Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

That just showed how much Caroline knew about what was going on in the War. Even if it had been a real Air Raid practice, the last thing a person should do was stand in Main Street and yell up at a Boy Scout carrying out Civil Defense duties on top of the Odd Fellows Building.

Now a whole bunch of people had come out of shops and stores on Main Street to look up and see what was happening.

“Better get down from there, boy,” some old guy in overalls yelled. “You ain’t got any net below.”

Artie brought his arms down, put both semaphore flags in one hand, and headed for the fire escape. He didn’t want to get bawled out by anyone from the Odd Fellows Building about using their roof without permission, especially since his Dad wasn’t even a member of the Odd Fellows Lodge but belonged to the Moose. Besides, Artie would have had to make up a real whopper to cover up the secret truth that he was counterspying on a suspected Jap.

By the time he climbed down from the top of the building to the street the crowd had broken up and everyone had gone on about their business, except for Caroline Spingarn.

She was standing there balancing on one foot while she picked at a scab on her right knee. Artie thought she looked like the picture of a whooping crane in the seventh grade Science Studies book. Since the time she’d come out to visit him at Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko in the middle of the summer, Caroline had grown a couple of inches and her arms and legs stuck out like skinny poles from the little dresses she always wore that looked like they’d shrunk now. She was always falling down in the schoolyard or tripping over herself in the halls and the little bows and ribbons she wore in her hair looked silly now instead of cute. The worst part was that she kept following Artie around all the time and asking him stupid questions.

“So what were you doing on top of the Odd Fellows Building?” she asked him, picking off a tiny piece of scab and holding it between her fingers like it was some kind of scientific specimen.

“None of your beeswax,” Artie said, and started walking off down Main with a swift, military step.

Caroline scrambled to catch up with him.

“You’re not even nice anymore,” she whined. “Do you know that?”

“I’m busy,” he said. “Don’t you know there’s a War on?”

“That’s no excuse,” she said, “Why don’t we go have a Coke at Damon’s?”

“Why don’t you go home and play with your paper dolls, Little Imogene?”

That’s who Caroline really reminded him of these days—Little Imogene, the bratty kid in the funny papers.

“Did I hear you right, Artie Garber?”

“If you didn’t, I’ll make it as plain as the nose on your face. You’re getting to be a real pest, Caroline Spingarn.”

Blotches of red came out on Caroline’s pale, squinting face.

“You’ll be sorry you ever said that, Artie Garber.”

“Oh, go fly a kite.”

Caroline burst out crying and ran, her knees knocking together and arms flying crazily.

For a moment, Artie had a panicky feeling that she might really try to do something to make him sorry. But he realized that was crazy. What could she do? She was only a girl.…

Back up in Tutlow’s bedroom with the curtains drawn and the candle flickering from the Coke bottle, Artie complained that Caroline was worse than a “counter-counterspy.”

“She can’t help it,” Tutlow said. “She’s just a girl.”

“Well, I’m through with girls for the Duration. I swear on my oath as a counterspy.”

“Never mind,” Tutlow said. “We got the info we need anyway. Wu Sing leaves his laundry every day at noon to go to the bank, which takes about ten minutes, and again he closes up at six and walks around and around the Bandstand in the Town Square.”

“That sure is suspicious,” Artie said. “You think we ought to check underneath the Bandstand for hidden explosives?”

“Maybe he’s only taking his constitutional,” Tutlow said. “Anyway, the first thing we got to do is, while Wu Sing is out going around the Bandstand, we ought to get into that hidden back room of his and search for evidence.”

“You mean break into the laundry?”

“It’s not ‘breaking in’ if it’s counterspy work.”

“How do we get inside, though?”

“There’s got to be something for opening doors on the Official Scout jackknife.”

There was. It might not have been intended on purpose for jimmying doors open, but one of the terrific metal gougers that pulled out of the belly of the jackknife slipped right under the simple latch on the back door of the laundry and flipped it up and open.

The boys quickly slipped inside, pulling the door shut behind them. It was dark, and smelled heavily of starch and foreign stuff. Tutlow struck a match, and in the eerie, wavering glow, Artie could make out a table, some shelves with little bowls and glasses and tiny teacups without handles. There was also, to his amazement, a Betty Grable pinup calendar. Did it mean Wu Sing was trying to pretend to be American, or did he look at Betty Grable while lying at night on his narrow little cot and beat off, Oriental style? Or did Orientals even beat off? Maybe the Chinese did and the Japanese didn’t, or vice versa, and it was one way of telling them apart, but the article about telling them apart didn’t go into stuff about sex.

“Eureka!” Tutlow said in a loud whisper.

He had gone to the table and pulled out the one drawer in it. Artie hurried over to look, expecting to see some kind of bullets or homemade bomb parts. Instead, there were stacks of little papers with Chinese (or Japanese) writing on them. Tutlow started stuffing them into his pockets.

“Hurry,” he said, “get all you can.”

Artie picked up one of the little papers and looked at it by the light of the match.

“I think it’s just laundry tickets,” he said.

“That’s what he wants you to think, dumbo. It might be Japanese code about troop movements, or Home Front morale or something.”

Artie dutifully grabbed a bunch of the papers and shoved them in his pockets.

“Okay, we better scram,” he said.

He was getting the heebie-jeebies thinking about the treacherous Wu Sing bursting in on them, shooting out his arms and legs in some complicated jujitsu movement, and knocking out Artie and Tutlow at the same time. When they woke, they’d be bound and gagged and have little slivers of bamboo under their fingernails, all ready to be lit by the fiendish Jap agent.

“First, I got a surprise for this yellow-bellied Son of the Rising Sun,” said Tutlow.

He waved out the match just as it was about to burn down to his fingers, quickly lit another one, and pulled from his coat pocket something that looked like a homemade firecracker.

“What the heck is that?” Artie asked.

“Stink bomb,” Tutlow said. “Made it with my chemistry set.”

Tutlow started to light the thing and Artie grabbed his arm.

“That’s not fair,” he said.

“Huh?”

“I mean, this is America. You can’t punish a guy before he’s proved guilty.”

Tutlow pointed around the room.

“How guilty can you get?” he asked.

“He still deserves his day in court,” said Artie.

“Don’t worry, he’ll get one all right. Then they’ll hang him from the highest cottonwood.”

“You’re thinking of cowboy stuff, not spies.”

“Have you got a yellow streak down your back or something?”

“You dope!”

Artie shoved Tutlow backward and he fell against the shelves, knocking over teacups, glasses, and bowls, some of them shattering as they fell to the floor.

“Now you’ve gone and done it,” said Tutlow.

“Now we really gotta scram,” Artie said.