Willow Run (3 page)

Suppose he was dead?

He reached up to wave away a Japanese beetle. They were all over the place, chomping away at the vegetables as fast as he planted them.

I walked toward him. He was alive, certainly he was alive. What was I thinking of? He had told me once he wanted to live to be a hundred. And he still had a way to go.

He looked up from under his bushy eyebrows and pushed back his hat with one large hand. A rim of dirt lined his nails: he was always running a clump of soil between his fingers or sifting it across his wrist, then rubbing it in.

“When your grandmother Margaret died,” he had told me once, “I felt better kneeling in the dirt, watching my plants grow. That and …” His voice trailed off. Grandpa could drive you crazy, beginning a sentence and stopping halfway through.

“What?” I had asked.

“Edward,” he had said.
Edvard
. “And you.” He pointed at me. “You make me feel better. Who knows why?”

“Bah,” I had answered, his favorite word, pleased in spite of myself. We had grinned at each other.

“Well, Margaret,” he said now.
Vell, Mar-gar-et
.

“Meggie.”

Grandpa hauled himself to his feet, papers scattering. One landed at my toes: our entry for the Sweetheart Soap contest. I scooped it up. “There's mud all over this. We spent two hours working on it and now…”

He peered down at the splotched paper in my hand. “It's not how it looks, Margaret. It's the words we have here.”
Verds
. He tapped the paper with his thumb. “We might even win this time.”

Impossible. No one would want to touch this. “Think, Grandpa. It's a
soap
contest.”

He threw back his head and laughed. His laugh was the best thing about him. Eddie and I always said so. His teeth were strong and even below his gray mustache, and his eyes crinkled, almost like the pictures of Santa Claus in Macy's window every Christmas. When Grandpa laughed, we couldn't help laughing, too.

“I sent an entry to the oatmeal contest,” I told him. “I'm probably going to win that, anyway.”

I wouldn't win in a hundred years.

“Nasty stuff, that oatmeal,” he said.

I nodded. Suppose I did win? I'd have to eat oatmeal for breakfast the rest of my life. That was the prize. A lifetime supply of oatmeal.

I wondered what the prize for the oleo contest was. But winning was winning. Grandpa and I had a plan. When we won our first contest we were going to take ourselves on the bus to New York City and see the sights. It was a secret, of course. Only Eddie knew.

Grandpa looked at his watch. “Enough time to weed a little?”

I let the paper drop back into the pile. “I just came to say goodbye. Mom and Dad said they'd be over later.”

“I counted,” he said. “Fourteen blossoms on the first cucumber vine.”

I didn't like the way his eyes looked, almost the way they did when he dusted the picture of my grandmother Margaret in his living room… the only thing he dusted in the whole house.

If I said “Come with us,” would he leave his house and his garden? I thought he might. But what about the swastika on his window, and the factory, and the OSS? I thought of prison. I couldn't ask him.

“You'll have fourteen cucumbers.” I tried not to look at him.

He walked past me down the path, patting the flat leaves as if they were his babies.

I remembered suddenly. “I have a letter in my pocket. Mom said to bring it over for you to read.”

He still didn't answer.

Was Grandpa crying?

Of course not.

I handed him the letter, the thin envelope with red, white, and blue edges. He stood there, patting it the way he had patted the plants, then leaned against the tree to read it.

It wasn't much to read, I knew that, and it had been written two months ago: still April, when the plants hadn't even begun to sprout in Grandpa's garden. Much too soon to know if Eddie had been in Normandy. I knew the letter by heart.

… the war has to end one of these days. In the meantime I think of you and miss you, Mom and Dad, Meggie, Grandpa, and even the cats. I'll be home when this is over, and I can't wait.

Grandpa crumpled the envelope, and now I was sure he
was
crying. “I'm glad Mrs. Easterly is next door,” I said to fill up the no-talking space.

Grandpa turned, his eyes rimmed with red. “Don't you worry about me, Margaret.”

“I'm not worried, not one bit.”

“Good thing.”

I didn't even want to mention the garden. “Maybe you could go fishing with …” I couldn't think of anyone.

“I'll go by myself. Probably catch my dinner every day
without anyone knocking over the bait box and splashing her feet in the water.”

