Doing My Part

front porch and arrange the pillows so I can just happened. Every time I think I know all there is to know about this family, I find out something else, like the fact that my grandmother speaks German and that our crazy neighbor is practically a member of our family. Grown-ups scold children for keeping secrets, but it seems to me they have plenty of secrets themselves.

  I’d almost forgotten about my head in the excitement of the afternoon. Now I touch it gingerly. It’s still sore. I sit up to look down the street for Grandpa. “What did I miss?” he always asks when he returns from an errand. It’s his way of being funny, because nothing much of interest ever happens around our house.

  But today I’ll have plenty to tell him.

  7 - My Mistake

  Before light the next morning, I’m eating breakfast at the kitchen table when someone bangs on the back door. I turn on the porch light. It’s Janie. If she’s here to apologize, I’m not going to make it easy for her. I cross my arms and look at her coolly, but then I notice that her face is flushed, and my heart sinks.

  “What is it, Janie?” Grandma asks, coming up beside me and lifting the screen door latch to let her in.

  “Oh Mrs. Uhland. Hal ran off last night. He left a note saying he was going to join up. Daddy wants to know if he can borrow your car. He wants to drive to LaSalle and see if Hal’s at the recruiting station there.”

  “He’s not,” I hear myself whisper.

  “What’s that, Helen?” Grandma says.

  I clear my throat. “He’s not in LaSalle. He’s in Peoria.”

  “Merciful heavens. Did you know about this, child?”

  Janie stares at me.

  “I didn’t think he’d leave so soon,” I blurt out. “It’s only just his birthday.”

  “You knew?” Janie’s scowling at me. “You knew and you didn’t tell me?”

  “I couldn’t! You were off with Maxine Land.”

  “I was only gone a minute. If you’d been patient for once in your life, you’d have known that.”

  “Oh Helen,” Grandma Kate says, as if I don’t feel bad enough. “Wait here, Janie. I’ll fetch the car keys.”

  “I’ll go back with you,” I tell Janie. “We can leave for work from your house after I talk to your parents.”

  “I’m not going to work today. I’m going to help look for my brother.”

  “But you missed yesterday. You’ll get fired.”

  “I didn’t miss. I got a ride there and back with my neighbor. She was spending the day in LaSalle and I didn’t want to ride the train.”

  “You mean you didn't want to ride with me.”

  “Okay, yes. That was part of it. One of the boys told me you stormed off Saturday night. I thought it was ridiculous for you to be so mad. But I never would have imagined you’d keep something like this from me just to get even.”

  “I didn’t keep it from you, Janie. I meant to tell you about Hal. Then yesterday things just . . . happened. My hair and Frederick and Mrs. Osthoff. I just forgot. Honest.”

  Just then, Grandma Kate reappears with the keys.

  Janie thanks her and turns to go. I call to her, but she doesn’t look back at me.

  “Come and finish your breakfast,” Grandma Kate says. “You’ll miss your train.”

  “I’m not going to work.”

  “Nonsense. There’s nothing you can do here. Mr. Brey will find Hal or he won’t. That’s just the way of things.”

  But it didn’t have to have been the way of things, I realize, not if I’d done what I should have. If I’m so grown up, why do I keep making such childish mistakes? But I did tell them Hal went to Peoria. Maybe that will be enough. Surely Mr. Brey will find him there and bring him home. Then I can make things up with Janie.

  I haven’t touched my eggs and toast since Janie showed up, and now Grandma whisks my plate away, pushing me roughly out of my chair. “Go to work,” she says. “You’ll feel better when you get there.”

  I don’t believe her at first, but as I trudge toward the train depot alone, I think maybe work is the best place for me. At least there I do things right. And if I can’t save Hal from leaving, I can at least help bring him home quicker by working hard, by making timing devices for those bombs that will sail right over those German cities. I can help make sure that nobody else’s son has to die like Mrs. Osthoff’s and that no one thinks twice about our family’s loyalty, despite our German blood. And when my paycheck comes this Friday, I’m gonna ask Mother if we can spare a few cents to buy war stamps, like the Westclox supervisors encourage us to do. One ten-cent stamp would pay for five bullets. A twenty-five-cent stamp could buy a soldier’s mess kit. So little can do so much.

  I can make up for my mistake with Hal if I work hard enough, and if Martha or Betty try to get in my way, I’ll find a way to deal with them once and for all.

