Liberty

by Kirby Larson

  For Eli, braver than dragons and giants

  Half Title Page

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE: Not My Dog

  CHAPTER TWO: Somewhere in North Africa

  CHAPTER THREE: With a Side of Spam

  CHAPTER FOUR: Near Algiers

  CHAPTER FIVE: Freedom for Liberty

  CHAPTER SIX: Young Mr. Edison

  CHAPTER SEVEN: Roll Call

  CHAPTER EIGHT: No Picnic at the Beach

  CHAPTER NINE: Putting Pen to Paper

  CHAPTER TEN: Hitching a Ride

  CHAPTER ELEVEN: Forward Fish

  CHAPTER TWELVE: Thunder and Lightning

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Meeting the New Noah

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN: A Distant Shore

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN: “A Great Crusade”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Now You See Her, Now You Don’t

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: Eighty Cents a Day

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Big Brass and Big Bullies

  CHAPTER NINETEEN: Friedrich’s Twin

  CHAPTER TWENTY: Caged

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: Der Hund

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: Friend or Foe?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: The Plan

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: Diving in Headfirst

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: Bad News Times Two

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: Sleight of Hand

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: Pleased to Meet You, Mr. President

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: A Visitor

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: Just Like Any Boy

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Kirby Larson

  Copyright

  Thomas Edison said, to invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Fish Elliott had both. Unfortunately, he also had Olympia. Fish heard her before she even poked her braided head through the loose board in the fence between their yards.

  “Aren’t you done with that yet?”

  Fish grabbed a hammer, pounding extra loud to drown her out.

  “It’d go faster if you let me help.” She slipped through the narrow opening in the fence. If they had been allowed to attend the same school, that loudmouth in his class would’ve called her String Bean. Olympia’s grandmamma, Miss Zona, said that Olympia had to turn around twice to catch her own shadow.

  “It was a pure accident with your model plane,” Olympia said, tossing an imaginary pebble and hopscotching across the yard.

  That “pure accident” left Fish’s B-17 with a broken wing.

  He braced one piece of wood against his bad leg, and held another up to it at right angles, tapping a nail to fasten them together. With every tap, though, the pieces of wood slipped apart. After the third try, he threw everything down in frustration.

  “Let me help steady those.” Olympia reached over. “Now pound.”

  The nail went right in.

  She brushed her palms together, a know-it-all smile on her face. “Looks like you could use an extra pair of hands.”

  Fish grunted, and kept nailing. He tapped two more pieces together and then two more, until the frame was more or less square. Sometimes, there was a goodly distance between what he drew in his plans and what got built. Did Thomas Edison ever have problems like that? Sure as shooting, Andrew Jackson Higgins didn’t. Mo’s boss was the most famous man in New Orleans — maybe the world. His sister said that even Hitler knew about Mr. Higgins. “He calls him the New Noah,” Mo told Fish.

  She brought home a different story from work every night. Fish’s favorite was when some big brass from the Navy told Mr. Higgins there was no way a small company like Higgins Industries could build ships on assembly lines. Mr. Higgins told that admiral, “Like heck we can’t. Just watch me.” Only he didn’t say “heck.” If such words had come out of Fish’s mouth, Mo would’ve cleaned it with a bar of Palmolive.

  Olympia tapped Fish’s project with the toe of her saddle oxford. “What’s it going to be?” she asked.

  “You’ll see when I’m finished.” Fish picked up a hunk of chicken wire.

  “A crawfish trap?”

  He pointed at the size of the holes in the chicken wire. He’d been in town long enough to learn about crawfish. “They’d climb right out.”

  “Oh, yeah. Ouch! Danged skeeter!” Olympia used her thumbnail to make an X on a mosquito bite on her arm before slapping it three times. “Well, you must be counting on catching something big,” she pressed. “That trap could hold three possums and a couple of squirrels.”

  Fish hadn’t planned on building such a large trap. But Mo wouldn’t let him use a saw when she wasn’t around. “The bigger it is, the less likely that critter eating your grandmamma’s Victory Garden will see it. It’s like camouflage.”

