Across a War-Tossed Sea (7 page)

Freddy looked at Wesley's hand with surprise, then took it.
“Shall?”
He made a face like he'd just bitten into a sour apple. Then he grinned, showing he was teasing, and imitated Wesley's clipped British accent. “Pleased to meet you.”

They laughed.

Wesley stepped off the porch and let his eyes adjust to the moonlight. It was a fairly new moon rising and didn't give off much light. Even so, Wesley fairly skipped on his way home. Not only did he have good news for Charles, Wesley might actually have made a friend.

“W
alk on!” Bobby shouted. Standing behind a plow, he faced the rear end of two mules. He snapped one of the long reins he held so the strap rippled forward along its length to whack one of the animals' rumps.

The mule snorted and bobbed his head. But he didn't budge.

Bobby flipped the other rein so it snapped the butt of the other mule. She laid her ears back and swished her tail. But she didn't move either. “Aw, g'on, Belle!” He clucked.

Hee-haw, hee-haw.
Belle seemed to laugh.

Bobby kicked the dirt. “I can't believe there's not enough gas for the tractor! We're getting nowhere with these ornery jackasses. This is ridiculous.” He let go of the plow's handles and cupped his hands to his mouth. “Dad!” he shouted. “Dad-dyyyyy!”

“That's real smart, Bobby,” said Ron. “As if Dad could hear you over the shredder.”

Up by the barn's silo, Mr. Ratcliff and Ed were shoving acres of cut cornstalks into a buzz-saw shredder. Across the fields, Ed's sons and two of their friends were raking and pitchforking mown hay into a tractor baler. Those machines were using the only rationed gas Mr. Ratcliff had left for the month, even though he had an “essential farmer” quota.

So it was up to the boys to turn over the soil of the shorn cornfields to plant winter wheat the old fashioned way—with a heavy plow pulled by a pair of mules. For a Londoner, this kind of work was all new and shockingly hard. Bobby was trying to guide the iron blade to cut the earth in a relatively straight furrow between the old corn rows. The corn stubble would actually shield the tender wheat shoots from frosty winds and prevent winterkill—a brilliant bit of practical thinking, but one that required precision. The mules' resistance was turning the already backbreaking task into a terrible battle.

“Okay, Mr. Big Shot, go take Belle by the bridle,” Bobby directed Ron. “If we can get her to move, Jake will follow.” Bobby pulled off his work gloves and, holding them up like a riding crop, positioned himself by the mule's rear end. “Chuck, you take hold of the plow for a few minutes.”

Charles had been walking behind Bobby with a sack of seed, tossing handfuls into the freshly churned ground. Following him, Wesley and Ron had been raking soil on top of the seed, while the twins tiptoed behind, pressing down the dirt so it wouldn't blow away and expose the seed to hungry birds. Even though Bobby called him a city slicker, Charles knew to safeguard the precious seed from spilling. Before taking hold of the plow's splintery handles, he hung the burlap sack on Wesley's shoulder. “Be careful with that,” he warned. Then he stepped into Bobby's post behind the mules.

With Ron yanking on her bridle and Bobby smacking her butt, Belle moved. Jake did follow. But within moments Charles knew exactly why the mules had stopped dead before. In ten strides, they stepped on an underground yellow-jacket nest, its entrance hole covered with weeds. A few seconds later those mules were covered with dozens of mad, stinging wasps.

Hee-haw, hee-haw!
The animals lurched forward, bucking in panic, straining against the plow's lines to break free from the pain.

Ron jumped aside and ran away, hollering and swatting yellow jackets off himself.

Bobby stayed with the kicking, lunging mules, even though Charles could see he was being swarmed. “Whoaaaaa now, Belle. Easy, Jake.” Bobby's voice was somehow calm.

Charles followed his friend's lead and stuck to his post. He pulled back on the long reins with all his might. But he was no match for the mules' panicked strength. They yanked Charles forward, bashing his chest against the top crossbeam of the plow.

“God's teeth!”
Charles cursed, barely able to breathe from the blow. But he righted himself and planted his feet. He wrapped the reins once, twice around his hands to have a better grip—just like he'd done in games of tug-of-war at his London boys' school. He wasn't about to be bested by two mules.

