Under the Apple Tree Page 6

  “You must know more about him than anyone else in the world, except for your parents, of course.”

  Artie thought maybe Beverly Lattimore knew some stuff about Roy that he and his folks didn’t know, but he wouldn’t have said that even if Japs put bamboo sticks under his fingernails and set them on fire.

  “They’d like you to come have supper with us Thursday.”

  Shirley stopped in her tracks.

  “Are you sure? It was their idea?”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die. Mom’s even making chicken and dumplings.”

  “Oh, I don’t want her to go to any trouble.”

  “Heck, she wants to. After all, you’re almost part of the family now.”

  “Is that what she said? Your mother?”

  “Well, I don’t remember the exact words, but it’s what she meant, I could tell.”

  Shirley gave him a bear hug.

  “Oh, Artie!”

  She let him go and stepped back, beaming at him.

  “Can I bring anything?”

  Artie looked down at his shoes.

  “Yeah. I told ’em you would.”

  “What? I’m not even a very good cook! What in the world did you tell them I’d bring? Nothing like a cake, I hope—I’m a flop when it comes to baking.”

  Artie looked up at the sky, like he was trying to identify an enemy aircraft.

  “I told ’em you’d bring your letter from Roy.”

  “Artie Garbed!”

  “Well, they haven’t gotten any, themselves.”

  “That letter is highly personal!”

  “Isn’t there any regular stuff in it? I mean, like about the food, or how he likes bayonet practice or something? You could just read a part like that.”

  Shirley looked like a bee had stung her.

  “Bayonet practice,” she said.

  They walked the rest of the way in silence, without even singing “The White Cliffs of Dover.”

  Shirley sat very erect at the table, eating her chicken and dumplings in tiny bites, looking beautiful in her blue cashmere sweater. The trouble was, everyone coughed more than they talked. It was like being in the infirmary.

  “There’s this neat new song,” Artie burst out suddenly. “I don’t know all the words yet, but the first part goes like this: ‘We’re Going to Find a Fella Who is Yella, and Beat Him Red White and Blue …’”

  “Not at the table, we’re not,” Mom said.

  “Well, it’s patriotic,” Artie said.

  Mr. Garber cleared his throat.

  “There’s all kinds of patriotism,” he said. “I like mine on the quieter side.”

  “You like Kate Smith,” said Artie. “She’s not so quiet.”

  “You won’t catch her singing about beating people black and blue,” his mother said.

  “Not black and blue—red, white, and blue,” said Artie.

  “These dumplings are scrumptious,” Shirley Colby said.

  “Please have more,” Mom said.

  “Oh, no, thank you, I couldn’t take another bite, I’ve stuffed myself so.”

  “I hope you have room for some rhubarb pie,” Mrs. Garber said.

  “Well, just a little,” said Shirley. “I’m sure it’s wonderful.”

  “I bet ole Roy would like to be here now,” Artie said. “I bet he doesn’t get chicken and dumplings and rhubarb pie in the Marines.”

  “We don’t know that for sure,” Dad said. “He hasn’t got around to writing us yet.”

  “I just hope he’s getting enough to keep him going,” Mom said.

  “Oh, I’m sure he is,” said Shirley.

  “Did he tell you that?” Mom asked eagerly.

  “Well, not exactly,” said Shirley, patting her napkin at the corners of her mouth.

  “Artie tells us you got a letter from Roy,” Mr. Garber said.

  “Oh, yes! I brought it along.”

  “How thoughtful!” Mom said.

  “That was, really neat of you, Shirley,” said Artie.

  Shirley gave him a dagger look as she bent down and picked up her purse from beside her on the floor. She took out a long envelope, and a fat sheaf of folded pages. There must have been six or seven pages in the letter, written by Roy! Artie’s parents leaned forward, like they were going to reach for the letter. Shirley held it close to her chest, tight, like she was afraid the pages might fly away.

  “We’d sure appreciate hearing some of it,” Dad said.

  “Oh, of course,” Shirley said. “Let me just see if I can find anything that would be of any interest to you.”

