If someone had suggested such a thing a week ago I would have said they belonged in the loony bin. But after hearing Dudley talk about his little brother getting beat up by his daddy, I didn’t feel so alone anymore. Maybe we did want the same things in life. Like Miss Hinkle and that handwriting book said, Union of interests brings union of minds.
Now here Dudley was, talking about enlisting. Defending the freedom of America’s children. That sounded good. Joining the army would earn me some respect, for sure. My picture would be in the paper. Granddaddy might even hang it on the bedroom wall.
But still, I wasn’t planning to enlist. “You’re crazy,” I said. “We’re underage.”
“Lots of people lie about their age,” he said. “And the army is desperate for soldiers. It’s the patriotic thing to do.”
I shook my head.
“Young man,” said Dudley, “grasp your opportunity.”
“You sound like some old lady schoolteacher.”
“Watch your mouth, Bledsoe!”
When it was time for physical education, Miss Hinkle told me and Dudley to stay behind while the others went to the gymnasium. “I’ve been told that the two of you rode your buses to school yesterday. Is that correct?”
I saw the toe of Dudley’s shoe making a figure eight on the wooden floor.
“Look at me. Both of you.” I jerked my head up and looked Miss Hinkle in the eye. It was like staring at two bright shiny nails. Metal. Cold. “Were you on the school bus yesterday?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Dudley?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“And where were you after that?”
I shrugged, waiting for Dudley to explain. But he let me do the talking.
“Don’t shrug your shoulders at me, Junior.”
“We went to Brookford.”
“So you were truant?” That was her fancy way of saying I was playing hooky. “I will, of course, need to talk to your parents.”
I couldn’t let her do that. But how could I stop her? I started talking. Fast. “My mother has been real upset,” I said. “On account of Pop dying. It would be best if you don’t say anything. I’ll do better, Miss Hinkle. I promise. I won’t play hooky again.”
Maybe Miss Hinkle did have a little bit of neighborliness left in her, because what she said next surprised me. “I’ll give you one more chance. But if this happens again, I will be contacting Bessie.”
26
AIM
March 1942
I wasn’t about to give Miss Hinkle a reason for talking to Momma about my truancy. So I worked harder than ever. But the sight of my handwriting always sent Miss Hinkle fishing for her fountain pen and bottle of red ink. She kept returning papers marked up with criticism. You can do better. Or, Sloppy. Do this over.
One good thing about school—besides the time I dropped my pencil and Janie picked it up and handed it back to me—was that Dudley and I weren’t constantly bickering. He’d bring his sack lunch and plop down at the table with me. Sometimes he’d tell stories on his daddy—about him whipping up on his brother or being happy drunk and making a fool of himself.
“We just need to leave out of here,” he kept saying. “I heard on the radio where three thousand men from Catawba County enlisted last month. Now it’s our turn.”
“Those three thousand men were between the ages of twenty and forty-five,” I said.
“So we’ll tell them we’re eighteen. The army ain’t being that picky.”
The worse I did in school and the more I listened to Dudley saying “Young man, grasp your opportunity,” the more he made me believe we could do it. Some days when Granddaddy was dozing in his chair or poking around in Momma’s business, I’d pick up that picture of Gideon Bledsoe and stare at it.
His eyes would hold me and I’d want to have a conversation with him. I sure would love to hear him tell me what it felt like to go off to war so young. And how did it feel to come home a hero?
One day Miss Hinkle assigned us to write essays on things we could do to help win the war from home. I wrote that I had already dug around in my shed for rubber and metal to take to the scrapyard. I would plant a bigger garden next year so food from grocery stores could go to the army.
I knew I should be buying war bonds, which was a way of loaning money to the government until after the war. Every copy of the Hickory Daily Record advertised them for sale, and every citizen was supposed to be buying them. But what if some citizens had to struggle to pay the light bill?
