Operation Yes (11 page)

“Why, ma'am?” Melissa finally spoke up in a small voice. “What's happened, ma'am?”

“Miss Loupe has had an emergency come up.” Mrs. Heard unbuttoned and re-buttoned the top jeweled fastener on her suit jacket.

“It's all my fault, ma'am!” Melissa burst out. “Please don't blame Miss Loupe!”

Mrs. Heard's voice was quieter than Bo had ever heard it. “Melissa, please calm down,” she said. “It's not about that. She would have told you if …” She paused. Then into the silence, she said:

“It's Miss Loupe's brother. His unit in Afghanistan reported him missing.”

The class erupted.

“Marc! He sat on our couch! … The Super Bowl … Remember, the cat ate his salsa … I can't believe he … his box is still … Army … missing … Does that mean … He's dead?”

Gari sat in the middle of the chaos, not saying a word. She squeezed the one little green army figure still in her pocket. She didn't know much about Marc, not like the rest of the class.

He'll be okay,
thought Gari.
He'll be okay. He has to be.

But the words in her head couldn't drown out the other words
in there too. The ones that had popped into her head like huge splotches of red paint when she'd heard the words
Army
and
missing
and
dead
:

It will feel like this. When it happens to me, it will feel like this.

The weekend, for once, felt too long.

On Saturday, Trey asked Bo to go to the skate park, and they dropped in the steepest side, over and over, until their legs and ankles hurt. They asked Gari too, because Bo knew his dad would want them to, but she refused to come. Instead, she went to the BX and bought the last bag of little green army men.

Bo's mom made macaroni and cheese for dinner, a giant casserole's worth, with toasted crumbs on top, the kind she used to make before she became a P.E. teacher and lost fifty pounds. She made an extra casserole and placed it in the freezer.

“Just in case,” she said.

Gari ate two bites and went to check her e-mail.

 

Hi, baby. Only have a minute. Crazy busy here. My FOB trip was approved, so I have to prep for that. Plus a million other things.

Is everything okay? You haven't been writing much. I'll try to call soon.

All the time,

Mom

P.S. Have you taken any pictures yet?

 

While Gari was on the computer, Bo sneaked into her room and borrowed the mouthpiece off her trumpet. He didn't feel bad because she hadn't even picked it up since she'd gotten there, not even when he'd asked her if she could play it. When Taps sounded that night, he tried not to think about when he'd heard it in movies: at funerals. He put the mouthpiece to his lips and acted as if he were a magnificent trumpet player.

On Sunday, after church, Gari tried to reach Tandi. She wasn't home. Gari got a new plastic bag and sat on her bed and folded star after star after star. She wasn't folding them for Tandi anymore. She was folding them because if she didn't, those awful paint splotches of words filled her head. Even after an afternoon of folding, the bag still looked empty.

Bo's dad made confidential phone calls to his contacts in the Army, but no one knew more than the initial report about Marc. Or they weren't saying.

Indy ate a small hole in the hallway carpet and a large one in the toe of a black shoe that she found in Bo's room.

Gari stared at her new bag of army men and thought of the others she'd left in the bathroom. If someone found them now, without the publicity of the School Commission visit, her message wouldn't get farther than the principal's office.

Mrs. Heard called Miss Loupe at her apartment six times, but got no answer.

Miss Loupe did not return on Monday.

Bo hated the substitute teacher that Mrs. Heard hired. She wore shoes that clicked loudly on the floor and only one pair of earrings, and she was tall. Bo didn't listen to anything she said. He didn't answer when she asked questions. He stared at his name near the bottom of the list of the Ugly Couch Players and tried to remember how good it had felt to put it there. Miss Loupe's name was first on that list. What were the chances that she would come back?

On Tuesday, Kylie forgot her sash for Safety Patrol. Melissa broke three pencils, and Zac started an argument with Sanjay over who got to be first in line for lunch. Shaunelle tried to straighten one of Miss Loupe's posters, but instead made it fall off the wall. The substitute reviewed probability concepts for the scheduled math test, but Room 208 got so many answers wrong that she decided to postpone it.