But instinct ruled the mules now. Belle knocked Bobby to the ground as she fought against the plow's harness. Jake reared and bucked, reared and bucked.

SNAP!
The chain connecting the mules to the plow broke. They bolted. The mules were free.

Charles was not.

Pulled by the leather tied around his hands, Charles vaulted into the air. He hit the dirt face-first. Charles felt himself being dragged, fast, over grasses and cornstalk roots. Spluttering, choking on soil, he tried desperately to worm his wrists free from the leather handcuffs he'd made for himself.

Behind him somewhere, he heard Wesley screaming, “Charles!”

“Let go of the reins, Chuck!” Bobby called. “Let go!”

“Stop, stop, stop!” shrieked the twins.

Spooked by the shouts, the mules only ran faster.

Charles managed to pull himself up enough so his face was at least off the ground. He could see Ed's cottage coming up fast, and behind it, the road. This will be a bloody stupid way to die, Charles thought as he bounced and slid and fought to release himself. He could just hear the lads back home. They'll have a laugh won't they—
Charles Bishop ran away from the Nazis, only
to have his neck broken behind a mule's backside!

“Chuck! Let go the reins!” Bobby's voice was much farther back now.

Charles thought his arms might pull out of their sockets. About two hundred yards to the roadway now.

Suddenly the mules stopped short—like a switch had been flipped off.

Charles heard Bobby thunder up behind him, felt Bobby uncoil the leather straps and yank him away from the reins' hold. “You all right, Chuck? You hurt?”

Charles was scraped up and his clothes were torn, but he seemed to be in one piece.

“Charles!” Wesley ran up, panting. “Thank goodness. You're alive!”

He was followed by the twins.

“Can you walk, Chuck?” Bobby asked as he pulled Charles to his feet and held him up.

Charles took a few wobbly steps, supported by Bobby. “I'm okay,” he said feebly. “What stopped them?”

Wesley pointed at a silent, solemn boy the mules were nuzzling, now completely calm. “It's Freddy!”

Wesley was making introductions as Ron stormed up, shouting about being stung.

Bobby ignored him. “I'm mighty grateful to you, Freddy. How'd you stop those jackass mules anyway?”

Freddy shrugged, holding out a piece of cornbread. “Happened to have some leftovers in my pocket. Main thing, though, is not to act like a jackass yourself and be making so much noise around them when they're already scared.”

Bobby laughed. “True enough! Well, thank you. I think you might have saved old Chuck's life here.”

He still had his arm around Charles, propping him. “Let's get you back to the house, Chuck, and let Mama give you a once-over just to be sure nothing's busted.” Slowly Bobby turned Charles and guided his steps toward the farmhouse. He called back over his shoulder: “Ron, get the mules back to the barn.”

“What the hell?” Ron blurted. “Did you hear me say I got stung bad?”

“Yeah, I heard. I've stings on me, too.” Bobby kept walking with Charles.

“Not as many as me! I got 'em all over.” Ron darted ahead of them and planted himself in front of Bobby. “Look!” His arms were red and blotchy and swelling up fast. “I'm the one you should be helping!”

“Just like you helped me when the mules were rearing and kicking? Just like you helped Chuck when they bolted and he was being dragged? You made the choice to turn tail and look after yourself. So you just keep on doing that.” Bobby sidestepped Ron and continued to the house with Charles.

Ron stood watching them for a moment, balling and unballing his fists. Wesley thought he heard Ron muttering, “I'm your brother, not him.” But before Wesley could tell for sure, Ron stomped toward the house. He shouted back over his shoulder, “You take care of the mules, limey.”

“Shoo-ee.” Freddy whistled. “That one's trouble.”

“You can say that again,” Wesley replied.

“Shoo-ee,” Freddy repeated with a grin. “That one's trouble.”

He helped Wesley take the mules back to the barn. The boys unharnessed them and hosed their sting-welts with cold well water. “See you later?” Wesley asked as Freddy headed back to Ed's house.

“Not if I see you sooner.”

It was an old joke, but Wesley knew it was the kind friends made and were polite enough to laugh over. This was turning out to be a good day! he thought happily. Charles didn't die, and it looked liked Freddy might become a real chum.

