100 Days and 99 Nights

by Alan Madison

  “His whole unit, every man and woman, private to major, will have a copy of the Drum & Bugle by Tuesday.”

  “We hope,” added Ms. Pitcher, “the scrap metal will be melted down and turned into armor to protect our troops.”

  As the sun set, it made the enormous mound of metal glow orange and red. A truck from the army arrived, loaded the scrap, and headed back to the base.

  “We are grateful for any and all support we get from the home front, where every citizen can be a soldier. Anything done here helps us defeat our enemies over there,” commented Captain Capra of the U.S. Office of War Information.

  For their patriotism and hard work, each child received a red, white, and blue battle ribbon from their principal, Ms. Jacqueline Pershing, and a certificate of commendation from the army for a job well done.

  “So what do you think?”

  I wore a big ear-to-ear grin. “You sure know how to tell a story.”

  Which made Mom put on the same grin. She got up from my bed and started to pluck the week’s dirty clothes from the hamper that hung from my closet door.

  “I have to get the laundry in ASAP.” Which is army talk for “As Soon As Possible.” I jumped up to help pick the clothes off the floor.

  “Thank you, young lady. Fish sticks tonight?”

  “My favorite.”

  “And spaghetti?”

  “No sauce,” I reminded.

  Loaded with an armful of smelly socks, I followed my mom down to the basement washing machine.

  Queen Bee

  Queenie is black and yellow, with a fuzzy big bottom and two floppy wings made out of lace. My mom gave her to me for Ike’s first birthday. It was the only time I ever got a present for someone else’s birthday. Dad sometimes calls Mom the queen bee, which is kind of funny since she does not have a black-and-yellow fuzzy big bottom.

  “Esme, so many soldiers slap me on the back to say, ‘Tell your daughter thanks,’ that I am black-and-blue and proud all over!” my dad joked when he next called from his base. “Everyone has a copy of the paper and I am bursting with pride.”

  The phone static crackled.

  “I folded it up and keep it in my top pocket next to a picture of the three of you.”

  “Which part did you like the best?”

  “The picture. You look so big.”

  “Where are you?” I asked.

  “It’s a secret. Where are you?”

  “In the good ol’ U.S. of A.,” I chirped cheerfully, not feeling the need to keep secrets from him any longer. Sharing that not-so-secret secret made him very happy, which made me very happy.

  “That, my girl, is a good place to be. A good place to be . . . ,” he repeated, or the phone echoed a bad connection.

  “Ike around? Ike around?”

  “Ike! It’s Dad!” I yelled.

  He charged up the stairs from the basement and grabbed the phone.

  “Hello. Dad? Dad? Hello?” He dropped the phone; it rebounded off the floor, swung from its cord, and clattered across the kitchen cabinets. Ike stormed away, back to the basement.

  “That’s not funny, Esme!”

  I caught the still bouncing phone and put it to my ear.

  “Dad?” My own voice bounced back to me. “Dad?”

  I hung up and stood thinking. Mom entered.

  “What happened?’

  “We were disconnected.”

  “Oh. That’s too bad. He’ll call back when he can.” She continued to the stove. “Why don’t you finish your homework and then we’ll have dinner.”

  Nodding, I headed toward my room. As I passed the open basement door, I stopped and listened. Ike rumbled his trucks along the floor, talking to them, pretending they were people. I clomped down the stairs to give him fair warning of my arrival. He stopped his imaginary trucking and stared up at me.

  “You know, Dad was on the phone. We just got disconnected.”

  “I know.”

  “He’ll call back when he can.”

  “I know.”

  “Next time you can talk first.”

  He ducked his head and went back to pushing his long-necked crane. I squatted down to a laddered fire engine and gently rolled it back and forth. Ike didn’t bite my head off so I eased down to a full sit and moved the bright red truck farther along the carpet. There was a long silence as we both pushed our separate trucks across the floor. I hadn’t ever played with Ike’s toys before. He never let me and I never wanted to. We both needed time to figure out exactly what we were supposed to do.

