Artie couldn’t move or think. It was like being caught in a bad dream.
“What kind did you get?” Shirley asked.
“Here—they said it was supposed to be the best.”
“Oh, yes—I’ve heard of this kind.”
“Shall I do it now?”
“Be gentle,” she said. “I know you will.”
Tutlow reached down and grabbed his own gonads, protectively.
“Holy Horseradish!” he gasped.
Artie lay frozen, trapped in the nightmare.
The whole woods were still now, not even a breeze stirring.
Foltz spoke again, in a low, excited voice that sounded like he was gargling Listerine.
“I dreamed of this, I dreamed of it,” Foltz said.
“And now you’re doing it,” Shirley said soothingly.
“You’re wonderful. Oh, God, you’re wonderful. No other girl would let me do this, I know.”
“There, there.”
“Is that too much?”
“No. It feels fine.”
“It’s not too cold?”
“No. The sun is warm.”
“Oh, God.”
“Mmmmm. Feels good.”
“A little higher?”
“If you want.”
“Oh, God. I’ll never forget this.”
“They’re doing it,” Tutlow gasped.
“You don’t know what it is they’re doing,” Artie said desperately.
“It ain’t touch football,” Tutlow said hoarsely.
Artie couldn’t stand it any longer.
“Don’t move,” he told Tutlow. “I’m going to see.”
Artie crept forward, moving dreamlike over the moist brown earth that smelled headily of spring, till he came to a rise in the land. He crawled to the top and peered over.
The first thing he saw was that Shirley and Foltz had all their clothes on, thank the Good Lord.
They were not doing It, but they were sure doing something weird and unnatural. Shirley was sitting on the rock, her skirt lifted halfway up her thighs, and Foltz was on his knees in front of her. He was rubbing his hands slowly, tenderly, on one of her legs. He was rubbing something onto the leg, some cream or lotion from a jar. Where he had rubbed, the leg was darker.
Now Artie got what was happening. Foltz was applying “leg makeup” to Shirley’s legs. Artie knew all about how nylon stockings had got too expensive because of the War so companies invented leg makeup for women to wear instead of stockings. Not many women in Birney used it, but evidently lots of working girls in cities who had to wear stockings to offices every day had gone in for leg makeup for the Duration. So that’s what Foltz had “dreamed of”—putting leg makeup on a girl’s legs! And that’s what Shirley was talking about when she asked him “what kind” he had got, and said she had heard of that kind—there were different brands of the stuff, like “Legstick” and “Stocking Fizz.”
Artie tried to tell himself that what Shirley and Foltz were doing was helping the War Effort by conserving the vital material of nylon, but he knew darn well that didn’t have beans to do with what was going on.
In his heart, Artie knew that he was watching something really pre-verted. In a way, this was even worse than doing It because this was so oddball. Shirley didn’t seem to be doped, but Artie hated to think she would do such a thing—or let such a thing be done to her—of her own free will. Maybe the insidious Foltz had weakened her will by using some secret Nazi methods of mind control. Maybe this was just a technique for getting her all sexed up so she’d really do It when he finished with her legs.
Whatever the case was, Artie, didn’t want Tutlow or anyone else to find out that Shirley was the girl in the woods with the German saboteur. Nor did he want the demented Foltz to do anything else to the girl that Roy Garber was going to come home to before he even had a chance to come home. Without exactly planning what to do, just knowing he had to do something, Artie leaped up and screeched out the Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko tribal war cry:
“Eeeeeee-yaaaaaa-yoooooo!”
Then he turned and took off like sixty, hurling his body forward, putting his whole throbbing heart and blanked out mind into running.
Tutlow answered the cry with his own bloodcurdling rendition of the Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko whoop, and at the same time, Shirley Colby screamed. Clarence Foltz, his voice undoped and militarily usherlike again, yelled, “Dirty bastards!”
