Aunt Ida went into the house, leaving the door open. Chris turned to Macy, his blue eyes more intense than she had ever seen them. “We can be friends. If we try hard enough.”
Was he kidding? She stared after him in astonishment as he followed Aunt Ida into the kitchen. Having Christopher Adams living across the street might be even more difficult than she’d thought. What was she going to do about Miss Tokyo?
While they sipped hot cocoa and ate honey cookies, Aunt Ida asked Chris about school and sports — all the boring questions grown-ups always asked.
Macy was glad of it. Everything felt normal. She could pretend she wasn’t terrified inside. All the time she had waited for Mr. Oakes’s great-nephew to arrive, she had thought he would be like Mr. Oakes. She’d hoped he would help protect Miss Tokyo.
But the nephew was Christopher Adams. He’d been kind the awful day of the bonfire. He’d even carried Miss Tokyo to the museum for her. And a little while ago, he’d sort of said they could be friends. But what would he say if he learned she’d brought the doll here and that Miss Tokyo was hiding in his great-uncle’s closet?
Uncle Emory had said he’d like to shoot all the Japanese dolls. If Christopher told him about Miss Tokyo, Uncle Emory would head straight for his gun. A shiver ran through Macy. She swallowed a gulp of hot cocoa, but it couldn’t warm the chill she felt inside.
“Has Macy told you about her scrap collecting?” Aunt Ida asked Chris. “She has everyone in school competing to bring in the most tin. And every bit of fat from the kitchen goes to the war effort. She watches our ration coupons, too, making sure they cover everything we need. No black-market goods will come into this house.”
Chris glanced at Macy, who felt her face getting warm. To Aunt Ida he said, “I’m glad to hear she’s turned into a super-patriot. I suppose that’s because Nick —”
Aunt Ida cut him off. “Of course she’s proud of all our fighting men. Would you like to take some cookies to your uncle, dear?”
“He already has some,” Macy reminded her, wondering why Aunt Ida had cut in like that when she’d been trying to draw Chris out. “I nearly dropped the plate when Chris answered the door.”
“And you’ll be in the same class at school,” Aunt Ida said, as if that were the best news ever. “You can walk together.”
“Uh, well, I can show you where it is,” Macy told Chris. If he agreed to walk with her, that would be his choice, not Aunt Ida’s.
“Sure,” he said, getting to his feet. “I’d better get back to Uncle Del now. Meet you at the road Monday morning?”
“Okay.” Inside, she felt her nerves tightening. His uncle Del must have been keeping the doll out of sight in that closet. Maybe some heavy clothes hung in front of her.
She was going to stay away. She’d have to be careful what she said every minute she spent with Christopher Adams. She couldn’t let him find out about Miss Tokyo.
She lay awake late into the night and the next night, too, picturing Chris looking into his uncle’s closet, but he didn’t rush across the street dragging the doll behind him so she began to relax a little. On Monday, they left their houses at the same time and walked to school together.
Macy wasn’t surprised to see that Chris fit easily into the new school. I had to set up scrap collecting, she thought. All he has to do is push his hair back and smile.
Linda turned from the desk ahead to whisper, “He has the bluest eyes ever! You went to the same school? Lucky! Does he have a girlfriend?”
“I don’t know! I left ages ago.” The words sounded defensive. She added, “There was this girl Rachel. But he hasn’t said anything about her.”
“Then they must have broken up,” Linda said. “You’re friends. He’d have told you if he was sad to move away from her.”
“We’re not friends! We’re enemies.” Maybe she shouldn’t have said that, but it was annoying to watch Linda drooling over Christopher Adams.
“What happened?” Linda’s eyes went wide. “Did he try to kiss you?”
“What? No!” Macy felt her face getting hot. Why hadn’t the teacher told Linda to stop whispering and turn around? “He broke something that mattered to me. On purpose. That’s all.”
Macy pulled open her spelling book and stared at squiggles that didn’t even look like letters for a moment. Then Miss Ross said, “Linda, turn around and sit straight, please,” and Macy could breathe easily again.
