Under the Apple Tree Read online

  “Why’d you do that?” Artie asked.

  “If we wanna play broomstick hockey, that’ll be the puck.”

  “Great idea!” Artie said, looking back over his shoulder to see if Old Man Bittleman was coming after them with a shotgun. He joined in whistling with Fishy, trying to look natural, like he hadn’t just been an accessory to a crime.

  They found an old, stubby broom in the alley behind Main Street, and Fishy swiped a garbage can lid to use for the goalie to defend with, and went out to Skinner Creek for the game.

  When Fishy got tired, Artie built a fire, and they sat by it singing the popular song “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” at the top of their lungs. Fishy said he had something that would make them even hotter than a flame in a heart.

  Artie tried to look excited instead of scared.

  Fishy slowly drew from the pocket of his pants a small, brownish booklet. Not a real book, or magazine, but a special kind of thing on rough paper that Artie immediately recognized as something called a “three-by-five.” It was called by its size, which was three inches high and five inches wide. Artie had only seen the outside of them before, and was not sure he wanted to see the inside.

  Fishy opened it to the first page.

  There was a cartoon drawing in black and white of Pop-eye the Sailor Man, and his skinny girl friend, Olive Oyl. In the regular comics in the Sunday paper Popeye smoked a pipe and had a tattoo on his arm and ate spinach to make himself strong. Olive was thin as a rail and had her hair in a bun and no chin but Popeye loved her anyway. Artie liked them, Popeye and Olive. They were funny and familiar, like friends.

  Fishy turned the page, and his breath came faster, smelling of stale potato chips.

  There was a picture of Popeye unbuttoning his pants, and Olive Oyl pulling her skirt up.

  On the next page, Popeye pulled his thing out of his pants.

  Fishy’s potato chip breath came heavier as he turned the pages, showing Popeye sticking his thing into Olive Oyl, who looked scared but seemed to like it at the same time, just the way real girls were supposed to, and Artie made himself pretend to be excited, saying “hubba-hubba-hubba” right along with Fishy, whose eyes were now tilted and glazed like a moron’s.

  Fishy got up and went behind some bushes and came back pale and slack in the face, and Artie, who didn’t want to show he felt sickish, suggested they go to Damon’s Drugs and get some rainbow Cokes, he would even treat. It was still a couple of hours till Artie was supposed to meet Roy there, but he figured they could just hang around and look at the comic books.

  They were sipping their rainbow Cokes, made from every kind of syrup at the fountain, and Fishy was tapping his hands on the table in time to “The Chattanooga Choo-Choo” playing on the radio.

  Suddenly the song stopped and the radio crackled.

  The voice of a man who sounded like a minister, deep and doomlike, said they were interrupting this program to report that the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor, the American Naval Base in the Pacific. The Japs had bombed American ships and the American Army Post without any warning, killing American sailors and soldiers.

  The regular program resumed, and the song went on again, but Artie couldn’t think about ham or eggs being finer in Carolina or anywhere else. He felt dizzy, like someone had spun him around with his eyes closed. He blinked, and looked at Fishy.

  “Fish-ee,” Fishy said in a low voice, not even googling his eyes around.

  Mr. Damon, the druggist, came out from behind the fountain and took off the white apron he wore, like maybe he was going to get a gun or a pitchfork and go join the fighting.

  “This means war,” he said.

  Artie stood up. His throat felt dry.

  “Roy,” was all he could say.

  He grabbed his coat and ran.

  The streets were the same, as if nothing had happened. Artie thought maybe everyone would run outside, rally with their neighbors, and decide what to do. Then he realized lots of people might not have heard yet, they might not have had their radios on, so they still were enjoying the peace and quiet of Sunday afternoon without even knowing their country had just been attacked. He wondered if maybe he should yell out the news as he ran, like Paul Revere warning that “The British Are Coming,” but it didn’t seem the right thing to do without a horse. He cut across the Hixons’ front yard at the corner of Main and Sycamore and charged right through their scraggly hedge of bushes, figuring anything goes in Wartime. Farther down Sycamore, he saw the first sign of his country preparing. Old Man Syvertson, bundled up in his mackinaw and scarf and earmuffs, was hanging the American flag from his front porch. Artie touched the first two fingers of his right hand to his brow, giving the Cub Scout salute, as he passed.

