He broke the rhubarb in two and handed a piece to Ed. Then he spread out the paper. ‘Dig the end in the sugar and then eat it.’
Ed did and Chris laughed at his face, at the strings of rhubarb which hung from his mouth.
‘Jeez, what the hell’s this?’ Ed said, his face screwed up.
‘It’s a bit sour, makes your teeth feel funny doesn’t it? But it’s nice when there’s nothing sweet left to eat.’ Chris was smiling and now Ed was too. Chewing but asking for more water.
‘I forget that there’s rationing over here. You must excuse us if we tread on your toes. We don’t mean to but little England sure takes some getting used to.’
‘My mum says we’re very lucky Mr Roosevelt decided to come in after all, even if it took Pearl Harbor to do it. She says we can’t win without you.’
Ed threw the remains of his rhubarb right across the field and Chris watched. He threw the remains of his too but it fell far short of the man’s.
‘Your mom is here with you, is she?’ Ed asked, stretching out his arms, flexing his shoulders.
‘No, she’s in London. How do you throw that far?’ Chris said, kneeling now, looking out across the field, trying to see where the rhubarb had landed.
‘I was a pitcher back home in college. You know, baseball. You call it rounders.’
Now Chris did know but the boys at school called it a girls’ game and sniggered at the American comics which showed pictures of the game. But this man wasn’t girlish.
‘I’ll show you one day. How about it?’ Ed leaned forward, pulling up another grass shoot, chewing it. He turned and looked at Chris who was nodding, his blond hair bleached almost white by the sun.
‘So we’re both away from home then, Chris Weber? Get’s kind of lonesome, doesn’t it?’
Chris nodded, packing up the sugar carefully, to take home and use again tomorrow. ‘I’d like to learn to throw,’ he said.
‘Well, we got a deal then. You don’t bring me any more rhubarb and I’ll teach you to pitch.’ Ed stuck out his hand and his teeth were strong and white when he smiled.
Chris shook his hand. It was big and warm and it felt good to be touched by a grown man again. It reminded him of his father.
‘Where you going now then, Chris?’ Ed was standing up, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand, lifting up his cap then brushing off his trousers.
A formation of bombers was coming in to land and Chris could not talk against the noise so they both stood and watched.
‘I was just going to look for some butterflies. You can come if you like.’
They walked slowly through the meadows and Chris asked Ed if he flew.
‘Yeah, I fly one of the Fortresses.’ Ed stopped as a Nymph rose from the wheat. ‘Say, is that one of those things that fly into the lampshade at night, banging itself to bits? Can’t stand the things.’
‘No, it’s a Nymph, a butterfly. You can tell them from moths because butterflies’ antennae have knobs on the end. Moths tend to hold their wings horizontally when they’re at rest too.’
‘You know a lot about this then? Do you collect ’em?’
Chris shrugged. ‘No. I don’t like the idea of killing.’
Ed nodded and started to walk again. ‘I guess most of us are like that.’ He wasn’t smiling now but then a Red Admiral flew up before them and Chris held out his hand to stop the man.
‘Isn’t that beautiful?’ Chris said. ‘I mean, it’s just so beautiful.’ They stood quietly for a moment watching as the butterfly wove its way over the wheat.
‘They get drunk on the rotten apples in the orchard, you know,’ Chris said, talking to this man as though he had known him all his life. He was so easy. Not like the English grown-ups. Were all Americans like this?
Ed’s laugh was loud.
‘Do you get butterflies where you live?’ Chris asked, moving the bag on his shoulder, then feeling it lifted from him as Ed took it.
‘Not much. We live in Montana, ranch country. Down in the valley they come but not up near the sage brush. We keep horses, cattle, sheep. Herd them, and there’s some hay too. It’s kind of beautiful there. Mountains all around with deep snow in the winter and hot sun in the summer.’
Chris stopped. ‘Do you ever brand them to stop the rustlers? And are there Indians?’
They were on the old cart track now and Ed sat on the oak which had been felled by lightning four years ago.
