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  I only said yes because I didn’t want to hurt the girl’s feelings—and because it seemed like it was my patriotic duty to stand in for her brothers. Plus, the bluffs looked like a good place for spotting any Jap balloon bombs that might decide to float across the sky. You could see for miles.

  As we were walking back to her house, Willajean told me she thought she might’ve seen one of the balloons herself once. “It was in March. I was coming back from taking some letters to the post office and I saw a round dot—almost like a silver coin drifting above the mountains over there,” she said, pointing east. “Then there was a tiny flash and it was gone. Didn’t want to tell anybody what I saw or they’d think I was plain crazy.”

  For the next couple of days, I sat on the warm rocks above the river, hoping to see the same kind of dot in the sky. Willajean sat in the shade farther away with her nose in her books.

  It was easy to be fooled by the sky, I soon found out. Time and again, I’d whip my head around, sure I saw something move outta the corner of my eyes. Only it would be a flock of birds, or an airplane, or something ordinary like that. Clouds played the biggest tricks. I saw more Jap balloon clouds than you can possibly imagine. Often, in the afternoon, a bunch of small clouds would start drifting out of the west, looking exactly like a fleet of distant balloons, and my heart would start to hammer. All the blood would rush to my head. I’d picture myself being an army hero—winning all these badges and medals for being the first citizen to spot an enemy balloon attack. Could see President Truman pinning the honors on my jacket as my daddy proudly watched.

  Then the balloons would get closer and be nothing but dumb clouds. Didn’t take long before I was sick of looking at the color blue.

  From what I could tell, my daddy and the other paratroopers weren’t having much luck finding the enemy balloons either. Think they were all getting fed up, from the way they sounded on Saturday when my daddy finally picked me up for the fishing trip he’d promised. We’d just finished clearing the plates off the table from supper—Peaches was on the porch rocking Victory, who’d started fussing—when my daddy and Cal pulled up to the house in Graphite, which was packed to the doors with men and fishing rods.

  Cal leaned out the car window and said, “How about it, Peach—you mind if I go along with the fellows for a little while tonight?” Then he waved an arm at me. “Come on, Legs, your daddy says you’re riding with us.”

  I don’t think Peaches was too happy to see Cal choose fishing over her, but I was glad to be free of the house for a few hours. Being around a bunch of ladies all the time is no picnic, let me tell you. Earlier in the day, me and Willajean had been walking back from the river when she said to me, “Do you think I’m nice-looking or not?”

  Heck, what was I supposed to answer? Willajean Delaney wasn’t any picture of beauty. And probably never would be. So I said everybody had good and bad sides to them.

  “What are my good sides?”

  Well, I tried telling her how she was smart and knew more about poetry than a lot of girls and how she was kind to stray dogs—which must’ve been the wrong things to say, because she took off down the street and left me in the dust. Hadn’t said a word to me since. That’s why I was glad to climb into that automobile with all the troopers on Saturday night. At least they wouldn’t be asking me for my opinions on their looks.

  I got squeezed into the front seat of Graphite, between my daddy, who was driving, and the trooper they called Killer, who had legs the size of cannons. Cal had it worse in the backseat. He was sandwiched together with Tiger Ted and Ace and another big-shouldered fellow they called Brothers. Poor Graphite was dragging bottom when we left.

  We ended up on the Umatilla River, not far from the Pendleton bluffs. Some other troopers were already there with their lines in the water.

  Now, except for going catfishing with Uncle Otis once or twice when I was real little, I’d never been fishing before. Had no ding-donged idea what I was doing. My father pushed a pole into my hand and told me to go ahead and give it a cast. Well, the bait ended up landing in about two inches of water in front of my feet.

  “Try again.” My father pulled in the line and handed me the pole. I gave it one more cast and nearly put the bait in the back of my head. You could hear some of the fellows snickering. “You fish for a while.” I gave the pole back and plunked myself down on the edge of the river, ignoring my father’s offer to show me some of his casting tricks. Had enough of being everybody’s spectacle. Told him I felt like sitting and watching instead.

