Alice At The Home Front Read online

  “Hi, Alice. How yer doing? It’s Jimmy.”

  “Aie, soyrbaak? Owdiiigo?”

  “What? I can’t hear you.”

  Alice tried again, tucking the mouthpiece into her sleeve. “Owloongyer baakfr?”

  Mother smiled and left the room.

  “Jeez. You got a cold, or what?”

  “No, Everything fine,” she said, uncovering the phone. “How’d it go?”

  “Hah! That’s a long story. You wanted me to call you?”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Of course I wanted you to call. I want to hear all about it.”

  “Well, gosh, I’m kinda busy, you know. The gang’s giving me a party tonight … Alice? But if you want, we could meet at the drugstore like last time?”

  “When?”

  “Say, tomorrow after your school? I don’t have many free days.”

  Alice put a curse right then and there on the “gang” and the “your school.” She wanted to say how about right now? But didn’t.

  “So you’ll come there tomorrow? Promise?”

  “Yeah, okay, Alice. I promise. Boy, you drive a hard one.”

  She had no idea what “drive a hard one” meant, probably boys’ talk for making things difficult.

  In spite of finally talking with Jimmy and his calling her and promising to meet, Alice felt a little nudge of sadness inside. She was pretty good at getting what she wanted, but what if the other person didn’t feel the same way she did?

  Downtown the next day, the warm sun had managed to sneak along some of the narrow streets, melting the old snow, polishing up the new, and giving everything around a preview of the coming spring.

  When Alice got near the Rexall drugstore, she heard a terrible racket coming out of the wedged open door. A chorus of men were singing. “… the Lord and pass the ammunition. Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition, and we’ll all be free!”

  When she stepped in, she came face-to-face—at least that’s what it seemed to her—with an enormous orange jukebox. It was winking and blinking and throbbing and pulsing a rainbow of mismatched colors while the music blasted on, until finally, at the end of the song, the whole thing came to a halt. Music and colors vanished, and there stood a big, ugly plastic box.

  With the creature subdued, Alice went over and looked at the tabs with the names of songs and the big black records that flopped down one by one with each nickel inserted in the slot. A fun thing, thought Alice, but “I don’t want that jive on my milk diet.” She chose a booth far enough away so that she’d be able to hear Jimmy talk when he came.

  As soon as she sat down, the door swung back and in shuffled a bunch of boys, one of whom was Jimmy. Another boy, called Moses, whom she’d seen at dancing school in the advanced class, was with him. Jimmy and Moses came over to the booth and sprawled themselves on the benches and then shoved over to make room for the other two standing at the jukebox. She hated the smell of French fries wafting over the tables.

  “Hiya, Alice. See? I brought the party with me,” said Jimmy. “You know Moses, here, don’t you?”

  Something inside Alice sank. She thought they’d be alone, not with his gang. But maybe … just maybe he wanted her to feel included.

  “And here comes Bill in the moth-eaten jacket.”

  “It’s a Pendleton, you jerk,” said Bill, plunking himself down beside him.

  “And over there’s Cameron, who’s never seen a jukebox before.”

  They all laughed.

  “And may I present to you guys, Alice the spotter. And in case you’re too ignorant to know what that is, she spots planes—our planes and Jerries’ planes, if they’ve got the nerve to fly over here. She records them in her little black book that she swiped from me at the stationers.” He winked at her.

  “Oh, yeah? A spotter,” said Bill. “I have an aunt who does that.”

  “You mean you can recognize them from down below?” said Cameron.

  “Very good, Cameroni. Ye get an A,” said Jimmy, climbing over Bill to go to the counter. Alice saw he was ordering for everybody.

  “Okay, now, Alice,” said Bill, when Jimmy returned, “I’ve got a test for you. Listen carefully, now.”

  With all the attention, Alice was feeling a little foolish and a little happy at the same time. “You drive a hard one,” she quoted.

  “Ready?” He leaned close enough to touch noses. “Now, how does a Lockheed P38 look different from a Curtiss P40?”