Maybe the best thing I could do was get a job. Then I could buy war bonds. And if I worked for a sock factory like the one Peggy Sue’s daddy owned, I could even make socks for soldiers. But when would I have time for that? Between school and working around the house, I was doing good to catch the bus every morning.
In the essay, I mentioned that I could quit school and find a job.
That was the wrong thing to say in a paper for Miss Hinkle. The day after I turned it in, she called me into the hall. I didn’t have any idea what I was in trouble for until I saw that paper in her hand. She flapped it in the air to show me that she disagreed with what I wrote. “Junior,” she said, “I certainly hope you are not serious about dropping out of school. That will not benefit you or the war.”
It was bad enough that she had to go and argue with my ideas. But on top of that, she started in on my handwriting. “I do not emphasize this for my own benefit,” she said. “The Palmer method is designed to help you make a good impression when the time comes to pursue work. I want you, Axel Junior, to meet with success when you go out into the world.”
Miss Hinkle just had to throw in Pop’s name—to remind me he hadn’t made such a good impression. To shame me into doing better than he did. She handed me a small book. It was The Village Blacksmith, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “I want you to copy this poem in your best handwriting. And memorize it, too. Then you will have its message in your heart for the rest of your life.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
That poem was all about a hard-working, upstanding man who didn’t owe any debt. I had no trouble reading between the lines, and I knew Miss Hinkle was trying to tell me to be different from Pop.
I copied the poem as best I could, in between all my other chores. But I didn’t even try to memorize it. If Miss Hinkle thought she had talked me into staying in school, she was sure wrong about that. Instead, I turned in the poem and told Dudley I was ready to enlist.
“Atta boy!” Dudley thumped me on the back.
The next morning we walked right into the building like every other day—in case Miss Hinkle or Mr. Hollar or anyone else was watching out the windows. But just when I was ready to pass the auditorium doors, Mr. Hollar stepped out into the hall. He cast his eyes around like he was always doing, looking this way and that, but he was busy talking to a teacher and I didn’t think he even noticed I was there. They turned and walked up the hall in front of me and went into a classroom.
Now all I had to do was make it past my room. Miss Hinkle was at the blackboard, writing a sentence in her perfect Palmer longhand. Seeing that made me want to run, but I tried my level best to look normal. I went out the back door and slipped past the building, sticking close to the wall so no one inside would see me from the windows. At the corner I started ducking from one tree to the next. Then I got antsy and took off at a run.
We had to go through Brookford to reach the recruiter’s office. Dudley had said to meet at a certain hickory tree just before the swinging bridge. There was a hollow log there for hiding our schoolbooks. He was sitting on the log and smoking a cigarette—calm as pond water.
I leaned my forehead against a tree and closed my eyes while I tried to catch my breath. The rough bark of the tree felt good under my hands. I peeled some off and crumbled it in my fist.
“Want a smoke? It’ll settle your nerves.”
I shook my head. “Naw. I’m not nervous.”
“Liar. I see you shaking in your s
hoes.”
I didn’t see how he could tell and I sure wasn’t about to admit it. I turned and leaned with my back to the tree, sliding until my behind was sitting in the leaves. “I don’t smoke.”
He shrugged. “Look, there’s nothing to be nervous about. Throw your shoulders back and march into that office like a soldier.” Dudley stood and started across the swinging bridge.
“Ha! You look like a drunken sailor, is what you look like.”
Dudley started singing, slurring his voice. “Shipmates, stand together. Don’t give up the ship. Fair or stormy weather, we won’t give up, we won’t give up the ship.”
I just sat there staring. And laughing. Dudley Walker could actually be fun sometimes. I thought about the first time I saw him on that bridge and what he said he wanted—to be free of school and Miss Hinkle. To get out and see the world. He sat there listening to Otis tell stories on my pop. And then he started telling his own stories. About Wayne Walker.
He was right about what he said that day. We both wanted the same things. Not just to leave school behind us but to be shed of some other things, too. For instance, the way people looked at us on account of our fathers. We both wanted to earn our own respect in this world.