  With his dirty brown buzz cut, sharp blue eyes, and jaw that came out past a flat forehead, Ike looked a lot like Dad — only smaller.

  “There’s a fire over there.”

  He pointed at a block-built building at the edge where the carpet met the concrete.

  I stuttered out a low vibrating siren sound and rumbled the truck toward the pretend blaze. He grabbed his big red pumper with his left hand and the small fire chief’s car with his right and raced them past me.

  “Faster, Esme! Faster! We have to save the people.”

  Rhinoceros Ofcourserous

  Anytime I say “rhinoceros,” my dad says “ofcourserous.”

  “This is Reginald my rhinoceros.”

  “Ofcourserous! Glad to make your acquaintance.”

  He says he didn’t make the word ofcourserous up, and that it is from a famous movie. But he can’t remember which one. I don’t believe him. I think he made it up and doesn’t want to admit it because it is sillier than spatula. Ofcourserous.

  In math class, while others learned to add and then subtract, subtract and then add, I watched the wall clock’s thin black second hand collect minutes on its march toward dismissal. Even though it is my favorite subject, I couldn’t help but drift away, thinking about the next slice of my dad’s one hundred day and ninety-nine night tour of duty. “Doodee,” I muttered Ike’s mangled pronunciation, and grinned. Tour, not such a funny word, but then I imagined it as an actual tour. Dad sitting in a bus, driving across the desert; the guide gripping the microphone close to her lips, pointing out places of interest, like when we went on the class trip to Colonial Williamsburg.

  “If you look out the right side of the bus you will see an excellent example of sand,” explained the peppy tour guide. “And if you look out the window on your left you will see . . . more sand!”

  I chuckled out loud at the thought.

  “Esmerelda . . . Esmerelda McCarther.”

  I looked up and swallowed my smile whole. Standing at the door was Principal Pershing calling out my whole first name and sometimes my last name in front of the whole class.

  “Esmerelda. Esmerelda McCarther . . . Esmerelda. Esmerelda McCarther . . .”

  How long had she been standing there? Did she know I wasn’t listening to the tower of tens that Ms. Pitcher properly summed up? How many times had she called my name? I wanted to crawl into my desk and hide behind the ruler, but being too big for that . . .

  “Esmerelda, a moment,” she inchwormed her pointer at me, requesting my immediate attention.

  Slow-rising from my seat, I winced in pain at her continued use of my extended first name. Then I wondered why and then worried why I was being called out of class ten minutes before school was over. Everyone’s eyes grabbed at me, trying to hold me down, but the pull of that inchworming principal’s finger was just too strong. I zigzagged through the desks toward the door and halfway there I thought of why and my knees started to shake. Not me. Please not me. Each classmate I passed looked down at their doodle-filled notebook, as if, like the flu, they could catch whatever the principal was going to give to me. Not me. Please not me. Martina smiled lightly and gave me the ol’ thumbs-up as I exited.

  “Your brother is in my office,” stated the principal plainly when we stepped out into the hall.

  “Ike?” I asked for no particular reason but to fill up the empty hallway air. I didn’t have another brother. Ike it was.

  �
��He has had a bad day. A scuffle in the yard.”

  My knees gradually stopped their crazy rhythms. My stomach stopped doing gymnastic tumbles and the corners of my mouth turned up away from frown toward a sky-high smile. It wasn’t my nightly nightmare become real in the day. It was okay — only Ike, in a “scuffle.”

  “There is nothing funny about a fight, young lady.”

  “No, ma’am. I’m sure Ike didn’t start . . .”

  But she was down the hall before I could finish.

  In the main office, Ike was perched at the edge of that very same pencil-scarred wooden bench that ran along the faded blue construction-papered bulletin board. The left knee of his pants was ripped and his angry face was finger-painted with streaks of dirty tears.

  “What happened?”

  “I got into a fight with Stony, he . . .”

  “This way, you two.”

  Principal Pershing swung open the heavy wooden door that bore her gold-plaqued name and title. We climbed into the two heavy wooden chairs and stared across the wide expanse of the cluttered, heavy wooden desk at our principal’s creased face.

