She turned long enough to agree. “Everyone’s in. Everyone who wants to be.”
When she faced the front of the room and opened her new history book, a warm feeling spread through her. This school was going to be all right. She would make it be all right. She just wished Lily were here to help.
Lifting the little silver anchor on its chain, she made sure to place it in plain sight over her blouse. Her brother was already helping her fit in with the new school.
At recess, only girls gathered around Macy to plan their scrap drive. Then Linda yelled across the ball field to her brother, who was in the seventh grade, one year ahead of them. “Vincent! I have dibs on our wagon after school.”
“What? No!” A red-haired boy charged toward Linda. He made Macy think uneasily of Mark back home. A group of Vincent’s friends followed, including some Macy recognized from her sixth-grade class. “We’re going to use it to collect scrap.”
“So are we.” Linda planted her feet solidly and knotted her hands on her hips. “And I said dibs first.”
“I thought it,” Vincent yelled back.
The others — Linda’s friends and Vincent’s — began shouting, too.
Macy almost expected to be shoved back and forth the way she was on that awful day when her kokeshi doll necklace was nearly ruined. “Stop!” she called. “It’s for our soldiers! Remember?”
Everyone fell silent. They looked at one another. Vincent said, “Okay, you can use the wagon first. We’ll collect more scrap than you, anyway.”
“It’s not a contest,” Linda said.
“It could be,” one of the girls exclaimed. “We can collect more scrap metal than any old boys!”
“Can not!” one of the boys countered.
“Sure, we can,” a third girl said. “Those boys will stop to play ball.”
“You think so?” Vincent glanced around at his friends. “All right, now it is a contest. You can use the wagon first and we’ll still beat you.”
Miss Ross hurried toward them. “What is all the shouting?” she demanded. “Is there a problem?”
“No, Miss Ross,” Macy said. “We’re just deciding how to help fight the war.” She looked around at her new friends and realized she wasn’t missing Lily as much as she had before.
After promising to meet the group later, Macy walked from school to the Farrells’ home. Mrs. Farrell approved the idea of a scrap drive but had chores that needed to be done first. “Ladies will be coming over this afternoon to roll bandages for the Red Cross. I’d like you to help. Maybe you’ll have time before supper to talk to the nearest neighbors about saving their tin cans.”
Macy glanced across the gravel road to Mr. Oakes’s small cabin, wondering how many tin cans he used and if he would save the empty ones for her.
“There’s an old baby buggy still hanging on the wall in the garage. That should hold a lot of empty cans.” Mrs. Farrell smiled and set the teakettle on the top of the iron stove to stay hot.
Half a dozen ladies soon arrived. They were all pleasant to Macy, but impatience burned inside as she rolled strips of cloth cut from old sheets worn soft. Every one of the ladies had already promised her empty cans to someone from school. Both boys and girls must have dashed off to ask their neighbors the moment they got home.
Now as she watched the shadows grow longer, Macy knew she wouldn’t have time to talk to anyone about scrap today.
When Mr. Farrell drove home from the barbershop, the sun was setting behind a bank of clouds over the ocean.
Macy held the door as the last of the ladies left, then called, “I’m going to look for that baby buggy, Mrs. Farrell.”
“Aunt Ida, dear,” the woman corrected gently. “If the buggy is too high for you to reach, Uncle Emory will help you.”
Macy nodded. It was hard to think of them as aunt and uncle. Maybe that would be easier when she knew them better.
“Take your coat,” Aunt Ida reminded her. “It’s getting cold outside.”
Macy shrugged into the cloth coat she’d left on a hook in the hall, thinking she didn’t plan to be outside long enough to need it. Supper would be ready in a few minutes.
Rain had begun to fall when she stepped into the garage, which had three sides but no doors. She stood still for a moment, listening to raindrops hitting the galvanized-metal roof overhead. If she were home in Stanby, she could sit by the warm kitchen range while she sipped a cup of hot chocolate.
Thoughts like that weren’t helping. Shaking them away, she located the baby buggy, hanging from hooks on one wall. She had to climb onto a box to reach it but managed to lift it down. Dust filtered from the rattan when she moved it. Maybe she should just set it in the rain for a few minutes to get it clean.
