Aim (13 page)

February 1942

By February there was no denying that the war was cranking up. The newspaper announced that sugar would probably be rationed in the next few months. And maybe gasoline. On top of that, they were fixing to change the draft age.

I heard it first on Granddaddy's radio. Men from age twenty to forty-five would have to register. “What'd I tell you?” said Granddaddy. “Mr. Leroy is gonna be called up.” To hear Granddaddy gloat about it, you'd think Leroy didn't have a wife and children at home who might worry about him.

It was a few more days until Ann Fay borrowed the newspaper from the Hinkle sisters and read it for herself. Then she brought it to school and I read the article on the bus.

“It doesn't look so bad,” I told her after I read it. “Because he has more than three dependents. Yeah, he has to register, but they're not expecting men with three dependents to serve. Not right now, anyway.”

“Not right now,” said Ann Fay. “But that means later. Eventually they'll be calling him up too.”

“Maybe it won't come to that. We're going to win this war. Soon.”

A week later, the whole country went on War Time, which meant we had to turn our clocks ahead one hour. It was supposed to help save on gas. Granddaddy was downright hostile about anybody messing with the sun. “Franklin Roosevelt might think he's God,” he said. “But he can't decide when the sun comes up, and he ain't making me change my clock.”

To prove his point, Granddaddy got out of bed at the usual time—according to his watch—and when Momma brought him meals, he'd let them sit for an hour before he ate them. They were cold and he complained, but Momma didn't heat them up for him.

Of course his radio programs came on according to War Time, but since he mostly stayed in the bedroom and listened, it didn't much matter what time it was. The radio was full of news about our boys fighting the Japanese in some place called Bataan. And Granddaddy had lots of opinions on the topic. Never mind that he hadn't even fought in a war. He still thought he knew more about it than General Douglas MacArthur, who was leading America's battle against Japan.

“I've half a notion to sign up,” Granddaddy said one morning.

He thought he could go off to some place in the Pacific Ocean? For the last three days he'd barely left the bed.

“That's gonna be hard,” I said, “if you stay in bed all day.”

He must've taken that for a challenge on account of he sat straight up and grabbed his shirt off the nail in the wall. He wiggled his legs over the side of the bed and started to put the shirt on, but he couldn't find the sleeve.

“Help me out, boy!”

I took the shirt from him and held it so his arms could go through the sleeves, and then I turned to go. “Button me up!” Like he was an army sergeant and I was a common soldier.

“I guess you're practicing up for war.”

“Huh?”

“Giving orders, I mean.”

“Hmph. Children, obey your grandparents. Look it up in the Bible.”

I knew that wasn't in the Good Book. Not the grandparent part. But I kept my mouth shut.

“You should sign up. It's your patriotic duty.”

I buttoned the last button and he pointed to his pants, so I took them off the other nail. “I'm not old enough,” I said.

He nodded toward the portrait of his father. “Don't tell me you're not old enough. If Gideon Bledsoe could
do it, you can too. Lie about your age. Big strapping boy like you could sneak in and they'd never know the difference.”

“Okay, Granddaddy.” I didn't mean
okay
—like I would do it. Just
okay
—like I'd say anything to shut him up and get myself out of the room.

By the time I could dress and shave and empty his chamber pot, I had to run to catch the bus. Momma shoved an apple-butter biscuit into my hand and sent me out the door. “I'll do the milking for you,” she said.

At school I was still in a sour mood. And bumping into Rob Walker at the water fountain did not help matters one bit. I noticed a big red welt on his arm. And I guess I stared at it a little too hard because, all of a sudden, I felt someone twisting my jacket sleeve.

“What're you staring at?” It was Dudley's voice coming through clenched teeth. I turned and his face was right there—so close I could tell he ate raw onions for breakfast.

“Nothing,” I said. “I'm not staring.”

“Yes, you are. You're looking at my brother's arm. It ain't none of your business what happened to it.”

“I wasn't going to ask. But now I reckon you gave yourself away. You did that to him, didn't you, Catfish?”

