Across a War-Tossed Sea (3 page)

W
esley settled back in to study until Charles got out of the shower. Then he'd try to nab the bathroom himself. He'd have to move quickly. With nine people, the one bathroom was in constant use. And on a hot, dry day, everyone wanted to spritz off. Of course, showers in general were still a treat to Wesley. Like most British homes, their ancient London row house had only a bathtub.

Wesley forced himself to stop imagining a refreshing shower. He went back to his list. “North Dakota, Bismarck.” He stopped. “Dakota” was an Indian name, just like the Chickahominy River nearby. “What an odd thing to have a state named for Indians and its capital named for a German province.”
The Bismarck
also happened to be the name of a notorious Nazi battleship that had shelled cargo ships crossing the Atlantic.

“Boy, if I lived in Bismarck,” Wesley muttered to himself, “I'd change that name for sure. To something like…” His eyes searched the room for an idea and landed on the day's newspaper funnies. “Tonto!” He struck on the name of the loyal Indian guide in the comic strip and on his favorite radio program,
The
Lone Ranger
. “Yes! Tonto!”

Bored with studying, Wesley got up and stretched. With one arm up, like the Ranger when he waved his cowboy hat in good-bye, Wesley laughed and echoed the character's departing line as he rode away on his white horse: “Hi-ho, Silver, away!”

He shook his head. Given Hollywood movies, he'd completely expected to see cowboys and Indians everywhere when he came to the States. Wesley had been so disappointed not to meet any on the streets of Richmond, the Ratcliffs had given him toy six-shooters and a holster for his first American Christmas.

Wesley looked back over his shoulder to make sure he was alone. Then he slowly opened the drawer of the desk he and Charles used. He'd recently stashed the present there, telling himself he was too old for imaginary games. Oh, but he'd had such fun pretending with those guns.

Hesitantly, fondly, he pulled them out. Enough geography for the moment, he told himself. No one's looking. Wesley strapped on the holster. Facing the window, his back to the door, he held his hands out parallel to his six-shooters, like a sheriff in a Wild West showdown getting ready to fire at some low-down, good-for-nothing gunslinger. Wesley took a few slow steps imagining the sound of spurs jingling as he moved. He snarled, “Git out of my town, you two-bit outlaw, before I string ya up.”

He smiled ruefully and was about to take the guns off and tuck them back in the drawer, when he heard: “What a baby! You still play make-believe?”

Wesley wheeled around. Ron was at the door.

“Wait till I tell the class. They'll laugh you out of school, straight back to that stupid little island of yours. ‘Pip-pip, cheerio, and all that rot.'”

Wesley's fingers twitched beside his play six-shooters. For a moment, he wished they were real. Bet Ron wouldn't pick on him then! Why was it that he could never come up with a proper retort for Ron? Charles always did.

Ron entered the room and circled him. “Cat got your tongue?” Ron glanced back at the door, clearly timing his bullying to end before Charles came back. Then he spotted Wesley's state capital list. “You did that already?” It wasn't due until the end of the week. He snatched it up.

“That's mine,” Wesley protested.

“Now it's mine.” Ron folded it and stuffed it into the chest pocket of his overalls.

“Give that back!”

“Come and get it, runt.”

Wesley knew he'd never win a wrestling match with Ron. He also knew what Ron was going to do with that paper—he'd turn it in for homework as if he'd done it himself. “That's cheating,” he cried.

“What you gonna do? Tell the teacher?” Ron closed in on Wesley and towered over him. Ron was lean and muscular, tall for his age, like Bobby was. But his hair was darker than his sibling's, a bloodred almost, and his face typically carried a brooding scowl that made him slightly sinister in Wesley's eyes.

Wesley had quickly learned that tattling was a cardinal sin among American boys. If Wesley ran to the teacher or Charles or Bobby for help, it'd only make Ron see him as a total weakling. And that would encourage Ron to torture him more. “Fine,” Wesley squeaked. “I already know them all. It will only take me a few minutes to rewrite it. Have it.”

Then, as Ron stepped back with a smirk on his face, Wesley did think of a comeback. It so surprised him, it came out only as a whisper: “Of course, the real trick for you, Ron, will be trying to
learn
and actually remember forty-eight states and capitals.”

Ron heard. His face turned as red as the tomatoes the Ratcliffs raised and sold to the Piggly Wiggly grocery store. He grabbed Wesley's arm. “You calling me stupid?”

No more clever retorts came to Wesley. He wondered how much a bloody nose would hurt.

