“Is he out for the season?” Mariel asked, feeling worried.
“He walked right out of the hospital, went to the ball field, and smacked a ball out over Bedford Avenue.” She tapped Mariel’s head. “Home run, of course.”
Mariel nodded. She liked to look at Loretta with her shiny pageboy hair and her Chiclet teeth. Then she remembered. “It’s too hot for school to start,” she said slowly, trying to sound as if it didn’t bother her. “Too hot for Mrs. Warnicki’s picnic tomorrow.”
Loretta opened her mouth to say something but then she clapped her hand to her mouth. “The potatoes, boiled away again, the pot probably burned to a cinder.”
Mariel used the broomstick to get herself up, then followed Loretta across the yard and into the house, blinking in the dimness. She kept an eye on the red-and-green runner in the hall, hopping away from the bits that looked like killer vines.
In the kitchen, Loretta gave the radio knob a quick turn on her way to the stove. “It’s the end of that pot,” she said, reaching for it with one hand. “Ouch.” She threw it into the sink, crashing it into four or five dishes.
Mariel could hear them smash. She put her hands over her ears and grinned as Loretta stood in front of the sink saying all kinds of bad words. Loretta had some temper, hot and quick, but over just as fast.
Already Loretta was picking pieces of the plates up and dropping them into the garbage can. “Don’t worry, Mariel. I can bake potatoes in the oven if I have to.” She began to smile. “If we ever get a husband in here, we’ll have to make sure he can cook.” She looked around. “We’d have to clean the place up, too.”
“I like the way it looks.” Mariel glanced at the countertop under the windowsill. Loretta had plants everywhere, stuck in jelly glasses and cups that were missing their handles. Hanks of wool cascaded out of a cabinet: fire-engine red, electric blue, sunshine yellow. Loretta spent her spare time knitting. She made mittens, scarves, and snoods, and even argyle socks for her only relative, old Uncle Frank who lived in Butte, Montana.
And the walls! They were covered with pictures, most of Mariel. Some of the others were old and curled on the edges, Loretta’s parents, when they were young, the father with a mustache as big as a brush. It was strange to think of Loretta young with parents. Loretta was there in her white uniform, and even in the picture her cap was on crooked. In an almost straight row over the table were pictures of Loretta’s best friend, Mimi, from nursing school, her cap just as crooked. Pictures of Mimi with her hair long, and then short, Mimi with her husband and her baby boy.
In back of them the radio was tuned to WOR. Mariel could hear the announcer Red Barber’s soft voice and the sound of the crowd.
“Dixie Walker’s up,” Loretta said, slicing a piece of meat into uneven chunks. “Love that boy.” She stopped to pop a piece of meat into her mouth, then pointed up to the magazine pictures of the Dodgers they had taped up over the table.
Mariel moved the Good Housekeeping magazine aside and looked down at the plate that Loretta slid onto the oilcloth mat in front of her, a slab of pot roast—“a little dry again,” Loretta said—and a pile of carrots, cold and crunchy. For dessert there’d be a Drake’s cake with white icing that would peel off and melt in her mouth.
Mariel waited for Loretta to sit as Dixie Walker cracked the ball and rounded the bases. She looked up at the calendar: blue letters, a page for every day. She felt her fingers begin to flutter and gripped the fork harder.
Loretta tugged gently at Mariel’s hair. “School won’t be so bad this year, honey. Wait and see. And just think about that picnic tomorrow.”
Mariel was thinking about that picnic. Mrs. Warnicki, her new teacher, had sent notes to everyone in the class: Lemonade, cookies, and games to celebrate our new and wonderful school year.
Mariel marched a slice of meat around her plate. A schoolyard picnic on the last Tuesday of summer.
“Besides,” Loretta said. “We’re having company.”
Mariel looked up.
“A surprise.” Loretta peeled a strip of icing off the cake for Mariel. “Don’t ask me more than that.” She leaned forward, touching the tip of Mariel’s nose with one finger. “Going to be a whole new year, kiddo.”
