Edenville Owls

by Robert B. Parker

  The class was taught by a single lady named Miss Miller who played music on a piano in the corner, and would count for us as we glomped around the floor.

  None of us exactly liked dancing class. But they insisted we go, and it was a chance to hang with your friends and dance close with girls. Miss Miller insisted we dress up for class, so the girls mostly wore big skirts and white socks and loafers. On top they usually had sweaters, sometimes with a little dickey under the sweater, and sometimes they’d wear a blouse, usually white, instead of a sweater. When you danced with them, you could feel the sharp push of their bra against your chest. The bras were very hard.

  I usually had on gabardine slacks and a brown plaid jacket, and either a maroon or a green rayon shirt, with the collar open and spread out over the neck and lapels of the jacket. Most of the guys wore the same kind of stuff. Some kids wore sweaters instead of suit coats.

  We were also supposed to learn manners from Miss Miller. She was always saying “Young gentlemen” this, and “Young ladies” that, and acted as if we would want to be young gentlemen and ladies. Most of the guys, I knew, were not much interested in being young gentlemen. Most of us were interested in sex. We didn’t think that girls were; we thought they were interested in being young ladies. But we might have been wrong.

  The problem with being so interested in sex was that we didn’t really know how to express the interest, or what to do about it. Most of us knew the facts of life in a technical sense. We just lacked what you might call hands-on experience. So we made jokes, and talked sort of dirty, and danced as close as we could. And then retreated to our side of the room and huddled among our gender mates.

  The Grange Hall had a bad heating system, so it was always too hot or too cold in there. And the real issues of sex and uncertainty that made the air in the Grange Hall thick with intensity was far beneath Miss Miller’s plane of vision. She played her piano and counted for us and talked about “young gentlemen” and “young ladies.” If Miss Miller had ever thought about sex, she seemed to have stopped a long time ago.

  Dancing with Joanie was, of course, the most pressure. Neither of us could dance, and as we bumped around the barnlike room, we giggled a lot. But I also smelled her shampoo, and felt the hard pointy bra against my chest, and felt her thighs move. I almost closed my eyes in the effort not to think impure things about her. I didn’t want to have to tell Father Al I’d had impure thoughts about Joanie Gibson…I didn’t want to have them, she was too important to think about like that…I forced any bad feelings back down into the bottom of my soul…Sometimes I said several silent Hail Marys to distract me. They worked. Or it worked. Or something worked. I didn’t have impure thoughts about Joanie, but the effort of not having them was so powerful that sometimes it was difficult for me to talk.

  CHAPTER 36

  IT was about half past three in the afternoon. School was over for the day. Joanie and I were squeezed into the phone booth outside Romeo’s Package Store next to the Village Shop.

  “All my uncle John could think of,” Joanie said, “was the Veteran’s Administration.”

  The copy of the Medal of Honor list that Old Lady Coughlin got for Joanie said that Oswald Tupper was in the 1st Infantry Division, 26th Infantry Regiment, 3rd Battalion, Company L. Joanie had it written on a piece of paper along with the number for the VA. She dialed the number.

  “Hi,” she said. “I’m trying to locate my brother.”

  She held the phone away from her ear a little and I pressed my head against hers to listen.

  “He is a veteran of what service?” the VA woman said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Army? Navy? What service?” the VA woman said.

  There was the kind of impatience in her voice that kids always hear from grown-ups.

  “Army,” Joanie said.

  “And he’s missing?”

  “Yes, ma’am. He went to war and now it’s over and we haven’t heard from him and my mom’s awful sick…” Joanie said.

  “I’ll transfer you,” the VA lady said.

  We waited. Another lady picked up. Joanie told her story again. We got transferred again. Finally we got a guy. He sounded like a young guy.

  “…and I don’t know how much time my mom has left,” Joanie said.

  She sounded ready to cry.

  “I understand,” the young man said. “What is your name?”

  “Janie Krauss.”

  “And your brother’s name?”

  “Richard. Richard Krauss.”

  “Do you have any kind of address for him?” the young man asked.

  “I don’t know. I have an address, but I’m not sure it’s his,” Joanie said.

  “Let’s try it,” the young man said.

  Joanie gave him Oswald Tupper’s military address.

  “The Big Red One,” the young man said. “That would be European Theater.”

  “Can you look and see?” Joanie said.

  “Hang on,” the young man said.

  It was cold outside, with a lot of wind. But in the small telephone booth, with the door closed, the two of us were perfectly warm. We stayed with our heads together, listening. We didn’t want to talk in case the young man came back on the line. So we were silent. It took forever. But finally he was back.

  “Janie?” he said.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “That was the correct address for your brother,” he said.

  “Do you know where he is?” Joanie said.

  The young man paused.

  “No,” he said after a moment. “I don’t.”

  “Can you tell me anything?” Joanie said.

  Again the young man paused.

  “Please,” Joanie said. Her voice was desperate. “Please. I don’t have a father. My mom’s dying. I don’t know where my brother is. Please tell me something. Anything. Please.”

  “I was with the Forty-fifth Division,” the young man said. “At Anzio.”

  Joanie and I waited.

