Under the Apple Tree Page 16

  In the crisp clear days of October, America was beautiful, just like in the song. Artie had never been “from sea to shining sea,” nor had he seen “the purple mountain’s majesty” but he knew they were out there, believed in them, and saw every day with his own eyes the beauty of the gentle hills, the creeks and cornfields, the solid old white frame houses and the ancient oaks of Town. He believed, in fact, that God had “shed his grace” on this land, that this grace was tangible, visible, in the arch of rainbows over wet fields, the slant of shed sunlight on the sides of old barns. His pride in his country was sustained by the signs of nature and the symbols of men, not only the bright stars and stripes that flew from public buildings and hung from private porches but the comforting, everyday emblems of home: Bob’s Eats, Joe’s Premium, Mail Pouch Tobacco. This was what Roy and all the other boys were fighting to save, preserve, and protect, along with the people who were lucky enough to live in and of it, and all this was sacred, worthy of any sacrifice, including life itself, for without it, life would be hollow and dumb.

  Sometimes home seemed so beautiful and right it was hard to believe the War was really going on out there in the fringes of the world, the bleak foreign battlefields and alien oceans. When Birney beat Geneseo 13–6 Artie felt so good about everything he went to Damon’s after the game to see if the latest magazines had any hopeful news about the War. Leafing through them, though, he found only gloom and frustration. The whole situation was summed up in one blunt headline:

  NATION WARNED OF GRIM TRIALS, WITH WORST OF WAR YET TO COME

  Yet to come!

  If that wasn’t bad enough, some General said in the same article that “our losses may well be so heavy they will be felt in every town and village in the U.S.”

  Birney had already lost Wings Watson, and his teammates were strewn around the world now, from Bo Bannerman with the Air Corps in England to Roy with the Marines in the South Pacific.

  If the worst was yet to come, Roy himself might be stabbed by some Jap leaping down from a coconut tree in the dead of night, or blown to smithereens by a mortar shell, with only his “remains” shipped home in a box.

  Artie felt his knees go watery, and he stuck the magazine back in the rack.

  IV

  1

  ‘Slingin’ Sammy Baugh was crying.

  That’s how crummy things were at the start of the New Year of 1944.

  The most shocking thing to Artie about the full-page picture in Life of Slingin’ Sammy bawling like a baby was that he wasn’t even crying about the War. The star passing quarterback of the Washington Redskins was crying because his team was getting beat 41–21 by the Monsters of the Midway, the champion Chicago Bears. Artie had seen lots of pictures of grown men crying because their loved ones were going off to battle, or their comrades were getting killed all around them, but this was the first one he’d seen of a he-man crying in the midst of Wartime because his team was losing a football game.

  It figured, though. The War had gone on for more than two years now, and people were tired of it. They wanted something else to get worked up about, even if it was losing a football game.

  The worst part was that after all the fighting and dying there still wasn’t any end in sight. The new issue of Life predicted for the New Year, “The Most Sobering Fact About It Will Be Death,” and went on to say that even though lots of people had thought Hitler would collapse in ’43 and the War would be over that Christmas, the truth was, “We are still far from Victory.” After the great invasion of Italy, where Wings Watson got killed, the valiant American and British armies were all bogged down. The depressing story about it in the magazine said, “In the Mud and Mountains the Allied Advance Has Been Virtually Stopped.” Over in the South Pacific where poor old Roy was still fighting his heart out, it seemed like there wasn’t any end to the number of rinky-dink little islands the Marines had to capture just to inch a little bit closer to the Japanese homeland. Last year it was Guadalcanal and Midway, now it was Tarawa and Kwajalein, and the same old stuff all over again.

  Artie flipped through the Life in Damon’s Drugs, it seemed like he’d seen the same pictures a zillion times: muddy soldiers crawling out of foxholes, or bloody soldiers lying on beaches; ships and planes being blown up; bodies of dead Japs rotting in caves; all the same old stuff. Artie felt guilty that the War really bored him now, but at least he wasn’t the only one. In fact, he was part of a whole new problem that was sweeping the nation.

