Under the Apple Tree

by Wakefield, Dan;

  According to their own rules, it was fair for one guy to yell some weird-sounding name he might have learned in Geography or History class to try to crack up the shooter and make him miss.

  “Swishum!” Tutlow yelled quickly as the ball was in the air, which was one of the words that was supposed to help make the shot go in and “swish” through the net.

  But the ball hit the rim of the basket and bounced off harmlessly down the driveway.

  “Tough luck, Keemosabee,” Artie said as he ran to retrieve the ball.

  Tutlow crawled backward on the limb of the maple and swung to the ground.

  “If his name is Foltz—F-o-l-t-z—it’s probably German,” said Tutlow.

  “That’s what I figured, but I wasn’t sure.”

  “Oh, sure. ‘Foltz’ is as German as horseradish.”

  Artie came dribbling the ball back up the driveway. “Horseradish is German?” he asked.

  “Sure, they invented it,” Tutlow explained. “They eat it to make themselves meaner.”

  “So maybe the Axis sent Foltz to infiltrate Birney when they lost their other agent,” Artie said.

  “It’s exactly what they might do.”

  “They probably figured Wu Sing Lee was too detectable, being yellow and all, so they wanted to try a white man.”

  “I wouldn’t put it past them.”

  Artie scratched his head, trying to figure out the sneaky strategy of the Axis at the same time as trying to figure out a new shot that he could make and Tutlow would find impossible to duplicate.

  “The first thing to do,” said Tutlow, “is try to search his room at the Boardinghouse. You know Miss Winger?”

  Artie stood on one leg and tried to bend over backward, seeing if he might have a chance for a one-legged, two-handed backward shot, but he couldn’t keep his balance.

  “Heck, yes,” he said, straightening up again. “Miss Winger used to baby-sit for me.”

  “Well, then, all you got to do is go over there and make up some excuse for going to Foltz’s room while he’s at work.”

  “What excuse?” Artie asked.

  He set the basketball on top of his head, wondering if he could run to the basket, toss up the ball a few feet and then bounce it in off his head like the Harlem Globetrotters did.

  “Say you’re on a Treasure Hunt, and have to get something from the room of a new guy in town.”

  “Too fishy.”

  Artie gave up on the head shot and walked real casually across his front yard to the front porch steps, which were right on a straight line to the basket. He climbed to the top step and practiced aiming. Actually, he had practiced shooting from this position for the whole last week, but Tutlow would never know.

  “You want me to sneak in and search his room while you attract Miss Winger’s attention?” Tutlow asked.

  “No! I don’t want you setting any stink bombs in Miss Winger’s place.”

  “Never said I would.”

  “You and your chemistry set.”

  “You going to take a shot, or can’t you think one up?”

  “I can think up a shot, and a better excuse than you can, too,” Artie said. “This is one-handed, from the top step of the porch, without using the backboard.”

  Artie took his stance, and just as he released the ball Tutlow yelled, “Horseradish!”

  “Swishum!” Artie retorted, and the ball sailed cleanly through the net. It was a good sign: “Swishum” had overcome the German “Horseradish” hex, and Artie knew he was destined to trap the conniving Nazi spy who was posing as an Usher while he tried to sabotage the town of Birney.

  “Have another oatmeal cookie,” Miss Winger said.

  Artie nodded, and selected a big one.

  “Don’t mind if I do. Boy, I tell you, Miss Winger, your oatmeal cookies still beat anything.”

  Miss Winger gave him a pat on the knee, but it wasn’t sexy or anything, coming from Miss Winger. She was sort of like a kindly grandmother in a kid’s storybook, sparkly eyes behind rimless glasses, hair always up in a bun on top of her head, a high-collared gingham dress with a little velvet ribbon at the neck. She was plenty smart, though, and had actually been Artie’s favorite baby-sitter because of the neat stories she read him, like The Secret Garden, and the Dr. Doolittle books.

  “I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you, Artie.”

  “Well, I been busy with Scouts, and school, and work for the War Effort.”

