Alice At The Home Front (3 page)

She peered in every direction without finding the plane, but still she kept looking for what seemed a long time. She thought her ears must have frozen off her head, because she couldn’t feel them anymore, and her ribs were sore from leaning out. Why had Mother done this? Why couldn’t Mother take her spotting seriously? Never mind, she would show her in the end that this was her right work, a job that she could do, and better than anybody else. She believed in herself, even if Mother didn’t. She had to find a way to retrieve the binoculars or find someplace else to spot, but she knew both were impossible. She sneezed hard three times as she got used to the warmth of the room. Inside herself, she felt satisfied at having at least tried. This is what she was supposed to be doing, no matter what anybody else thought. This was her job.

* * *

“You’ve eaten nothing tonight,” said Mother that night at dinner. “At least eat one or two mouthfuls of vegetables.”

“Suppose I’m a tiger. Would I eat vegetables?”

“You don’t look like a tiger.”

“But if I was, I’d die of hunger without any meat.”

“You have some meat. Look.” Mother pointed to a puny little piece of chicken.

“I mean real meat,” Alice clarified. “Tiger’s meat. Steaks and roasts.”

“I’m surprised you even remember those cuts. They’ve been rationed for a long time. They’re for the soldiers.”

“I know,” said Alice, remembering why. She thought of the soldier in his tent, with a waiter in a white uniform appearing and serving him a steaming steak, and the soldier saying, “Thanks, buddy. Now I can get strong again. And be sure to thank that little girl in Providence.”

Alice skirted the vegetables, speared the lump of chicken with one stab, and popped it into her mouth.

“Attagirl,” said Gramp, patting her hand.

Chapter Three
 

Sandbags
 

From her room, Alice could hear a lot of arguing going on in the stairwell. It was Gramp, her mother, and another voice she recognized as Mr. Hopkins, the air raid warden.

The night before she’d had terrible nightmares of planes shot down and screaming toward the earth, just like in the news reels, spiraling closer and closer toward her. She could see the pilots, their faces frozen, open-mouthed, eyes bulging with terror at what would happen. But Alice couldn’t move away, couldn’t run from it; her legs were frozen, stuck into the earth. She saw one plane whining through the air directly above her with pieces of metal falling away, plummeting down on every side; the fire from the engine shot out, the terrible heat approaching her head, burning red hot, about to collide with her. Then suddenly the plane veered off to the left, and she heard a loud crash and a splintering of crushed metal and saw flames shoot up and then a column of smoke rising from the rubble. It had been so close. She’d had this dream, or one like it, several times before. She felt her forehead covered with little pinpricks of moisture and wiped them away on her pillow along with her fear.

From the second floor, Alice peered down at the carpeted landing to see what the ruckus was about. Mother was saying they couldn’t possibly convert the basement into an air raid shelter. It was too damp, too dark, and too uncomfortable, and besides, she’d seen a family of black widow spiders nesting by the water heater.

“A family of black widows?” the warden sniggered. “You mean lots of black widows living together?”

“Nonsense, there are no black widows in a New England winter,” Gramp interrupted.

They didn’t spot Alice crouching on the stairs.

“It’s not a question of comfort, Mrs. Calder,” explained Mr. Hopkins. “It’s a question of not getting in the way of an exploding bomb.” He scratched his head under his hard hat with “Warden” printed on it. Mother hated hats in the house.

“I think the landing in this stairwell would be just perfect,” Mother said. “There are no windows. A bomb couldn’t possibly get in. We could sit on cushions”—she threw open her arms—“sip tea, and wait for the all clear.” She tilted her chin back to show she wasn’t going to give in.

“Maddy, we’ve been told we should get under a table,” said Gramp. “We’ll carry the old dining room table from the sunroom down to the basement and put a mattress under it. We’ll make a bulkhead with sandbags, just like they say to do in the regulations.” Gramp looked at Mr. Hopkins for his approval.

So this was the plan! Alice wondered if Mr. Hopkins would want to help carry a table down three flights of stairs to the basement, even if he was Gramp’s buddy and an air raid warden to boot.