‘Sure we brand them, but we don’t have a big herd and it grazes behind fences now but in the days of rustlers there was a real need for branding. You ever seen it done?’
Chris shook his head.
‘Well let me tell you something you can tell your friends. Come the spring the cowboys would bring in all the cattle on the ranges, sort them out into the different owner herds. Then they’d brand the calves with a red-hot iron. Say, you got a blacksmith here?’
Chris nodded.
‘Well, the iron has to get that hot, then you press it against its hide and the smell and the sizzle is just something.’ Ed took a packet of Lucky Strikes from his pocket, tapping the cigarette on his fingernail, then striking the match on it too. Chris breathed the scent of sulphur pretending it was the smell of burning hide.
‘Now, there are all sorts of brands, put on with a stamp iron. Usually no more than four inches long, not more than seven inches in any direction but they grow with the animal you see. Now a brand’s made up like this. If it’s the Lazy M Bar you would lay an “M” on its side with a line underneath. Kind of neat eh?’
He flicked the ash off on to the ground. ‘But, oh my, did those cowboys know what they were doing, kid. They would have to drive a mile-long herd you know. They’d keep the stronger cattle forward and out of the way so they didn’t trample the weaker ones. They’d call that keeping up the corners. The cowboys would keep the herd together, signalling by hand, using Plains Indian sign language.’ He paused. ‘Hey, should you be back at home by now? It’s past four o’clock.’
‘No, go on.’ He could tell Mary and the others, but not Joe or his gang.
‘Now did I tell you about a running iron for branding? That’s what those darned rustlers would use. A straight poker drawn like a pencil to make any brand.’
‘But what about the cowboys. Did they shoot the rustlers?’
‘Yeah, they sure did. They were taking something which wasn’t rightly theirs, you see. And the West didn’t have the kind of laws you Britishers have. You’ve been here so darned long.’ He laughed.
‘What about stampedes? Have you ever been in a stampede when you’ve been moving your cattle?’
‘Not moving our own but I have when I worked one summer down in the south. You have to churn them around to the right when they’re spooked, always to the right and you have to have a good horse, one that ain’t going to run out on you. You just got to squeeze that circle smaller and smaller until the herd becomes compact and stops. It’s kind of spooky, I’m telling you. And there’re no Indians any more near us but there were some on the plains. They got real mad when the white man came but who can blame them?’
He lit another cigarette. ‘It all seems very far away now.’
‘Is flying as exciting as being a cowboy?’
Ed smiled. ‘Exciting isn’t the right word. We go up into the sky and try to find the assembly ship which is shooting off flares so that we can see it. This can take an hour, Chris, and then we fly in formation at high altitude, hoping our bomb aimers are going to do their job properly. And we won’t know whether any of us are going to turn out right until we actually try it and who knows when that will be. No. It’s not exciting. It’s tiring, it’s worrying. Ships collide, crash. It’s not exciting.’ His voice was flat now and he stood up.
‘I guess maybe being a cowboy is better. But I reckon I’d better be getting back now. I’ll see you again, Chris, teach you how to pitch, eh?’ He passed back the bag and punched Chris on the arm. ‘Nice meeting you, kid. You take care now.’
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Chris watched him go, his rolling walk, his cap on the back of his head and turned, his hand at his belt, wishing he still had his cap gun. He formed his hand into a gun and shot into the hedges that he passed. The shadows were longer now, the sun not so hot and his watch said it was five o’clock.
Joe was waiting at the edge of the village, beyond the grey stone wall where no one could see. Chris had forgotten him. How could he have done that? How could he have forgotten? He tightened his grip on the butterfly net and kept his hand as a gun. It gave him courage.
Joe lounged out into the lane, kicking a stone.
‘I want to talk to you, you German swine,’ he said, using a drawl he had copied since the Americans arrived.
‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ Chris said, pushing past because it was not the postal order day. The gang came out from behind the wall then and they had nettles in their gloved hands. They grabbed Chris and he fought but Joe hissed, ‘Keep still, or I tell the whole bloody village.’