  He was “slacking off.”

  That was the newest Wartime term, and it didn’t have anything to do with sex, even though it sounded a lot like “whacking off,” and was almost as bad. It meant you had got lazy and bored with helping out on the Home Front, and weren’t doing your part in the War Effort anymore.

  After looking at the new Life with all the depressing War news, instead of getting inspired to go out and start a new scrap drive or something, Artie just wanted to put off his homework and squander what money he had on him for a dime giant hamburger and a chocolate malt, at Bob’s Eats.

  He was “slacking off.”

  As he moseyed down Main Street from Damon’s to Bob’s, Artie started singing the new hit song to himself. It wasn’t one of those rousing ballads about our Brave Boys and the evil enemy; it wasn’t about the War at all. In fact, it wasn’t about anything; it was only these rhyming words that went:

  Mairzy doats and doazy doats

  And little lamsy divey …

  It was just a fast way of saying “mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy,” which didn’t mean anything at all. Maybe that’s why people liked it so much. Since it didn’t mean anything, you didn’t have to think about anything when you sang it or listened to it.

  Artie was about to bite into his dime giant hamburger when a bony hand clamped him on the back of the neck, and a deep, grainy voice began to sing in an imitation colored-person’s accent:

  “Is you is, or is you ain’t my ba-by?”

  Artie swung around and saw Fishy Mitchelman, all duded up in an outfit that surely was the first of its kind ever worn in Birney, Illinois. Fishy had on a bright yellow sport coat with padded lumps at the shoulders, a black shirt with a thin green tie, and brown peg pants that were clinched in high above his waist and hung down to a gathering drape around the ankles, where the material billowed down and over a pair of pointy shoes. If not the real thing, it was sure a good imitation of the weird type of getup that Artie had seen the hoods in big cities wearing in magazine pictures since just after the War had started.

  “You got a zoot suit?” Artie asked incredulously.

  Fishy held up his right hand and snapped his long, thin fingers.

  “What’s buzzin’, cousin?” he said in a kind of chant.

  Artie put down his hamburger in wonderment as Fishy took off his flat-brimmed porkpie hat, lofted it in a high, graceful toss that landed it right on one of the coat hooks on the wall, vibrating for a moment like a horseshoe settling around the stake, and then hanging secure. Fishy pulled out a chair from Artie’s table, turned it backward, and sat down straddling it.

  “Where’d you ever get that stuff?” Artie asked, staring transfixed at the exotic outfit.

  “Me and Trixie rolled up to Chi for Kringle Time,” Fishy said, pronouncing the nickname of Chicago as “Shy,” the way the hepcats said it. Fishy acted real casual, like it was a normal, American thing for a mother to take her son to a big city for Christmas, instead of staying home and having turkey with all the trimmin’s and opening presents under the tree.

  “Well, what did you and your Mom find to do up there at Christmas, anyway?” Artie asked.

  Fishy stuck both his hands in the air and snapped the fingers on each one, making a little bob with his head at the same time.

  “We swang,” he said.

  Artie just nodded, like that was normal, too, whatever weird stuff it actually meant. He turned back to his hamburger, but before he could pick it up again, Fishy had su
ddenly rubbed his hands in his sticky, slicked-down, Brylcreemed hair and then grabbed the burger, taking a monstrous bite.

  “Hey!” Artie protested.

  Fishy flopped the burger back on the plate and stood up, chewing.

  “Thanks,” he said. “It was reet.”

  That was hepcat language for “neat.”

  “Where you goin’?” Artie asked.

  Fishy hiked his pants up higher on his chest, and lifted the long, gold, looping key chain out of his pocket and twirled it around and around his finger.

  “Goin’ to Spingarn’s party tonight.”

  “Caroline? She’s having a party?”

  “Didn’t she give you the nod?”

  “Huh? Well, I haven’t talked to her lately. I guess she forgot.”

  Fishy twirled the gold key chain off his finger now, and stuck the end back in his pocket.

