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Well, you should have seen Miss Pauline's face when he said that. Now she was the one turning red. Miss Dinah started to snicker, but Miss Pauline gave her a look that would erase the chalk right off a blackboard.

I knew Momma wanted Granddaddy to go back in that room and shut the door, but she wasn't about to make a scene in front of the neighbors. She got up from the table. “Take my seat,” she told me. “I'll be busy serving. Let's bless the food.”

Just like that, Granddaddy started thanking God, almost like he believed what he was saying. But I knew he was putting on a show for the pretty ladies.

I was supposed to have my eyes shut, but instead I was studying Miss Pauline, thinking
What's so pretty?
If you asked me, Miss Dinah was better looking than she was. But they both looked old to me. Maybe older than Granddaddy.

Soon as Granddaddy finished saying grace, he started bothering Miss Pauline. “How's the boy doing at school? I betcha he's a holy terror.” He bumped my elbow and laughed.

“Holy terror,” said Miss Pauline. “I'm quite certain that is an oxymoron.”

Granddaddy was buttering a biscuit, but he stopped with his knife in midair. “A what kind of moron?”

I think Miss Pauline chuckled just a little when he said that. “Junior,” she said, “tell your grandfather what an oxymoron is.”

Was I supposed to know what that was? I racked my brain but couldn't find an oxymoron in there anywhere. “Uh, Miss Hinkle, Momma said you wouldn't be giving any quizzes today.”

But Granddaddy wasn't interested anyway. He started going on about Japan taking over the Philippines. “There goes our rubber supply,” he said. “There won't be no new tires for your fancy cars. People will have to walk again,
the way I did when I was growing up. I never owned a car in my life. Didn't hurt me none.”

He filled our ears with war news. I think everybody at the table tried to change the subject at one time or another, but he always brought it back around to war. When Momma was fixing to serve pumpkin pie, Granddaddy looked at Leroy. “Mr. Honeycutt, next thing you know, they'll be moving the draft age. Calling you up.”

Ann Fay's eyes went big and round as Momma's pies.

“No, Granddaddy,” I said. “He's a married man, and married men aren't being called.”

“They done changed that law,” said Granddaddy. “Too many young people getting hitched in a hurry so they wouldn't have to serve. That don't work anymore.”

“Doesn't,”
said Miss Pauline.

“Dozen?” Granddaddy looked confused. “More than a dozen. Hundreds are hitching up, just to keep out of the draft. Sorry devils.”

“
Doesn't
work,” said Miss Pauline. “Not
don't
work.”

Granddaddy elbowed Miss Pauline. “You're sure itchin' to teach me a thing or two, ain'tcha?”

Miss Pauline scooted herself away from Granddaddy until she was practically sitting on her sister's lap. And she didn't bother to tell him that
ain't
wasn't a real word.

Miss Dinah giggled. “I think he likes you,” she whispered.

I was sure having a good time watching Miss Pauline squirm. Too bad Granddaddy couldn't be in her classroom. I'd have liked to be a fly on the wall watching her teach him perfect handwriting. How would she teach Granddaddy, who didn't even have a right hand? And what would the people who wrote
The Palmer Method of Business Writing
say about a person like that?

Maybe they thought Granddaddy didn't have any business trying to write in the first place. Probably somebody like him was expected to stay at home where other people didn't have to see his messed-up arm. And what would that feel like?

I'd never really considered how Granddaddy felt before. But then, I didn't know much at all about him. And I wasn't likely to start asking him questions.

After dinner the women cleaned up the dishes and the twins played with their Christmas presents—paper dolls. Ann Fay wanted to know what I got.

“BBs, for one thing,” I said. After she heard that, Ann Fay didn't care about any other presents. She wanted to practice shooting. Leroy said she could target-practice, so I set up a tin can on the fence post and showed her how to hit it every time.

Ann Fay's aim was okay. But mine was a whole lot better. And that right there made me look like a hero in one person's eyes at least.

