Stepping on the Cracks

by Mary Downing Hahn

  Stuart nodded. "You don't want the old man looking for you," he said. "Don't make him mad, Gordy. I'm not worth it."

  Silently, we followed Gordy outside. Doug had dumped water on the fire, and the smell of damp ashes lingered in the clearing. He and Gordy walked ahead of us through the trees. Side by side, heads down, hands jammed in their pockets, saying nothing, they looked like old men.

  "We'll come again tomorrow," Elizabeth said before the boys turned off in the direction of their homes.

  Gordy looked at us then. "Stuart's getting sicker and sicker," he said, his voice rising until he was yelling at us. "Somebody should be with him all day, making sure he's okay. I can't keep missing school. Mrs. Wagner called my mother and she told my father. Do you know what he'll do to me if I play hooky again?"

  Elizabeth and I stared at Gordy. The sun was a red ball behind him, and his shadow stretched toward us, ending in a pinhead at our feet.

  "I'll do it," Elizabeth said. "I can forge a note for Mrs. Wagner. I'm real good at disguising my handwriting."

  She watched Gordy, waiting for his approval. He chewed his lower lip and studied the ground. Finally, he looked up and sighed.

  "Okay," he said. "But if anything goes wrong, it's your fault, Lizard. I'll personally make you very sorry."

  Elizabeth took a deep breath. I couldn't tell if she was relieved or scared. Looking Gordy in the eye, she said, "Nothing will go wrong."

  "It better not," Gordy said. Without another word, he and Doug trudged off into the sunset.

  Elizabeth and I watched them until they turned the corner. A gust of wind whipped my braids, and I shivered. "You can't go down there all by yourself," I said.

  "Why not?" Elizabeth tossed her hair out of her eyes.

  "Suppose your parents find out?"

  "They won't," she said.

  "I'll come with you," I said, hardly daring to think about what I was saying.

  Elizabeth seized my hands and jumped up and down. "Oh, Margaret, that's great! I didn't think you would. I was scared even to ask you!"

  Wondering what I'd done, I watched Elizabeth run up her back steps. I'd never played hooky, and I was terrified of what might happen if we were caught, but I couldn't let Elizabeth do it all by herself. She was my friend, and I had to stick by her no matter what.

  Quietly, I slipped into the house, hoping Mother wouldn't take one look at me and know exactly what I was planning to do. My face always gave everything away.

  I needn't have worried. As usual, Mother was too busy to pay much attention to me. If I was quieter than normal at dinner, neither she nor Daddy noticed. They had more important things on their minds.

  The Germans had started a big campaign against us in France and Belgium, and things looked worse every day. Mrs. Wagner told us about it in school. Pointing to a place on the map called the Ardennes, she said that was where we were fighting the Battle of the Bulge. According to Daddy, Jimmy was probably right in the middle of it, and he and Mother talked of nothing else.

  16

  The next morning, Elizabeth and I walked up Garfield Road just as if it were an ordinary day and we were going to school. At the trolley tracks, though, we stopped and looked ahead. Way up the street, under a gray sky heavy with clouds, we saw Polly, Linda, and Judy. Ducking behind a telephone pole, we watched them pause to talk to Bruce and then run across the playground. As the cold wind swirled around me, I wished with all my heart that Elizabeth and I were with them.

  A screech of tires startled us. Whirling around, we saw Gordy on his bike. "You didn't tell me Baby Magpie was going with you," he said to Elizabeth.

  While I stood there wishing people would stop thinking I was a baby, Elizabeth leapt to my defense. Glaring at Gordy, she said, "Margaret's not going to blab on Stuart any more than I am."

  The wind blew Gordy's hair in and out of his eyes, and he tossed his head to the side, considering Elizabeth and me.

  "Just make sure nobody follows you," he said at last. "As soon as school's out, me and Toad and Doug will come down there and you can go home."

  Gordy looked around as if he expected to see spies everywhere, just waiting to catch Stuart. "Go on," he said, "before I change my mind and sock you a good one."

  He pedaled toward school, glancing back from time to time to scowl at us. Checking to make sure there were no tattletales in sight, Elizabeth and I ran down the trolley tracks, putting a couple of streets between us and Garfield before we cut up an alley toward the woods.

