Don't You Know There's a War On? (8 page)

OKAY, NEXT DAY
, Thursday, plenty of stuff happened.

First off, even though I walked with Denny to school, I still didn't tell him what happened the night before. He never asked. The truth was, I was keeping it to myself. I didn't want to share.

After checking headlines at Teophilo's, Denny and me talked about the war. What was going on in North Africa. Where his father was. The Pacific news. And my father, wherever he was, dodging Nazi U-boats.

In school I kept watching to see if Miss Gossim would act different to me. She didn't, except once. Sort of. It was at family news time. Gladys Halflinger announced to the class that her mother was expecting. When she did, I thought Miss Gossim took a quick look over at me. Maybe I was only wishing it.

Then, it being Thursday, we did war stamps.

War stamps went like this: The U.S. government had to buy all kinds of stuff for our soldiers. Guns, ammo, airplanes,
ships, tanks. So what did they do? They borrowed money from people by getting them to buy war bonds. The thing was, they borrowed from kids too by getting us to buy war stamps.

When you bought a stamp, you pasted it in a special book. Fill your book and you'd get a twenty-five-dollar war bond. The government promised to give the money back with extra. Soon as peace came. Most of us bought only one or two stamps a week, so it took a long time to fill a book. Almost as long as it took to win the war.

You could buy stamps for ten cents or twenty-five cents. I liked the ten centers best. They were red with a picture of a minuteman on them.

Thursday, Billy Wiggins was war-stamp monitor. If you were war-stamp monitor, you stood in front of the class and made a speech about why it was a good thing to buy stamps and support our boys in the war. Then we kids would line up. As Miss Gossim watched, we'd buy stamps from the monitor. Stick them in our books.

That time, Billy made a speech about how bad Hitler was. Nothing I didn't know. Then, as the kids paid their coins, making a little pile on Miss Gossim's desk, I noticed she was looking at the money. Looking upset, actually.
Then I remembered her saying how little money she had, being a teacher and all.

I was thinking, Holy moley, how am I going to help her? I mean, she only had a couple of days left. Maybe she had a plan for her life, but I didn't. It was what the movie serials—like in
Dick Tracy Against Crime Inc
.—called “a desperate situation.” If something didn't happen, there wasn't going to
be
a next week. It was gonna be “The End.” Goom-bye.

But at three o'clock, all she said was “Children, study your history books tonight. Tomorrow we'll have our test on the American Revolution.”

AFTER SCHOOL
, Denny and me, we were walking home. No one was saying anything 'til he said, “Learn anything new about Miss Gossim?”

Now, remember, I hadn't told Denny nothing about my visit to Miss Gossim's. For that matter, I never told him I'd seen her looking over the cliff either. Hadn't even told him
where she was living.

At first all I said was “I guess she's still only got 'til Monday.”

He said, “When do you think she'll tell the class she's going?”

“The last hour, I bet.”

Then he said, “You figure out yet why she got fired?”

Soon as he said that, I knew I couldn't handle it alone. I was a kid. This was supercolossal grown-up stuff. If I was going to help Miss Gossim, I needed help.

So I said, “Remember the other day when we were collecting, how I followed her?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, I found out where she lives.”

“Oh, sure,” he said, smooth as a Fudgsicle. “Hicks and Orange. That apartment building. Apartment Five-C.”

I looked at him, really annoyed. Then I remembered that he knew about her father being dead and he hadn't told me none of that stuff either. So I said, “How come you know so much about her?”

“Because,” he said.

“Because
what
?”

“Because I do,” he explained.

I was about to get really mad at him and call off our no-secrets pact. Then I remembered I hadn't told him stuff either. So we were almost even. In fact, the only way to get really even was to let him know what happened to me. So I said, “Well, I know a lot more.”

“Like what?”

“Hey, wise guy,” I said, “how come I'm supposed to tell you stuff when you don't tell me the stuff you're supposed to tell me?”

“I dunno,” he said.

But, let's face it, the best part about having a secret is telling someone. So after a while I said, “Promise not to tell?”

Right away he poked out his pinky. No two ways about it, Denny loved swears. We hooked. “No fins,” I said.

“No fins,” he echoed.

I chopped.

“Okay,” I said, “she . . . she got fired because she's going . . . to have a baby.”

He stopped dead short and stared at me, mouth open, like he was waiting for a fly to pop in. You can't believe how good I felt knowing something he didn't know.

“That really true?” he said.

I nodded.

“How come you know?”

“She told me.”

“She
told
you?”

“Yeah,” I said, kind of casual, the way the hero says it in movies.

“She did? When?”

So I upped and told how I visited Miss Gossim in her apartment. The more I said, the more his mouth hung open.