“You ain't talking about me and my little brother like that. Hear me, Bledsoe?” And before I could even see it coming, Dudley slammed his fist into my ear.

I stumbled backwards, but I wasn't about to take that sitting down. I steadied myself, balled up both fists, and went at him. Face. Neck. Stomach. For every time he punched me, I made sure I socked him back. I heard voices cheering for Dudley. And some hollered for me. One was louder than all the rest—Ann Fay screaming, “Stop it, Junior Bledsoe. Stop it. Here comes the principal.”

Strong hands pulled us apart, and there was Mr. Hollar glaring at me and then at Dudley and back at me again.

“What do you boys think you're doing?” He half pushed us from the water fountain to his office. When we were inside, he shut the door. Hard.

My ear hurt. My jaw hurt. Some other places did too. “He started it,” I said.

“Did not!”

“Did too. You hit me first.”

“Hush,” said Mr. Hollar. “I don't
care
who started it.
I'm
going to finish it. I should expel you for this kind of behavior. Bend over. Put your hands on your knees and keep them there.” He reached for the big wooden paddle that hung off the front of his desk so that anyone could see it the minute they walked through the door.

He hit Dudley first. Dudley grunted. I snuck a peek at him. He squeezed his eyes shut and waited for the next hit. But evidently Mr. Hollar was watching me.

“Mind your own business, Junior. Eyes on the floor.”

So I stared at the wooden boards and waited while Dudley took five licks. I heard five loud grunts. Being expelled wouldn't be so bad, I thought. If only Momma didn't have to know about it. At least, if Mr. Hollar kicked me out of school, I wouldn't have to decide to quit.

Then it was my turn.

It hurt like fire. But every time I took a lick I thought about Pop. If this was him back when he was a boy, Granddaddy would give him twice as many when he got home.

February 1942

One morning about two weeks after I played hooky, I decided to slip off again. This time I wanted to find that swinging bridge. I wanted to stand on the bridge and remember. Remember me being scared and Pop helping me across.

Only thing was, I wasn't far into the woods when I heard some twigs snapping behind me. I stopped and listened. But all I could hear was the sound of a horse and wagon clattering down the hill into Brookford.

I started walking again, quiet as I could. And every so often I'd hear a noise and think I wasn't alone in the woods. But then I decided it was my imagination, so I stopped paying it any mind and kept going until I found the bridge. It was just a few rows of boards fastened to cables that stretched across the river. And there was a cable on each side for hanging on to and a pitiful row of slats to keep a body from falling off.

That bridge swayed with every step I took, and the water rushing below gave me the heebie-jeebies. It felt
as if the whole bridge was moving upstream. My legs wobbled and I gripped the cable, hanging on to Pop's words.
Keep your eye on the other side
. For some reason, that put me in mind of Miss Hinkle and that confounded handwriting advice:
Keep thinking. Keep moving. Keep gliding
.

When I was halfway across, I saw a stranger come onto the far side of the bridge. I didn't feel like talking to strangers, so I turned and headed back to where I came from. That's when I realized who had been in the woods with me.

Dudley Walker.

And now Dudley was on the bridge, too. There I was, up in the air on a swinging bridge—trapped between two people I didn't feel like talking to.

Dudley came straight toward me. Fast. Like he thought he could scare me by making the bridge sway. Or maybe he wanted to knock me off. I hung on to the cables at the sides and did my own share of swaying—just to let him know I wasn't afraid. We got that bridge rocking worse than Granddaddy's chair when he was fired up about something.

Behind me, I heard the stranger yelling. “Whoa there. Whoa. Yee-owl.”

Dudley was just about six feet from me now.

“What are you doing here?” I yelled.

“Following you, I reckon. Someone has to keep an eye on you.”

“What I do is none of your business!”

“What if I make it my business? What if Old Lady Hinkle wants to know why her little neighbor boy wasn't at school? Somebody has to tell her the truth, don't they?”

I didn't figure Dudley would be running to tell Miss Hinkle about me coming to Brookford when I was supposed to be in school. But it was hard to tell. He probably wouldn't mind getting himself in trouble as long as he could drag me along.

