Alice At The Home Front (6 page)

It was still bitter cold, but it was a short walk from the trolley to her house. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom, went in, and shut the door. Alice was upset and confused, but she didn’t know why exactly. It was wonderful, Jimmy getting the job of a real pilot—actually being able to fly—but it left her out of everything. That’s the part she didn’t like, and that’s why she wasn’t happy. She’d have to find a way to get into the flying program.

She flopped back on the pillows of her bed and stared up at a spot on the ceiling where she’d swatted a bug last year and left it there for Mother to clean up. She dozed off a bit and found herself at the pilot’s recruiting station during a dimming, dressed in a pair of boy’s pants from the Salvation Army, a secondhand jacket, and a cap. She stood in front of the officer’s desk and saluted him. He looked up, surprised.

“Private Aliceton reporting for duty, Sir,” she said.

“What’s that, young fellah?” The officer, too fat for his uniform, Alice thought, leaned forward to get a look at this peculiar young man.

“I want to join CAP, Sir,” she said, lowering her voice a few tones, “and get trained in Atlanta.”

“Do you, now? Well, well. And who sent ye?” asked the officer.

“I work for Harold Johnson, Sir. He’s sending one of his planes to CAP and me along with it for training. His son’s too busy to go, what with his teaching tango and rumba at Frobel Hall.”

The officer’s jaw dropped. “His son teaches
rumba
?” Alice realized that hadn’t been the right thing to say at all. He leaned back in his desk chair and shouted over his shoulder. “Clancy! Hear anything about Harold Johnson sending one of his planes to CAP?”

“Not that I know of. Certainly would have remembered that,” Clancy yelled back.

The officer turned to Alice. “You’ll have to wait till we get word of it from the authorities, young fellah. Why don’t you write your name and address down on this pad here, so we’ll have a record of it and how to reach ye.”

The scene faded away into nothingness. Alice rubbed her eyes.
That sure isn’t going to work,
she thought. They’d find out who she was in no time.

Still lying on her bed (with her own clothes on), she tried to puzzle it all out. How could she make things happen in real life the way she wanted them to and not ruin it by making stupid mistakes?

Alice hummed a few bars from “The Trolley.” She loved that song—loved the tune and the words that fit so nicely. “Ding, ding, ding went the trolley,”
she sang. “And it was grand just to stand with his hand holding mine! To the end of the line!”

Whenever she was working on something in her head or feeling unhappy, she’d sing songs from “Your Hit Parade” on the radio. It always gave her ideas.

But Alice knew deep down it wouldn’t work. She knew Jimmy would laugh at her trying to get into the CAP. He’d say, “Everything’s wrong with the idea, silly. One, you’re way too young. Two, you’re a girl. Three, you don’t even have a plane!”

Mother and Grandfather would act as if they didn’t understand how a young girl would want to do such a thing, and of course, the recruiting agent, having found out who he was dealing with, would call Clancy over, and they would have a big laugh about it at her expense—including the bit about Harold Johnson Jr. teaching rumba and her flying his father’s plane. So to console herself, she started singing every song from “Your Hit Parade,” starting with number 10 on down. She threw on a jacket, went out, and started walking down the street, so she could really let loose. “Chickery Chick” was stupid but fun.

Chickery-chick, chelah, chelah,

Checkalaroony, eena banonika

Bolika walika, can’t you see?

Chickery-chick is me.

“Any Bonds Today?” That was a good one. It was snappy and made her march down the street swinging her arms. Alice sang really loud and caught the eye of everyone who passed her by. Several of them smiled at her, because of her patriotism, she was sure. Old Mr. Crosby, the lead actor for the “Friday Knights” performance, who had stopped to light his cheroot, even nodded in approval. Maybe someday he’d give her a part in his show. She almost toppled over pulling up her socks and started off again.

“Hut-sut rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit.” A great little song, because it was bouncy and didn’t mean anything. She finished that one just as she turned the corner and started down Thayer with Number 8.

Mairzey doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey,

A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe?

Down the street, a mean-looking ginger terrier began yapping behind his iron gate.

“Shut up,” said Alice, who was enjoying the second verse. That made him bark even louder: “Grrr … Rah! Rah!” Alice was still a couple of yards away.

