Woodford Brave Read online

  “J-J-Jackson can’t wait to get over there,” Aidan butted in.

  Aidan’s brother turned eighteen in a month, which meant he would do what every other red-blooded-true-blue American would do: enlist. Just like my dad had done. Since Aidan’s dad couldn’t enlist on account of his busted-up knee, all Aidan talked about was how Jackson was going to win the war single-handedly once he got over there. Hearing about it was getting as tiresome as Hitler’s blitzkrieg bombings of London.

  The music from Glenn Miller’s Orchestra floating out the open windows gave way to Bing Crosby. “The Crooner,” they called him. Jackson scratched his head right where the hair was starting to curl over his collar, then got distracted by the truck that had circled the block and was heading down the alley, its brakes grinding to a stop in front of what used to be the Taylors’ garage.

  When the Taylors lived next door to Aidan, they’d hung a blue star in the window for their son just like Mom did after Dad went to Europe. Only Mom made a star out of old wrapping paper left over from Christmas and taped it to the window, and Mrs. Taylor ordered a special-made banner with the blue star sewn dead-center on it. After their son was killed, she stitched a gold one over the blue. Blue for the living. Gold for the dead. It didn’t hang in their window for long because Mr. Taylor lost his job at the grain elevator and they moved to Burlington. The house had been empty ever since. Until now.

  “Wonder who the new folks are,” Jackson said. He said it mostly to himself, but Aidan acted like his brother had just handed him a secret mission.

  “We’ll find out!” Aidan ran straight to the maple tree in the corner of his yard, climbing up to the platform Jackson had helped us nail between two limbs the summer before last. It wasn’t much of a tree house, but until this summer, when Aidan had gotten all buddy-buddy with Sawyer, it had been our secret hangout.

  Sawyer beat me to the tree and scrambled up after Aidan. There wasn’t enough room in the tree house for three, so I perched on a lower limb, rested my back against the trunk, and tried to see all the way to Ziegler’s house at the bottom of the hill.

  The bushes surrounding Ziegler’s yard were so high a tank wouldn’t be able to see over them. Sawyer was right about one thing—I didn’t have proof that Ziegler was a spy. But the fact that he was from Germany was enough to make me suspect he might be part of Hitler’s inner circle. Since I had promised Dad I’d keep Mom safe until he got home from stopping the Nazi aggression in Europe, it was obviously up to me to expose Ziegler for what he really was and save the entire town.

  My other next-door neighbor, Mrs. Springgate, sat on her porch, her white hair flopping with every flutter of the cardboard fan in her hand. She was probably getting snookered on beer again. It was hard to tell since beer cans were rationed and she had switched to drinking from glass jars, but it was a known fact that since her husband died she preferred sipping beer to drinking milk.

  Mom was working in her Victory Garden, staking up the tomatoes. Growing vegetables was never going to help us win the war, no matter what Mrs. Roosevelt said. There was no way a bombardment of tomatoes and squash could stop Hitler or his evil spies.

  “I hope there’s a k-k-kid our age,” Aidan was saying.

  “One who plays ball,” Sawyer added. “We need someone who can really step up to the plate.”

  There it was again. Baseball. Sawyer’s favorite thing in the whole wide world. I checked to see if he was looking at me. He was.

  The new neighbors spilled out of the truck and were already unloading boxes from the back. If I squinted I could make out the “A” sticker on the windshield showing their gas-rationing allocation. “There’s a bald guy and an old lady,” I said. “And a girl.”

  Sawyer groaned. “Girls don’t count. All they think about are dresses and lace and dolls.”

  “This one isn’t wearing frilly stuff,” I pointed out. “She looks to be wearing overalls and Keds.”

  Sawyer leaned back against the trunk of the tree, already bored. “Doesn’t matter. Girls can’t pitch and they can’t hit. By morning she’ll be prissing down the street wearing ribbons and carrying a doll-baby. Mark my words.”

  “G-G-Girls are useless when it comes to b-b-baseball,” Aidan said with a shake of his head.

  As if to punctuate his words something whomped the bark right above Aidan’s head. He jerked, slipping over the edge of our tree house. His arms flailed, searching for a handhold. Anything to stop his fall. He grabbed a branch, stripping leaves as his grip slipped.

