Aim (14 page)

“Minding my own business. What about you?”

“I didn't see you today.”

“I reckon you had a good day then, didn't you?”

She frowned. “I like seeing you. At least when you're not being mean. Are you feeling mean?”

Was I feeling mean? I shrugged. It was hard to explain what I felt, and if I knew what it was, I probably wouldn't be telling it to her.

“I heard you played hooky.”

I didn't like the sound of
that
. “Who you been talking to?”

“Rob Walker said his brother seen you leaving school one day. He figured you'd do it again. And you weren't in class today.”

“When did you turn friendly with the likes of Rob Walker? He's trouble and you ought to stay away from him.”

“Rob didn't say it to me. Other people are talking too.”

“Other people don't know what they're talking about.”

“I don't think I believe you, Junior.”

I shrugged. “If you don't like what I have to say, go sit with Peggy Sue.”

Ann Fay hugged her books to her chest. “I think I'll do just that.” Then she stood and headed for the front of the bus.

“And don't be spreading lies about me neither,” I called after her. But I saw her whispering in Peggy Sue's ear the minute she sat down.

The next morning I tried to think of a good reason to stay home. I figured I was in deep dooky with Miss Hinkle and probably Mr. Hollar too. But when I told Momma I didn't feel good, she put her hand on my forehead and said, “You don't have a fever.”

Miss Hinkle didn't say a word about me being absent from school. She called the roll same as every morning and made us practice our handwriting like usual, too.
The drill sentences on the board were:

Young man, grasp your opportunity.
Time and tide wait for no man.
Quibbling and quarreling are bad habits
.

The way me and Dudley had been quarreling this year, I was sure it never crossed Miss Hinkle's mind that we had spent yesterday hanging around in the same place together.

Dudley ignored me until time for lunch. And then he plopped himself down at the table next to mine. “We ought to join the army,” he said. “It'd make more sense than what we're doing here.” All of a sudden it was like Dudley Walker had decided to be my pal.

If someone had suggested such a thing a week ago I would have said they belonged in the loony bin. But after hearing Dudley talk about his little brother getting beat up by his daddy, I didn't feel so alone anymore. Maybe we did want the same things in life. Like Miss Hinkle and that handwriting book said,
Union of interests brings union of minds
.

Now here Dudley was, talking about enlisting. Defending the freedom of America's children. That sounded good. Joining the army would earn me some respect, for sure. My picture would be in the paper. Granddaddy might even hang it on the bedroom wall.

But still, I wasn't planning to enlist. “You're crazy,” I said. “We're underage.”

“Lots of people lie about their age,” he said. “And the army is desperate for soldiers. It's the patriotic thing to do.”

I shook my head.

“Young man,” said Dudley, “grasp your opportunity.”

“You sound like some old lady schoolteacher.”

“Watch your mouth, Bledsoe!”

When it was time for physical education, Miss Hinkle told me and Dudley to stay behind while the others went to the gymnasium. “I've been told that the two of you rode your buses to school yesterday. Is that correct?”

I saw the toe of Dudley's shoe making a figure eight on the wooden floor.

“Look at me. Both of you.” I jerked my head up and looked Miss Hinkle in the eye. It was like staring at two bright shiny nails. Metal. Cold. “Were you on the school bus yesterday?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“Dudley?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

“And where were you after that?”

I shrugged, waiting for Dudley to explain. But he let me do the talking.

“Don't shrug your shoulders at me, Junior.”

“We went to Brookford.”

“So you were truant?” That was her fancy way of saying I was playing hooky. “I will, of course, need to talk to your parents.”

I couldn't let her do that. But how could I stop her? I started talking. Fast. “My mother has been real upset,” I said. “On account of Pop dying. It would be best if you don't say anything. I'll do better, Miss Hinkle. I promise. I won't play hooky again.”

Maybe Miss Hinkle did have a little bit of neighborliness left in her, because what she said next surprised me. “I'll give you one more chance. But if this happens again, I will be contacting Bessie.”