January 1942

If there was one thing Miss Hinkle was dead serious about, it was writing. Handwriting and writing essays. She believed that communication was the passport to success. The first handwriting drill for the New Year was:

Good business writing is in demand.
Pull push and practice penmanship
.

After we worked on those, Miss Hinkle passed a cigar box around the room, telling us to reach in and choose one of the folded papers with topics written on them.

I drew Woodrow Wilson. What I knew about him I could write in three sentences.
He was our president during the Great War. He was a Democrat. He wore glasses
. Well, actually, I decided I could write another sentence.
Granddaddy hates him
.

Miss Hinkle gave us time to work in class, using magazines and some books and encyclopedias on the shelves under the windows.

The encyclopedias were right there beside my desk, so I grabbed the
W
one. Before I was finished reading about President Wilson, Dudley was beside me. “You got the W?” he demanded. “I need it.”

“Sorry, pal.”

“I'm not your pal. And I want that book.”

I knew I wasn't his pal. And I didn't want to be, either. But I knew how to get his goat. “How do I know you even need this encyclopedia,
Catfish?
Maybe you're just trying to start something.”

“Maybe I am.” Dudley pulled a slip of paper out of his pocket and held it in front of my face—so close I'd have to be cross-eyed to read it. “It says Wilbur Wright—in case you can't read. And don't call me Catfish.”

I shrugged. “I might be finished in a minute or two.”

“What if I don't have a minute or two? My paper is due the same time as yours.”

I started to tell him to find a magazine or one of those other books on the shelf. But then Janie Aderholt, in front of me, turned and said, “Leave him alone, Dudley. When Junior's finished, I'll bring it to you.”

Dudley's glare changed into a slow smile. “Well, okay then,” he said. “I'll see
you
in a minute or two, Janie dear.” He looked at me and smirked as though he had just won a fistfight. He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Got yourself a girl to protect you?” He winked. “Or maybe she's looking after me.”

I guess he thought Janie was sweet on him, but when
he walked away, she turned to me and rolled her eyes. “Good riddance,” she whispered. We both laughed, and I noticed then that she had some real cute dimples. Funny how I never paid attention to that before.

I wrote a few notes about Woodrow Wilson. He was born in Virginia in 1856, and later he even lived in North Carolina. He was religious. He tried to keep America out of the Great War. And he started the League of Nations, which was supposed to stop the world from ever having a war again.

So how had we landed right in the middle of another one? That's what I wanted to know.

I heard Dudley making noises in the back of the room, so I decided to give up the
W
encyclopedia. Janie was bent over her page, busy taking notes on whatever her topic was. I tapped her on the shoulder with my pencil. “I'm done for now. In case you want to take this to you know who.”

She turned and smiled at me, and I decided that those dimples of hers might just be the best part about coming to school. “What are you writing about?” I asked—hoping she wouldn't notice that I was feeling kind of swoony.

“Infantile paralysis. Polio.” She held up the copy of
Time
magazine that she was taking notes from. “It's scary. Any of us could catch it. Even President Roosevelt had it.”

I knew that. I figured most people did, because of the
President's Birthday Balls coming up in just a few weeks. Every January there were big fundraiser parties all over the country. Rich people went to the balls, and all the money they gave supported the war against polio. The rest of us just read about it in the newspaper or brought dimes to school to help in our own small way.

Janie reached for the
W
encyclopedia. “I'll be back,” she said. And something about the way she said that made it sound like a promise.

January 1942

I should have kept that
W
encyclopedia longer and taken more notes on President Wilson. But at least I'd stayed out of trouble with Dudley, and Momma would've been proud of me for that.

Now I had to write the paper. At home, while I was struggling over it, I came up with the crazy idea to ask Granddaddy for help. If anybody had an opinion on Woodrow Wilson, it was him.

I took my composition book and my pencil into the bedroom. “I have to write a paper.”

From the look he gave me, you'd think I'd just told him I was fixing to take his radio away. “Do it someplace else,” he said, as if I was an intruder in my own bedroom.

“On Woodrow Wilson.”

Granddaddy turned off the radio. “Sit down.” He leaned over and spit tobacco juice into the tin can on the floor. Then he wiped his mouth with his stub, leaving it streaked with black.

