Under the Apple Tree Page 3

  They were real.

  3

  Everyone from first grade right up through high school assembled in the auditorium to hear F.D.R. on the radio. Over the urgently crackling airwaves that famous voice, with its top-dog, Eastern accent, told the boys and girls, the teachers and coaches of Birney, the way things were, in no uncertain terms.

  “Yesterday, December 7, 1941—a date which will live in infamy—the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan …”

  Artie got goose bumps, thinking of a whole Empire attacking his country; beside him, Ben Vickman made a hissing sound.

  “I ask the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack …”

  That was a good word for the Japs—dastards.

  “… a state of war has existed …”.

  It was official now. The President had said it.

  War.

  Mr. Goodleaf, the Principal, stood up in the center of the stage when the speech was over. As befitted the occasion, he was wearing his uniform—the black and gold outfit with epaulets and braid that denoted his position as Director of the Band. Everyone stood as he led them in singing “The Star-Spangled Banner,” “America the Beautiful,” and the Birney Bearcat Fight Song.

  Artie looked around the big room as he sang at the top of his lungs, and felt proud. His brother and the other big athletes stood against the wall, wearing their sweaters and corduroys, some with their hands on their hips or stuck in their back pockets, loose and ready for anything, players and winners who were ready and willing to fight for their home, their school, their country. No Empire of dastards could ever defeat them.

  The four varsity cheerleaders bounced onstage in their streetclothes and led the Victory yell:

  Fight em, team, fight em;

  Beat em, team, beat em;

  Beat em fair, beat em square;

  Beat em, team, beat em!

  Shirley Colby, as always, bounced higher than the rest, her dark hair flying, her taut calves, sheathed in nylon, shimmering.

  Artie looked over at his brother looking at Shirley, and after the din of the cheer subsided, Roy doubled his fist and led the jocks in the unofficial, favorite, “Cemetery” cheer:

  Hit em in the teeth,

  Kick em in the jaw,

  Cemetery, Cemetery,

  Rah rah rah!

  The auditorium roared.

  Mr. Goodleaf got up again and called for order. He said now everyone should return to classes, and study as hard as they could to help win the War. He said there would be basketball practice in the gym and band rehearsal in the auditorium after school as usual. Then he said he wanted to see Roy Garber in his office.

  There were hoots and whistles as everyone turned to look at Roy, who grinned and clasped his hands over his head like a champ.

  “Your brother’s in for it now,” Ben Vickman said ominously.

  “Like fun,” said Artie.

  He didn’t believe Mr. Goodleaf had it in for Roy just because he led the “Cemetery” yell; that was the least the Japs deserved. What worried him was that Mr. Goodleaf had somehow found out about Roy and the guys going over to Moline to see Bubbles LaMode on the day the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor, but there wasn’t anything unpatriotic about it since they didn’t know it was going to happen. Maybe he found out they got drunk, though, which was breaking training, but why would he only call Roy when Wings and Bo were along too? Maybe Roy was the only one who got drunk, but even if that was true, his own buddies wouldn’t have ratted on him. Maybe it wasn’t anything bad at all, but just the opposite, like Roy being picked for some secret mission in the War because he was such a terrific athlete.

  On the gravel schoolyard playground at recess, Artie forgot to worry about Roy because Ben Vickman got all the kids stirred up about their Dads.

  “If my Dad has to go in the Army he’ll be an officer,” Vickman bragged.

  “Just ’cause he went to college don’t make him any officer,” Blimpy Ottemeyer said.

  “Not ’cause he went to college, dopey,” said Vickman. “’Cause he’s a Doctor is why he gets to start out at least as a Second Lieutenant.”

  “Fish-ee,” said Mitchelman.

  “Sounds more like the German Army if you ask me,” Artie said. “We’re a democracy.”

  Vickman gave Artie a little shove.

  “You wait and see when your Dad is just a Buck Private,” he said.

  “Dumbo! My Dad knows so much about cars he’ll probably be the Captain of a Tank Battalion!”

