harlan and Kennis were playing Giant Steps. “Take thirteen banana steps,” Harlan said.

Kennis, wearing a pair of shorts that came up almost under his armpits, took thirteen banana steps, twirling back and forth in the street. It took him forever.

Harlan waited until the last minute, watching him, his mouth twisted, trying not to laugh. Then he slapped his leg, snickering. “You forgot to say ‘May I?’ Start over.”

“That's it, Harlan,” Kennis yelled, his face beet red. “You think I'm an idiot? I'm not playing with you again for the rest of my life.” He stomped off.

Harlan squinted toward our living room window. I was sitting on the foldout couch, smelling the odor of Grandpa's cellar and running my hands over the horrible green plaid. I
could imagine what Harlan was thinking. He needed another idiot to play with.

In ten giant steps he was at the window, jumping up to peer inside. The top of his head bobbed up and down two inches away from me. “Hey, Meggie.”

I went into the kitchen for something to eat. I pulled out a box of butter cookies, the ones with the hole in the middle, and stuck my finger through one to nibble around the edges.

“What's the matter with you, Meggie? Going to sit inside all day? Is that what they do where you come from?”

I took a couple of cookies for him and opened the door. I didn't look back at it. I knew Mom had put a silver star there instead of the blue one to tell the world Eddie was missing. I swallowed. “I'm not playing Giant Steps.”

“Baby game,” he said. “I was just trying to be nice to Kennis.”

“Sure.”

“Where do you come from, anyway?” He yanked up the middle of his shirt and blew on his World's Fair pickle. “It needs shining every once in a while.”

I remembered the day Grandpa had gotten me a pickle like that. I was five and…“I went to that World's Fair,” I told Harlan. “I come from New York, from Rockaway. Every night there are searchlights in the sky looking for enemy planes. We're a big target for the Nazis.”

Patches had slid in on the steps next to us.

“Not so exciting,” Harlan said, but I hurried on, determined to make him change his mind. “I've seen the Atlantic Ocean a million times,” I said. “The waves can be almost as high as a house. And you know that movie?…” I stopped for a breath. “The one with King Kong hanging off the Empire State Building? I was right there, too.”

Harlan made a face. “You hung off the Empire State Building? I should believe that?”

“No, I
saw
…”

He looked bored. “Well, in Detroit…,” he began.

Patches leaned forward. “I come from the mountains. And once we had a bear on our front porch.”

Harlan and I were silent. Nothing could beat that.

They both leaned forward at the same time, taking cookies from me. Harlan's was gone in three bites. “We have stuff to do,” he mumbled, his mouth full.

Patches stood up. “I'm going home for a while. I'm supposed to sweep the walk for my mother.”

Harlan and I sat on the steps. Someone across the street had turned on the radio. The Andrews Sisters were singing “Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree.”

In the fall, the apples on Grandpa's tree plunked down onto the ground, and one had landed on my head once, leaving a round lump like a small apple itself.

“
We'll put all the apples in the bushel basket,”
Grandpa had said. “
Your mother can make chunky applesauce and maybe a couple of pies.”

“They're full of worms. Disgusting.”

“Not a thing wrong with worms, Margaret. They tunnel through the earth, making it soft so green things will grow.”

“Don't call me Margaret, please. If you think I want them tunneling through my stomach … Besides, I'm afraid of worms.”

He had thrown back his head and laughed.
“Oh, Margaret, you have the courage of a lion. But it's all right to be afraid.”

“Come on, Meggie, let's go,” Harlan said.

“Where?” I asked, but he didn't answer. He started down the street, scooping up a ball. “I declare war on Italy!” he said, bouncing it hard. “I declare war on Germany!”

I followed him, the hazy lemon sun burning a spot in the middle of my head. On a day like this last summer, Grandpa had told me,
“I remember the old Germany, Margaret, not hooligans like Hitler who started this war. And when this is over, maybe it will be different. Maybe people will remember and try to be better to each other.”

Grandpa's eyes were red and he had said it as if he wasn't sure it would ever happen.
“Boats on the river, summer concerts, neighbors.”
He had walked away from me then, out to the garden, and bent over to touch the feathery leaves of his tomato plants.

Two steps ahead of me, Harlan declared war on the planet Mars. He turned then. “We have to go to the factory.”

“I'm not going to the factory, Harlan. Not in a million years.” I could picture Mom right there in front of me.
What are you doing here?

“Listen,” Harlan said. “I know everything that goes on at the factory. Even the guard at the gate. He'll let us in.”

“No good,” I said. “And why do we want to go there, anyway?”

“It's about your brother. I know he might be dead.”

I felt a terrible burst of anger, and then fear, such fear that I almost couldn't swallow.

I looked up at the sun. If you stared at it long enough, you'd be blind in ten years or so. I took a breath. “Don't say that, Harlan! My brother isn't …”

“I didn't mean it that way,” Harlan said. “I meant I was going to help find him.”

What was he talking about? “How?” I had trouble saying that one word.

“I told you. I know the guard at the gate. I even brought him ice cream the other day.”

Another scratch mark on the fender.

Harlan didn't wait for me. “There's someone we have to see,” he said over his shoulder. “His name is Terry. He works in the wings.”

And then we were there, at the factory with women in kerchiefs like Rosie the Riveter, men in overalls with black lunch pails, some of them sitting on the edge of the wall with their eyes closed as if they were napping.

What did Eddie have to do with this factory? Eddie, who hadn't known what a B-24 was when he went into the army.

“We're leaving soon,” Harlan said. “Going back to Detroit before school starts.”