  “I’ll lose my job if you tell anyone I told you,” he said.

  “I’ll never tell,” Joanie said. “I promise.”

  “And,” the young man said, “there’s other jobs, anyway.”

  “I won’t tell,” Joanie said.

  “I’m sorry,” the young man said, “but your brother is listed as a deserter.”

  “A deserter? Like, you mean AWOL?” Joanie said.

  “Sort of like that,” the young man said.

  “Oh my God,” Joanie said.

  “If you find him,” the young man said, “he needs a lawyer.”

  “Yes, sir,” Joanie said.

  CHAPTER 37

  IT was too cold for the bandstand, so we went into the Village Shop. We had three nickels left from the phone call, so I went to the jukebox while Joanie ordered two black cows from Alice at the soda fountain. I played an Andy Russell record, one by Eddy Howard, and Johnny Mercer singing “Personality” with the Pied Pipers.

  We took our black cows to the far back booth and sat down.

  “Wow,” I said. “You were like Barbara Stanwyck or somebody.”

  “I know,” Joanie said. “I thought I might actually cry at one point.”

  I’m laughing on the outside, crying on the inside, ’cause I’m still in love with you.

  “I love Andy Russell,” Joanie said.

  “I know,” I said. “Girls do. That’s why I played him.”

  “The guy at the VA was nice,” Joanie said.

  “Yes,” I said. “I played Eddy Howard too.”

  “Oh good,” Joanie said, “which one?”

  “‘To Each His Own’.”

  “He does that great,” Joanie said.

  We listened to Andy Russell for a moment

  Friends see me out dancing, carefree and romancing…

  “How bad is it to be a deserter?” Joanie said. “Isn’t that pretty bad?”

  “I think they can get the death penalty,” I said.

  Jo
anie widened her eyes and pursed her lips and blew out her breath.

  “Yowch,” she said.

  “So you can see why Krauss would want to be somebody else.”

  “You think that’s what happened?”

  “He was in the same outfit that Oswald Tupper was. I say he deserted. Knew about Tupper dying and getting a medal. So he took his name.”

  “Wouldn’t he have been smarter?” Joanie said. “Not to take a guy who won the Medal of Honor? I mean, other guys must have gotten killed too, that no one would ever hear of.”

  “Maybe Tupper hadn’t gotten the medal,” I said, “when Richard Krauss took his identity. Maybe Krauss is a little crazy. You heard him talking to Miss Delaney.”

  I ate some of the ice cream out of my black cow with the long spoon that came with it. The Andy Russell song was over. Eddy Howard was on.

  …or its lovely promise won’t come true,…

  “Do you think they’d actually execute him?” Joanie said.

  “They’d do something,” I said.

  “God,” Joanie said. “If we turned him in and they executed him…wouldn’t you feel weird about that?”

  “I don’t think we’re going to turn him in,” I said.

  “So what are we going to do?”

  To each his own, I’ve found my own. And my own is you…

  “I don’t think we have to turn him in,” I said. “If he knows we know, maybe he’ll leave Miss Delaney alone.”

  “Or we’ll turn him in?” Joanie asked.

  “I guess so,” I answered.

  “It’s like we’d blackmail him,” Joanie said.

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “But what if he…did something to us.”

  “We’d have to be careful,” I said.

  “If a bunch of people knew…,” Joanie said.

  “He couldn’t do something to all of us,” I said.

  The third record came up on the jukebox.

  When Madame Pompadour was on a ballroom floor…

  “But we promised Miss Delaney we wouldn’t tell anyone.”

  “Actually,” I said, “I promised, and then I told you.”

  “Telling me is different,” Joanie said.

  Said all the gentlemen “Obviously, the madam has the cutest personality.”

  “Because?”

  “Because we’re best friends,” Joanie said. “We tell each other everything.”

  I nodded.

  And when Salome danced and had the boys entranced…

  “But she’ll know what we’ve done,” Joanie said. “Maybe she won’t like it.”

  “We gotta tell her,” I said.

  “Together?” Joanie said.

  “If you don’t want to,” I said, “I can do it alone.”

  Joanie nodded and put her hand out suddenly and rested it on my forearm. She smiled, and I felt as if I might start on fire or something.

  “We’ll do it together,” she said.

  What did Romeo see in Juliet?

  Or Pierrot in Pierrette?

  Or Jupiter in Juno?

  You know!

  CHAPTER 38

  IT was snowing again. We stayed after class until everyone else had gone, and then I said, “Miss Delaney, can we see you?”

  “Of course,” she said. “Come down front.”

  I got up and went and closed the classroom door. Miss Delaney smiled.

  “Are we going to have a confession?” she said.

  Joanie and I sat at the two desks in front of Miss Delaney. Outside the windows, the snow was different than the last snow. The flakes were small, and the wind was blowing the snow around. I looked at Joanie. Then at Miss Delaney. I took in a big breath.

  “We know about Mr. Tupper,” I said.

  Miss Delaney didn’t move. Her expression didn’t seem to change, but somehow her face got sort of sharp and hard, and she looked kind of pale.

  “What do you know about Mr. Tupper?” she said.

