Operation Yes (13 page)

When they were finally done, Bo and Gari walked home. They walked past the curved domes of concrete hangars and the massive new brick-and-glass fire station and the well-lit base gym and the now-closed BX and the smaller shoppette with video rental and a ten-pump gas station. They walked past signs advertising Sunday brunch at the Officer's Club and bingo at the
NCO Club. They walked past the sweep of the chapel roof and through the maze of enlisted housing and into the officers' section. They walked past house after house, down the streets named after states … Alabama, Colorado, New Hampshire … and streets named after generals … Langley, Fairchild, Mitchell … and the streets named after aircraft … Falcon, Stratofortress, Phantom….

“We could have waited five more minutes and ridden in your dad's car,” said Gari.

“Didn't want to,” said Bo.

 

Later that night, Bo asked Gari if he could have the trumpet mouthpiece back.

“Wipe it off when you're done,” she said.

Bo silently played along to Taps in his room. In his head, he relived the finale to the Flying Farmer's act. The announcer, step by step, had talked the farmer out of the sky and down onto firm ground, complete with a staged bumpy landing and a wild careening ride down the taxiway. At the end, the farmer had stumbled from the plane, lifting his battered straw hat to the applauding crowd.

Bo put the trumpet mouthpiece down on the windowsill near his bed. He fell asleep and dreamed that he was the Flying Farmer, but his plane was streaming tape out the back instead of white smoke. He dove and flipped and rolled through the hallways of Young Oaks, holding his breath and looking and looking for the runway where his dad had said he was supposed to land.

Gari was awake during Taps too. She had gotten another e-mail from her mom.

 

I have to disagree with you about there being nothing to show me in North Carolina. There's beauty everywhere. Use your camera to find it.

I'm thinking of you — All the time,

Mom

 

Gari held her mom's old army figure tightly until the last sad note had played, and then she slipped it under her pillow. She didn't want to risk losing it again.

On Monday morning, Miss Loupe, wearing a plain black shirt, frowned at the notes the substitute teacher had left. She stood outside the Taped Space and spoke to her class.

“This is what Marc was wearing when they rescued him.” She held up a round emblem with a bolt of lightning embroidered on it. “This patch saved his life.”

“They found him?” said Aimee and Martina at the same time.

“Where is he, ma'am?” asked Melissa.

“Did you talk to him?” said Allison.

“How?” said Bo. “How did it save his life?”

“Can we see the patch?” said Rick.

“Was there a great battle?” said Trey.

“There
was
a great battle. But Marc's side didn't win,” said Miss Loupe. “Six of his friends died.”

She handed the patch to Rick in the front row, who held on to it for a moment, then passed it to Allison beside him. It slowly traveled throughout the class as Miss Loupe spoke.

“Marc ended up alone, hiding in a crevice — that's a kind of crack — deep in the mountains of Afghanistan. I don't think the rescue team would've found him because he had gotten too weak
to cry out. The only reason they did was because he threw his patch out when they came near. But the patch was so small that at first the rescuers didn't see it.”

A chorus of voices broke out: “But you said
—
then how did
—
where did you —?”

“Because when it landed, the patch startled a bird….” Miss Loupe's words began to break apart. “… It flew up … out of the crevice … squawking … and the team came … and they found him.”

Melissa scribbled in her notebook. “What kind of bird, Miss Loupe?”

“Why is
that
important?” said Zac.

“I'm writing … Never mind.” Melissa drew a little question mark in the margin of her notes.

Miss Loupe continued. “They called in a helicopter, and then they flew him on a larger plane to a hospital with a medical team, and —”

“My mom does that! That's what she does!” Gari spoke before she could stop herself. “In Iraq.”

“Please thank your mother for me, then,” said Miss Loupe. Her eyes stayed on Gari's face. “A team like hers saved Marc's life.”

But Gari noticed that Miss Loupe was biting her lip. Hard. There was a raw spot on her bottom lip.

“He's not in Afghanistan anymore. They flew him to a base hospital in Germany, and then back to the States,” continued Miss Loupe.

“He's fine?” Bo said. “He's going to be all right? Everything's okay?”

“No,” said Miss Loupe. She looked sideways at the Taped Space, but she didn't step in. “I know you're used to me pretending all sorts of crazy things. But I'm not going to pretend now.”

She watched as Trey handed the patch to Bo.

“Marc will never be the same. They had to amputate his left foot. He's blind in one eye.”

“He won't be able to fight?” said Trey.

“Which eye did he lose?” said Melissa.

“Did you go see him?” said Bo. The underside of the patch was rough in his hands. The lightning bolt on it looked exactly like the sky was splitting.

“Yes,” said Miss Loupe. “But he didn't recognize me.”

At that moment, the fire alarm rang. And rang. And rang.

OO-GAH! OO-GAH! OO-GAH!

The students automatically got up from their desks and lined up at the door.

OO-GAH! OO-GAH!

Miss Loupe stayed frozen in her spot outside of the Taped Space.

OO-GAH! OO-GAH!

Her students had to come back and guide her out of the classroom.

Engine fire, left engine. Engine fire on the left.

That's all Gari could think as they marched outside. Every time her left foot hit the ground, dialogue from an old movie played in her head.

Engine fire, left. Engine fire, left.

