On The Wings of Heroes (6 page)

Dad worked a longer day. Everybody was waiting for gas to be rationed, but he said it wouldn't be till after the election. Only kids played hide-and-seek now, so Scooter and I didn't. We played some catch in the street, fed each other some fast-balls. But I was used to three-corner with Dad and Bill, and the Packard for a backstop. August was on the way already, and there wasn't even a state fair, not for the duration.

When we got tired of nothing happening, Scooter and I set off to collect enough of whatever it took to win the war.

“Let's get this war over with,” Scooter said. “I'm sick of it.”

“GAS!” I said to liven things up, and we rummaged around for handkerchiefs we naturally didn't have.

Then we went off collecting. We were tired of rubber, but we'd take anything that wasn't nailed down. Especially scrap metal because if you turned in twenty-five pounds of it, the Varsity Theater would give you a free ticket for a Saturday matinee.

We started with our own street, skipping the Hisers, who always used everything up. They were laying out a victory garden that ran back to the alley. By the end of the summer, rows of sweet corn rustled like open country, and there were tomatoes enough for all. Mrs. Hiser put up fifty-two bottles of her own ketchup, one for every week, in recycled Royal Crown Cola bottles. The summer smelled like spiced tomatoes simmering.

We had our Number One ration books now, after the big sugar panic of the spring. Sugar was down to a trickle, so Kool-Aid was out. Everything on the table was going to be rationed sooner or later, canned goods because of the tin—everything. The Hisers were ready.

Mr. Hiser said he'd retired from retirement. He was in bib overalls again and his Purina Chows cap.

“You boys are welcome to do some digging and weeding,” he told us, so Scooter and I got busy collecting scrap farther down the street.

The oldest house dated from before bungalows, like a house in the country before the town crept up. An old man lived there alone. Mr. Stonecypher. And if any house in town was haunted, here it was. So Scooter and I dared each other to begin at Mr. Stonecypher's. It sounded swell till we got there.

We pulled our Radio Flyer wagons around to the back. We'd tried hitching the wagons to our bikes, but that hadn't worked. “You knock.”

“No. You.”

The back door flew open, and we fell off the step and grabbed each other.

Mr. Stonecypher glared out. He looked like Father Time. “Stick 'em up,” he said.

We stared.

“Whatcha want?” He had a voice like a gravel pit.

“WHAT HAVE YOU GOT?” Scooter yelled at him, really brave. “WE'RE COLLECTING STUFF FOR THE WAR EFFORT.”

Mr. Stonecypher jerked. He had eyebrows like nests. “Quit yelling,” he said. “I'm not deaf. That's Hiser.”

“Tin cans?” Scooter said. Housewives were to soak off the labels, flatten the empty cans, and take them back to the store. So said the OPA. There was no housewife here, but Mr. Stonecypher looked like he ate straight from the can.

“Five thousand tin cans will make a shell casing,” Scooter said like he knew. I let him do the talking.

“That a fact,” Mr. Stonecypher said. “Don't stand in the door. Come on in. You're letting the flies out.”

He didn't tell us to wipe our feet, and no wonder. We stuck fast to the kitchen floor. Everything was flaking or rusted out. It was fairly interesting, but only in daylight.

“Whatever you've got we'll take,” Scooter said, all business. We were looking for metal because of the movie tickets, but whatever, even rubber. But not paper. Paper came later.

A brown picture of a young soldier in an old uniform hung in the living room. The place was so clearly haunted I couldn't believe it. Scooter spotted a wind-up Victrola with a gigantic brass horn. A load of scrap metal right there.

“How about that?” he asked Mr. Stonecypher, who was on our heels.

“Nothin' doin',” he said. “Them things is coming back.”

“How about your basement?” Scooter said.

“Forget my basement. It's off-limits,” Mr. Stonecypher said. “I keep my still down there. If you saw it, I'd have to rub you out.”

A still was for making corn liquor. People made their own at home back in Prohibition times. We looked at him. Did he know Prohibition was over? His teeth clicked at us. “You can scout around the attic. I got a job for you up there.”

A problem with old people, as we were to learn, was that they always had a job for you.

Down a dark hall, Mr. Stonecypher pulled a folding ladder out of the ceiling, and Scoot swarmed up. So I had to.

The eaves up there were clotted with dried wasps' nests. An old lightbulb with a pointed tip hung down. Scooter pulled its chain so we could see because there was only one pokey window over the front porch roof.

“See that winder?” Mr. Stonecypher's voice echoed up. “It's open a crack. Shut it for me. I don't want to get bats in my belfry.”

Scooter stared at me with round eyes.
Too late
, he mouthed. But he banged the window down, which caused a lot of buzzing in the walls.

“How about these toys?” Scooter yelled down. An open box was heaped with really old cast-iron toys. A little touring car and a toy implement like a manure-spreader or something. Many things, small but heavy.

“Leave them.”

We jumped. Mr. Stonecypher had followed us partway up the ladder. Only his eerie old head showed, like a skull on the attic floor.

“And keep clear of that trunk.”

Over against the webbed eaves stood a hulking foot locker, stenciled with brown letters. “Don't mess with it, or I'll have to rub—”

“How about that?” Scooter pointed out the head of an old brass bed. A single bed, but tall. It was a couple of movie tickets right there.

