by Alan Madison
“It’s boiling!” I squealed.
“Mrs. McCarther! It’s boiling!” Martina reeled.
“Penny,” my mom corrected, and helped direct the paths of our hard pasta into the pot’s erupting center.
“Hmm, I guess a watched pot does boil.”
Martina and I nodded and smiled but did not offer anything to make her think different. Sometimes it is better for parents not to know they are almost always right.
After dinner we all got into our pj’s, cuddled up on the couch in the den under a huge Grandma Swishback quilt, made loads of popcorn, and watched an ancient not-color movie about a woman who really, really likes a ghost and also really, really likes a real live man. Partway in Ike got bored and grumped up the stairs, mumbling, “Dumb movie.” I was happy about him leaving because it made the movie better and left us more popcorn.
For sleepovers, Dad would carry the mattress from the downstairs guest bedroom and set it on the floor next to my bed. I always thought this task must have been awfully easy because with little fuss the mattress always appeared, sheets hospital-cornered, pillows plumped, ready for my friend to be tucked in. I was wrong. It was way easier for Dad to do than to actually be done.
The three of us dragged the flopping mattress down the hall and lifted it onto the first step. With our backs bent, Martina and I gripped the top and Mom the bottom.
“Pull,” Mom commanded, and we did.
“Push!” we called down, and she did.
It took about a hundred pulls and pushes, combined with several laughs, a bunch of giggles, and many more grunts to gradually, step by step, inch by inch, make it to the top of the stairs. Sweaty-wet, Mom flopped onto the mattress. We followed.
“Your dad is going to pay when he gets home! This is entirely one hundred percent his job.”
“Yeah, he’s going to totally pay,” I agreed.
“Absolutely pay,” chimed Martina, not wanting to be left out.
Pushing and pulling the mattress to its proper spot next to my bed, we listed every job we would have Dad do when he returned.
Mom tucked the pink sheets under the corners and went to get the extra pillow.
I handed Martina Karl the monkey from my bedzoo.
“Want to borrow him for the night?”
“Oh, Karl! How have you been getting along?” She put his puckered mouth to her ear. “Really! Wonderful.”
It was true, he had gotten along with all, from Alvin to Zelda — even though his first name did not start with an M.
Safely sandwiched between the sheets, I positioned my kind-of-ugly dodo, whose turn it was for me to cuddle. I explained exactly why the dodo bird really started with the letter X and Martina gasp-laughed at Grandpa’s problem-letter solution.
“You know odd is almost dodo spelled backward,” I reminded her.
“Almost,” agreed Martina.
“Okay, you two. Time to quiet down and get some sleep.”
Mom swept in, tucked the covers to our chins, and gave us kisses.
“Are you all right, Martina?”
“Yes. Thank you, Mrs. McCarther.”
“Penny,” my mom corrected, and flipped the lights. “Sleep, ladies. No more talking.”
Both of us squeezed our eyes shut. The door creaked closed. Slippered footsteps traveled the stairs. Our eyes popped open. No more talking, indeed, I thought to myself. Then why bother having a sleepover! I turned on my left side, and Martina turned on her right side to face me. Lit only by the tiny flicker of the night-light, our super-serious sleepover whisperings began. Voices barely louder than breathing, we chatted about our spaghetti dinner, the ghostly movie, and my pesky Ike. Then, after several exhausted yawns, we went silent and tried to fall asleep.
I couldn’t. Wondering if Martina could, I leaned over. Ulrich my unicorn, Gabriella my goat, and a small herd of other fluffy animals that I could not exactly identify hopped from my bedzoo to the floor. I stared down into the dark shadows. The watery whites of Martina’s open eyes glistened. She was most definitely awake.
“Martina?” I whispered. There was no response. “Martina?” I slightly raised the volume.
“Will they come home?”
“Soon for you. Eighteen days.” We all knew each other’s parents’ return dates better than our multiplication tables.
“Seventeen, it’s after midnight.”
I glanced at the glowing red numbers that sat on my desk. It was way past my bedtime.
“Richie C. said that when you see a single shoe, sneaker, or boot hanging from a tree or sitting in the street it’s because a lot of soldiers come home only needing one and they throw the other out. Do you think that is . . .”
Her voice slid short to silence. I clear-remembered our wonderful day parading around the neighborhood collecting scrap metal and laughing at the sidesplitting stories we had made up about all those single shoes.
“Fustilug.”
“You called old Mr. Wormser that. What is that? What’s a . . . ?”
“Fustilug — it rhymes with crusty bug.”
Martina quarter-chuckled at my one-line poem. Then I told her about the deep dark jungle of Nostomania and the bandy-legged blue bugs that live there.