March 1942

I wasn't about to give Miss Hinkle a reason for talking to Momma about my truancy. So I worked harder than ever. But the sight of my handwriting always sent Miss Hinkle fishing for her fountain pen and bottle of red ink. She kept returning papers marked up with criticism.
You can do better
. Or,
Sloppy. Do this over
.

One good thing about school—besides the time I dropped my pencil and Janie picked it up and handed it back to me—was that Dudley and I weren't constantly bickering. He'd bring his sack lunch and plop down at the table with me. Sometimes he'd tell stories on his daddy—about him whipping up on his brother or being happy drunk and making a fool of himself.

“We just need to leave out of here,” he kept saying. “I heard on the radio where three thousand men from Catawba County enlisted last month. Now it's our turn.”

“Those three thousand men were between the ages of twenty and forty-five,” I said.

“So we'll tell them we're eighteen. The army ain't being that picky.”

The worse I did in school and the more I listened to Dudley saying “Young man, grasp your opportunity,” the more he made me believe we could do it. Some days when Granddaddy was dozing in his chair or poking around in Momma's business, I'd pick up that picture of Gideon Bledsoe and stare at it.

His eyes would hold me and I'd want to have a conversation with him. I sure would love to hear him tell me what it felt like to go off to war so young. And how did it feel to come home a hero?

One day Miss Hinkle assigned us to write essays on things we could do to help win the war from home. I wrote that I had already dug around in my shed for rubber and metal to take to the scrapyard. I would plant a bigger garden next year so food from grocery stores could go to the army.

I knew I should be buying war bonds, which was a way of loaning money to the government until after the war. Every copy of the
Hickory Daily Record
advertised them for sale, and every citizen was supposed to be buying them. But what if some citizens had to struggle to pay the light bill?

Maybe the best thing I could do was get a job. Then I could buy war bonds. And if I worked for a sock factory like the one Peggy Sue's daddy owned, I could even make
socks for soldiers. But when would I have time for that? Between school and working around the house, I was doing good to catch the bus every morning.

In the essay, I mentioned that I could quit school and find a job.

That was the wrong thing to say in a paper for Miss Hinkle. The day after I turned it in, she called me into the hall. I didn't have any idea what I was in trouble for until I saw that paper in her hand. She flapped it in the air to show me that she disagreed with what I wrote. “Junior,” she said, “I certainly hope you are not serious about dropping out of school. That will not benefit you or the war.”

It was bad enough that she had to go and argue with my ideas. But on top of that, she started in on my handwriting. “I do not emphasize this for my own benefit,” she said. “The Palmer method is designed to help you make a good impression when the time comes to pursue work. I want you, Axel Junior, to meet with success when you go out into the world.”

Miss Hinkle just had to throw in Pop's name—to remind me
he
hadn't made such a good impression. To shame me into doing better than he did. She handed me a small book. It was
The Village Blacksmith
, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “I want you to copy this poem in your best handwriting. And memorize it, too. Then you will have its message in your heart for the rest of your life.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

That poem was all about a hard-working, upstanding man who didn't owe any debt. I had no trouble reading between the lines, and I knew Miss Hinkle was trying to tell me to be different from Pop.

I copied the poem as best I could, in between all my other chores. But I didn't even try to memorize it. If Miss Hinkle thought she had talked me into staying in school, she was sure wrong about that. Instead, I turned in the poem and told Dudley I was ready to enlist.

“Atta boy!” Dudley thumped me on the back.

The next morning we walked right into the building like every other day—in case Miss Hinkle or Mr. Hollar or anyone else was watching out the windows. But just when I was ready to pass the auditorium doors, Mr. Hollar stepped out into the hall. He cast his eyes around like he was always doing, looking this way and that, but he was busy talking to a teacher and I didn't think he even noticed I was there. They turned and walked up the hall in front of me and went into a classroom.

