Carry Me Home Read online

  Ma says Eddie can come over for cake, so he does. He wears a nice school shirt, and he brings a present wrapped in blue paper. Ma tells him he can set it down right beside the little present she got for me. Molly surprises me and comes over too. I ain’t see’d Molly for a long time, so I get all happy when she comes through the door. She got her hair cut into one of them new hairdos she says is called a pageboy. I can tell Molly likes it by the way she keeps swooshing her hair around so it bobbles on her head. She got on new shoes too, and I can see some of her little toes peeking out of the hole up front, and her toenails are painted pink.

  We eat spaghetti, ’cause I like that best, and after we eat, Ma sponges Eddie and my shirts off before we have cake and I open my presents. Ma and Dad give me a war bond, and I wonder what in the hell kind of present that is. Dad tells me they bought it to help the war effort, and Ma says it will be worth twenty-five dollars in twenty years.

  Eddie wrinkles up his nose, probably ’cause he thinks it’s a dumb present too. “Open the present I gave you next, Earwig. Mine’s good.” Molly laughs when Eddie says that, and she says then maybe I should open her present next and save Eddie’s for last. Molly gives me a little box that is filled with these candies they call M&Ms. They are little chocolate pieces and they got colored candy over ’em that makes little crunchity noises when you chew ’em. “They made this candy for the soldiers,” Molly says. “They coat the chocolate with hard candy so they won’t melt when the soldiers take them into the fields. You’re eating the same candy Jimmy eats,” Molly says. Dad tells Molly she must have good connections to get ahold of those candies, and Ma tells me to share with Eddie, so I do.

  Inside the blue wrapped box from Eddie is a toy airplane. And not just any old airplane either. It’s Captain Midnight’s airplane, I shit you not. “Thanks, Eddie!” I say, and I pick up that plane and I fly it around the room, right over the heads of those damn Japs and Nazis, and I drop a few bombs.

  While I’m zooming my plane around, Eddie tells me his ma let him order one just like it, so he runs home to fetch it so we can both play. I can’t go with him, ’cause I got company, so I fly my plane around and wait for Eddie to come back. Dad and Ma and Molly talk while I “Nrrrrrrr” around the room, fighting evil.

  They talk about Washington not answering Ma’s letters, and Dad says how we just gotta go on believing Jimmy’s still okay. “How can twelve hundred American GIs be lost? They’ve got to be somewhere. A prison camp is the most likely place.” My plane flies lower when Dad talks, but not so low that Lucky can bite it or the Japs or Krauts can shoot it down.

  Ma sighs, like she’s been doing lots these days. “I wish Jimmy had never signed up for the Guard. It was the most foolish thing he could have done.”

  “Jimmy would have had to go anyway, Eileen,” Dad says, “but I wish he had waited until he got drafted. At least he would have gotten decent equipment to work with and had better training. It’s like those poor Guard boys were nothing but throwaway soldiers. The army used them to distract the enemy, bide themselves some time to put together an effective army, and now that those things have been done, they don’t care what happened to the first batch they sent in.”

  “They were sacrificial lambs,” Ma says.

  “I pray for him every night,” Molly says, and Ma smiles.

  Ma’s smile don’t last long, though. Not when Molly tells us she’s gonna go live with her aunt in Chicago. “My uncle, he’s a doctor, and he’s been drafted. My aunt’s health is poor and she has six little ones to tend to.” Ma’s smile sorta freezes. Then, when Molly adds, “I’m going to watch my cousins during the day, then at night I’ll be working as a hatcheck girl at the Starlight Ballroom,” that would be the part that knocks that smile right off Ma’s face.

  “A hatcheck girl at the Starlight Ballroom? I’m not sure Jimmy would approve of that, Molly.”

  Molly dabs at the corner of her lip, like maybe she thinks that her lipstick is smeared, then she clears her throat. “Well, Mrs. Gunderman, I’ll make good money. Who knows, maybe I can make enough for that down payment on the Williams place. I think Jimmy would appreciate that, don’t you?”

  I set my Captain Midnight plane back in its box to wait ’til Eddie gets back, and I say, “Sometimes, I almost forget what Jimmy looks like. I ain’t never gonna forget him in my heart, but sometimes I think my eyes are starting to forget him.” I think maybe I ain’t said the right thing, ’cause Molly starts fussing with her skirt, even though it ain’t got a speck of dog hair on it.