As soon as the thought came to her, she pushed the buggy to the open end of the garage and outside into the rain. Across the gravel road, a beam of light shone from under one side of Mr. Oakes’s blackout curtain.
Should she tell Mr. Farrell? Uncle Emory, she reminded herself, adding, Why bother when I can just run over there?
She was glad of a scarf tucked into her coat pocket and pulled it over her hair before running through the light rainfall.
Mr. Oakes answered her knock, his white eyebrows rising in surprise. “You’re the young lady from across the street. Macy, isn’t it? I’ve heard them call you that.”
“Yes, Macy,” she agreed, and pointed past him into the house. “Your curtain caught on something again.”
He turned toward his window and shook his head. “Too many books piled everywhere. I suppose Mr. Farrell sent you to scold me.”
“No!” Macy exclaimed. “No, I wanted to warn you. I wouldn’t like having someone bang on my window and shout at me to turn out my lights.”
“That’s kindly thinking, young miss, and I thank you.” He glanced around the room as if seeing the piled books, magazines, and newspapers through fresh eyes. “And now you’re thinking what an awful clutter.”
“No,” Macy said again, adding from her heart, “To me, it looks like a library where you don’t have to be quiet.”
He chuckled, sounding surprised and pleased as he crossed to free the offending curtain from books stacked on a windowsill. “A library where you don’t have to be quiet. I like the sound of that.”
He glanced toward her as he added the books to others piled on the table. “Do you like to read, Miss Macy?”
“Yes. I used to read with my mama before she died, especially her big book with pictures of places in Japan.”
Macy clamped her mouth shut, afraid of betraying Miss Tokyo. What would Mr. Oakes think of a big Japanese doll hidden beneath a bed in the Farrells’ house, when the Farrells were such patriotic people?
“Japan is a beautiful country,” he said.
“With nice people,” Macy agreed, remembering Mama. She added quickly, “Some of them. Others are fighting us.” She glanced across the street. “I have to go. Supper’s ready and they don’t know where I am.”
“Thank you for the warning,” he called after her. “I’ll watch out for that curtain.”
She waved, wondering if he could see her in the dark as she ran back across the road. Mr. Oakes was nicer than the Farrells had made her expect. She was glad to have warned him before Mr. Farrell went out with his loud shouts and baton.
In the next few days, the garden demanded Macy’s help. Even with winter coming on, there was a lot to do: mostly cleanup to prepare for the Victory Garden that would be there next spring.
At school Macy had little to add when her new friends compared the amounts of scrap they had collected. All she could contribute was what Aunt Ida was able to find. She hadn’t even thought to ask Mr. Oakes for his cans the night she warned him that his curtain was caught again.
Her other nearest neighbors lived much farther up the tree-lined road, almost to the highway. Macy often saw Mr. Oakes walking along the road in his heavy coat and knit cap with bells on top. When she waved, he nodded in a neighb
orly way, but she didn’t have time to talk to him, and he didn’t seem inclined to stop.
Every night, Uncle Emory fiddled with his shortwave radio, bringing in voices from faraway places while Macy did her homework across the table. Life had taken on a routine that didn’t leave time for Little Orphan Annie’s scrap-collecting Junior Commandos.
On Friday, when Macy once again rushed upstairs to change from her school clothes before helping with the garden, she felt her enthusiasm running out like the tide.
She threw herself across her covers to peer between the bed and the wall at Miss Tokyo, bundled below. “Miss T,” she said softly, “I don’t think I’ll have time to collect a single tin can besides the few Aunt Ida can give me.”
“Your friends will forgive you, Macy-chan,” she answered in the doll’s high voice.
“They’ve all known each other most of their lives,” Macy said. “They have close friends already. So they’re not really friends to me. Not like Lily. Not even like Christopher Adams.”
Why had she thought of him? She wanted to make the doll laugh and say that at least she didn’t have him here making fun of her.
Aunt Ida called up the stairs. “Macy?”
