On The Wings of Heroes

by Richard Peck

  Eyes rolled all over the room. Except for Walter Meece, just now noticing the teacher was absent.

  “But we are fortunate in finding a replacement, whose patriotic duty is to step in on a moment’s notice. I am sure you will all welcome her with your best behavior.”

  Beverly snorted.

  Miss Howe looked at the door. We all did.

  A figure stood in the door frame, dark against the glare of the hallway light.

  It was like they’d turned Miss Landis inside out, and here was her opposite. Old and scary with eyes bugged by her spectacles and wearing a shapeless shroudlike garment. One withered fist was parked on her bony hip.

  One of the girls screamed.

  Scooter smacked his forehead.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  It was Miss Eulalia Titus.

  In Scooter’s Opinion . . .

  . . . we’d gone out of the frying pan into the fire. Miss Landis had been too young to teach us. Miss Titus was too old to live.

  It took us a while to adjust to her. We weren’t used to a teacher who looked like a walnut with a mustache. With those specs, her eyes were bigger than she was, but you couldn’t tell where she was looking. Maybe around corners.

  The girls found out they missed Miss Landis. She’d worn a different outfit every day, and they’d drawn her dresses in their notebooks instead of learning. Miss Titus wore the same shroud every day. She wouldn’t have had to paint her legs. They were nowhere in sight.

  We supposed she’d be a bear on diagramming, but she said, “I gather you can all diagram sentences. Let’s see if you can write one.”

  Composition? Hands smacked foreheads all over the room. Beverly stirred.

  Beverly was biding her time. She’d run one teacher off, and this one looked like she already had one foot in the grave. “Lady,” I personally heard Beverly mutter to herself, “I’ll have you in the nursing home by Thanksgiving.”

  Our first composition was to be:

  While we wrote, I chanced a look Beverly’s way. She was drawing a lopsided skull and crossbones across the page.

  “Can we use the dictionary?” somebody asked.

  “You better,” Miss Titus said.

  Wednesday was her day to supervise recess. We were to leave by rows, which was a new one on us. But even Beverly went quietly. Miss Titus left her pocketbook behind on the floor by her desk, sticking out. Great big cracked-leather handbag.

  Hoyt Albers pointed it out. “Better not,” he said, but Miss Titus didn’t seem to hear.

  After recess, she manned the outside door to see that we came back in one at a time. I remember Beverly brushing past her because they were the same height. Then we heard screaming from inside school, echoing down the halls. Big screams.

  Teachers looked out of their classrooms. The screams came from ours.

  Doreen was up by the teacher’s desk, wringing her hands. Janis was on the floor at her feet, back arching, flailing around, howling. Something heavy was clamped to her hand, and she was banging it on the floor.

  Another odd thing about Miss Titus, she could move like greased lightning. In a twinkling, she was at the front of the room, crouching over Janis. She grabbed her flopping hand and held it up.

  We made a circle and gaped. All four of Janis’s fingers were mashed into a big spring-action patented rattrap. It was a businesslike trap, though rusty. Her fingers sticking out were gray, and her nails were blue. Taking her time, Miss Titus sprung the trap open and took it off Janis. “Get my pocketbook,” she told Doreen.

  Janis was wracked with sobs, a weird sound coming from her. Jungle Dawn Pink lipstick was all over her face. She was one big smear, and her feet kicked. You’d hope there’d be some blood, but there wasn’t. Still, her fingers were real flat.

  Doreen collected Miss Titus’s pocketbook from over in the corner where it had skidded. You could see how it happened. When Janis reached in to rifle the purse, the rattrap inside it got her. This was a surprise, and she jumped. The purse went flying.

  “My stars,” Miss Titus remarked. “I wonder how on earth a thing like that could have happened.” She stood. “In your seats,” she said, and we settled. Beverly too, looking around in her desk to make sure it hadn’t been tampered with. The whole classroom could be a minefield.

  Miss Titus told Patty MacIntosh to go with Janis to the girls’ restroom to soak her fingers. We stirred.

  Patty paled.

  But her arm was in a sling, so she and Janis made a good match. One had a good arm, the other a good hand.