“What?” exclaimed Mother. “The mice would be into that mattress in a minute. And besides, the dining room table has a pedestal under it.” Her voice rose with irritation. “How could we possibly sit there? Why on earth do we need a table? We’ll be perfectly safe
right here on the landing
!” Her eyes flashed—a sign, Alice knew, that she’d had enough with the stupidity of these men. But Mr. Hopkins and Gramp kept very still and waited until she had gone back downstairs. Alice could tell by their whisperings and nods that they had quietly agreed behind Mother’s back to get help carrying the table. Gramp had seen Alice listening in and gave her a wink.

Alice thought about the sandbags. What a great idea! The little knitting needles in Alice’s brain began clicking as she schemed. There was a room in the attic that led out to the roof. It hadn’t been used since Ella, the cook, had taken a job in the shipyards. She could crawl out of the window and lean against a buttress on the roof and spot planes there all day long, or at least after school. Not at night, of course. They used blind people to “spot” the night planes, because their keen hearing was best at recognizing which engine belonged to which plane.

Alice took a strand of hair she’d been chewing on while thinking, stuck it behind her ear, and completed her plan. Sandbags would be perfect to provide safety on the roof. Just lug up a few sandbags and dump them around the window in case a bomb caused a fire. Carry up a thermos of Postum and a peanut-butter sandwich. That and her logbook would make her a real spotter, maybe even a member of the Ground Observation Corps some day. People would find out she knew the planes a lot better than they did. In the meantime, she’d better find out from other spotters how they did their job. But—she almost forgot! Mother had taken the binoculars! How would she get them back? And how would she get Mother to change her mind? Alice thought hard. She played with her hair, twisting it round and round; poked a finger through the tiny hole in her sweater, making it wider; and chewed on her thumbnail until it almost bled. Then she grinned to herself and cried, “That’s it!”

The next day, Sunday morning at 6:30, she sat down beside Gramp on his big, creaky bed while he was half asleep and pinched his toes until he listened to her.

“Ow! What’s the problem, Alice? Up nice and early, ain’t ye?”

“Gramp, I’ve got a wonderful idea. Now listen!” She pinched another toe. “Are you listening? Say yes.”

“Yup, uh! Yes.”

“You know those big binoculars that are too big for me?” She hoped Mother hadn’t told him she’d taken them away.

“Yup. Have to grow into ’em.”

“
No
, Gramp. That’ll take too long. There’s another pair; you know which ones I mean.” She shook his shoulders. “Let’s go find them.”

She had to wait what felt like hours for Gramp to get up and get dressed. At least he didn’t take time to shave. Then he followed Alice to the third drawer of the dresser in the corner. At one time it had belonged to her grandmother, now on her way up to heaven, Alice hoped.

Alice pulled out a small pair of elegant, mother-of-pearl binoculars she knew had been very expensive in their day. Until now, Alice had a problem with the spotting because of the big binoculars. Try as she would, there was no getting them to close tight enough for her to see through both lenses at once. She’d been looking through first one glass and then the other, which was a waste of time and forced her to refocus when the planes changed altitude or direction. Now, with the mother-of-pearl glasses, she had a perfect fit. Gramp had them tucked away lovingly, in memory of their “happily married days,” Mother had said.

“Don’t know about
them
, Alice.”

“Gramp! Look how they fit me!” Alice chose the perfect argument. “Don’t you
want
to help the war effort? These glasses will spot the enemy planes! These glasses will save all of Rhode Island from the bombing by the Krauts.”

She noticed he raised an eyebrow at the unexpected word.

“They’ll help win the war! Just think! And besides that,” she added, caressing the smooth mother of pearl, “they’re beautiful—too beautiful to be stuck in some old dusty drawer,” she pouted. Alice doubted what she had been told about the dresser being a priceless antique.

“But the trouble is now Mother’s against it! Against my spotting, and I don’t know
why.
I’m not a baby. I won’t fall out the window like she says. Please, Gramp. You’ve got to talk to her, make her see how important it is for me—to do the job, I mean. I can do a swell job, even if I’m not grown up yet. You’ve seen how hard I’ve studied those plane silhouettes and how much I’ve learned.”

Gramp drummed on the dresser, making a tap-tap with his nails, turning what she said over in his mind, she guessed. Slowly he looked down at her face, which she knew wasn’t the fake pleading face she put on sometimes when she wanted her way but a really and truly sincere face—one that Gramp could tell was real.