  “Gotta fade,” he said.

  And he did.

  Artie looked down at his hamburger. There were fingerprints of grease on the bun. He picked it up gingerly, turning it around to the opposite side from where Fishy had taken his enormous bite. Artie took a small nibble in a place that was free of fingerprints. It was okay, but he didn’t feel hungry anymore.

  He felt rotten that Caroline hadn’t invited him to her party, and he couldn’t help wondering if maybe besides her getting back at him for calling her a pest last fall he was just being punished in general for slacking off so much. Here he had just wasted most of a dime hamburger when people all over the world were starving, not to speak of wasting good money that could have bought a whole dime War Stamp.

  Artie realized shamefully it was this kind of selfish, wasteful attitude that had made the last big bond drive such a fizzle all over the country. The only thing that saved the drive from being a complete bust was when the government released some secret documents about the horrible atrocities the Japs had done to Our Boys back a couple of years ago when they captured all those soldiers on the Philippines and put them in prisons to torture them. Some of the secret documents even revealed that the Japs had done atrocities on Red Cross nurses, and people really got stirred up about it. Tutlow had cut out a neat story for his War Scrapbook about how outraged people were over the atrocity reports, and Artie’s favorite part in the article was: “A blond stenographer in Seattle said: ‘I’ll tell you what the girls in Business say. They say kill the little yellow bastards, each and every one. Kill the big ones, kill the little ones, kill the medium-sized ones.’”

  That was the good old patriotic spirit, and a lot of people caught it along with the blond Seattle stenographer. Bond sales really picked up for a while, but then even anger over the atrocities fizzled away and most people went back to slacking off again.

  Artie himself hadn’t bought a War Stamp for over a month. He had spent all his money from holiday tips on his paper route for Christmas presents, and the only one that had anything to do with the War Effort was the carton of Camels he had sent to Roy. At least he hadn’t cashed in his Bond that would someday be worth twenty-five dollars, like lots of people were doing. So many Americans had lost their patriotism and cashed in their Bonds that there were ads now in magazines pleading with people not to “make a coward out of your cash!” There was even a magazine article on “Wartime Slackers” that told how lots of demoralized citizens had taken the money out of their Bonds and gone to Florida to spend it betting on horse races, drinking champagne, and lolling around swimming pools. Artie wasn’t that bad—at least not yet—but if he kept on the way he was going, he might end up squandering his hard-earned money betting on horses and buying champagne while he lollygagged around swimming pools.

  Just then he happened to look out the window of Bob’s Eats to see none other than Caroline Spingarn ambling by.

  That’s what she did now when she walked.

  She ambled.

  It was part of the amazing change that had come over Caroline almost overnight. Artie barely even noticed around Thanksgiving that her knees stopped knocking together when she walked, and instead of hanging her head and scrunching her neck down into her little shrunk-looking dresses, she stood straight and acted like she didn’t even mind that she was taller than most of the other kids. Instead of babbling and asking questions about everything she just got kind of quiet, not like she was scared, but more like she was waiting, biding her time. Then she went to her Grandmother’s house in Rock Island for the holidays, and when she came back to school she not only had these terrific new dresses that fit her, she had her hair curled under real sleek and shiny without any bows and ribbons sticking out of it, and she walked in this ambling, movie star rhythm that made her behind sway like it was moving in time to some sultry music. She acted real calm and cool and took her time about everything, like she was waiting for everybody else to catch up.

  Artie slammed down his money to pay for the food he hadn’t finished at Bob’s and rushed outside to catch up with her.

  He ran as fast as he could and then when he got about five yards away from Caroline he started creeping up on tiptoe to surprise her. He got right behind her and reached around and clapped his hands over her eyes, at the same time making his voice as deep as he could and singing in a hoarse, colored kind of tone, “Is you is, or is you ain’t my ba-by?”

  Caroline sighed, like she was weary of the world.

  “Really,” was all she said.

  “Guess you forgot to invite me to your party tonight,” Artie said.

  He figured there was no sense in beating around the bush.

  “Really?”