  I felt very small and stiff. I felt like if I moved quick, I might break.

  “We know he was married to you. We know about your son.”

  Miss Delaney’s voice was as flat as the top of her desk.

  “We is you and Joanie?” she said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Anyone else?”

  I shrugged.

  “Mr. Tupper,” I said.

  “Besides him.”

  “No.”

  Joanie was completely still at the next desk. I wanted to reach out and touch her. But I didn’t.

  “I thought we had a promise,” Miss Delaney said.

  “We had to break the promise,” I said. “So we could help you.”

  “You and Joanie?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Miss Delaney leaned back in her chair and the sharpness kind of went away. She put her hands over her face for a minute. And rubbed her eyes. Then she took her hands away and rested them on her desk.

  “What have you done to help me?” she said finally.

  “I…we…we know Mr. Tupper is really Mr. Krauss.”

  She nodded silently. She seemed tired, like too tired to fight about it, like she had given up.

  “We know Mr. Krauss is a deserter,” I said.

  Miss Delaney stopped nodding.

  “What?”

  “The army wants him as a deserter,” I said. “Did you know that?”

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t. I never knew why he took another name.”

  “Oswald Tupper really did win a Medal of Honor,” I said. “But he got killed in the war. He and Mr. Strauss were in the same place in the army.”

  “And Richard took his name,” Miss Delaney said.

  The snow outside was getting blown all around, so that sometimes it was going sideways, and sometimes it even looked like it was going up.

  “Have you talked to anyone else about this?” Miss Delaney said. “Anyone?”

  I wanted to lie.

  “I told the Owls a little about it,” I said. “They’re ready to help.”

  Miss Delaney stared out at the snow blowing around outside the second-floor window. Then she looked up at the ceiling.

  “My gang,” she said.

  “They won’t tell,” I said.

  Miss Delaney nodded. She seemed very sad.

  “What do you think of all this, Joanie?” she asked.

  “I think Bobby was right to try to help.”

  Miss Delaney nodded again.

  “If he weren’t a fourteen-year-old boy,” she said.

  “He’s very smart,” Joanie said.

  Miss Delaney put her elbows on the desk and her fingertips together and rested her fingertips on her chin. She tapped her chin gently and didn’t say anything. Then she took a big breath and blew it out.

  “I met Richard in college,” Miss Delaney said.

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said. “Colby College.”

  She looked at Joanie.

  “That’s why you wanted my yearbook.”

  Joanie nodded.

  “He was a hero in college,” Miss Delaney said. “Football star, very handsome, good student. The other boys looked up to him. Girls all wanted to date him.”

  Joanie and I were very quiet.

  “We began dating in our junior year, and we got married the day after graduation. Three months later I was pregnant and he was in the army, overseas. My son was born June 5, 1943. His name is John Strauss. I lived with my parents during that time. Richard was in Italy then, and we wrote each other often, and I sent pictures of Johnny. After Italy he went to England, and in 1944, he was in the Normandy invasion. And then one day he wrote me a letter saying good-bye. No explanation. Just good-bye for a while. He hoped he’d see me again. I wrote back. But I never got an answer. I wrote the War Department and never got an answer. My parents didn’t have much money. My father couldn’t support us forever. I had a baby. I didn’t know what had happened to my husband. I started looking for a teaching job. I didn’t w
ant to tell them about the baby, for fear they wouldn’t hire me. I didn’t know what to tell them about my husband. So I pretended to be single, and I used my maiden name.”

  It had started to get dark outside, the way it does in the winter before the afternoon is even over. It was as if we were closed up in this little lighted classroom, and the only people in the world were Miss Delaney and Joanie and me, surrounded by snow and darkness forever.

  “In January 1945,” Miss Delaney said, “I got the job here, starting in September. And a month later my husband showed up. It was as if I didn’t know him. He had a new name. He was angry. He wanted a divorce. And he wanted custody of the child.”

  Miss Delaney shook her head.

  “He didn’t even know Johnny. He’d never seen him before. I asked him what had happened. He said I wouldn’t understand. It was the war, he said. If you hadn’t been in the war, you couldn’t understand. He barely looked at Johnny when he met him. He just wanted custody. Like of an object. Like I want that lamp.”

  She sat thinking about it.

  “So you got divorced?” Joanie said.

  “Yes. But no custody. He said it didn’t matter. He would take the child anyway. I couldn’t take this job and take care of Johnny too. My father took a job in another city. Not much of a job. My father is a laborer and spent everything he had to get me through college. They moved there and took Johnny, so Richard couldn’t find him. I send them money every month. It’s why I need this job.”

  Miss Delaney smiled kind of sad.

  “Johnny has been with them since he was born,” she said. “He’s comfortable with them. I probably miss him more than he misses me.”

  “And you took this job,” I said.

  “Yes, as soon as my parents left with Johnny. A month later Richard moved to the next town and started his church of whatever. And began badgering me about Johnny.”

  “He hit you,” I said.

  “Yes,” Miss Delaney said. “He has threatened to kill me. But he doesn’t know where the child is, and I don’t think he would kill me unless he did.”

  “Then he would?” Joanie said.