“Coming!” Macy scrambled off the bed and hurried down the stairs. She found Aunt Ida in the open garage beside gleaming tools, each hanging from a nail on one wall. The woman took down a freshly sharpened hoe with markings on the handle. “You should be using this to chop out the old corn stalks. It’s a good hoe. Mr. Toyama treated his tools well.”
Macy took the hoe and turned it to see unusual markings on the handle.
“Uncle Emory doesn’t lend them out,” Aunt Ida continued, “but you’ve proved to be a responsible young lady. I don’t believe he’ll mind if you use this today.”
“Who is Mr. Toyama?” Macy asked, realizing that the markings were Japanese characters that spelled a word or a name.
Aunt Ida walked across the driveway toward the garden. “He was a friend of Uncle Emory’s, but he had to go to an internment camp with the others.”
Like Betsy Oshima and her family. But not her dog, Macy thought. “How did Uncle Emory get his tools?”
“Mr. Toyama won’t be using them in the camp,” Aunt Ida said briskly. “It wouldn’t be helping him any to leave them in his shed, going rusty and dull.”
“So you’re taking care of them for him?”
“Yes, but I doubt if he’ll be coming back here. Now, pull on the gardening gloves. You’ll be finished with the corn stalks before you know it.”
Macy looked at the dry stalks, all of them leaning in different directions or lying flat on the ground. She set to work using the sharp hoe and was pleased to see that the stalks fell more quickly than she had expected. Silently, she murmured thanks to the Japanese man who had selected and cared for his tools.
Even so, the work seemed to take forever. When she finally reached the end of the garden nearest the road, she thought it must be almost time for Uncle Emory to get home from the barbershop. And then it would be time for supper. And homework. Again.
She hurled a last stalk away from her. “This is not fun!”
“Macy!” Aunt Ida’s call made Macy jump while heat rushed to her face. She had the awful feeling she’d been caught sounding like a four-year-old. Aunt Ida came toward her with a covered plate.
“I’ve made some oatmeal cookies,” the woman explained. “Will you take these over to Mr. Oakes? I doubt that man eats much, living alone the way he does.”
Macy could smell the cookies even though they were covered. It would be tempting to take them into the trees and eat them all. But they were for Mr. Oakes. Besides, she wanted to talk to the man with bells on his knit cap.
She pulled off the gloves and left them next to the hoe before taking the plate. “I’ll bet he eats these. They smell so good, I’ll bet he eats them all.”
“Come straight back,” Aunt Ida said. “Uncle Emory will be home at any minute and then we’ll have supper.”
Temptation grew as the cookies’ spicy aroma swirled around Macy, but she carried the entire plateful to the small cottage across the gravel road. When she knocked, Mr. Oakes came to the door, still wearing his heavy coat hanging loose over a knit sweater and dark pants.
He must feel cold all the time in the windy, damp climate of the coast. She was glad she’d brought the cookies. Maybe the oatmeal and spices would warm him up some.
He looked at the plate and breathed in deeply. “Is that cinnamon I smell? And vanilla. Could those be cookies?”
“They’re for you,” Macy said. “Mrs. Farrell sent them.”
“That is good of her. And it is kindly of you to take the trouble to bring them. I saw you working in the garden over there,” he added with sympathy in his voice. “It looked like unpleasant work.”
Embarrassed, Macy realized he must have seen her hurl the corn stalk. “It’s just that my friends are having a scrap drive,” she said. “I wanted to prove I’m as patriotic as they are.”
Mr. Oakes’s clear-eyed gaze seemed to look right into her. She was almost afraid he saw Miss Tokyo hiding behind her eyes. “It can be hard to be the newcomer,” he said. “I remember that.”
It was especially hard to be the newcomer with a secret, Macy thought, but she kept that worry to herself. “They decided on a contest to see who gets the most scrap, the girls or the boys. And here I am working in an old garden! It’s going to be a Victory Garden, but even that doesn’t feel as patriotic as collecting scrap for our soldiers!”
A sparkle came into Mr. Oakes’s eyes. “I can help you there. You’re welcome to the heap of empty cans piled out behind my place waiting for my grown son to haul them away.”
“You have cans? And I can take them?” She was afraid to believe it.
