Aim
Authors: Joyce Moyer Hostetter
JOYCE MOYER HOSTETTER
Aim
CALKINS CREEK
AN IMPRINT OF HIGHLIGHTS
Honesdale, Pennsylvania
Text copyright © 2016 by Joyce Moyer Hostetter
All rights reserved.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact
[email protected]
.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Calkins Creek
An Imprint of Highlights
815 Church Street
Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431
Printed in the United States of America
ISBN: 978-1-62979-673-4 (hc) ⢠978-1-62979-746-5 (e-book)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932209
First hardcover edition, 2016
First e-book edition, 2016
The text of this book is set in Sabon.
H1.1
Design by Barbara Grzeslo
Production by Sue Cole
For Carolyn Yoder,
who suggested I find a story in my own backyard,
which, as it turns out, is the very best place for a series
to begin
VISIT THE WORLD OF JUNIOR BLEDSOE IN THE TWO SEQUELS TO
AIM
.
PROLOGUE
       Â
It was Pop who taught me to shoot.
       Â
He showed me how to aim and hold that gun real steady.
       Â
But when it came to life,
       Â
aiming wasn't so easy for him.
       Â
Seemed like he was always stumbling around
       Â
looking for something that would make him happy.
       Â
I don't reckon he ever found it.
       Â
When he died,
       Â
I was stuck with Granddaddy and with stories
       Â
of how, back during the Great War,
       Â
he turned my pop into his own personal enemy.
       Â
Pop was just a boy then.
       Â
The way I figure it,
       Â
what I learned from the two of them
       Â
and from my own dumb mistakes
       Â
is enough to fill a book.
POP AND ME
July 1941
“Hand me that wrench.” Pop wiggled his grease-covered fingers.
I gave it to him, but I wanted real bad to get my hands on his repair job. “I could do that if I had me half a chance,” I said.
“Too bad,” said Pop. “I'm not taking half a chance on messing up Miss Pauline's car.” Pop had been in a growly mood ever since Granddaddy moved in last week. But it wouldn't make a difference if he was in a good mood. Fixing cars was his job. My part was handing him tools and fetching him cups of cold well water when he was thirsty.
Sometimes I wondered if I'd ever get to show him what I could do.
Just then my hound dogs started howling. “Hush, Jesse. Be quiet, Butch.” I squatted and scratched Jesse behind his ear. “Pop, it's the Honeycuttsâin a truck!”
“Leroy don't have a truck.”
“He's driving one now. A '35 Chevrolet.”
The Honeycutts' oldest girl, Ann Fay, was hanging out the truck window. “Hey, Junior,” she hollered. “Look what we got!” Leroy parked right beside us under the big oak tree where Pop fixed cars.
Pop leaned in close so only I could hear. “Sounds to me like a box of rocks.” Then he called out, “Howdy, neighbor. Where'd you find that dandy?”
Leroy hopped out of the truck and pointed to the name on the door.
Hutton and Bourbonnais Lumber Company
Hickory, North Carolina
He grinned. “The boss called it a rust bucket. Said it used too much oil, so he replaced it with a brand-new one. Of course, this is coming out of my wages.”
Pop didn't own a truck or a car, so I expected him to turn green as moss right in front of Leroy. But he took it like a man. “I'm right proud for you, Leroy. Mind if I take a look?” Pop lifted the hood of the truck and reached for the dipstick. He pulled it out, wiped it clean with a rag, and put it back in. Then he pulled it out again. “Oil looks okay now,” he said. “But keep an eye on it or you'll be rebuilding the engine for sure.” He pointed to the pulleys hanging from the big oak tree overhead. “My block and tackle is just waiting.”
Leroy nodded. “It could use a tune-up. Think you could help me?”
Ann Fay climbed out and grabbed her daddy's arm. “Can I help?” She was only ten years old, but I declare, she was like a pint-sized Leroy with her black hair and those blue eyes. All she needed was a pair of overalls to finish her off.
People said me and Pop looked alike too. Same stocky build and brown hair that wanted to curl whether we liked it or not. But we didn't go together like biscuits and gravy the way Ann Fay and Leroy did. Seemed like when I turned eleven years old, me and Pop went from being biscuits and gravy to vinegar and baking soda. When you put the two of us together, there was bound to be some fizzing going on.
Jesse came sniffing at Ann Fay's feet, so she scooped him up and snuggled into him like he was Bobby, her baby brother. “Hey, cutie pie. I sure wish I had a dog like you.”