  Beverly bolted. She and her stooges were never parted. It was a rule of theirs. She snapped a finger at Doreen, who was looking the other way. Then Beverly was lumbering up the aisle, heading for the door and Janis. Suddenly she was nose to nose with Miss Titus.

  “What business is this of yours?” Two magnified eyes bored into Beverly.

  Beverly fell back. A first. The tide of classroom war began to turn.

  The whole business was a real good lesson about not stealing. And after she quit sobbing, what could Janis say? That a rattrap out of an old barn jumped up and bit her as she happened to be passing?

  Some people thought baiting a rattrap with your purse wasn’t the way a teacher should act. But nothing teacherish worked with Beverly or Doreen or Janis. Anyway, there was a war on, so you needed to bring out your big guns and your secret weapons.

  When Patty MacIntosh and Janis came back, Miss Titus said to get ready for a lesson in first aid, as per the instructions on a wall chart. We were all in either Brownies or Cub Scouts by now, working on our bandaging badge, so we got busy on Janis, stretched out once more on the floor.

  Her hand didn’t look too bad, but she wouldn’t be slapping anybody around with it for a while. Still, she hollered the place down every time you went near it. She was a lot bigger sissy than we’d realized.

  With Miss Titus showing us how, we bandaged Janis up one side and down the other. She was a dead ringer for an Egyptian mummy by the time Miss Howe looked in on us, following Janis’s screams. Miss Howe saw us at our patriotic best, working over Janis as volunteer victim, with actual tears.

  “Very realistic,” Miss Howe said, and withdrew.

  War Stamp Thursday Came Around . . .

  . . . and Miss Titus called out, “Scooter Tomlinson? How are you in arithmetic?” The wisp of scant hair atop her head seemed to form a question mark.

  “A grade or two ahead,” Scooter estimated.

  So she put him and Hoyt Albers behind her desk, to take our money and issue the War Stamps, which they liked.

  We were all used to returning to our desks by way of Doreen’s row, to drop our dimes on her. But today Miss Titus was standing right over her. The first one down her aisle, Darryl Dillman, was ready with his dime. But there was Miss Titus, standing guard, all eyes. Doreen held her palm out, below the corner of her desk. But Miss Titus could see around corners.

  “What’s that dime for?” she demanded, loud enough for all.

  “He . . . owes it to me,” Doreen said in an all-new, mousy voice.

  “What for?”

  “. . . For about a week,” Doreen mumbled into her grubby shirtfront.

  “Move on,” Miss Titus told Darryl, and the line of dime-droppers behind him melted away.

  “Nobody owes you a red cent, sister,” Miss Titus said, over Doreen’s head. But her buggish gaze swept the room and fell all over Beverly.

  Beverly sizzled. An ugly flush rose up her brawny neck. She looked like she might burst into flames.

  As one more of her stooges bit the dust. First Janis in the rattrap. Now Doreen without a dime.

  Soon after, we got back our HOW WE, THE YOUNG OF AMERICA, ARE WINNING THE WAR essays. Scooter wrote about two boys who found a mutant form of milkweed growing in a barn, and they won the Congressional Medal of Honor for their discovery. Scooter liked using words such as mutant. Miss Titus wrote on his page that “It read well for fiction” and gave him a 94.<
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  I wrote about a couple of boys who found a brass bed in a spooky attic and got a pair of movie tickets out of it. None of my participles dangled, but I’d written:

  when I should have written:

  She graded me down for that. Way down. Down, down, down. But it cured me.

  Beverly got an F for her skull and crossbones, and stalked out of the room without her coat.

  “Where’s she going?” somebody said.

  “Who?” Walter Meece said.

  Where she went was Raycraft’s Drug Store to order a cherry Coke she didn’t pay for. She was nabbed going out the door with a bottle of eyedrops, a pair of dress shields, and a roll of Tums down her shirtfront, which must have been the first things she happened to see. All this came out later.

  But Beverly sulked into school the next morning, and Miss Titus said nothing.

