Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

“You go on to your room, Clarence. Artie and I need to have a long talk.”

Foltz sighed, and raised his hands about to his waist, turning the palms up, in a sign that meant What the heck, anyway . Then he shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather German aviator jacket and walked away, kicking at rocks as he went.

When Foltz was out of sight, Shirley sat down on the rock and lit a cigarette.

“Artie,” she said, “you have to trust me. You have to promise you won’t ever tell a soul about this.”

“That you were fooling around with a German spy?”

“ A what? ”

“It’s no use lying. I know darn well that guy is no veteran of Guadalcanal.”

“All right, but he’s no German spy, either, for Heaven’s sake.”

“Well, what the heck is he, then?”

“You mustn’t ever tell. He’s so ashamed.”

“Is he some kind of criminal?”

Shirley shook her head, then she looked Artie right in the eyes.

“Clarence is Four-F,” she said.

Artie knew she was telling the truth, or at least what Foltz had convinced her was the truth, but Artie smelled something fishy about it. He figured a guy who was classified 4-F in the Draft and couldn’t go to War had to really have something terribly wrong, like be missing an arm or a leg or be so blind in both eyes he could only walk with a cane and a dog. The only 4-F guy he knew was Ribs O’Mahoney, and even though he could see all right and get around pretty good, at least he had a pretty bad limp.

“So what’s wrong with the guy, anyway?” Artie asked suspiciously. “He sure can run fast, I’ll tell you that.”

“It’s nothing you can see, that’s what makes it so awful for him. People think a boy his age who’s not in uniform is a slacker, a Draft-dodger. Unless of course they think he’s already been in and discharged because of a wound. Which is why he pretends that’s what happened.”

“But what did happen? To make him Four-F?”

“Clarence has a punctured eardrum.”

“He stole that!” Artie shouted, seeing through the phony story right away. “He copied it from Leo Durocher!”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Leo Durocher is Four-F because of a punctured eardrum. It was in all the magazines. Foltz must have read it and used it for his own excuse for not going in the Army!”

“Who’s Leo Durocher?”

For a split second Artie thought Shirley was pulling his leg, but then he realized that smart as she was, she was still a girl, and so there were really important things she just didn’t know about.

“Leo Durocher,” Artie said patiently, “is the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

“Well, that should show you that even real he men can have punctured eardrums, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“But how do you know he isn’t lying, just to dodge the Draft?”

“Because he showed me:”

“His punctured eardrum?”

“No! You can’t even see it. He showed me his letter from the Draft Board.”

“Well, if it’s true, what’s he doing here? In Birney?”

“Running away. Everyone made fun of him. In his own hometown.”

“Maybe his punctured eardrum’s not the only thing wrong with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he’s some kind of pre-vert.”

“He’s nothing of the kind. He’s just very sensitive.”

“You mean he’s like a girl?”

“No! Lots of men are sensitive. Well, not lots of them, but the ones I care about. You are yourself. Sensitive. So is your brother, but he tries to cover it up, not to show it. When I saw that side of him, that’s when I cared.”

“You care about Foltz, then?”

“Yes. I worry about him. He’s all bottled up inside.”

“He must be pretty sad, I guess.”

Shirley suddenly threw her cigarette away, only half-smoked. She got up and stamped her foot on it.

“He’s lonely. I’m lonely too. Don’t you see? We’re both lonely.”

She burst out crying and bent over, holding her face in her hands as she sobbed.

Artie stood up, feeling helpless, feeling like he was all thumbs. He squeezed his hands into fists and went to Shirley and placed a fist gently on her back, moving it a little ways up and down.

She sniffled and coughed, then straightened up and wiped at her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wish this horrible War was over. I don’t know how long I can stand it.”

“Don’t worry,” Artie said. “Everything will be fine.”

He knew it would. It was up to him to see that it was, and he was going to do his duty.

The first thing Artie had to do when he got back to town was lie to Warren Tutlow. He was sorry he had to do it, especially while he was sitting cross-legged on the floor of Tutlow’s room with the curtains drawn and the candle in the Coke bottle lit, since they were supposed to be exchanging true information as fellow counterspies, but Artie knew the most important thing he had to do was protect Shirley. He didn’t want Tutlow snooping around Foltz, for fear he’d find out the guy had anything to do with Shirley.

“The poor guy is no kind of spy, German or otherwise,” Artie said easily, since that part was true.

“So how come he pretends to be a wounded veteran of Guadalcanal?”

Here came the hard part. Artie stared unblinking at the flame of the candle so his eyes would get weird and not reveal he was lying.

“The funny thing is, he really is . He got shellshocked so bad they had to give him an honorable discharge, since he wasn’t much good for anything anymore.”

“Then how come he has the book about Guadalcanal with stuff underlined, if he really was there?”

“He got shellshocked so bad he can’t remember what happened, so he reads the book over and over to try to remember stuff.”

“Wow—a real amnesia victim!”

“That’s not all. He got a case of the jungle rot, too.”

“Ugh! You think you caught any off him?”

Tutlow scooted back on the floor away from Artie.

“I hope not, but I sure wouldn’t want to hang around the guy much.”

“Then who was the girl, anyway?”

“Remember Beverly Lattimore?”

“You mean Roy’s old girl friend?”

“Yeah, well, I guess she’s been about everybody’s old girl friend.”

“And now she’s Foltz’s?”

“I guess she feels sorry for the guy, him being shell-shocked and all.”

“Holy Moly. If next year’s football team never wins a game, it’ll mean all the guys have got jungle rot!”

“I guess that’s the kind of stuff that happens in Wartime.”

Tutlow blew out the candle and pulled the curtains back, letting in the sunlight.

“I got the heebie-jeebies,” he said. “Let’s go play some HORSE.”

“Good idea.”

Taking care of Tutlow was one thing, but handling Foltz was another matter. Even though he was nothing but a skinny guy with blotchy skin and a punctured eardrum, he was bigger and older than Artie, and strong enough to make a good tackle on him and just about twist his arm out of the socket. Artie figured the best thing to use on him was psychology, but he wasn’t sure exactly what kind, and he couldn’t get anyone’s advice without spilling the beans about Foltz being too darn friendly with Shirley. Finally he figured he would just go see the guy and lay his cards on the table. His ace would be the threat of exposing Clarence Foltz for what he was—a 4-F failure who was besmirching the good name of the wounded veterans of Guadalcanal by pretending he was one of them.

Artie put off his duty for more than a week, thinking maybe if he waited a little while he’d come up with some better psychological strategy to use on Foltz, or, better still, that the impostor would just leave town on his own.