Back at the house, Wesley found Charles sitting in a rocker on the porch. His arms were bandaged and Patsy was pressing a wet washcloth against his eye. “It's going to be a proper shiner,” Charles told Wesley with a grin.

Bobby and Ron sat on the stoop, and seemed to be ignoring each other. Both were slathered with a paste of baking soda and water to pull the venom out of their stings. Wesley had to admit he didn't feel the least bit sorry for Ron, though he knew he should. He told Bobby that he'd put the mules away and fed them.

“Thanks, Wes, you're a real chum,” said Bobby, copying the Bishops' lingo for once.

Wesley could see Ron seethe. He changed the subject before Ron thought up something nasty to say. “Where are the twins?”

“I sent them to the woods to look for Halloween props,” answered Bobby, perking up with the thought of his party. “Mulberries to mush into bowls to look like guts, and monkey balls for brains.” Bobby burst out laughing at his own accidentally off-color joke.

Monkey balls were wrinkled, green, grapefruit-size fruit of the Osage orange tree that grew wild everywhere in the woods. When they'd arrived in the States, Wesley and Charles had thought them one of the weirdest-looking things they'd ever seen.

“We're going to blindfold people and get them to stick their hands in stuff as we lead them through blackout curtains,” Bobby continued. “You and the twins get to sit in the corners and moan. Like this,
Whoo-a, whoo-a, whoo-a
.” He waved his hands in Ron's face, then elbowed his younger brother. Wesley knew he was trying to make peace. Bobby was like that.

But Ron continued to sulk.

“Honestly, you boys,” said Patsy. “Don't you have anything better to do?”

Bobby grinned at her. “Nope.”

She rolled her eyes, but laughed all the same. She took the washcloth from Charles's face. “That's going to be black and blue. Thank goodness nothing worse happened.”

She went inside. Charles let out a long sigh.

Wesley almost asked his brother if the Ratcliffs had given him a shot of whiskey for pain, he was acting so dopey. But he had another question: “Hey, Bobby, may I invite Freddy to the haunted house?”

Bobby's smile vanished.

“The Negro boy?” Ron nearly shouted.

“Freddy, yes,” Wesley answered.

“Do you know what my friends would say if…”

Bobby held up his hand to cut off Ron. “I'm sorry, Wes. Not tonight.”

“Why not tonight?”

Bobby looked at the ground for a moment and then back up to Wesley. “If it were just us, or on any other night, I'd say for sure. Honest. But…” He paused. “There're definitely some people coming tonight who wouldn't like it, and Halloween's an especially bad night to invite Freddy, Wes. People do stupid things on Halloween. You have to trust me on this.”

It was one of the few times Wesley had ever seen Bobby look uncomfortable and unsure of himself. Wesley knew that black children had to attend a different school from the whites, but this was a party at their house. And hadn't Freddy just kept the mules from running into the road and maybe being hit by a truck? He might have even saved Charles's neck.

Ron folded his arms and smirked.

Wesley looked to his big brother. Come on, Charles, say something, he thought.

But Charles didn't.

“S
ure was nice of Mr. Epstein to give us these marshmallows his wife cooked.” Bobby was helping the twins put two homemade marshmallows onto long sticks to hold into the campfire the boys had built near Malvern Hill, the Civil War battlefield. “She must have used up all her sugar ration for these.”

He sat Jamie and Johnny down at a safe distance from the flames, and then set up his own marshmallow stick. “That was a dynamite haunted house, boys. By my count we collected three bushel baskets of old paper and tin. A right good haul for one night.”

He plopped down next to Charles. “It was fun, don't you think, Chuck? Most every pretty gal from school was there. They sure made a fuss over you.” Bobby shifted his voice to a feminine falsetto, “‘Lawd a' mercy, Charlie, what in the world happened?' ‘Land sakes, can I get you a soda or somethin'?'”

Charles grunted affirmatively, although he'd surprised himself by not being particularly interested in the high school girls that hovered over him. He'd felt an annoying tug at his heart when Patsy had said she could tell that he was “all taken care of” with his “bevy of beauties,” and left his side to oversee the bobbing-for-apples contest.