  “Isn’t it the truth? I’m glad you found time for a visit. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  “Oh, just for old times’ sake. I got to thinking about you. Somebody mentioned the new Usher at the Strand was staying with you, and I got to wondering how you were doing.”

  “Yes, Clarence Foltz took Mr. Veederman’s old room. You know Mr. Veederman got into the Coast Guard, at his age? He was thirty-seven years old.”

  “Well, Henry Fonda was thirty-seven when he joined the Army. What’s he like?”

  “Mr. Veederman? Why, he seemed to be your ordinary, fast-talking Vacuum Cleaner Salesman, but I guess beneath that smile there was quite a bit of pluck.”

  “No, I meant Clarence Foltz, the new guy.”

  “Oh, Clarence is a real gentleman. Very quiet and reserved. Spends most of the day in his room. He was wounded, you know, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.”

  “That’s the second-floor room at the front, with the nice view of Hempstead’s silo?”

  “Yes, and I think he appreciates it. I think that boy has an eye for beauty.”

  “I bet. You still doing baby-sitting these days?”

  “Oh, yes, I’m sitting the Buskerman boy tonight. Little Franklin? He’s a real scamp. Can’t sit still for a story. More like that brother of yours than you. How is Roy, anyway?”

  “Oh, he’s super, Miss Winger. Mowing down Japs over there on Eniwetok.”

  “To think of it. All those nice boys.”

  “Well, I got to shake a leg, Miss Winger, but thanks a lot for the oatmeal cookies.”

  “Take some with you. And don’t be such a stranger!”

  “Cross my heart and hope to die,” said Artie, and hurried out with a handful of cookies.

  He kept his promise to return much sooner than Miss Winger would have dreamed, but he hoped she would never find out. While she was over baby-sitting little Franklin Buskerman, and Clarence Foltz was busy ushering at the Strand, Artie slipped back to the Boardinghouse, saw there were no lights on except in the living room, where Miss Winger always kept a light going even when no one was there. Artie knew the door to the house was never locked and the roomers didn’t have locks on the doors of their rooms.

  He didn’t turn on the light when he got inside Clarence Foltz’s room, so no one would discover him, but used his trusty penlight. The first thing he noticed were the books. They were everywhere: on the desk, beside the bed, on the bed, under the bed, stacked in the corner. They were spread across the room in piles and pairs and alone, randomly, like a scattering of leaves: brown, yellow, black, green, red. Being a good counterspy, Artie avoided the obvious, and opened the main drawer of the desk. There too was a book. He picked it up, shining the penlight on it. Holy Toledo! Talk about a clue!

  The book was Guadalcanal Diary. Artie flipped through it, noticing immediately how many parts were underlined in red pencil. It was obvious Foltz was a fraud; he had never even been to Guadalcanal, and he got all his info out of the book about it! Artie slipped it back in the drawer, and quickly scanned the books on the desk. Most of them were thin, and he didn’t recognize the titles. He picked one up and read it. There were poems inside. He tried to read one, but he couldn’t figure it out. He turned to another called “The Waste Land,” which he figured must be about the War, like the way a country was after a battle. He turned to the end of it to see how it came out, and which side had won. There were strange, mysterious words he had never seen or heard:

  Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

  Shantih shantih s
hantih.

  Artie tried to mouth the sounds to himself, but none of it made sense. Then he slapped his hand to his head.

  Of course! The book was in code. That was the only sensible explanation.

  Artie crept back to the door, satisfied beyond the shadow of a doubt that Foltz was a German spy.

  3

  Tutlow was wearing sunglasses.

  March had “come in like a lamb” this year, and the days were kind of warmish and breezy, but it sure wasn’t any weather for sunglasses yet.

  “What you got those on for?” Artie asked. “It’s not even summer.”

  “We’re going to tail a man, aren’t we?”

  “I doubt he’s going all the way to Florida.”

  “Don’t be a sap,” said Tutlow. “You tail a man, you don’t want to be identified, do you?”

  “Everyone in Town will identify a guy wearing sunglasses in March,” Artie said. “They’ll think you’re cuckoo.”

