Woodford Brave Read online

  Anne sat down on the painted plywood and grabbed the rope, holding it like it was the reins to a horse. “Push me to the square so I can test the steering.”

  I leaned into Anne’s shoulders, pushing her go-cart over the bumpy backyard and around the side of the house to the front sidewalk. Her shoulder blades were small and sharp compared to Sawyer or Aidan’s, but there was nothing weak about her as she tugged the ropes. Echo followed us to the corner before fading back into the shadows.

  The square’s crisscrossing sidewalks made a perfect test track as long as people got off the sidewalk to let us pass. Anne had done a good job, but the wheels from her old baby carriage felt every bump and crack on the sidewalk. Her shoulders were bound to be bruised from where I pushed.

  I was looking at how the sun made a perfect halo of shine on the top of her head, so I didn’t see Aidan and Sawyer until they crossed Main Street and stepped right in our way. Anne’s whole body leaned left as she steered to miss them. The cart jerked right, thumped off the edge of the sidewalk, and banged into the base of the statue. I glanced up at Grandpa as if he might be ready to yell at us, but he still wore the same unblinking stare.

  Sawyer laughed, nearly choking on his gum. Aidan circled Anne’s cart to get a good look.

  “No way yours will be better than mine,” Anne told them right off.

  Sawyer glared at me. “You told her what we were doing?”

  “Don’t blame Cory,” Anne said. “I could hear you through the walls of Aidan’s garage. It’s not like you were quiet or anything. I can spy just as well as you can. Even if I am a girl.”

  “She was going to f-f-find out anyway,” Aidan pointed out to Sawyer.

  Anne plopped her feet over the sides of the plywood. “You want a turn?”

  “I thought you’d n-n-never ask,” Aidan said and climbed on the cart.

  Sawyer settled against the statue to watch how the go-cart handled while I helped Anne push Aidan around the statue. We started out slow, easing the cart toward the sidewalk that circled the park. The old wheels made a racket, but we didn’t care. It didn’t take long for Aidan to get the hang of tugging the ropes to make the front axle swivel.

  “F-F-Faster!” Aidan hollered over his shoulder.

  I leaned into his shoulder, pushing for all I was worth. Anne matched me step for step. Aidan was nearly bent double, but the go-cart picked up speed. We sprinted around the park, then cut back across the middle. The wheels rattled on the sidewalk as we urged the go-cart faster and faster. Aidan whooped as we hurtled past my grandfather. Sawyer was nothing but a blur.

  Aidan muscled the ropes, struggling to steer around the base of the statue. I leaned into his shoulder to give him a boost. We were working together and it felt good. Just like old times.

  And then Sawyer yelled, “Watch out!”

  Aidan jerked the rope. The cart yawed to the right and bounced off the sidewalk, barely missing Mr. Ziegler and his two giant wolfhounds walking on the far side of the statue. Anne struggled to keep her balance, and I slipped off the sidewalk’s edge and rolled to the ground.

  The massive dogs growled, but Ziegler jerked the leashes, the black case he clutched banging against the base of the statue with his sudden movement. “Odin, Pandora. Sitz!” His throaty accent sent my stomach tumbling. The monsters sat on their haunches, but they didn’t take their eyes off of us. Neither did Ziegler.

  “We’re sorry, Mr. Ziegler,” Anne said. “We didn’t see you.”

  “You muzt learn to vatch where you go,” he said, his mouth pulled down in a crooked frown. “Zomeone could get hurt.”

  When I stood up, one of the dogs growled.

  “Bleib!” Ziegler reminded the dogs in a calm voice. “Braver Hund! Braver Hund!”

  The spit in my mouth evaporated and I froze, waiting for them to break that tiny rope and go for my throat. Anne must’ve thought the same thing.

  “Your dogs really are big,” she said. “Will those little ropes hold them?”

  Ziegler inspected her over the tops of his glasses. “They vill ztay,” he said, not really answering her question.

  Then Anne asked what Aidan and I had wondered about ever since Ziegler moved to Satan’s Sidewalk. “What keeps them from jumping your gate and running away?”