The woods, so quiet and still only a moment ago, was now thrashing with runners. Artie could see Tutlow charging ahead of him toward Town, not even looking back to see if his counterspy comrade was okay or in trouble. Artie not only heard the noise of his comrade fleeing ahead of him, he heard the mad galloping steps of his pursuer pounding behind him. Artie looked over his shoulder and saw, only about a first-down’s distance away, the wild eyes and furious mouth of Clarence Foltz, charging for him like a skinny Bronco Nagurski gone berserk.
In a desperate maneuver to shake the enemy, Artie cut off the narrow path and plunged into the underbrush, flailing through tangles of bushes and branches that whipped against his face and arms, lashing and cutting. His throat and lungs were burning with the gasping sucks of breath as he forced every muscle forward, fleeing, knowing no matter how much he hurt it was nothing compared to being captured by a Nazi spy who would have no mercy, who might punish a counterspy to death, or even worse, by beating his privates to jelly. The pursuer was gaining ground, the heave of his breath and the crash of his furious steps coming closer. Artie bent forward as he ran, like he was stretching for the tape at the finish line of a dash, but then hands were on him, not around his ankles like a real All-American tackler would do it, but on his back, grabbing, pulling him down.
“Eeeeeeeyaaaaaa-yoooooo!” Artie screamed, but there was no reply, only the faint, distant sound of dashing feet as Tutlow fled to freedom. Hands were on him, jerking and pulling him over onto his back, pinning his shoulders into the hard ground. The enraged Foltz, gasping and trembling, bent over Artie, the features of his Nazi-disciplined face contorted with hate.
“Bastard. Dirty little bastard,” Foltz whispered with evil intensity.
“The other guy’s name is Warren Tutlow!” Artie blurted out, at once feeling sick with shame, knowing he had not for even a second been able to carry on the mute tradition of courageous silence pioneered by the former Boy Scouts who refused as soldiers to give information to the enemy even though their privates were beaten to jelly. The next thing that came to his mind made Artie fear he was going crazy, for instead of thinking up a cunning plan of escape or at least a cutting remark like something Bogart would say from the side of his mouth if brought down by a Nazi pursuer, all he thought of was the dumb line of a silly song: It must be jelly since jam don’t shake like this.
“Get up, ya little punk,” ordered Foltz, yanking his arm and then twisting it behind him so hard it felt like his shoulder was being yanked from its socket.
“March!” came the clipped command of the Nazi agent and Artie stumbled ahead, coughing, the efficient Foltz twisting his arm as he pushed from behind.
The one thing almost as bad as having his privates beaten to jelly was being brought to face Shirley Colby as a captive counterspy. She was standing on the rock, wearing her sweater and coat and skirt just like a normal pretty All-American girl except one of her legs was tan and one was white. When she saw Artie, her mouth opened like she was hit on the head and then her whole face turned from shock to the sour look of hate, making her almost ugly.
“Artie Garber,” she said. “You little sneak.”
Anger flooded Artie so quickly and fully that instead of looking down at his shoes in shame and sorrow he stared right back at her, his jaw jutting out defiantly, and said, “Takes one to call one!”
Whap!
Foltz gave Artie a sharp cuff on the ear, and Shirley shouted, “No!”
She rushed to Artie, falling to her knees in front of him and throwing her arms around him. She was crying now and sque
ezing him, and he didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who was in the power of whom, which one was doped or mind-controlled by which, or what in the heck was going on here anyway, so he just stood there, stiff, silent, suspicious and totally confused.
“Oh, Artie,” Shirley said, pulling back and looking at him through her tears, “I’m so sorry. I know you don’t understand. But I want to explain. I want to explain everything.”
“You traitor!” yelled Foltz.
Great Balls of Fire. Artie’s worst fears were true.
Shirley put an arm around Artie and held him beside her, like they were both on the same side against the Nazi agent.
“Artie’s my friend,” she said bravely. “He’ll understand.”
“He’s only a kid, for chrissake!”
“He happens to be the brother of Corporal Roy Garber, United States Marine Corps.”