  “Doesn’t matter what other people think. The idea is not to get identified by the man you’re tailing. Then he can’t accurately identify you later.”

  “You’re trying to be like in the movies is all you’re doing.”

  Tutlow whipped off the sunglasses and glared at Artie.

  “You want me to do this job alone?”

  “It’s my job!” Artie said. “I’m the one discovered the guy. I just invited you.”

  “Invited,” said Tutlow scornfully. “This is no tea party, Garber.”

  Tutlow put the sunglasses back on. Artie thought they made him look blind, but he decided not to mention it.

  They walked out to the Hempstead Farm in silence, to wait for Clarence Foltz to take his mysterious daily walk during which he disappeared for several hours every afternoon.

  Foltz came out in an old leather jacket that reminded Artie of the kind German flyers wore. He headed for Main Street, and after he had gone about the length of a football field, Artie started to get up out of the weeds and start tailing, but Tutlow pulled him back down.

  “You got to give him enough of a lead so he doesn’t look back and see you,” he explained.

  “If he can’t look back and see us, then how the heck can we see him?”

  “I mean see us good enough to identify us.”

  “I thought he’d never identify you anyway cause of those corny sunglasses,” Artie said.

  Tutlow pretended he didn’t hear that, and instead of saying anything he just got up, pulled the collar of his coat around his neck, shoved his hands deep in his pants pockets, and started trailing.

  “Some guys think they’re Humphrey Bogart or somebody,” Artie said under his breath, but he just went along and followed Tutlow; there wasn’t time now to mess around.

  Artie’s strategy was to try and just look natural, especially when they were walking down Main Street. People kept staring at Tutlow in his wacky sunglasses and his counterspy walk, so Artie made a point of being real casual, swinging his arms and whistling “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” like there wasn’t even a War on.

  Just then the last person in the world Artie wanted to run into came ambling out of Damon’s Drugs, right in front of him and Tutlow.

  Caroline stopped and looked at them with a little smile, like she was highly amused.

  “What do we have here?” she asked. “The Rover Boys?”

  She was using this new kind of perfume that drowned out the smell of her Mild Camay Beauty Soap and reminded Artie of something Yvonne DeCarlo would wear in her harem.

  “Sorry I can’t shoot the breeze,” Artie said. “We got business.”

  “What are you going to do,” she asked, “hold up the First Federal?”

  Tutlow shot her a corny comeback out of the side of his mouth.

  “Take a powder,” he said.

  Caroline threw back her lovely head, the shining hair swinging in the sunlight, and laughed like Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.

  Artie slunk on beside Tutlow, feeling like the worst kind of worm. He took deep breaths of air, trying to get Caroline’s harem perfume out of his head, as they followed their man clear out of Town.

  When they got to the edge of the woods by Skinner Creek, where Foltz had disappeared down the path into the trees, Artie stopped.

  “Come on!” said Tutlow. “We’re hot on his trail.”

  “I dunno,” Artie said.

  “Don’t know!” Tutlow said in a hiss of rage. “You turning yellow on me?”

  Artie supposed he was being really weird, but he had this funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he wasn’t yellow, he knew he wasn’t even afraid of risking his life for his country, but he still had this odd feeling, like something telling him not to go on any further. He couldn’t explain it, though.

  “There’s nothing to sabotage at Skinner Creek,” he said feebly. “Maybe he’s just getting his exercise. They got to keep in shape, spies; it’s not just all glory.”

  “You nit! He might be out to rendezvous with a paratrooper and help him hide the chute. You think the Nazis just parachute guys onto Main Street in broad daylight? Spies hide out in the woods, they make their plans in the woods, they keep their maps and explosives in the woods.”

  Artie kicked his toe in the dirt.

  “Okay,” he said, “I guess we should go ahead and see.”

  Tutlow shook his head as he headed onto the path.

  “For a minute there,” he whispered, “I thought you’d gone yellow in the belly.”

  “Oh, go button your lip,” said Artie, following along reluctantly but dutifully, wondering how come he had this funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.