  8 - The Garden

  When I get home from work that evening, there is still no word from Janie. Mother telephones Mrs. Brey and finds out Mr. Brey called from Peoria. Hal had never been there. He must have guessed I’d tell them and gone somewhere else. Springfield, maybe, or even Chicago. Mr. Brey and Janie are on their way home. They’ll drop the car off soon. Grandma Kate must have been in no mood to cook, so fried cornmeal is all we get and that’s fine by me. I’m not hungry anyway, and I want to make sure I’m finished and up in my room when Janie and her father arrive. I can’t face either of them yet.

  “This is not your fault,” Mother says to me.

  “Hal’s practically a grown man,” Grandpa George adds. “If his mind was made up, nothing was going to stop him.”

  “But they might have talked him out of it,” I say. “Mr. Brey might have convinced him he’s needed at the store.”

  “That’s not how a young man’s mind works, Helen. When I was Hal’s age, I wanted to join in fighting the Spanish down in Cuba. But my father was dead, and my mother couldn’t manage the farm on her own. If it hadn’t been for that, I just might have run off to war myself.”

  I can’t picture my grandfather in a soldier’s uniform. He doesn’t even like guns and has no heart for killing. He hates shooting even a squirrel or a duck for our dinner. I know he’s trying to make me feel better, but I’d rather change the subject.

  “Did you see Mrs. Osthoff today?”

  Mother and Grandma Kate exchange a look across the table. “That poor woman wants to be left alone, Helen,” Grandma says.

  “But I do worry, Mama,” Mother adds. “I worry she’ll stop taking care of herself.”

  “Give it a few days,” Grandpa George says. “Then we’ll check on her again.”

  I skip dessert. It’s just peaches anyway. We’re out of cream. I hide out in our room, trying to finish my letter to John. But when I hear our car pull up to

  the driveway behind our house, I go to the window. I hear Mr. Brey talking to Grandpa, apologizing for the wear he put on our tires. With rubber in such high demand, there will be no new tires until after the war. Grandpa tells him not to worry, that he can take the car out again tomorrow if he wants, but Mr. Brey says no. He figures they’ll just wait to hear from Hal. If they fetched him home now, he might just run off again anyway. I risk a peek out the window and see Janie still sitting in our car. She’s hiding, just like me.

  After they leave, I pick up my Nancy Drew book, Mystery of the Moss-Covered Mansion. It came out last year, and I’ve read it through once already, but I always read Nancy Drews at least twice. Janie says I’m too old for these books, but I like the way Nancy knows how to handle any situation. Grandpa George would say she has “pluck.” I used to think I had that too. As the evening wears on, I hear the crickets chirping outside my window and a dog barking down the street. The sounds of kids playing are starting to fade as they get called inside for bed. Mother knocks on my door and pokes her head in to check on me. I don’t turn over to look at her, just mumble goodnight, and she gently closes the door.

  When it’s grown late enough that I would need a light to keep read
ing, I close the book and go to my window to let the twilight settle in around me. I rest my head against the windowpane and watch Grandma Kate putting away her garden tools. She sets the watering can next to the shed and heads back to the house. The lightning bugs flicker across the yard. From the open window below come muffled voices from the radio. Grandpa’s listening to war news, which makes me think of John. If something had happened to him, I’d feel it, right? He’s my favorite cousin, after all. And once when we were little, one of the kids came running up to a teacher and said a boy had fallen out of the tree. I knew immediately it was John, and I’ve always wondered how I knew. Since I don’t feel anything now, he must be all right, over there in the Pacific somewhere. I wonder if he flies at night, like they do in the movies, right into the sunset. I wonder if he’ll bring me back a souvenir from the war. I try not to wonder about Hal and where he’ll wind up or whether I’ll feel it if something happens to him too.

  Just then, there’s a movement in Mrs. Osthoff’s yard, and my heart quickens. I imagine it’s her, coming out to check her garden. That’s what I hope, anyway. I didn’t see her last night, and I’ve got Mother’s words echoing in my ears: “I worry she’ll stop taking care of herself.” I lean forward for a better look, but it’s just an old tomcat prowling around her lawn, and I remember what Janie said about Mrs. Osthoff eating cats. Now that I’ve seen her, I know it’s not true, and I wish people would leave her