  “Isaac, would you care to tell your sister what happened?”

  “He said he was going to hit me. . . .”

  Stony and Ike had a history, so the idea that they had an argument did not surprise me. They were what Mom called “light-switch friends” — on again, off again. When they were on they were “thick as a brick and as sweet as honey,” and when they were off . . . But a fistfight . . . Ike, even though his curious Ike Sense often guided his actions, wasn’t like that at all.

  “He’s half your size,” I pointed out.

  “. . . with a stick. He said he was going to hit me with a stick . . . a big one,” he added, and stressed the “big” to help excuse his actions.

  I looked up to see if the “big stick” story held any water with the principal. Not even a teaspoon.

  “Did he hit you with the stick?” she quietly queried.

  I swiveled back to Ike, almost hoping. He sad-shook his head.

  “Did he even have a stick?” she calm-continued.

  “Not that I saw . . . no, but he said . . .”

  Having barely one leg to stand on, his hurt voice limped away. Ike had hit a kid in the playground who was half his size because the kid had threatened to hit him with a stick. This was Ike Sense at its worst! The bell rang, interrupting Ms. Pershing and releasing our classmates for the day. Her mouth twisted in impatient knots as she waited for the clanging to finish, and when it did the lecture began.

  “Now, I know that your father is away and that is very hard. But, Isaac Ulysses Swishback McCarther . . .”

  Oh, gosh, she used his middle name. I panicked inside, wondering if he would be suspended, kicked out of school, or worse. . . .

  “Today you have broken many school rules and I’m not really sure what to do with you.”

  She paused and took in a deep noisy breath through her banana-curved nose.

  “I would prefer not to worry your mom about this. Is this something you two can solve?” Both our heads bobbed like Halloween apples in a tub.

  “Good. Isaac — do I have your word that this will not happen again?”

  Ike’s head continued to bob.

  “Even if next time Stony Jackson says he is going to hit you with a tree trunk?”

  The bob slowed as he thought of Stony trying to swing a tree trunk at him.

  “Then on your way, you two.”

  Signaling that she was done with us, she steep-curled her nose down, pretending to examine a stack of papers. We thanked her, and as we backed out, I assured her that I would talk some sense into Ike, even though I knew that was fairly impossible.

  Squirrel

  Mom says when I saw Sylvester in the toy store window it was love at first sight. I bought my squirrel with my very own money. I saved my allowance and when I reached $10.99, which is as close to eleven dollars as you can come before it actually becomes eleven dollars, I opened my little safe (the combination is a secret), took the money to the toy store, and bought Sylvester my squirrel. At the last minute, Mom had to chip in seventy-nine more cents because they charged me something called tax, which I did not think was very fair. Still, I was very proud of myself.

  Silent as fish, we traveled the hall upstream into the rush of students heading home. Still silent, we passed the playground where the day’s trouble had begun. Children raced around the swings, monkey bars, and seesaw. There was no trace of the afternoon’s fight. We walked all the way to the mailbox on the corner of Normandy Avenue before Ike begged, “Esme . . . say something.”

  I considered what Mom would say in this sort of situation but then just said what I had to say.

  “Dad’s rules are all we have until he comes back. You absolutely broke his playground rules.”

  “I know it . . . I just wasn’t thinking. . . .”

  “That’s Ike Sense, all right — just not thinking.”

  I shouldn’t have said that, but I did. His shoulders folded down low as if I had just punched his stomach. I felt pretty bad. I had been a fustilug, but he had broken at least one, if not more, of the playground rules that Dad had drilled into us.

  1. Wait your turn.

  2. Don’t talk to adult strangers.

  3. Don’t throw sand.

  4. Don’t leave the playground without telling an adult.

  5. The first person who hits is always wrong.

  “Number five,” I said matter-of-factly.

  “Five,” agreed Ike as he fought hard to hold back tears.

  “Sticks and stones . . .”

  “I know . . . I know . . . ,” moaned Ike. “Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names . . .”

  “. . . and dopey threats will never harm me,” I finished.