  Actually, it never occurred to Artie that his Dad might have to go in the Army, since he figured he was too old to fight, but he wasn’t about to tell Vickman that.

  “Guys who just put gas in the tank are Buck Privates,” Vickman said.

  “Oh, yeah? My Dad can put gas in a tank with his eyes closed, you dope. What he really does is fix every motor of every car they got made!”

  Artie gave Vickman a shove this time.

  “So he’s just a grease monkey!” Vickman said, and poked Artie in the ribs.

  “You callin’ my Dad a monkey, you dope?”

  Artie poked Vickman.

  “Monkey see monkey do!” shouted Vickman, and kicked Artie in the shin.

  Artie kicked him back, and Vickman punched him one right in the nose.

  Artie jumped him and they wrestled to the ground. The other kids gathered around and the girls started screaming. Miss Mullen came and broke it up and when Artie stood and brushed himself off, there was blood on his shirt. Vickman had given him a nosebleed, but he really didn’t care, and if anything, he was kind of proud. After all, it was Wartime.

  Wanda Swanley started crying.

  Artie pulled himself up straight, dabbed his handkerchief at his nose, and fell in beside Wanda, wanting to comfort her.

  “Heck, it’s nothing,” he said very manfully, “just a little nosebleed.”

  “Who cares?” she sobbed.

  “So how come you’re crying?”

  “My Dad’s a mailman,” she wailed.

  “So what?”

  “He’ll have to be a Private in the Infantry!”

  Ben Vickman’s stupid bragging was ruining morale.

  When school was out Artie delivered his paper route faster than he ever had in his life. He pretended the folded papers were hand grenades, the neighbors’ front porches were enemy gun emplacements.

  As soon as he finished he sped to the gym, to try to find out what Mr. Goodleaf had wanted with Roy. Maybe the Army had sent out a call for the best athlete in every high school in the country to form a crack team that would parachute behind the enemy lines and score a quick, unexpected victory right at the start of the War that would turn the tide of battle.

  Roy wasn’t at basketball practice, which meant something really big was up.

  Artie took off for Joe’s Premium, his Dad’s filling station on Main Street, where Roy hung around sometimes to help pump gas or just to put pennies in the peanut machine and talk to the men who stopped in to shoot the breeze with his Dad. Just as the ladies liked to sit around and gab at the Beauty Shop, the men of the town talked politics and business and crops at the filling station. It was warm in the little office where spark plugs and other kinds of auto parts were for sale and it smelled reassuringly of grease and machinery, the odors of he-men.

  Dad was king here, ruling with his honorably oilstained hands, rags coming out of his pockets like cowboy kerchiefs, emblems of expert work, worn jaunty, like the Premium cap with “Joe” stitched above the bill, tilted back firm on his big curly head. He was patching an innertube and talking to Mr. Marburger, the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, who was sitting in the old rocking chair by the peanut machine, slapping a folded evening paper on his leg.

  “… spotted some of ’em right over San Francisco,” Mr. Marburger was saying.

  “Excuse me,” Artie said, “but has Roy been around?”

  Dad look
ed up from the innertube, squinting.

  “He’s not at practice?”

  “Well, he wasn’t, but maybe he had something else to do. A lot’s going on.”

  Mr. Marburger reached in his pocket and offered Artie a penny.

  “Peanuts, on me?”

  “No, thanks, I got to find Roy.”

  “If you find him, you tell him I want him to be at that table at suppertime,” Dad said. “War or no War.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Artie started to go and then he remembered what Ben Vickman said, and looked at his Dad again.

  “Say, Dad, if you have to go to War, will you get to be an officer?”

  “If I have to go, it will mean we’re down to the last pitchfork and peashooter.”

  “Huh?”

  Dad shoved the innertube away and stood up, wiping his hands.

  “I was too young for the last one, and looks like I’m too old for this one, son.”

  Mr. Marburger slapped the newspaper hard into his palm.

