Under the Apple Tree Page 4

  The only one who didn’t respect the new Roy was his old girl friend. Roy never really went steady with Beverly Lattimore, he never gave her his gold basketball on a chain to wear around her neck, and sometimes he went off with other adoring girls after ball games, but mostly he took out Beverly, and everyone knew they did the dirty deed when they parked out at Skinner Creek after dances and parties.

  Beverly was known for her red hair and temper that matched, but Artie was really shocked when she marched right up to Joe’s Premium after school and started in on Roy while he was lying under Old Man Bittleman’s Buick with only his legs sticking out, checking the exhaust pipe.

  “You can’t fool me, Roy Garber,” she said. “You’re running away.”

  “Hi, Bev,” Roy said from under the Buick.

  “You’re not any hero, you’re a coward!”

  “Hey!” said Artie, who was leaning against the Premium pump, sort of standing guard over Roy, but Beverly didn’t even look at him.

  Roy scooted out from under the car, looking up at Beverly real calm, and not even saying anything. That seemed to get her even more riled up.

  “You’re running away from Chemistry and English!” she shouted. “And me!”

  Roy stood up slowly, wiping his hands with an oily rag, and instead of getting ticked, like he would have done before he changed, he spoke very quietly.

  “I’m sorry you don’t understand, Beverly.”

  “I understand, all right! It’s a two-bit grandstand play is what it is, so you can keep on being a star even though you’re ineligible!”

  “Hey!” Artie shouted, but no one paid any attention to him.

  Roy smiled at Beverly, sadly, like you’d look at a person who meant well but didn’t have enough upstairs to understand you, and he turned his back and walked away from her like she didn’t exist, and Artie looked around and she didn’t. Beverly Lattimore was gone, as surely as if she had only been a drawing of chalk on a blackboard and Roy had simply erased her.

  That night after supper, instead of going out with the guys or getting a date, Roy stayed home to sit around with the rest of the family in the living room and listen to Fibber McGee and Molly on the radio. They all stared at the big wooden arch-shaped radio like it was a stage and you could actually see Fibber and Molly, which you did but really in your mind, like you pictured the Lone Ranger or Ma Perkins or all the other people you had never actually seen in person but knew what they looked like from what they said and did in their stories on the radio.

  When Fibber was over and the Longines Wittnauer Hour came on playing music, Mom said with just a little bit of sarcasm in her voice, “Well, Roy, going into the Army seems to suit you. All the sudden you don’t have so many ants in your pants.”

  “Who said I was going in the Army?” asked Roy, real casual.

  “You mean you didn’t really enlist?” asked Dad. “It was all hot air?”

  “I didn’t enlist in the Army,” said Roy.

  “Well, I wish you’d have said so,” Mom said, sighing. “I always felt the Navy was safer. I’d rather think of you being on a nice clean ship with regular meals instead of crawling around in some muddy trench.”

  “Being on a ship with enemy subs all around is just as dangerous,” Roy said, “but anyway, I didn’t enlist in the Navy.”

  Dad tossed the paper off his lap.

  “Well, what the Sam Hill did you go and join, the French Foreign Legion?”

  “No, Dad,” Roy said very calmly and proudly, “the United States Marines.”

  Artie jumped and yelled joyfully.

  “Hurray—‘the Fighting Devil Dogs’!”

  His mother dropped her darning and said, “Goddamn,” which was even more shocking than Roy joining the Marines.

  “Now, Dot,” his father said, “it’ll be all right.”

  “He’s always had to hog the limelight,” his mother said, meaning Roy but not looking at him or anyone else, just staring at the wall, “and now it’ll end up getting him killed.”

  “Jesus, Mom,” Roy said, “you sound almost like Beverly Lattimore.”

  “Don’t add insult to injury,” his mother said. “Everyone knows the Marines are the first to go in and be killed.”

  “You’ve got it all upside down, Mom,” Roy said. “The Marines are better trained than any other fighting men, so they have a better chance to survive.”

  “Hogwash,” his mother said.