He stared into the campfire's flame and wondered at himself.

“Okeydokey,” announced Bobby. “Time for ghost stories. Chuck, you must know some doozies from England. What about Bloody Mary, for instance? What was she all about, anyway?”

“Eeewwww,” said Jamie. “Was she oozing guts like a zombie?”

“Maybe she was a vampire, and ripped people's throats up when she bit them,” suggested Johnny hopefully.

Wesley jumped in to answer, and Charles, surprised by his little brother's sudden confidence, let him speak for them.

“No, she was a queen,” said Wesley. “She was Catholic and hated Protestants. So she beheaded them or burned them at the stake if they wouldn't convert. Dreadful woman. So…Bloody Mary.”

The boys stared at Wesley.

“Wait,” Bobby shook his head in confusion. “Mary killed people just because they weren't Catholic? They were still English, right?”

“Right,” said Wesley.

“They just worshipped the Lord in a different way from her?”

“Right,” answered Wesley.

“That's wacky,” said Ron.

“About as insane as refusing to invite a friend to a party just because his skin color is different,” Wesley whispered to Charles.

Charles was relieved the Ratcliffs didn't hear that comment. He frowned at Wesley.

“What is it about religion that makes you people in Europe want to kill each other?” Bobby asked in earnestness. “You know, a few months back Mr. Epstein was worried sick over what's happening to the Jews there at the hands of the Nazis. Hitler's taken all their property and denied them their jobs and even herded them into walled-off sections of cities. Some just seem to disappear altogether. Mr. Epstein says the Allies have hardly paid any attention to it. He was real upset. You hear anything about stuff like that from home, Chuck?”

Before Charles could reply, Ron interrupted, pulling the attention back to himself. He was forever doing that when Charles and Bobby were talking to each other. “Hey, hey, I've got a good ghost story. There was this guy, see, asleep in his bedroom, snoring peaceful-like. Something woke him with a jolt. He sat up. He saw two tiny shiny eyes staring at him from the bottom of his bed. No matter how he shifted around, those eyes followed him. ‘Go away,' he shouted, but the eyes just kind of danced around like they were laughing at him. So the man reached into the drawer of his nightstand. He pulled out his revolver.
BLAM!
” Ron stopped short.

Both twins flinched and gasped at the
BLAM
. “What happened next?” they squeaked.

“The next morning they found the man dead, swimming in his own blood.”

“How?” breathed the twins. “Why?”

“He'd shot his own foot off!” Ron guffawed. “Those shiny eyes were his big ole toenails reflecting the moonlight.”

“That's stupid,” Bobby said, even though he laughed. “Okay, I see you're ready for ghost stories, so let me start. I've got a good one, a real sad, awful one, especially 'cause it's true. And it happened”—he lowered and lengthened his voice for effect—“right here, during the War between the States.” He swept his hand out gesturing to the battlefield. “Ready?”

The boys nodded.

“Sooooo…As y'all know, the Battle of Malvern Hill was the last in the Seven Days campaign. If the Yankees captured Richmond, the war could have ended right then and there. If General Bobby Lee beat them bad enough, though, that might have ended the war, too. So each side was desperate to win the day.

“Right about here”—Bobby pointed to a stand of trees—“was a small group of Southerners, trying to hold their position. Over there”—Bobby pointed down the slope—“was an Irish brigade from the Union. Its captain saw that the Confederates were holding their ground because of the leadership of one daring boy. That Yankee officer called his best sharpshooter and told him he had to take that boy down.

“The sharpshooter raised his rifle and took aim, waiting until that brave Southern boy exposed himself again. Then he fired.
BANG!
”

All the brothers flinched.

“The boy fell over,” Bobby continued. “His company scattered. The Union took the hill. Then the Yankee officer told the sharpshooter to go find the boy because he was so courageous he deserved to get medical help if he still lived.

“Well sir, by and by, the sharpshooter found the boy. He turned the Confederate over onto his back, face up. The boy opened his eyes for just a moment to look at the Yankee sharpshooter. He whispered, ‘Father.' Then he died.” Bobby paused dramatically, making sure he had his audience's full attention before delivering the climactic sentences of his story. His voice grew sad as he told it: “It was the sharpshooter's very own son, who'd run away to the South before the war. The sharpshooter had killed his own child, not recognizing him.”

