Woodford Brave Read online

It was the back door to Aidan’s house that stood wide open. Not a single blackout curtain had been pulled over the windows. Enough light cut slices out of the night to lead a hundred Nazi warplanes to our neighborhood. If the light didn’t, the shouting would.

  Aidan’s dad was loud and full of growl. His mother’s voice was so high-pitched I couldn’t make out the words. Finally there was Jackson.

  “I’m not going,” Jackson yelled over the other voices. “I’m not fighting in any war. Ever!”

  If Jackson had grown wings and announced he was the tooth fairy, I couldn’t have been more surprised.

  Aidan stopped, as if Jackson’s words had enough power to freeze his hand to the gate.

  His father’s voice carried a note of pleading: “Think of Aidan. He looks up to you.”

  Jackson’s voice shot back: “Don’t bring Aidan into this. He’s nothing but a little kid.”

  “Then think of us. You’ll bring shame to us. To our family.”

  “You want me to murder other men just so you won’t be embarrassed?”

  His father’s voice backed down a notch. “It’s your patriotic duty, not murder.”

  Jackson appeared at the back door, a black shadow against the yellow light of the kitchen. “I’m no soldier and you know it. You’ve known it all my life.” He turned his back to the kitchen and carried a suitcase down the three steps. He paused when he saw us standing at the gate.

  “Wh-Wh-Where are you going?” Aidan whispered.

  Jackson’s eyes flitted to me, then back to Aidan. “Oregon.”

  “But you’re l-l-leaving for Europe next month,” Aidan said. “To f-f-fight the Nazis.”

  “Not me, little brother. Not me.”

  “You can’t, J-J-Jackson. You can’t. Everyone will think you’re a coward.” Aidan’s voice dropped when he said the last word, as if the feel of it burned his tongue.

  Jackson took a step toward Aidan. One arm was raised as if he planned to hug his little brother, but Aidan backed away. “Try not to hate me, okay?” Jackson said, letting his arm drop to his side. “Just try not to hate me too much.”

  He started walking down the alley, straight toward the Demons’ Door. He had only taken three steps when he stopped once more, as if suddenly remembering something. This time he faced me. “I’m sorry, Cory,” he said. “I’m sorry I’m not made of the same stuff as your comic book heroes. But you know what? I don’t think your dad was, either. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is like that. In real life, everyone is scared witless. Bravery is just the disguise they wear to cover up the fear.”

  Then he turned and disappeared into the shadows. A sudden eruption of barks from Odin and Pandora announced when he reached the bottom of the alley.

  19

  TWO SIDES OF THE SAME COIN

  A heavy thud woke me the next morning.

  “Mom? Mom? Are you okay?”

  No answer.

  I rushed to my parents’ room. Mom’s room now. She sat on the bed, a box on the floor at her feet. Her eyes were red and puffy. The covers were a jumbled heap, but only on one side. The other side was smooth without a single wrinkle.

  “He didn’t have much,” Mom said, knowing I was there without even looking. “This is all that’s left of him. A few shirts. Some shoes. How does a man live in a house his entire life and not leave anything of value behind except for a cardboard box of odds and ends and one silver coin?”

  She turned Dad’s lucky silver dollar in her fingers, creating a small pinprick of brightness in the room. From where I stood, I couldn’t tell which side was heads and which was tails.

  “Whenever he needed to make a decision he would reach in his pocket and rub this dollar as if he could rub out an answer,” Mom said, her own fingers smoothing its surface. “I think he rubbed the face off Lady Liberty before finally enlisting.”

  That didn’t make sense at all. “Dad wouldn’t think twice about joining the Army. He was a Woodford. He knew what he had to do.”

  “Oh, Cory,” Mom said, her words tangled in a sigh. She looked at me, drawing me into her tear-puddled eyes. “Your father didn’t want to fight. He didn’t want to leave you. Or me. But he felt that he had to.”

  I nodded, finally sure of what we were talking about. “Because he wasn’t a coward like Jackson.”

  Mom stopped rubbing the coin. “What about Jackson?” she whispered.

  I told her what had happened the night before, leaving out the part about spying on Ziegler. I waited for her to realize that I had sneaked out at night, but if she did, she didn’t let on. “He said he was going west. To Oregon,” I finished.