“Oh, so we’re back to that,” said Foltz in a pouting voice. “The big War Hero. I should have known.”
“You should have known I’d be loyal to the man I intend to marry, since I told you all about it.”
“Ha,” Foltz said in that bitter, choked laugh of his.
“I think you’d better leave me and Artie alone for a while,” she said to Foltz.
“Sure! I’ll go, I’ll go all right, I’ll get my stuff and hit the road and go to the next lousy town in my lousy life.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort, Clarence Foltz!”
Foltz put his hand over his face. He was sobbing. Shirley got up and went to comfort him.
“There, there,” she said. “You just run along to your room and read some poems, and I’ll see you tonight at the Strand. I have to explain this to Artie alone now, and then he’ll understand everything.”
“I don’t want him to understand! I don’t even want him to know. It’s no kind of thing for a kid, anyway.”
“Oh, yeah?” said Artie. Made bold again by Shirley’s taking his side, and her obvious power over the Nazi agent, Artie spoke his mind.
“I may only be twelve years old, so I’m just a Boy Scout now instead of a soldier, but I’m still an American citizen, and I have a right to know about anything that threatens American freedom and democracy. Also, I have served as an Assistant Junior Air Raid Spotter.”
Both Foltz and Shirley looked blankly at Artie, like he’d just spoken Chinese or something.
Foltz cleared his throat.
Shirley made a dainty little cough into her fist, then spoke to Foltz softly.
“You go on to your room, Clarence. Artie and I need to have a long talk.”
Foltz sighed, and raised his hands about to his waist, turning the palms up, in a sign that meant What the heck, anyway. Then he shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather German aviator jacket and walked away, kicking at rocks as he went.
When Foltz was out of sight, Shirley sat down on the rock and lit a cigarette.
“Artie,” she said, “you have to trust me. You have to promise you won’t ever tell a soul about this.”
“That you were fooling around with a German spy?”
“A what?”
“It’s no use lying. I know darn well that guy is no veteran of Guadalcanal.”
“All right, but he’s no German spy, either, for Heaven’s sake.”
“Well, what the heck is he, then?”
“You mustn’t ever tell. He’s so ashamed.”
“Is he some kind of criminal?”
Shirley shook her head, then she looked Artie right in the eyes.
“Clarence is Four-F,” she said.
Artie knew she was telling the truth, or at least what Foltz had convinced her was the truth, but Artie smelled something fishy about it. He figured a guy who was classified 4-F in the Draft and couldn’t go to War had to really have something terribly wrong, like be missing an arm or a leg or be so blind in both eyes he could only walk with a cane and a dog. The only 4-F guy he knew was Ribs O’Mahoney, and even though he could see all right and get around pretty good, at least he had a pretty bad limp.
“So what’s wrong with the guy, anyway?” Artie asked suspiciously. “He sure can run fast, I’ll tell you that.”
“It’s nothing you can see, that’s what makes it so awful for him. People think a boy his age who’s not in uniform is a slacker, a Draft-dodger. Unless of course they think he’s already been in and discharged because of a wound. Which is why he pretends that’s what happened.”
“But what did happen? To make him Four-F?”
“Clarence has a punctured eardrum.”
“He stole that!” Artie shouted, seeing through the phony story right away. “He copied it from Leo Durocher!”
“What in the world are you talking about?”
“Leo Durocher is Four-F because of a punctured eardrum. It was in all the magazines. Foltz must have read it and used it for his own excuse for not going in the Army!”
“Who’s Leo Durocher?”
For a split second Artie thought Shirley was pulling his leg, but then he realized that smart as she was, she was still a girl, and so there were really important things she just didn’t know about.
“Leo Durocher,” Artie said patiently, “is the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.”
“Well, that should show you that even real he men can have punctured eardrums, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”
“But how do you know he isn’t lying, just to dodge the Draft?”
“Because he showed me:”
“His punctured eardrum?”
“No! You can’t even see it. He showed me his letter from the Draft Board.”