  Olympia wrapped a braid around her finger, her brown eyes challenging him. “You don’t say.”

  “It’s my trap.” Fish tested the joints to see if the nailing job would hold. “I guess I know what I’m doing.”

  “I saw Roy’s car here again the other night.” Olympia started stacking the unused scrap wood into a neat pile. Now Fish would never be able to find anything. “He’s awful handsome in that Navy uniform.”

  She should mind her own beeswax. Roy was okay, but Fish had set three places at their dinner table too many times lately. Roy said Mo’s cooking was better than anything he got at the Navy base. Why a lightning bolt hadn’t struck him dead for saying that, Fish had no idea. His sister could change the oil in a car, rotate a set of tires, and replace a worn clutch, but cooking edible food seemed beyond her. If Miss Zona hadn’t sent over a plate of gumbo or some red beans and rice once in a while, Fish and Mo might have starved to death.

  Olympia started humming “Here Comes the Bride” while he wrestled a piece of chicken wire into place. It was hard to imagine that someone so ornery sang solos in her church choir.

  “I can manage on my own now.” Fish picked up his plans, puzzling over them. How was he going to fasten on the trapdoor?

  Olympia fiddled with a bent nail. “Why don’t you want my help?”

  There was the model, of course. Fish kept his eyes on his plans. He wasn’t about to explain to Olympia that the last time he’d made a real friend, it was another kid in the polio ward. Someone like him.

  “O-lympia!” Miss Zona hollered out the back door. “Come help me shell these peas.”

  “Wish I could stay longer.” Olympia stood up, brushing off her dress.

  Church bells chimed the hour. Fish folded the plans into his pocket. “I’ve got to go anyway.” Mo had asked him to pick up some green beans for supper. That meant three places at the table again. Roy was crazy about green beans.

  As he step-clomped to Cali’s Market, Fish heard the faint mournful blasts of steamships coming and going. He paused to listen, imagining workers unloading bananas and coffee beans from the holds, then reloading with sugar and such. He’d looked up New Orleans in the encyclopedia before he and his sister left Seattle. The map showed the city sandwiched between the bubble of blue that was Lake Pontchartrain and the snaky path of the Mississippi River. Now that he was here, he got the feeling, what with the lake, the canals, the bayous, and the river, New Orleans was nothing more than a sponge floating in the middle of an enormous bathtub. There was so much water, even the cemeteries were aboveground.

  He passed by Campbell’s Hardware with the war poster in the window — BRING THEM HOME SOONER/BUY WAR BONDS — which always reminded him of Pop. He didn’t have to enlist, but he did, saying he could make a difference, and besides, Mo and Fish could take care of themselves just fine. But Fish knew he was the real reason Pop joined up.

  “All you need is them green beans?” Miss Rose sounded downright disheartened. “We’ve got a nice sale on sou
p,” she said. “Three cans for a quarter. And only three points each.”

  Fish promised to ask Mo about the soup as he handed over the money and the ration book and took the packet of beans. A block away from the market, he spied some guys from school throwing rocks at the corner light post. Fish decided to avoid them by taking the long way around. Pritchard Street didn’t look much different from his own: rows of shotgun houses on either side of the road, one of them painted the same shade of pink as Miss Zona’s. That reminded him about the trap. What was he going to do about the door?

  “That your dog?” a gruff voice called out.

  Fish kept walking.

  “I’m talking to you, boy.” The voice got sharper. “That your dog?”

  A man wearing suspenders over a dingy undershirt glared at Fish.

  “I don’t have a —” he began. Then he turned around to catch a skinny cur hound trotting along behind him. She wore white stockings on her two front legs, and a white bib on her chest. The rest of her was a mottled coppery brown. Kind of like that patchwork quilt Miss Zona threw over her living room sofa. The dog cocked her head at Fish, as if asking, Don’t I know you?

  “She’s not mine.” Fish didn’t see a collar. A stray?