“If you can get it down, you can have it,” Mr. Stonecypher said, “and tell 'em to drop it directly on old Hirohito's head. And that'll do you.” He vanished.

We worked for half an hour getting the brass bed loose and down the ladder in a shower of mouse droppings. It was about too much for us. We were at the back door now and heading for open country with it. Mr. Stonecypher was still on our heels, and his teeth were clicking like a Spanish dance. When we were outside, he said, “Here's some more metal for you.”

He put out his old papery paw and dropped a dime into each of our hands. “And you ought to wear your Cub Scout uniforms, or something to make you look regulation. Ain't everybody as friendly as I am.”

Then he banged the back door on us.

We'd sweated through our polo shirts, and the bed kept falling off the wagon.

“What do you think was in that trunk?” I asked Scooter.

“Mrs. Stonecypher,” he said.

. . . as any Halloweener could tell you. The Civil Defense issued him a white tin helmet and an armband with the striped diamond in a circle, and he was the street's air raid warden.

When the siren sounded, I supposed I'd be sitting home in the dark. But Mom handed me something, an armband with a striped diamond in a circle, homemade and the size to fit over my puny bicep. She was doing more sewing now. Clothes rationing was just around a couple of corners.

The armband wouldn't have fooled anybody, but it felt right. Behind us, Mom threw a towel over the radio to hide the orange light in the dial. They said the Luftwaffe could see a struck match from a mile up. At the door, she pulled on me. “Don't let your dad fall down. Watch out for him.”

“Because he's the biggest kid on the block?” I said.

“No,” Mom said. “Because he isn't.”

Outside you couldn't see where the porch steps ended. The corner streetlight was off, and there wasn't a star in the sky, like they'd blacked out heaven. The Packard out at the curb could have been anything—a pile of lumber.

The Hisers' house next door was a black shape. Even the night birds seemed to be standing around on their branches, wondering what happened.

I kept next to Dad. We were to spot for any stray lights left on, and our beat was both sides of the street, from the park boundary at our end down to West Main.

The Hisers' porch swing squawked in the night. There was nothing to see out here, but they wouldn't have missed it. Dad flashed his red-bulbed light up at them.

“Earl?” Mr. Hiser spoke over the spirea. “Hitler was here, but he seen you coming.”

The Hisers cackled.

Box elder roots had heaved the sidewalk, but Dad's foot knew that slab by heart, from hide-and-seek. A lot of people were on their porches. It was too hot inside, hotter than a Model T radiator, as Mrs. Hiser always said. Living room radios blared so that people could hear the WDZ rebroadcast of a Brooklyn Dodgers game. The Dodgers were enjoying a ten-and-a-half-game lead. You could follow the play from house to house. “There's the pitch . . . and it's low and outside . . .”

We were passing the Friedingers' place when I got the idea we were being followed. It was probably just being out in the dark, but I could feel it down my back. A shoe scraped behind us, and I leaned into Dad. I wasn't about to look around. A small rock got kicked.

We were even with the Bixbys' overgrown lilac bush. Dad edged me off the sidewalk. One sidestep, and we'd vanished into bush branches. My hand hooked Dad's belt. Twigs fingered my face. Somebody was coming along the sidewalk. A step, then a stumble. Somebody wondered where we'd gone. The night stood still.

A shape, small and gnomish, passed us, a reach away. We stepped out, Dad with me stuck to him. He flashed his red bulb on the follower.

Face glaring red in the dark, bug-eyed, Scooter shrieked.

He was scared out of his wits, but what did he expect? We were out here on official business, which he wasn't. Dad reached into his pants pocket. Was he going to cuff Scooter and run him in? Seemed fair.

Dad pulled something out and handed it over. “Here, Scoot,” he said. “Try this for size.” I saw in the red light it was a homemade armband like mine. Mom had sewn two of them. And it was okay. It was fine. Dad had another side, and Scooter took it.

We went on past the Rogerses' house, but we were safe enough with Dad here. That's when we saw our first light, beaming like a beacon down through tree limbs from an attic window. It was Mr. Stonecypher's. Scooter looked around Dad at me.

“Well, he's an old duffer,” Dad said. “Who knows how long he's left that light burning.”

Scooter and I happened to know. He looked around at me again. We'd forgotten to turn out the light when we'd brought the brass bed down, days and days ago. Weeks? Anyway, it had slipped our minds. We'd been busy.

“We'll wait,” we said when Dad turned up the front walk, but he told us we were on duty. The Stonecypher porch crinkled with last year's leaves. Dad knocked, then pounded. The house was dark as pitch, except for the attic.

The door sprang open, and there etched against blackness was the ghostly Stonecypher shape.

“Keep them hands where I can see 'em,” he greeted. Scooter and I shrank.

“Mr. Stonecypher,” Dad said, pointing to the attic, “whose side are you on?”

“Who wants to know?” he rasped. “That you, Earl? Why you wearing a wash pan on your head? Better come on in before you get lost. They're havin' a blackout. And don't stand in the door. You'll let the flies out.”

Scooter groaned. But we had to go in, and it was that same smell of old medicine inside. Dad said he was showing a light upstairs, though Mr. Stonecypher didn't think so. But when he pulled the ladder out of the hallway ceiling, light flooded down. He spotted Scooter and me, blinking. His old eyes narrowed, but his jaw clamped shut.