  “The ‘Last One,’” he said with a grunt. “‘The War to end Wars.’ That’s what they told us.”

  “They forgot the Good Book,” Dad said. “‘There will be wars, and rumors of wars’!”

  “Goddamn politicians,” Mr. Marburger said, and then smiling at Artie added, “excuse my French.”

  “Well, I got to get going now,” Artie said. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

  Artie headed straight for Skinner Creek.

  There was a spot there where Roy liked to go to be alone, to think and skip rocks or maybe just sip from a half-pint bottle, of whiskey he sometimes fitted in his hip pocket. Artie was proud Roy had showed him the place; it was one of those times when his brother was being great to him, like big brothers were in movies, teaching you how to bait night-crawlers on a hook, or the way to place your hand along the laces of a football to throw a good spiral pass. Those were the times Artie loved his big brother, and mostly made up for the other kind of times when Roy would get him down and tickle him until he couldn’t breathe, or throw a basketball right in his gut so hard it knocked the wind out of him, or worst of all, the time Roy had to stay home to baby-sit Artie instead of going out to a party and made Artie, who was only five, listen to the scariest program on the radio, “The Hermit’s Cave,” not letting Artie stick his fingers in his ears to shut out the fiendish laugh of the horrible Hermit—yee-hee-whoo-ha-ha-ha-heeeeeeeeee! Those were the times Artie could have killed his big brother, bashed in his head with a brick, but of course he wasn’t big and strong enough; he only could kick at his shins and Roy would just laugh and lift him in the air and swing him around like a sack of potatoes.

  But Artie got over it every time and Roy would do something great again, so if ever he got into trouble and Artie could help, he would do anything on earth for the guy.

  Like now.

  Roy was sitting on his special rock, sipping from a half-pint of Four Roses, his big shoulders hunched against the cold.

  “How they hangin’?” asked Artie.

  He had learned that from listening to Roy and the other ballplayers when they got together at Joe’s Premium to shoot the shit and eat peanuts out of the penny machine after practice.

  “Kid,” said Roy, “I hope this thing is over before you’re old enough to have to go.”

  Artie was relieved. At least whatever had happened, Roy was in one of his real big-brother-in-the-movies moods, protective and wise.

  “Heck,” said Artie, feeling manly, “I’d like to get me one of those yellow-bellied Japs:”

  Roy put his arm around Artie.

  “It’s not all glory, kid,” Roy said. “The truth is, War is Hell.”

  Artie was thrilled, his brother telling him how life really was, his arm around him, just like a scene of two brothers in a movie except for the powerful whiskey smell of Roy’s breath when he spoke his words of wisdom.

  “Is that what Old Man Goodleaf wanted?” Artie asked. “To talk to you about the War?”

  Roy took an extra gulp of the booze.

  “In a way.”

  “Do they want you to do something? For the War Effort?”

  “Nobody’s telling me what to do. I made me my own decision, by God.”

  “What?”

  “I’m going to enlist.”

  “When the season’s over, or what?”

  “Tomorrow. Going to Moline and sign up.”

  “Before the Henshaw game?”

  “It’s just a game, kid.”

  “But it’s the Big Game!”

  “No game’s bigger than Freedom.”

  Artie felt ashamed for putting sports before Freedom.

  “Is that what Old Man Goodleaf said?”

  “Dammit, you little twerp, you think I don’t know which end is up without some jerk like Goodleaf telling me?”

  Roy took his arm from around Artie, swigged down the last of the half-pint, and threw it at the frozen surface of Skinner Creek where it broke, like the warm and wonderful mood of brotherly camaraderie. Roy stalked off and Artie trotted after him, head down, like a shamed spaniel.

  Later Artie learned—along with everyone else in school, and then in Town—that Roy got so mad because Old Man Goodleaf had called him in to tell him he was flunking Chemistry and English, and he’d have to do the whole semester over again, like last year, which meant he’d be ineligible for all sports, starting with the big Henshaw game next week.