Dudley was on the other side of the bridge now. I hoisted myself up and followed him, keeping my eye on the other side so I wouldn’t lose my nerve. I intended to go through with this.
So, when I was across the bridge, I took off at a trot toward the highway. We passed the cotton mill, marching and holding our heads up proud and puffing out our chests. We told each other what we planned to say to the recruiting officer—that our country needed us because we were young and strong and of sound mind. We wanted to protect the freedom of the world. I decided I would say what Franklin Roosevelt said—that it would be a privilege to fight for the future of America’s children. The Germans and Japs and Italians were gangsters trying to take over the world, but we were too tough for that. I’d tell them I had a crackerjack aim and I intended to use it.
It was a long walk, but we finally made it there.
27
MISFIRE
March 1942
After all that walking, it felt good to just sit on a hard bench and wait. Dudley smoked one cigarette and then another. “Where do you get them?” I asked.
He laughed. “My old man. And his friends. Have to sneak them one at a time. My father is a happy drunk. He’s fine with missing a few cigarettes when he’s drinking. But I can’t take too many too fast or he’ll notice when he sobers up.”
We sat in that waiting room for more than an hour. And I noticed that people who came in after us were called back before we were. Maybe their lottery numbers had come up. Maybe that explained it.
But we waited forty-five more minutes, and I was fixing to be mad. “God bless America! Where are they?” I asked. “We come here to help win the war and they leave us sitting like a couple of dogs by the side of the road.”
I went outside and stared at the brick wall of the building across the street. Being in town was like being stuck in my room with Granddaddy. Everywhere I looked, I saw walls when I wanted some trees. I needed the smell of pine needles and rotting stumps. The clean fresh air of the woods. I needed the feel of my gun in my hands and a squirrel or even a deer in my sights. I half closed my eyes and imagined the woods behind our barn.
“What you doin’?”
The trees in my mind disappeared, and now I was staring at that brick wall again. The smell of cigarettes pushed away the leafy, woodsy smells. Dudley was standing there poking me with his elbow. “You look like you’re pulling at a trigger. Like you just can’t wait to find yourself in this war.” He laughed and slapped me on the back. “That’s good. The recruiter is going to take to you like a turkey buzzard on dead possum.”
“Dead possum? Dadgummit, Catfish. Is that the best you could come up with?”
Dudley laughed so hard he nearly choked on his cigarette smoke. And that got me to laughing, too.
“Junior Bledsoe!” That was the recruiting officer standing at the door. “Thought you wanted to talk to us.”
“Yes, sir.” I turned. “See ya later,” I said to Dudley.
“Oh, no. I’m coming too.”
The officer held up his hand. “One at a time.”
Dudley spoke up. “Sir, we came together. We plan to stay that way.”
We did? I didn’t remember discussing this. But maybe Dudley was scared too. Maybe he needed me to make him feel brave. “If you don’t mind, sir,” I said.
The officer frowned. He stood there tapping his foot for a minute. “Follow me.” He took us to a small office with no windows—just a desk with a chair and a short bench on the front side of it. “Sit.”
I couldn’t help but feel how close Dudley was on that bench. But it felt good. Like it wasn’t just me facing the officer and his questions. If I didn’t have the right answers, then more than likely Dudley would.
The officer left us there and we waited some more. “This is what it’s like in the army,” whispered Dudley. “They tell you to hurry up, and then they make you wait.”
The desk had a metal lamp on it with a green glass shade and a pull chain. The lamp was off and the bare bulb in the ceiling didn’t light the place up so well, but I could see a world map on the wall—marked with all the places the Germans, Italians, and Japanese were causing trouble.
Finally I heard footsteps coming down the hall. When the door opened, the officer had another man with him. He explained, “Two of you, two of us.” As if this was some kind of contest we were in. As if he needed help to win.
I wished they had two chairs on that side of the desk, but they didn’t, so the second officer just stood there with his arms folded across his chest. “What brings you here today?”