  “Now, Dot,” his father said, picking up her darning for her, “it’s true the Marines are trained to be a crack outfit. They don’t just throw green kids into the front with broomsticks.”

  Artie started marching around the living room singing the Marine Hymn:

  From the Halls of Montezu-u-ma,

  To the shores of Tripoli …

  Roy went over and put his hand on his mother’s shoulder.

  “Come on, Mom. As long as I was going to do it, I wanted to be with the best.”

  “You wanted to wear that fancy uniform with the red stripe down the pants, that’s what you wanted.”

  “For God’s sake, Mom.”

  Roy was starting to crack and be like his old self.

  The lines in his face were tightening, but his father put a hand on his arm.

  “Your mother has a right to be upset, Roy. It’s only natural.”

  Roy eased up, nodding, and Artie continued his march around the room, singing with patriotic fervor and pride:

  First to fight our country’s battles,

  And to keep our honor clean,

  We are proud to wear the ti-i-tle

  Of United States Marine!

  Even though Roy was a changed man, you still could have knocked Artie over with a feather when his older brother made him the offer.

  “How’d you like to take in a movie?” Roy asked Artie, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Actually, the only time Roy took Artie to the movies was on his birthday or when his parents started nuzzling each other and gave Roy the money to take himself and Artie to the Strand so they could be alone in the house, though they didn’t say that was the reason.

  “What movie’s on?” Artie asked, suspicious.

  “A Bob Hope, I think. Or maybe it’s the new Roy Rogers.”

  “So how come you wanna go if you don’t even know?”

  “Look, you don’t want to go to the movies, have us a little popcorn, maybe go by Damon’s for a sundae afterward, it’s no skin off my teeth. Forget it.”

  Roy started walking away and Artie reached and tugged at his sleeve.

  “I didn’t say that. I just wondered how come.”

  “Never knew you had to have a ‘how come’ to go to the movies.”

  “Okay, that’d be great. Just you and me, huh, after supper?”

  “After supper, sure. Listen, you wouldn’t mind if Shirley Colby came along?”

  “Shirley Colby! What’s she got to do with it?”

  “I thought you liked Shirley Colby. Thought you said she was probably the prettiest cheerleader in U.S. of A., never mind Birney High.”

  “Yeah, but you told me she was just an Iceberg.”

  “I said that?”

  “Lots of times.”

  Roy shook his head, smiling not at Artie but at himself, or rather the way he used to be before the War changed him.

  “I guess I was still such a kid then I thought the main thing in life was making out.”

  “What is it then?” Artie asked. “The main thing in life?”

  He was getting confused.

  Roy slung a brotherly arm around him.

  “There’s better things. Higher things. You’ll learn, someday.”

  Artie felt uncomfortable, and slid out from under his brother’s arm.

  “I thought Shirley Colby wouldn’t go out with you,” he said.

  “She wouldn’t. Won’t. She doesn’t believe I’ve really changed. But she did say she’d go out with us. You and me, pardner.”

  Roy did
a fast shuffle, took a boxing stance, and landed a soft left at Artie’s shoulder.

  “Okay,” said Artie, “I get it now.”

  It was like he’d be the chaperone, so Shirley would think she was safe.

  “There’s nothing to ‘get,’ ole buddy,” said Roy, still dancing around him, throwing little taps of punches. “We’re all just going to have us a good time.”

  “Ha,” said Artie.

  Roy dropped his boxing stance, and looked sternly at Artie.

  “Shirley’s a decent girl and I respect her,” he said, “so don’t go getting wise about it.”

  Artie walked away, embarrassed and confused. He had just begun to find out he’d soon be old enough to try to make out with girls, and doing it was the most exciting, terrific thing in the world, along with playing varsity football and basketball. Now before he was even old enough to try making out, Roy was making it sound like that was just kid stuff. Artie felt like a jerk.

  The only time Roy acted nervous after joining up was waiting outside the movie for Shirley to’ show up. He lit a cigarette, and then after just a couple of puffs he dropped it to the sidewalk and mashed it out with his foot, like he was trying to scrunch out some kind of killer bug.