  “That’s where the conscientious objectors go,” she said softly. “To a camp where they work for the government instead of fighting.”

  “Conscientious objectors?” I repeated. The words were hard to say, getting caught in my throat like a German curse word.

  “Men who don’t believe in fighting,” she explained.

  “Cowards, you mean?”

  Mom’s eyes changed in that instant, as if they had turned to frozen pond water. “It takes a brave man to stand up for his beliefs. To turn his back on everything his friends and family say. To speak a truth that’s different than everyone else’s. It’s a different kind of courage, Cory, but courage just the same. I just wish to God your father had been that kind of brave. At least he’d still be alive.”

  “But he would’ve ruined the Woodford name,” I said, my words webbed in whisper as I tried to make sense of what she had said.

  “What good is a reputation to a dead man?”

  She absently turned the silver dollar over and over in the palm of her hand, but then she stopped to look at it as if it was the first time she’d ever seen it. Reaching out, she grabbed my wrist and pulled me toward her so she could lay it in my palm. Then she curled my fingers around it. “Take this, Cory. Use it to make good decisions. Just remember that there are always two sides to everything.”

  My eyes smarted at the feel of the cool metal, the smoothness of the silver. I wrapped my fingers around it, making it the center of my fist. “I hate the Germans. I hate them for starting this war. I hate them for what they did to Dad.”

  The color of Mom’s face drained, but her eyes never left mine, reminding me of how Anne had peered at me last night in the alley behind the VFW. “Understand this,” Mom said. “War isn’t about the people from a faraway country. It’s not about where a person is born and raised. It’s about money and land and power.”

  “Exactly,” I said. “The Germans want it all. They started this war and I hate them for it. Every. Single. One.”

  Mom pulled me close and wrapped her arms around me, resting her chin on my head. “Do you hate me, Cory?”

  She was speaking English, but her words were gibberish. I stepped back so I could look at her. “Of course I don’t hate you.”

  “But my great-grandmother’s real last name was Kuhljuergen. Before she changed it to Collier.”

  The German name hit me in the gut like a cannonball and I stumbled until my back was against the wall. “No,” I whispered. “No.”

  Mom ran her fingers over the delicate blue lines just beneath the surface of the skin on one of her wrists. “That blood you hate so much runs through these veins. Yours, too.”

  “But . . . but everyone hates the Germans.”

  “Be careful, Cory. Hatred is very dangerous,” she said. “It’s the worst weapon in this big ugly world.”

  I stood there with my back against the wall, watching my mother turn away from me and place a pair of mismatched socks in the box that was all we had left of my father.

  20

  THE UNDERCOVER ADVENTURES OF THE KID AND HIS MIGHTY ECHO

  I laid the silver dollar on top of my desk and stared at the stack of blank paper next to it. I had believed Ziegler was a spy. Franklin, too. Just because they were German. And all summer I’d worked to convince Aidan and Sawyer. “What if they find out I’m German, too?” I whispered.<
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  Echo’s ears swiveled toward me, and he batted at the pencil. “Mrr-oww.” I barely caught the pencil before it rolled off the edge of the desk.

  “No one can know the truth,” I told the Mighty Echo, punctuating each word with a sharp, straight line on the paper. “No. One. Can. Ever. Know.”

  “The Kid will never crack. Never falter,” I told Echo. “I finally know what my superpower is. Silence.”

  When I noticed I was smothering the Kid with musical notes from the evil spy’s trumpet, I scribbled them out, leaving nothing but a big black smudge.

  21

  SUPERPOWER

  I finished painting a blue lightning bolt on the white background of my go-cart the next morning. A clump of Echo’s hair floated through the air, sticking to the area over the front left wheel. The creak of a gate and racing footsteps interrupted the quiet summer day. I turned, crouching low, half-expecting to see all of Harmony’s ghosts thundering over the alley, but it was only Aidan.

  “Look at this, C-C-Cory!”

  “A note from Jackson?”

  Aidan’s eyes narrowed. “Leave h-h-him out of this. D-D-Don’t even mention his name to me.”

  I took the unopened envelope. “What is it?”

  Aidan snatched the envelope from my fingers and turned it over. “Look who it’s addressed to, C-C-Cory,” he said, creasing it with three jabs of his finger.

