Willow Run

by Patricia Reilly Giff

  “Arnold,” I called, my voice with that rusty sound again. He stopped ahead of me and turned.

  I walked toward him slowly, taking baby steps, until I couldn't make myself go any closer. “Do you know Harlan Tucker?” I couldn't look at his face; I stared down at the Queen Anne's lace and buttercups in the field in front of me.

  He raised one shoulder. “Dirty-looking kid? The one who wears the World's Fair pickle?”

  “That's what I want to talk to you about.” I reached into my pocket, feeling the grosgrain ribbon and Grandpa's medal under my fingers. I held it tight.

  “A World's Fair pickle?” He took a few steps closer to me, and I wondered if I should run, so I put up one hand, almost like a policeman, and he stopped.

  “Something else,” I said. “And something about me, too.”

  Someone was calling him from the house. I looked up. “You have a mother?”

  He glanced over his shoulder and waved. “Of course I have a mother.”

  “We took your ice cream,” I said. “Lots of ice cream.” And then all of it was spilling out, words tumbling one over another: my allowance, and Uncle Leo's dollar bill, the only thing Harlan had left of him.

  “You wrote the note about the key,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “I thought so. You were always writing things.…”

  “You watched.…”

  “I see everything,” he said.

  I looked up at him, surprised to see that his face had rearranged itself. It was round, and acne marks dotted his cheeks. He didn't look angry or even like a spy.

  And then I realized I had said it aloud, gasped it aloud through my crying. “You don't look like a spy.”

  “Spies don't look like spies,” he said. “They look like ordinary people.”

  But then he took a step backward, and I could see the red come into his face. “I'm not a spy.” He raised his hand to his mouth, and his fingers weren't quite steady. “But I'm a coward.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  I turned the corner to see Dad standing on the front step. “Meggie,” he called, and I went toward him, still thinking of Arnold. Arnold with tears spilling down over those acne marks on his cheeks.

  I had wanted to run away from him, but I hadn't. The whole time we talked I had kept one hand in my pocket, clutching Grandpa's medal so hard it made dented crescents in my palm.

  “Where have you been?” Dad said now. “Mom is home, we're both waiting.” He pushed up his glasses so he looked like an owl. “And you have mail again, Meggie.”

  I looked up at him quickly, but he shook his head. Not Eddie, then.

  Mom was in the kitchen. The wash on the line was dry now, and she was sorting socks, dark ones for Dad, stripes and plain for me. And on the table was a letter in a pale blue envelope and a package addressed to me.

  “Like Christmas.” Mom rolled the socks into balls and piled them into neat mounds on the table.

  I didn't know which to open first, so I slit open the blue envelope with neat slanted handwriting and circles instead of dots over the i’ s. “It's from Virginia Tooey.”

  Mom glanced at Dad. “I never thought of Virginia,” she said. “I should have written. If only I had thought …” She broke off and went to the counter to begin a Spam loaf. “Poor Virginia. What did she say?”

  I opened the letter: “Dear Meggie, I'm so glad you wrote to me. I know about Eddie. All of Rockaway does, every single one praying for him. But I want to tell you something, Meggie. I know he's coming home. Just believe it. He promised me. Love, Virginia.”

  For a moment there was silence. Then Mom turned from the sink. “It's the first time,” she said, “the first one who has given me hope.” She raised both hands almost the way the choir in church did on Sundays. “All of Rockaway praying.”

  Have hope. That's what Grandpa would say.

  Haf hope. Mom came to the table. She leaned over to take the letter from me and held it up to her face. “I believe it,” she said. “I have to believe it.” She put her arms around me. “And you, Meggie, writing to her. How grown-up you've become this summer.”

  I sat there with Dad across the table, nodding at me and smiling a little. He reached out to reread the letter as Mom went back to the counter. He cleared his throat. “I like Virginia Tooey, I really do.”