Macy was sure Chris would walk home with his new friends after school. But the only one going their way was Linda, so he fell into step with the two of them, and while Linda giggled and flirted, Macy silently fumed.
Linda asked, “Is this your first time to the beach, Chris?”
“I’ve visited my uncle before.” He glanced toward the dunes. “Anyone else want to go see what the waves have washed in?”
Macy thought at once of the rose-colored float. Should she tell them about it? She couldn’t take it to the Farrells’. Chris might as well have it. But he’d probably give it to Linda.
It’s mine, Macy told herself, and I’m keeping it. Aloud she said, “I have to go home. The Farrells think the beach is dangerous while the war is going on. Besides, I have chores.”
“See you tomorrow.” Linda looked far too eager to say good-bye.
Every day after school, Linda and Chris went over the dunes to spend half an hour or so exploring the beach while Macy walked the rest of the way home alone. Though she tried not to pay attention, she couldn’t help but notice him coming home to his uncle’s with his hair windblown and his skin reddened from sun and wind.
Linda began an annoying habit of talking about him as if he belonged to her, saying, “I can’t wait for school to let out so Chris and I can go to the beach” or “Chris and I found an amazing tide pool yesterday” or “Chris and I are going to race hermit crabs to see whose gets into the tide pool first.”
On Friday, Linda stayed after school for cheerleader practice. As Macy walked along the highway toward home with Chris, she asked before she knew she was going to, “Do you like Linda?”
His eyebrows rose in surprise. “She’s okay. I don’t think she’d have the nerve to stop just about everybody in town from burning a Japanese doll, though.”
Macy was startled to hear him bring up the bonfire. “I saved her, but Papa says I was dumb to defy everybody over a doll.”
Chris stopped walking to look at her. His eyes weren’t accusing. Were they actually approving? “It was dumb,” he said, adding, “Dumb but brave.”
“That’s me.” She didn’t know whether to feel praised or insulted and decided to feel praised.
After a few more steps toward home, he turned to her again. “Why did you ask? About Linda, I mean.”
Because he had praised her in a Chris sort of way, she risked trusting him. “I want to show you something I found on the beach. If it’s still there. But Linda can’t have it.”
“Okay. Where is it? What is it?”
“I’ll show you.”
Her conscience pinched, but she hadn’t actually promised the Farrells she wouldn’t go to the beach without them. So she led Chris over the railroad track and the short road through the dunes.
She remembered exactly where she’d left the rosy float, but she took a moment to breathe deeply of the salt air. She needed to watch the waves rising and breaking and rolling to the sand. Something about the unchanging ocean made her feel safe. Even if Uncle Emory did think the waves were full of enemy submarines.
“So where is it?” Chris demanded.
“This way.” She led him to the log, hoping the higher night tides hadn’t reclaimed her treasure. No, seaweed still lay in a heap where she’d piled it over the driftwood and glass. Dropping to her knees in the grainy sand, she shoved the kelp aside and lifted out the float.
Chris blew a low, appreciative breath. “Keen!”
When he held out his hand, she hesitated, then let him take the baseball-size globe.
Chris held
it up. In the lowering sunlight, the rosy glass glowed as if filled with fire. “You found this?”
“Weeks ago.”
“Weeks ago! Why leave it here? The tide could take it.”
Macy rose to her feet, frustration rushing through her just as it had on the day she found the float. “I can’t take it to the Farrells. Mr. Farrell breaks them. He says anything from Japan should be smashed. I can’t let him find the . . . uh . . . the float.”
She’d nearly said “the doll.” She clamped her lips together, but Chris was too busy admiring the heavy glass globe to notice. “You can’t leave it here,” he said. “It will wash away any night the tide comes up this high.”
“I can’t keep it with me.”
“I’ll take it to Uncle Del. He’ll let us have it there.”
He would. Of course he would. Mr. Oakes would understand. “Maybe he’ll put it in a window,” Macy said, “where the sun can light it up like that. But don’t let the blackout curtains hang up on it.”