  “Anything at all,” Mom said.

  “Well,” said Shirley, “he says here—”

  She stopped talking and started to blush, then quickly put the first page in back of the others.

  “Well,” she went on, “he says it’s real cold over there in Virginia, and he’s simply exhausted when he gets to bed …”

  “Roy said ‘simply exhausted’?” Mom asked.

  “In so many words, he does. I was just trying to sort of sum it up, more or less.”

  Shirley took the next page and the next and put them in back of the others.

  “Oh—here’s a good part!” she said. She read from the letter: “‘There are guys here from Brooklyn, Texas, and even Maine. Some of them have pictures of their girls, but none of them—’”

  Shirley stopped and went on to the next page.

  “None of them what?” Mom asked.

  “Oh, that was just sort of silly. There’s a real good part, though, that I’m trying to find.”

  Shirley went through to the last page, then took a deep breath of relief.

  “Here it is—listen to this.”

  “We are,” Dad said.

  Shirley read from the letter, with great feeling, like it was a recital in English class: “‘I’m proud to be part of this great outfit that has made its mark on history from the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli. No matter what the cost in sweat, blood, and tears, it will all be worth it to know that I am playing a small part in making my country and my loved ones safe for democracy.’”

  “That’s us!” Artie said. “His ‘loved ones’!”

  Shirley quickly folded the pages of the letter, stuffed them back in the envelope, and stuck it in her purse.

  “That’s Roy, all right,” Dad said.

  “That’s all?” Mom asked.

  “Well, all that’s really interesting.”

  “If that was the interesting part,” said Mom, “the rest must have been the stock market report.”

  Shirley burst out crying. Dad stood up, and Mom went over and put her arms around Shirley.

  “I’m sorry, dear. There, there. We’re all just a little on edge. Heavens, we ought to be happy Roy wrote you so many pages, whatever they say.”

  “It’s the God’s truth,” Dad said. “That’s more than he wrote through all the high school he had.”

  “See?” Artie said. “Shirley inspired him. Just like the girl in the Coty ad.”

  Shirley stopped crying, and turned her moist red eyes toward Artie, confused.

  “What girl?” she asked.

  “In the Coty ad. Where it says ‘His duty to serve—hers to inspire.’”

  Shirley burst out crying again.

  “Oh, carry me—” Dad said and then paused, adding with a sigh, “back to ole Virginny.”

  Mom stood up and smiled, making her voice sound real chipper.

  “Let’s have the rhubarb pie!”

  3

  Artie figured Shirley was part of the family now that she had cried at their supper table, and he turned his War Efforts back to the part he’d been neglecting, which was finding a serious patriotic friend to replace Fishy Mitchelman for the Duration.

  Artie discovered his man the day the Bearcub came out.

  The Bearcub was the four-page newspaper published once a semester by the grade school kids of Birney, with articles about stuff like the 4-H Club a
nd the School Rhythm Band, essays on Citizenship and Weather, and poems, mostly by girls. The biggest surprise of the new Bearcub was a poem by this quiet little guy who was new in town, Warren Tutlow. The poem went like this:

  American soldiers, Marines and Sailors

  Over the whole world through

  Will shed their blood in sleet and mud

  To make things safe for you.

  So get your Home Front fighting going,

  Watch out for booby traps,

  Save scrap metal and Buy those Bonds

  And we’ll slap the Jap right off the map!

  Artie looked over at Warren Tutlow when he finished reading the poem, and realized Mom was right when she said, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” There was Tutlow, this scrawny little towheaded kid with glasses as thick as Mason jar bottle caps, a kid you’d never want to choose up for in a ball game. You’d never guess that on the inside he was a red-blooded, tough-minded person who burned with the fever of patriotism.

  Artie waved his hand in the air and Miss Mullen called on him.

  “I think we should all give a hand to Warren Tutlow for his patriotic poem.”

  Everyone turned toward Tutlow and most people clapped and whistled. All except Ben Vickman, who waved his arm back and forth like he was trying to stop a runaway horse.

