“Do you remember that commander you mentioned, Colonel, um, whatever?” I asked.
“Now I do,” John said. “Wish I didn’t, but yeah.” He shook his head. “Guess there are some good things about not being too clearheaded about what happened to you in the past.”
“Do you remember anything else about him besides what’s in the letter?” Julie prompted.
“Just that it was a pretty constant thing, once he transferred to the medical corps battalion,” John said. “Of course we were all so busy, and most of the time I was assigned to an infantry platoon, so it could be days or weeks between times I saw him — or rather he saw me. That would only be when they pulled me from the front lines, out of the platoon, and instead had me working in the rear in a field hospital. And he was busy, too. He was an officer, but he was also a surgeon, and a darn good one. But I guess what you’d call a misanthrope.”
“What’s that?” Greg asked.
“Someone who doesn’t like people,” Julie answered.
“Oh,” Greg said. “I thought it was, like, somebody who was a racist, because of what you wrote about him hating the black soldiers.”
“ ‘Judge not, that ye be not judged,’ ” John said. “‘For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged.’ ”
We all stared at him for a minute.
He smiled and said, “That’s according to Jesus.” He smiled again. “But I guess Colonel Buncombe did seem to be that sort of person. From what I can recall. That was his name — what the censors blacked out. I can still picture him in my mind and still hear his voice — how he barked at you instead of just talking or giving regular orders. At least I can still see him and hear him from the first weeks he was there. After that, well, it all gets blurry again.”
“Colonel Buncombe,” Greg repeated. “That’s a funny name.”
“I believe it means ‘nonsense,’ ” Julie said.
“Really, Julie?” I asked. “You even know that word?”
“We had to learn it for the spelling bee in fourth grade,” she said.
“Which Julie won,” Greg said to John.
“Congratulations,” John said. “I never was a very good speller. And I didn’t know that’s what the colonel’s name meant, either. Would have been a good thing to know back during the war. I bet my fellow medics would have liked to know that our new commander was named Colonel Nonsense.”
And I bet John was just saying that about being a bad speller, and not knowing the definition of “buncombe,” to make Greg not feel dumb.
“How about another letter?” Greg suggested.
We read two more, both of them really short, both heavily redacted, which Julie told us was what you called it when the censors blacked stuff out. They were similar to the first letter and addressed to both John’s mother and his brother. Neither one said much.
The one after that was just addressed to Aaron again.
Dear Aaron,
I’ve really stepped into it this time. Colonel says he’s having me court-martialed. I could be kicked out of the medical corps, out of the army altogether. I could even be sent to jail. It’s complicated, and I’m feeling sick to my stomach just writing this. We’ve got the Germans on the run now and their POWs have been pouring into our camps. I’ve spent more time treating them than our own troops — mostly because there are so many of them, and because our casualty rate has dropped now that we’re .
“There’s not much here,” Julie said, after we finished. “About the court-martial or anything else.”
“It doesn’t ever say why?” I asked frantically. “What charges? What John did?”
Julie shook her head. “It just says, ‘We needed so much blood for transfusions, we had to go out and beat the bushes for donors. So that’s why I …’ ”
“Then what?” Greg asked. “So that’s why he what?”
“It doesn’t say,” Julie repeated. “Everything is redacted after that.”
We all turned to John to ask him about the court-martial, but couldn’t.
He was gone.
Greg and I met up at the Kitchen Sink the next afternoon to start our career as street performers. He didn’t like the word “busker,” which I guess is more something they say in Europe than in America anyway, so I gave it up, even though I thought it sounded cool to say.
Uncle Dex let us plug in our amplifiers inside his store. We had a couple of long extension cords he let us borrow snaking outside and down the sidewalk a little ways to the corner where we set up to play. I was so nervous I thought I would throw up again, like I did at the last all-ages open mic night. Greg was nervous, too, but the way he dealt with it was by telling a lot of jokes. Really stupid ones, too: Interrupting Cow, Interrupting Ghost, Interrupting Space Alien. And stupid puns, of course. He was really big on those. “Hey, Anderson,” he said as we tuned our guitars. “It was really foggy this morning. So foggy I tried to catch some.”
He waited until I sighed and said, “Okay, so what happened?”
He said, “I mist,” and laughed.
I groaned.
Greg opened his guitar case in front of us and we started playing — me doing rhythm guitar and Greg doing the melodies on lead guitar, though neither of us had exactly mastered our techniques quite yet. We probably didn’t sound awful, but we probably didn’t sound like the sort of street performers who were going to make much money.
But, boy, was I wrong. Every older person who walked by — especially the ones who looked like they could be our grandmothers — smiled and told us what a good job we were doing, and keep up the hard work. And then they carefully pulled a dollar out of their purses, making sure we could see how much, and put it in Greg’s guitar case.
“If they could pat us on the head and pinch our cheeks, they’d probably want to do that, too,” I said after one even told us how much we reminded her of her grandson.
“Hey, if it meant they’d throw in a little something extra, I wouldn’t mind at all,” Greg said.