  ***

  By the time we got to the hut, we were out of breath and freezing cold. Stuart was lying so still under a pile of ragged blankets, I was afraid we were too late, but when Elizabeth bent over him, he opened his eyes and smiled at her.

  "Well, well," he said, "look who's here, the angel of the battlefield." His voice was low and husky, and his eyes were bright and sparkly. Despite his beard and long, shaggy hair, he looked very handsome, but I remembered Mother telling me once I looked too pretty to be well. Sticking a thermometer in my mouth, she'd put me to bed. Sure enough my rosy cheeks and bright eyes were the result of a high fever, and I'd spent the next couple of weeks in bed with strep throat.

  Relying on what we'd learned in Girl Scouts, Elizabeth and I managed to get a fire going so we could make tea for Stuart. After he drank it, he looked better, but he was coughing a lot.

  Elizabeth and I had used the money we'd been saving for Christmas presents to buy three boxes of cough drops and a big bottle of Cheracol. After pouring a couple of spoonfuls of cough syrup down his throat, Elizabeth gave Stuart a handful of little yellow lozenges and sat down beside him.

  "Tell me something." Elizabeth stared at Stuart. "Did you go all the way through boot camp and then change your mind about fighting?"

  Stuart shut his eyes for a moment as if he were trying to remember something that had happened a long, long time ago. "I didn't want to serve in the army," he said, "and I was thinking about becoming a conscientious objector or something. But while I was making up my mind, I got drafted and then I thought maybe I should be in the army like everybody else. I never hated anything so much in my whole life."

  I thought about the funny letters Jimmy sent us from boot camp. He'd made Fort Benning sound like a joke, but maybe if you were actually there doing all that stuff you wouldn't find it so comical. Especially if you weren't good at sports or fighting.

  "Finally I came home on furlough," Stuart went on, "but I knew the next step would be a ship going to Europe. Then I got this letter from Donald. It was different from the ones he sent the old man. He told me his outfit shot down three or four English planes by mistake, and then fired on one of our own divisions. He said it happened all the time. They were always making mistakes, shelling towns, killing civilians, families."

  Stuart coughed, long and hard. When he stopped, he reached under his cot and pulled out a metal box. In it was a letter written on familiar V-mail stationery, creased and recreased from being read over and over again. Stuart smoothed it out and read, "'Don't believe that patriotic stuff about dying for your country. All me and my buddies want to do is get out of this mess alive. War is nothing but killing people before they kill you, and it's more awful than anything you can imagine.'"

  "Donald wrote that?" Elizabeth stared at Stuart.

  Stuart put the letter back in his box and coughed again, even harder this time. He lay back on his cot and closed his eyes. "There's no way I can believe war is the answer to anything," he said.

  Elizabeth and I looked at each other. Nobody said a word. Jimmy never wrote about the war itself, though sometimes, like Mother said, he sounded unhappy and homesick. Was he keeping thoughts like Donald's to himself?

  I wanted to ask Stuart if the war was like that for everybody in Europe, but he was asleep. He wasn't coughing, but his breath was loud and rattly. The noise of it filled up the hut and scared me.

  Looking at the pile of sticks by the little stove, I decided to go outside and gather more. When
I opened the door, I was surprised to see snow whirling down from the sky. It lay like gauze on the brown leaves curled at my feet and closed in around the hut like a thick white curtain. The wind-driven flakes stung my face and bare legs as I searched the ground for dead wood.

  When I had an armful, I went back inside. Stuart was asleep, so I put the pile down quietly. "Guess what?" I whispered to Elizabeth. "It's snowing like mad."

  Pressing our faces against one of the little windows, we watched the snow fall. The flakes whirled through the air so thickly we could barely see the trees surrounding the hut.

  "Maybe it's a blizzard," Elizabeth said softly, "and we'll be stranded here."

  Around noon, we made soup and practically forced Stuart to eat it. After he'd finished, he picked up a book, but the effort of holding it tired him out, so Elizabeth offered to read it to him.

  He smiled at her. "That's something Gordy can't do," he said. "He hates to read."

  Stuart handed Elizabeth an old high school literature book. "I've had it since twelfth grade," he said as she looked at the faded blue-and-gray cover. "Read me some poetry. There's one in there I like a lot. The Man He Killed,' by Thomas Hardy."