  “Herman Birkbiegler?” I read out loud. “Who the heck is Herman Birkbiegler?”

  “Look c-c-closer.”

  I read the address once. Twice. “Anne’s house,” I whispered.

  “Exactly. It was d-d-delivered to us by mistake. D-D-Don’t you get it? You were right all along. Anne’s real last name isn’t Burke. It’s B-B-Birkbiegler, which can only mean one thing. Her family moved to Harmony to be part of Ziegler’s Nazi spy ring.”

  I leaned back against the workbench and stared at the name on the envelope. Birkbiegler. German through and through.

  But then, so was Kuhljuergen. They can never know.

  “Anya,” I said without thinking.

  “What?”

  “Her real name. It’s Anya. That’s what she said on the day we first met her. Remember? It’s what her grandmother called her, too.”

  “Anya Katerina Birkbiegler, to be exact.”

  Aidan and I jerked as if we’d just heard the rat-a-tat-tat of machine gun fire on Satan’s Sidewalk. Anne stood there, slingshot dangling at her side. Quick as the Mighty Echo batting at a mouse, she loaded the slingshot with a rock and let it fly. The rock smacked the envelope out of Aidan’s hand. It landed on the floor near Aidan’s shoe.

  “Sawyer wondered why you kept st-st-standing up for Ziegler,” Aidan said through clenched teeth. “Now we know. You’re one of them.”

  Anne stepped into the shadows of the garage. “We’re not Nazis any more than you are, but no one will believe us. It’s why my dad lost his store in Joliet and it’s why my mother died. The druggist wouldn’t sell her the medicine she needed. All because people didn’t like the sound of our last name. But we’re Americans just like you, Aidan. We’re the good guys.” With each word, Anne’s voice grew louder and stronger until she was shouting.

  “There’s n-n-no such thing as a good German,” Aidan snapped. “Tell her, Cory.”

  Anne turned to me, her blue eyes a mix of anger and hope. She had stood by me after Dad died. Helping me with my go-cart. She hadn’t expected anything from me at all. Until now.

  Dad’s silver dollar sat heavy in my pocket. Two days earlier, I would’ve stood side by side with my best friend. But now I had my own secret. A secret that tumbled all my words and thoughts into one giant cannonball of confusion.

  “C-C-Cory?” Aidan stammered. “Say s-s-something.”

  It wasn’t the Kid’s X of impenetrable glue over my lips that kept me silent. Anne had been right all along. I had jumped to a conclusion about Ziegler based on nothing but pure hatred. If I admitted that to Aidan, he’d think I was siding with Anne instead of him and I’d lose my best friend forever. Was the truth worth that?

  I stared down at the letter, knowing that everything balanced on this tick-tock of time. I’d never be able to take back whatever I did or said. Not in a million years.

  Anne stooped, retrieved the letter by Aidan’s foot, then stood up and matched his stare nose-to-nose. “I don’t blame you for being embarrassed, Aidan,” she said, her voice sounding like one of Echo’s hisses. “Because after you bragged all summer about how your brother was going to defeat the Nazis single-handedly, he ran away.”

  “Nobody talks about my br-br-brother that way. Especially a German.” And then Aidan surprised us both with a sucker punch to Anne’s jaw.

  Anne’s head snapped back and she fell, landing on the seat of her overalls. She didn’t stay down. She pushed off the ground and rushed Aidan, head-butting him in the gut.

  My comic book fell out of my pocket when I jumped out of the way.

  Aidan slipped on it, tearing the cover halfway off, and fell sideways right where Echo hunkered. Echo hissed and slashed his arm, leaving three lines of blood.

  Aidan swung blind, connecting with Echo’s haunches, flinging him halfway across the garage. Echo scrambled for balance and raced out the door just as Anne planted an elbow in Aidan’s stomach. The air left him with a big whoosh, but he shoved her away and scrambled up, blocking the door. His hands clenched in white-knuckled fists.

  Anne wasn’t backing down. Not one bit. She clawed up the workbench to face him.

  Aidan glanced my way. There was a look of pure hatred there, and I could tell he had crossed some invisible line where he couldn’t be stopped. “This is your chance to b-b-be a hero, Cory. Help me p-p-pound this Nazi into the ground.”