  Alice sat up straight. “Oh! That’s easy. A Lockheed P38 Lightning is a fork-tailed twin engine fighter. You can’t miss it, because of the double tails. But a Curtiss P40 Warhawk has an open shark’s mouth instead of a nose, with all the teeth showing in a big smile.”

  Bill’s eyebrows shot up. “Well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. She knows her stuff, all right.”

  Cameron nodded slowly. “Uh hmmm,” thinking hard about what she’d said.

  “Wow!” said Moses, surprised.

  “Wow,” said Alice to herself, who was feeling too warm from the compliments.

  Jimmy went to get the drinks, and the jukebox started up with

  Hut sut Ralston on the riddle rah

  And a brawla brawla suet,

  Hut sut Ralson on the riddle rah

  And a BRAWLA SOOO-EET!

  The boys joined in, yelling over the music, “BRAWLA SOOO EET!”

  Jimmy came back, balancing five root beer floats in his arms and passed them around.

  “A toast, boys. A toast to the spotter.”

  They slurped their drinks, and Alice, who was the thirstiest of all after Bill’s test, had to wait her turn because they were toasting her.

  Then she took a long sip from her straw and surprised herself by saying, “I came to find out what Jimmy was doing in Atlantic City.”

  “Hear, hear!” said Bill. “Come on, Jimmy, ol’ man, ol’ man, let’s have it.”

  “Okay, well, to begin with, Coastal Patrol Base Number One, is just outside Atlantic City. I flew Dad’s plane down there and registered it, and they camouflaged it.”

  “You mean it’s no longer fire-engine red?” Bill asked

  “That’s right. What I had to learn was stuff like how to search for subs, of course, but that’s secret, and downed aircraft among the dunes and along the water’s edge. And another thing we did was tow targets for antiaircraft gunnery practice. That’s kinda neat, because all you do is just fly the plane, they aim at the targets you’re towing, and then … blam! blam! Actually, it’s scary the first time you do it. ’Specially if the gunners are rookies. They don’t know what the heck they’re aiming at. One little miss, and you’re swimming in the Taunton River. Hah! Not that I’d mind in summer.”

  “Yeah. Can’t ye see it? Get shot down in the Taunton River,” said Bill, “and have to scramble out of the plane before it sinks. They can’t blame you for that.”

  “Now? With the ice? You’re crazy man,” said Moses, picking at a cuticle on his thumb.

  Moses was bright but too nervous, thought Alice.

  Jimmy was saying, “But the most fun of all is when you impersonate the enemy aircraft planes in the air-raid drills. Your plane’s actually got enemy insignia—the swastika—on it to make it look real. Then you can do anything, nose dive, zigzag, the whole shmear. They let you go wild.”

  “Criminy. You know what? You’re going to have all the fun,” grumbled Cameron, “while we’re slaving away trying to make the grades for college.”

  “I’m goin’ to have to do all that grunt work too, ye know—only later,” said Jimmy.

  Alice hadn’t moved an inch since Jimmy had started talking. She sat there dazed and even forgot to be envious.

  “Yeah, but wait a minute.” Bill scratched his head slowly, a sign that he was thinking, or try
ing to, thought Alice. “Do they pay you plenty of dough? How much do ya get?”

  “Nah. Not much. Just enough to buy some black-market stuff, you know, candy, cigarettes … whoops!” He raised an arm against Alice’s wide, shocked eyes. Inside she was laughing. Did he really care what she thought?

  After a while, Alice stood up, scrunched her napkin, and tucked a strand of hair in back of her ear. “I … I’m going to have to go now.” She’d promised Mother she’d be home before five, and now it was even later. “Thanks a lot for coming, Jimmy, and all of you. And thanks for the root beer float.”

  Alice was so filled to the brim with all those deliciously interesting stories that she felt she couldn’t contain any more. She’d take it back home with her and think about everything he’d talked about—what it was like to do the work of a civil air patrolman—but without letting herself feel envious. The trick was to think about it without wanting to do it. Not easy, but that’s all she had.

