On The Wings of Heroes

Table of Contents

 

 

 

 

The whole world was golden with forsythia in bloom that noontime when Bill walked me home for lunch. He'd come off the morning train with just time to see Mom first. His uniform buttons sparked sunlight, and there was a little strut in his step. I rode all the way home on the wings of my hero. So did Scooter, as far as his house.

When Bill and I got home, Mom had all our favorites. Toasted cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. A pie was in the oven.

Bill was only home for a few days before he had to report for training. On Saturday he went out to Dad's station, and I tagged along. I shadowed him the whole time, trying to match his stride and memorize him for later.

ALSO BY RICHARD PECK

 

 

 

PUFFIN BOOKS
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First published in the United States of America by Dial Books,
a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2007
Published by Puffin Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2008

Copyright © Richard Peck, 2007

All rights reserved
THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE DIAL BOOKS EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Peck, Richard, date.
On the wings of heroes / Richard Peck.
p. cm.
Summary: A boy in Illinois remembers the home-front years of World War II, especially his
two heroes—his brother in the Air Force and his father, who fought in the previous war.

eISBN : 978-1-440-65257-8

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party Web sites or their content.

THE BOX ELDER TREE

. . . the evenings lingered longer, and it was always summer when it wasn't Halloween, or Christmas.

Long, lazy light reached between the houses, and the whole street played our version of hide-and-seek, called only by olly-olly-in-free and supper time.

Before I could keep up, I rode my brother's shoulders, hung in the crook of Dad's good arm. I rode them across the long shadows of afternoon, high over hedges, heading for home base, when our street was the world,

. . . was a branchy box elder tree in front of the Hisers' house out by the curb. We could count on the Hisers not to mind when we pounded in from all directions to tag out on their tree. We plowed their sod when we skidded home, bled all over their front walk when we collided, knocked loose the latticework under their porch.

Big Cleve Runion, who was nineteen years old, lit once in the middle of their syringa bush in an explosion of sticks, and it didn't fill out again till after the war. But the Hisers had no kids and were getting on in years. They said they got a kick out of us. They were the rare grown-ups who liked noise, and Mr. Hiser was deaf.

Nobody was a stranger before the war. Everybody played. Dogs too, yapping at our heels. Dogs we didn't even know. They weren't locked up or walked in those days. They ran wild like the rest of us. Kids younger than I was were in the game, and big sweating galoots like Cleve. Kids from the other streets, and girls. Once in a while, dads, before they went to war or worked Sunday shifts. Always my dad.

We played to win. One time a big boy was it—Cleve or one of the Rogerses—and we took off for the alley to hunker behind the hollyhocks, my brother Bill and I. Our breathing was like dry leaves while a cracking voice yelled numbers into the tree. “Five, ten, fifteen, twenty.”

When we heard in the distance, “Here I come, ready or not,” Bill swung me up on his shoulders. We bobbed and weaved across a patchwork quilt of backyards, from one garbage can to another. Like magic, Dad was there by the Hisers' back drain spout.

In a Knute Rockne handoff, Bill passed me to him. I hung like a hammer off his belt. My feet danced in air, my head hung. There we came around the house, Dad pumping and wheezing, panting and red-faced with his bifocals fogging. Car keys and change rang in his pocket.

His timing was better than a kid's. Whoever was it never saw us coming, and it could have been Jinx Rogers, who played basketball on the starting five. I slapped the tree personally.

One time Dad dropped me. On a hot evening I oozed out of his slick arm and did a cartwheel, landing across the rocks around the Hisers' flower bed. The air went out of me, but there wasn't time to cry. Dad scooped me up and ran to the tree. I took giant strides in the air just above the grass, and we tagged in with seconds to spare.

Later, when I'd outgrown the crook of his arm, when Bill was away, Dad stayed in the game a little longer. He'd find another toddler to tote. Or he'd erupt, all on his own, a hundred and ninety pounds, out of the Hisers' thrashing bushes and swerve toward the tree. His work shoes slapped the bricks of the street before he could get himself stopped. But he always let himself get caught if he didn't have a kid in his arms.