A whole new year … like the Dodgers maybe winning the pennant. Outside Geraldine Ginty was screaming about some razy cray thing. Mariel tried not to listen. Instead she thought about the Drake’s cake icing melting on her tongue, and the surprise company that was coming.
4
Brick
A strange smell drifted in through the kitchen window even a week after the fire, but the smell was different now; it was almost like licorice. He’d never eat licorice again, Brick thought, as he sat at the table finishing his cereal. He could see Pop outside, standing near the fence, his head down, his hands loose at his sides.
“Go after him,” Mom said, one freckled hand reaching out to brush his shoulder. “I hate to see him like that.”
She stood at the stove, her dark hair curling over her forehead from the heat in the kitchen, her eyes still red from the smoke, or maybe from crying. His mother was an easy crier. She cried at everything, the sun shining on the stream in back of the farm, or a good report card; she was teary when Pop threw his arms around her to dance to music on the radio.
Brick set his glass in the sink. He went out the back door, going slowly, not knowing what to say to his father, not wanting to look at the orchard any more than he had to. The fire had been much worse here than at Claude’s. Everything was black: poor little trees, nothing but stumps without leaves and branches. And even the earth itself was scorched.
“Pop,” he called.
His father turned, his hair darker than Brick’s, tall, lanky like a baseball player. He almost looked like Pete Reiser. He smiled at Brick, reaching out the way Mom had to touch his shoulder.
Brick opened his mouth to say something he’d been thinking all week, something that he thought of last thing at night, first thing in the morning when he opened his eyes. “I should have come home. If I had been here with you we might have saved our trees.”
Pop looked down at him, blue eyes squinting against the sun. “Is that what you’ve been thinking?”
Brick looked at the oddly shaped tree stumps in front of them. He didn’t answer.
“Do you think,” Pop said, “I’d have been proud of you for walking away from that old man and woman? They’ve been like grandparents to you.”
“I could have helped you,” Brick said, trying to keep his words steady.
Pop put both hands on his shoulders. “You did the right thing,” he said. “You did what I would have done.”
Brick could feel something easing in his chest, the pain backing away from him.
“There’s something hard I have to tell you.” Pop glanced up toward the kitchen window. Mom was at the sink, looking out at them. He waved at her. “Something I don’t know how to tell your mother.”
Brick looked beyond the orchard to the fields, corn gone, vegetables gone. Last week birds had perched on the feathery plumes, and he’d had to chase the rabbits away from the tight lettuce leaves. But the birds had disappeared, and the rabbits, too, with nothing for them to eat. Everything was quiet and still.
He knew what Pop was going to say. It wouldn’t be the first time they had farmed a piece of land that hadn’t worked. He remembered when they’d tried a place thirty miles away. Brick shivered as he thought of the river, swollen in the rain, that had edged up over its bank just enough to flood the fields and leave soggy land with the spring seed floating in puddles. And before that …
Pop tightened his grip on Brick’s shoulders. “There’s no help for it,” he said. “We’ll have to leave again.”
“Give up the farm?”
“There’s plenty of work off the farm now,” Pop said. “Shipbuilding. Planes. We’re sending them to England, to Russia, as fast as we can. Maybe if they have enough to fight the Nazis we won’t have to go to
war.”
“But where will we go? When?”
Pop dropped his hands to his sides. “Soon,” he said. “Just as soon as I can figure it all out.”
Brick wanted to say it wasn’t fair. He wanted to say his father had promised this would be the last move. That was what he had said the last time, though, and the look on his father’s face, that sad terrible look, made him close his mouth over the words.
5
Brick
Even from the gravel path Brick could hear the rumble of Claude’s voice. Sometimes he spoke French to Julia, who answered in a high rat-tat-tat of a voice, or to Brick, who couldn’t understand a word but would nod anyway.
Brick trudged around to the side of Claude’s house and knocked on the screen. Regal, the dog, waved his tail like a plume and nuzzled Brick’s hand.