“Why not?” Mr. Oakes asked. “You will get more use out of those cans than my son. He simply hauls them to the dump.”
Mr. Oakes didn’t look like he’d welcome hugs, so Macy hugged herself instead. “Can I get them right now?” She stopped, remembering. “A boy is coming to live with you. Your nephew? He might be in my class. Will he be mad if you give away the cans?”
“Not if we don’t tell him.”
Macy giggled. “Okay.”
“You bring Emory Farrell’s wheelbarrow around and I will help you load.”
A wheelbarrow! She hadn’t thought of that. It wasn’t a wagon, but she would get less teasing with cans in a wheelbarrow than in a baby buggy.
She saw a question in Mr. Oakes’s eyes. He was wondering why it mattered so much to her to be the most patriotic, but he didn’t ask. She was thankful for that. She liked him, but she couldn’t tell him about Miss Tokyo.
“I might have to get the cans tomorrow,” she said as Uncle Emory’s car came down the road to the house. “I need to ask if I can use the wheelbarrow, and it will be supper time before I can ask, and after supper I have to roll bandages for the Red Cross again and do my homework.”
“Whenever you can make it will be fine,” Mr. Oakes answered.
Macy hoped so. The way her luck was running and with the Farrells keeping her so busy, that nephew would turn up and claim all the cans for the boys’ scrap drive before she could get to them.
Collecting scrap is a worthwhile job for you,” Uncle Emory agreed at breakfast on Macy’s first Saturday with them. “But I’d like you to finish cleaning the garden. You’ve done well. You should be able to clear the tomato patch today.”
He twisted the dial on his shortwave radio, causing a fresh burst of loud static.
Macy tried not to frown. The other kids were meeting with their scrap again today. She had to remember that the Farrells were being kind in letting her stay here. She had to keep reminding herself of that. The way she had to keep reminding herself to call them Aunt and Uncle.
“The new hoe is very sharp,” Macy said. “Aunt Ida was telling me a little about Mr. Toyama. What was he like?”
“Toyama was a pleasant
enough fellow. A hard worker.” Uncle Emory looked as if thinking back, smiling a little. “He did a lot of fishing and sold most of his catch in town.”
“Uncle Emory enjoyed fishing with him from time to time,” Aunt Ida said, her expression warm with memory. She rested the teapot on its stand to listen to her husband with a fond smile.
“There was this one time,” Uncle Emory said, as crinkles appeared at the corners of his eyes. “The two of us were fishing in his old rowboat, and he hooked a big one. We never did see that fish. It happened so fast.”
“What happened?”
“That big fish grabbed his line and jerked Toyama head over boots right off the end of the boat and into the bay.”
Macy nearly dropped her fork. “Did he drown?”
“Uncle Emory would never have let that happen,” Aunt Ida assured her.
“For a while there, I thought he might be a goner,” Uncle Emory said. “Then here comes his hand out of the water, grabbing for the boat. I hauled him in and I’ll be darned if he didn’t come up laughing.”
“Laughing!” Macy thought she must have heard wrong.
“Laughing,” Uncle Emory assured her. “Toyama said he thought the fish must have been the ghost of his cranky old neighbor. The woman always had it in for him when she was living.”
Macy chuckled with them, though she wasn’t sure the story was funny. And now Mr. Toyama was in an internment camp and Uncle Emory was using his tools. She pushed unsettling questions aside. This was as good a time as any to ask about borrowing the wheelbarrow to collect scrap metal.
“It won’t be any help to you,” Uncle Emory answered, turning to his radio. “The wheelbarrow needs a new tire, and we won’t be getting one while rubber is rationed.”
“We’ve already talked about that old wicker baby buggy in the shed out back,” Aunt Ida reminded her.
Uncle Emory nodded. “Good idea, Ida. She won’t have trouble with the boys trying to steal her tin cans. None of them is likely to run off with a baby buggy!”
Macy giggled. Maybe the buggy would be better than the wheelbarrow. Even Christopher Adams wouldn’t risk being teased by grabbing a baby buggy full of scrap and pushing it through town.
Dolls of War Page 13