  “How come we didn’t pick her up at her house?” Artie asked.

  “I told you, it’s not a real ‘date,’ numskull.”

  Roy jerked Artie’s stocking cap off and rubbed his knuckles over Artie’s skull real hard so it hurt, but Artie gritted his teeth and didn’t yell. Then Roy stuck the cap back on him.

  “Besides, her parents are weird about things.”

  The Colbys were real snooty, even though they lost their big bucks in the Crash and had to sell the fabulous house on the hill that looked like some kind of mansion in Gone With the Wind. Now they just lived in a regular frame two-story with an old-fashioned gingerbread front porch on Pine Street. Some people claimed they got even snootier when they had to move to Pine, and looked down their noses at their neighbors. Shirley wasn’t snooty, though; everyone said she was just “reserved” because she was always so quiet and polite, but she always smiled and spoke to everyone, and proved she wanted to be a part of things when she went out for cheerleader. She turned out to be about everyone’s favorite cheerleader, even though—or maybe because—she didn’t really seem like the others. Even when she jumped up high and spread her legs wide at the end of a cheer, there was something ladylike and delicate about her. She reminded Artie of a princess disguised as an ordinary high school girl.

  A minute or so before the start of the movie she came around the corner, looking serious and beautiful. She was wearing a nice plaid coat and had on stockings and loafers. Shirley never wore bobby sox, or skirts and sweaters, but came to school in dresses or jumpers with blouses and always the stockings and loafers or real heels, like college girls or ladies wore. She had on a white scarf that matched her mittens and a furry white hat that came down over the line of her dark bangs.

  When Roy saw her, he looked like a pinball machine when somebody put a nickel in.

  In the movie, Artie sat next to Roy who sat next to Shirley. Shirley had offered to sit in the middle of Artie and Roy but Artie had hurriedly made some dumb excuse about how he liked to sit on the aisle, because the idea of sitting in the dark next to Shirley Colby, her knees and boobs only inches away from him, her perfume that smelled like essence of honeysuckle making him dizzy, would have been too much to take, so he sat next to Roy, with Shirley a seat away. Still, though Artie laughed and looked at the movie, from the corner of his eye he kept watching to see if Roy would try to make out with Shirley. Once, when there was a big laugh, Roy real casual slung his arm on the armrest of the scat between him and Shirley, but Shirley kept her hands in her lap and Roy never reached for one, much less a knee. Either he was playing it real cool, or he actually had grown into some mysterious wisdom about, other things being more important than making out.

  At Damon’s Drugs after the movie Artie had a double-chocolate malt, Shirley had a cherry Coke, and Roy had a cup of coffee, black without cream or sugar. It was part of his new grown-upness, Artie guessed.

  “Before Pearl Harbor,” Roy said, “I guess I was living in a dream world. I kept pushing the War out of my mind, like it wasn’t real. Just something you saw in the news-reels.”

  “I guess a lot of us did,” said Shirley.

  “I sure did,” said Artie, wanting to get his two cents in. But Roy and Shirley didn’t even seem to hear him. They were staring at each other’s eyes as they talked, like they were hypnotized or something. Maybe this was the thing that was more important than sex. Hypnotism. It seemed like before you got around to learning one thing there was a new one you had to figure out that was even more complicated.

  “The trouble with me is,” Roy went on, “I pushed everything out of my head that was really important.”

  “Lots of people do,” said Shirley.

  “You don’t,” Roy said.

  “You don’t really know me.”

  “I’d like to. I mean, I’d like to know your mind. What you think about things. I feel like I’ve just started thinking myself, for the first time in my life, and I feel this goddamn—excuse me—this real deep urge to talk about it with someone. Someone who has their own values, real standards.”

  “You never seemed to be interested in things like that.”

  “That was before Pearl Harbor.”

  Artie sucked up the last of his malt, making a noise with his straw, and went to look at the magazine rack. He couldn’t stand that hypnotizing stuff going on with Roy and Shirley.