“Okay, little girlie,” he said finally. “I’ll talk it over with her, if that makes you happy. Don’t see any harm in it meself. It’s the leaning out that scares her, ye know. But you’re big enough now not to lose your balance, ain’t ye?”

“No! I mean yes! I’m certainly big enough. And, uh … can I have the binoculars?”

Gramp sighed. He combed his fingers through his white hair a few times and peered at her from under his glasses. “Don’t scratch ’em now. And don’t drop ’em out the window.” He chuckled.

The next day, Alice felt nervous when she saw Mother look at the binoculars on the table beside her window and said nothing. That meant she had been talking with Gramp.

“He certainly does like to spoil you, doesn’t he, Alice?” Alice smiled back carefully. It sounded like everything was going to be okay. Not only that, but she was better off on two counts. One, she’d gotten permission to spot, and two, she had the binoculars—ones that really fit her.

“Gramp, where do the spotters sit when they watch out for planes?” Alice asked that night after dinner.

Gramp frowned—a thinking frown, not an angry frown. “Oh, they’ve taken over a couple of abandoned buildings downtown. There’s another one at the asylum, I think. Material’s too scarce to build official lookouts.”

“Dexter Asylum? The loony bin? Aren’t they afraid of the loonies?”

“That’s not nice, Alice!” commented Mother on her way out of the dining room.

“I guess they’re not.” Gramp tried to hide his smile.

“Oh.” Alice thought about it. “And who’s the boss of the Ground Observation Corps?” she asked.

“I dunno. Isn’t it Dan Parker’s father? Mr. Hopkins would know.”

“No! Don’t ask Mr. Hopkins, please!” She didn’t want
him
to know about her plan. He would be sure to tattletale.

Alice thought about it for all of two minutes. She’d go see Mr. Parker and get him to accept her as a spotter, but she wouldn’t tell him about the roof.

Slipping into the next room, she called, “Gra-amp! I think the French clocks have run down.”
There. That should distract him
, she thought as she listened for his footsteps to head toward the clock room. She could probably find Dan Parker’s house by herself, but out the window she could see it had grown dark already. She was never supposed to go out so late, but this was an exception. Wasn’t she working for the war effort? You bet she was.

Alice grabbed her jacket and the deck of cards and slipped out of the house into a world of unfamiliar shapes and eerie shadows. Why did everything look so different at night? Why did the tree in her own front yard reach down with twisted purple arms instead of branches? Alice made herself walk through the damp leaves down the path and turn right, as if she knew where she was going. The chilly wind hit her, and she shriveled and shivered inside her thin sweater. Too bad. This couldn’t wait. Farther on she passed the looming profiles of houses she saw every day and didn’t recognize them. She peered up the deserted street. Was she headed in the right direction? She’d only walked a few minutes from home, but everything was inky black and she didn’t know anymore.

Farther up the hill, she thought she made out a dark shape in the middle of the sidewalk. She stopped. It began moving toward her, the black hairs on its back shimmering in the dim light. Shoot, a dog. It was only a dog. But did it have to be so big? And black? She bit her lip. And why was it loose without a leash? Alice backed away from the approaching shape, but suddenly it growled and lunged toward her. She turned and ran back down the hill, past all the houses and kept on running. It was darker this way, the streetlights were too dim, and the wind smelled moldy. She kept going, by golly. She was no coward. But she started coughing, which made her slow down. She glanced over her shoulder. The dog was still following at a distance, but now it was crossing the street to a corner house. A corner house! Wait, wasn’t that Mr. Parker’s house? Shoot. She kept perfectly still while the dog sniffed around, peed on the steps, and finally moved away down the street. Yup. That was the house, all right, with chipped green paint on the door. Whew. She felt inside her sweater to see if her heart was going to attack. They say when you’re scared, your heart attacks. When it didn’t, she climbed the stairs and rang the bell.

Mr. Parker switched on the porch light and got a good look at the very small girl standing on his doorstep.

“Better come right in,” he said. “Can’t leave this bright light on during the dimmin’.” The dimming was something new—they’d been asked to shut off all but essential lights after dark. Alice stayed put because she didn’t like the smell inside an old person’s house. Instead, she told him she wanted to be a spotter, but he did not look very convinced. Instead, he frowned and shook his head.