Willow Run

by Patricia Reilly Giff

“Miss him, Honey-doke.”

  There was something I did ask. “You have a lot of freckles,” I said, as if that weren't a bad thing, as if everyone wanted a million blots covering their face…as if I didn't mind that I had freckles.

  Ronnelle laughed. “I used to think I looked horrible, but Michael …” She hesitated. “He thinks I look like that movie star, Katharine Hepburn.”

  I sat back watching, laughing as Abbott and Costello came onto the screen, fighting. Lulu called “Hi-ho” a half-dozen times, then climbed onto Ronnelle's lap to fall asleep. Ronnelle put her head back and slept, too.

  For the first time I thought it might not be so bad to have those freckles, not so terrible that everyone in school called me Freckle Face.

  The war news began: pictures of soldiers against a gray stone wall in a place called Sainte Mere-Eglise, tired, filthy, sitting there in the mud, heads bent, legs stretched in front of them as the rain poured down.

  I remembered Eddie getting ready for his dates with Virginia Tooey, his hair slicked back, still wet, so you could see the comb marks running through it. He spent hours in front of the bathroom mirror, while I banged on the door yelling that he was taking forever.

  On the screen the scene changed and a line of soldiers marched along a road. They grinned at the camera, shoving each other a little. One of them had a wreath of daisies wound around his helmet.

  Was it Eddie? I sat up straight, watching his back go down the road. Thin, like Eddie, feet slopping along in boots. My heart flip-flopped in my chest. Could it be?

  Ronnelle was awake now, pointing as the camera zeroed in on a huge basket of mail that was being hoisted over the side of a ship to the waiting sailors. “I write to Michael every day,” she said. “Twice a day sometimes. He writes me, too, but sometimes I have to wait weeks, then it all arrives in a bunch.”

  I nodded as I watched a woman cook a pot of something she said was full of nourishment but didn't take a lot of rationed meat. That was what Mom always said about Spam with Grandpa's pickles. But this looked even more dreadful.

  “Time to go, kids,” Ronnelle said, smoothing back Lulu's hair.

  We marched out. I thought about the soldier on the screen with daisies on his helmet.

  My brother, Eddie. Could it have been?

  Dear Grandpa,

  Thanks for the letters you keep sending. I'm glad your garden is growing. I miss fishing with you, too.

  I may have seen Eddie in the movies.

  Love,

  Meggie

  P.S. You asked about the salad garden. I haven't quite started it yet.

  Notes for Hot-O Soup:

  When the war is over …

  1. … we'll have a party with fireworks that will light up all of Rockaway.

  2. … I won't eat Spam for the rest of my life. I'll try Hot-O Soup instead.

  3. … I'll put real butter on everything, even a lump in Hot-O Soup.

  4. … I will never take anything I should pay for.

  Chapter Ten

  I lay sideways across the bed. “Here.” I tapped on the wall with my fingers.

  “Right,” said a ghostly voice from the other side of the wall.

  “Meggie?” Mom called from the kitchen. “Why don't you go outside and get some fresh air?”

  “Nothing to do out there.”

  Sawing sounds came from the other side; I picked up my knife and began to saw, too, until there was a tiny hole.

  “Watch out.” Patches’ voice was clearer now. “You're going to stab me with that.”

  “It's just a butter knife from the kitchen. It doesn't even cut butter.” I leaned back. It might not cut butter, but plaster was crumbling, the hole growing, and light beamed through from the other side. “Enough,” I told her. “You don't want the whole wall to fall down.”

  Laughing, she stuck her finger through the hole and wiggled it around like a pale snake.

  “Let me see,” I said.

  She pulled her finger away and I peered through into her bedroom. It was exactly the same as mine but there wasn't as much stuff thrown around; her new brown school shoes were on the table next to her bed.

  She leaned forward until I could see the flecks of green in her brown eyes. “This is going to be terrific,” she said. “We don't have to yell one bit, we can talk all night long if we want.”

  Mom's footsteps tapped down the hallway, and I rolled off the bed, glancing back over my shoulder to be sure she couldn't see the hole.