  “How about some coffee?” Dad asks, and Molly says that sounds good, ’cause their house is fresh out of coffee ’til the new books come out tomorrow. “Eileen,” Dad adds, “maybe you need to take Jimmy’s Guard picture out of our room and put it out here where Earl can see it.”

  When Eddie gets back, Molly leaves, and me and Eddie, we run missions with our planes up and down the stairs ’til Ma says that’s enough and sends Eddie home. Dad, he don’t listen to Ma harp about Molly being a hatcheck girl. He listens to the nine o’clock news and he gets happy when they say that our Navy won the battle at Midway, wherever to hell that is.

  With Molly and Eddie gone and the radio shut off now, there ain’t too much talking going on. Dad sits in his chair, squirming his butt around like the cushion don’t fit him right no more. I hold my airplane and look at the way it’s put together. Ma is sewing a patch over a tear in the knee of my trousers. When she finishes, she pats her work and says, “Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Then she asks Dad if he wants coffee, ’cause there’s some left from earlier. Dad says no.

  Both nights, Dad sleeps on the couch ’cause his back is hurting him, then on Sunday, he leaves.

  Them Schlitz bottle caps I saved up when Jimmy and the guys was here, I got ’em in my closet. One night I take that box out and I put it on my bed. Then I sit on my bed like a Indian and run my hands through ’em, listening and liking that tinky-chinky noise they make when they slip through my fingers. I ain’t got a clue why I saved ’em. Just ’cause I like bottle caps, I guess. I like the smell of ’em and the sound of ’em, and I like to stick my fingernail in that soft cork part underneath.

  I pick up a handful and pick through ’em, turning one in my hand, trying to remember exactly which good time it come from and whose bottle it came off of, but I can’t remember that. Downstairs, Ma’s playing Glenn Miller, and ’cept for the music, and the tinky-chinking of my bottle caps, I don’t hear nothing but Lucky’s snores.

  I drop the whole handful of bottle caps into the box, real slow-like, watching ’em plink on the others. Then I pick up more handfuls and watch those fall. I get to thinking about how these bottle caps are like the days since Jimmy left. First there was only a few of ’em, but before I knowed it, there got to be so goddamn many I couldn’t count ’em no more. Ma says Jimmy’s been gone over two years now. Don’t seem right to me, but if Ma says it’s true, then it’s true, ’cause she’s real good at counting.

  When I’m done hearing my bottle caps, I pick up the box and haul it back to my closet. Ain’t a damn thing to do at night no more with Dad still working at that plant in Janesville and Ma not wanting to listen to the radio at night in case they say something bad about the war. She don’t even wanna play checkers.

  Before I shut my closet, I see a little piece of black poking out from under the box where all my winter clothes are kept, and I pull it out. It’s the felt hat Ma made me one Halloween so I could be a pirate. I put it on, but it don’t fit real good no more. I scrinch it down the best I can and hope my quack-grass hair will keep it in place. I dig more and find the wood sword Dad made me to go with it, and I stick it through my belt loop. I wake up Lucky so he can be my parrot, even if he’s too big to sit on my shoulder, and I tell him we is going treasure hunting. “We gotta have our treasure hunt up here, though,” I tell Lucky, “’cause Ma has got the nerves tonight and she’ll yell if we go digging around downstairs.”

 
; I look down at my treasure map, which ain’t a real treasure map but a page that come loose from my Superman comic book, and then I head out on my adventure. I look for a treasure under beds and in closets, and my parrot follows me. There ain’t nothing good anywhere. Even in the closets. Just clothes lined neat on hangers, boxes of Christmas ornaments and old knickknacks or outgrowed clothes. Nothing good at all. That’s when I get the notion to head up to the attic, where there might be something good. I got a flashlight in my drawer in case I gotta pee in the night, so I take that flashlight with me ’cause there ain’t any lights in the attic.

  I pull the attic stairs down real careful-like, hoping Ma don’t hear ’em groan, and I pick up my parrot and up we go. It’s hot in the attic. So hot it could fry a ghost.

  That attic is spooky in the dark, all shadowy and smelling like dust and mothballs. I whack my knee hard against a old sewing machine, and I cuss like a good sailor. Lucky is sniffing all over the place.