  She got on the trolley, and then she remembered she hadn’t made any other kind of date with Jimmy to hear more, once he’d started the job. She’d have to let enough time go by, let him have the experience of it, before she dared pester him again. Then she remembered how they all were impressed by her aircraft knowledge. She grinned to herself, feeling happy—proud, even. Uncle David said the spotting job should be enough. Okay, she’d make it be enough, she promised herself. But underneath, Alice knew it wasn’t enough.

  Chapter Eleven

  When the Nor’easter Blows

  The following Monday, Alice, dressed in her gym shorts and top, crossed the sports field in back of Miss Whittaker’s School for Girls. She was supposed to be playing softball but was taking her time getting there, wondering just what maneuvers Jimmy was practicing at the CAP pilot’s training school. Target practice? And was it as dangerous as he said it could be? Would he go deaf, and then she’d have to write him letters instead of talking on the phone? She’d give him a week before he went deaf. In the meantime, she’d learn sign language.

  Alice thought she’d heard somebody calling her from the storm fence surrounding the grounds. She looked over toward the enormously thick wisteria vine growing up one side, with its fat trunk and branches that hugged the fence like a family of pythons. Alice had once climbed it, carrying a hunk of coal as big as her head that she called the black diamond. She was a pirate and was going to hide it from the redcoats, a bunch of girls who were standing around below, watching her. They were afraid to follow her up, of course. They might hurt themselves or get their uniforms dirty.

  That was years ago. Ancient history. Today, Alice spotted her friend Gladys, who was sitting on the trunk calling her over.

  “Hey, Alice, come here a minute.”

  Gladys was built like what she thought a wrestler must look like: short and stocky with fat, muscular legs that curved a little outward as if she’d spent most of her life on a horse. She had a thick neck on wide shoulders. Her eyes looked at you from a crooked angle that Alice wished she could straighten with a twist of her hands. She was a good friend, just different enough from the other girls for Alice to like her. She never played with dolls, and she never traded cards in a circle.

  “Come here; take a look at this! It’s a new comic book!”

  Alice walked over and joined her on the trunk of the tree. She looked at the cover of the comic book, which was called Wonder Woman, Amazon Princess.

  “You know I only read Terry and the Pirates,” said Alice, backing away.

  “No, look, she’s terrific. She fights the enemy and stuff in the war. This war.”

  Alice noted Wonder Woman’s blue shorts with the stars on them, her red halter and boots, and the gold crown. Her mother would say she had really bad taste. Alice thought so too, with those two embarrassing bosoms sticking out at you.

  “She looks kooky,” said Alice.

  Gladys gestured for her to come over. “No, she’s swell. She’s a princess from the Amazon, and she’s got special powers.” Gladys pointed at the comic strip. “Here she’s fending off German bullets with her bracelets. And there she’s forcing a spy to tell her the truth.”

  “How does she do that?” said Alice, glancing at Gladys sideways.

  “She lassoes him with her magic truth-telling lasso. See?”

  “You’re kidding.” Twigs from the branches were getting caught in Alice’s hair and pulling. She untangled them with one eye on the drawings.

  “And on this page, she breaks a Nazi sub in two!”

  Alice examined the drawings closely.

  “And, Alice, she’s a girl, and she fights the Axis with her own powers!”

  “In Terry and the Pirates, he does it with brains and a plane.”

  “Yah, but he’s not much without his friend Pat Ryan.”

  Alice was not going to argue that one.

  “Listen to what it says. ‘She’s going to free Europe from the Axis. Stop the Axis cold.’ That’s the Germans and the Japs.”

  “I know.”

  “Here.” Gladys pushed the magazine over so Alice could see. “She defeats Baron Blitzkrieg, and in the next chapter, she fights Doctor Poison and Tyrannosaurus Reich.”

  “Ha ha. Yeah, that’s pretty good.” Alice reached up and untangled more hair.

  “No other girl does that!”

  “No, I guess not. But I hate the way she looks—all those stars on her underwear and that big pointed bra.”