It was a movie she and her mom had watched last November.

Begin the emergency procedure checklist!

Engine fire, left. Engine fire, left.

It was an Air Force movie, not an Army one.

It's not working! Nothing's working!

Engine fire, left. Engine fire, left.

Gari's mom had yelled at the TV:

“Don't just stand there, soldier, do something!”

Gari had laughed at her mom, talking Army to an Air Force pilot in an old plane on a little screen. But she suddenly knew how her mom had felt, watching and being unable to do anything.

Left! His left foot was gone.

While they were outside, waiting for the fire alarm to be turned off, Rick asked Miss Loupe where her loupe (with a little l) was. Martina remembered seeing the cord break before Miss Loupe had run outside. Sanjay asked her to retrace her route, near the younger grades' rusty jungle gym. Bo explained how a FOD walk worked. Mr. Nix, whose class kept making dashes for the playground equipment instead of standing still in line, volunteered his students to help.

“One STRAIGHT line, first graders! PARALLEL to the line formed by the sixth grade.”

Amazingly, the first graders formed an orderly line and marched with quiet intensity, inspecting every blade of grass. Tony found the loupe in less than five minutes.

“We have a GIANT card for you too. It's from Hawaii,” he said as he handed the brass teardrop back to her. “You can look at it with your special eye.”

Miss Loupe nodded slowly and thanked him. Her earrings didn't move or twinkle.

At lunch, the boys had to sit with the girls. No one said a word to one another, until Allison offered Rick half of an Oreo
(the half without the creamy filling, but he took it). Then Martina started talking about the air show, and Bo used a milk carton to demonstrate how the Flying Farmer buzzed the crowd. Zac moved his chair over from the next table and said something about a girl being on the Thunderbird team now, and Shaunelle moved her chair too, and said yeah, she was good, and Aimee said she liked the demonstration of how the paratroopers jump in behind enemy lines. Then Trey drew a picture on his napkin of Marc's unit being attacked and everyone crowded around one table and passed it around.

“What if they hadn't found him?” said Zac.

“What do you think?” said Sanjay.

They cleaned up their tables as carefully as they could. Then they chose Allison and Rick to approach Mrs. Purdy for a favor.

The next day, the principal and the cafeteria manager carried the Ugly, Ugly Couch from the lunchroom back into Miss Loupe's classroom. As they tilted it through the doorway, the class could see all the signatures on the bottom, including Marc's.

“I need this
out
of my lunchroom,” said Mrs. Purdy, looking at Miss Loupe with a faint smile.

“Until the School Commission makes up their mind about when to visit again,” said Mrs. Heard. She sneezed.

Miss Loupe nodded again to say thanks. But she looked away from the couch after they left. Her black slippers stayed under her desk.

Later that week, during library time, Shaunelle looked up Miss Loupe's former boyfriend, Eric Browne, on the library's computer.

“Who's he?” asked Gari.

Martina explained about his name being under the couch. “Maybe they couldn't be together anymore after Miss Loupe came to Reform,” she said. She leaned a tiny bit closer to Sanjay. He didn't move away.

“There's an Eric Browne in L.A. who buys old houses and fixes them up. Do you think that's him?” said Shaunelle. The mansion in the ad with Eric Browne's name was made of gray stone and had pointy turrets, like Miss Candy's drawings of her Reading Castle. The little sign that hung from a wooden post in the front yard said
OPEN HOUSE
.

“What's an open house?” Zac asked.

“It's when anyone can come in to look,” translated Kylie. “My mom does them all the time.”

“So?” said Allison. “Why are we looking at this dumb house?”

“I was hoping he'd be … a multimillionaire,” said Shaunelle. “Like in books. Where someone who is long lost turns out to be worth oodles of money.”

“Why do we need money?” Sanjay spoke up. “Miss Loupe doesn't need money. She needs … I don't know. She needs …”

No one could finish his sentence.

When they returned to Room 208 from the library, Miss Loupe let them all have free reading time. She sat at her desk and opened her own book, but she didn't turn the pages.

Behind the cover of his library book, Bo took a pen and began to cover the back of his hand with tiny black dots. Sometimes, when his dad flew hard and fast, the force of pulling against gravity broke blood vessels in his legs. He had shown Bo
the purple speckles on his calves and feet, which the pilots called G-measles. You couldn't see gravity, but you could see what it did to you.

Miss Loupe could make them see things that weren't there too. She could make you believe that a couch was worth talking to, that cracks were infinitely important, and that anything that happened between four lines of slightly dingy masking tape was as real as a scar on your leg. Bo looked over his book at Miss Loupe, who was staring over his head at the wall behind him. You couldn't see Miss Loupe's sadness, but you could see what it was doing to her.

Four rows to his left, Gari sat at Dillon's old desk, with the book club selection propped up in front of her. She wasn't reading.

She wished her Plan B had actually happened. She wished she hadn't believed her mom when she'd said her assignment wasn't dangerous. The box of donated toys and school supplies for Marc was still sitting in front of Miss Loupe's desk, its cardboard flaps sticking out like wings. The School Commission wasn't coming back any time soon. She'd have to come up with a new plan. Before it was too late.

Miss Loupe kept looking at the clock hands as they clicked forward inside their bent cage, every five minutes for the rest of the day.