But just as Ron was pulling his other hand back to punch Wesley, Charles entered the room, rubbing his hair with a towel.

Ron let go. He took a step back as Charles pulled the terry cloth off his head and noticed the two boys standing there.

“What's going on?” Charles demanded. “What are you doing up here, Ron?”

Wesley could see that Charles was immediately suspicious of Ron. Their last fight—over shoes—had been awful. Since leather was needed for army equipment, new shoes for civilians were rationed. The younger boys made do with the older boys' cast-offs. When Mrs. Ratcliff saw that Wesley's feet were bloody with blisters because of how tight his old shoes were, she made Ron give Wesley his favorite Converse All Stars, even though they weren't quite too small for him yet. Ron was so mad about it he went after Wesley but ended up punching Charles in the face, when Charles told him to back off. Things only got more tense when Mr. Ratcliff gave Ron a tanning after learning why Charles had a split lip.

Perhaps remembering that episode, Ron played innocent. “Mama sent me to get Wesley,” he said. “Because the Japs captured the East Indies we can't get kapok to stuff life preservers with anymore. So there's a call for milkweed pods. They say a pound and a half of milkweed floss will keep a one-hundred-fifty-pound sailor afloat for ten hours.”

“Get out of town! For real?” Bobby was now in the doorway too. “That weed we're always trying to pull out of the cornfield can save a man's life?”

“Yeah,” Ron answered. “Good old
American
ingenuity figured that out.”

As if the British couldn't have seen that, thought Wesley.

Ron continued, “Here's the best news: the factory making life preservers will pay fifteen cents for each cotton sack of pods. So Mama said me and Wesley could skip our regular chores to collect pods.”

“Fifteen whole cents per bag?” repeated Bobby. He whistled. “There must be a ton of that stuff growing along our fence line—a dollar's worth for sure, maybe even five!”

Wesley sure didn't like the idea of spending the afternoon with Ron. But he did like the idea of contributing some money to the mason jar of change in the kitchen. The Depression had sucked away most all Mr. Ratcliff's savings, and Wesley and Charles were painfully aware that the money their parents sent didn't equal what it cost the Ratcliffs to feed and clothe them.

Wesley knew Charles would go pick pods even if faced with a dozen bullies. He looked up at the photo of Churchill and steeled himself. “All righty, then,” he said, and picked up the straw hat he wore to shade his fair-skinned face while picking vegetables.

“Watch your back,” Charles warned as Wesley passed him.

R
on and Wesley walked the edge of the Ratcliff farm, picking pods off the chest-high milkweeds. In June, the plants' fragrant purple flowers hummed with bees. In August, their lush leaves crawled with black-and-gold-striped caterpillars that morphed into monarch butterflies. Now, in September, the stalks were dried and fragile, seemingly lifeless. But each held up pods as big as chicken drumsticks, crammed full with life to come—wispy dandelion-like tufts that would carry seeds on the winds once the pods cracked open enough to release them.

During Wesley's first autumn in Virginia, milkweed had been a terrific game with Patsy. “Never say there's no fun to be had on a farm,” she'd told the two Londoners. She took all the boys out into the fields and pulled the pods apart to send the seeds floating. The brothers ran underneath blowing in puffs to see who could keep their seed off the ground the longest. Jamie and Johnny had tumbled all over each other as they followed the drifting seeds.

Wesley stopped snapping off pods for a moment and watched the twins, who had come along with him and Ron. Instead of helping to pick pods they were playing “red light, green light.” Wesley couldn't help feeling jealous of their being able to play while he labored. He straightened the shoulder strap of his cotton-picking sack with some irritation. His bag was getting full and clumsy to drag. But it wasn't heavy. The milkweed fluff was that lightweight.

“Green light!”

The twins dashed past him, their strawberry blond hair dancing. Jamie pulled ahead of Johnny and ran up behind Ron, slapping his butt to claim his big brother as home base. “Safe!” Jamie shouted.

“Hey! Watch it!” Ron pushed Jamie off him. “Take a hike!” He turned back to his picking.

“I won! I won!” Jamie crowed.

“You cheated!” Johnny cried, panting as he caught up. “You took off before we said ‘green light!'”

“Did not!”

“Did too!”

“You're just a sore loser,” Jamie shouted.

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

Wesley knew it was a matter of seconds before the first shove. As predictable as the twins' tussles were, there was still something entertaining about them. They never truly hurt each other. When they really got into it, rolling around and swatting at each other, they looked like one of those blurred images in Looney Tunes cartoon fights, where there was a whirling ball of fists with
X
s and
oof
s flying out of it.