  “He didn’t even make up the last line himself. He stole it right out of the War Stamp book!”

  There were gasps of breath, and the tips of Tutlow’s large, protruding ears turned red.

  Artie knew that Vickman was twisting things around because he was jealous. The truth was, the War Stamp books that were passed out to all the kids in school had stirring slogans to make you angry and one of the pages said “Slap the Jap Right Off the Map” and showed these pictures of ugly, monkey-faced Japs with their fang teeth dripping blood, so you’d want to buy the dime War Stamps to paste over them and cover them up. Once you filled the whole book with dime and quarter stamps it was worth $18.75, and if you waited till the War was over to cash it in like you were supposed to, it was worth a whole $25! Artie figured it wasn’t “stealing” to use the slogan from the Stamp book in a poem, it was helping more people get stirred up about the War, and he said so.

  “Warren Tutlow wasn’t ‘stealing’ to put that in his poem. He was helping the War Effort, so more people would know about slapping the Jap right off the map. That’s what I call using the old bean!”

  The other kids were relieved that one of their classmates wasn’t really a poetry thief, and most of them spoke up with “Yeah” and “Right” to show it was okay by them. Even Miss Mullen said, “I believe Artie Garber is one hundred percent correct,” and Artie, encouraged, spoke up again.

  “If you ask me, we ought to make Warren Tutlow the Poet Lariat of the Class.”

  “Poet Laureate,” Miss Mullen corrected, “and I think that’s a fine idea.”

  Artie led the applause, happy to see Ben Vickman slumping down in his seat, defeated.

  In the schoolyard at recess Tutlow came up to Artie and said, “Hey, thanks.”

  “Shoot, I was only doin’ the right thing.”

  They both kicked at some gravel, and then Ben Vickman walked up to Artie and asked, right out of the clear blue sky, “What kind of Gas Ration sticker has your old man got?”

  “He’s got a ‘B’ sticker, what’s it to you?”

  A “B” sticker meant you were doing something important enough to get more gas than people whose work had nothing at all to do with the War Effort and only got an “A” sticker. Since Artie’s Dad had to go out sometimes to help people get their car started, he needed the extra gas.

  “Well, my Dad’s got a ‘C’ sticker, cause he’s a Doctor!” Vickman bragged.

  A “C” sticker meant that the work you were doing was so important you could get about all the gas you wanted.

  “Maybe so,” Artie said, “but your Dad’s no Lieutenant in the Army like you claimed he was going to be.”

  “That’s what he’ll be if they ever call him up to go in.”

  “Fat chance,” said Artie.

  “Darn tootin’,” Tutlow piped up in Artie’s defense.

  Vickman screwed up his face in an ugly sneer and leaned close to Tutlow.

  “Oh, go write a poem,” he said.

  Tutlow looked him right in the eyes, and without even blinking he said right off the bat:

  Roses are red,

  Violets are blue,

  Hitler stinks

  And so do you!

  Artie let out a real hee-haw, and all Ben Vickman could say was, “Aw, your father’s mustache,” which didn’t have anything to do with the price of eggs, and he slunk away.

  Tutlow invited Artie to come over to his house after school.

  Artie was really impressed to find out that Tutlow not only read the War stuff in the magazines, he clipped it out and pasted it into a scrapbook with a picture of Old Glory on the front.

  Tutlow had stuff in his War Scrapbook that even Artie had missed. The most exciting thing of all was an article from Life magazine about this bunch of farmers out in Tillamook, Oregon, who were organized by a blind veteran of World War I to defend their homes and families against enemy attack. There were pictures of the farmers with their guns, crouched behind tree stumps. The article said: “They are prepared to defend their heritage with bullets and frontiersman’s lore. Sworn to die fighting if need be, they plan to hide their dairy herds deep in the woods, to combat forest fires started by incendiary bombs, and to harry the invader who dares penetrate their trackless timberland. To a man, they are dead shots.”

  When he finished reading the article, Artie looked at Tutlow and said, “My Dad has a twenty-two rifle he goes hunting with. And I got a BB gun.”