I pulled a chair in from the kitchen, and by the time
I came back he had that rocker going fifty miles an hour. Before I could ask the first question he started talking. “Wilson was a yellow-livered Democrat. He waited until America was attacked to do a thing about that war. By then it was too late.”

“Too late? Why was it too late? I mean, we helped win the war.”

Granddaddy shook his head.

“Too late for what?”

He didn't answer me. Matter of fact, I don't think he was even seeing me anymore. The chair stopped rocking. His eyes went cold and hard, and he raised his left arm like he was holding a gun. He steadied it with his right stub. And then he started yanking that trigger finger. “Axel. You sorry little upstart.” His voice dropped real low and mean. “It was all your fault.”

Axel? Pop? What did he mean, it was Pop's fault? “Granddaddy! What are you talking about?”

Evidently Granddaddy remembered where he was then. He dropped his arms and pounded the arm of the rocking chair. Then he said, “Go on. Git outta here.” He shut his eyes and clamped his teeth, but that trigger finger on his left hand kept on jerking.

I don't know why I let him run me out of my own room. Except it didn't much feel like mine anymore, and that room with him in it was scary sometimes. I needed some outside air.

I pulled on my coat and hat with the flaps that
fit down over the ears and headed out the back door. Butch and Jesse hurried to meet me. I stopped on the big stone step and gave them each a good belly scratch. Then I stuffed my hands in my pockets and took off walking, out past the oak tree and the shed until I came to the garden. It was a tangle of dead vines and a few bent corn stalks—dark as shadows against the earth.

Pop would have loved this night. The air was crispy cold, and the stars were so bright they put me in mind of millions of headlights off in the distance. I sure wished they could shine some light on my understanding.

“Pop? He said it was all your fault. What was all your fault? What did you do? And why was he acting like he wanted to shoot somebody?”

There was a whole lot I didn't understand about Granddaddy. But I was starting to realize something. Whatever was wrong with my pop was probably Granddaddy's fault. Instead of the other way around. When Pop was alive I was busy just trying to get
him
to notice
me
. It never crossed my mind to ask questions about
him
. Now I wished I had.

After a while I heard Momma on the back porch, banging the water dipper against the well bucket and calling my name.

“Coming, Momma.”

She was waiting in the kitchen with a cup of hot Postum. “Child, it's freezing out there. Land sakes! I thought you fell through the hole in the outhouse.”

“I was just having a little talk with Pop. That's all.”

“Oh,” said Momma. “And what did he have to say?”

I shrugged. “Nothing much.”

During the night I dreamed about Granddaddy standing in the middle of Brookford pointing a gun at Pop. He was yanking that trigger finger. And I just knew my pop was about to die.

I woke up with one big question.
Why did Granddaddy hate his own young'un so much?

I headed off to school that morning without finishing that paper on Woodrow Wilson. Every time I thought about it, my mind went back to Granddaddy and how he went from talking about President Wilson to my pop. What in the world did they have to do with each other?

When the bus turned in to the school I could see where the highway made a sharp turn toward Hickory. At the bottom of that hill on the way into town was Brookford. My aunts, who were too sorry to take care of their own daddy, were less than a half mile away from me right that minute.

All of a sudden I wanted to talk to them. Maybe I could learn some things. So, just like that, I decided to pay a visit to Pop's sisters.

I waited until last to get off the bus. When the rest of the students went through the side door of the school, I moseyed over to the front of the school grounds past Miss Hinkle's Plymouth and all the other teachers' cars. And then I took off at a run—down the bank, across the
road, and into the trees on the other side of the highway.

It didn't take me ten minutes to reach the aunts' houses. I followed the stepping-stones to Lucille's front porch and knocked on the door. There was a window beside the door, and Aunt Lucille pulled back the lace curtain and peeked out at me. Her eyes widened, and I saw from the way her mouth flew open and how she threw her hand over her heart that I had caught her by surprise. She dropped the curtain and then the latch rattled and she opened the door.