  “Help!” he yelped, clutching for Sawyer. Only Sawyer didn’t reach out fast enough to stop my best friend from falling headfirst out of the tree.

  3

  A BASEBALL PEACH

  Aidan slammed against the branch next to me, caught on another branch, then slid until his pants snagged a limb. I did what any hero would do—reached out and grabbed his shirt to keep him from getting his pants torn clean off. I was saving his life, but did Aidan notice? No sir-ee. He slapped my hand away and slid the rest of the way down.

  The new girl stood on Satan’s Sidewalk watching everything, a slingshot in her hand. The sun filtering through leaves reflected off her blue eyes. Not that the color of her eyes made any difference.

  “What are you doing?” she asked. “Spying on us?”

  “Shh,” I hissed, glancing down Satan’s Sidewalk even though Ziegler was too far away to hear. “‘Loose lips sink ships!’”

  “Don’t pay attention to Cory,” Sawyer said, hopping down on the other side of Aidan and landing with both feet in a dust cloud. “He’s a big knuckleball.”

  If only I had jets on my boots like the Space Warrior’s, I could’ve flown from the tree like a true hero. Instead, I scrambled down, ignoring the long scrape the bark left on my knee next to the scratch I’d earned escaping the Mallory house. Once on the ground I reached back to make sure The Cosmic Adventures of the Mighty Space Warrior hadn’t gotten ripped on tree bark.

  “What’s your name?” Sawyer asked with about as much politeness as a pig in a trough.

  “Anya . . . I mean, Anne,” she said. “Anne Burke.”

  Sawyer squinted as if he’d just caught Anne throwing a spitball. “Don’t you know your own name?”

  “Of course I do. It’s Anne. Just like I said.”

  “You said An-ya.”

  Anne rolled her eyes. “My tongue slipped. That’s all. We’re from Joliet. That’s in Illinois near Chicago, right here in the good ol’ U.S. of A. Joliet is a big city compared to Harmony.”

  “That probably means your dad’s a Cubs fan.”

  Leave it to Sawyer to start talking about baseball.

  Anne had her hands on her hips, dangling the slingshot from its rubber sling. “Of course not, because the Cardinals are the best team in the whole wide world.”

  Sawyer sputtered. “Nuh-uh. The Yankees are.”

  She set her chin so it jutted out by at least an inch and eyeballed my Yankees cap. Anne didn’t wear her hair in any bows, so when a loose strand curled around her cheek and stuck to her lip, she blew it away. “The Cardinals won the World Series, so that makes them the best.”

  Mom would’ve swatted the seat of my pants if I didn’t show better manners to our new neighbors than Sawyer, so I stopped him before he could pick a full-fledged fight. “That’s Sawyer and this is Aidan. He’s your next-door neighbor. Sawyer lives two blocks to the north. I’m Cory. I live across Satan’s Sidewalk.”

  “Satan’s Sidewalk?” Anne repeated, her blue eyes suddenly losing their squint and turning big and round. “What’s that?”

  “What Cory calls the alley you’re standing on,” Sawyer said, butting in before I had a chance to explain. His one-track brain was in full gear and he couldn’t be bothered with manners. “Got any brothers? Someone our age? Someone who can pitch and hit?”

  Anne shook her head. “It’s just me, Dad, and Grandma. My mom’s dead, but don’t worry. I’m not sad anymore. Not much, anyway. She’s been dead f
or almost two years.”

  Sawyer pointed to the slingshot. “Well, if you don’t have any brothers, who does that belong to?”

  “Me,” she said, smiling so big the freckles on her nose got all squished together. “Dad taught me how to make one. I’m good at building stuff. Someday I’m going to build houses and stores and maybe even skyscrapers like in New York City.”

  “Nuh-uh. You’re a girl. Girls grow up to have babies and cook turkeys,” Sawyer told her, as if it was the eleventh commandment.

  “You’re the turkey,” Anne said, and I grinned at the way she didn’t back down from Sawyer. “Being a girl doesn’t matter. Just ask Rosie the Riveter. It’s what a person does, not what they are, that’s important. And I can do anything I want. I can already saw wood, patch bike tires, and pitch a mean fastball, too. I want to be a Peach. A Rockford Peach.”

  “That’s not a real team,” Sawyer argued.

  “Is, too.”

  “Not.”

