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  JOYCE MOYER HOSTETTER

  Aim

  CALKINS CREEK

  AN IMPRINT OF HIGHLIGHTS

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania

  Text copyright © 2016 by Joyce Moyer Hostetter

  All rights reserved.

  For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, contact [email protected].

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Calkins Creek

  An Imprint of Highlights

  815 Church Street

  Honesdale, Pennsylvania 18431

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-1-62979-673-4 (hc) • 978-1-62979-746-5 (e-book)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2016932209

  First hardcover edition, 2016

  First e-book edition, 2016

  The text of this book is set in Sabon.

  H1.1

  Design by Barbara Grzeslo

  Production by Sue Cole

  For Carolyn Yoder,

  who suggested I find a story in my own backyard,

  which, as it turns out, is the very best place for a series

  to begin

  CONTENTS

  PROLOGUE

  1 POP AND ME

  2 GRANDDADDY

  3 BAD NEWS

  4 FUNERAL

  5 TUNE-UP

  6 GUILT

  7 SCHOOL

  8 ATTACK

  9 SHOOT ON SIGHT

  10 HOSTILITY

  11 RESPECT

  12 FRUSTRATION

  13 WAR MANEUVERS

  14 TROUBLE

  15 THANKSGIVING

  16 WAR!

  17 SERGEANT YORK

  18 CHRISTMAS

  19 NEW YEAR

  20 PLAYING HOOKY

  21 AUNTS

  22 OXYMORON

  23 FIGHT

  24 SURPRISE

  25 CAUGHT

  26 AIM

  27 MISFIRE

  28 CONSEQUENCES

  29 QUITTING

  30 BROOKFORD

  31 DRIVING

  32 FISHING

  33 PLAN

  34 HOG HILL

  35 GUILTY

  36 NEWS

  37 DOFFING

  38 BLUNDER

  39 HUMILIATED

  40 GRANDDADDY

  41 POP’S FAMILY

  42 REPAIR

  43 TURN AROUND

  44 PETE

  EPILOGUE

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  RESOURCES

  THANK YOU!

  VISIT THE WORLD OF JUNIOR BLEDSOE IN THE TWO SEQUELS TO AIM.

  PROLOGUE

  It was Pop who taught me to shoot.

  He showed me how to aim and hold that gun real steady.

  But when it came to life,

  aiming wasn’t so easy for him.

  Seemed like he was always stumbling around

  looking for something that would make him happy.

  I don’t reckon he ever found it.

  When he died,

  I was stuck with Granddaddy and with stories

  of how, back during the Great War,

  he turned my pop into his own personal enemy.

  Pop was just a boy then.

  The way I figure it,

  what I learned from the two of them

  and from my own dumb mistakes

  is enough to fill a book.

  1

  POP AND ME

  July 1941

  “Hand me that wrench.” Pop wiggled his grease-covered fingers.

  I gave it to him, but I wanted real bad to get my hands on his repair job. “I could do that if I had me half a chance,” I said.

  “Too bad,” said Pop. “I’m not taking half a chance on messing up Miss Pauline’s car.” Pop had been in a growly mood ever since Granddaddy moved in last week. But it wouldn’t make a difference if he was in a good mood. Fixing cars was his job. My part was handing him tools and fetching him cups of cold well water when he was thirsty.

  Sometimes I wondered if I’d ever get to show him what I could do.

  Just then my hound dogs started howling. “Hush, Jesse. Be quiet, Butch.” I squatted and scratched Jesse behind his ear. “Pop, it’s the Honeycutts—in a truck!”

  “Leroy don’t have a truck.”

  “He’s driving one now. A ’35 Chevrolet.”

  The Honeycutts’ oldest girl, Ann Fay, was hanging out the truck window. “Hey, Junior,” she hollered. “Look what we got!” Leroy parked right beside us under the big oak tree where Pop fixed cars.

  Pop leaned in close so only I could hear. “Sounds to me like a box of rocks.” Then he called out, “Howdy, neighbor. Where’d you find that dandy?”