And so, on Wednesday, five days after the news about Marc, the Ugly, Ugly Couch still sat in one corner of the Young Oaks cafeteria, wedged between a stack of plywood and two sealed
cans of Stone Gray paint. Several musty boxes of Student Handbooks were piled onto its cushions, and the plaid woolen blanket Mrs. Purdy had thrown over it camouflaged the whole mess. Even the couch's odor was masked by the thick smell of beef chili and the highly unusual scent of freshly baked cornbread. Only a stray roll of masking tape betrayed the couch's presence, by lifting the edge of the blanket enough to reveal one of its heavy brass feet.

Near this carefully concealed mound, Room 208 had claimed the same two lunch tables it always did: one for the boys and one for the girls.

At the boys' table, Bo sniffed his watery chili.
Yuck.
He should open his chocolate milk first. He tapped his straw on the table to loosen its wrapper and thought of Miss Loupe, rowing and chanting to her own beat. And Marc, who had probably sung jody calls in basic training. He felt itchy inside.

“I don't know, but I've been told …” he said loudly.

He pointed the still-wrapped straw at Sanjay, who was sitting across from him.

Sanjay looked surprised at the challenge. “Uh … You stop running … uh …” He shrugged. “… your boots will mold?”

“Lame,” Bo said. He jabbed the straw at Zac, who was sitting in Dillon's old seat, and chanted again: “I don't know, but I've been told …”

Zac said without thinking, “Generals' butts are made of gold!”

“Whooo! Yeah!” Rick yelled. Then he looked apologetically over at Bo. “Sorry.”

“He's a colonel, not a general,” said Bo.

“He will be,” said Rick.

An announcement crackled over the school's PA system:

“Students, staff: Excuse the interruption, please. The School Commission's return visit, which was scheduled for this afternoon, has been postponed.”

“I knew it,” said Allison. She opened her lunch bag. Carrots and cookies. “They're
never
coming back! They should put somebody who knows the right people on that Commission. Like me.”

Melissa sprinkled her chili with crumbled cornbread, trying to make it thick enough to stay on her plastic fork. “Who cares about them? Why doesn't she announce when Miss Loupe is coming back? Or what's happening with Marc? Why doesn't anyone ever tell us what's going on?”

Gari ignored all of them. She wasn't eating anything. Instead, she arranged and rearranged her soldiers on the table in front of her.

Mrs. Heard was still talking:

“… your cooperation in keeping Young Oaks neat and orderly. Unfortunately, the School Commission has not yet set a new date for their arrival, so I cannot tell you when to expect them. It may happen on short notice. Therefore, please keep up the good work. We want them to see that we take pride in our school, even as we seek its improvement.”

Mrs. Purdy harrumphed. She had half a mind to take the cornbread muffins she had made from scratch for the School Commission and feed them to the birds on the playground.

The speaker crackled for a second, and then came back on:

“One last announcement: The base has informed me that the jet noise may be louder than usual all this week. The demonstration team is rehearsing for the air show this weekend. Remember to
beaaaar
with it!”

Bo sang out again: “I don't know, but I've been told …”

Trey beat back his reply: “Heard's not dead, she's just real old!”

The whole boys' table whooped with laughter, but at the word
dead
, Bo's itchiness came back. He lifted his straw in the air and blew off its wrapper at Sanjay. Sanjay snatched the wrapper, wadded it up, and surprised everybody by throwing it at the girls' table. It landed in Martina's chili.

Martina giggled, but Allison rolled her eyes in disgust. She swiped one of Gari's army men and lobbed it at Sanjay.