  “Yes, it is,” Anne said with a tiny stomp of her Keds. “Dad took me to a game before we left Joliet. Olive Little pitches a fastball that could spin your head like a corkscrew, and I’m going to be just like her. I’m already a better baseball player than most boys. I bet I’m every bit as good as you.”

  “Imp-p-possible,” Aidan said. “Sawyer is p-p-practicing for the Majors. Tell her she’s f-f-full of beans, Cory.”

  They were all looking at me, waiting for an answer. Cory and Aidan on one side, Anne on the other. Sawyer’s face had turned so red he could’ve been the Torch of Evil’s long-lost cousin, and Anne’s cheeks were dotted with pink.

  I said what I had to say. “He’s the best player in all of Harmony. Ask anyone.”

  Sawyer slapped me on the shoulder so hard I had to take three steps to keep from falling headfirst onto Satan’s Sidewalk. Something about the way the new girl looked at me made me feel worse than if I had just admitted to being in cahoots with the double-crossing spy living at the bottom of Satan’s Sidewalk.

  4

  THE ADVENTURES OF THE WARRIOR KID

  My room was stifling that night. Blackout curtains hid the lights so our house couldn’t be spotted by enemy planes, but they also kept out any trace of a breeze. I wiped a bead of sweat from my head and started to write.

  Dear Dad,

  A new girl moved into the Taylor house, and guess what! She’s a Cardinals fan! It was enough For Sawyer to hate Anne right on the spot. Who knew girls even cared about baseball? She doesn’t bat an eyelash over the way Aidan’s words get tangled on his tongue, and she’s got freckles on her cheek that look like a constellation. Not that I care about stuff like a girl’s freckles or anything. It’s just something I noticed, that’s all.

  Sawyer’s still ticked over the Yankees losing to the Cardinals. I wear the Yankees cap you bought me every day, and I see him eyeballing it. I know he wishes he had one just like it, but that dosen’t make up for him being such a fat-head. He nearly choked on his gum when Anne told us She wants to play for the Peaches. He thinks the only reason they started the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League is because the Majors’ season might be cancelled now that most players are enlisting. Baseball. It’s all Aidan talks about now that he’s teamed up with Sawyer. That, and how his brother is going to win the war single-handedly. Sawyer calls baseball players herose, but he’s wrong.

  I know

  you’re

  the real hero!

  I couldn’t tell Dad about the Nazi spy living down the alley and how I planned to catch him red-handed, because of the censors who read all the letters.

  I glanced at the Space Warrior grinning up at me with his cobalt-blue eyes from the cover of my comic book. His red x-ray goggles blasted yellow death rays, and lightning bolts zigzagged from his blue-gloved fists of doom. The Warrior, with his sidekick the Allied Panther, faced yet another attack from the Torch of Evil, a hideous being made of nothing but red-purple flames.

  It truly was a beautiful picture.

  There was plenty of space left on the paper beneath my letter, so I started to draw my own comic strip. My superhero was smaller than the Space Warrior, and the initials on the sides of his Helmet of Power were “WK.” Short for “Warrior’s Kid.”

  I looked over my comic strip, wondering if Dad would notice that I had drawn my own face tucked inside the superhero’s Helmet of Power.

  5

  LAST WORDS

  Thwok. A pebble smacked against the garage. If I hadn’t been bending over Mom’s tomato plants, it would’ve binged me in the head.

  Thwok.

  Another one hit the tomato I was ready to pluck. The skin cracked, bleeding tomato juice.

  THWOK!

  Something smacked into the seat of my pants with enough force that I was sure it left a bruise the size of Italy’s boot.

  I faced the alley. “Cut it out!”

  Sawyer and Aidan were in the tree house. It bothered me that they hadn’t waited to make slingshots. Now I’d have to make my own, though there really wasn’t enough room in my pocket for both a slingshot and my comic book.

  I plucked tomatoes from the vines, imagining loading a slingshot of epic proportions with supercharged explosives powerful enough to knock the Mallory ghosts clean off the planet. The slingshot would work on the demon dogs, too. And once the dogs were out of the way, I’d use it to whop Ziegler until his eyeballs rolled up into his head. Then I’d hog-tie him with a red-white-and-blue bow and slingshot him all the way to the White House. Sawyer wouldn’t dare say my veins were dry of Woodford blood then.