  After an hour or so, I think my daddy and the other men forgot I was there. They weren’t catching any fish—not getting many bites either—and that was making them mad. Lines were getting snagged in the rocks and they were losing hooks and bait as fast as they put them on. And the bugs were getting real bad. As the sun started sinking, the troopers’ spirits did too, and things got uglier. They started complaining about how the trout were no different than balloon bombs. Neither one was real.

  Killer, who’d been drinking way more than most of them, started sloshing around in the river, smacking his pole on the water, yelling, “Hey, where are all them Jap balloon bombs?”

  If there were any fish still hanging around in the shallows, they woulda been long gone after he was done. Cal tried to tell him to hush up. Then the one called Ace joined in—telling everybody how the army was gonna give them all fishing poles next.

  “They took away our guns and handed us shovels. Told us we’re gonna be putting out forest fires instead of fighting the Japs. What next? They gonna say fires are too dangerous for us, and hand us each a fishing pole? Tell us we’re fighting trout?” Ace’s rude laughter bounced off the rocks, echoing. “Hey, what do you think, Boots, we gonna be jumping outta airplanes with fishing poles and nets next, huh?”

  Cal said a little louder that people should cool off their heads and talk about something else. “This ain’t the right place or time. We’re on a nice fishing trip with Legs and his daddy.” His eyes darted toward me, so I think he was mostly saying those words for my benefit. My daddy stood on the riverbank saying nothing, just casting his line into the water and chomping hard on a wad of gum. The way he was acting reminded me of the times at school when people came up and tried thumping me in the stomach just to see what I’d do. You like some kinda soft pillow, nothing can touch you.

  The troopers kept pushing, insisting how the whole mission was probably one big lie and how the army wanted them to fail. They were gonna die in the forests of Oregon, they said, without ever having seen the war. The bottles kept tipping back and things got more sloppy. Mosquitoes were eating us alive. Finally, my daddy had enough of being a punching pillow, I guess. He whipped around, his dark eyes throwing sparks.

  “All of us volunteered for the airborne. All of us got the same wings and jump boots and patches as any other trooper in the service and agreed to follow whatever orders we get. No matter what color we are. Drop and gimme a hundred, everybody.” My father’s soft voice snapped with heat. “Even you, Levi. And whoever says one more word against the mission we’ve been ordered to do will find himself carrying one of the mortar baseplates on his back all day tomorrow.”

  What? Couldn’t believe my father was giving me orders when I hadn’t said one word against anybody. I wasn’t a paratrooper. I was just sitting there minding my own business, swatting mosquitoes. Feeling pretty steamed, I flopped over in the grass to join the other fellows. Except for the ripply sound of the river, the air was dead quiet.

  Once we started snapping out those push-ups, I’ll admit to being kinda proud about being included. Felt like I was one of them. We were a smooth army machine popping out one push-up after another.

  That good feeling lasted for about five seconds.

  I was sucking bugs at thirty push-ups and almost facedown in the dirt at fifty. Never did get close to one hundred.

  “Your boy’s got a ways to go to catch up with us, Lieutenant,” Killer joked, not even
breathing hard after he’d finished. Of course, if Archie had been there, he woulda shot an impolite comment right back to defend me, but I didn’t have the guts to say a word. Killer coulda flattened me with one finger. My father kept quiet too. Hard to tell if it was outta pure embarrassment for me or if he was looking out for his own skin. I began to regret coming along. It would’ve been better if it had just been the two of us catching nothing, instead of half the U.S. Army being there with us, you know?

  Thankfully, the conversation moved on from my weakly push-ups to Tiger Ted’s story about the time he’d fought Joe Louis. You could tell the men had heard the story a hundred times before and still enjoyed every detail. Tiger leaned against Graphite’s back fender and the other fellows stretched out on the grassy dirt, passing around some of the snacks they’d brought. Pork rinds were a big favorite of theirs. I wouldn’t touch them.

  “Now, we’re talking Joe Louis.” Tiger popped a handful of food into his mouth. “Joe Louis versus me.”

  The men laughed—although Tiger wasn’t any twig himself.