  “They are trained,” Mr. Ziegler said. “My dogz obey.”

  I glanced at Sawyer to make sure he was listening when I asked my own question. “Who trained them?”

  Ziegler turned his gaze to me, and one corner of his mouth lifted in a half-smile. “I did, of course,” he said. “But my dogz, they do not like to be teased. You vould be wise to remember zat. All of you.”

  He looked directly at the place where my cap should’ve been before turning his attention back to his dogs. “Odin, Pandora,” he said in a voice as serious as death. The dogs’ ears twitched as their massive heads swiveled to face him. “Fuβ!”

  The monsters found their places by Mr. Ziegler, one on each side. Pandora smacked her lips and gave us a final look before following Mr. Ziegler past my grandfather’s statue.

  The Warrior Kid would have zapped Ziegler and his hounds with death rays right then and there, but since I didn’t have any superpowers, all I could do was watch him go. “Did you hear that? He admitted it. He trained those dogs and he’ll sic them on anyone who gets in his way.”

  Sawyer gave me a little shove between my shoulder blades. “Then this is your chance, Cory. Put your money where your mouth is and stop your Nazi spy. Or are you just going to let him walk away?”

  “You’re both knuckleheads,” Anne told him. “There’s nothing sinister about Ziegler.”

  “He’s G-G-German,” Aidan reminded Anne. “That makes him g-g-guilty by association.”

  “Not all Germans are bad,” she said.

  “They are in my book,” I told her.

  “You’re wrong, Cory. Saying all Germans are bad is the same as saying a girl can’t knock a baseball across the square or pound a nail in a plank of plywood. And we all know that’s not true.”

  Anne stood on one side of her go-cart. We stood on the other. She crossed her arms, put one foot on her cart, and stared us down in victory.

  Sawyer shifted his wad of gum and spat at the wheel of her go-cart. “You’re full of beans. Come on, Aidan. Let’s go build a real go-cart that puts this one to shame.”

  As I watched Aidan and Sawyer march through the shadows of my grandfather’s statue, I tried to ignore the bubble of doubt boiling up until it popped as one giant question.

  What if Anne was right about Ziegler?

  14

  THE COLOR OF DEATH

  On Friday, Mom fixed me a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. It was too hot for anything else. I had the latest Space Warrior comic book on the table by my plate. Before Dad left, I wasn’t allowed to read at the table, but Mom didn’t say anything about it now. After all, she had Dad’s letters filed in a basket on the table right next to the salt and pepper shakers.

  I pulled the crusts off my bread while reading about the Warrior locked in another battle with his nemesis. I liked how the Warrior stood with his arms on his hips, facing his archenemy without a flinch of fear. He even smiled as flames bounced off his helmet. Laughing in the face of evil. That’s what a hero does.

  Echo wrapped around my ankles and I reached down to run my hand along his back.

  “Don’t pet the cat while you’re eating,” Mom said without looking up from the letter Dad had written last month.

  Echo weaved through the chair legs and paused at Mom’s ankles. I grinned when she reached down to rub the space between his ears without even thinking.

  The radio static was almost in time to Benny Goodman’s “Taking a Chance on Love,” and a fly buzz-thumped against the blackout curtain pulled back from the kitchen window. Everything was normal and dull and boring, so the knock on the front door seemed unnaturally loud.

  Mom looked at me. I looked at her, the letter from Dad floating from
her fingers down to the table in a lazy zigzag.

  The sound of our chairs scratching the floor as we scooted back spooked Echo and he took off running. I followed Mom out of the kitchen. Through the dining room. Into the living room. Past the big double window that Mom casually glanced out.

  She stopped, then, so fast that I almost stepped on her heel. Her breath caught in her throat like a hiccup and one hand moved toward her face only to stop and hang in midair as if she forgot it was attached to her arm. “Oh,” she whispered. She took three quick breaths without letting any of them out before saying it again. “Oh.”

  I looked out the window to see what had caught her attention.

  They had come when we weren’t watching. When our guard was down. In a shiny Army car with the official C gas ration sticker proudly displayed in the window.