 

On the opposite side of the school, Mr. Nix's class paused in their construction of the giant card they were making. Red and white stripes (not quite parallel) covered a piece of poster board, except for the upper left corner, which was painted a solid blue. Each first grader, when instructed to do so by Mr. Nix, was taking a turn with the paper punch, clipping pairs of tightly spaced holes into the blue rectangle at regular intervals. A pile of fifty crisp yellow ribbons all cut to the same length lay ready to be threaded through the holes and tied into loops.

Mr. Nix supervised them closely: “Forty-seven … Don't make the holes too close! Forty-eight … That's good, nice and straight … Forty-nine …”

“I love it at the air show when the planes sneak up from behind and scare you!” one first grader said. She whooshed her hand over Tony's head as he took his turn with the hole punch.

“Fifty!” Mr. Nix surveyed his class. “Who knows what the fiftieth state to join the Union was?”

“Corn dogs!” a boy said, smacking his lips. “Funnel cakes! Barbecue! I'm going to eat everything!”

 

In the library, Miss Candy flicked the light switch in her storage room. Nothing happened.
Tuck Everlasting!
The light must have burned out. Where was the media cart? Mr. Nix had asked to show a movie this afternoon, and the cart was somewhere behind all the construction materials that had been stacked out of sight. Airman Kresge had helped her store most of the supplies in here for the School Commission visit, but now he wasn't available to help her take it all out. At least not until after the air show. The overflow had gone to the cafeteria, which Mrs. Purdy had grumbled about. Was
still
grumbling about.

 

The little green figure skimmed by Sanjay's head, bounced off Zac's cheek, and ricocheted into Bo's milk carton. The nearly full carton turned over and poured a pint of chocolate liquid onto Trey's lap.

 

“No one knows the fiftieth state?” Mr. Nix said.

“Who's this card for?” said Tony, who was still holding the paper punch. “I forget.”

“Hawaii,” Mr. Nix said. “H-A-W-A-I-I is the fiftieth state. Notice there are two A's and two I's.”

 

Trey and Bo picked up their corn muffins —

“I don't know, but it's been said —”

— and threw them.

“Girls are dumb as pencil lead!”

 

In the dim light, Miss Candy bumped into a corner of the media cart. Ouch! She rubbed her bruised thigh and inspected the cart. Its shelves had been stacked with boxes and papers. She hurriedly shoved them off and pulled the movie Mr. Nix had requested from the closet shelf. She couldn't make it out in the dark, but it seemed to be a video about staying safe when you find yourself alone at home. It had come in last week; she hadn't had a chance to preview it. She put the video on the cart and edged toward the door.

 

A corn muffin hit Allison's bag of Oreos, dumping them onto the floor. She reached down and picked up several of the cookies —

“I don't know, but I've been told —”

— and handed them to her troops. They launched their ammunition high into the air.

“Boys smell worse than ten dead toads!”

 

“Hawaii?” Tony said. “This card is going to —”

“No, it's not going to Hawaii,” Mr. Nix said. “Weren't you listening when I explained —”

Ca-click. Ca-click.

Mr. Nix reached for the paper punch, but it was too late. America now had a fifty-first state.

 

Corn muffins and cookies and army men flew in the air. Straws, milk cartons, a whole bowl of chili. The boys stood up on their chairs and pelted crackers down on the girls. The girls shot their carrot missiles at the boys' heads. Rick stepped from his chair up onto the boys' table, and it tilted over with a crash. Gari ducked and wove through the battlefield, trying to retrieve all her men. Trays flew in all directions. Chili mixed with chocolate milk, and the sticky liquid from canned peaches coated the floor. They were throwing and dodging and slipping and yelling until no one knew who was on which side anymore.

 

Miss Candy wheeled the cart down the hall. As she passed the cafeteria, Mrs. Purdy exploded from the double glass doors, her hands waving in the air.

“OUT!” she yelled. “I will not tolerate fights in MY cafeteria! March straight to Mrs. Heard's office. ALL OF YOU!!”

