Woodford Brave Read online

  Sawyer didn’t know what hit him when I tackled him. He heaved, pushing me off, and I rolled to a squat, then lunged at him again. The air left his lungs with a satisfying oomph.

  Sawyer swung. His fist connecting with the side of my face snapped my teeth through the flesh of my cheek. I jerked my head away before he could land another punch. Sweat, blood, and spit sprayed us both when I head-butted him in the chest, sending us rolling across the ground in a tangle of legs and arms. His slingshot was torn from his pocket, and I felt it dig into my back as we rolled across the gravel. We ended up with me sitting on the great high-and-mighty’s chest.

  “Take. It. Back,” I growled, ignoring the taste of my blood.

  “Stop it,” Anne yelled. “Both of you.”

  The Kid would not stop. Woodfords never gave up. I shook Sawyer’s shoulder with each word. “Say. You’re. Sorry!”

  Sawyer opened his mouth, but instead of apologizing, his eyes widened and his mouth started flopping open and shut like a bottom-feeder fish.

  “G-G-Get off him. He’s choking,” Aidan yelled, grabbing me around my middle and heaving me to the ground.

  Sawyer’s lips were tinged blue. Anne grabbed one of his arms and Aidan grabbed the other, pulling until he was sitting up and I could pound him right between the shoulder blades. Maybe, just maybe, I hit Sawyer a little harder than I needed to, but it worked. His gum flew out of his mouth and landed in a clump of dandelions.

  Did Sawyer thank the Kid for saving his life? Of course not. Instead, he gave me a look that would’ve curdled milk. He snatched his slingshot from the ground and stuffed it in his pocket, then grabbed his bat and mitt and stalked down the alley to Catalpa without even saying good-bye.

  “What’d you go and m-m-make him mad for?” Aidan asked.

  I stared at him as if he’d just started speaking German. “Me? Make HIM mad? You heard what he said about my grandfather!”

  I couldn’t believe the words Aidan said next. “Do us all a f-f-favor, Cory, and g-g-give that hero crap a rest.” Then he jogged after Sawyer like some kind of lost puppy.

  My comic book lay on the ground, the Warrior staring up at me from the torn cover. I picked it up and straightened it as best I could, acting like it didn’t matter one bit that my best friend had just turned his back on me.

  8

  THE COURAGEOUS ADVENTURES OF THE WARRIOR KID

  I used my pocketknife to whittle the pencil to a sharp point, letting curls of shavings fall to the floor. I stomped on one until it was nothing but slivers. The inside of my cheek was swollen, and I was mad as a hornet at Sawyer for throwing my cap to the dogs and saying all those things about the Woodford name. But what really got to me was the way Aidan had gone along with Sawyer. Of course, I couldn’t tell Dad any of it, since letters to the troops were supposed to cheer them up.

  I kicked the rest of the shavings under my desk and started to write.

  Dear Dad,

  An old scraggly cat was hanging around the house next door to Ziegler’s. He seems to be following me wherever I go. (The cat, not Ziegler.) Sawyer says the cat is worthless because he’s scared of everything, but I think he’s braver than he looks. (The cat, not Sawyer.) After all, he was living in the weeds right next door to Ziegler’s dogs, and they’re big, loud, and really mean. (The dags, not the weeds.)

  The only things Sawyer worries about are whether or not there will be a World Series or if a girl can actually hammer a nail. He’s wrong about the cat being a scaredy-cat so I’m pretty sure he’s wrong about the danger lurking right here in Harmony, too. I don’t know why he doesn’t like Anne. She seems okay to me. Although she’s a little confused about Germans not being the enemy. Don’t worry, I’ll set her straight. Aidan, too. And don’t worry one bit about Mom, either. I’m keeping her safe right along with the rest of Harmony, because I’m just like you. You and Grandpa.

  WOODFORD BRAVE.

  It wasn’t necessary to tell Dad about not finishing the stupid dares. After all, it was the cat’s fault for coming out of nowhere. That, and the fact that Anne sneezed loud enough to knock the Mallory ghosts clear to Burlington. It wasn’t like I backed down or anything.

  I squared off the bottom of the paper and started to sketch another courageous adventure for the Kid.