“Shut your trap, scruffy little mutt.”

“Grrr … Woof! Woof!” he answered, eying her viciously.

Passing in front of his gate, a thought occurred. She stopped, crouched down, and sang right to his face as loud as she could: “Off we go into the wide blue yonder.”

“Grrrah!” He advanced, crouching, ears back.

She giggled. “You like the air force anthem better than ‘Mairzey Doats’?”

“Rah, rah, rah, rah, rah,” he barked rapidly, sounding like a machine gun and shaking with rage.

“Off they go!” She shot her arm skyward. “Zooming to meet our thunder,” she sang.

The dog lunged at the raised arm and gnashed white teeth. Alice kept up the singing, laughing at the same time. “Off we go … into the sun!”

“Grrr … Rah! Grrr … Rah!” The mutt was furious, and the duet was deafening.

She noticed an old lady in the house had raised the curtain to see what the rumpus was all about. Alice stopped singing, but the dog kept right on barking.

“Nice doggy,” said Alice, smiling at the lady. Then she got up and skipped down the street.

She wished she had Kate Smith’s voice, so she could boom out “God Bless America” from house to house like the Hope Street High kids did when they were collecting scrap metal in their cart. Nobody could resist that. The mothers always had teary eyes and would give things they hadn’t planned to, like old sewing machines.

But to Alice, scrap metal wasn’t very real. Bandages were realer and bloodier.

Humming Kate Smith’s “God Bless America” on the way to school the next day, Alice glanced over to where she had written “grunty” on the pavement and had scrubbed it off. “What a dumbbell,” she said to herself. She was a
very
different girl now. She had two war jobs and personally knew a CAP pilot.

When Alice got home after school, she saw an envelope on the side table in the entry she didn’t recognize. It wasn’t the usual bills, and it wasn’t from Aunt Sally or the Red Cross.

On the left corner, it said “US Department of War.” Alice’s face fell. That could only mean one thing—her uncle, and it was bad news.
Oh God, he must have been shot—or maybe killed!
Alice thought hard. What had happened? He had gone to the pyramids to look for a mummy for her, and the Krauts had found him in the tomb. She could see it in her mind’s eye. They had cornered him against a wall, and he had dodged the bullets and escaped down the passage. But they were faster than he was. He climbed up over the mummies and hid behind one. They caught up with him and started shooting. He must have run down farther into the pharaoh’s burial room and climbed into one of those tall jars. They looked around but couldn’t find him at first. Then they spotted his hair poking out of the jar, dumped it over, and shot him. There he lay, wounded or dying, or maybe even already dead!

“We regret to inform you …” That’s how letters from the War Department always begin. Her favorite uncle! How was she going to wait for Mother to read her the letter? Shoot! She must be stuck at the Red Cross, and Alice was going to have to wait hours for her to get home, and that was forever. Forever before she’d find out what happened.

Chapter Seven
 

A Pinpoint of Light
 

Only an hour had passed when Mother walked into the house. Alice wiped her face with the back of her sleeve and handed her the letter.

“Open it,” she ordered. Mother took it as if it wasn’t anything special. Alice couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t she guess? Mother opened the letter, read it, and tossed it back on the table.

“Mother!” Alice cried. “Tell me what it said!”

Mother smiled and cocked her head. “Well, since you’re interested, Gramp and I have been asked by the War Department to join others in grinding lenses for the artillery—guns and whatnot. Nothing to get excited about, Alice. I think we’ll accept.”

Alice breathed out all of her pent-up sorrow and flopped down in a chair. By this time she was exhausted and feeling left out of everything. And she was dying for a piece of fudge.

* * *

It was one of those quiet, winter evenings when the snow has covered everything from the earth to the treetops in deep silence. Alice didn’t like it, because the snow acted like a muffler. It made everybody move around quietly, as if they were in the room of a sick person. What for? Nobody acts that way in summer. She missed the raucous bird cries and the screams of the kids playing dodge ball.