I could hear Dad's voice that first day.
“They come and they go.”
I stared at him. “You're going home?”

“That's what I said.” He was grinning. “Couple of weeks.” He swiped his arm across his face.

I opened my mouth. Harlan wasn't really my friend. I hardly knew him, hardly knew Kennis or their mother, who had said
“Ah”
on the other side of the wall. But it was just too much.

Harlan squinted up at the sun. He was going to be blind,
too. “My mom and dad made money building planes,” he said. “They're going to take that money now. My dad is going into the army. Going to fight in the Pacific, I guess. He wants to be a hero like Uncle Leo.”

My mouth was dry. Lily's father was fighting in the war, and she hated it.

Harlan seemed to know what I was thinking. “I don't worry about my father. He's the toughest guy I know.”

A man sat at a table in front of the factory gate, watching as groups of people came in and others left. All of them had tags like Dad's pinned to their shirts.

The guard didn't seem to be worried about the top-secret factory. His feet were up on the edge of the table. He had a huge hole in the sole of his left shoe.

“All right if we go inside?” Harlan asked him. “We have to see someone.”

The guard stared at us; he barely lifted a thumb to motion us past him and onto the cement walk just beyond. I held back, thinking of Mom, but Harlan waved furiously, so I went after him.

Inside was an open space, bustling with people who moved things on huge carts that sped past us. Over our heads were slabs of metal plane parts, and there was an odd smell of glue or paint in the air.

I didn't have to worry about Mom's seeing me. So many people wandered around, drilling, scraping, yelling—hundreds of them—that if it had been the other way around and
I had been searching, really wanting to find her, I'd never have been able to do it.

“Hey, kids,” someone yelled. “What are you doing?”

Harlan never stopped. He dodged the man who was calling us and skittered down an aisle, jumping over a pile of tools that was in his way.

I ran, too, pretending I was invisible, passing women who were riveting plane parts together.

Harlan cupped his hands around his mouth: “Terry? Where the heck are you?” And then he stopped and pointed. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Someone was inside the wing of the plane, someone smaller than I was.

The man grinned at us and popped out of the wing, hanging there until his feet found the ladder. He jumped off the last rung and wiped his hands on a cloth that hung out of his pocket.

“Terry”—Harlan waved his hand—“this is Meggie. Her brother's missing in action. Probably—”

“Don't say that.”

The man looked up at me, his head turned to one side.

He reached out with one hand and put it on my shoulder. “Missing,” he said. “Not dead. No.”

I nodded, narrowing my eyes at Harlan.
See? You don't know everything,
I wanted to say.

But the man, Terry, motioned to us to follow him around the side of the wing to sink down against the wall. It was cool there against the cement.

“We're going home at the end of the summer,” Harlan told Terry.

“Ah,” Terry said.

“Ah.”
Like Harlan's mother, Mrs. Tucker.

If I were the one leaving, I'd say,
Going back to Rockaway, going back to my bedroom where the ceiling shimmers from the water, back to digging in Grandpa's garden.
I swallowed.
Back to Grandpa
.

Terry rubbed his knees and his legs, which poked out in front of him. “Lucky. So lucky.”

“I know it,” Harlan said. Were there tears in his eyes? Could that be? He was as homesick as Kennis, then. As homesick as I was.

And then I saw there were tears in Terry's eyes, too.

“Why don't you go back?” I blurted out. If I had been grown and could do what I wanted, I would have left that minute.

Terry opened his eyes, blue and clear. “In Germany, Hitler is killing anyone who's different.… Different religions, old people, sick people.” He squinted up at the wing of the plane. “Little people like me.”

He leaned forward. “We have to do what we think is right, no matter how hard it is.” He smiled then. “I'm doing my bit. Not many can get into the spaces inside the plane that I can. And when it's over… ah, when it's over, I'm going back to the mountains to sit on my porch and rock forever. Knowing that keeps me going.”

I put my head back against that cool wall, watching everything that went on. A great wing, attached to runners on the ceiling, rode high over my head, going from one part of the factory to another.

If only I could squeeze into one of those wings the way Terry did, fly to Normandy, France, and look for Eddie myself.

“This is what you want to do.” Harlan pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and folded it into a piece so small you could hardly see it.

Terry looked from Harlan to me. “You want to send a message to the pilot?” For a moment I thought he looked sad; then he stood up, leaning against the ladder. I wondered if I had imagined it.

Harlan nodded. “Write what your brother looks like. Say he's probably wandering around somewhere.” He snapped his fingers. “Maybe he has that thing when you get hit on the head. You know, you can't remember anything, not even your name.”

I closed my eyes. Strange. Harlan thought the way I did after all. Eddie wasn't really missing. He was just lost. But then suddenly a thought came into my mind, and I knew it had been there all along. Being missing wasn't the same as being lost.

Don't think that,
I told myself, but I knew it was true.

“Don't you see,” Harlan said. “This pilot might go to France, right? He'll talk to people. And maybe…”

I thought of all the notes in the bottles we had dropped into the surf in Rockaway with our names and addresses. We had never seen them again, had never heard from one person. Writing to a pilot was just like that.

I couldn't look at Terry. Still, I took the paper, trying to think of what I could write to a pilot I didn't know.

In the end, I didn't write about Eddie at all. Instead, I wrote that I would be thinking about that pilot, hoping he was safe. But it was Eddie I thought about as I wrote: the way his teeth were separated, that he could yodel, and that he dated a girl named Virginia Tooey. I thought, too, that sometimes I was angry because Eddie was Grandpa's favorite when I wanted to be. And I remembered he had said,
“Going to win the war for you, Meg.”