We kept playing for an hour and a half, the same couple of songs over and over. Greg tried to get me to sing, but I was too nervous for that and told him definitely, absolutely, no. But then two old ladies stopped in front of us and listened through an entire song. I thought they would leave once we finished but they didn’t. One pulled out a five-dollar bill. I practically threw down my guitar and jumped over to grab it before she changed her mind.
Only she didn’t put it in Greg’s case. “You boys are just the cutest things,” she said.
“They sure are,” said her friend.
“Now if you’ll sing one of your songs, too, I’ll put this in with your other dollars,” the first lady said.
“It’s a five-dollar bill,” her friend added, as if we couldn’t see.
“Sure,” said Greg. “We’d be glad to. I mean Anderson would be glad to. He’s our singer.”
I was caught. I gave Greg a look that he knew meant I was going to kill him later, and then, as he started strumming and I joined in, I stumbled my way through a very shaky version of that hamster song of Julie’s. The two old ladies laughed their butts off the whole time, but at least they left us with the five once we finished. A couple of other people walked by during the song, too, and threw in some loose change.
After the hour and a half that we were out there, cranking through our very limited repertoire, Uncle Dex finally came out of his store. “Here’s ten dollars,” he said. “It’s yours on one condition.”
“What?” I asked, reaching for the money.
“That you take the rest of the day off. You’ve been out here quite a while, and it’s been great getting to hear you. But maybe it’s time for a well-earned break. What do you say?”
Greg shrugged and I did, too. We’d raised enough to help pay for the letters, so we were done anyway.
We had told Julie we couldn’t meet to practice that afternoon, so she had no idea what we were up to. Our plan was to go to her piano recital the next night and surprise
her with the money. Even though the letters hadn’t turned out the way we’d hoped, because of all that redaction in them, they still had taken us closer to solving the mystery of what happened to John Wollman in the war in North Africa.
At least we hoped so. John hadn’t shown up that night at my house, or at all the next day at school. And if he was anywhere nearby while we were playing on the street corner, we were probably lousy enough — and repeating ourselves so much — that he didn’t stay around very long. We still had a ton of things to ask him about. I was hoping the time away would give him a chance to remember more. Julie said maybe the court-martial had something to do with the German prisoners of war. And maybe John’s disappearance — his going AWOL — had something to do with it, too.
Julie’s recital was at the downtown library, not too far from where Greg and I lived, so we rode our bikes over that evening, even though it was dark. We both had helmet lights so we could see in front of us and so people could see us, and Mom made me swear we would stay on the sidewalks the whole way there and back.
We were just locking our bikes up at the stand in front of the library when we heard a familiar voice behind us.
“Aren’t you baby chicks out a little late on your own?” It was Belman, of course. “Shouldn’t you be back at the henhouse sitting in a nest somewhere with your mother hens?”
Before we could respond, somebody did it for us. “Oh, please,” said a little girl walking next to him. “Is that the best you can do?”
Belman laughed. “You’re right,” he said. “Must be off my game a little tonight.”
The two of them blew past us, trailing a middle-aged woman who must have been their mom. They headed into the library annex, which had a small auditorium and a stage, and which was where Julie’s recital was supposed to be.
“I’m betting that was Belman’s sister,” Greg said. “Same snarky voice.”
“Yeah, probably so,” I said. “Sounds as mean as him. Do you think she’s in the piano recital, too?”
“I guess,” Greg said. “Why else would they be here?”
“This town is way too small,” I said. Greg agreed.
Julie and her parents were already there when we walked in — sitting in the front row. Julie, maybe sensing we had arrived or maybe just looking around to see if we were there, turned and saw us and gave a quick wave. Her parents turned and waved, too. An older woman in a very flowery dress was playing some very complicated song on a very big piano up on the stage. The room was filling up fast.
“There are the Belmans,” Greg said, gesturing to the opposite side of the room. “And check this out.” He had picked up a program from somewhere. “It’s not the sister who’s in the recital; it’s Belman himself.”
“You’re kidding,” I said. “Let me see that.” I checked and sure enough, it was true. I guess it made sense. Belman played the keyboards in his band, the Bass Rats, but it never occurred to me that he might take lessons.
“Great,” I said. “We have to hear him play before it’s Julie’s turn.”
Greg had gotten quiet all of a sudden. He took the program, studied it for a minute, then handed it back. “Looks like about twenty minutes before he goes on.”
I shrugged. “I guess so.”
“I’ll be back,” Greg said. And before I could ask where he was going, he took off.
I was mystified but couldn’t do anything about it now, so I just took a seat on Julie’s side of the auditorium. She turned back and waved again, this time with a quizzical look on her face. She mouthed “Where’s Greg?” but I just had to shrug again. She frowned.
The first couple of kids in the recital were terrible. The piano teacher — the same lady who had been playing when we walked in — sat next to them on the bench and practically held their hands and stabbed their little fingers for them on the keys.
And then it was Belman’s turn. He was totally smirking as he walked up onstage. The piano teacher retreated — probably afraid of him and the way he was acting all super junior Beethoven. The way he sat down at the bench, you’d think he was at Carnegie Hall instead of a small-town library — though in fairness to our library, I’ve always thought it was one of the most awesome places around.