There it was—Johnny pushed Jamie hard. Jamie staggered, then shoved back. Reeling, Johnny took a few forward steps for momentum and really shouldered Jamie. Johnny's counterattack sent Jamie flying—right into Ron. All three of them landed on the ground with a loud thump and squeals of pain.

Johnny and Jamie lay there, gasping and whining and giggling all at the same time, still slapping at each other good-naturedly.

It was clear, however, that Ron was not amused. The weight of the three of them had smashed his sack of milkweed. Just like a pillow might split during a pillow fight to send feathers flying, Ron's milkweed pods had exploded into a cloud of wisps that drifted away.

Ron exploded as well. “Just wait until I get my hands on you dopes!” He grabbed for his little brothers. They wormed away in swift, practiced dodges and got to their feet to run.

Wesley knew they wouldn't get far before Ron, who was twice their size, would catch them.

Shrieking, the twins darted straight for Wesley. They wrapped their arms around his waist and cowered behind him. “Save us!” they yelled.

Wesley was stunned. They were still playing a game, he knew. But even so, the twins had never before turned to him for help. He looked down at them in surprise, then up at Ron coming toward him.
Blimey!
Now I'll catch it, he thought.

But Ron stopped. His mouth popped open. His look of rage turned to one of surprise, and—Wesley couldn't be entirely sure, but it looked like Ron's feelings were hurt. His brow puckered as he looked at his brothers, the same expression Wesley had seen on Ron's face when Bobby went off on some lark with Charles.

Then Ron crossed his arms over his chest, and that chip-on-his-shoulder look that always meant trouble for Wesley settled onto his face. “Turncoats.” He spit out the word.

Jamie and Johnny peeped out from behind Wesley. “What did you call us?”

“Turncoats,” he barked.

“What does that mean?” they chimed.

“Someone who chooses the enemy over family. Someone who switches sides to save his own skin.”

The twins let go of Wesley. “We're not no turncoats,” Johnny whimpered.

“Prove it,” Ron challenged.

Jamie and Johnny came to attention like little soldiers.

Ron pointed at the fluff floating away on the air. “See that? You wrecked my work. That's about five American sailors who won't have a Mae West to keep them alive now, thanks to you two knuckleheads. They'll drown instead.”

The twins glanced at each other in horror as if caught committing a terrible crime.

Ron peeled off his cotton sack and tossed it at them. “Fill this back up to prove you're behind me and that you back the U.S. of A.”

“Okay, Ron. We will!” The twins took up the cotton sack. Dragging it between them, they took turns standing on tiptoe to pluck the pods. As carefree as they'd been earlier, they were now filled with patriotic purpose.

Pretty clever the way Ron got the twins to do his work for him. Wesley stewed as he continued to fill his own sack. Then he noticed Johnny wiping his face with his shirtsleeves. He was crying.

“That was mean, Ron.” The words came out of Wesley's mouth before he could stop the thought. He even dared to repeat it. “Making the twins feel like they were turncoats for hiding behind me and that they didn't care about American sailors was plain old mean.”

Ron glared at Wesley, and called ahead, “Hey, boys, do you know when Americans started using the word ‘turncoat'?”

“When, Ron?” Jamie spoke for the two of them. Johnny was still sniffling.

“During the Revolutionary War. When we had to fight the…”—he paused for emphasis—“British.”

Living not far from Williamsburg and Yorktown, where the Americans finally beat the British, the twins knew a good amount about the Revolutionary War, despite being just second graders. They stopped picking to listen.

“Yup, the British,” Ron went on, reciting the history their teacher had just covered the day before. “Like old Wesley here. Taxation without representation, don't you know. The Brits tried to take our freedom. They would have hanged George Washington and Thomas Jefferson if they'd gotten their hands on them.”

The twins frowned and glanced at Wesley suspiciously. Washington and Jefferson were like gods in Virginia. Ron was on a roll.

“There were even some turncoats right here in Virginia.” Ron pointed east, where just a few miles down the road enormous old plantation houses built in the 1700s still stood along the riverbanks. “When the British fleet sailed up and down the James lobbing cannonballs at people's farms, some planters who'd claimed to be patriots turned into loyalists when they thought being loyal to the king was safer.”

“What happened to turncoats?” Jamie asked.

“Well, I'll tell you, Jamie.” Ron put his arm across his little brother's shoulders. “When patriots realized they had British sympathizers in town, they'd haul them into the street and tar and feather them.” He looked toward Wesley and cocked his head, as if imagining Wesley covered in white chicken feathers.