  Tiger explained how the match was his commander’s idea. “I was on a base in Louisiana and my commander was a mean son of a gun from Texas who hated Negro soldiers. Didn’t even bat an eye when he called me into headquarters and gave me a direct order to fight the greatest boxer in the world. Told me Joe Louis was coming to the base, and he wanted to do an exhibition match with somebody. Commander said the somebody would be me. Said it was my patriotic duty to entertain the fellows before they went off to war.”

  Tiger shook his head. “Of course, I figured it was gonna be lights-out for sure. Thought I’d be lucky to escape with my head still attached to my body. But what was I gonna do? Commander gave me a direct order. Nothing I could do about it. So, I stepped into that ring and gave it my best shot. Left jab here. Right jab here. Little duck and sidestep.” Tiger showed off some of the moves. “And I’ll be darned if I didn’t hold my own against Joe Louis. We went two rounds without a knockdown. Proved something to everybody—even myself—that night. Joe Louis said I was pretty good for a fellow right off the street. An amateur. Of course, I didn’t tell him I’d been a professional boxer before the war—or how I was a middleweight champion back home. Just asked for his autograph, shook his hand, and got my grateful butt outta there.”

  The men all clapped.

  Then Cal started another story about the time when a new paratrooper at Fort Benning, Georgia, landed on the chimney of a house during a training jump and busted it all to pieces. “I mean, there were bricks and kindling from here to breakfast. That poor fellow was picking toothpicks outta his army underwear for weeks.” Cal had all of us rolling, acting out the landing and the toothpicks.

  The stories kept getting swapped around, one after another, until it was dark and we drove back to Pendleton. Nobody mentioned another word about the mission the rest of the evening, but I noticed Killer and Ace kept their distance from my daddy, sitting on the edges of the group and not glancing his way much. Even with all the laughter and joking, you could tell the bad feelings were waiting right below the surface, swimming around like the trout we never caught.

  29. Firecrackers

  As June slowly dried up and turned into the white-hot month of July, everything in Pendleton seemed to crumble along with the days. The tall weeds that people called cheatgrass got brittle and sharp as needles. The dirt roads outside of town cracked along the edges like overbaked cookies. Spiderwebs grew on everything. I swear if you fell asleep on the Delaneys’ small front porch, you’d wake up to find yourself wrapped up in webs, tighter than one of MawMaw Sands’s baskets.

  Got a short note from Aunt Odella at the end of June describing how the weather in Chicago had been real warm too and how she was gonna take deviled eggs to Uncle Otis’s barbecue this year, even though she hated making them.

  Every Fourth of July, Uncle Otis invited anybody and everybody to a big barbecue at his house. Didn’t matter if you were related or not, all you had to do was show up with something edible. One time, there was so much food on the tables in his yard, they collapsed. His wife did too. It was a real mess. You didn’t know what to save—his wife or the good potato salad somebody had brought.

  Now, I kinda hoped Aunt Odella would have written a few words about how everybody back home was missing me and wishing I was gonna be at the barbecue—but she didn’t. I read over the note a couple of times, thinking I might have overlooked something, but there wasn’t much to overlook. If you squinted hard, you could see the pale pencil lines she’d put on the paper to keep her penmanship straight. That was about it. I stuck the note in MawMaw Sands’s basket and decided Aunt Odella wasn’t the world’s best letter writer.

  In Pendleton, the Fourth of July was more about noise than food, it seemed like. People bought armloads of whizbangs and rockets from the Chinese who’d been living in the town for years—ever since they built the railroads, Mrs. Delaney told me. I swear every man, woman, and child in Pendleton must’ve had their own Chinese arsenal. For weeks after the holiday, the streets of downtown were littered with burnt paper tubes and blackened fuses popping under your feet, no matter where you walked.

  Probably the only people in the entire place who weren’t allowed to shoot explosives into the sky were the paratroopers at Pendleton Air Field. Which burned them up, of course. But the army didn’t want to take the chance of any kind of trouble starting between the town and the soldiers, the commander said, so they kept the whole battalion stuck at the base for the Fourth. No passes into town allowed.