“The war,” said Dudley.
The officer looked at me. “Yes, sir,” I said. “The war.” I pointed to the map on the wall. “The gangsters are trying to take over the world. We’re not gonna let ’em.”
“We?” asked the officer. He stared into my eyes and I knew he wanted me to explain.
“Me and my pal.” It sounded strange to call Dudley my pal. But sitting there shoulder to shoulder, it seemed right, too. “President Roosevelt said we’re all in this together. We aim to win this war, and it will take every last one of us.”
“How old are you?” asked the second officer.
I hesitated just a second. I knew I wasn’t a good liar. Dudley spoke up. “Eighteen, sir. Both of us.”
The officer narrowed his eyes at Dudley. Then he looked at me.
I nodded.
The officer came around the desk, and what he did next surprised me. He put his hand on my face and rubbed at my chin with his thumb. I jerked my head away. He laughed. “Maybe you’re growing a couple of whiskers there. Maybe not.” He stepped in front of me and reached for Dudley. “What about you, pretty boy?” He turned to the other officer. “Can you give me a light here?”
At first it sounded like he was asking to light a cigarette, but then I realized that no, he was mocking Dudley. Asking the other officer to pull the chain on the desk lamp and turn it in Dudley’s direction. So he could search for facial hair.
Well, Dudley was kind of blond, and I reckon that made a difference. The officer rubbed on his chin. “I don’t believe this one is eighteen,” he said. I could feel Dudley tensing up beside me. He scraped his shoe against the floor, making that figure eight again, and making little growly sounds in his throat. The officer smacked him a little on the side of the head and went back around the desk. “They’re just a couple of cubs. Momma bears won’t like them leaving home.”
“Tell me,” said the other one. He looked at Dudley. “What do you have that this army needs?”
I heard Dudley swallow real hard. And I could feel the bench shaking. Maybe it wasn’t him shaking it. Maybe it was me. But his foot was going like crazy against the floor. I watched it until I could almost see the nu
mber eight laying there sideways on the boards.
Finally he spoke up. “Sir, I’m a fighter. Just ask him.” He jabbed me with his elbow. “I know how to go after the enemy. Put me in this army and I will track the enemy down and make him wish he was at the bottom of the sea.”
I almost laughed when Dudley said that. I don’t know why. Maybe it was nervousness. Then I realized it was my turn to speak. I had to convince them I was qualified to serve in the United States Army. “I’ve been hunting all my life, sir. My aim is dead-on perfect. I can shoot a turkey from forty yards. You know Sergeant York, sir? I’m that good.” Of course it was stupid for me to say such a thing. But in that moment I was grabbing at whatever came into my head, and that’s what showed up. After all, Alvin York learned to shoot the same way I did. It wasn’t the army that taught him. He learned from living in the backwoods of Tennessee. “My pop taught me,” I said.
The officer nodded. He picked his cigar out of the ashtray on his desk and blew a few puffs our way. He didn’t say anything. The other officer didn’t either. They both just sat there staring at us. Nodding.
What did that nodding mean?
Dudley lit up a cigarette. Everybody was smoking except me. And for some reason, all of a sudden, I had to have me a cigarette too. Maybe that would prove something about my age. I bumped Dudley’s arm with my elbow. “How about a smoke?”
He squinted, and I knew what he was thinking. He was remembering how I told him I didn’t smoke.
“I was lying,” I whispered.
Dudley put the cigarette in his mouth and dug into his pocket. The one he brought out was bent, like all his cigarettes. Dudley leaned toward the desk and tapped the ashes of his cigarette into the ashtray there. He held the tips of those two cigarettes together until mine caught the light. Finally he handed it to me.
I put it in my mouth, and the sharp taste of tobacco set me back for a second. I let it sit there until I got used to it. I thought about eating lima beans—I didn’t like them either when I first tasted them. That was years ago. But now I loved limas. I could learn to like tobacco too. I inhaled.
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