  Elizabeth checked the table of contents, then turned to a page near the back of the book and began to read:

  Had he and I but met

  By some old ancient inn,

  We should have sat us down to wet

  Right many a nipperkin!

  Elizabeth stumbled on "nipperkin" and giggled. "'Wet right many a nipperkin'? What does that mean?"

  "Drink a mug of beer," Stuart said, "a half-pint like in England."

  That made us both laugh, but Stuart asked Elizabeth to go on with the poem. "It's not funny," he said.

  Trying hard to stop giggling, Elizabeth read the rest. Stuart was right. It was a sad poem about a soldier who killed a man he might have been friends with if he hadn't been his enemy in a war.

  "That's what war does to people," Stuart said. "Turns them into killers."

  "But if Thomas Hardy hadn't killed that man, the man would've killed him," Elizabeth said. "They both shot at each other. It says so right here." She stabbed at a line of verse with her index finger and frowned.

  Stuart leaned toward Elizabeth and me. He looked very earnest. "But suppose they hadn't?" he asked. "Suppose they'd thrown their guns down and said, This war is really dumb. Let's go get a beer.'"

  Elizabeth shook her head. "Stuart, I just don't think that would happen."

  "You never know till you try," Stuart said.

  "Should I read some more poems?" Elizabeth asked.

  Stuart coughed and shook his head. "No," he mumbled, "I think I'll take another nap."

  He closed his eyes, and Elizabeth and I sat quietly, watching him sleep. Cautiously, Elizabeth leaned over and laid her palm against his forehead. Turning to me she said, "He's just burning up, Margaret. I think he's got a high fever."

  From outside, we heard Gordy yelling something at Doug. The door of the hut opened, and Gordy stopped on the threshold with Doug and Toad behind him. At the sight of us huddled beside Stuart, they shut the door quietly, keeping out the snow gusting in behind them.

  "Stuart's really sick," Elizabeth whispered.

  Gordy bent over the cot, and Stuart opened his eyes. "They're my angels of the battlefield," he said, pointing at Elizabeth and me. "Don't know what I'd do without them."

  Stuart's voice was raspy, and his eyes were even more fever bright. When he started coughing, Gordy brushed past Elizabeth and bent over him. "You're worse," he said.

  "No, no," Stuart said. "The angels make me better. Their wings are so white and they sing so sweet. Don't worry, don't worry. Stay out of the street, don't make the old man mad, don't let him see you." His voice was barely a whisper. "Just the angels, that's all we need, the angels. You'll see after the war, after the war is over, after they've all gone home."

  Stuart closed his eyes, and Gordy looked at Elizabeth. "What's the matter with him? What's he talking about?"

  Elizabeth shook her head. "I think he's delirious because of the fever."

  My heart sped up again. Delirious—I'd read books where people were delirious from fever. I remembered Little Eva's death in Uncle Tom's Cabin. She'd seen the angels coming down from heaven. Suppose Stuart was about to die? I started crying, I couldn't help it.

  "Shut up, Magpie!" Gordy turned on me then. His face was dead white, and his voice was tight from all the anger squeezed into it. "We don't need no crybabies making things worse!"

  "I'm so cold," Stuart muttered, "so cold. Isn't the war over yet? I want to go home, I want Mom, but the old man is there, he won't go away. Why can't it all be over?"

  He struggled to sit up, but Gordy pushed him back down. "Just lie still," he said. "Lie still, Stuart, and get better. Please get better."

  Stuart didn't seem to hear Gordy. "Have to go home," he said. "Can't kill, can't do it, don't want to see it. Wrong, all wrong, must be something I can do. Make the shooting stop, make it stop!"

  "Stuart, it's me," Gordy said. He tried to keep him from getting up, but Stuart was fighting him. "Help me," he yelled to Doug and Toad.

  They grabbed Stuart's shoulders and shoved him down, but as he fell back, he kicked out hard and sent his literature book flying. Elizabeth picked it up and clasped it against her chest. I was scared. From the way Stuart was acting, you would have thought we were his enemies, not his friends.

  In the midst of all the turmoil, Stuart started coughing so hard he couldn't struggle anymore. He coughed till he could hardly breathe and then he lay still. Slowly his eyes traveled from face to face, studying each one of us. The tension went out of him, and he closed his eyes.