  Then we got company again. They should have put a revolving door in for all the company we got. Beverly’s mom was back, steaming like a kettle. The tails on her big bandanna vibrated, and she kicked the door on her way in. She was one burly woman.

  We were doing fractions, and Miss Titus turned from the blackboard. Beverly’s mom skidded to a stop. Nobody’d told her about Miss Titus, who would come as a surprise to anyone. For a moment, she might have thought this was Miss Landis after two months of us.

  “Beverly’s parent?” Miss Titus’s eyebrows rose over her specs.

  “Yes, and I’m on a cigarette break from the plant. What do you mean turning her loose to waltz out of sch—”

  “I let her go,” Miss Titus said.

  “Why in th—”

  “Because it was high time I saw you,” Miss Titus said. “I can’t picture you at a PTA meeting.”

  Beverly’s mom simmered, but said, “Well, I can see you’re no better than the last so-called teacher.”

  “Possibly worse,” Miss Titus said. “They had to scrape the bottom of the barrel to find me. They had to burn the woods and sift the ashes. There’s a war on, you know.”

  The nutcracker jaw on Beverly’s mom clamped shut. Threats weren’t going to work.

  “You give her an F. It . . . upset her.”

  “An F’s for not trying,” Miss Titus said. “In this class you learn, or the police get involved. What’s it going to be?”

  That too slowed down Beverly’s mom, way down. But she turned over a big hand. “Oh well, me and school never got along either.”

  “You mean school and I never got along either,” Miss Titus said, correcting her. “Don’t use bad English in front of my pupils. They need all the good examples they can get.”

  Beverly sat at her desk, kind of clenched up, just under their line of fire. We were all ears.

  The sizzle went out of Beverly’s big mom. Her voice fell a mile. “I make twice the wages here I made back home. But it ain’t—isn’t worth it.”

  She turned on Beverly, who was staring into the distance the way girls do around their mothers. “You’re not cutting the mustard here,” her mom told her. “They’re going to have to win the war without me because I’m taking you back down home. I’ll get my old job back, and when I’m not set—sitting on your head, your grandma will be.”

  Beverly erupted. “Grandma! NOT GRANDMA!”

  We tried to picture her grandma, but couldn’t.

  Her mom checked the classroom clock and left.

  It was nearly noon, but Miss Titus got us back to fractions in five-eighths of a second. When we left for lunch, Beverly stormed out first, opening the pocketknife she always carried to carve her desk with. We all gave her a running start. The other eight-to-five orphans opened their lunches. Doreen and Janis weren’t sitting together.

  When the coast was clear, Scooter and I strolled out to look along the curb for Miss Titus’s banged-up Chevy with the suicide doors. When we spotted it, Scooter checked around on the street to find a pocketknife stuck in the flat front tire.

  But it was worth it. Beverly was gone for good. And next semester Doreen made the honor roll. She was good at math, probably from counting all those dimes. And Janis did all right with her grades.

  Over lunchtime I called Dad at the station to see if he could locate a tire for a ’33 Chevy. He said he’d scout around and put out some feelers.

  Without Beverly in school, it was like a day off.

  In the afternoons, we had music, not Miss Titus’s best subject. When she raised her voice in song, she sounded like her mama cawing from the bed. But we were warbling, “From the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foooaaam—” when we got our last visitor of the day.

  It was Dad.

  It was definitely Dad in the door, grinning and doffing his Phillips 66 cap. He and Miss Titus had about the same amount of hair. A recapped tire hung in his good arm. He spotted me, so he was in the right place. Then he saw Miss Titus.

  And Miss Titus saw him. She lowered the pitch pipe and squinted through her specs. “Earl Bowman?”

  I flinched.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Dad said, somewhat flushed. At home I’d never quite mentioned we didn’t have Miss Landis anymore.

  “That’s my boy.” Dad pointed me out.

  “I knew he was yours as soon as I caught him in my barn,” Miss Titus said.

  I hadn’t happened to mention that to Dad either.

  “The apple never falls far from the tree,” Miss Titus observed. “Remember the paddle?”

  Dad winced and reached around behind himself.

