On The Wings of Heroes (4 page)

. . . with Staley's syrup and bacon popping in the pan. I woke up to the jangle of the sleigh bells on the old leather harness Dad had always rung to make me think Santa was just leaving.

Dad wouldn't give up on the bells.

Downstairs, the tree lights were on, though daylight poured in. All the Made-in-Japan glass balls on the tree glittered in their prewar way. We were all there in our bathrobes.

But right in front of the tree was a bicycle. The kickstand dug into the living room rug.

It took me a second because the room went blurry. But it was a bike, painted a gloss black with a thin silver stripe. Not quite a Schwinn, but not that heavy—leaner, faster-looking. I didn't want to move or say anything. I might wake up.

Then I saw it was Bill's old bike. The tires were a little smooth. But the paint job was showroom fresh, hardly dry. And where did those chrome fenders, front and back, come from? They were new, or off some other bike. Dad must have looked around for them. And that stitched-leather seat? The handlebars had seized up with rust long ago, but now they were sanded down, and the bell was new, and the grips. Hanging down below the rear reflector was a squirrel tail. A real one, off a squirrel.

“Is it mine?” I said.

And they said yes.

 

We got through the morning and the other presents. I handed out the pen wipers. Finally the four of us were outside on the driveway with the bike. It was cold, but there was no ice underfoot.

If this had been a real dream, I'd have climbed on and ridden away down the drive, down the street, into the world without a wobble. I'd been on bikes before, other people's and junior-size. But I'd fallen right off and crusted both knees.

This bike of mine was full-size. Somebody had built up the pedals with wood chunks.

Dad held the handlebars while I climbed on. The seat fit that part of me like a glove. The balls of my feet grazed the built-up pedals. But it felt like I was up a tree, and the concrete on the drive looked far away and hard. Bill stood a bike's-length away, but not near enough. Dad gave a push, the front wheel went sideways, and over I went.

Over and over. But we kept at it. I was wringing wet under my layers, and they were working overtime not to laugh. But we stuck to it. I was going to find the balance, learn to ride. It was part of my present, and the day. Back and forth I wobbled, from one pair of big hands to another. Mom watched, dancing out of danger in that graceful way she had, because I went in every direction.

Just for a flash I found it. The wheels and I aligned. I zipped past Bill and rode the length of the house before I sprawled off and the bike fell on me. And that hurt, but I didn't let on. By the time they got to me, I was up and climbing, stumbling over the chain guard.

Then it worked for sure. I'd started back by the garage, and I was still on and steering when I came down the slope of the drive to the street. There were no hand brakes then. You back-pedaled to stop. I forgot and barreled across the street into the Blanchards' driveway before I fell off.

But I was like the Wright Brothers, both of them, at Kittyhawk. I'd flown this far.

I turned the bike, alone here on this side of the street. I was sucking wind, blowing steam. And there coming up the street was Scooter, red-faced in a stocking cap.

He was on the Schwinn from Black's window.

On and off it. And his dad was running along behind, picking him up, putting him on again. But Scooter was biking too, almost, and on that brand-new Schwinn with the two-tone paint job and the headlight like a tiny torpedo. He usually did pretty well for presents.

And it was all right. It was swell. We both had bikes, and mine was Bill's.

. . . did her best to bring World War Two into our classroom. At first it was uphill work this far behind the lines. Still, several of us hoped they'd bomb the school before we got to decimals. Also, Miss Mossman wasn't any good at geography. Scooter was and took over the classroom map and the box of pins. On the Monday after Pearl Harbor, he'd put in a pin to show Hawaii. Before Christmas, he'd put a pin in Germany.

By the end of winter, a poster hung over Miss Mossman's desk, showing an aircraft carrier sinking, under the words

 

If we knew any military secrets, we weren't to tell anybody who could be a fifth-columnist, which was the wartime word for spy. I took this personally since I couldn't keep a secret.

Every Thursday we brought as many dimes as we had for pink War Savings Stamps to stick in a booklet. When you had eighteen dollars and seventy cents, you traded the booklet for a War Bond. It would mature in ten years and be worth twenty-five dollars.

“I hope you
children
mature in ten years,” Miss Mossman said.

Toward the end of the winter when they started rationing rubber, she saw her chance to get us into the war. Rubber was the first thing to go because the place it came from was behind enemy lines now. Scooter put a pin in the Malay Peninsula.

Guidelines from the Office of Price Administration, the OPA, told kids to bring in all old rubber items to a point of central collection. We'd be competing with other schools. Miss Mossman said anything could help the war effort, even rubber doormats.

“Not ours,” Mom said.

LaVerne Bixby brought her mother's dishwashing gloves. Duane Hemple brought in all seven of his Seven Dwarf rubber statuettes, which he was a little old for. Somebody threw in a pair of handlebar grips, which reminded me to keep mine with me when I wasn't on my bike. People brought in a mess of rubber.

One morning just before the Pledge of Allegiance, Walter Meece, who was slow, shook out a sack of something into our collection corner.

