Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

They all had a piece of Verna’s hot apple pie, while the jukebox played the same song that Roy and Shirley had been dancing to in the living room that afternoon.

“You’ll never know just how much I care …”

Artie prayed that Roy and Shirley still cared for each other, still loved each other, and that love would make Roy be more like himself again, or the way he used to be, anyway. He hoped they had made out all the way while everyone was gone, but the one thing that scared him was if somehow while Roy was doing it with Shirley he could tell if she had done it with anyone else. You were supposed to be able to tell if a girl was a virgin or not, she bled all over the place if she was, but that would have happened way back before Roy went off to the War, when they first had done it. But what if there was some secret way a guy had of knowing whether a girl had done it with somebody else? If there was any kind of test like that, old Roy would know it, and if he found out Shirley’d done it with anyone else he’d probably go right off his rocker.

“Maybe we ought to get going,” Artie said.

He was picturing Roy going stark-raving in the living room, pitching Shirley right through the door with some sort of deadly jujitsu he had learned from the Japs.

“Have some more pie,” Dad said.

“I’m stuffed.”

“What’s the big rush?” Mom asked.

Artie squirmed in his seat.

“It’s late is all.”

“Tomorrow’s not even a school day,” Mom said.

“Well, I want to get up early, so if Roy wants someone to talk; to. He gets up with the birds now.”

“Best thing to do for Roy is not worry over him,” Dad said.

Mom nodded.

“He needs time.”

“Shoot, he’s had most all afternoon and night,” Artie said.

“I wasn’t talking about that, for Heaven’s sake.”

“What your Mom means is, he needs time to get the War from his head, relax and recuperate. These things don’t happen overnight.”

“He’s only got eleven nights left,” Artie said.

“He’ll have his whole life,” Dad said.

Mom sniffed, and blew her nose.

“Even then, he’ll have scars,” she said.

“The one on his leg’s not so bad,” Artie said. “I saw it.”

“Your Mom doesn’t mean those kind,” Dad said quietly.

“Never mind,” she said. “Just pray those are the worst kind he has.”

Artie was getting a headache. He figured there’d be plenty of time to pray that Roy didn’t get any worse scars than he had; right now he was worn out from praying that Roy hadn’t found out anything about Shirley that she didn’t want him to know.

When Artie and his folks finally came home, stomping and talking real loud as they went inside, Roy and Shirley were sitting on the living room floor playing Chinese checkers.

“Who’s winning?” Mom asked real brightly.

“Oh, Roy is, he’s really good,” Shirley said.

Roy took one of his marbles and hopped it right over a row of Shirley’s. Then he looked up and actually smiled, the way he used to.

“Haven’t lost my touch,” he said.

Shirley reached over and squeezed his hand.

Artie figured everything was fine.

The next morning, Roy wasn’t up with the birds. He didn’t even come down for breakfast, though the smell of waffles and syrup and sausage was as powerful as perfume all through the house.

“I think we should just let him sleep,” Mom said.

Dad nodded as he dug into his waffle.

After breakfast Artie went upstairs and stopped at the door of Roy’s room to listen. He didn’t hear a sound, not even snoring. He had hoped that Roy would be up-and-at-’em this morning, maybe even like his old self again, after the time alone with Shirley. Maybe it hadn’t been so great after all, maybe later on they’d had a fight when Roy took her home and now he was really down in the dumps, or maybe he’d had some terrible nightmares about the War and was trying to wake up from them and couldn’t. Artie lifted his hand, hesitant, then rapped very softly on the door. There was no answer. Artie put his hand on the knob, turned it gently, and peeked inside.

The bed was all made and Roy was lying on top of it wearing just his skivvies and the dog tags that hung around his neck. You could see the red stitches on his stomach where they’d taken off skin to fix his leg, and the other stitches on the part of his thigh where he’d had the operation. He was smoking a cigarette, tapping it into an ashtray that lay in the hollow of his belly, and staring at the action photos of himself as a basketball and football star that hung on the opposite wall. Or maybe he was staring right through them; the way his eyes looked he might be staring through the wall itself, through the house, the Town, the whole country. The real smile of the night before was gone, the mouth a hard line again, so he looked like the older veteran who had stepped off the train, a stranger, and even more strange and out of place in this boyhood room with the pennants and sports pictures, the ribbons and trophies of high school games. The man on the bed didn’t match the rest of the room.

“Roy?”

The man’s body jerked up straight, the hand dropping the cigarette.

“I’m sorry!” Artie said, and rushed to brush at the sparks and ashes that had fallen on the bedclothes.

“Damn!” said Roy, whacking a spark out.

“Dumbo Garber, that’s me,” Artie said.

“Take it easy, kid. I’m the goof-up.”

“I shouldn’t have bothered you, that’s all.”

“Hey, I can’t just hang in the sack all day, can I?”

Suddenly Roy smiled, and clapped a hand on Artie’s shoulder, the first time he’d done that since he’d been home.

“Hell,” he said, “I haven’t even thrown you a pass yet. My leg may be gimpy, but there’s nothing wrong with my throwing arm.”

“Let’s go!”

Roy swung off the bed, holding his wounded leg, and Artie charged off to get the football. It was almost like old times.

In the next couple of days Roy was mostly like he used to be, but there were moments when he seemed to slip out of it and into the silent, far-off stare, not seeming to notice or hear anything going on around him, and then he’d snap back again, like going in and out of a trance.

Every day Roy would have a big breakfast with the whole family, and then he’d take the car and drop Artie at school and Dad at the station and go get Shirley for their all-day picnic at Skinner Creek. Evidently Shirley’s folks didn’t make any fuss about it. Artie guessed they must be impressed and maybe a little afraid of the grim new Roy who’d been seasoned and aged by the War, who was now in some ways older than anybody’s parents.

One day when Artie came home from school Roy was asleep in a chair in the living room and Shirley whispered not to wake him; she was getting ready to walk on home by herself, but Artie insisted he’d walk her. He hadn’t even had a chance to talk to her alone since Roy had been back, and he wanted to know if everything was going as good as it looked, and if there was anything he could do to make it even better.

“I wish these days would never end,” she said dreamily, as Artie strode proudly beside her, protector of his brother’s beloved.

“You’re real happy, huh?”

“Deliriously. Except—”

Shirley’s face clouded over, like she was in some dark trance of her own, seeing into depths of things.

“What? Except what? ”

“Clarence.”

“You’re not still in love with him, are you?”

“Artie! I was never in love with him, I explained all that to you. I did love him, as a person, that I cared about deeply, that’s all.”

“But you still care? Is that it?”