  “Well, if I catch her around here again, she won’t be anybody’s dog,” the man snapped. “Bound to go after my chickens sooner or later. Scram!” He flapped his arms and hollered at the dog; Fish felt like he was being yelled at, too. He let out his breath when the man stormed off.

  Fish whistled softly, patting his leg, and the dog took a few steps toward him. “That’s a girl,” Fish encouraged. A few more steps. “Come with me, okay?” He could count her ribs. “I’ll find you some food.”

  She froze, a front paw in the air.

  The crabby man barreled around the corner of his house, picking up rocks as he ran.

  “Don’t hurt her!” Fish yelled.

  The man clipped the dog on the hindquarters. She yelped, tearing off down the street, a blur of copper and white.

  “She comes back around here again, I’m going to shoot her.” The man threw one last rock.

  Fish scrambled away, as fast as he could with his bad leg.

  That dog needed saving.

  And it was up to him to do it.

  He and Hans had felt like pirate captains, coming upon the deserted camp and the Tommies’ rations. Tins of meat and sausages, fruit, and biscuits hastily buried in the sand. They’d shared their bounty with a few of their Gruppe, all of them eating like wolves, inhaling the food before the flies got in. Erich could scarcely remember what it was like to eat without batting away flies.

  At least the night had passed quietly; he’d slept like a babe with his full belly. For the first time in months, Erich’s dreams were not of the war, or of the Afrika Korps, but of home: He and his brother were bookended by their parents at the dining table. Mutti, Vater, and Friedrich lifted their glasses to him, as if toasting some good news. It was not much, that pleasant dream, but precious in its ordinariness. Erich was reluctant to wake, to leave his family, especially his little brother, Friedrich, behind. But his bladder was insistent. As others in the camp began to stir, Erich pulled on his shorts and shirt, checking his boots for scorpions. Almost worse than scorpion bites were the infections from the cactus thorns. But those were finally healing. Things were looking up. In addition to last night’s feast, they’d been able to stay put for a few days. Long enough to set up a camp, to dig into the hardpan and pitch the two-man tents. He bunked with Hans, who was not bad, for a Bavarian. At least he didn’t snore.

  Outside the tent, Erich stretched, smacking his lips. When was the last time he had truly quenched his thirst? How did the Bedouins survive in this miserable desert? It was crawling with enemies: the brutal sun, the flies, the sandstorms. And, of course, the Americans.

  He nodded to Oskar, exiting the nearest tent. “Guten Tag.”

  Oskar nodded back, lit a cigarette. Erich continued on to the slit trench they used as a latrine. He relieved himself, then did up his shorts, shivering. It would be beastly hot soon, but the morning air still bullied him with last night’s chill. Despite being a decent student, he had been astonished to learn that, in this desert, the temperature could vary forty degrees between day and night. It was a wonder they hadn’t all succumbed to pneumonia.

  Erich moved away from the latrine trench, his boot crunching against the sandy crust atop the hard stone. He took another step and hesitated, aware of a vibration in the bedrock. A vibration that traveled through his worn leather boot soles, up his legs, and straight into his gut.

  His head jerked up, eyes scanning the cloudless sky. B-17 bombers. The Americans!

  “Take cover!” He screamed the warning to his comrades. Why he even bothered, he did not know. This miserable stretch of grit and pain was hardly like the thick forests back home that swallowed men with ease. Here, there was nowhere to hide but the few bomb shelters and trenches they’d been able to carve out of this unforgiving rock. But Erich ran anyway. What else was there to do?

  “Hans!” His tent mate could sleep through anything. “Take cover!”

  Erich did not hear the bomb. He saw it or, rather, saw the pummeling fist of dust and rock and debris it sent skyward. Blown like a matchstick across the sand, he crashed against a Panzer. Dazed, he shook himself. Took inventory. Everything seemed to be in working order. He staggered away from the tank toward the tent he shared with Hans.

  It wasn’t there.

  Now, as he fought to stay on his feet, he had a vague memory of someone — Oskar? — helping him put his boots back on, handing him a canteen of water, offering words of comfort.