The boys gasped.

Bobby nodded solemnly. “That poor sharpshooter set off howling up the hill, calling for a charge, straight into a line of Confederates. It was total suicide—they riddled him with bullets.” Bobby stopped once more. “People say on a still night, you hear the crackling shot of a rifle and then the most bloodcurdling outcry of grief and regret you can imagine. If we sit here long enough”—Bobby lowered his voice to a whisper—“we might feel him pass right by us, a-wailing and a-carrying on, reminding us to think twice about going to war.”

That silenced the boys.

Bobby gazed into the darkness and added in a voice hushed with thought, “Thousands of boys died here, and the battle didn't decide a thing. I swear, man is a perplexing species.” He sighed. “You know, a bunch of the guys from last year's football squad are shipping out soon. Bet they're heading over for the coming invasion of France.” He turned back to the campfire and poked at it with a stick before looking back up to his brothers.

The twins' eyes had expanded in fear to the size of golf balls.

“Oops,” Bobby murmured, recognizing that his ghost story had probably been a bit too much for them. He clapped his hands, changing the mood abruptly. “Who can spit into the fire from ten feet out?”

Long into the night, as the other boys slept by the campfire, Charles stewed over that ghost story and Bobby's reaction to Bloody Mary. It was the first time he'd really thought about the ridiculousness of England's Catholics and Protestants murdering each other, basically over how they said their prayers. And what about the American Civil War? How could a father and son end up on opposite sides of such an argument?

Would adults ever stop slaughtering one another? Well, at least this world war was a righteous fight, Charles told himself. Hitler was a monster, no question about that. He had to be stopped. Of course, Hitler should have been shut down before he gained so much power. So many people, including the British—if he were honest about it—had looked the other way for so long, hoping that what was happening, really wasn't. And why hadn't some good Germans spoken up against the prejudices Hitler was spewing, even if all their friends and neighbors bought
der
Führer
's racist and anti-Semitic baloney?

That thought drew Charles up short.

He looked over at Wesley, who was flopping about on the ground, probably having nightmares again. He'd let his little brother down, hadn't he? Charles hadn't spoken up when Bobby said Freddy couldn't come to the party just because he was a Negro. He hadn't because he knew it was an accepted prejudice, just like the Brits' attitude about the natives of their colony India. Charles hadn't wanted to rock the boat.

Suddenly Charles felt ashamed.

Out in the night, a fox yelped, sounding alarmingly like a woman screaming. Wesley flipped over again and whimpered.

Charles got up and sat himself down by Wesley. He put his hand on top his brother's blond curls, just like their mother had done countless times during the night for Charles when he'd had bad dreams.

Wesley quieted, and slept. Under that big, open, starry American sky, Charles kept watch and thought of England and the changes the Allies themselves would have to make when they finally won the war.

15 November 1943


Dearest Mumsy,


Things are finally looking UP! I have a friend! His name is Freddy. He loves books nearly as much as I do. But he has hardly any, so I am lending him mine. He has started with
Treasure Island
. Now we have such fun talking PIRATES! Did you know there was a horrid pirate named Blackbeard who used the Outer Banks just south of here as his hideaway cove? Now the Yanks call it Torpedo Junction because of all the ships Hitler's U-boats sunk there last year. Some of my classmates go to those beaches, but I think I would rather not. Sometimes pieces of blown-up ships and dead sailors wash up.


School is better now that we are past the War of 1812 and focusing on Thanksgiving. At an assembly for the lower grades about the Pilgrims' feast with the Indians, I am to recite a Longfellow poem about Hiawatha. ‘By the shores of GITCHE GUMEE' is how it begins. I do so love Indian words. They are ever so much more interesting sounding than our British names, and I think it is brilliant to call men ‘braves' instead of ‘boys' or ‘lads.' I wish I could meet a REAL Indian, though, one wearing an eagle feather and carrying a tomahawk like Tonto.


I hope you are well. Are you safe?


Your loving son,


Wesley Bishop