  Roy made Artie come along when he walked Shirley home, though Artie couldn’t figure why since Roy and Shirley were still in their hypnotism state and Artie felt like a fifth wheel. Roy stopped when they got to Shirley’s house, not even going to the door with her where he might have tried for a smooch good night, but just stood and looked at her eyes and said he had never enjoyed anything so much as their talk and he had so much more to say to her he wondered if she’d take a walk with him tomorrow after school. Not a date, just a walk, a chance to talk about serious things.

  Shirley said yes.

  Real life went on, like the Henshaw game, and the Packers played the Bears for the pro Western title, and they even had the Rose Bowl, but it was switched from California to the stadium at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, so the big crowds that came to such a historic event would not be endangered by attack from Japanese bombers who might make afraid on the West Coast. You knew it was Wartime even though you were listening to a ball game on the radio, because the sportscasters, patriots like everyone else, never mentioned the weather anymore—like whether the playing field was muddy or frozen—so that Jap and German spies could not pick up vital information for possible surprise attacks. The whole country was on the alert, Artie included.

  When the family saw Roy off on the train for Boot Camp in Quantico, Virginia, no one but Artie seemed to notice that Shirley was wearing Roy’s old silver ID bracelet. It hung significantly but loosely from her left wrist. Artie figured Roy didn’t have time to get some links of the chain taken out so it would fit her better. There wasn’t time to think of all that stuff during War. The main thing was, she was wearing it.

  Roy had never gone steady because he was too busy playing the field and Shirley had never gone steady because she was too pure and didn’t want to get that serious about a boy but now suddenly because of Pearl Harbor they had come together—only to be torn right apart by Roy going off to the Marines.

  Just before Roy swung aboard the train he kissed his mother and hugged his father and went into a long, movie-passion slurparooney with Shirley and when that was finally over and lipstick was smeared all over Roy’s mouth like a wound, Roy knelt down and biffed Artie one on the shoulder, and whispered, pointing his thumb to Shirley standing stoically behind him, “You take care of her while I’m gone, ole buddy.”

  Artie gulped and nodded, and whe
n everyone had waved off the train and it had disappeared into a dot and then nothing, Shirley, pale and beautiful, took one of Artie’s hands in her own as they walked back with his folks to the car.

  Artie couldn’t speak. Shirley’s hand was cold but it seemed to burn his own. He did not let go and run, he walked straight ahead, chin up, heart pounding at a million miles a minute, shoulders squared, eyes forward. He did not even care if other kids saw him walking like this holding Shirley Colby’s hand and make fun of him. He would do his duty.

  This was War.

  II

  1

  The shadow of a Messerschmitt slipped across the moon.

  Or was it a dive-bombing Stuka?

  The aircraft spotter adjusted his binoculars, squinting. His hands were cold but he held them steady. From his rooftop position he commanded a sweeping view of the terrain. Bare skinny branches of winter trees cast menacing shadows against the snow. The small rows of houses and the long fields beyond were silent, hauntingly still. The spotter fought back the urge to sniffle, fearful of betraying his position.

  He lowered his binoculars, wiped his eyes, blinked, and craned forward, certain he saw a darkened wing move swiftly over the moonlit landscape.

  The sound of a motor groaned in the distance.

  The wing and the motor might mean an enemy aircraft.

  But now the wing was gone and the motor coughed and chugged, from over on Old Route One. The spotter had to admit, disappointed, that the motor was probably the truck of some farmer.

  But what about the wing?

  It might have been a Japanese Nakajima 96.

  On the other hand, it might have been a crow.

  The spotter reached into the pocket of his mackinaw and took out the pack of Enemy Aircraft Identification Cards that showed the silhouettes of Jap and German planes. His fingers, stiff with cold, let the pack slip, and half a dozen cards went floating off the roof, lazily drifting down like black and white leaves of winter. The spotter scrambled to grab the cards and almost toppled from his perch. It was a close call, like you had to expect at any minute during Wartime.