  Leroy hopped out of the truck and pointed to the name on the door.

  Hutton and Bourbonnais Lumber Company

  Hickory, North Carolina

  He grinned. “The boss called it a rust bucket. Said it used too much oil, so he replaced it with a brand-new one. Of course, this is coming out of my wages.”

  Pop didn’t own a truck or a car, so I expected him to turn green as moss right in front of Leroy. But he took it like a man. “I’m right proud for you, Leroy. Mind if I take a look?” Pop lifted the hood of the truck and reached for the dipstick. He pulled it out, wiped it clean with a rag, and put it back in. Then he pulled it out again. “Oil looks okay now,” he said. “But keep an eye on it or you’ll be rebuilding the engine for sure.” He pointed to the pulleys hanging from the big oak tree overhead. “My block and tackle is just waiting.”

  Leroy nodded. “It could use a tune-up. Think you could help me?”

  Ann Fay climbed out and grabbed her daddy’s arm. “Can I help?” She was only ten years old, but I declare, she was like a pint-sized Leroy with her black hair and those blue eyes. All she needed was a pair of overalls to finish her off.

  People said me and Pop looked alike too. Same stocky build and brown hair that wanted to curl whether we liked it or not. But we didn’t go together like biscuits and gravy the way Ann Fay and Leroy did. Seemed like when I turned eleven years old, me and Pop went from being biscuits and gravy to vinegar and baking soda. When you put the two of us together, there was bound to be some fizzing going on.

  Jesse came sniffing at Ann Fay’s feet, so she scooped him up and snuggled into him like he was Bobby, her baby brother. “Hey, cutie pie. I sure wish I had a dog like you.”

  She just wanted a dog and I just wanted that truck. I walked all around it. There were a few rust spots and a dent in the fender. But it had a nice blue color. I was already scheming how I could get Leroy to let me drive it. I walked over to the driver’s door and stepped onto the running board.

  “Go on,” said Leroy. “Hop in.”

  So I did. Ann Fay climbed into the passenger side.

  “Someday I’ll have a car,” I said. “Except I want one of those 1940 Studebakers with a cargo box that fits in the back. That would be like having a car and a truck, all in one.”

  Ann Fay probably didn’t know what a cargo box was, and evidently she didn’t care either. “Can you believe it, Junior? My daddy has got his very own truck. We won’t be hitching rides with the Hinkle sisters or Peggy Sue’s family anymore. Take me for a ride, Junior.”

  I shook my head. “First I gotta learn to drive. And Lord knows when that’ll happen. Pop ain’t been willing to let me try.”

  Leroy came to the driver’s door, so I hopped out and watched while he got in and turned the truck around. Before he could leave, Ann Fay called me to her window. “Here’s the paper,” she said. “Almost forgot to give it
to you.” She shoved a copy of the Hickory Daily Record into my hands.

  The Honeycutts almost always passed the paper on to us. The only reason they had one in the first place was because the Hinkle sisters let them read their copy when they were done with it.

  I unfolded the paper. First thing that caught my eye was a warning from President Roosevelt saying that Americans should be willing to pledge our lives to preserve freedom.

  In other words, he was preparing us to go to war. So far, my pop and Leroy didn’t have to register with the army because they were over twenty-eight years old. And they had families. But if America joined the war against Adolf Hitler, there was a chance they’d have to serve. And according to most people, it wasn’t a matter of if we joined the war; it was a matter of when.

  The Germans had already taken over Poland and France and a bunch of other countries. They’d tried to take England but couldn’t, and now they were marching through Russia, fighting their way to the capital. Besides all that, they had submarines in the Atlantic Ocean, attacking whoever they took a notion to.

  But I didn’t want to think just then about war and Pop being called up and maybe even getting killed. I flipped over to the sports page for a quick look at the report on Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak. He was up to forty-seven games now, and it looked like he couldn’t be stopped.

  I put the paper on a crate sitting in the yard and went back to help Pop with Miss Pauline’s carburetor. “Can I finish adjusting that?”