  I added a few lines, setting the Kid’s face with a look of pure determination. When Dad saw my comic, he would know I was just like him. No matter what Sawyer said.

  9

  WHATEVER IT TAKES

  “Wash your face,” Mom said the next morning. She smoothed down my hair and gave my cheek a pat. She sounded serious, but she was smiling. “There are pencil smudges all over your forehead. I do believe more lead ends up on your face than on those cartoons of yours.”

  “Comics,” I said. “There’s a difference.”

  I was glad she couldn’t see the way the inside of my cheek was swollen from where Sawyer had socked me. I wiped my hand across my forehead before handing her my letter. It was her day to roll bandages at the Methodist Church, so she read it fast before slipping it into the airmail envelope.

  The living room radio crackled static in time to the Glenn Miller Orchestra, but Mom had stopped listening as soon as the war report ended. “Doesn’t making bandages give you the heebie-jeebies?” I asked. “Think about it. Some soldier fighting Nazis all the way over in Europe is going to need that Red Cross bandage. Somebody like Dad.”

  The coffee cup slipped from Mom’s hand, shattering into jagged pieces by her feet. She’d used the coffee grounds so many times the water was barely tinted, but it was still hot enough to flower her ankles with burn marks.

  “I didn’t mean Dad,” I said as I dived to the floor and started picking up the shards, but Mom tugged on my arm to stop me. “Saying Dad could get hurt is like telling the Warrior he isn’t strong enough to fight the Torch of Evil.”

  Mom put a finger to my lips, not hard or mean, but enough to make my words stop. “I don’t care if all your dad does is swab latrines, as long as he stays safe. The faster this war is over, the sooner he comes home, and I’ll do whatever I can to help, whether it’s rolling bandages, going without stockings, or growing radishes.”

  She glanced out the kitchen window at her Victory Garden when she said the last part. “Where did that come from?”

  I pulled away from her fingers and immediately looked to the sky, expecting to see a spy plane blitzkrieging our house. But Mom wasn’t looking at the sky; she had her eyes on her garden. I shoved the blackout curtains out of the way to see. There, making his way through the tomato vines, was the cat from the day before.

  “He must’ve followed me back from the old Mallory house,” I said without thinking.

  “Cory!” Mom shrieked so loudly I almost dropped the pieces of her coffee cup. “I told you not to go near that place.”

  “We didn’t go in. I was just showing Anne around the neighborhood. Don’t worry. If we saw a ghost, I’d knock it clear over the moon.”

  “It’s not ghosts I worry about,” Mom said. “It’s rotten floors.”

  She glanced out the window again and her tongue made the tsk-tsk-tsk that I was used to hearing whenever she disapproved of something. “It’s a sin the way people dump strays, leaving them to fend for themselves. Feed him, Cory. After all, even your cartoon heroes have compassion.”

  “Comic books,” I reminded her.

  She kissed the top of my head and snatched her pocketbook from the counter. “Behave yourself while I’m gone.” She left the kitchen, her heels click-clacking on the hardwood floor until I heard the latch of the front door closing.

  I found two cracked saucers, filled one with water, and crumbled bacon in the other. As soon as he heard the squeak of the screen door, the cat zigzagged through the tomato vines like a soldier dodging enemy gunfire. He stopped at the edge of the garden, eyeing me.

  “All it would take to send you straight up in the air is one stomp from the Kid’s HyperSpeed Boots.”
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  “Mrr-oww,” he answered.

  I was half-tempted to stomp my foot just to see how fast he would run. That’s what Sawyer would’ve done. But the cat’s nose wiggled at the dishes in my hands, and I knew for a fact he was starving, since I’d felt his ribs the day before. His eyes followed my every move until I placed the plates in a shady spot behind the garage. He waited for me to step back before wolfing down the bacon as if he hadn’t eaten since the Japanese sneak-attack on Pearl Harbor nearly destroyed our navy. When he finished, he hunkered there, his pink tongue flicking over whiskers. I reached out to rub between his ears, but he pulled back with a wary look, his amber eyes locking on mine for a split second.

  “Fine,” I muttered. “Be that way.”

  I crossed the alley, figuring Aidan would be around, but Jackson told me he’d gone fishing with Sawyer. At first I thought Jackson was pulling my leg, but Jackson was dead serious.