  “The Japs attacked Pearl Harbor!” Artie shouted when he burst into his house, but he realized before he was finished that his folks had heard the news.

  Iva Tully, the widow who lived next door, was standing in the living room.

  She had beat him to it.

  As if that weren’t enough, she ran to Artie and hugged him, pressing his face against her stomach.

  “Thank God he’s too young,” she said.

  “Mrs. Tully just brought us a nice peach pie,” Mom said.

  “Only half of one,” the widow said. “It was all I had in the house.”

  Mrs. Tully always took pies and cakes to people in time of emergencies—funerals, weddings, illnesses, epidemics, and, evidently, Wars.

  “Thanks,” Artie said, wriggling out of her woolly grip.

  Mrs. Tully patted him on the head and sniffled.

  Dad came up and took her by the elbow, gently, and led her to the door.

  “We sure do want to thank you, Iva.”

  He closed the door behind her and sighed.

  “Old vulture.”

  “Now, Joe,” Mom said. “She means well.”

  “Listen,” Artie said, “does Roy have to go fight the Japs?”

  “Where is he?” Dad asked.

  Artie turned around as he took his coat off.

  “Uh, he’ll be right along.”

  “I didn’t hear the car,” Mom said.

  She went and peeked out the window at the empty drive.

  Artie flung his coat on the davenport and hurried into the kitchen, trying to think as fast as he could. Now that it was too late he realized maybe he should have stayed put at Damon’s Drugs and waited for Roy to show up at five like they planned, but he figured in Wartime all other plans were canceled and everyone rushed right to headquarters, which was home. He was sure Roy would zoom right home when he heard the news, but what if he hadn’t even heard? Would the owner of the Roxy Burlesque walk right on the stage while Bubbles LaMode was bumping and grinding and tossing her clothes away and announce that the Japs had attacked Pearl Harbor? Maybe the owner didn’t even know himself, maybe they didn’t even have radios in Burlesque House offices. Maybe Burlesque Houses didn’t even have offices. He hadn’t even stopped to think about it. He sure wasn’t going to ask his folks. Even in Wartime, he wasn’t going to betray his brother. Any more than he already had by rushing right home without him, anyway.

  Mom and Dad came into the kitchen and Artie yanked open the icebox, pretending to rummage around for something.

  “Artie?”

  “Son!”

  Artie grabbed a dried-up biscuit left over from breakfast and stuffed it in his mouth. He slammed the icebox door shut and turned around to face his folks, chewing like mad.

  “We want to know where your brother is,” Dad said.

  Artie pointed to his mouth and made a sound like “Mmmf.”

  The biscuit tasted like sawdust.

  “Of all times,” Mom said, “this is no time for fooling.”

  Artie nodded.

  “Like I said, he’ll be right along.”

  “He didn’t take you,” Dad said.

  “He did so! He took me for a ride! A really neat one!”

  “He t
ook us all for a ride,” Dad said. “As usual.”

  Mom plunked herself down at the kitchen table.

  “The Phantom Caveman,” she said. “I should have known.”

  “Well, we were going to do that, but then Roy had to do some important stuff with Wings and Bo.”

  Dad started getting real red in the face and slammed his fist in his palm, but then he took a deep breath and sat down. Whenever he started flaring up like that he took the deep breath, and instead of getting mad he got philosophical. When he got philosophical, his voice had more of a downstate drawl.

  “That Roy,” he said, “would rather climb to the top of a greased pole and tell a lie, than stand at the bottom and tell the truth.”

  “I’ll perk some coffee,” Mom said.

  Roy wasn’t home by suppertime, so Artie and his folks went ahead and ate the Sunday leftovers. It was one of those meals with long stretches when all you heard was everyone chewing, and then all the sudden there’d be a whole flurry of talk.

  “Those boys,” Mom said. “They couldn’t just go and join up, could they?”

  “No,” Dad said, “it’s Sunday.”

  “How about Monday morning?” Artie asked.

  “Lord sake, keep your pants on,” Dad said.