  “Well, I got a BB gun,” said Warren, “but I think all my Dad has is a blackjack.”

  “A blackjack?” Artie asked, impressed. “How come?”

  “He says if anyone ever tried to break in the house and rob us, it’s better to be able to bang him one on the bean than shoot him full of holes. Then, when he’s out cold, you can call the police.”

  “That’s really neat,” Artie said. “What’s your Dad do?”

  “He’s an Insurance Man. Sells Farm and Life.”

  “Wow,” said Artie.

  He didn’t know exactly what it meant to sell Farm and Life, but it sounded pretty important. Maybe dangerous, too, if Mr. Tutlow had his own blackjack.

  “I bet if you bopped a Jap on the head with a blackjack,” Tutlow said, “you might really kill him instead of just knocking him out, since he’d be so small.”

  “Heck, yes,” Artie said. “A blackjack would be a sort of different kind of secret weapon than a rifle or BB gun for killing Jap invaders if they tried to take Birney.”

  Tutlow nodded, and both boys vowed to ask their Dads if they could start up an armed group of men like the ones in Tillamook, Oregon, to defend their own town.

  Dad was underneath a Studebaker when Artie went over to the station to ask about getting him to help organize a group of armed men to stave off parachute attacks from the Japs or Nazis on Birney, Illinois. All Artie could see was Dad’s legs and feet sticking out from under the car which was really okay, maybe even best, since Artie was kind of afraid his Dad might think the whole thing was weird and give him one of those “Now, son” looks or come out with one of his philosophical sayings like, “You don’t get anything done by running around like a chicken with its head cut off.”

  “Who are these fellas with guns?” Dad asked when Artie explained the whole thing.

  “Farmers, out in Tillamook, Oregon. They were organized by this blind veteran from World War One.”

  “Well, far as I know, we don’t have us any blind veterans from World War One here in Birney.”

  “Aw, come on, Dad,” Artie said. “You don’t have to have one of those. It’s even better if the guy in charge isn’t blind, if you ask me. So he can see the parachutes dr
opping.”

  Dad scooted out from under the Studie, stood up, looking at Artie real serious now, as he wiped his greasy hands with the greasy rag.

  “Son,” he said, which meant it was going to be serious, “those fellows out in Oregon, they’re right near the Pacific Ocean, where Jap subs are sneaking around, so they have some call to get their guns out and be on the ready, but it’s just not the same for us here right smack in the middle of the country.”

  “What about the airplanes? What about Chicago is closer to occupied Norway on the polar route than New York City and we’re right below Chicago?”

  “If the wind blows one down here from Chicago, you let me know and I’ll go and grab the twenty-two.”

  “Heck,” said Artie, “it’s not the same.”

  His Dad fished into his pocket and handed Artie a penny.

  “Here, go put this in the peanut machine.”

  Artie turned and went in the office part of the station, but he didn’t get peanuts. He would save the darn penny and put it toward a ten-cent War Stamp. He would also figure out a way that he and Warren Tutlow could do more for Civil Defense instead of just waiting around for their Dads to go grab their guns and blackjacks when the enemy was already landing in the Town Square.

  Mom came in the house humming, carrying a bag of groceries. She walked in the dining room, screamed, and dropped the bag.

  The bodies of Artie and his friend Warren Tutlow were lying face down and motionless under the dining room table.

  Artie looked up and asked, “What’s wrong, Mom?”

  “What on earth are you doing under there? I thought you were dead.”

  “For gosh sakes, we’re practicing,” Artie said.

  He and Tutlow crawled out from under the table and started gathering up the spilled groceries.

  “This War has poisoned everything if boys have to practice being dead,” Mom said.

  “We weren’t dead, ma’am,” Tutlow explained. “We were practicing what to do in an Air Raid.”

  “Haven’t you even read the CD Air Raid pamphlet?” Artie asked his mother.

  “What pamphlet?”

  Artie scrambled up and got the pamphlet, which was lying on top of the table that he and Tutlow had been lying under.