Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

On the gravel schoolyard playground at recess, Artie forgot to worry about Roy because Ben Vickman got all the kids stirred up about their Dads.

“If my Dad has to go in the Army he’ll be an officer,” Vickman bragged.

“Just ’cause he went to college don’t make him any officer,” Blimpy Ottemeyer said.

“Not ’cause he went to college, dopey,” said Vickman. “’Cause he’s a Doctor is why he gets to start out at least as a Second Lieutenant.”

“Fish- ee ,” said Mitchelman.

“Sounds more like the German Army if you ask me,” Artie said. “We’re a democracy .”

Vickman gave Artie a little shove.

“You wait and see when your Dad is just a Buck Private,” he said.

“Dumbo! My Dad knows so much about cars he’ll probably be the Captain of a Tank Battalion!”

Actually, it never occurred to Artie that his Dad might have to go in the Army, since he figured he was too old to fight, but he wasn’t about to tell Vickman that.

“Guys who just put gas in the tank are Buck Privates,” Vickman said.

“Oh, yeah? My Dad can put gas in a tank with his eyes closed, you dope. What he really does is fix every motor of every car they got made!”

Artie gave Vickman a shove this time.

“So he’s just a grease monkey!” Vickman said, and poked Artie in the ribs.

“You callin’ my Dad a monkey, you dope?”

Artie poked Vickman.

“Monkey see monkey do!” shouted Vickman, and kicked Artie in the shin.

Artie kicked him back, and Vickman punched him one right in the nose.

Artie jumped him and they wrestled to the ground. The other kids gathered around and the girls started screaming. Miss Mullen came and broke it up and when Artie stood and brushed himself off, there was blood on his shirt. Vickman had given him a nosebleed, but he really didn’t care, and if anything, he was kind of proud. After all, it was Wartime.

Wanda Swanley started crying.

Artie pulled himself up straight, dabbed his handkerchief at his nose, and fell in beside Wanda, wanting to comfort her.

“Heck, it’s nothing,” he said very manfully, “just a little nosebleed.”

“Who cares?” she sobbed.

“So how come you’re crying?”

“My Dad’s a mailman,” she wailed.

“So what?”

“He’ll have to be a Private in the Infantry!”

Ben Vickman’s stupid bragging was ruining morale.

When school was out Artie delivered his paper route faster than he ever had in his life. He pretended the folded papers were hand grenades, the neighbors’ front porches were enemy gun emplacements.

As soon as he finished he sped to the gym, to try to find out what Mr. Goodleaf had wanted with Roy. Maybe the Army had sent out a call for the best athlete in every high school in the country to form a crack team that would parachute behind the enemy lines and score a quick, unexpected victory right at the start of the War that would turn the tide of battle.

Roy wasn’t at basketball practice, which meant something really big was up.

Artie took off for Joe’s Premium, his Dad’s filling station on Main Street, where Roy hung around sometimes to help pump gas or just to put pennies in the peanut machine and talk to the men who stopped in to shoot the breeze with his Dad. Just as the ladies liked to sit around and gab at the Beauty Shop, the men of the town talked politics and business and crops at the filling station. It was warm in the little office where spark plugs and other kinds of auto parts were for sale and it smelled reassuringly of grease and machinery, the odors of he-men.

Dad was king here, ruling with his honorably oilstained hands, rags coming out of his pockets like cowboy kerchiefs, emblems of expert work, worn jaunty, like the Premium cap with “Joe” stitched above the bill, tilted back firm on his big curly head. He was patching an innertube and talking to Mr. Marburger, the Hoover Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, who was sitting in the old rocking chair by the peanut machine, slapping a folded evening paper on his leg.

“… spotted some of ’em right over San Francisco,” Mr. Marburger was saying.

“Excuse me,” Artie said, “but has Roy been around?”

Dad looked up from the innertube, squinting.

“He’s not at practice?”

“Well, he wasn’t, but maybe he had something else to do. A lot’s going on.”

Mr. Marburger reached in his pocket and offered Artie a penny.

“Peanuts, on me?”

“No, thanks, I got to find Roy.”

“If you find him, you tell him I want him to be at that table at suppertime,” Dad said. “War or no War.”

“Sure thing.”

Artie started to go and then he remembered what Ben Vickman said, and looked at his Dad again.

“Say, Dad, if you have to go to War, will you get to be an officer?”

“If I have to go, it will mean we’re down to the last pitchfork and peashooter.”

“Huh?”

Dad shoved the innertube away and stood up, wiping his hands.

“I was too young for the last one, and looks like I’m too old for this one, son.”

Mr. Marburger slapped the newspaper hard into his palm.

“The ‘Last One,’” he said with a grunt. “‘The War to end Wars.’ That’s what they told us.”

“They forgot the Good Book,” Dad said. “‘There will be wars, and rumors of wars’!”

“Goddamn politicians,” Mr. Marburger said, and then smiling at Artie added, “excuse my French.”

“Well, I got to get going now,” Artie said. “Don’t take any wooden nickels.”

Artie headed straight for Skinner Creek.

There was a spot there where Roy liked to go to be alone, to think and skip rocks or maybe just sip from a half-pint bottle, of whiskey he sometimes fitted in his hip pocket. Artie was proud Roy had showed him the place; it was one of those times when his brother was being great to him, like big brothers were in movies, teaching you how to bait night-crawlers on a hook, or the way to place your hand along the laces of a football to throw a good spiral pass. Those were the times Artie loved his big brother, and mostly made up for the other kind of times when Roy would get him down and tickle him until he couldn’t breathe, or throw a basketball right in his gut so hard it knocked the wind out of him, or worst of all, the time Roy had to stay home to baby-sit Artie instead of going out to a party and made Artie, who was only five, listen to the scariest program on the radio, “The Hermit’s Cave,” not letting Artie stick his fingers in his ears to shut out the fiendish laugh of the horrible Hermit— yee-hee-whoo-ha-ha-ha-heeeeeeeeee! Those were the times Artie could have killed his big brother, bashed in his head with a brick, but of course he wasn’t big and strong enough; he only could kick at his shins and Roy would just laugh and lift him in the air and swing him around like a sack of potatoes.

But Artie got over it every time and Roy would do something great again, so if ever he got into trouble and Artie could help, he would do anything on earth for the guy.

Like now.

Roy was sitting on his special rock, sipping from a half-pint of Four Roses, his big shoulders hunched against the cold.

“How they hangin’?” asked Artie.

He had learned that from listening to Roy and the other ballplayers when they got together at Joe’s Premium to shoot the shit and eat peanuts out of the penny machine after practice.

“Kid,” said Roy, “I hope this thing is over before you’re old enough to have to go.”

Artie was relieved. At least whatever had happened, Roy was in one of his real big-brother-in-the-movies moods, protective and wise.

“Heck,” said Artie, feeling manly, “I’d like to get me one of those yellow-bellied Japs:”