Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

Since his pow-wow on the subject last summer with Chief “Pops” Hagedorn, Artie had kept his hands off his thing at night except to just check and make sure it was still there. As Pops had predicted, the Lord in his wisdom had provided “release of excess” around every week or so in a wet dream. The trouble was, the Lord didn’t make up the dreams the way Artie would have most enjoyed them. They were all tangled up and crazy, like the one where Artie was an escaped prisoner from a Florida chain gang, hiding out in the swamps, when he came upon this woman who had the body of Dorothy Lamour, sarong and all, and the head of Shirley Colby. She licked her lips playfully and started taking off her sarong just as a giant alligator came into the picture and started chasing Artie up a tree, and then everyone including the alligator and the Lamour-Shirley woman turned into monkeys. Artie would have imagined the whole thing differently and left out the part where they all turned into monkeys, but at least he woke up wet and “relieved of excess” so he figured he just had to relax and accept the fact that the Lord worked in mysterious ways, his wonders to perform.

For a week or so after Wings Watson got killed, Artie turned kind of sour on the War. He took thirty-five cents that he could have used to buy a quarter and a dime War Stamp and spent it all on a cherry Coke and banana split at Damon’s Drugs, and afterward read through the College Football issue of Sport magazine instead of trying to find out the latest stuff about the invasion of Italy. He went out to Roy’s rock at Skinner Creek by himself and prayed to God to keep Roy safe, and after praying he tried to concentrate his mind on sending messages to Roy by mental telepathy. Last winter he had read this article about how Beatrice Houdini, the wife of the great escape-artist magician, had given up trying to contact her husband from the dead. Mrs. Houdini explained to the press that “Harry could escape from anything on earth. If he can’t slip through a message for me from Heaven then the deal is off.”

What stuck in Artie’s mind was that Mrs. Houdini evidently believed in Heaven, and he figured he had a better chance of contacting Roy if he ever died since Houdini and his wife were only related by marriage but Roy was Artie’s own brother. As everybody knew and said all the time, “Blood is thicker than water.” Artie thought if he could contact Roy by mental telepathy while he was still alive, then maybe he’d have an easier time of doing it if Roy got killed and his spirit merged into the trees and clean laundry of the earth that made up the mystical realm of Heaven. Artie just tried to concentrate on sending Roy simple messages like “Hello, it’s me, Artie—come in if you hear me.” Sometimes the wind would stir in the trees and Artie thought maybe that was Roy signaling back, but there wasn’t any real proof and he concentrated so hard on sending and trying to receive the messages that he got these fierce headaches, so after a while he gave up and wrote Roy a long V-mail letter.

When he told about Wings Watson getting killed he got real mad at the evil, power-mad Nazis, and suddenly his old patriotism revived again. He realized that Wings Watson’s death had demoralized him, making him wonder about the sense of the War, questioning the weird events of the world that made a guy from Illinois have to go and get killed by a bunch of Germans way over in Italy, but now he saw that such brooding and questioning of the rightness of things was just the effect that the Nazis wanted to have on you when they murdered one of your own neighbors in cold blood. Artie vowed that he’d never be demoralized like that again, falling into the trap of doubt and despair. He pledged to himself as the brother of a fighting Marine that he’d renew his Home Front efforts with even greater zeal.

Artie wanted to find a more serious, grown-up way of helping the War Effort now. Buying War Stamps was still okay, and he certainly wasn’t going to waste his money anymore on binges of banana splits, but filling up the Stamp book was really just a duty that didn’t give him much of a charge anymore. Collecting scrap paper seemed like kid stuff now, and in fact it was the younger boys who had taken up that campaign, little kids in the fifth and sixth grades who were rolling their own red wagons down the street and knocking on doors for papers and magazines the way Artie and Tutlow had done the year before.

Collecting scrap metal seemed more serious because it was harder, heavier work and what you collected went directly into making armaments, but the trouble was most of the good stuff had already been rounded up in the big drive of the Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko Scouts last summer. Artie knew darn well that every farmer in fifty miles had been cleaned out of his last rusty shovel and broken tractor chain. When he tried to take two beat-up old pots from his own kitchen to start a new drive, Mom caught him and told him in no uncertain terms she needed those pots more than the Armed Forces did.

“But the thing is,” Artie said, still holding on to the pots, “only 7,698 more of these will make a whole pursuit plane.”

“The Air Corps can make its own planes,” she said, “but I’ve got to make our suppers.”

Artie surrendered the pots.

He went down to his Dad’s filling station and rummaged around in the garage till he found an old tire iron he figured could be made into a machine gun barrel, but Dad said it was essential to his own effort and he couldn’t give it up to the War Effort.

“Cripes,” Artie said, “there’s nothing any good a guy can do anymore on the Home Front.”

Dad took one of the rags from his pocket and swiped it across his big forehead.

“There’s plenty,” he said.

“Like what?”

“A guy can brush his teeth after meals, he can clean his plate even if it’s Spam or liver, pick up his clothes, and study his lessons.”

“Heck, that’s just regular stuff.”

Dad put an arm on Artie’s shoulder and spoke some philosophy.

“Keep your eye upon the doughnut, and not upon the hole,” he said.

Artie sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. He figured that meant you should take care of the little things and the big things would work out for the best. That’s the way adults always talked, telling you the best way a kid could help win the War was to obey his parents and teachers, which was okay for keeping the nation’s mighty War Machine running smoothly, but it wasn’t very inspirational.

Artie realized he’d better talk things over with another patriotic kid.

“We got to figure out something real to do,” Artie said.

Warren Tutlow nodded, knowing exactly what his buddy meant.

They were chowing down on nickel hamburgers and bottle Cokes at Bob’s Eats on Main Street, trying to figure out a new, glorious, and (hopefully) dangerous way to serve the Home Front.

“You listen to ‘Captain Midnight’ last night?” Tutlow asked.

“Sure,” said Artie. “They had the ‘Secret Squadron Signal Session’ on the air. Couldn’t you get the message?”

“Heck, yes,” Tutlow said. “I know how to use my Decodograph. All I meant was, Captain Midnight and his guys get to go to the South Pacific and outwit the Japs, and we’re still stuck right here in Birney.”

“Well, somebody’s got to be on the Home Front, I guess.”

“We’re veterans of the Home Front,” Tutlow said. “The little kids could do that stuff now.”

“That’s the whole thing. We got to think up something the little kids would be too little to do, something really big.”

Tutlow pushed his glasses back hard against his nose, which probably created pressure on his brain and made him think better.