I bit the inside of my lip. Fishing with Grandpa was just the opposite of what he was saying. He was the one who couldn't move two inches without dropping the hooks into the water, never to be seen again.

Last week the ham sandwiches had gone off the bridge. A bunch of killies had attacked the bread like piranhas, and the brown paper bag with the napkins had sunk to the bottom, one soggy mess. All we had between us was six cents. We didn't have anything to eat all day but a pair of Chiclets he found in his pocket.

“Pay attention,” he said now.

“I am.”

“What did I say?”

I tried to think. What was he always saying? “You're going to fertilize…”

“No.”

“You're going to…ah…go to the movies without me.” I took a wild guess.
“Stage Door Canteen.”

“That hasn't been there for months.” He handed me Eddie's crumpled letter. “Don't lose this, now.”

“I'm not the one…,” I began, and gave up.

“Come on,” he said, “I'll show you something inside.”

I followed him into the small room in back of the kitchen, his office. The desk took up most of the room and
was filled with contest entries, and bills, and newspaper clippings. A small table was covered with pictures: Mom when she was a girl, Eddie and me, one of Grandma Margaret standing in front of the Neckar River in Heidelberg, where she had grown up. But the best thing, Grandpa always said, was his Victory medal from the Great War. I picked it up. The rainbow ribbon was faded and the medal was tarnished, but Grandpa kept it in the place of honor next to Margaret's picture.

“You must have been brave to get this,” I said.

Grandpa leaned over my shoulder and touched the angel on the front. “It's the other way around. It reminds me to be brave when I need to be.” He stared out the window. “You have to dig deep before you judge a person,” he said absently. “What do people say? You can't tell a book by its cover.”

What was that all about? I wondered. Had he somehow found out about the swastika on his window? Or maybe he was embarrassed about his accent. It was the first time I'd ever thought of that. Could he possibly know I didn't want him to come to Willow Run?

I glanced over at his second-best thing: a paper tacked up between the windows that said he was a citizen: Josef von Frisch, a new American. The paper was so old it was crinkled on the corners, and it had a damp spot from the hurricane when I was five. It also had a dab of jelly, Eddie's
fingerprint from long ago. If I had done that, Grandpa wouldn't have spoken to me for days. As it was, he had just rubbed at it, making it worse.

Grandpa opened one of the drawers; it was stuffed to the gills, as he would say, with all kinds of junk. He pulled out an envelope and rubbed it against his vest before he handed it to me.

I looked down at his loop-de-loop writing:
lettuce, cukes, and tomatoes;
then shook the envelope.

I glanced up at him. “What's this for… seeds all mixed together?”

“What do you think? Salad, that's what it is. Plant it all when you get to Michigan.”

“All right.”

“Bah. You'll probably lose it.”

I tried to think of an answer, but he was on his way outside again, banging the screen door behind him.

Willow Run, Michigan

Thursday, I think

Dear Grandpa,

We couldn't find anyplace to stay last night, so we slept in the car. I counted nine mosquito bites on one leg and four on the other.

The cats hate this trip. Judy keeps attacking the floor pads. Jiggs keeps attacking my feet.

People in a Model A Ford just like ours were
parked next to us. They were on their way to work in a war factory, too, but in the opposite direction.

A girl was crying next to the window. But not me.

Meggie

The car was filthy, caked with mud from a thunderstorm in Rochester, grit from a blast of wind in Ohio, and a smear of greasy yellow dirt on the fender from somewhere in Michigan.

“We're here,” Dad said.

Here was nowhere. A long building that went on forever, cars pulling up in front, people streaming in and out the doors like Macy's. What had I expected Willow Run to be like? I tried to think. Maybe the Emerald City in
The Wizard of Oz
. At least someplace shiny and beautiful.

“It's the factory.” Dad waved his hand. “Henry Ford's assembly line for the war effort.”

I didn't know who Henry Ford was, didn't know what an assembly line was, and I didn't care. I was sticking to the backseat of the car, boiling hot, while the two cats were fur coats covering my feet. “We're going to live in a factory?”

“Come on, get out. I'll show you,” he said.