  Roy blew up at the supper table when the folks said they thought that was why he wanted to enlist right away instead of waiting till June. Of course now they knew he’d go to War, along with the other boys in Town; not even Mom would have dreamed of trying to get him to shirk his duty. If your country was at War, you fought for it, unless you were some kind of jerk or crazy person. The only question now was when.

  Artie stood up for Roy’s decision to go right away.

  “High school doesn’t even count compared to Freedom,” he said.

  “Eat your brussels sprouts,” Dad said.

  “Okay, but if I was old enough, I’d enlist right away too, just like Roy.”

  “Thank Heaven you’re only ten,” Mom said:

  “Going on eleven!”

  “By the time you’re of age,” Dad said, “this whole mess will be over.”

  Roy gnawed a piece of his drumstick and waved it at Dad.

  “Not unless guys like me hurry up and get the job done.”

  Dad pointed his fork at Roy.

  “The job you’re supposed to get done first is earning that diploma.”

  “Diplomas aren’t going to stop the Japs.”

  “Neither are you, single-handed.”

  “The War will wait till June,” Mom said, “and then you could go off a high school graduate.”

  Roy suddenly pushed back his chair, jumped up from the table, and pointed at the ceiling.

  “There it comes! It’s got the old Rising Sun painted right on the wings, and its guns are blazing. It’s a Jap Zero, coming in for strafing, coming right at me in my foxhole. I haven’t even got a bullet left, but wait—hey—what’s this?”

  Roy pretended to pull something from his hip pocket, look at it, then wave it toward the ceiling or the “oncoming plane.”

  “I’ve got my high school diploma to save me! Take that, you dirty Jap, I got the hex on you! The powerful diploma-rays are zapping up at you like out of Flash Gordon’s gun and you’re bursting into flame!”

  Artie giggled, and Roy looked around, pleased.

  “All right, boys, you’ve had your fun, now finish your supper,” Mom said.

  Roy saluted and sat back down.

  “Make all the fun you want,” Dad said, “but the Japs won’t be giving out the jobs when this thing is over, son. And the people who do won’t hire you because you were a hero. They forget fast. I remember from the first one. A few weeks after the boys came home, the parades were over, and everything back to normal, nobody cared about the war or what a
nyone did in it, except for the politicians puffing up their records to try to get elected. It’ll be the same way again, and you can take that and put it in the bank.”

  Roy took a slug of his milk and began to sing, loud and off-key:

  Over there—Over there—

  Send the word, send the word

  To beware—

  “Everyone who finishes their brussels sprouts,” Mom said, cutting off the song, “gets mince pie for dessert.”

  Roy made a little belch and rubbed his stomach.

  “Good! I need all the mince I can get.”

  Roy winked at Artie, who giggled wildly, not sure what Roy meant but sure it must be a dilly.

  “Oh, carry me home to die,” Dad said.

  Roy hitched into Moline the next morning before anyone was up. When he came home, he was different.

  It wasn’t just the G.I. haircut he got right after he enlisted, making his face seem bony and stark. It wasn’t a uniform because he didn’t have one yet, and he wouldn’t even report for induction for another couple of weeks. The really different thing was his attitude. There was something real calm about him now, a feeling of high purpose, like the guy who was going to enter a tough kind of monastery where they only had bread and water and couldn’t talk to anyone but God. Roy was preparing himself, like getting in shape for football except in the mind and soul instead of the body.

  Instead of going off on a toot when he came back from joining up, Roy hung around Joe’s Premium pumping gas and helping out Dad and shooting the breeze with the guys who dropped by to talk about the War. Wings and Bo came around after basketball practice, having Cokes and peanuts and saying how they envied Roy getting a head start on them, but they figured they’d better wait till June. They seemed to treat the new Roy with a new kind of respect, as if he were set apart from them now, beyond them, off in a more important world than the one they had shared of sports and girls and messing around. Artie was proud, and he stuck by Roy every minute he could, wanting to help keep up his morale before he went off.