“I’ll keep an eye on the curtains,” Chris promised. “That’s what I’m here for.”
“I’m glad.”
For a moment, their eyes met and held, sharing the secret of the float, sharing the brush of misty salt air, sharing the rush and fall of the waves, and maybe, she thought, sharing the start of friendship.
“I’ve got to go now,” she said with reluctance. “They’ll wonder where I am.”
“Right.” He walked with her across the dune and down the road to their houses. They were almost there when he said, “I don’t know about that float, about keeping it in a window, I mean.”
Macy looked at him sharply. “Do you want to take it back to the beach?”
“No, but Uncle Del got in trouble over light showing under his curtains. Someone like Mr. Farrell might call him a traitor for putting a Japanese float in his window.”
Macy sucked in a breath so sharp it hurt. They would, when Mr. Oakes had only been nice to her. “We need to hide the float.”
“I’ll take care of it. Don’t worry. I just won’t put it in a window for anybody to see.”
“Where will you put it?”
“I don’t know. Under the couch, maybe. That’s where I sleep.”
“You sleep under the couch?”
“On the couch!” His grin answered hers.
“With the float under there, you might dream of sailing,” she said, “and wake up seasick.”
“More likely I’ll wake up under the covers thinking I’ve been swallowed by a whale.”
Laughter felt good and made her much happier than the jokes deserved.
On Sunday afternoon as Macy finished folding laundry for Aunt Ida, Chris came to the door. When Aunt Ida answered, he spoke with angry precision. “Please ask Macy to come outside. I want to talk to her.”
Aunt Ida exchanged a puzzled glance with Macy before asking, “Is something wrong, dear? Your uncle?”
“My uncle is fine, thank you.” He sounded too polite. What was going on? He said again, “I need to talk to Macy.”
“Would you like to come in?” Aunt Ida began.
Macy said quickly, “Never mind. I’m right here.”
As she came toward the door, Chris said, “Bring your coat,” and started toward his uncle’s cabin.
Macy snatched up her coat and ran after him. “What’s the matter? Why are you acting like this? Is it your uncle?”
“My uncle is well. If you don’t count being called a spy because his curtains aren’t always tight and he makes mysterious bus trips to Tillamook.”
“To buy books!”
“Not everybody knows that. You must have heard talk in school. I sure have.”
“But everything can be explained.”
They had reached his uncle’s stairs. As he led her to the porch and opened the door, he said, “People could understand a Japanese fishing float if they saw it in his window. Something pretty, picked up on the beach. A lot of people have one.”
“You want me to move the float?”
Without answering, he stalked toward the closet near the kitchen.
Macy knew what was coming even before he threw open the door.
Miss Tokyo stood in the closet. She looked embarrassed, as if caught holding the change from Mr. Oakes’s dresser drawer. Macy felt the same way.
Chris’s knuckles turned white on the door frame. For a moment, Macy thought he was going to slam the door shut again. “How could he explain this?” he demanded. “A museum piece. From Japan. Hidden in his home.”
Macy felt sick. She hadn’t thought about the people who already suspected Mr. Oakes when she left the doll with him. She imagined them now and shivered. I’ve put my friend in terrible danger when he’s been nice to me.
Tears choked her as she said, “People at home wanted to kill Miss Tokyo. You know about that, Chris. They weren’t going to stop trying just because I left. How could I leave her behind to be burned or worse?”
“She was in storage.”
“But I promised! I promised Mama and I promised Hap that I’d keep Miss Tokyo safe. I couldn’t go off and leave her to be ruined!”
“So you sneaked her along.”
Macy looked unhappily at the doll. “Aunt Ida wanted to sweep under the bed where Miss Tokyo was hiding, so I put her in the woodpile. But then I found out more wood was coming and . . .”
“And you thought nobody’d suspect Uncle Del of hiding her. Right?”
“How could they suspect when they didn’t know about her? I was scared, Chris, and he offered to help.”
“Wrap the doll in your coat and get her out of here.”