  “It's dark in here. Miserable.” Mom dumped a pile of clean underwear on my bed. “I want you to go outside, make some friends. Do something.”

  I wondered if she could hear Patches breathing. “All right.” I shoved the underwear under the bed so Patches wouldn't see it. “I have to mail letters anyway.”

  I skipped out the door, hearing Mom sigh, “I just washed all that.”

  As I went down the street I looked back; there was a blue star in Ronnelle's window for her husband, and one in ours for Eddie. I saw Patches coming as I turned the corner. I waved a pile of envelopes at her: a letter to Grandpa, four Hot-O Soup entries, and a quick twenty-five-words-or-less contest I had entered… Why I Like Sparkling Blue.

  Just then a ball whizzed by me so fast I could feel the breeze lift my hair.

  Harlan: filthy shorts, scabby knees, the World's Fair pickle pinned to his striped shirt, and a white bag under his arm. “Can't you even catch?” His sweaty face was streaming. He raised his shirt and swiped at his chin, leaving a sooty mark across the stripes.

  Sparkling Blue makes your clothes white, even Harlan's, I thought, grinning to myself, and then I got a better look at the bag in his arms. So did Patches, who had just caught up to me, her bare feet as filthy as Harlan's shirt. “You stole more ice cream, Harlan Tucker.”

  “Did not,” he said. “I come from a family of heroes, not thieves.” He put the bag down on the ground. “I'm going to show you two something.” He pulled a dollar bill out of his pocket, as filthy as his shirt. “This doesn't count as money, of course. I'd never spend it in a million years. My uncle Leo gave it to me before he went overseas.”

  Patches leaned forward. “The one who was…”

  “Shot. Right. This is all I have left of him.”

  Patches and I took a quick look at each other; neither of us knew what to say.

  “He won't be coming home to Detroit. He wanted to start a hardware store there when the war ended,” Harlan said. “He said we could be partners and I should hold on to this dollar bill until he got back.”

  Like Eddie with the envelope. I raised my hand to brush back my bangs. No, not like that at all.

  “I'm going to have a hardware store myself someday so I can remember him,” Harlan said. “I'll never use this dollar, though. Never.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  “Anyway,” he said. “I dug six scratches into Arnold the Spy's running board. I'll pay the whole thing back someday. That's what Leo would want me to do.”

  “Six?” How could he have done that? I was terrible at math; I couldn't even figure out how much money that would be.

  “Yup. Two each. It's going to be a scorcher today.”

  My mouth watered, but at the same time I felt a lurch in my chest. What would Grandpa say? What would Eddie say? And Lily Mollahan would never steal ice cream, even though the ice cream man might be a spy.

  All my fault. I should never have told them about the key. If only I hadn't done that.

  Harlan held out the bag. “I don't think…,” I began, then sighed. “I'll take the strawberry.”

  Patches shook her head. “My mother made icecube pops.”

  We sat on the curb eating two ice creams each, and then we ate the ones for Patches, too. I could feel an uneasiness in my stomach. “They taste stale or something,” I said.

  “I wouldn't put it past him,” Harlan said. “Secondhand ice cream.”

  “Don't be ridiculous,” Patches said. I could see she had no patience
for Harlan.

  Harlan wiped his mouth with his shirt again. “That's done,” he said. “Now what?”

  “Mailbox,” Patches said.

  Harlan took the envelopes from my hand and fanned them out. “What's this stuff?”

  “You're not supposed to read other people's mail,” Patches said, looking over his shoulder.

  “Contests,” I said reluctantly. They'd probably think I was crazy.

  “No,” Harlan said. “This one. Josef von Frisch? Von?”

  I hesitated. “My grandfather.”

  “A Nazi?”

  “No.” I shook my head. “Certainly not.”

  “Sounds German to me.”

  I took a breath. “Mongolian.”

  “Where's that?” Patches asked.

  “Australia,” I said.

  Harlan bent down to scratch a mosquito bite on his leg. “The mailbox is a couple of blocks down.”