  Me and Peaches decided we’d join them for the holiday and try to raise their spirits a little with two homemade pies. Then Mrs. Delaney asked us to take Willajean along. You could tell she didn’t want to come, but Mrs. Delaney insisted. To make matters worse, Willajean’s mother put her in a church dress and white gloves, and gave her a ladies’ pocketbook to carry. The girl looked like a Sunday-school teacher.

  When we got up to the base, most of the troopers were sprawled outside the barracks in their white undershirts and army trousers, looking bored and hot as they pitched dice and round metal washers in the dust. Somebody said my daddy was trying to get a movie projector started inside the mess hall, but he wasn’t having much luck with the projector or the people. Honestly, the whole place felt as if a slow fuse had been lit underneath it, and it was only a matter of time before everything exploded like Chinese fireworks.

  Peaches must have sensed the uneasiness in the air because her voice sounded extra cheerful and extra loud. “Happy Independence Day!” she shouted, giving everybody a bright smile as she popped out of the automobile with Victory in her arms when Cal dropped us off. You could see a handful of other guests scattered around too—a couple of soldiers’ wives and girlfriends. Lucky for Willajean, some of them looked as overdressed and out of place as her.

  “Don’t forget the pies we brought, Levi,” Peaches said.

  Instead of giving the pies to Peaches, I made the mistake of handing them off to Ace, who was sitting on a wooden crate nearby, tossing washers into his army helmet. Of course, he didn’t even lift the wax paper to take a peek at what flavor the pies were. Or say a polite thank-you. Just walked off with Peaches’s hard work, saying he’d put the food in the mess hall for later. I know she was hurt. Then Victory started howling as if she wasn’t in a celebrating mood either, and you could see people glancing around for somewhere else to go. The holiday was a collapsing table with everything sliding downhill fast.

  Thankfully, one of the fellows came to my rescue. Mickey, the young trooper I’d met on the first day, wandered over and invited me to join a game of horseshoes with him and some of the other men. “We’re short a person on our side,” he said. “You want to pitch some shoes with us?”

  After I told him I’d come over, a shadow moved behind me and I knew Willajean was standing there awkwardly like a lost extra in a movie. Mickey’s eyes glanced past my shoulder, clearly wondering who the Sunday-school teac
her was, and I knew I didn’t have any choice but to introduce her. “She’s one of the Delaneys who live in Pendleton. Her brothers are both serving in the navy.” I tried to make the story quick.

  “Nice to meet you, miss.” Mickey stuck out his hand. “You can come to the horseshoe pits and watch, if you want. I’ll find you a chair.”

  It went better than I expected. Mickey drew people like flies, no matter how reluctant they were. Willajean started out hunched over a book she’d brought along, as if she was hoping to disappear, until he convinced her to keep score. “You gotta help us keep the other team honest,” he said, trying to joke with her. “Look at them. You can tell they’re a bunch of cheats.” It wasn’t long before she took off those dumb white gloves Mrs. Delaney’d made her wear and warmed up a little. Smiled a few times. Stuck her book and her pocketbook under her chair and forgot about both of them.

  The whole gang of us had a great time drinking sodas and pitching horseshoes until it got too dark to see them landing in the dirt. My daddy joined us after giving up on the projector. We matched up officers versus enlisted, North versus South, West versus East, jumpers versus legs.

  Second Lieutenant Battle and his son were two of the best, let me tell you. I wondered if maybe I’d finally discovered the one talent in the world I’d got from my daddy—pitching horseshoes. Who woulda thought? Never played horseshoes before in my life, but both of us had dead-on aim. Got more three-point ringers than anyone.

  After dark, everybody gathered outside the mess hall, dragging out chairs and tables, to watch the flashes of fireworks over Pendleton. Being on a hill, the airfield turned out to have a view that couldn’t be beat, so I think everybody was starting to feel better about being stuck at an army post for the Fourth. Mother Nature was putting on a good show herself, lighting up the night clouds with bright bursts of summer heat lightning. Don’t know which was more impressive—Mother Nature or what the people of Pendleton shot into the sky.