She just wanted a dog and I just wanted that truck. I walked all around it. There were a few rust spots and a dent in the fender. But it had a nice blue color. I was already scheming how I could get Leroy to let me drive it. I walked over to the driver's door and stepped onto the running board.
“Go on,” said Leroy. “Hop in.”
So I did. Ann Fay climbed into the passenger side.
“Someday
I'll
have a car,” I said. “Except I want one of those 1940 Studebakers with a cargo box that fits in the back. That would be like having a car and a truck, all in one.”
Ann Fay probably didn't know what a cargo box was, and evidently she didn't care either. “Can you believe it, Junior? My daddy has got his very own truck. We won't be hitching rides with the Hinkle sisters or Peggy Sue's family anymore. Take me for a ride, Junior.”
I shook my head. “First I gotta learn to drive. And Lord knows when that'll happen. Pop ain't been willing to let me try.”
Leroy came to the driver's door, so I hopped out and watched while he got in and turned the truck around. Before he could leave, Ann Fay called me to her window. “Here's the paper,” she said. “Almost forgot to give it to you.” She shoved a copy of the
Hickory Daily Record
into my hands.
The Honeycutts almost always passed the paper on to us. The only reason they had one in the first place was because the Hinkle sisters let them read their copy when they were done with it.
I unfolded the paper. First thing that caught my eye was a warning from President Roosevelt saying that Americans should be willing to pledge our lives to preserve freedom.
In other words, he was preparing us to go to war. So far, my pop and Leroy didn't have to register with the
army because they were over twenty-eight years old.
And
they had families. But if America joined the war against Adolf Hitler, there was a chance they'd have to serve. And according to most people, it wasn't a matter of
if
we joined the war; it was a matter of
when
.
The Germans had already taken over Poland and France and a bunch of other countries. They'd tried to take England but couldn't, and now they were marching through Russia, fighting their way to the capital. Besides all that, they had submarines in the Atlantic Ocean, attacking whoever they took a notion to.
But I didn't want to think just then about war and Pop being called up and maybe even getting killed. I flipped over to the sports page for a quick look at the report on Joe DiMaggio's hitting streak. He was up to forty-seven games now, and it looked like he couldn't be stopped.
I put the paper on a crate sitting in the yard and went back to help Pop with Miss Pauline's carburetor. “Can I finish adjusting that?”
“No.” He didn't even lift his head to look at me. “This is my mechanic shop. Find your own job.” He kept right on working. Finally he said, as if he'd grabbed the idea right out of thin air, “Your pal Calvin quit school. You can too.”
Calvin Settlemyre. Pop and I went night-fishing on the river with him and his daddy. Used to, anywayâbut not lately. It seemed like the more Pop took to drinking
whiskey, the more certain people kept their distance. After all, his ways might rub off on them. For all they knew, I could be a bad apple too.
But if there was anything I wanted, it was to show the world that the Bledsoes could be as upstanding as anybody else. “I'm going to high school, Pop,” I said. “Momma wants me to. And I finally made it to ninth grade.”
“Yeah, well, you go on, then. After the first day, quit. Least you can say you went to high school.” Pop laughed and poked me in the chest with his wrench.
I laughed too, but not for real. It was just an act-like-it-didn't-hurt laugh. A go-along-with-Pop laugh. “But Pop, I can play baseball this year.”
He snorted. “There's only one Joe DiMaggio. And one of these days his streak will end just like that.” Pop snapped his fingers in front of my eyeballs.
“Yeah,” I said. “But that don't stop him from playing.”
“Nope,” he said. “But I can stop you.”
He stuck out his hand, and I put a screwdriver in it. It was time to adjust the carburetor.
“Start 'er up,” he said. “And cover the seat so you don't get it dirty. I won't have you disgracing me in front of the neighbors.”
“Yes, sir.” The car belonged to the Hinkle sisters just up the road. They were proper ladies, especially Miss Pauline. I spread a clean feed sack across the seat, then
slid behind the steering wheel, pushed the starter button, and turned the key. I felt like revving that engine high as it would go, but I knew better.
Pop poked his head up past the hood and hollered. “Let it idle.” He tinkered with the screws on the carburetor and hollered again. “Now rev it up. Hold her steady. Whoa, not so much.”
We went back and forth like that, him hollering instructions and me trying to get it just right. In my mind's eye I could see exactly what his hands were doing because more than once I'd watched him work on Wayne Walker's 1940 Ford, with Wayne giving it the gas and Pop adjusting the screws.