Now all I had to do was make it past my room. Miss Hinkle was at the blackboard, writing a sentence in her perfect Palmer longhand. Seeing
that
made me want to run, but I tried my level best to look normal. I went out the back door and slipped past the building, sticking close to the wall so no one inside would see me from the windows. At the corner I started ducking from one tree to the next. Then I got antsy and took off at a run.

We had to go through Brookford to reach the recruiter's office. Dudley had said to meet at a certain hickory tree just before the swinging bridge. There was a hollow log there for hiding our schoolbooks. He was sitting on the log and smoking a cigarette—calm as pond water.

I leaned my forehead against a tree and closed my eyes while I tried to catch my breath. The rough bark of the tree felt good under my hands. I peeled some off and crumbled it in my fist.

“Want a smoke? It'll settle your nerves.”

I shook my head. “Naw. I'm not nervous.”

“Liar. I see you shaking in your shoes.”

I didn't see how he could tell and I sure wasn't about to admit it. I turned and leaned with my back to the tree, sliding until my behind was sitting in the leaves. “I don't smoke.”

He shrugged. “Look, there's nothing to be nervous about. Throw your shoulders back and march into that office like a soldier.” Dudley stood and started across the swinging bridge.

“Ha! You look like a drunken sailor, is what you look like.”

Dudley started singing, slurring his voice.
“Shipmates, stand together. Don't give up the ship. Fair or stormy weather, we won't give up, we won't give up the ship.”

I just sat there staring. And laughing. Dudley Walker could actually be fun sometimes. I thought about the
first time I saw him on that bridge and what he said he wanted—to be free of school and Miss Hinkle. To get out and see the world. He sat there listening to Otis tell stories on my pop. And then he started telling his own stories. About Wayne Walker.

He was right about what he said that day. We both wanted the same things. Not just to leave school behind us but to be shed of some other things, too. For instance, the way people looked at us on account of our fathers. We both wanted to earn our own respect in this world.

Dudley was on the other side of the bridge now. I hoisted myself up and followed him, keeping my eye on the other side so I wouldn't lose my nerve. I intended to go through with this.

So, when I was across the bridge, I took off at a trot toward the highway. We passed the cotton mill, marching and holding our heads up proud and puffing out our chests. We told each other what we planned to say to the recruiting officer—that our country needed us because we were young and strong and of sound mind. We wanted to protect the freedom of the world. I decided I would say what Franklin Roosevelt said—that it would be a privilege to fight for the future of America's children. The Germans and Japs and Italians were gangsters trying to take over the world, but we were too tough for that. I'd tell them I had a crackerjack aim and I intended to use it.

It was a long walk, but we finally made it there.

March 1942

After all that walking, it felt good to just sit on a hard bench and wait. Dudley smoked one cigarette and then another. “Where do you get them?” I asked.

He laughed. “My old man. And his friends. Have to sneak them one at a time. My father is a happy drunk. He's fine with missing a few cigarettes when he's drinking. But I can't take too many too fast or he'll notice when he sobers up.”

We sat in that waiting room for more than an hour. And I noticed that people who came in after us were called back before we were. Maybe their lottery numbers had come up. Maybe that explained it.

But we waited forty-five more minutes, and I was fixing to be mad. “God bless America! Where are they?” I asked. “We come here to help win the war and they leave us sitting like a couple of dogs by the side of the road.”

I went outside and stared at the brick wall of the
building across the street. Being in town was like being stuck in my room with Granddaddy. Everywhere I looked, I saw walls when I wanted some trees. I needed the smell of pine needles and rotting stumps. The clean fresh air of the woods. I needed the feel of my gun in my hands and a squirrel or even a deer in my sights. I half closed my eyes and imagined the woods behind our barn.

“What you doin'?”

The trees in my mind disappeared, and now I was staring at that brick wall again. The smell of cigarettes pushed away the leafy, woodsy smells. Dudley was standing there poking me with his elbow. “You look like you're pulling at a trigger. Like you just can't wait to find yourself in this war.” He laughed and slapped me on the back. “That's good. The recruiter is going to take to you like a turkey buzzard on dead possum.”