A small group of boys and girls from Miss Loupe's sixth-grade class stumbled out of the cafeteria. The girls broke into a run, so they could get to Mrs. Heard's office first and tell their side of the story.

Oh, Winn-Dixie,
thought Miss Candy.
We're in for it now.

 

Mr. Nix wondered if he could tape and paint over the extra pair of punched holes. Miss Loupe would think his class didn't know
how many stars were on an American flag! Or worse, she would think he couldn't count! He removed the giant card from his students' reach, placing it on his desk.

Miss Candy tapped at his classroom door.

“Your movie, Mr. Nix,” she said. “Keep the VCR as long as you like. No one else has asked for it today.”

 

“Some cheap
Army
thing started it,” Allison was telling Mrs. Heard.
“Hers.”
She tossed her hair in Gari's direction and held up one of the little green men.

“Oh?” Mrs. Heard said. “Would you empty your pockets please, Gari?”

Silently, Gari emptied her pockets onto Mrs. Heard's desk. Little green soldiers covered the stacks of paper. She was glad she'd left her new bag of stars safe inside her desk in Room 208. Mrs. Heard might have flipped out seeing them again.

 

Mr. Nix put the video in the VCR.

“Class, this video will help you if you ever find yourself at home alone without your mother or your father or another responsible adult. Please pay attention to its important message about safety.”

He pressed the play button and glanced at his watch. The video was about ten minutes long. That should be enough time to slip down the hall to see if there was more blue paint in the supply cabinet….

 

“The rest of you, empty your pockets too!” Mrs. Heard commanded.

Sanjay had a ticket stub from a movie.

Melissa had a spool of dental floss.

Rick had a fake spider tattoo and wax for his braces.

Martina pulled out a movie ticket stub and a note from Sanjay, with a red ink heart on it.

Allison didn't have pockets in her skirt, so she leaned over to stare at Sanjay's note.

Aimee got the giggles. She tried and tried to stop, but she couldn't. Mrs. Heard told her to sit down and hold her breath.

Trey had a pencil stub and a half-finished picture of a school swarming with secret agents.

Zac had nothing but a ball of lint.

Bo produced one earplug, two golf balls, two bits of wadded-up tape, a worn strip of cloth with a key attached, and a mouthpiece. From a trumpet.

Gari stared at the mouthpiece and then stepped on Bo's foot, twisting her heel silently back and forth into his toes, below Mrs. Heard's line of sight.

 

When Miss Candy returned to the library, she tried to bring some order back to the storage closet. At least with the TV cart gone, she had space to turn around. She picked up a stapled packet of papers from the floor. The cover sheet was ripped and had a spot of gray paint on it. She tilted it toward the doorway, where there was more light.

“Assessment of the Physical Condition of My Classroom and the Surrounding Environment,” she read.

She picked up another packet, shaking off the sawdust. It said the same thing.

Rhyme and Reason!
What were Mrs. Heard's papers doing in her closet?

 

On the base, Airman Peters was high in the glass-enclosed top of the control tower. He could see the narrator for the demo team standing below him beside the runway, preparing to rehearse her voice-over for the air show. He radioed the single jet on the runway.

“Demo One, you are cleared for takeoff. Maintain at or below twenty-five thousand feet.”

“Demo One is cleared for takeoff,” confirmed the pilot.

 

In Mr. Nix's room, the class sat glued to their seats as, on the TV screen, a masked figure crept toward an oblivious babysitter who was eating popcorn on an ugly, ugly couch. The sound of a slightly out-of-tune piano tinkled in the back-ground.

 

Mrs. Heard picked up her phone to call the mothers and fathers of all the students standing before her in the office.

“I think my mom's not home now,” Allison said. “I think she's, like, having lunch with the mayor.”

 

Airman Peters watched the demo jet leap from the runway up into the brilliant fall sky, tucking its landing gear away as it rose.
It turned west, setting up for a low pass back over the airfield. The narrator on the ground addressed an imaginary crowd.