  They had lost sight of Foltz, but automatically figured he must still be following the trail, otherwise they’d have heard him if he suddenly dashed into the woods. The boys walked stealthily, keeping their eyes peeled for a glint of silver parachute silk.

  The path was leading them straight to the clearing with the rock where Roy used to go to think about life, or lie on the ground beneath blankets with a beautiful girl and do the most wonderful thing in the world. Tutlow had bent to a crouch as he walked and Artie had done the same and now he felt a crick in his back and stopped a moment, straightened up, and looked around him. He blinked in the brightness, wishing he had a pair of sunglasses. The afternoon sun lit the trees and Artie felt caught and suspended in the eerie brightness, when suddenly the sound came, a song, from a tenor voice that was pure and high but not a girl’s, a voice that was only a stone’s toss away in the woods:

  So come ye back, when summer’s in the mea-a-dow,

  Or when the vall-ey’s hushed and white with snow—

  Tutlow sprang erect, then crouched again and scuttled into the woods, throwing himself behind a large rock. Artie scooted after him, his breath coming hard, burrowing against the cold stone next to Tutlow.

  It’s I’ll be there, in sunshine or in sha-a-dow,

  Oh, Danny Boy, oh, Danny Boy, I love you sooooo.

  Tutlow nudged his elbow into Artie’s ribs.

  “It’s a signal!” he whispered. “He’s calling his accomplice with code!”

  “Shhhhhh!” Artie hissed.

  Another voice spoke now, softly.

  “Oh, Clarence. That was wonderful.”

  Artie froze.

  Tutlow dug his fingers into Artie’s shoulder and blasted a whisper into his ear.

  “It’s a girl!”

  Artie lay there rigid and breathless, afraid to move or speak.

  The spy’s accomplice was not just “a girl.”

  It was Shirley Colby.

  There had to be some mistake, or explanation.

  Artie lifted his head, straining to hear what was said.

  “… for so long, I didn’t know if I could do it anymore,” came the voice of Foltz.

  “Mmmmm, but you did, you did, so beautifully,” Shirley said.

  Her voice sounded far-off and dreamy, like it was lulled by some kind of dope.

  Tha
t must be it. The crafty Nazi agent had doped up Shirley and lured her to the woods against her will.

  “Beautifully for you, because you’re so beautiful,” Foltz said.

  His voice was not clipped and military now like it was when he was ushering, it was soft and bleary. It almost sounded like he was doped! Maybe that was it. Maybe Shirley was playing a double agent’s game, pretending to be taken in by the spy and all the time slipping some kind of dope into his Cokes and luring him into the woods to crack the secret of the whole Nazi network of sabotage in America.

  “With your beautiful talent for it, you should do it all the time,” said Shirley. “You were born to sing—and write, and paint, and all those beautiful things.”

  A bitter, choked kind of laugh came from Foltz.

  “I was born to be miserable,” he said.

  “Stop saying that!”

  Shirley’s voice sounded sharp and clear now, untainted by any trace of dope.

  “I’m sorry,” said Foltz. “It’s how I feel.”

  Just then Tutlow blasted another whisper right into Artie’s eardrum.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s wrong with the guy?”

  “Shut up and listen!” Artie hissed back at him.

  Shirley was speaking again—softly, gently.

  “Clarence—if we did what you want to do—would it make you happy?”

  “I should never have even asked you. I should be ashamed.”

  “Stop talking that way. Did you bring what you need—to do it?”

  “Yes,” Foltz said in a kind of choke, “I brought it.”

  “Well, then,” Shirley said. “Go ahead. Do it.”

  Tutlow grabbed Artie’s arm and squeezed so hard Artie had to bite his own lip to keep from yelling.

  “She told him to do it to her!” Tutlow whisper-shrieked.

  “Shut your dirty mind!” Artie said with a croak.

  His own mind was a jumble. He couldn’t believe that the “it” Shirley just asked Foltz to do was really It. But what if it was? Should Artie try to save her from doing something she’d regret for the rest of her life? Would she thank him later for protecting her from the dreadful power of her own passion? Or would she hate him forever? And what about Roy? What would he want his loyal brother to do at a time like this?