  “They must be lost,” I said. It was the only thing that made sense. “They have the wrong address. It’s a mistake. I’ll tell them, Mom. I’ll let them know.”

  Another knock on the door caused Mom to shudder and the hand that had been hanging in the air found my arm to stop me. “No,” she said. “I’ll get it. It has to be me.”

  I watched her walk to the door and pause, staring at it as if she’d forgotten how to work the doorknob, until another knock rattled it. Then her head gave a little jerk and she took a breath before opening the door to face two men standing there.

  “Mrs. Woodford?” asked the man wearing a dress uniform. I recognized him from a fuzzy photograph Dad had sent us from boot camp, but I couldn’t remember his name. The man didn’t seem to need an answer, since he took Mom by the elbow and gently led her right back the way she had just walked—all the way back into the living room to the sofa. His actions were full of practice and memory.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Woodford,” the officer said in a quiet, even voice as he gently placed a silver chain in Mom’s hand and then curled her fingers around it. He pulled a Western Union telegram from his pocket, staring at the words, waiting as if he thought they might change. Finally he started to read. “It’s my duty to inform you that there was an accident in France a little over a week ago.”

  Mom’s fingers played over the chain as if it were a Catholic rosary. Dog tags, they were called. One to leave on a fallen soldier. One to notify the family. Name. Rank. Serial number. Religion. The identification that soldiers wore until they didn’t need it anymore. There was only one tag on the chain sliding through Mom’s fingers.

  “I knew your husband in boot camp. He told me about his father. And Cory and you. I didn’t want you to hear this from a telegram, Mrs. Woodford.” The officer laid the paper on the sofa next to Mom and patted it as if he could settle the words into the cushion. He kept talking. I tried to listen, but his words didn’t quite go together and they ended up as phrases getting lost somewhere between his mouth and my ears.

  “It was an explosion in the camp. A spark ignited by something your husband triggered.”

  “It was a mistake. A horrible mistake,” said the other man, the one wearing the white collar.

  I shook my head. That just wasn’t right. It couldn’t be. “No. No. NO!” I interrupted. “You’re the ones making a mistake. My dad is a Woodford. A hero. He’s saving the world. Dad would never do something stupid like that! Take it back. Take. It. BACK!”

  The priest walked across the room and put his arm around my shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said. “This is a terrible thing, to lose your father. We must pray for his soul.”

  “He’s in France,” the officer went on to tell Mom. “Your husband was buried in France.”

  Buried. My father was buried. And that’s when the words became real and I knew that it was too late. Too late to pray. Too late for my dad.

  The men talked to Mom about benefits and where we could get help while I stood there, stuck in that nowhere land between the front door and the living room. I stared at the hole in the rug where Dad had dropped a bit of ash last Christmas, and twisted my comic book tighter and tighter until I felt the cover tear. Even then I didn’t stop.

  It surprised me the way Mom sat so straight. Rigid, like my grandfather’s statue. Totally still except for the way her throat jerked with tiny twitches every time she swallowed. Her eyes looked hard and shiny at the officer, but she didn’t say anything. Not a single word.

  It didn’t make sense. Why didn’t she scream that they were wrong? They had to be. Heroes don’t die from making a mistake.

  “If there’s anything we can do, let us know,” the priest finally said, leaving my side so he could reach down and help Mom stand. Her hands were still rubbing the chain of Dad’s dog tag, so he had to take her arms instead. He didn’t let go of her until they moved past me to the front door, where he paused long enough to mutter a prayer. The words were garbled and blurred together like a song from a different country. Then he nodded to Mom and stepped through the door.

  The officer looked me in the eyes before following the priest. “You’re the man of the house, now,” he said. He reached out, planning to squeeze my shoulder, but I stepped back from his touch. He raised his hand to his forehead in a silent salute instead.

  He turned then, and they both walked down our sidewalk. I watched them get in that shiny car with the C gas ration sticker. Heard the click of the key. The engine turned and the wheels shushed down the street, sounding like the Mallory ghosts whispering acid-laden lies.

  I saw curtains twitch in the house across the street, and one of Ziegler’s hounds barked down at the bottom of the alley. Echo paused in the hallway, one paw frozen in the air as if he planned to claw through silence thick enough to smother us.