The bridge was starting to settle down a little. “What do you want, anyway?”

He shrugged. “To be shed of that school. And that teacher. Probably the same things you want.” He jerked his head toward the other end of the bridge. “Who's that?”

I'd almost forgotten about the stranger behind me. I turned and there he was. A tall man. He looked familiar. But why? He was hanging on to the sides of the bridge and trying not to drop his fishing pole at the same time. “Steady now. Steady boys.” Then he looked right at me and said, “Axel? Is that you? I heard you was dead.”

He thought I was Pop!

“Axel Bledsoe has passed on,” I said. “Who are you?”

“Otis,” the man said. “Hickey.”

Otis Hickey. Of course. Now I remembered. Pop would buy car parts from him. And one time, when he needed a radiator, he even took me to the junkyard behind Otis's house. “Axel was my pop,” I told Otis.

He nodded. He looked a little sad and faraway too, with his eyes just staring down into the water. “Me and Axel used to fish in this river,” he said. “Axel was older, but he let me follow him around. Mostly to wherever Jerm Foster was working on a car. Axel liked getting grease on his hands.”

Jerm Foster. Pop used to take me to his garage sometimes. I'd wander around, stepping over tools, and sniffing at the smell of oil and tires while I listened to the two of them go on about everything from mufflers to ignition switches.

Hearing Otis talk about the two of them gave me a warm feeling inside. I just sort of forgot about Dudley standing there listening. But after a while I noticed he'd sat down with his legs hanging over the side of the bridge. Come to think of it, sitting wasn't such a bad idea. So I did the same and Otis joined us.

There we were, just sort of floating above the river—a grand place to be on a school day, up at the height of the trees, with the river below us, washing on downstream. It soon turned and went out into the country.

Otis told me stuff Pop had never even mentioned. How Pop wanted to play baseball on the Brookford Mills team, only Granddaddy wouldn't let him. And how one day Pop walked out of Brookford with only the clothes on his back. “He'd had enough of this town and his people,” said Otis. “Enough of his daddy, anyway. Hammer Bledsoe is a hard man.”

“Yup,” I said. “He sure is.”

“I heard he went to live with Axel. I am kindly surprised.”

“It was my momma's idea. Since nobody else wanted him.”

Otis shook his head. “Hammer was a bad sort of fellow, some days—setting his children one against the other until they didn't know who to trust and who to hate. People say he grew up rough and passed it right on down the line.”

When he said that, I pictured Gideon Bledsoe in his Confederate uniform, holding that gun across his chest. Granddaddy said Gideon was hard as nails. But I couldn't imagine it—an earnest-looking boy with kind eyes like that, turning as mean as Granddaddy.

Every now and again, someone would come across the bridge and stop to talk to Otis. Before I knew it, the noon whistle was going off at the mill and Otis was getting to his feet. “Time to shove in the clutch,” he said. “Momma's expecting some fish for supper tonight.” And just like that, he up and left.

But Dudley Walker was still there. He opened his lunch bag and pulled out a biscuit. “It was my daddy,” he said.

“Huh?”

“My daddy put that welt on Rob's arm. Buckle end of the belt.”

“Oh.”

“He
could
pick on me, but he don't. Not that much, anyhow. Mostly it's just Rob. I try to lie and take Rob's punishment for him, but Daddy beats him anyhow. I don't know why he hates Rob so bad.”

I thought about Granddaddy hating my pop on account of that accident and how that meant he couldn't go to war. And about Pop pulling away from me the day I turned eleven, which was the same age Pop was when Granddaddy lost his hand. It didn't make any sense, really. But still, the more stories I heard, the more I thought I understood.

“There's usually a reason,” I said. “Even if it doesn't make sense to anybody else.”

February 1942

We snuck up to the school just before the last bell rang. I circled around below the back side of the building and came from the lunchroom end of things.

When I got on the bus, Ann Fay was already there. I walked right past her and found a seat near the back. Even before I sat down, I could tell she was on my trail. “Where you been, Junior?” She sat down beside me.