  “They went without me?”

  Jackson hitched his shoulder in a shrug that made his hair curl over his collar. “Guess so. You could probably find them at Old Man Jacobs’s pond.”

  Mr. Jacobs lived at the edge of town. He didn’t mind if we used his pond as long as we shared our catch with him.

  “Naw. They’ll probably just catch a bunch of drowned worms, anyway.” I said it as if it didn’t really matter.

  Without Aidan, there wasn’t much to do, so I headed back across Satan’s Sidewalk. The cat scooted under a bush as soon as he saw me. “I don’t care if you stay, but quit acting like some big scaredy-cat. Deal?”

  “Mrr-oww.”

  I took that as a yes and left the cat to nap in the safety of the shadows while I spent the afternoon alone, reading comic books.

  That night, Mom stood in front of the map of Europe she’d thumbtacked to the wall and listened to the nightly radio war report. Bits of blue paper tacked to the map showed the major battles. Red paper scraps showed where Mom thought Dad might be. While her fingers traced the distances between red and blue paper, I sneaked into my parents’ bedroom and opened Dad’s top dresser drawer. There, neatly arranged, were the things he’d left behind: a gold pen, a pocket watch that had belonged to Grandpa, and a silver dollar.

  Dad would sure as the dickens know how to convince Aidan that Sawyer was nothing but a big nincompoop. He’d tell me what to do about Ziegler, too. If only he were here so I could ask him.

  I felt the edge of the silver dollar that Dad had carried in his pocket for as long as I could remember. Silver dollars were supposed to have ridges, but this one was as slick as a Buick’s fender. Dad had smoothed away the letters and words, too, until both sides looked almost the same. All that was left was the faint memory of Lady Liberty’s head on one side and the eagle on the other.

  Dad had packed for the war as if it were nothing more than a camping trip, rubbing the coin between his thumb and finger one last time before tossing it in his drawer without a second glance. He’d given me a silver dollar once, but I’d spent it on comic books while he was at boot camp. He didn’t say anything about it when he came home on leave, but I knew he was disappointed. I promised myself it wouldn’t happen again. The Kid would never disappoint the Warrior. Ever.

  Back in my room, I laid my comic book on the nightstand, smoothing the bent bottom corner before turning out the light. The air was thick and my sheets were soggy with sweat in no time. I parted the blackout curtains and moved the rocks lining my windowsill so I could lift out the screen.

  Aidan was convinced the glittery rocks we collected when we were seven were full of diamonds that would make us rich. After Jackson told us they were worthless fool’s gold, Aidan threw his rocks into Jacobs’s cow pond, but I saved all of mine. Aidan’s new idea of joining the Majors was just another get-rich-quick plan, and that’s why he was hanging onto Sawyer’s shirttails. Still. Best friends should never turn their backs on each other. It was obvious that I’d have to prove Sawyer was full of beans to get Aidan to come to his senses.

  It was so hot I wouldn’t have minded if Cyn Mallory herself had popped in front of me and blown the sweat off my face. I leaned on the sill, resting my head on my arms. I could’ve sworn I heard the ghosts singing a mournful song at the bottom of Satan’s Sidewalk, but I convinced myself that it was nothing more than the creak of an old tree. The place where the cat had scratched me stung when I picked off part of the scab.

  The branches of the maple tree outside my window blurred as I imagined being the Kid, wearing a cape the color of a ripe plum, fighting side by side with my dad. He’d be the Warrior and I’d be his sidekick. Together, we’d bat planes from the sky as if they were just pesky mosquitoes. Nothing could scare the Hero and his Kid. Not rumbling tanks or buzzing planes. Not stuttering machine guns or even the blinding flashes of grenades. We’d be invincible.

  Ziegler’s dogs split the night with an outburst of barks, reminding me where I was.

  If only Dad were here, we’d knock those dogs’ heads together, leaving them on the ground with little stars floating around their limp ears. Then we’d capture Ziegler single-handedly before ridding Satan’s Sidewalk of the Mallory ghosts once and for all. My cape would billow in the wind, its fabric fortified to withstand anything the Mallory ghosts lobbed my way.