  We listened to Mom stirring the wooden mixing spoon against the bowl. She began to hum the pilot song Ronnelle was always singing: “Coming In on a Wing and a Prayer.” It was the first time I had heard her sing since the soldiers had come to tell us Eddie was missing.

  I reached for the package next. I knew what it was even before I saw Lily's large handwriting on the front. I unwrapped it slowly, telling Mom and Dad that I had asked for Eddie's picture, and when the last piece of paper fell away, there was his face.

  As I looked at it, it was as if something happened inside my head; things rearranged themselves the way they had with Arnold; the look of Eddie slid together in my mind like a puzzle I had just finished. I could see him so clearly it was as if he were standing right there in front of me.

  Not the Eddie in the picture, who was a little fuzzy, but Eddie himself now, Eddie yodeling, dancing down the front step, Eddie swinging me around once on my birthday.

  I closed my eyes so I'd never forget again.

  Mom came back to the table, wiping her hands on her apron. “He's coming home someday,” she said.

  Dad reached out and covered my hand. “Good, Meggie, so good that you asked for the picture.” He propped it up against the napkin holder on the table and stared at it, nodding. “With Eddie smiling at us here, it almost seems as if we're a family again.”

  “If only …” Mom broke off and went back to the counter.

  I knew she was thinking the same thing I was. I rolled up the string and folded the wrapping paper into a square. If only Grandpa were there in the kitchen to feel the way we did, that Eddie would come home someday.

  When everything was cleared away, I realized there was another envelope underneath, an official-looking letter with its row of stamps and the bold black return address: Hot-O Soup Company, Battle Creek, Michigan.

  Mom and Dad watched me. “We hid it underneath for you, Meggie,” Dad said. “It could be a great surprise.”

  “I wonder …” My heart began to thump. I tore it open and began to read: “Dear Miss Dillon, You have won an honorable mention in our soup contest. We are delighted to send you this certificate and five dollars. Your entry warmed our hearts as our soup does for the soldiers, sailors, and marines who are fighting for us overseas.”

  I had won something at last.

  “Oh, Meggie,” Mom said. “Won't Grandpa be happy when he hears about this?”

  All those contests Grandpa and I had entered. We were going to see the sights in New York City with our first winnings, and now he wasn't even here.

  “What did you say to win this?” Dad asked.

  I blinked. “I don't know. I wrote so many.…”

  In celebration, Mom opened a jar of the strawberry jam that hadn't broken the first day. We slathered it on toast and ate it with the Spam loaf, looking at Eddie's picture with my brand-new five-dollar bill propped up in front of it.

  And then we realized how late it was: time for Dad to go to work, and for Mom and me to go to bed. I wondered if Harlan had gotten home yet. I wondered where Eddie was.

  I knelt on the floor in my bedroom, reaching under the mattress to feel Eddie's envelope, and pulled it out.

  I held it up to my face the way Mom had held Virginia Tooey's letter, but I didn't open it. Just believe it. He's coming home. And then I put it back under the mattress.

  I lay in bed and tapped on the wall to talk to Patches. She was half asleep, but I told her about Harlan with the dollar bill. I didn't tell her about the rest of it, though. It was all too much to think about.

  “Harlan wasn't such a bad kid after all,” she said, and her voice trailed off.

  I was
still wide awake and remembered Grandpa's seeds and the little salad garden I had planted outdoors. It wasn't as dark in the bedroom tonight as most nights. The kitchen window reflected a piece of the moon so it spilled out onto the linoleum floor. Just this morning, I told myself, none of the seeds had begun to grow. Not one. But somehow tonight might be different. Have to have hope.

  I pulled on my Snow White bathrobe and tiptoed through the kitchen, taking the flashlight off the counter-top. I opened the door and the two cats followed me outside to sit with me on the stoop, cool after the hot summer day.

  I didn't have to worry about Arnold the Spy coming after me. I knew now that he couldn't sleep, that he wandered around the streets of Willow Run every night trying to think of what to do.