On the stroke of eleven, a big woman loomed up at the window of our door. She rapped once and stalked in. Miss Mossman was in the middle of telling us something and stopped. It was Mrs. Meece, Walter's mother, clutching her big pocketbook.

“Where's the stuff?” she said over us to Miss Mossman. But she could see our rubber pile from there. She started up an aisle, brushing desks on both sides. Walter got down in his seat, thinking she was coming after him. But she turned at the front of the room, sharply past Miss Mossman.

When she bent over our collection, a silence strangled us. She grunted and sorted through—galoshes, hot water bottles, bathing caps, a played-out garden hose. She had on a big hat. When she found what she was after, she held it up.

One of the girls screamed.

Mrs. Meece was holding a rubber girdle, huge. Hers.

She shook it at Miss Mossman, who'd turned to stone. “I've got an Eastern Star luncheon today,” Mrs. Meece said, “and I have to fight my way into this thing first.”

Out she stalked with the loose ends of her girdle flapping outside her pocketbook.

Later that day somebody heard Miss Mossman out in the hall talking to the principal, Miss Enid Howe. “We're collecting nothing else in my classroom,” Miss Mossman said. “
Nothing
. I don't care. Fire me.”

But Miss Howe didn't.

. . . that Dad ran across town in the North End was on a different planet from our leafy street. Now that his helper Charlie had been drafted, he was down to part-timers. Dad was back and forth from the pumps to the lift, running himself ragged.

I told him I'd be glad to drop out of school and help, at least for the duration. I could pump gas and read the tire gauge. If I could get the hood up, I could check the oil. But Dad said we'd talk about it when I was bigger than the dipstick. I'd be out there on Saturdays sometimes, getting underfoot, pretending to work.

Dad ran the station like a club where old codgers hung out on the pump island, complaining and remembering. And on cold days he let paperboys roll their newspapers in the station, out of the weather. You had to be twelve for a paper route, and they were a tough twelve. They wore no socks with their knickers, and they wrote things in ink on their arms. I overheard vocabulary from them I didn't know what to do with.

I was there the Saturday after the OPA issued a new order. A car owner with more than five tires was to turn in any extras to his local gas station. They'd clamped a freeze on tire sales. Now you needed a certificate from the Ration Board, and it wasn't easy. The government made it hard to get a new tire, but they wanted your old one.

Mr. Smiley Hiser drove across town to turn in an extra spare to Dad personally. His old Essex sedan with pull-down window shades stood square out by the pumps. I shook out the squeegee to wash down his windshield. We gave full service.

Dad ducked out from under a car on the lift when Mr. Hiser rolled his extra spare across the pavement.

“Smiley,” Dad said, “where are you going to find another tire for an Essex when you need your next one?”

“Say what?” Mr. Hiser said, cupping an ear.

“Take your tire home, man,” Dad boomed. “We'll all be riding on rims before this war's over.”

“They say it'll be over by Christmas,” Mr. Hiser said.

“They said that last time,” Dad remarked.

A long car pulled up at the pumps. A bulky guy in a belted coat got out and swaggered over. He had Big Shot written all over him. “Say, listen, buddy,” he said to Dad, “give me a Firestone for a Cadillac.”

Dad looked him over. Eight or so tires still hung on the lubritorium wall.

“I've got a certificate from the Ration Board,” the big shot said, “if that's what's worrying you.” He flipped a wallet out of his overcoat. A whole page of precious tire certificates unfolded like a road map.

“I can't help you,” Dad said.

The big shot sighed and put his certificates away. He reached out with something wrinkled sticking out of his fat fist. A twenty-dollar bill. I'd never seen one.

Dad didn't seem to see it now. “You heard me say I can't help you.”

I dropped back over by the pumps.

“Don't waste my time.” The big shot jerked a thumb at the tire wall. “You've got one left.”

“It's earmarked for a regular customer,” Dad said, which couldn't be exactly right because he didn't have a regular Cadillac customer.

I dipped the squeegee into soapy water. To reach the Cadillac's windshield, I'd have to walk up the front fender, which the big shot wouldn't like. But he was busy. I could barely reach across the window on the driver's side.

“This war's a real opportunity for you little guys to throw your weight around, isn't it? For the first time in your life.”

Nobody talked to Dad like that.

“Maybe you don't know who I am,” the big shot said. He was standing too close, in Dad's face.

“Maybe I better not find out.” Dad's right hand clenched. It wasn't his good hand, but this guy wouldn't know that. I almost fell off the fender from looking back. The big shot's ears had gone an ugly color. When he turned around, I jumped down off the fender. Dad's work shoe rang on the pavement behind him, and the big shot made a kind of skip. He piled in the Cadillac and thundered out onto Division Street.

Mr. Hiser blinked from Cadillac exhaust. “What did he say he wanted?”

“More than his share,” Dad said.

“Wonder who he was.”

“The Water Commissioner,” Dad said.

I was beside them now, and Dad wasn't grinning, so you wouldn't even recognize him. I held up something to show them, and now they both blinked. It was the Cadillac's wiper blade, off the driver's side, because nobody ought to talk to my dad like that.