  Thanks to us, the alleys of Harmony would be safe for helpless kids like Anne. Aidan and Sawyer, too. Of course, just like the Space Warrior, we would never take credit, since the safety of the people would be the only reward we needed.

  Although a medal would be nice. One that I could pin to my cape.

  I was imagining my hero’s ceremony when a shadow hurtled across the tree branches right in front of my face. I fell back, butt-scooting across the floor as something leaped through my open window, landed on the sill, and thumped to the floor all in one fluid movement. I sucked in hot air until my heart regained an even beat and I could snap on my lamp.

  I don’t know who was more surprised. Me—or the huffing yellow cat. A flick of his tail sent a tumbleweed of matted hair under my bed. “Sawyer said you were nothing but a dumb cat, but you figured out how to climb up here and jump in my window, so you can’t be all that stupid. I bet you’re smarter than he is.”

  The cat’s ears flicked forward to catch my words, then went back again.

  “Okay, okay. Sometimes it’s hard to tell who’s a friend and who’s not, but you have to stop sneaking up on me, okay?”

  This time he answered with a deep-throated “Mrr-oww.”

  I held out a hand and watched his ears twitch forward as he eyed my fingers. He took a step in my direction, but kept his belly low to the ground like a soldier crawling under the barbed wire of a battlefield. He took his time closing the space between us, his tail slowing from wild lashing to a lazy swish. I reached out to rub the spot between his ears where the darker orange coloring made a letter M. He tensed at my touch, but then relaxed and lifted his head so I could rub harder.

  His fur was matted under his chin and on his belly. Leaves were caught in the bushy hair of his tail. To fill the quiet space of night, I told him about Dad as I picked out the burrs and tangles. Whenever I paused the cat echoed with a “Mrr-oww.”

  “He’s like Grandpa. A hero.”

  “Mrr-oww.”

  “And I’m going to be just like both of them.”

  “Mrr-oww.”

  “I call myself the Kid. Nothing scares me.”

  “Mrr-oww?”

  I knew the cat couldn’t really understand what I was saying, but it made me a little mad that his meow sounded more like a question just then.

  “You did not scare me when we were in the Mallory yard. I was just surprised when you bumped into me, that’s all.”

  “Mrr-oww.”

  Then I told him exactly how I planned to battle the Nazi spy at the bottom of Satan’s Sidewalk. Just like a superhero would. By the time I finished, his hair was smooth and soft. “You can stay,” I whispered. “You could be my sidekick. Since you have something to s
ay about everything, your name could be Echo.”

  But this time he didn’t answer. The Mighty Echo was already asleep.

  10

  BATTLE LINES

  “I’m pretty sure the Space Warrior never had to sweep out his neighbor’s garage,” I said the next morning.

  “It won’t hurt you to help out a neighbor,” Mom said. “Now scoot.”

  Altering time obviously wasn’t my superpower, because the minutes dragged by while I worked in Mrs. Springgate’s garage. When I moved the boxes to a corner so they’d be out of the way, I found a wagon jammed against a wall. Two boxes inside the wagon were neatly packed with a child’s clothes. A teddy bear with a missing eye and torn nose was on top of one box.

  For as long as I could remember, Mrs. Springgate had been just the old lady who lived next door. I knew her husband had died before I was even born, but these boxes revealed a past that included a little boy who once carried a teddy bear until its eye fell off. Since Mom and Dad had never mentioned him, I figured it could only mean one thing. Mrs. Springgate’s son was dead just like her husband. The fact that Mrs. Springgate sat on her porch drinking beer made a little more sense.

  I replaced the teddy bear and stacked the boxes in the wagon. I was a little irritated when Echo jumped onto a pile of old clothes for a nap, as if he didn’t have a care in the world, while I hoisted the other boxes into a neat stack. “Good-for-nothing lazy bum.”

  Thunk.

  I glanced across the alley. Anne was in her backyard, shooting rocks at a target propped against the garage. Anne had said we were knuckleheads to think Ziegler was a spy just because he was German. I’d have to set her straight about that. Everyone knew the Germans were our enemy.

  Thunk.

  Anne sure didn’t look like a damsel in distress, the way she squared her shoulders and sent rocks smashing into the bull’s-eye. She was a good shot. Much better than Sawyer, though he’d never admit it.