  “No.” He didn’t even lift his head to look at me. “This is my mechanic shop. Find your own job.” He kept right on working. Finally he said, as if he’d grabbed the idea right out of thin air, “Your pal Calvin quit school. You can too.”

  Calvin Settlemyre. Pop and I went night-fishing on the river with him and his daddy. Used to, anyway—but not lately. It seemed like the more Pop took to drinking whiskey, the more certain people kept their distance. After all, his ways might rub off on them. For all they knew, I could be a bad apple too.

  But if there was anything I wanted, it was to show the world that the Bledsoes could be as upstanding as anybody else. “I’m going to high school, Pop,” I said. “Momma wants me to. And I finally made it to ninth grade.”

  “Yeah, well, you go on, then. After the first day, quit. Least you can say you went to high school.” Pop laughed and poked me in the chest with his wrench.

  I laughed too, but not for real. It was just an act-like-it-didn’t-hurt laugh. A go-along-with-Pop laugh. “But Pop, I can play baseball this year.”

  He snorted. “There’s only one Joe DiMaggio. And one of these days his streak will end just like that.” Pop snapped his fingers in front of my eyeballs.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But that don’t stop him from playing.”

  “Nope,” he said. “But I can stop you.”

  He stuck out his hand, and I put a screwdriver in it. It was time to adjust the carburetor.

  “Start ’er up,” he said. “And cover the seat so you don’t get it dirty. I won’t have you disgracing me in front of the neighbors.”

  “Yes, sir.” The car belonged to the Hinkle sisters just up the road. They were proper ladies, especially Miss Pauline. I spread a clean feed sack across the seat, then slid behind the steering wheel, pushed the starter button, and turned the key. I felt like revving that engine high as it would go, but I knew better.

  Pop poked his head up past the hood and hollered. “Let it idle.” He tinkered with the screws on the carburetor and hollered again. “Now rev it up. Hold her steady. Whoa, not so much.”

  We went back and forth like that, him hollering instructions and me trying to get it just right. In my mind’s eye I could see exactly what his hands were doing because more than once I’d watched him work on Wayne Walker’s 1940 Ford, with Wayne giving it the gas and Pop adjusting the screws.

  When Pop was satisfied with the sound of things, he put the air filter back on and closed the hood. I stuck my head out the window. “How about I ride along when you take it back?”

  “How about you see if your momma has supper ready? It won’t take me a minute to run this up the road.”

  Miss Pauline’s ’35 Plymouth sat there purring like a cat on a Sunday afternoon and Pop wouldn’t even let me ride with him. If you asked me, I deserved a little something for being his flunky.

  Pop scrubbed the grease off his hands with kerosene, then went to the back porch to wash with soap and water. He lathered up his arms, singing “Amazing Grace” and how it saved a wretch like him.

  He sure could act like a wretch.

  I closed my eyes for a minute, pretending I was on the highway driving away from Pop. To some place where I could get me a little respect.

  “Time to stop daydreaming.” Pop was back.

  “Yes, sir.” I slid out from under the wheel.

  “I meant what I said about school. Find yourself a job and take care of your momma.” He climbed in the car. “I’ll be back before you can say ‘Yankee Doodle Dandy.’” Then he drove off and left me to put the tools away.

  “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” I said. And he wasn’t even out of the driveway yet.

  2

  GRANDDADDY

  July 1941

  Momma used the skirt of her apron to dab at the sweat on her round face. “Junior, dish up a bowl of beans for Hammer.”

  I crumbled cornbread into the beans. And added raw onions. Granddaddy would yell if I didn’t. When I carried the bowl into the bedroom, he was sleeping in his rocking chair with his radio on. They were saying something about German U-boats sinking British ships and wondering how long it would be until those submarines attacked the United States.

  Granddaddy’s gray hair was flat on one side from sleeping on it. I nudged his leg with my knee. “I brung your supper.”

  “Thunderation! You fool. You woke me up.” His eyelids slid shut again, and his mouth fell open like a trapdoor without a hook. A dried stream of tobacco snuff ran from the corner of his mouth and down onto his neck.