He kept still while they rubbed the freshly picked nettles over his face, arms and legs as far as his shorts would allow. They then broke his butterfly net, again.
That week Laura wrote to Helen to come because Chris would not tell her what was going on, but something was because his limbs were covered in nettle rash and she was sure he hadn’t fallen, as he was insisting.
Ed walked on back to base. No, he thought, it was not exciting. He had not expected it to be somehow, maybe because he was older than most of the kids who volunteered or were drafted. For Christ’s sake he was thirty, so why the hell was he here? To get away from the ranch, from his father, his mother who loved him too much? Out of a sense of duty maybe? Who knew, who cared? He was here, wasn’t he?
He looked over the meadows. England was so green, that was what had struck him when they finally landed at Liverpool and travelled out from the bombed city. It was so damn green. But Liverpool hadn’t been green, neither had the run through bomb alley off Greenland on the transport ship because he’d travelled over by ship, not flown one of the Fortresses like some of the others. It had been cold and grey at sea and cold and grey in Liverpool.
Barrage balloons were moored to barges in the river the guys called the Mersey. There was a freighter with a torpedo hole, women with scarves round their heads. There were little trains with hooters, not whistles. Red tram cars but hardly any cars. Red Cross girls with doughnuts and coffee at stalls on the station. On the train there were closed blackout curtains, on the trucks which wound through these tiny little lanes there was just a wooden rail to hang on to.
At the air base there were only showers with cold water which shot up from the centre of a wide concrete dish and you washed yourself in the downfall. It was crazy. What a way to run a war; but as he walked he knew that he was thinking of these things rather than the daylight bombing runs they were training for.
Why daylight? He knew why. So that the Air Force could become a service in its own right, separate from the Army. They wanted to bomb accurately in daylight and win the war in a few months. Ed shrugged. But he wasn’t being fair. After all, the Allies did need to put the pressure on day and night but they’d forgotten there was no proper long-range fighter cover. They had forgotten there were a lot of enemy planes up there, a lot of anti-aircraft guns. They’d forgotten that the people flying these damned Fortresses were skin and bone.
He thought of the boy, the butterflies, the pitching. Yes, he’d show him how to throw. He was a nice kid. It was better to think of that than assembling at altitude, flying in formation, dropping bombs, spotting Messerschmitts, hearing the stuttering of guns, feeling the shudder of bullets hitting the fuselage. He was thinking in time to his footsteps and now he stopped, his hands in his pockets, breathing deeply, wishing there were just a few mountains around, making himself stop thinking of aeroplanes and battles.
Making himself think of the Red Admiral getting drunk on apples, tasting again the rhubarb. Crazy people, these Britishers, but kind of nice.
Helen came down when she received Laura’s letter. The trip was quicker now that the bombing was almost non-existent. The bus drove quickly down the lanes in the long evenings made longer still by double summer time.
She talked with Laura in the kitchen and with Mary too who would not say what was happening but only that one boy and his friends were ganging up. Helen fed the hens with Chris while Laura prepared salad and after they had eaten she walked with him, letting him take her towards the base, walking along the tarmacked road which was slippery with melted tar from the hot afternoon sun. They walked on the grass verge and stopped as Chris pointed out the hangars, the aeroplanes, the baseball pitch which had been marked out off to the left.
She listened as he told her of Captain Ed McDonald who was showing him how to pitch in the meadow near the pond; of Mary who came and watched. He talked of the butterflies he still watched and led her over the fields to the pond where they still had not recovered the tin bath. But he told her nothing of his fears, though she hugged him and said that she knew there was something wrong. He would not tell her about Joe though. No. His father had told no one of his battle so he mustn’t either.
Helen stood at the edge of the pond watching her son flick his hair from his face. The shadows were there in his eyes and they had been there for too long.
‘Right,’ she said, walking over to him. ‘Listen to me. I can’t make you tell me but I am going to teach you what an old boxer taught some of the lads in the shelter because you must fight back, Chris. Whatever is going on, you must fight back.’