  But I couldn’t save the world, because Mom was inside, listening to the radio and waiting for tomatoes. Every so often the sounds of Les Brown, Doris Day, and Bing Crosby were interrupted by updates of battles and troop movements on the European and Pacific fronts. Then Mom would drop everything and run into the living room to turn up the volume. Earlier there had been a report that Nazi concentration camps were worse than anyone could imagine. Much worse. People were being rounded up, starved, and killed. I didn’t get to hear the whole story, though, since Mom turned down the volume. She hated the stories about the camps. Everyone did. What the Nazis were doing was wrong. They had to be stopped. And my dad was right in the thick of the war to do just that.

  Walking into the kitchen was like being bear-hugged by the Torch of Evil. Even though the blackout curtains were pushed aside and the windows were open as wide as they would go, there wasn’t a hint of a breeze. “How can you stand it in here?” I asked.

  Mom pushed aside a strand of limp hair. “If canning tomatoes helps the war effort just a little, then we’ll do it, Cory. Anything to help get your father home.”

  “He’ll come home a hero, too,” I said. “Just like Grandpa. Everybody in town says so.”

  Mom looked at me, and for a minute I thought she was going to snap off my head like a tomato from the vine. “But Dad’ll come back alive,” I added fast.

  Mom let out a breath and squeezed my shoulder in a sideways hug. “Of course he will,” she said. “He promised.” She sorted through the tomatoes, picking out five of the best ones. “Take these over to the new neighbors. Let them know I’m canning jars for them, too.”

  Stepping out into the August sun should’ve felt hot, but after being in the kitchen it was a relief.

  The way Sawyer leaned against Aidan’s garage made it look like he was trying to push it over. Sawyer’s bat was propped against the fence and his mitt sat on top of it. Sawyer would’ve carried his bat and glove to church if his mom let him.

  “Let’s p-p-play ball,” Aidan shouted loud enough to scare a mockingbird from the maple tree.

  I held up the tomatoes. “I have to give these to the new neighbors.” Then, as an afterthought, I added, “Maybe Anne will want to tag along.”

  “Your girlfriend would rather play with her doll-babies, but you could stay here and play house with her,” Sawyer said with a grin. He had a rock the size of my thumb pulled bac
k in his slingshot, ready to let it fly at the mockingbird that had landed on top of Aidan’s garage.

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” I said, hating the way my face felt as if I’d been spat on by the Torch of Evil himself. “I’m just being neighborly, that’s all.”

  “Sounds like love to me,” Sawyer said, laughing so hard the rock he sent flying went wide right. The bird took flight anyway, proving it was smarter than Sawyer and all the kissy-kissy noises he started making.

  Aidan rode the gate as it swung open to the Burkes’ yard. He laughed as if Sawyer was funnier than Daffy Duck while I made my way across the backyard to Anne’s door. She opened it before I even knocked. Just like before, she wore overalls and Keds. There wasn’t a bow or doll in sight. Nothing pink, either. Except for her cheeks. She squinted at Sawyer holding his bat over his shoulder the way a soldier carries a gun. “I’ll get my mitt.”

  I stuck out the bag of tomatoes. “These are for your family. I’m supposed to tell your grandmother that my mom will can tomatoes for you, too.”

  Anne grabbed the bag. “I’ll tell her. Wait here. I’ll tell her everything.” Then she closed the door and left me standing on the back step.

  Sawyer sauntered across the yard and hopped up the steps next to me. Aidan followed him like a little puppy dog, only there wasn’t enough room on the step, so he had to stand in the grass. “Of all the nerve,” Sawyer said. “A dumb Dora of a girl, thinking she can play as good as me. That’s the stupidest idea ever.”

  “You g-g-got that right,” Aidan said.

  “What’s so stupid about it?” I asked. “She’s got two arms to swing a bat just the same as you and me.”

  “You just say that because you think she’s cute,” Sawyer said.

  “Do not,” I sputtered.

  “Do so,” Sawyer shot right back. “But girly arms are weak. Not strong like ours.” He punched my arm to prove his point, leaving a bruise clear down to the bone. I hated the fact that I flinched, and hated it even more that Sawyer noticed. But the worst thing was that Aidan laughed right along with Sawyer.