  This time her eyebrows arched when she said it, sort of like Bette Davis in Watch on the Rhine.

  She stood there staring at him grandly, and he felt like some kind of worm. He remembered back to the time he’d called her a pest and she had cried and threatened to make him sorry for it and he hadn’t believed she could ever do it. That just showed how you couldn’t predict anything when it came to girls.

  Now he was already sorry, in a way he had never imagined possible.

  “Well,” she said, “I suppose if you think you can act like a grown-up you might as well come.”

  He was going to say something smart-alec about her new hip-swinging walk, but instead he just kicked at the sidewalk and looked down humbly at his shoes.

  “Gee, thanks,” he said.

  Caroline yawned and delicately tapped her fingers to her mouth.

  “Don’t mention it,” she said, like she was Greer Garson in Mrs. Miniver.

  Then she turned and walked off, swaying like mad.

  They had eaten all the pretzels and potato chips and drunk all the Cokes. Caroline went over to her new plug-in Victrola that you didn’t have to crank up to play; you just turned on the switch. She was wearing this shimmery blue dress and real stockings that glistened too, and shiny black shoes with heels that made her even taller. She turned to look at the kids and her bright reddish blond hair, which now fell clear to her shoulders and turned under, swung across part of her face, sort of like Veronica Lake.

  “Requests?” she asked coolly.

  “‘Pistol-Packin’ Mama’!” Ben Vickman shouted.

  “‘Winter Wonderland’ again!” said Marilyn Pettigrew.

  “Why don’t you get out the milk bottle?” Warren Tutlow asked.

  There was a sudden hush, a general intake of breath, and everyone stopped whatever they were doing, except for Fishy Mitchelman, who sat by himself in a corner of the basement, drumming his drumsticks on an old washpan he had turned upside down.

  “Milk bottle?” Caroline asked, pushing the hair back from her eyes with a slow, delicious gesture. “What in the world do you want with a milk bottle?”

  Ben Vickman let out a whoop and suddenly the girls were all shrieking and giggling and the guys were pounding each other on the shoulders with their fists and yelping. The reason for all the commotion was that just before Christmas at Edith Lynx’s party they had played spin-the-bottle, and the guys
and girls had really kissed, not just the little pecks on the cheeks like they’d done the year before playing Post Office, but real grown-up kisses where you put your arms around each other and mashed mouths together, just like in the movies, right in front of everyone else!

  Suddenly the door at the top of the basement steps opened, and Mrs. Spingarn looked down from the kitchen.

  “Is everything all right?” she asked.

  All the kids quickly shut up and settled down, the boys straightening ties and coats, the girls smoothing their skirts.

  “Everything’s hunky-dory, Mother,” Caroline said, and put on “Winter Wonderland” again.

  Mrs. Spingarn went back in the kitchen and closed the door.

  Caroline reached behind the record player and pulled out an empty milk bottle that she must have had there all along. In no time at all the girls were sitting on the cold cement floor of the basement, their skirts carefully spread over their legs. Warren Tutlow got to go first since he was the one who was brave enough to ask about the milk bottle. He looked at Caroline Spingarn like he was taking aim for her, gave the bottle a quick spin, and it ended up with the open mouth pointing directly to Betty Sue Beam. She was short and chubby and when Tutlow kissed her she kept her eyes squeezed shut and held her hands behind her back, so it wasn’t much of a kiss at all.

  Artie pushed in next ahead of Ben Vickman and they started to argue about whose turn was first when Caroline looked over in the corner and called, “Monroe? Aren’t you going to play?”

  Everyone looked at Fishy, who rattled off a few more beats on the washpan, then tossed his two drumsticks in the air, caught them, shoved them into his hip pocket and walked over to the circle of girls. Artie and Ben forgot their argument as everyone watched Fishy flop to his knees, rub his hands together, blow on the palms, and say, “Seven come eleven!”

  Then he grasped the milk bottle right in the middle with his long, bony hands, gave it a terrific spin, and watched it end up pointing straight at Caroline Spingarn.