Jamie and Johnny followed his lead.

Wesley held his breath to see what Ron would say next. Bobby might think Ron had no brains, but this speech of his was diabolically clever.

“But aren't we friends with the British now?” Johnny asked.

“Of course we are. And us Americans are good friends, too. Hitler would have starved out the Brits if it hadn't been for us sending ships with American food and American fuel and American parts for their trucks and airplanes. Think about all those ships sailing out of Norfolk and Hampton Roads for England, braving the high seas and Nazi submarines. Remember those tankers of ours being blown to smithereens right off Virginia Beach?”

The twins nodded. Wesley remembered too. One of the Ratcliff neighbors was enjoying a day of sunbathing when she witnessed four ships explode and burn from mines a Nazi U-boat had managed to string at the mouth of the harbor. After the girl recounted the scene, Wesley had had to rush outside to throw up in the bushes.

Ron continued: “But we didn't stop sailing, did we? Even with those dirty rotten Nazi subs waiting off Virginia's coast to blow up our ships? Our ships keep going out.”

The twins shook their heads. “No, not us. We don't stop.”

“Some people even say the only reason the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor was because we'd stuck out our necks for the Brits…again…just like in World War I. But”—Ron shrugged—“that's what friends do, right? Otherwise the great British Empire might be just another Krautville right now.”

Wesley's face flamed with fury at the insinuation the British were weak charity cases. But before he could manage any kind of reply, Ron changed the subject. “Say, you boys did a great job. The bag's full again. How about a swim? It's hot.”

“Gee, thanks, Ron!” chorused the twins.

Ron smiled down at them as sweet as honey. He turned to Wesley. “Coming, old chum?”

Smarting from Ron's not-so-concealed insults, Wesley wasn't interested in getting himself into a situation that facilitated further harassment. “No thanks,” he managed to answer. “I'm going to fill another sack. Your mum can use the fifteen cents to buy a quart of milk.”

Ron narrowed his eyes. “Trying to show me up?” he said in a lowered voice only Wesley could hear. “No way.” Then he announced loudly, “It's hot. We all deserve a break. You too, Wesley. You don't want us to feel guilty if we go on to the pond and you stay here, do you? You'd spoil it for the twins.”

“Yeah, don't be a spoilsport,” said Jamie.

That was that.

As soon as they reached the pool's clearing, the Ratcliff boys stripped down to their boxers. They dove in, scrambled out, and dove in again—over and over. Wesley floated along the opposite bank.

“Hey, y'all, who do I remind you of?” Ron stood at the water's edge, thumped his chest, and bellowed: “AAAAHH-a-a-a-AAAAAAHHH-a-a-a.”

“Tarzan!” squealed the twins in delight.

Hearing them, even Wesley laughed. He had to admit Ron's imitation was spot-on. The yodeling scream was the hallmark of the films, including the one they'd just seen—
Tarzan
Triumphs—
in which Tarzan battled Nazis who'd come to the jungle and captured Boy. Ron gripped a thick grapevine hanging off a willow oak and swung himself over the water, just like Tarzan swung from tree to tree. Ron let go at just the right moment to drop—SPLASH!—into the water.

“Oh-oh-oh! I want to do it!” the twins chanted. Ron helped them hold the grapevine and pushed them out over the water.

SPLASH! SPLASH!

They came up spluttering and giggling, just as Ron cannonballed into the water. The Ratcliff brothers' laughter pealed through the woods. Wesley knew Charles would have been right in the middle of that happy roughhousing. He was so tired of feeling like an outsider.

Determined to be a part of the fun for once, he climbed out of the water. As Ron helped the twins onto his grapevine again, Wesley grabbed the vine nearest him. He had to tug hard to get its tentacle hairs to pull free of the tree trunk. He gripped the vine tight, walked backward, and then leaped onto it, wrapping his legs around it tight to clasp it close to his body.

He swung over the water, triumphant that he had managed such an athletic move, and let out his own Tarzan scream. As Wesley slid down the stubbly vine to drop into the water he could see the surprised look on the brothers' faces.

SPLASH!

He surfaced and bobbed, grinning at the boys treading water in his wake. He waited for their congratulations, their pulling him into their raucous circle.

Jamie and Johnny looked horrified. Ron? This time Wesley couldn't decipher his expression.

“What's wrong?” Wesley asked.

Together, Jamie and Johnny pointed to his vine and recited: “Only a dope swings on a hairy rope.”

Within two days, Wesley was covered head to toe with poison ivy.