Sitting at her desk in her room, she dipped her brush in Chinese ink and began tracing the character
chi
onto the drawing paper for the twelfth time. She wanted to get it right, like on the cover of the book
How to Write Chinese
with the drawing of an old Chinese scholar on it. Her uncle had given it to her two years ago, and she didn’t want him to come back from the war and find out she hadn’t learned to draw any of the characters. She held the brush just right, between the third finger and the thumb, and pressed down, let up, pressed down, let up, and said “damn” because she couldn’t make the tear-like stroke the same each time.

Alice could feel something niggling in the back of her mind. Because it was unpleasant, she ignored it—but not for long, because within a few minutes, sure enough, her mother had poked her head through the doorway.

“Hadn’t you better put that down and begin working on your math?” Amazingly, as soon as her mother had spoken these words, a terrific noise ended all possible protests or pleas.

The air-raid siren pulsed through the house with an escalating scream that wouldn’t let up, sending little chills of fear along Alice’s spine. An air raid at night—this was the real thing! The Krauts were coming! The night spotters must have fallen asleep! They must have failed to identify the Messerschmitt engines in time. The Krauts will be dropping bombs any minute now!

Alice ran from her room. “Watch out!” she screamed, grabbing hold of the banister. “Mom! Gramp! Let’s go!”

Gramp got up from his desk, and Mother snapped the lights off in every room as they made their way down the staircase in the dark, a step at a time. Gramp’s tiny flashlight led the way, emitting only a pinpoint of light.

Alice yowled, “I can’t see a
thing
!” And she clung to the banister, sliding her hand down cautiously with each step, furiously trying to see through the dark.

Once on the ground floor, Alice got over the darkness, pushed ahead, and clattered down the back stairs to the basement where Gramp had successfully propped up the dining room table he and Mr. Horton had lugged downstairs without Mother knowing. Mother shook her head when she saw it. It was high enough off the floor and big enough, in spite of the pedestal, for all three to get under it and on to the mattress, as Gramp had promised.

The sirens stopped abruptly. Mother leaned over and smiled at Alice who was crouched down with her arms covering her head and ink-stained fingers gripping the blanket.

“It’s only a practice raid.” Mother seemed to think it was funny.

“Are you sure?” Alice felt foolish and lowered her arms.

Mother remarked, “We would have been a lot more comfortable in the stairwell.”

Gramp shrugged his shoulders. “T’ain’t so bad here,” he said.

“It stinks of old coffins and witches’ throw-up,” said Alice.

“We call that a musty smell,” corrected Mother.

Little by little, as Alice got used to the silence and the almost total darkness, she began noticing an odd noise—a tapping in one corner, a creak on the floor above them where no one was walking, a slippery sliding against the back wall. Mother was ready with an explanation.

“Those are just the sounds of an old house,” she said, “not burglars, murderers, or wolves. Don’t pay attention.”

“How about black widows and scorpions and rats?” suggested Alice. Her mother tried to laugh but shivered instead.

“What do you suppose everybody else is doing?” Alice craned her neck and looked up at the ceiling. “It’s completely dark up there in the streets. What if some little kid got lost and can’t find her way home in the dark? What if a werewolf comes down from Pembroke Hill and drags her off to his lair? And
eats
her?”

“Speaking of eating, Alice, would you like a sandwich?” asked Mother, reaching for the emergency kit.

“Yes! I’m starved. That’s exactly what I’d like! How did you ever guess?”

“Anyhow,” said Gramp, “wolves don’t live on Pembroke Hill. Only lawyers.” He smiled at mother. “And don’t forget. Mr. Horton is patrolling the neighborhood. We’re safe as bugs in a rug.”

Alice checked for bugs where she was sitting. “Well, now what? We can’t read or anything. We can’t see to write, and there’s a groundhog over there scratching to get in.”

“Let’s enjoy a nice, peaceful, restful time,” said Gramp, trying unsuccessfully to adjust his backside on the lumpy cushion.

What he wants is his easy chair
, thought Alice.

The scratching resumed. If it wasn’t a groundhog, then what was it? Alice looked around. In the dim light, she could just make out a poster on the door for Calder’s Dentine, invented by an uncle of hers. Over by the wall was Gramp’s workbench. Tools of various shapes and sizes were piled up along one side and mixed paint brushes on the other so that only he could figure them out. Alice was thankful that he was a disorderly person like herself so that he would never nag her about
that.
When Gramp’s messy, it’s because he’s “creative.”