  Mom stabbed a piece of ham and just looked at it.

  “They’ll still just be boys on Monday,” she said.

  Dad put his hand gently on her arm.

  “Roy is nineteen years old,” he said.

  “He’s still in high school. He hasn’t even graduated from high school.”

  “We can’t blame that on the Japs,” Dad said.

  Mom sighed, and got this faraway look.

  “Geometry,” she said. “It’s still a mystery to me. I passed it, but I see how someone could flunk it.”

  Dad blew on his coffee.

  “Geometry wasn’t all Roy flunked last year,” he said.

  Mom stuck the piece of ham in her mouth and spoke loud and cheerily as she chewed.

  “No use crying over spilt milk!”

  Dad made a kind of grunt and sipped his coffee.

  After a while Mom cleared the table and brought in Iva Tully’s pie for dessert.

  Dad took a bite and nodded, smiling.

  “Say what you will about Iva Tully, she can bake a pie.”

  “Well,” Mom said, “let’s count our blessings.”

  Artie spoke up, wanting to help.

  “The best thing is,” he said, “Roy’s almost six feet tall.”

  Mom and Dad stared at him.

  “I mean, no Jap in the world is big enough to beat him.”

  Mom burst out crying, and Dad got up and put his hand on her shoulder.

  “All I meant was,” Artie said, “it’s a blessing that Roy is so tall and the Japs are so short.”

  “Finish your pie,” Dad said to him.

  After supper they sat around the radio in the living room and listened to the War bulletins. The news got worse and worse, as reports of all the American ships that sank and the men who went down with them grew. It was awful, but Artie figured it didn’t prove a thing about the Japs being better fighters; it just showed how sneaky they were to attack on a Sunday without any warning or declaration of war.

  The radio said F.D.R. was busy writing a speech he would say to an emergency session of Congress tomorrow, but Eleanor was going to talk to the nation.

  Mom gave Dad a look.

  “I want to hear this, Joe.”

  Dad threw up his hands like a surrender sign.

  “And no remarks, please,” Mom said.

  “Did I make so much as a peep?”

  “Thank you.”

  Mom went over and turned the radio louder.

  The one thing she and Dad disagreed about was F.D.R. And of course Eleanor. Not to speak of their dog, Fala. Dad complained that Mom thought F.D.R. “hung up the moon,” and everything he did was right. Mom believed F.D.R. was the greatest President since Lincoln and wasn’t afraid to say so, which made a lot of people in Town think she was kind of an oddball. Some of them thought so anyway because she wore her hair in a single braid (some people called it a pigtail) and went around most of the time in dungarees and a pair of low blue Keds tennis shoes. Artie thought she was neater than any other Mom and was proud that everyone knew she was smart as a whip, whether they approved of her or not. If she hadn’t gotten married and had kids, she’d have probably been a librarian or schoolteacher.

  When. Eleanor came on, Mom sat right next to the radio, like she wanted to be right beside her. In her high voice and the accent Mom said was dignified and Dad thought was phony Eastern, she spoke to the women of America.

  “I have a boy at sea on a destroyer,” Eleanor said. “For all I know he may be on his way to the Pacific; two of my children are in coast cities in the Pacific. Many of you all over the country have boys in the Service who will now be called upon to go into action; you have friends and families in what has become a danger zone. You cannot escape anxiety, you cannot escape the clutch of fear at your heart, and yet I hope that the certainty of what we have to meet will make you rise above those fears.”

  Mom took out her handkerchief and rubbed her eyes, which were already red.

  Eleanor finished off by saying, “I feel as though I were standing upon a rock and that rock is my faith in my fellow citizens.”

  Mom turned the radio off then and blew her nose.

  Dad got up and went over to rub the back of her neck.

  “Tomorrow’s still a school day, son,” he said to Artie.

  Artie nodded, knowing this was one time it wasn’t right to mess around about staying up late. He gave Mom a kiss on the cheek and hugged Dad around the waist and went to his room.

  When he got under the covers, Dad came in and sat on the edge of the bed.

  “You’ll remember this day the rest of your life,” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Usually he didn’t call his father “sir,” but now that the War was on, it seemed like the right thing to do.