He said, “You saying she really, truly—no fooling or nothing—told you?”

“Swear to God.”

“Oh, wow. How did she look?”

“Like a movie star.”

“What . . . what was she wearing?”

“A bathrobe.”

“A bathrobe! Willikers. . . .”

“Yeah,” I said. “Glassy.” Then I said, “Only I didn't tell you because I told her I wouldn't.”

“Then how come you're telling me now?” He sounded angry.

“Don't you want to know?”

“Yeah, but . . .”

“Hey, Denny . . .”

“Hay is for horses.”

“Come on, Denny, tell the truth. How much you like Miss Gossim? A
whole
lot, right?”

“I guess,” he said.

“Well, can't we both like her and still be best friends?” I asked.

He thought a minute. “Suppose.”

“Then you should tell me how come you knew all that stuff about her I didn't know.”

So Denny said, “Remember when Lomister put me in the office for running down the hall to the bathroom when I had the runs?”

“Yeah.”

“When I was sitting in there, I asked Mrs. Partridge all about Miss Gossim. She told me.”

“You didn't spy or nothing?”

“Do I look like a J. Edgar Hoover?”

“You wear a bow tie.”

“Doesn't mean . . .”

Then I said, “Come on, Denny, I really want to help her. Only I don't know what to do. I mean, if you were going to be . . . you know . . . expecting . . . would you
know what to do?”

“Boys can't have babies.”

“I know that! I'm just saying, if you could, would you?”

“No,” he admitted.

“Well, then, okay. It must be scary. When she leaves, we probably ain't ever going to see her again.”

“She going home to Indiana?”

“Yeah,” I said, sore because that was still another thing he knew which now I knew, only he hadn't told me before.

We went on, checked the headlines at the newspaper stand, but when we got to his tailor shop, I was still sore. So all I said was “See you in the morning.”

“Can't,” he said. “I have to make a delivery for my mother first.”

“Okay. Goom-bye.”

“Hey, Howie,” he called after me.

“What?”

“Plant you now, dig you later.”

I trudged off, not looking back. I was thinking, What was the point of telling him all that? I still didn't know how I was going to help Miss Gossim.

WHEN I GOT HOME
, I sat on my front stoop. The sun was shining warm enough so that windows were open. The skinny pin-oak trees in their squares of dirt had some green buds. Kids were jumping rope. Playing marbles. Hopscotch.

Not wanting to think about Miss Gossim, I started studying my American history book.

But Gloria, up in the apartment, had the radio on so loud I could hear the soap opera she was listening to:

I ran up to the apartment. “Gloria!” I screamed. “Turn the radio off! I'm trying to study!”

All she did was make it lower.

Being already upstairs, I sat in the kitchen and kept reading. After a while Gloria came into the room.

“What you studying?”

“The Revolution.”

“What's that?” she asked.

“Go read Orphan Annie.”

She stood behind me, reading my book over my shoulder. “What's a pet-i-tion?” she said, pointing to the word in my book. She was a good reader.

Naturally, I had to show off like the big brother I was. “A petition is what people do when they don't like something. See, they write up a sort of letter saying that they don't want something to happen. Everyone signs it. Then the people who are doing the thing they don't want them to do read the petition and change their minds because they see people don't like what they're doing. That's a petition. In case you didn't know, the Declaration of Independence was sort of a petition.”

She thought for a moment and then said, “What's the Declaration of Independence?”

I said, “Go ask Helen Trent.”

“Sad Sam,” she called me as she walked away.

The thing was, after she went, I started thinking about what I'd just been saying. And I began to have this idea: What about doing a petition about Miss Gossim? I'd get everyone in class to sign it, then give it to Dr. Lomister. That would make him un-fire Miss Gossim.

The more I sat there thinking about it, the more I liked it. I got so excited, I got out some paper and a pencil.

It took a while, with bunches of cross outs, but what I did finally read like this:

The exclamation points were so Lomister would know we really meant it.

Then I signed it, big, like John Hancock.

I figured I'd bring it to school next day. Get the whole class to sign it.

I have to admit, though, I did remember my promise to
Miss Gossim that I wasn't going to do anything. But I was telling myself I
had
to do something. See, I couldn't do nothing for my pop, or Denny's dad, but I could do something for Miss Gossim. I mean, Pop was somewhere. Denny's father was in Africa. She was close. Understand? Doing
something
was better than doing nothing. “Hey,” I said, giving myself permission, “don't you know there's a war on?”

FRIDAY, MARCH 26, 1943

Rommel Hangs On in North Africa.

Heavy U.S. Casualties Will

Mark Victory.

Meat Shops Bare All over City.

No Relief in Sight.

Center of Berlin Blasted in

Heaviest Raid.