Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

“We’d sure appreciate hearing some of it,” Dad said.

“Oh, of course,” Shirley said. “Let me just see if I can find anything that would be of any interest to you.”

“Anything at all,” Mom said.

“Well,” said Shirley, “he says here—”

She stopped talking and started to blush, then quickly put the first page in back of the others.

“Well,” she went on, “he says it’s real cold over there in Virginia, and he’s simply exhausted when he gets to bed …”

“Roy said ‘simply exhausted’?” Mom asked.

“In so many words, he does. I was just trying to sort of sum it up, more or less.”

Shirley took the next page and the next and put them in back of the others.

“Oh—here’s a good part!” she said. She read from the letter: “‘There are guys here from Brooklyn, Texas, and even Maine. Some of them have pictures of their girls, but none of them—’”

Shirley stopped and went on to the next page.

“None of them what?” Mom asked.

“Oh, that was just sort of silly. There’s a real good part, though, that I’m trying to find.”

Shirley went through to the last page, then took a deep breath of relief.

“Here it is—listen to this.”

“We are,” Dad said.

Shirley read from the letter, with great feeling, like it was a recital in English class: “‘I’m proud to be part of this great outfit that has made its mark on history from the Halls of Montezuma to the Shores of Tripoli. No matter what the cost in sweat, blood, and tears, it will all be worth it to know that I am playing a small part in making my country and my loved ones safe for democracy.’”

“That’s us!” Artie said. “His ‘loved ones’!”

Shirley quickly folded the pages of the letter, stuffed them back in the envelope, and stuck it in her purse.

“That’s Roy, all right,” Dad said.

“That’s all?” Mom asked.

“Well, all that’s really interesting.”

“If that was the interesting part,” said Mom, “the rest must have been the stock market report.”

Shirley burst out crying. Dad stood up, and Mom went over and put her arms around Shirley.

“I’m sorry, dear. There, there. We’re all just a little on edge. Heavens, we ought to be happy Roy wrote you so many pages, whatever they say.”

“It’s the God’s truth,” Dad said. “That’s more than he wrote through all the high school he had.”

“See?” Artie said. “Shirley inspired him. Just like the girl in the Coty ad.”

Shirley stopped crying, and turned her moist red eyes toward Artie, confused.

“What girl?” she asked.

“In the Coty ad. Where it says ‘His duty to serve—hers to inspire.’”

Shirley burst out crying again.

“Oh, carry me—” Dad said and then paused, adding with a sigh, “back to ole Virginny.”

Mom stood up and smiled, making her voice sound real chipper.

“Let’s have the rhubarb pie!”

Artie figured Shirley was part of the family now that she had cried at their supper table, and he turned his War Efforts back to the part he’d been neglecting, which was finding a serious patriotic friend to replace Fishy Mitchelman for the Duration.

Artie discovered his man the day the Bearcub came out.

The Bearcub was the four-page newspaper published once a semester by the grade school kids of Birney, with articles about stuff like the 4-H Club and the School Rhythm Band, essays on Citizenship and Weather, and poems, mostly by girls. The biggest surprise of the new Bearcub was a poem by this quiet little guy who was new in town, Warren Tutlow. The poem went like this:

Artie looked over at Warren Tutlow when he finished reading the poem, and realized Mom was right when she said, “You can’t tell a book by its cover.” There was Tutlow, this scrawny little towheaded kid with glasses as thick as Mason jar bottle caps, a kid you’d never want to choose up for in a ball game. You’d never guess that on the inside he was a red-blooded, tough-minded person who burned with the fever of patriotism.

Artie waved his hand in the air and Miss Mullen called on him.

“I think we should all give a hand to Warren Tutlow for his patriotic poem.”

Everyone turned toward Tutlow and most people clapped and whistled. All except Ben Vickman, who waved his arm back and forth like he was trying to stop a runaway horse.

“He didn’t even make up the last line himself. He stole it right out of the War Stamp book!”

There were gasps of breath, and the tips of Tutlow’s large, protruding ears turned red.

Artie knew that Vickman was twisting things around because he was jealous. The truth was, the War Stamp books that were passed out to all the kids in school had stirring slogans to make you angry and one of the pages said “Slap the Jap Right Off the Map” and showed these pictures of ugly, monkey-faced Japs with their fang teeth dripping blood, so you’d want to buy the dime War Stamps to paste over them and cover them up. Once you filled the whole book with dime and quarter stamps it was worth $18.75, and if you waited till the War was over to cash it in like you were supposed to, it was worth a whole $25! Artie figured it wasn’t “stealing” to use the slogan from the Stamp book in a poem, it was helping more people get stirred up about the War, and he said so.

“Warren Tutlow wasn’t ‘stealing’ to put that in his poem. He was helping the War Effort, so more people would know about slapping the Jap right off the map. That’s what I call using the old bean!”

The other kids were relieved that one of their classmates wasn’t really a poetry thief, and most of them spoke up with “Yeah” and “Right” to show it was okay by them. Even Miss Mullen said, “I believe Artie Garber is one hundred percent correct,” and Artie, encouraged, spoke up again.

“If you ask me, we ought to make Warren Tutlow the Poet Lariat of the Class.”

“Poet Laureate,” Miss Mullen corrected, “and I think that’s a fine idea.”

Artie led the applause, happy to see Ben Vickman slumping down in his seat, defeated.

In the schoolyard at recess Tutlow came up to Artie and said, “Hey, thanks.”

“Shoot, I was only doin’ the right thing.”

They both kicked at some gravel, and then Ben Vickman walked up to Artie and asked, right out of the clear blue sky, “What kind of Gas Ration sticker has your old man got?”

“He’s got a ‘B’ sticker, what’s it to you?”

A “B” sticker meant you were doing something important enough to get more gas than people whose work had nothing at all to do with the War Effort and only got an “A” sticker. Since Artie’s Dad had to go out sometimes to help people get their car started, he needed the extra gas.

“Well, my Dad’s got a ‘C’ sticker, cause he’s a Doctor!” Vickman bragged.

A “C” sticker meant that the work you were doing was so important you could get about all the gas you wanted.

“Maybe so,” Artie said, “but your Dad’s no Lieutenant in the Army like you claimed he was going to be.”

“That’s what he’ll be if they ever call him up to go in.”

“Fat chance,” said Artie.

“Darn tootin’,” Tutlow piped up in Artie’s defense.

Vickman screwed up his face in an ugly sneer and leaned close to Tutlow.

“Oh, go write a poem,” he said.