  I didn't let myself look at the little patch of earth right away; instead, I listened to someone playing the Victrola in one of the apartments across the street. It was that song that had followed us across the country: “We'll meet again.”

  I shined the flashlight over the side of the step. There weren't any shoots yet, but I thought of what Grandpa would say. Haf to have hope.

  “I do,” I told the little patch of dirt. “I have hope for Eddie.”

  Dear Harlan,

  I told you I would write. Here is your uncle Leo's dollar bill.

  Arnold said to tell you that he couldn't take it.

  He said he knows you feel sorry about the ice cream and that's enough for him.

  I found out about Arnold. He's not a spy, but I can't tell you the rest.

  Your friend,

  Meggie

  Chapter Twenty

  The days were cooler now, the sky that brilliant blue just before fall comes; August was over and we were into September. The Allied soldiers had swept their way across France and were heading into Germany, and it was the Wednesday after Labor Day, the first day of school.

  Patches was outside ahead of me, wearing her shoes, twirling around. My shoes were the scratched ones from the spring, but I didn't care. Dad had shined most of the marks away, and Ronnelle had made matching plaid hair bows for Patches and me.

  On the way to school, I met Terry from the factory, and he grinned up at me, saying that one of these days the factory was going to shut down. “The war in Europe will end by next spring, and the last plane will come along the assembly line soon,” he said. “Every one of us will sign our names on the nose cone so the plane will carry us overseas. Even Henry Ford.” He put his hand on my shoulder. “The way you did with your letter.”

  I waved to him over my shoulder. Home by next spring.

  I spent the day in school, third seat, third row, next to Patches, and it wasn't one bit different from my school in Rockaway, except that now I looked at everyone's shoes, wondering how many kids were wearing them for the first time.

  Just before dismissal Mrs. Roe scraped the chalk across the blackboard, writing in large white letters. I watched the two words appear, carpe diem, and was so surprised I didn't even raise my hand when she asked if any of us knew what it meant. Next to me, Patches called out, “Seize the day,” and smiled at me. I had told her about Grandpa and his sayings. I thought back to the letter I had written the day I had talked to Arnold. Carpe diem.

  “Yes,” Mrs. Roe said. “That's what we'll do this year. Take the initiative, learn what we have to…”

  A speech I'd heard every year since I began school.

  I reached into my pocket and touched Grandpa's medal. I held it as we lined up to march out of school, and instead of going home, I said, “See you in a little while,” to Patches, and went to look for Arnold, remembering that day he had said he was a coward:

  “I have my draft notice,” he said, his eyes filling. “I've had it for almost the whole summer.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “My birthday was in June. I was supposed to go into the service. …”

  Eddie, eighteen. My mother: “What have you done?”

  “I have a garden out back,” Arnold said. “My mother can't care for it alone. What will happen to the vegetables, the fruit …” He stopped. “That's not really it. I'm afraid to go.”

  “Afraid,” I said like an echo.

  “I see terrible things at the movies. People killing each other. Blowing each other up. Men being captured and held in terrible prison camps.”

  I put the dollar bill, still folded, into Arnold's hand. “That's from Harlan. He knows it isn't enough, not nearly enough, but he'll send you more someday.”

  Arnold looked down at the money. “I'm the last one to drive the ice cream truck. We've been passing it down. First my brother Stan. He's in the Pacific now. Then Charlie, on a ship somewhere.”

  I handed him a little pile of money, dimes and nickels. “This is for the ice cream I took. I still owe you two dimes, but don't worry, as soon as I get my allowance …” I broke off. “I'm never going to steal anything again. It's not worth it.” I looked across the field at the daisies. “It gives the ice cream a strange taste.”

  “That's what being a coward does,” he said. “It changes the taste of everything.”

  And now, after that first day of school, with the blue sky overhead, I was on my way to find him, to tell him part of the letter I had just received from Grandpa.

  I looked everywhere, and was about to give up when I saw the SUNDAE, MONDAY, AND ALWAYS truck parked across the street from the movie theater. I waited until he came outside, blinking in the daylight.