  "Is he asleep?" Elizabeth whispered.

  Gordy leaned over his brother and stared at him. He nodded. Then he motioned us to follow him outside.

  The ground was white now, and the snow was still falling thick and fast, closing around us like a cloak. From its perch on a limb high overhead, a crow cawed once and then lifted itself into the air. I watched it fly away, its shape blurred by the falling snow.

  "Stuart needs a doctor," Elizabeth said. Her words came out in angry puffs of white smoke.

  "Did I ask you to butt your nose in my business?" Gordy asked. "When I want your opinion, I'll ask for it, Lizard."

  "She's right, Gordy," Doug said. "He can't stay here. He's getting sicker and sicker."

  "Suppose he busts out of there and tries to go home?" Toad asked. "Your old man will kill him."

  "What do you think the army will do to him?" Gordy had tears in his eyes. "Give him a medal for deserting?"

  "We have to do something!" Elizabeth yelled. "We can't just let him die!"

  The five of us stood there, staring at each other. The snow swirled around us as if it were never going to stop, blotting out the tops of the trees and drifting against the hut. Elizabeth's words lingered in the air, but no one spoke.

  If only I really were an angel of the battlefield, I thought, I'd make the war stop. I'd make it safe for Stuart to go home, I'd make it safe for Jimmy and Joe, too. I'd make it safe for all the little children in the world and their mothers and their fathers and their grandparents.

  But I wasn't an angel of the battlefield, and neither was Elizabeth. I didn't know what to do. And neither did anybody else.

  17

  Standing in the snow, cold and miserable, we stared at each other, waiting for somebody to come up with a plan. As the silence grew and no one spoke, I found myself thinking of a solution. I turned it this way and that, examining it from all angles till I was sure it would work. The problem was saying it out loud. I wasn't very good at speaking up. Suppose they laughed at me? Gordy would scoff at anything I said, I was sure of it. Nudging Elizabeth, I forced myself to speak. "Why don't we ask Barbara to help?"

  "Barbara?" Gordy stared at me.

  "We need someone grown-up," I said, feeling my face grow hot with embarrassment. I wasn't used
to thinking of things for other people to do. "We can't tell our parents about Stuart. They wouldn't understand. But Barbara would."

  "Her husband died in the war, you dope," Gordy said. "She's not going to have any sympathy for Stuart."

  "She likes him," I said. "She even likes you."

  Gordy's face got red, and Doug laughed.

  "You must be out of your mind, Magpie. Nobody likes the Smiths," Toad said. "Except me and Doug," he added quickly when Gordy glared at him.

  Suddenly, Elizabeth turned to Gordy and said, "I think it's a good idea. Barbara's not like our parents. We can trust her, I know we can."

  Gordy scowled at Elizabeth. "What can she do that we can't?" he wanted to know.

  "For one thing, she can take Stuart to the doctor," I said, surprising myself. It was the first time I'd ever dared speak up to Gordy, but if I couldn't persuade him I was right, Stuart would die. I wasn't going to let that happen.

  "Barbara has a driver's license," I went on, "and we don't. How else is he going to get anywhere? He's too sick to walk. She can drive him."

  Gordy thought about what I'd said, looking for flaws in my plan. "Suppose she does do it, just suppose," he muttered, "and the doctor turns him in?"

  "He doesn't have to know Stuart's a deserter," I said. "We'll go to a doctor who doesn't know any of us, we'll give a false name, say Stuart's in high school. The doctor will just think he's sick."

  Doug nodded. "Don't doctors take some kind of oath that says they have to heal everybody, no matter what?"

  "That's right," I said. "Elizabeth and I can go to Barbara's house now and ask her. Okay?" I stared at Gordy, waiting for him to answer.

  Gordy looked at Doug and Toad. They didn't say anything at first. I guess they were used to Gordy being the boss. Finally, Toad said, "Let them try. Stuart needs help, Gordy."

  Doug stared at the falling snow. "Toad's right," he muttered. "We can't take care of him anymore."

  Gordy glared at Elizabeth and me. "Well, go on," he yelled. "Ask Barbara. What are you waiting for?" Then he turned his back on us and went into the hut. Silently, Doug and Toad followed him.