We walked through the gates. Dad showed a tag to a woman at a table; then we poked our heads into the wide doorway. It was hot, it was noisy, people were all over the place, and pieces of metal were on tables and…

“Enough for now,” Dad said. “Mom is hot in the car.” We slid back in and Dad waved his arm toward the factory. “Instead of cars, Ford is making bombers, B-24s. The same way though—everyone working on one piece at a time.” His round glasses glinted in the sunlight. “It's a mile long, this factory, the largest in the world. If only I could fly one of those B-24s …” He broke off. “But the next best thing is to build them.”

Mom turned toward him, her plump hand on his arm, her face red from the heat. “I know how much you miss flying.”

For a moment no one said anything. We watched people going in and out, hundreds of them, it seemed. If Dad had been able to fly, he'd have been in the war like Eddie. I was glad he wasn't, glad he wore those owl glasses. “I might die of thirst in this car,” I said to make him laugh.

He did laugh. “Just the last few streets to go.” He started
the car and drove along blocks of apartment houses with a few trailers here and there and a couple of shacks leaning against each other. Not a garden in sight.

Grandpa would hate it.

“All this was thrown up in about two minutes to house the workers,” Dad said. “It must have been beautiful before the war, green fields and trees, and once maybe a stream.”

“It'll be lovely again,” Mom said. “Someday soon.”

I knew she was thinking about Eddie coming home, wishing it were soon.

Dad turned the corner and I could see an ice cream truck hugging the curb,
SUNDAE, MONDAY, AND ALWAYS
painted on the side. A boy about Eddie's age was leaning against the side, jingling the bells.

Dad stopped the car. “Three sundaes, please.” He held out a bunch of change. “Strawberry, I guess.”

I looked up over the paper I was working on, a contest for Renkens milk, and waved at the boy with my pencil, but he didn't smile. His hair fell over his face, almost hiding his eyes. He stuck his head inside the square opening of his truck and backed out to hand us our ice creams with wooden spoons on top.

What a grouch.

And he'd given us chocolate.

As we drove away I looked back. I pulled my braid over my upper lip to make a tan Hitler mustache and raised my arm in a Nazi salute. “
Heil
Hitler,” I yelled.

My friend Lily loved that face. “What?” Mom said. “Nothing,” I said back, watching as the ice cream boy began to laugh. His whole face changed; then he walked around the side of the truck where I couldn't see him.

I turned around to watch the street as I licked the ice cream off the lid. Every single apartment was the same. Gray. Not a curtain on a window.

“People come and go,” Dad said. “Some of them come for the war effort, and some to make money for the first time in their lives. Such good jobs.”

He turned the key and the hum of the motor stopped. It was strange to hear the silence. “Anyway,” he said. “We're here for the duration.” He opened the door and wandered up the walk.

A kindergarten kid could have drawn it: a long low box that stretched from one end of the paper to the other, no paint, no color. And if you divided the box into tiny sections, each family would have one to live in. Worst of all, there was no grass, nothing growing, only tree stumps near the curb, their tops pale and raw. I remembered what Grandpa had said once, shaking his head in anger. “To kill a tree!”

I could see that Mom was as disappointed as I was. I handed the cats to her, one by one, then backed out of the car.

Dad was already turning the key in the lock. Mom
looked over her shoulder at me, her roly-poly face flushed. “It's just for the duration.”

The duration again. Hadn't I heard that a hundred times! As if the war were going to end tomorrow.

Mom went up the path with Judy, the mother cat, digging her front claws into her shoulder. The cats thought it was crazy we were here instead of home.

I was beginning to think so, too, but I wasn't going to let anyone know that, especially the kids who were standing at the edge of the walk staring at us. And not only that, people were wandering around all over the place: two women circling around me swinging lunch pails; a girl slapping a jump rope on the cement—
“Strawberry shortcake cream on top, tell me the name of your sweetheart”
—a man at a window, his radio blaring war news.

Someone was playing a song on a Victrola; it was scratchy and skipped a little:
“We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when.”
I'd heard that song over and over. I went around the side of the car, trying not to think about our house on the canal. Instead, I traced my name on the hood with one finger:
Meggie Dillon
. It stood out against the dust, the loopy
M
and the plump
D
towering above the other letters.