  Sticks and stones was a no-brainer. Thoughtless fustilugs would talk and say hurtful things, but that was never a reason to hit.

  According to Dad, “The first person who hits is the first person to run out of good ideas, and a McCarther never runs out of good ideas.” Dad was big on rules. Rules were important. After all, in the army you had more rules “than you could shake a stick at.”

  My father, Sergeant August Aloysius McCarther the Third, has made it super clear that you don’t want to go and break his rules.

  “I didn’t want to break his rules.”

  “I know you didn’t, Ike.”

  “It’s my duty not to . . . ,” Ike muttered sadly and proudly at the same exact time.

  I chewed that over, then nodded in agreement. While Dad was away it was our duty to follow his rules.

  “I broke my duty. . . .”

  The image of Ike breaking his “doodee” almost made me break out laughing, but the sad trickle of tears that slid down into his furred brown coat collar stopped me.

  We turned onto our street. The dogwood trees, with yellow ribbons tied to their trunks in hopes of our soldiers’ safe return, stood at attention as we passed. Our house squatted on the far corner. The white paint had started to potato-peel off parts of the walls. Dad would fix that when he got back. He’d take us to the hardware store to buy paint and turpentine.

  Turpentine! Dad thought turpentine was a funnier word than yogurt, llama, or even spatula.

  “You going to tell Mom?”

  “Turpentine.”

  I didn’t mean to say that; the silly word just slipped from my lips. Ike looked up at me, scrunched his damp face in confusion, and then for the first time since I saw him sitting on that bench in the office, smiled. Somehow, at that moment, “turpentine” was the very best thing to say. Funny, how you can get lucky that way. Then Ike’s smile just as quickly disappeared.

  “What about Daddy?”

  What about Daddy? I repeated inside my head. For the first time since my father had left for war, I was angry with him. How could I possibly be angry with him when he wasn’t even here? The house needed painting, Ike got into a fight, Mom
needed help, and we hadn’t had a good pancake in weeks. He had other duties — duties here with us. Which came first, the sergeant or the daddy? My lips went straight and my teeth gritted hard together at this dangerous thought. I knew deep inside that even thinking this I had somehow broken an important rule. I sucked in a deep breath of cool air through my nose and looked down at Ike, who waited, expectant eyes, chin raised, for my answer to “What about Daddy?” Think, Esme, think what to say. Be owl wise. But at that moment I was so mad-sad about so many things that I had gone blank inside my head and couldn’t put any words in any correct order.

  I stepped over the curb onto the faded stone walk that led to the house. From behind the front door you could barely hear Napoleon’s muffled welcoming barks.

  “I miss Dad,” I soft-said. It wasn’t something I had ever said since he had left. But now, having said it, I felt like I had broken another big rule.

  “Me too.”

  Ike slipped his hand into mine and squeezed. We continued up the path toward home.

  Tiger, Turtle

  This is my third time through the T’s. I started with Tina my tiger, which I got from Mommy’s little brother, Tom, when he visited us in Germany two years ago. He took us on an amazing boat trip down the blue Danube, a river in Germany whose banks are dotted with ancient castles that Tom told us are ruled by ferocious trolls. (Tom likes telling stories so I am not sure how true that part is.)

  My turtle’s name is Tililah, which Ike insists is no name at all. This is another case of Ike Sense. Since my turtle is named Tililah, it is most definitely a name. When we first arrived in Alexandria, Delilah, a corporal lady in my dad’s division, gave me Tililah. She explained that this turtle would always remind me that “slow and steady wins the race.” Even though I like Delilah and Tililah very much, I don’t believe that one bit because anytime we race in gym I have noticed that the fastest one wins and the slowest, steady one does not. Sometimes grown-ups don’t know very much about kids.

  I bounced on my bed, examining my crossed-off calendar. It looked like I was X in a very long tic-tac-toe game that I should have won at least ten days ago. To try and make the game a tie, I decided to circle the rest of the days Dad was gone. With my thick black marker I circled day seventy-two, a sunny Sunday. At least I had Grandpa McCarther’s visit to look forward to.