  Mom didn’t move. Not at first. Except for another twitchy swallow that ended in a choked gasp.

  “Mom?” I whispered. “Mom?”

  My voice jolted her back from the door and she stumbled, as if the earth had heaved up right beneath her feet. She hit the wall hard, scaring Echo so bad he left claw marks in the hardwood floor as he fled back to the kitchen.

  “He said he’d come back,” Mom said, her stony look finally crumbling as she slid down the wall. I reached out, but I still had my comic book in my hands and I couldn’t catch her before she landed on the floor in a ball. She held her head, the silver of Dad’s chain resting on her hair like a crown. “He promised,” she said, her voice breaking with a sob. “He promised.”

  I’d never heard Mom cry before, and my own eyes stung as I choked on a vile taste in the back of my throat. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood there and stared at my comic book for answers.

  The Kid had to be steady.

  Rock solid.

  Woodford Brave.

  “Heroes. Don’t. Cry,” I whispered. “Heroes. Don’t. Cry.”

  Mom reached up, the dog tag dangling from her fingers. She snatched the comic book from my hands and hurled it through the open door. “To hell they don’t!” she screamed, her voice raw enough to bleed. Then she grabbed my wrist, pulling me down to the floor so she could wrap her arms around me, burying my face against her shoulder.

  I tried to be strong. To be the man I was supposed to be. I tried to be like Grandpa. Like Dad. But there were too many tears to hold back. So we sat on the floor, Mom and me, rocking back and forth. Clinging to each other while our world fell apart.

  And that is how the blue star in our window changed to gold.

  Blue for the living. Gold for the dead.

  15

  WOODFORD BRAVE

  The neighbors came after that, bringing cakes and ham and biscuits as if feeding us could fill up the giant hole where my dad should’ve been. Mrs. Springgate seemed to camp out in the kitchen, switching out platters of sandwiches and cookies.

  Aidan came with his mom and dad. Jackson, too. Mr. Franklin and his wife brought a basket of jams. I almost didn’t recognize Mrs. Baird without the big straw hat covered in flowers. Mom always seemed to find me. To be there with her hand on my shoulder or squeezing me to her side in a hug.
And I tried to do the same for her. Sometimes it was hard to know who was holding the other one up. I guess it didn’t really matter as long as we stayed standing.

  Even Sawyer came. His mother had two loaves of homemade bread. Sawyer handed me a new Space Warrior comic book. “I’m sorry, Cory,” he said. “Really sorry. I never meant all those things I said about the Woodfords. I know your dad was brave.”

  I didn’t know how to answer. What good were words, anyway?

  Every time Mom answered the door, it was a battle. A fight to keep standing. Keep smiling. Be polite. She was a different kind of Woodford Brave. When she opened the door to Ziegler, I thought she’d spit in his eye and slam the door on his fingers. But instead she actually invited him in for coffee and cake.

  I couldn’t believe Ziegler had the nerve to walk in our house. Not after what fighting the Nazis had cost us. But there he was. Tall. Skinny. Pushing his glasses up on his nose.

  Even worse: he twisted my cap in his hand. The last thing Dad had ever given to me. I guess his dogs hadn’t chewed it up after all, though it was dirty and the bill was bent. The sight of him holding it burned a hole in my stomach, and if it hadn’t been for Mrs. Springgate standing there, I might’ve barreled into the living room and tackled him to the ground. Instead, I reached out and took my cap when he handed it to me, mumbling a thank you because I knew that was what Mom expected me to say. It felt good to have my cap back, even though it had been in the hands of a German. I tried to imagine feeling something left over from my dad woven in the fabric, a surge of power or a bolt of energy. Something, anything, from Dad.

  At night I’d lie in bed, staring at the dark. Echo liked to sleep curled up near my pillow. He’d wake now and then to reach out a paw, resting it on my cheek or chin. Sometimes I thought I could hear the Mallory ghosts moaning at the bottom of Satan’s Sidewalk. I wondered if they were doomed to spend eternity fighting over whether Cyn should dance or not. At least they could still talk to each other.