  Aidan stepped toward Anne, eyeing the center of her face. His foot landed right on top of my comic book. He paused just long enough to kick it out of the way. The Space Warrior’s icy eyes glared at me from the torn cover.

  Birkbiegler.

  The Warrior told the truth and fought for what was right. Always.

  Kuhljuergen.

  The only thing that made me different from Anne was the span of one single generation.

  Anne didn’t flinch when Aidan lunged. I did. I grabbed Aidan around his stomach and pulled back. Hard.

  “L-L-Let. Me. G-G-Go!” he screamed, his voice breaking in raspy breaths. His face was red and streaked with sweat, and blood from his arm smeared both our shirts. “What’re you st-st-stopping me for?”

  Right then; right there. It was my moment. Was my superpower silence? Or was it truth?

  I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t blow my own cover. I couldn’t tell the truth.

  “Because we have no proof.”

  “And you never will,” Anne said, “because you’re wrong.” She reached down and picked up the letter for the second time, then she turned and marched back across Satan’s Sidewalk.

  Anne was gone, but the fight didn’t leave Aidan as he pushed me away. “All this t-t-time, you’ve bragged about how br-br-brave you are, acting all high-and-mighty just because the t-t-town put up a statue of your g-g-grandfather before you were even b-b-born. Because your dad enlisted and mine and Sawyer’s didn’t. But when it came time to face the enemy, I was the one that came up f-f-fighting and you chickened out. Sawyer is right. You’re nothing but a ch-ch-chicken shit!”

  Mom had said it took a different kind of courage to tell the truth, and when it came to tossing that coin of courage I had blown it. But I couldn’t admit that. Not to Aidan. Not now. I had to smooth things over, say something to save our friendship. “It wasn’t a fair fight, and you know it.”

  “Fair?” Aidan asked. “What is it you’re always sp-sp-spouting from the Space Warrior? ‘Nothing is f-f-fair when it comes to evil.’”

  “This is different,” I said. “You can’t beat up on a girl. Especially Anne.”

  “She isn’t your friend, Cory. You said so last night.” Aidan stepped
into the alley before turning one last time. “But I am. You better remember who your real fr-fr-friends are. B-B-Before it’s too late.”

  22

  REVENGE

  One day stretched into another. A week dragged by after Jackson left for Oregon. A week since we’d learned about Anne. Or Anya. And a week since Mom had told me about my great-grandparents. A week since I’d turned my back on the truth.

  I spent time yanking weeds out of Mom’s Victory Garden and suffering through at least a dozen odd jobs for Mrs. Springgate. Sawyer was probably splitting a gut seeing me doing what he called “girly work.” Maybe he wouldn’t be so quick to make fun if he did a lick of work himself and saw it wasn’t so easy-peasy.

  Sometimes Aidan and Sawyer played catch in Aidan’s yard. Sometimes they holed up in the garage. Most of the time, they sat in the tree house, the one I’d helped Aidan build. They were talking about me, I was sure. Anne and me. Or Anya. Whatever her real name was. But I didn’t let it bother me. Much. There wasn’t room for three up there anyway so I kept my cap low over my eyes, pretending not to see them and waiting for things to blow over.

  “Aidan’ll get over it,” I told Echo. I’d seen Aidan mad plenty of times before and he always cooled down. Still, I missed my friend. I missed my dad, too. Missed how things used to be. Mom asked about Aidan almost every day, wondering why he wasn’t hanging around. I couldn’t tell her what had happened. At least I had Echo to talk to. “You shouldn’t have ripped open Aidan’s arm. He’s the only real friend I have.”

  “Mrr-oww.”

  “You’re more than a friend. You’re the Mighty Echo.”

  I was in the garage, putting the finishing touches on my go-cart, when I heard footsteps on Satan’s Sidewalk. Aidan and Sawyer stopped in the door, shoulder-to-shoulder.

  “Looks good,” Sawyer said, nodding at my paint job. It had dried hard and glossy and looked impenetrable. Like I had to be.

  “You still sore at me?” I asked Aidan.

  Aidan looked at Sawyer as if he needed permission, then back to me. “N-N-Naw.”