“They crawl into asleep people’s ears, people who don’t think very much even when they are awake, and spin brain webs that gum up the whole thinking works.”
Martina’s mouth slow-slacked open and her eyes became full mooned.
“Then forever after, they have to say out loud whatever comes into their head, no matter how hurtful it is to others.”
“Wow. I didn’t know. . . .”
“Fustilugs live miserably, wandering from town to town without friends, ’cause whatever they think, they say. It is all so very sad and we really must feel sorry for them.”
“Fustilugs.” Martina yawned and closed her eyes.
I felt tiredness tug at me as well, and whole-closed my eyes. Before falling deep into my nightly dream I barely heard Martina whisper, “You’re a good storyteller.”
Yak
I got Yolanda from a complete stranger. After we moved to Alexandria we bought a car out on the highway at Yakima’s Used Cars. Johnny Yakima, the owner, gives little stuffed yaks with the name of his company printed on the belly so you always remember where your car came from. I think this is a good idea because now I will never forget where I got Yolanda my yak.
We excitedly colored in signs and hung decorations.
“Why does he stay one more day than night?” I asked while I scrawled a big pink W.
“Because there is always one more day than night,” answered Ike, displaying classic Ike Sense.
“Hmmmm, well, maybe,” my mom hummed, “but probably the army just wants him to be rested so he’s ready to play with you right when he returns.”
Hmmmm, I hummed to myself. After exactly one hundred days and ninety-nine nights, I wanted to see him, ready — or not.
We sat waiting on our stoop, our bent legs propping up our scrawled sign, WELCOME HOME, DADDY! People honked their horns as they passed. Mom said it was their way of saying congratulations.
Mrs. Wood creakily crossed to us holding a telltale tin.
“Can’t stay to talk, but I brought some gingersnaps to hold you over. Be sure to save at least one for the returning doughboy.”
We agreed that we absolutely would.
“Ever find out why?” she asked as she made her way away.
We were completely baffled by her question and there was no disguising our confused expressions.
“Doughboys! Young Isaac. Why were they called doughboys?” she crackled as she retreated down our path.
Ike had not attempted to look up this particular why.
“Don’t think I’ve forgotten, young man. Next time our paths cross I expect a proper answer.”
Determinedly pushing her shopping cart down the block, she vanished as fast as she had arrived.
It started to drizzle and the pink W in WE
LCOME started to run away. There were far fewer honks. And my imagination started to run away as well. I started to worry. I started to worry about every big thing and every little thing. I started to worry that the rain would keep his plane from landing. I started to worry that I had miscounted the days. I started to worry that old Mr. Wormser would walk past, his cane kicking out in front onto his dark shadowed path, and he would stop and say something nasty and I would start to cry. I worried . . .
Then, as the clouded sun wandered low down the sky, he came marching: my hero, my dad, duffel over shoulder, smile on lips, raindrops streaming down cheeks.
I dropped the sign and ran. He ran. We hugged hard as if to make up for each and every hug we had missed while he was away.
Ike, charging like a little bull, yelled over and over, “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”
He engulfed us both in his broad arms. Napoleon circled, barking, rattling his chain, shaking his wet coat, swatting our faces with his swinging tail.
I carefully checked off each part of him from his fuzzy buzz cut down to his two tight-laced combat boots, and all were exactly the same as when he left.
“I didn’t forget,” he whispered, pressing the frayed bunch of blankie into my hand.
Embarrassed because now raindrops streamed down my cheeks, I buried my eyes in his rough, red burned neck and replied, “Neither did I.”
Zebra
The night I cuddle with my Zelda it means one thing: I’ve reached the end the alphabet. Which means one thing — my dad is home!
We wrestled over our hugs and kisses to get inside. As we curled into the kitchen, Ike and I alternated telling about all the amazing adventures that we had over the past one hundred days and ninety-nine nights. We told him about the big events, like the school play and our day with Grandpa McCarther, and the little ones, like what we ate for dinner and how much homework we had. Napoleon barked at the end of each story as if to add an exclamation point. We left out all of the bad things. No need to worry him on his very first day home. No need to make him sad on his very first day home. No need to scare him away on his very first day home!
When Ike and I became breathless, Mom would chime in with some detail that we had forgotten or tell something that she did or had to do or that he had to do. Then all of a sudden, as if all the words we had in our brains were sucked out and sealed away, we went silent. Dad sat staring at us and we at him. For now, we really didn’t have anything more to tell him. It was his turn to tell us about his adventures. But he just sat.
“What was your war like, Daddy?” It wasn’t what I meant to say but that was the way it came out.
“Esme!” Mommy blurted, making me feel like a fustilug of the first order.
Dad let out a little laugh, the kind that told me that although I didn’t ask the question exactly right, he knew what I meant and it was okay by him. Ike excitedly dove off his chair and landed on the couch next to Dad.