“Well, if it’s true, what’s he doing here? In Birney?”
“Running away. Everyone made fun of him. In his own hometown.”
“Maybe his punctured eardrum’s not the only thing wrong with him.”
“What do you mean?”
“Maybe he’s some kind of pre-vert.”
“He’s nothing of the kind. He’s just very sensitive.”
“You mean he’s like a girl?”
“No! Lots of men are sensitive. Well, not lots of them, but the ones I care about. You are yourself. Sensitive. So is your brother, but he tries to cover it up, not to show it. When I saw that side of him, that’s when I cared.”
“You care about Foltz, then?”
“Yes. I worry about him. He’s all bottled up inside.”
“He must be pretty sad, I guess.”
Shirley suddenly threw her cigarette away, only half-smoked. She got up and stamped her foot on it.
“He’s lonely. I’m lonely too. Don’t you see? We’re both lonely.”
She burst out crying and bent over, holding her face in her hands as she sobbed.
Artie stood up, feeling helpless, feeling like he was all thumbs. He squeezed his hands into fists and went to Shirley and placed a fist gently on her back, moving it a little ways up and down.
She sniffled and coughed, then straightened up and wiped at her eyes.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wish this horrible War was over. I don’t know how long I can stand it.”
“Don’t worry,” Artie said. “Everything will be fine.”
He knew it would. It was up to him to see that it was, and he was going to do his duty.
4
The first thing Artie had to do when he got back to town was lie to Warren Tutlow. He was sorry he had to do it, especially while he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Tutlow’s room with the curtains drawn and the candle in the Coke bottle lit, since they were supposed to be exchanging true information as fellow counterspies, but Artie knew the most important thing he had to do was protect Shirley. He didn’t want Tutlow snooping around Foltz, for fear he’d find out the guy had anything to do with Shirley.
“The poor guy is no kind of spy, German or otherwise,” Artie said easily, since that part was true.
“So how come he pretends to be a wounded veteran of Guadalcanal?”
/> Here came the hard part. Artie stared unblinking at the flame of the candle so his eyes would get weird and not reveal he was lying.
“The funny thing is, he really is. He got shellshocked so bad they had to give him an honorable discharge, since he wasn’t much good for anything anymore.”
“Then how come he has the book about Guadalcanal with stuff underlined, if he really was there?”
“He got shellshocked so bad he can’t remember what happened, so he reads the book over and over to try to remember stuff.”
“Wow—a real amnesia victim!”
“That’s not all. He got a case of the jungle rot, too.”
“Ugh! You think you caught any off him?”
Tutlow scooted back on the floor away from Artie.
“I hope not, but I sure wouldn’t want to hang around the guy much.”
“Then who was the girl, anyway?”
“Remember Beverly Lattimore?”
“You mean Roy’s old girl friend?”
“Yeah, well, I guess she’s been about everybody’s old girl friend.”
“And now she’s Foltz’s?”
“I guess she feels sorry for the guy, him being shell-shocked and all.”
“Holy Moly. If next year’s football team never wins a game, it’ll mean all the guys have got jungle rot!”
“I guess that’s the kind of stuff that happens in Wartime.”
Tutlow blew out the candle and pulled the curtains back, letting in the sunlight.
“I got the heebie-jeebies,” he said. “Let’s go play some HORSE.”
“Good idea.”
Taking care of Tutlow was one thing, but handling Foltz was another matter. Even though he was nothing but a skinny guy with blotchy skin and a punctured eardrum, he was bigger and older than Artie, and strong enough to make a good tackle on him and just about twist his arm out of the socket. Artie figured the best thing to use on him was psychology, but he wasn’t sure exactly what kind, and he couldn’t get anyone’s advice without spilling the beans about Foltz being too darn friendly with Shirley. Finally he figured he would just go see the guy and lay his cards on the table. His ace would be the threat of exposing Clarence Foltz for what he was—a 4-F failure who was besmirching the good name of the wounded veterans of Guadalcanal by pretending he was one of them.
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