  “Teaching isn’t what it was,” Miss Titus remarked. “Why are you bringing a tire into my classroom?”

  “You evidently need one, and we give full service,” Dad said. “I have an idea your spare’s shot.”

  “Tires are worth their weight in gold these days. There’s a war on,” Miss Titus said. “What are you charging for that tire? I see it’s a Goodyear. And your labor, young man?”

  Young man? The class gasped.

  “Miss Titus, you don’t owe me a thing,” Dad said. “It’s all the other way. You were the best teacher I ever had.”

  Miss Titus twitched. “I was the only teacher you ever had, Earl Bowman. All eight grades at Sangamon School.”

  “And the best,” Dad said.

  Under Miss Titus . . .

  . . . we learned a lot more than we’d meant to. Spelling counted. Everything counted, and she ran our grade like Parris Island boot camp for the marines. She even brought Walter Meece almost up to speed.

  Also Miss Titus was a St. Louis Cardinals fan, a big one. Months after the Dodgers threw away their lead, and the Cards went on to take the Series away from the Yankees, Miss Titus was using their stats in our arithmetic lessons.

  I asked Dad if she’d had a mustache back when she taught him.

  “It was just beginning,” he said.

  A classroom poster read:

  USE IT UP, WEAR IT OUT MAKE IT DO OR DO WITHOUT

  To buy toothpaste now, you had to turn in the old used-up tube to the drugstore. Coffee vanished, and President Roosevelt told people to reuse their coffee grounds.

  “I will if he will,” Dad said.

  Now the war effort needed kitchen fats and bacon grease. You were to save it up in a container. Then you got extra ration points when you took it to the grocer. Scooter said a single pound of cooking fat was glycerin enough for fifty .30-caliber bullets. A notice in the newspaper read:

  LADIES: GET YOUR FAT CANS

  DOWN TO THE STORE

  which was the first time I’d heard Mom laugh in a while.

  She was counting off the days till Christmas and having Bill home. He was night-flying now, and we were hoping he’d be done with that and home for the holidays.

  But by December when the war was a year old, the army sent him straight on to bombardier school. The army seemed to change its mind a lot. He wrote from Deming, New Mexico, that they were training him on the Norden bomb sight. He had to strip and reassemble it in the dark, and they had to burn their class not
es as soon as they’d memorized them.

  So you had to be able to keep a secret.

  Bill wouldn’t be home, but Christmas crept up anyway. We pooled our sugar ration and baked early, to mail him his favorites.

  “He’ll be home in the spring before they ship them overseas. He’ll be wearing his wings and his second lieutenant’s bars, and he’ll be on top of the world,” Dad said, for Mom’s benefit.

  On Christmas Day we three went out hunting. Come to find out, Dad had taken Mom out hunting the day he asked her to marry him.

  They carried their guns broken over their arms across the crusty fields. I walked in their frosty footprints. Dad’s big treadmarks. The smaller prints of Mom’s boots that laced up above her skirt tails. I walked behind them—Earl and Joyce Bowman. Pale sun played through the ice on the branches. They didn’t kill anything, and I couldn’t, not with a piddly Daisy air rifle, which wouldn’t dent tin. But that wasn’t why we were out here. If they’d seen anything to kill, they’d have let it go.

  In the evening Mr. and Mrs. Smiley Hiser came over with a fruitcake from last year and their own ration of coffee. We sat in the safe kitchen with the steaming, streaming windows. We kept Christmas and waited for warm weather, and my brother Bill.

  JALOPY JULY

  Spring Took Its Sweet Time Coming . . .

  . . . and Bill didn’t get home till June.

  They started rationing shoes that February, and my feet were growing faster than three pairs a year. We were down to twenty-eight ounces of meat a week and four ounces of cheese. Down in St. Louis they were eating horse meat.

  On Tuesdays now we wore our Cub Scout uniforms to school, and the pack met afterwards. Scooter and I had been in and out of Cubs for a year. The pack kept collapsing under us. You needed a den mother, and you wanted it to be somebody else’s mother, not yours. But our den mothers kept getting war jobs or moving away or just giving up.