Last time.
Claude and Julia looked up at him and motioned him inside. It was hot in the kitchen, steamy from pots of this and that on the stove: blackberry jam simmering gently in back, corn bubbling hard in front.
Claude sat in his rocker next to the window, wide hands up, both bandaged from the fire. He kicked at the chair next to him, pushing it out, but Brick shook his head. “I don’t have time.” He could hardly get the words out.
“Going now?” Claude said, not looking at him, looking out instead at the rows of trees. Brick could tell that Claude was having trouble with his words, too. And Julia, shaking her head, turned to the stove, lowering the flame under the corn.
“I wanted to tell you I’m coming back someday.” Brick glanced out the window, seeing what Claude was seeing: the orchard stretching across the hills on both sides and all the way to the fence that separated it from their own farm. Claude’s trees showed the marks of the fire. The trunks were blackened and the leaves sparse, but there were still apples on the branches, red and almost ready to harvest. One thing. They had saved Claude’s trees.
“It’s a hard-luck place,” Claude was saying, “this town of Windy Hill. When we came from Normandy four years ago, we thought things would be better away from Europe and its wars.”
Julia answered with a rattle of French, and then, remembering Brick, said, “We don’t have to hear that now.”
Claude moved heavily in the rocker. “Joseph from over the hill told me that years ago orchards lined the hillside here. Every fall the trucks came with workers to pick apples. Workers singing …”
“Claude, we know all that,” Julia said over her shoulder.
“I’m telling Brick.”
Julia rolled her eyes. “There’s no stopping him.”
Brick knew Claude was trying to fill up the silence, talking in that loud voice of his so they wouldn’t think about his leaving.
“No one comes to pick,” Claude said, a deep crease in his forehead. “Julia can’t climb anymore. There’s only Joseph, who’s mostly useless.” He shook his head. “And who knows if he’ll come?”
“Shhh,” Julia said again.
Claude’s voice trailed off. None of them said anything; none of them could think of anything to say. The sound of the bubbling water on the stove was loud in his ears. Then Brick heard Pop’s whistle. It was time to go back, time to close up the farm and leave.
Julia turned, tears running down her cheeks. “Dear child,” she said, patting Brick’s face.
He reached for her. Julia was so tiny his hands rested easily on her shoulders. Claude got to his feet as if it was an effort and walked around them to take a book off his shelf. His bandaged hands made him awkward and he almost dropped it before he handed it to Brick. “My book on the apple trees,” he said. “It’s marked. Underlined. I know you’ll use it someday.”
“Claude,” Julia said. “Your book is in French. Brick can’t read that.”
“He’ll piece it out with the pictures.”
“Such foolishness,” she said, but she smiled at Brick, her eyes glistening. They both knew it was Claude’s best book. Claude thumbed through it all the time, muttering about grafting branches, or pruning, or harvesting.
Brick held up the book. “I’ll keep it for now,” he said. “But someday I’ll bring it back.”
“I know that.” Claude’s voice was gruff. “Luck changes.”
Pop whistled again. Brick went down the steps, brushing the top of Regal’s head with one hand. He took the path through the orchard, touching the trunks of the trees he had helped save, and opened the door of his own house.
Mom stood in the parlor with Pop, crying the way Julia had. Her freckled face was streaked with tears, her curly hair flattened from leaning against Pop’s shoulder. And Pop was holding his face so tight it seemed as if it would crack. He had looked that way since the other night. Brick wanted to reach out and hug him, hug them both, tell them he loved them, tell them …
“Leaving,” Mom said, her hands out, shaking her head. “The three of us.”
Going every which way like the crazy quilt she had made for his bed.
The other night they had sat on the couch, Pop’s long legs spread out, Mom with her arm around Brick’s shoulders, swiping at her soft dark eyes with a handkerchief, the sound of the radio in the background.
“Remember,” Mom had begun. “Remember I told you about my friend from nursing school?”
“Loretta? The one who sent wool scarves and mittens and …?” He tried to remember.