She turned him round. ‘Now watch me. You hold your hands like this, see?’ She stood with her right hand forward and her left in close to her chin. ‘You lead with your right and then hit hard with your left. Now, you’ve got to keep your feet moving. Don’t stand still. You mustn’t stand still or they’ll be able to hit you.’
She stopped. ‘Do you understand?’ She was panting.
Chris nodded.
‘Good, now put your hands up and try and hit me.’ Her fists were up again and her feet were moving.
Chris just stood. ‘Come on, Chris, hit me.’
He put his hands up too but it felt awkward. He moved his feet but he couldn’t hit his own mother and so she hit him on the cheek and it hurt. He still couldn’t hit her and she hit him again, on the ribs, and now he circled her and jabbed at her, hitting her on the chin.
Helen stopped, her eyes blinking. It had hurt. It had really hurt. She smiled. ‘That’s right. That’s absolutely right. Come on. Again.’ They circled and jabbed for the next hour and both walked home with red faces but they were laughing and when Ed drove by in the jeep and hooted, Chris said to his mother, ‘That’s my friend.’
That night Chris slept because his mother had come and looked so funny trying to help.
CHAPTER 13
It was September, a month after Chris had first met Ed and each Saturday when the American was not flying they met out on the grass patch near the big pond to practise pitching. The tin bath was now up on the bank but neither Mary nor Chris had clambered in to drag it out. Ed had brought it in.
Chris had stood on the bank with Mary while the American threw out a four-pronged hook attached to a line. It had landed in the bath with a muffled clang and they pulled the line gently, hearing the hook scrape against the sides but it had caught on the rim and they were able to drag the bath back.
It had smelt and Ed had swirled water in it, then called them to help him tip it up and left it to dry. Chris had a plank now and Ed had brought along two empty drums from the Airbase and, after pitching practice this afternoon, Chris was going to lash it all together and see if it would float properly this time.
‘Come on then, Chris, let’s get going,’ Ed called from his position ten yards in front of him. ‘Now remember what I said last week. The pitcher’s got to deceive the batter, right. He’s got to produce pitches which are fast or will swerve or dip because the whole aim is to get
that man out. Now I want you to throw me a fast ball, OK? Mary, you get ready too, because I’ll be sending one to you soon.’
Chris looked at Mary. She had begun to come with him again because he had told her that he could fight now and one day he would and she was not to cry when she saw him with Joe. So far, though, he hadn’t fought. But the sun was too hot to think of all that now and Ed was waiting.
He was wearing a pitcher’s glove which Ed had given him. It was padded leather with a webbed pocket to help to catch the ball.
‘Remember to keep that foot in contact with the back plate when you throw.’ Ed called and Chris nodded, checking that his right foot was on the square that Ed had marked out with a stone earlier. He held the cowhide ball with his thumb underneath and his first two fingers on top, and close together. The ball was warm and smooth.
‘Blimey, it’ll be time to go to bed before he gets going,’ Mary called and Ed laughed.
Chris threw the ball then and Ed scooped it out of the air, curving his body, moving his legs.
‘That was great, really great. Real quick. Try catching this.’
As he threw it Chris saw the twist of his wrist and the ball came at him from right to left and dipped at the last minute but he caught it, hearing Ed’s shout of praise and Mary’s cheer.
Ed came over and stood next to Chris. ‘Right, Mary, you get ready to catch the next one. Let’s see if boy wonder can throw a curveball like that.’ He checked Chris’s grip. ‘OK, the grip’s the same as the fastball but the fingers are parallel to the seam. That’s right. Now get that twist right. Like this, see?’
Chris watched as again and again Ed twisted his wrist but did not throw the ball. The American had tossed his jacket over on the grass when he arrived and rolled his sleeves up above his elbows. He had left base for two hours only today because there was a briefing at 14.00 hours.
‘OK. Now try that.’ He ran back, standing towards Chris. ‘Move in a little, Mary. Ready to go when you are, Chris.’
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