  “Wake up. They’re talking about America joining the war again.”

  That got him going. “Huh!” he grumbled. “That yellow-bellied president is too chicken to take us to war. He ain’t half the man the Colonel was.”

  The Colonel—that was Theodore Roosevelt, who evidently loved war. But he’d been dead for twenty-some years. So far, our president, Franklin Roosevelt, had steered clear of fighting, and I figured he was doing his best for the good of the country.

  I turned the radio up so Granddaddy would listen and maybe even eat supper. He reached for the bowl, and I turned to go. But his voice chased after me. “With any luck, they’ll call up your pop and turn him into a real man.”

  It seemed like he couldn’t wait for Pop to be drafted. Or dead.

  Granddaddy had been living with us for a week, but it didn’t take one meal to figure out that he and Pop couldn’t eat supper at the same table. After the first day, Momma started carrying Granddaddy’s food into the bedroom to keep the two of them apart. But Pop and Granddaddy could argue without being in the same room. Pop would come in the house singing “Ain’t gonna study war no more”—just to get Granddaddy going—and the next thing we knew, Granddaddy’s radio would be turned up loud as possible. Then Pop would march over to the bedroom door and pull it shut. Hard.

  I wanted to ask Pop why he hated his daddy so much, but talking about Granddaddy might set him off and I didn’t plan to be the cause of him going out drinking with Wayne Walker.

  Back in the kitchen, Momma had three plates dished up, but Pop still wasn’t home. “I bet Miss Pauline got to talking,” I said.

  “No,” said Momma. “It’s her suppertime and she won’t let anyone interfere with her schedule. You know that, Junior.”

  “Maybe Miss Dinah, then.”

  “Pauline keeps Dinah on schedule too,” said Momma.

  Miss Pauline was a schoolteacher who liked doing things just so. As a matter of fact, she taught ninth grade.
I sure wished there was a way to miss having her for my teacher this year. Besides quitting school, that is.

  Momma sighed and glanced out the window. “Let’s eat.”

  While I was still eating, Granddaddy hollered for me to come into his room—which was actually my room, with him added into it.

  “I’ll be there when I’m done eating, Granddaddy.”

  I finished up and found him on the floor, dragging a pasteboard box out from under the bed. “Open that,” he said. “We’re gonna fancy up these walls.” Granddaddy had only a left hand. There was a scarred-up stub at the end of his right arm—something to do with a mill accident.

  First thing out of the box was a studio portrait of a soldier. “That’s your great-granddaddy there.”

  “Your daddy?”

  “Yup. Gideon Bledsoe. Confederate Army.” Granddaddy picked up the tin can he kept by the rocker, spit a stream of tobacco juice into the can, and kept on talking. “He was a pipsqueak when he joined. By the time he came back, he was hard as nails. I wasn’t born yet, but I can attest to the truth of it. A war will grow you right up.”

  Gideon looked to be about my age. Fourteen. His eyes were might near as shiny as the buttons on his uniform. His dark hair curled out from under his wool cap. Looking at that picture, I couldn’t deny him for a relative of mine. He held his gun across his chest like that was the thing he wanted most to show off in the picture. As if the gun was what made his eyes sparkle the way they did.

  “Set that on the bureau. And we’re gonna need some tacks.”

  Lucky for Granddaddy, Momma had some tacks in an old baking powder can. When I came back with them, Granddaddy unfolded a Theodore Roosevelt campaign poster and I tacked it up, like he told me to, on the wall above the iron bedframe. Then he started pulling newspaper pictures out of his box—local boys who were serving in the armed forces right that minute. “Those fellas are fighting for your freedom. You better appreciate it, too.”

  “Yes, Granddaddy. I sure do.”

  Granddaddy started telling me which of those soldiers were from Brookford, the small mill town where he raised Pop. My aunts lived there. Brookford was only a few miles away, but a body would hardly know it, considering how the family never saw each other. Pop could ride past his sisters’ houses without flicking an eyelash.