  Dad clapped a hand on his shoulder, gave it a squeeze, and went out, closing the door.

  Artie closed his eyes but he couldn’t sleep. He wondered where Roy was and what he was doing, wondered if he and his buddies had driven right on to Washington, D.C., to march right up the White House steps bright and early in the morning and offer their amazing athletic skills as Birney Bearcats to President Roosevelt himself to help fight the Japs. Maybe Bubbles LaMode had gone with them, to volunteer as an entertainer who would boost the morale of the troops.

  Artie said his prayer, asking God to bless America, and forgive him and Roy for pulling the wool over their parents’ eyes by fibbing about the Phantom Caveman. Artie couldn’t help wondering if maybe he’d gone to Sunday School that morning and come right home to do his school-work, the Japs might not have bombed Pearl. Harbor and the War wouldn’t even have started! But then he realized that was crazy. As sneaky as the Japs were, they couldn’t have found out that he and his brother had violated the Sabbath in Birney, Illinois, and even if they knew, they wouldn’t have cared. Nothing was sacred to the Japs, not even God or America. Artie squeezed his eyes shut, knowing he’d need his sleep to be strong for the trying times ahead.

  A black armored tank with the sign of the Rising Sun on the side roared down Sycamore Street, pulling right into the Garbers’ driveway with a sudden throb of the engine, then stopped. A shot rang out.…

  “… have to slam the door?”

  Artie woke to his father’s voice, which did not sound at all philosophical.

  “All present, ’counted for!” came Roy’s voice, wild and slurry.

  “Shhh! Your brother’s asleep!” hissed Mom.

  Artie threw back the covers, set his feet on the cold floor, and got down on hands and knees. He moved stealthily to the bedroom door, reached up and opened it, then crawled out along the hall to the head of the stairs. From between the posts that held up the banister
, he could peer down into the living room, but from where he crouched, all he could see were legs and feet.

  Mom and Dad’s legs were stiff; Roy’s were wobbly.

  “Where have you been—or can you remember?” Dad asked in a cold, even tone.

  Roy’s feet made little shuffling moves, like he was trying to keep his balance. His voice came out in a cracking singsong:

  A bunch of the boys were whoopin’ it up

  In the Malemute Saloon …

  “That’s enough,” Dad said.

  His feet took a step closer to Roy’s.

  Roy’s feet shuffled back, then planted themselves apart, defiant, “Went for a little spin is all,” he said sullenly.

  Mom’s right foot began to tap.

  “No more car,” she said, “not till you graduate.”

  Roy made a croaking kind of laugh.

  “School’s out!” he said. “War’s on!”

  “You straighten up and speak like you should to your mother,” Dad said.

  Sassing Mom was one thing Dad was not ever philosophical about.

  Roy’s legs stiffened and he clicked his heels together.

  “Atten-hut!” Roy called out like a Drill Sergeant.

  Dad took a step nearer to him.

  “Get smart with me and I’ll clean your clock,” Dad said, “and don’t think I can’t still do it.”

  Mom’s feet moved quickly between Roy’s and Dad’s.

  “‘If you can keep your head when all about you,’” she recited, “‘Are losing theirs and blaming it on you …’”

  Roy hiccuped, and said in a slurry voice, “‘What’s more, you’ll be a man, my son—’”

  His legs suddenly wobbled, and his body slumped over them.

  Hands reached down.

  “Let’s get him to bed,” Dad said.

  “Gently now, Joe. Gently.”

  Artie swiveled on his knees and made for his room.

  Grunts, falls, muffled moans, stumbling on the stairs, sounded through the pillow that Artie pulled over his head as the body of the fallen hero of last night’s victory (it now seemed long ago, in another season) was hauled to its bed. Artie knew if Roy went to War he would be a real hero on the battlefield, just as he had been on the gridiron and the basketball floor of Birney, but heroes in War could get wounded or even killed, and the other side of glory was not just defeat but death. Artie tried not to think about it, but his mind went out to those imagined far edges of the world where the soldiers and refugees ran and fell and this time the flames were brighter and closer; now he understood they were not just the backdrop to War, the bright decoration of battle.