“Did you shoot anyone and did they shoot you?” He asked, in a humongously bad display of Ike Sense.
“Ike!” Mom exclaimed, trying to control a moment that was now out of control.
“Well . . . ,” he started slowly, “in the day it was hotter than Kenya and at night it was colder than Korea. It was very, very boring. We sat around a lot, waiting. And when we were not waiting we were walking through the biggest sandbox you could imagine.”
“Neat,” poked Ike.
“But you could never make castles out of the sand, not a single one, because there was no water so it wouldn’t ever stick. All I did the whole entire time, every second of every minute of every day, was try to figure out ways to get back home.”
“And you did it!” I shouted.
“And now you’ll never have to go back again,” stated Ike.
There was a whole bowl of silence.
“I won’t lie to you, Ike. I might have to go back.”
“Why?”
That was a favorite Ike question. He could ask that question over and over until an adult would just finally yell, “Because!” and walk away. I have to say that this time I was glad Ike asked “Why?” because I was thinking the same exact question over and over in my head. Whywhywhywhy?
“I don’t think this is the time . . . ,” Mom started.
“Because there are a lot of my friends still there and the army may send me to help them.”
“And it is your duty to go.”
“Exactly, Esme.”
I expected Ike to ask “Why?” yet again, in typical Ike fashion, but he didn’t.
“I understand,” he said instead.
“You two have certainly grown up while I was gone,” he proud-said, but looked nearly sad.
Dad hardly lifted his duffel and dragged it toward the stairs. It seemed heavier than before, as if he had brought home pounds and pounds of sand from the desert. Napoleon, tail flipping like a windshield wiper, neck chain happily jingle-bell jangling, trailed after him. Mom gave us hugs that told us she would be right back.
Ike and I sat looking at each other. He started an awful out-of-tune whistle and I gave him my harshest Swishback frown, which immediately took the whistle right out of him. The room was nearly dark but I was too tired to flip on lights. The ticktock of the cuckoo clock, the heavy thud of the dropped duffel, muffled voices, then the clomping sound of his boots flooded down the stairs, trailed by a trickle of Mom’s softer click-clacking shoes. He appeared in front of us, framed in the door.
“You guys must be starving.”
We were.
“I thought we would go out to eat to celebrate.” Mom appeared from behind and slow-floated her hand into Dad’s.
“Are you kidding?” he boomed. “It took me one hundred days and ninety-nine nights to get back into this house, and right now I’m not taking one single step out!”
I felt a warm feeling gurgle inside my growling stomach and start to heat up the rest of my body until my face felt flushed red. Ike pinballed back and forth on the couch, which he was usually not allowed to do, and was ready to rocket out the roof if Dad didn’t soon grab him.
“Well, come on, let’s get to work,” he ordered, then scooped me up in his robin redbreasted arm and lowered his back to Ike, who grabbed his neck for the short ride into the kitchen. I have already mentioned that the kitchen is the single most important room in our house because it is where we do our important cooking and all our serious talking.
“I didn’t have time to shop, there’s not a thing for dinner!” Mom warned. Then, knowing that there were only lonely crumbs of food scattered about the fridge and that we would be eating ketchup over cookies and mayo mixed with mustard, she added, “How about we order in?”
But before you could say flour or flower, pots were clanging, spoons were tinkling, eggs were crackin’, and we all — me, Ike, Mom, and Dad — were laughing and cooking away as if the many days and hardly fewer nights had been no longer than a five-minute trip to the corner store.
“Spaaatulllaaa, spa-chew — la, sssspit-u-laaa.” He rolled the word until we were happily rolling across the floor.
That night my father, August Aloysius McCarther the Third, a sergeant in the United States Army, cooked pancakes for dinner, which was an absolute McCarther family first. I can tell you that without doubt they were the top-dog tastiest pancakes ever made.
August Aloysius McCarther the Third’s Top Secret Rules for Top-Dog Tasty Pancakes
1 egg
1 cup yogurt
1/4 cup water
1 tablespoon oil
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon baking soda
1. Mix up all the wet stuff. Try not to make a mess.
2. Now mix up all the dry things. Remember — flour, not flower!
3. Add the dry stuff to the wet stuff and careful-mix them together.
4. Now from here on out you absolutely need a grown-up’s help They heat a frying pan and drop in some butter. Sizzle!
5. After the
butter melts, spoon circles of batter out. The more batter, the bigger the pancake. Don’t make them too big or they are hard to flip.
6. When little bubbles start popping, flip the pancakes with a spaaatula, spitula, spatuuuulaaa.
7. When light brown on each side, they are ready.
8. Eat with gobs of syrup.