What was even worse than having to sit there and listen to Belman play was having to sit there and listen to him play and admit that he was really good. The title of whatever he was playing seemed to be written in German in the program, and I didn’t recognize the composer. It went on for a really long time, and I wasn’t sure Belman was even looking at his music, though a couple of times the piano teacher appeared back onstage to turn the page in front of him.
And then something dropped out of the sky (or out of the rafters up onstage) and landed on Belman’s head. An egg. And then a second egg. Bull’s-eye each time. He jumped up after the second one, wiped the yolk out of his eyes, then stared up to the rafters — just in time to see a rubber chicken also drop on his head, knocking him down, though from the way he immediately started yelling and cursing, I was pretty sure he wasn’t hurt.
Embarrassed, definitely, but not hurt.
He held the rubber chicken by the throat up in front of him, as if he thought it was the chicken’s fault, and not whoever was busy scrambling out of the rafters and bolting out of the library through a side door. Everybody in the audience — after gasping and a couple of them screaming — burst out laughing.
“Oh my gosh!” Belman’s sister shrieked, louder than anybody. “Is that my rubber chicken?”
Julie was standing now, too, with everybody else, only instead of cracking up about what had just happened to Belman, she was turned all the way around and staring at me, her eyes wide.
I turned my hands palms up, to try to let her know I was innocent — that it was just Greg, finally getting his revenge.
John Wollman didn’t show up that night, or the next day. When Greg, Julie, and I got together for band practice Sunday afternoon, we spent as much time hoping he’d show up and speculating on what might have happened to him as we did rehearsing for the next open mic competition.
“It’s got to be the court-martial,” Greg said — and not for the first time. We’d been through every conceivable theory. “He got so upset hearing about that from the letters that he just doesn’t have the heart to try to find out more.”
“More likely it’s just the energy drain,” Julie said. “I’ve said it before — the ghosts only have a certain amount of energy to reveal themselves to us. We wasted too much of his time on trivial things when we should have been encouraging him to save himself, or save the energy of himself.”
“But we never know how much energy or whatever it is a particular ghost will have,” I pointed out. “They’ve all been so different. I just hope John will manage to come back.”
“But we don’t have anything else to tell him if he does,” Julie said. She was more frustrated in some ways than any of us. She believed in research, and if you couldn’t find the answer to something, it was because you didn’t research hard enough, or deep enough, or in a disciplined enough way.
I knew — and I know — that there are some mysteries that all the research in the world can’t solve — like what becomes of our ghosts once we’ve figured out what happened to them in their wars, and what happens to them if we don’t.
I also knew it wouldn’t make Julie feel any better to tell her that.
After Friday night’s piano recital incident, we were nervous about going back to school and seeing Belman. Fortunately we didn’t see him over the weekend, so we hoped that maybe he would have a chance to calm down, and maybe even see the humor in what Greg did. Not that Greg was going to admit to anything. Nobody at the recital knew Greg was the one who dropped the eggs and the chicken except Julie and me, though obviously Belman must have had his suspicions. His very strong suspicions.
Oddly, Julie wasn’t even mad at Greg for messing up her piano recital. She still got to play, so that might have been the main
reason. And since Belman wasn’t able to finish, Julie was the bright, shining star of the evening, so that must have helped her mood the next time she saw Greg, too.
Finally, though, Monday came, and so did Belman. We saw him at lunch when he marched straight across the cafeteria to confront us, knocking over a couple of other sixth graders on the way.
Greg and I ducked, ready to dive under our table and crawl out through everybody’s legs, but Julie stood her ground. Literally. She jumped to her feet and held up her cell phone as if it was a sword.
“Hold it right there, Belman,” she commanded, and, unbelievably, he stopped — so quickly the Three Stooges collided into him.
“Out of my way, twerp girl,” Belman snarled. “I know it was that little ferret who dropped the eggs on my head.”
“Wasn’t there a rubber chicken, too?” Julie asked. “Don’t forget that.”
Belman actually growled. “I’m not going to forget anything. Now get out of my way.”
Julie shook her head. She was like Joan of Arc. I couldn’t believe it.
“I just have three words for you,” she said, waggling her cell phone at Belman.
“Oh yeah?” he said. “What three words?”
“Potato cannon photos,” Julie responded.
Belman froze. “You wouldn’t,” he snapped. It was an order, but Julie didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Oh, don’t think for a second I won’t,” Julie said. “If you do anything to Greg or Anderson, the evidence goes straight to the police. And to your mom.” She smiled and then added, “We might even tell your little sister.”
Belman growled again. I thought his head would explode. Then he spun on his heels and stomped off, this time bowling over his friends, who were still pressed up behind him so close they were practically on his back.
“Thanks, Julie,” Greg said, stumbling just a little from nervousness. “I didn’t know you got pictures that day at the cemetery.”
Julie laughed. “I didn’t,” she said. “I was bluffing.”
Greg and I kept looking over our shoulders the rest of the day at school. When I went to my locker, he stood guard. When he went to his locker, I stood guard. It made us late to most of our classes, but at least Belman wasn’t able to sneak up on us. He probably wouldn’t have anyway, thanks to Julie.
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