  I dig through piles of junk, old books, old lamps with no shades, a bag of baby toys, and them chairs Ma might have recaned someday. Then I see it. A treasure chest. A real pirate’s treasure chest! “Lucky, look!” I say, pointing to the wooden chest that has a rounded top and everything. I take the bag off the top of it and get down on my knees. “We’re rich! We’re rich!” I tell my parrot, who don’t give a damn about being rich, just about sniffing.

  When I open that lid, I can see right off there ain’t nothing in there but ladies’ stuff. So I tell Lucky this is a queen’s treasure chest that Blackbeard stole off her ship when she was sailing on one of them trips queens take. “Bet the queen will give us lots of money if we steal it from Blackbeard’s hiding place and give it back to her.”

  That queen, she sure does like lace, ’cause she’s got all kinds of lacy things in there. A tablecloth, folded pin-neat, and doilies, and even a white nightgown that’s all frilly with lace.

  She’s got squares of material, like for sewing them quilts, and they is all tied together with a ribbon like they is gonna be a present or something. She’s got a tea set in there too, and I bet it’s worth a pretty penny, ’cause when I peek under the newspaper the pot’s wrapped in, it looks pretty damn fancy to me with that gold stuck all over it.

  Toward the bottom of the treasure chest is a album filled with pictures of people from the old days. I tell Lucky that them sourpusses are the queen’s dead family. There is little ribbons and hair pretties under that photo album, along with a mirror and brush that have backs all shiny and rainbowy like seashells. Then there is another box. A small box made of wood, and it’s got a picture of an old-timey lady on the lid. The box is the last thing in there, ’cept for a few dried-up dead bugs and some mouse turds.

  Inside that box, there is a little bunch of squashed flowers with a ribbon still on it. When I lift it out, some of them petals, they fall right off even though I’m trying to be real careful so the queen don’t say I wrecked her things. There is a necklace in there, and a book of matches, of all the crazy things.

  When I tip my head over to get a peek at the photographs at the bottom of that box, my pirate’s hat falls off, bounces off the box, and rolls onto the floor. I just leave it there, ’cause I ain’t a pirate no more when I pick up the flashlight and get a good look at them pictures. Ma is in the first one. Just how she looks in that wedding picture that sits on her dresser. And she is standing next to a man who’s got his arm around her. That man, he is wearing a uniform with wings on it, and I ain’t kiddin’, he looks just like Jimmy. He’s got the same wavy hair that’s bright like the sun, and he’s got Jimmy’s same mouth, ’cept it stretches farther across his cheeks.

  I look through the other photographs, and sure enough, there that man is in every one of ’em, and if he don’t look like Jimmy, then my name ain’t Earl Hedwig Gunderman.

  In one of them pictures, that Jimmy-looking guy and Ma are standing in front of a porch, and Dad is there too, looking all young and skinny. It ain’t Dad’s arm around Ma, though, it’s this Jimmy-man’s arm, and him and Ma are standing so close the sunlight can’t even sneak between ’em. On the last picture, there is Ma, giving this guy a big kiss, her arms wrapped around his neck, his arms wrapped around her waist.

  Lucky comes sniffing around, and I shove him away with my arm. My head is all mixed up now, wondering why Ma is kissing this guy that looks just like Jimmy.

  There are some letters too, and they is tied together with a ribbon braid, one strand red, one white, and one blue. Them letters are all yellowed like old things get, and I’m kicking my own ass for getting kicked out of third grade, ’cause now I can’t read a word they say.

  The braid is tied with a knot and I ain’t good at getting tiny knots out, so I work the braid until I can slide one end off. Then I pull out a couple of them letters. It ain’t easy to do that when you got a flashlight in your hand either.

  I got ’em in my hand when I hear Ma. She sounds right at the bottom of the stairs when she yells, “Earl, what are you doing up there?”

  I look down and I got a heap of junk laying out. When I hear her coming up them stairs calling my name, I know I ain’t gonna be able to get it all throwed back in time. I don’t know what to do, ’cause I ain’t suppose to dig around and I ain’t suppose to touch nobody’s mail. So I stick them two letters I got out into my pocket, ’cause there ain’t a whore’s chance in heaven that I’m gonna get ’em back in the bundle quick, and I toss them pictures back into that old-timey box and start dumping the rest of the junk back in the treasure chest any which way. I ain’t even got the lacy stuff back in when Ma’s head and shoulders peek up out of the floor.