  He saw me at the same time. “I've been looking for you for the last few days,” he said. “Want an ice cream?”

  I shook my head, watching two kids come down the street. I waited until he had handed them sundaes and they were halfway down the block again. Then I pulled out the medal to show him. “It was my grandfather's,” I said.

  He took it in his hand, holding it up. “He must be a great guy,” he said.

  I nodded, and then I said something I never thought I'd say. “He was born in Germany. You can tell because he has an accent.” I rushed on. “At home in Rockaway, boys covered his window with a swastika just because of it.”

  “Terrible.” Arnold shook his head. “I've been thinking about it. Everyone around me is doing the best he can: Harlan with the dollar bill, my brothers. You know, there's even a guy who's only about three feet tall. He spends his days in the tiniest spaces building planes.” He shuddered. “I don't know how he can do that, squeezed in …” He wiped his eyes. “Everyone's doing something but me.”

  He looked down the street, his lips pressed together; then he nodded. “You're right. I have to go.”

  I raised my shoulders in the air. “I didn't say that.”

  We both smiled; then I took a breath. “The medal is for you to take with you. I wrote to my grandfather…”

  He shook his head.

  “I can't.” “Really you can. We would be glad. My grandpa and I.”

  I thought of Grandpa the day I had said goodbye to him, Grandpa touching the medal. “Grandpa said he was afraid. And once, he said it was all right for me to be afraid.”

  Arnold was smiling just a bit. “And will the medal keep me safe?”

  “I…I don't think so,” I said carefully. “But it would be good to have anyway, something to hold on to.” And in back of my mind: Haf to have hope.

  He nodded. “I don't even know your name.”

  “Margaret,” I said. “I'm named for my grandmother.”

  He reached into the freezer and brought out an ice cream bag. “Put down your New York address. I'll send it back to you when the war is over. I'll never forget.”

  As I took the paper I could see his hands were trembling; he was still afraid. I would be afraid, too. I scribbled my address on the bag. “It's just a loan,” I said. “I'll need it back.”

  “I promise.”

  “Then you'll have to be all right,” I said. “That's what I was thinking.” He put his hand on top of my head. “My luck has changed. Ever since the first day you came an
d made a face at me.”

  I touched the medal once more. And then from up the street I heard Ronnelle calling my name, calling and waving her hand.

  I turned to go, but Arnold called after me. “When this is over, I'm going to spend my days making sure wars like this never happen again.”

  “How?”

  “That's what we all have to figure out,” he said. “Every one of us.”

  Now Lulu was calling. “Hurry, Honey. Hurry.”

  And Ronnelle. “Oh, Meggie. Come fast.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Ronnelle's hair was rolled up in a dozen rag curlers; a thick layer of cream almost covered her face. She reached out and hugged Lulu and me at the same time, twirling us around together, leaving a smear of the cream on my cheek. “Oh, Meggie,” she said, “I've gotten the best news!”

  We went back to sit in her living room and she picked up her husband Michael's letter. “It's dated days ago. On his way home by ship.” She sounded breathless. “He'll take a train and meet me in Detroit.”

  “When?” I asked. “I don't know.” She shook her head, the curlers bouncing. “He didn't know.” She leaned forward. “I'm just going.

  This weekend I'll wait in the station, a day, two days at most. It'll be crowded with people coming and going. Safe. I'll just be glad to be there.”

  I pictured what it would be like for us to hear that Eddie was coming on a train to Detroit. Ronnelle knew what I was thinking. She took my hand, and then we both noticed that, on the floor, Lulu was pulling at my shoelaces, knotting them together, humming a song without words that sounded like the Uncle Don song on the radio.

  “There's something I'd like you to do for me, Meggie,” Ronnelle said. “We'll ask your mother to be sure it's all right. Will you take care of Lulu for me? I can't bring her to the station. It's just during the day until I come back. The babysitter will be here at night.”