Macy knelt quickly and spread her coat on the floor, but then she lowered her head to her arms. Despair spread through her. “What can I do with her?”
“You should have left her at the museum.”
“But I couldn’t. I told you —”
“What I don’t get,” Chris said, cutting her off, “is why you want to protect her even now. Don’t you care that a Jap sub sank your brother’s ship?”
Macy felt blood leave her face. Her hands — her whole body — chilled as if she’d stepped into the cold ocean. She wouldn’t . . . she couldn’t believe him. Nick’s ship? No, he was lying.
She swung around to search Chris’s face, her hand clenching over the anchor on her necklace. “Why would you say that?”
The truth was in his face. And in her own memory.
Scenes flashed through her head: Aunt Ida cutting Chris off when he started to talk about Nick. Uncle Emory telling Papa the night they arrived that she should be told. Overhearing Papa telling the pastor in Stanby that she had too much on her shoulders already. The missing letters from Nick!
They had all known and kept the awful truth from her. She knew how it felt to stand in the waves while sand was pulled from beneath her feet. She felt like that now, as if everything she believed were being drained away.
“The ship went down months ago,” Chris said. “I thought you knew.”
“Nobody told me! Why did they let me think Nick was coming home?”
Chris looked sick, but she couldn’t feel sorry for him. Everything roared through her. Papa didn’t trust her. No one trusted her. There’d been that fight at school. And being removed. And sent here to live with patriotic people.
It was all because of Miss Tokyo. Everything was Miss Tokyo’s fault.
She snatched up the Japanese doll so quickly the doll’s head smacked the door frame. “I was good to her. I kept her from a bonfire. I talked to her all the time. Now nobody trusts me. Not even Papa! And Nick’s been torpedoed! And it’s her fault!”
Chris reached toward the doll’s head. “You’ll break it.”
“I want her to hurt. Like I do!”
Ignoring Chris’s hand on her arm, Macy stumbled through the cabin and down the front stairs. The doll felt like a ten-pound log. It was no longer a doll to her, and no longer a friend.
When she rushed through the
Farrells’ front door, Uncle Emory looked up, startled, from his shortwave radio. “What is it? Has something happened?”
“You said you’d shoot a Japanese doll. Here’s one. Shoot her.” She dumped the doll on the floor by his chair. “Shoot her now!”
Chris came through the doorway. “I thought she knew about Nick,” he said, sounding anguished. ‘How come she didn’t know?”
“Oh, dear.” Aunt Ida came to Macy and wrapped one arm about her. “Macy, dear, your papa told us you probably had the doll with you. He said hotheaded people would destroy it if it remained in the museum.”
Macy felt her mouth come open. “All this time I’ve been terrified that Uncle Emory would find out about her and shoot her, and you already knew she was here!”
“We couldn’t imagine where,” Aunt Ida said.
“Doesn’t anybody tell the truth around here?” Chris asked. “She didn’t know about her brother. She thought the doll was a secret.”
“Her papa didn’t want her upset.” Aunt Ida stroked Macy’s hair. “All we know for certain is that Nick’s ship went down. It’s possible there were lifeboats. Your papa was waiting for good news before he had to tell you the bad.”
Uncle Emory clasped one of Macy’s hands to rub warmth back into her skin. “You’re thinking with your heart instead of your head, honey. I know because I do the same thing. I did that when I said the dolls should be shot.”
“She’s the enemy.” Macy pointed to the doll.
“That’s what I said about my friend. Your loyalty to the doll made me think again. Yoshio Toyama and I had good times together. He had nothing to do with the war. He’s a peaceful man. You’ve made me remember that.”
“But he’s Japanese.”
“Give this a week, honey. Let your mind catch up with your grief. When I said Japanese dolls should be shot, I was angry about the war. I still am, but the doll’s not to blame, any more than my friend Yoshio. This doll is important to you. Deep inside, you know that.”
Macy clamped her mouth shut on sobs she was determined to keep down. Even to her own ears, she was sounding like Mr. Ames and the others. Maybe they had been right all along.
Dolls of War Page 16