  “That’s to show she’s a girl and not a freak. And so’s the boys’ll read it too.”

  “Okay, the idea’s great. But Terry is more real, and he’s a lot cuter. The drawings are real without magic lassoes. I like that better.”

  “Okay then, I won’t buy you a copy for your birthday,” said Gladys, looking over with her crooked smile.

  “That’s okay, Gladys. Thanks anyway.”

  “Is that for you they’re blowing the whistle like crazy?”

  “I guess so. That’s the softball team. I’m supposed to be a fielder. Yawn.”

  She heard Gladys laughing as she walked off.

  * * *

  When Alice arrived home that afternoon, Mother said, “Mrs. Brownell called. She wanted you to come over after dinner and share some cake with Jimmy and some friends. He’s back for a day or two. I said you could go.”

  “He’s back? Really? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. She said she knew you’d like to see him.”

  “She said so? Did he agree?”

  “Well, I don’t know, dear. I suppose so.”

  “He’d better have agreed, or I’m chopped liver.” Alice had never said that before, but she’d heard Becky use it, and it sounded good. Mother looked a little surprised.

  Alice arrived late because Mother had wanted her to wear that awful blue dress, and she wanted to wear coveralls so she’d look less like a frilly girl and more like a CAP person. In the end, Mother won because she was afraid of “what Mrs. Brownell would say if she saw my daughter in trousers at a party in her house.”

  Alice was so furious she had tears in her eyes, which she quickly wiped away before she left the house. You don’t cry because of what your mother said or didn’t say, she told herself.

  Entering the house, Mrs. Brownell handed Alice a piece of cake. Alice didn’t get cake very often these days, and it looked delicious. She nodded a thanks because Jimmy was in the middle of explaining something to everybody. A couple of older girls were there too, sitting pretty in their chairs. One had a head full of curlicues. Phooey on them. The boys were on the couch, and Alice joined them with her cake.

  “I’d forgotten all about the gusty wind factor, so when I made a turn, the nor’easter caught me under the right wing, and I momentarily lost control. The plane started to go into a tailspin.” With his hand, Jimmy showed them how it had
spiraled down. “But then I righted it and pulled out of the spin. Pretty scary moments there, I can tell ya. I’d never flown in a nor’easter before. Dad would never have let me.”

  Alice got a little twinge of fear hearing about the tailspin and remembering how terrified she was sliding down the roof. How the wind pushed her down, and she could barely hang on and then lost her grip. Someday she’d tell Jimmy about it. That she’d had scary experiences too, like when he lost control of his plane.

  Now he was explaining something about the instruments and what happens in a tailspin. But Alice had lost track thinking her own thoughts.

  “You’re in the army now; you’re never behind the plough,” sang Bill, hunched down in a corner of the couch.

  “Never get rich, diggin’ a ditch,” finished Cameron.

  “Hey, enough of that. I’d never go in the army. Give me the air force any time. But for now, the Civil Air Patrol is about all I can handle,” answered Jimmy.

  They laughed and made boy noises.

  Alice noticed Mrs. Brownell’s serious face. She was not having a good time. Criminy, wasn’t she proud?

  “Anyway”—Jimmy stuffed his mouth with cake—“towing target sleeves for antiaircraft practice turned out to be pretty dumb work. We’d just fly back and forth from one location to the other while they drove us crazy with their rat-tatting. This cake is swell, Mom.” He smiled at her.

  “Yeah,” joined the others, with full cheeks.

  “Yes, it certainly is lovely, Mrs. Brownell,” said the curlicue girl whose lipstick was smeared on her teeth. That’ll teach her to try to look grown up, thought Alice.

  “You guys see the CAP insignia? Take a look,” said Jimmy, turning to show his sleeve.

  The two older girls pushed each other to get in close, as if he was some kind of a movie star. Alice stayed put. She’d already looked it up in the manual.

  He showed them the blue chevron-shaped badge with the white triangle and the three red propellers, and underneath was written CAP US Air Force Auxiliary. Handsome colors, thought Alice.