  I nodded. I had no idea where Mongolia was. Geography was harder than math. I had gotten a D on the last map quiz just before school closed.

  I followed them down the street, past a long line of apartment houses with rows of trailers between them, metallic gray and round, like turtles dozing on logs, and dropped the envelopes in the mail, crossing my fingers over the entries.

  We wandered back toward my apartment, passing the ice cream truck.

  “He moves the truck every day or so, looking for top-secret secrets, I guess,” Harlan said. “He probably keeps them frozen inside the truck somewhere.”

  “It's going to take us a hundred years to get back to the apartment if we keep stopping every two minutes,” Patches said.

  They began to argue, but I was thinking. What could I do about Arnold the Spy and paying him back? How could I ever ask Dad for the money? What would he think if he knew I had stolen two—no, three, ice creams, and because it was my fault, if you really counted them all it was eight or nine.

  Patches began to say something else, then stopped walking. I nearly bumped into her.

  A mud-colored jeep was parked in front of our apartment. Harlan grabbed my shoulder with his sticky hand. “Someone's in trouble.”

  Ahead of us two women were standing frozen on the corner. They reached out to hold hands.

  “They've come with a telegram,” he said. “Probably someone's missing or maybe killed in action.”

  It seemed as if everything inside began to slide from my head down into my chest, into my stomach. My legs didn't feel as if they would hold me up. “I think I'd better go in now.”

  I waited to run until I was nearly up the path; then I stumbled up the step and went inside.

  Dear Eddie,

  I'm sending this letter even though they say you're missing in action. I know you'll be found by the time it gets there. In fact, I'm sure I saw you in the movie I went to the other day.

  Please write as soon as you're found. Mom and Dad are crying.

  Love,

  Meggie

  P.S. I thought about opening your envelope, but I guess not. We're going to open it together, right?

  Chapter Eleven

  I had to go to the movies. I couldn't remember the way Ronnelle had taken me, but I didn't want to knock on her door. She would have asked me to come in.

  She had spent the last hour in our kitchen, chopping vegetables and chunks of pork fat into a soup that simmered in a pot on the stove, a soup that no one would eat, but she had whispered, “Have to have food, sooner or later.”

  Something was wrong with my mouth; my lips were numb, so I couldn't talk the way I usually did.

  I went across the bare packed earth in front of the rabbit hutch and down the block. I managed the first few streets, then stopped to ask a boy on a bicycle. “The movie?”

  The boy pointed. In my mind I kept repeating the directions he gave me: “Two blocks, then left; one block, then left again.” Who cared if someone saw me and thought I was talking to myself?

  I had money in my pocket. I had taken it off the kitchen table, the newspaper boy's money; it was more than enough. I was probably going to end up in jail someday, but this was different from the Arnold the Spy money. I could pay the paper boy as soon as I got my allowance on Wednesday. I could even tell him that myself. He looked patient, kind of like a sparrow, with those skinny legs and no chin.

  It made me smile. I'd have to tell Eddie that.

  And then I realized. I had forgotten for a second. I might not ever see Eddie again.

  But the movie. Maybe everything would be all right after all. It might be the same movie, the same news I had seen with Ronnelle. I'd take a look at the soldier with the daisies on his helmet again. And this time I'd be sure it was Eddie.

  Please let it be Eddie. I'll never take ice cream again. I'll never eat ice cream again. I'd even ask Dad for the money. I wouldn't wait for my allowance.

  Dad at the kitchen table holding Mom's hand.

  I didn't want to think about that. Instead, I thought of Pathe News and Eddie on the movie screen. I wouldn't wait for the second feature. I'd go home, running all the way; I'd go into that kitchen with the scratched-up table and tell them.

  Would Mom be sitting there, her round face milk-bottle white? Still not talking, her fingers pleating her handkerchief? Dad next to her saying everything was going to be all right, like the song, “We'll meet again,” but with tears dripping from his chin?

  I saw him, I'd say. He isn't missing in action. He was marching along with a bunch of soldiers, wearing daisies on his helmet. He's right there in Normandy, France.