  “What on earth are you doing up here?” She is leaning this way and that, trying to get a good look at what I’m up to, which ain’t easy ’cause it’s dark as shit up here but for the log of light shining from my flashlight on her old sewing machine.

  I stand up, ’cause I don’t know what else to do. “I was just looking around.”

  Ma is all the way up now. She puts her fingers on a box of old junk so she don’t trip. Like the idiot I am, I let my arm fall down and that light spills out right over the lacy junk that’s still heaped on the floor.

  Ma hurries to me and she yanks the flashlight outta my hand. She wobbles the light over the mess I made and I know I’m in big trouble. “What are you doing, digging around up here?”

  “Just playing, Ma,” I say.

  She leans over and picks up the stack of lacy stuff and she brushes it off, then hugs it to her like it’s a baby that’s falled and needs some holding before it can stop crying.

  She’s already got the nerves tonight, and now she’s pissed too, so I know I should just shut my mouth and take Lucky downstairs real fast, but I don’t. Instead, I reach down and dig in that old-timey box until I feel them pictures, and I pull a couple of ’em out. “There’s a man in these pictures that looks just like Jimmy,” I say, holding them out. “You’re kissing on him in one of ’em.” Ma snatches ’em right out of my hand and clunks me right on the side of my head and tells me I ain’t got no business snooping in other people’s things. She tells me to get downstairs, right now.

  I scoop up Lucky and carry him down the stairs, ’cause he don’t know how to climb stairs that are more like ladders than steps. I hurry back to my room. My hat is in the attic, but I’m still wearing my wood sword, so I take that off and shove it back in the closet. Then I sit on my bed and wait for Ma and the good harping I know I’m gonna get when she comes down.

  I wait a long time. A good long time. Finally I hear the creak and the thud that means she’s putting the stairs back up. I hear her footsteps coming, but they don’t stop at my door. They go right past, and down the stairs.

  I stay upstairs until me and Lucky gotta piss so bad we can taste it, then I go down quiet-like. I don’t go to the bathroom, ’cause that’s too close to Ma’s room, where she is with the door closed, so I slip outside with Lucky and we both take a leak by the tr
ee.

  Ma don’t say nothing to me the next morning. She puts my bowl of oatmeal on the table, then starts telling me all the things we gotta get done in the store today. I mind my Ps and Qs all day, and I wait ’til after supper before I go to Eddie’s, them two letters in my jacket pocket.

  Mrs. McCarty lets me in and she tells me Eddie’s up in his room. She asks me how my dad’s job is coming.

  “His job’s coming real good. He says them ladies work as good as any man. He says they do everything from heavy machining operations to forging. I don’t know what that exactly means, but that’s what Dad says they do. He says they is all Rosie the Riveters, but that ain’t what he calls ’em. He calls ’em ‘Wings,’ ’cause they got wings on their uniforms even if they ain’t pilots.”

  “It’s a shame he couldn’t get a foreman’s job right here in town, but I suppose they had their help already. I’m sure your mom would rather he was home, her worrying so much about your brother. And I’m sure your dad would rather be sleeping in his own bed at night too. People never seem to rest as well when they have to sleep in strange beds. I know I don’t,” Mrs. McCarty says.

  “Well, Dad can’t sleep in a bed no more,” I tell her. “His back’s been bothering him for a long time now, so he sleeps on the couch.”

  “Oh?” Mrs. McCarty is looking at me funny as I start up the stairs, so I stop and lift up my feet to check the bottom of my shoes, thinking maybe I brought a gob of dog crap in on ’em, but I didn’t.

  “Hey, Earwig,” Eddie says.

  “Hey, Eddie.”

  I pick up a piece of paper that’s on his bed and sit down. Eddie’s got words printed in neat rows down that paper. “You write real good, Eddie,” I tell him. He tells me he’s making a list of things he wants for his birthday, which ain’t coming up anytime soon.

  “You want to go fishing tomorrow, Earwig? Dad says the crappies are biting real good at Spring Lake.”