“Yes. Loretta, the best nurse I ever knew. We came to Windy Hill together to work with the polio kids.”
It was too much to think about, nurses and polio, and what was going to happen to them now.
“Loretta adopted a little girl with polio,” Mom said. “She wanted to go back to Brooklyn, where we had grown up.”
“We’re going to Brooklyn?”
Mom caught her breath. “Listen,” she said. “This is just going to be for a year. For us. For the farm. If we can just do this thing, maybe …”
Pop moved toward the window, running his hands through his hair, the pane dark, outside a blur, the burnt trees softer. “There’s a factory,” he said, “fifty miles north of here. It’s good money, making engine parts. Enough money to save some for once in our lives.”
“And for me …” Mom squeezed Brick’s shoulder. “There’s a job in Philadelphia with a sick woman who needs a nurse. I can live with her, take care of her, and save every cent.”
Brick shook his head. Philadelphia?
Pop turned from the window and sat down heavily at the end of the couch, his eyes glistening. “If you could go to Brooklyn …”
Brooklyn. Loretta. Brick’s mouth was dry. If he hadn’t stopped that day to fool around with the baseball bat, he would have been past Claude’s. He would have been home to help. They might have saved their own trees.
But how could he even think of that?
“I’m going to Brooklyn? Alone? Going to that nurse?” he said. “The one who …”
Mom nodded. “I’ll write to you every single day.”
Pop put his hand on Brick’s shoulder. “I can’t think of any other way,” he said slowly.
Mom reached for his hand. “You’ll like Loretta, you’ll see. They’re not far from Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers play. You can go to a real game.”
Brooklyn with a nurse. Brooklyn with a girl who had been sick with polio. Brooklyn.
He had looked up at the picture of the Dodgers, with scrawled autographs on one side. That had been his Christmas present from Claude last year.
And then it was the last minute. The pickup truck was on the gravel driveway; suitcases were lined up in the hall.
Next winter, the house would be cold, without heat. Mice would scurry around the linoleum floor, and flies would pile up dead on the windowsill.
He grabbed Pop’s sleeve, the sharp line Mom had ironed under his fingers. He felt as if he were reaching out to someone he hardly knew.
Pop looked down at him and ran his hand over Brick’s head.
“We can stay right here,” Brick said. ?
??I’ll get a job after school working at Butler’s. I can even quit school.”
The moment he mentioned school, he knew he had said the wrong thing. Mom stopped crying and started to shake her head.
But they knew he wasn’t a kid for school. He sat there in the classroom, day after day, all winter long, waiting. He’d look out the window across the snowy fields, thinking about Julia’s kitchen and how he’d listen to Claude tell him about the apple trees, the way to plant, the way to prune. And at home, he loved to be in the barn, warm and steamy, milking the cows. Sometimes on a cold day, he’d lie across the back of the broadest one, Essa, feeling her warmth and listening to the sound of the barn wood creaking around him. Essa sold now, the barn empty.
“I could get a job,” he said again. He was good with his hands. He had worked at Butler’s last summer moving barrels and crates.
“Never,” Mom said. “You have to study. You have to read every day. You have to learn. Every single piece of knowledge is important. Besides, you’re not going to wrestle with fields that wither away in …” She stopped and closed her eyes. Brick knew she couldn’t say a fire. “… in the heat,” she finished slowly.
Through the window he could see that a gray car had pulled up in back of the truck. It was the car that would take him to Brooklyn.
“Take hands.” Mom reached out to them. They stood in the middle of the room, Pop on one side of him, Mom on the other.
“A year.” Pop’s voice was high and strained. “One fall, one winter, one spring, and part of a summer.”
Brick shook his head.
“Think about Christmas,” Mom said. “Somehow we’ll be together then.”
“And we’ll get through,” Pop said.
“But the farm?” Brick asked.
“It’ll wait for us.” Pop spread his hands. “Locked up tight, with Claude to watch over it.” He sighed. “It will have to wait. We’ll hope …”