  Those daisies. It made perfect sense. Eddie loved gardening the way Grandpa and I did, the way Mom and Dad did. I came from a family of gardeners the way Harlan said he came from a family of heroes.

  Half a block in back of me, a voice: “Meggie?”

  It was Patches. She didn't say anything, just began to walk along next to me, but she knew. I knew she knew. Harlan came next. “Hey, wait up.” He had another Dixie cup in his hand. I was losing count of how many ice creams he'd taken, but I couldn't worry about that now.

  “Do you have to follow us everywhere?” Patches said.

  “She needs every friend she's got,” Harlan said. “That's what my mother said when Uncle Leo… you know.”

  Harlan's face was covered with beads of sweat. But even though I could feel the sun on my head, I was shivering, icy cold as if it were the middle of winter and I had forgotten my coat. I folded my arms across my chest, wishing I had a blanket to wrap around my shoulders.

  “Where are you going?” he asked.

  “To the movies.” My lips were still numb.

  “The movies?” He sounded surprised. “Anyway, wrong way, wrong time,” he said. “The movie isn't supposed to open for another hour or so anyway.”

  “Show me where it is. I'll get there early and just wait.”

  He finished the last of his Dixie cup and tossed it in the street. “I got Veronica Lake again,” he said.

  What was he talking about?

  “On the Dixie cup lid. I already have her twice. I'm looking for Gary Cooper.”

  “Where's the movie?” I asked.

  He chewed his lip. “Got any extra money?”

  “A few cents.”

  “That'll do it,” he said. “I'll go with you.” He reached down to pick up a stick.

  “I'll go, too,” Patches said, hopping on one foot. “Stones all over the place. But I can pay my own way.”

  I kept thinking of the two soldiers in the kitchen, their hats off. One of them looked as if he might be sick. A piece of paper, the telegram, was on the table, and everyone was staring at it.

  “Missing in action … June sixth … Normandy … Possible that he's still alive.”

  One of the soldiers had said that. It must be true. Of course it was true.

  If only I could go back to the apartment for a sweater, but how could I walk past Mom and Dad at the kitchen table?

  “There's the movie.” Harlan ran the stick
along the ground after him, raising dust and making a swish-swish noise. “In Detroit we sneak into the movies all the time.”

  I tried to listen to him. Lily did that, too. But I kept thinking of the words in my head: missing in action. What a terrible sound that had.

  “We can sit right here on the curb and wait for the woman to go into the ticket booth.” Harlan slid down against the telephone pole to sit on the ground.

  “Will you stop talking?” Patches asked him. “You're vibating in my ears.”

  I sank down next to them, watching Harlan make circles in the soft dusty earth with his stick.

  After a while a woman went into the ticket booth. I watched her arrange everything: a money box, a pile of blue tickets, smoothing back her long pageboy hairdo.

  “We're in luck,” Harlan said. “She's earlier than I thought.”

  We went into the empty theater. I was glad they were with me. Somehow it would have been terrible to be alone there in the dark.

  Just before the picture started, someone else came in. Harlan nudged me as the person went down the aisle. “There's Arnold the Spy.”

  I shook my head. “We should never have taken that ice cream.”

  “What's he doing watching a movie anyway?” Harlan whispered. “He should be in the army, overseas somewhere, like my uncle Leo was.”

  I couldn't say like my brother. I wished Eddie weren't in the army, wished we were all home. Fishing with Grandpa, the backs of my legs against the rough rocks of the jetty, the water swishing up, cooling my feet, my ankles.

  I wished the war were over. No, I wished it had never started.

  I didn't want to be the only one at home. How had I ever thought that would be fun?

  The picture began, and I tried to pay attention. It's an ordinary day, I told myself. I'm watching this boy from Iowa on the screen and he's on a train going into the army. And then I'm going to see the news … and what a surprise. Eddie will be marching along on the screen—and everyone thought he was missing! See? Nothing to it. I shouldn't have even written that two-minute letter to him. By the time it reached him, he would have forgotten he had even been missing.

  It was hard to pay attention, though. It seemed to take forever until the boy from Iowa was wearing an army uniform and it was over.