  The first thing he was truly aware of after the bombing was an officer waving a white flag. Of his comrades throwing their weapons down. Raising their hands.

  Erich shook his aching head, trying to make sense of the scene.

  A very tall American soldier — with corn silk hair and inexplicably kind eyes — greeted Erich in perfect German: “Fuer dich, mein junger Freund, der Kreig is vorbei — For you, my young friend, the war has ended.”

  By nightfall, Erich and his unit were in a holding camp. Each man was asked to show his Soldbuch, his military identification booklet. Erich had no trouble with the soldier examining his, but Oskar’s had been taken. To be kept as a war souvenir, no doubt, as was Erich’s father’s watch. It was now in the possession of a smug American private who wore it on his arm with six or seven others he had “liberated” from the captured men.

  Later, the Americans brought them food — slices of white bread as sweet and soft as cake — and bowls of stew. Each man even got an orange! Erich devoured every bite. He couldn’t imagine why he was so hungry at a time like this, but he was. Besides, this meal might be his last.

  After eating, they were marched in small groups to tents. Erich stumbled inside and collapsed on the nearest cot, too exhausted to comment on the luxury accommodations. At least they were luxurious in comparison to those he’d enjoyed in Rommel’s forces the past several months. He did not even remove his boots. He rolled onto his stomach, feet hanging off the edge of the cot, and fell dead asleep, no sweet dreams of parents, of Friedrich. No dreams at all.

  And that was how Erich Berger celebrated his seventeenth birthday.

  “Oh, gosh, I’m so late.” Mo tore down the stairs, through the kitchen to the bathroom. She soon emerged, smelling of Shalimar and Pepsodent, mumbling something about Mr. Higgins having her head. “Don’t forget to take out the trash!” She grabbed her hat and pocketbook, and was gone.

  Fish crunched his breakfast cereal in the now-quiet kitchen, still thinking about the dog. He hoped she’d found a safe place to sleep. He hoped that man hadn’t hurt her.

  He was almost out the front door on his way to school when he remembered the trash. He step-clomped back through the house to fetch the can from under the sink. Balancing it against his right leg, he hobbled down the back steps. Something rustled in th
e shrubs by the shed. A cat? Raccoon? Miss Zona’s rabbit? Fish approached slowly. The rustling got louder. When he was just paces away, a copper-colored streak flew out. The dog! And here he was with no treat.

  “Hey, girl!” He set the trash can down. Patted his leg. She hesitated, shaking. He took one small step. “I won’t hurt you.”

  She sniffed the air in his direction.

  He held out his hand. Moved closer.

  And she ran. She was out of sight before he could even think to call her again.

  Fish couldn’t believe he’d missed catching her a second time. But she’d been in his yard, which gave him an idea. An idea he couldn’t do anything about until after school. For one brief moment, he considered playing hooky. He didn’t even want to think about what Mo would do if he did. It was going to be torture, but he had to go.

  Fish had never made it home from school so quickly. He went straight out to the backyard to rummage around in the shed. None of the stuff in it was theirs; it belonged to the renters before them. But those people were long gone. Finders keepers. He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for. Sometimes an open mind was the best way to go about finding what you needed. It was like Thomas Edison once told an employee: “There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!”

  Hopeful as Fish was to find a solution for the trapdoor, he didn’t think that old lard tin or broken rake or torn fishing net would do much good. Or that stack of magazines. No comics, but some National Geographics and Life. He set aside the few issues of Popular Mechanics for later. A paint-spattered drop cloth hid an old Schwinn and a stack of cigar boxes. Pushing down the memory of his fifth birthday, he reached around the bike to yank out a couple of the cigar boxes. Fish picked up a pair of rusted needle-nose pliers, some snips, and a mallet before dragging all of his treasures out to the yard. He dropped to a sit, bad leg straight out.

  “Now what are you making?” Olympia poked her head through the loose board in the fence.

  Fish held one of the cigar boxes on his lap, flipping the lid open and closed. He could use hinges to hook the trapdoor on. That was all well and good for opening. But what could he use to trigger the door to shut? He flipped the lid back and forth again.