A Tiny Piece of Sky Page 2

JOAN WAS STILL THINKING of lakes and floating bubbles and other fanciful, up-in-the-air things while Daddy steered the 1937 Studebaker Dictator through town. They passed Wexler’s Five and Dime on Locust Street and Inkletter’s Drug Store on Franklin Street, and then turned left onto North Potomac. Daddy held up his hand to his good friend Mr. Mueller, who was sweeping the sidewalk in front of his spirit shop.

  “I need to make one stop before we head out of town,” said Daddy, slowing to the curb. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  Daddy set the brake and got out of the car, leaving the engine running. He shook hands with Mr. Mueller, who was known by the Baums and to a few others simply as Fritz. Why? No one knows; that’s just what people called him, so that’s all the explanation you are bound to receive.

  Daddy patted him on the back. Daddy was a good bit shorter, the top of his dark hair coming up only to Fritz’s shoulder, and Fritz was not what anyone would describe as tall. At least not anyone who had a proper sense of height, or good vision. Besides, at the top of any list describing Fritz would have been his balding head and double chin. After exchanging a few quiet words, Daddy gave a nod at Joan, and the two men disappeared inside the store.

  Joan rested her head on her arms on the open window and waited. As the sun warmed her face, she let her eyelids fall closed. She took in the sounds of the street—the clunking of the occasional car that motored by, the quiet whir of a passerby on a steel-frame bicycle, the sproing of pogo sticks. She opened her eyes when she heard the latter. Two girls she knew from school, Mary and Agnes Mills, bounced in unison down the block. And then, for a reason she couldn’t quite explain, Joan thought of Frankie and felt a pull in the pit of her stomach to go back home.

  All that was familiar to her, the people and the places, everything that she had always known, Joan was just now realizing, would be away from her for three long months and replaced by things Strange and Unfamiliar, and quite possibly Frightening. How well did she know Aunt Dottie, anyhow? Not very well, if you wanted to know the truth. Aunt Dottie was Daddy’s older sister, and Joan hadn’t spent much time with her outside of Christmas and Thanksgiving and Easter suppers, to which Aunt Dottie always brought a dish of egg custard. Sure, the egg custard was deliciously sweet, but there was a lot more to a person, Joan believed, than just creamy desserts.

  And what about that lake? People drowned in lakes often enough, didn’t they? Although Joan knew how to swim—she and her sisters had all had private lessons at the Alfred M. Bunkling Municipal Swimming Pool—she had never swum in a lake before, and now that she thought about it, didn’t fish live in lakes? Hungry ones with razor-sharp teeth? Oh me, oh my, oh dear.

  Just as a feeling started to come over her, such a feeling that involved a dizzy head and a good deal of sweat in her armpits, a feeling that could be called Terror by those who were familiar with the sensation, she saw Leroy Price and his younger brother Marty standing in front of Daddy’s car.

  “Look at that,” said Leroy, rapping his knuckles over the metal bird-in-flight ornament that crowned the Studebaker’s long, sloping hood. “Pretty fancy.” He elbowed his brother in the gut, prompting him to say “Uuf,” because of the elbow, and then “Yeah, fancy,” afterward.

  “Probably costs a pretty penny, too,” said Leroy. “A Studebaker Dictator. My father says he would never buy a Studebaker Dictator, not unless he was a supporter of Hitler.”

  Hitler! Joan gritted her teeth and then craned her neck out of the car window. “My daddy is going to be out here any minute now, so you better get going, Leroy.”

  “Come on,” said Marty, in a quiet voice. He pulled at Leroy’s shirtsleeve.

  “Naw,” said Leroy, shaking Marty loose. “I bet it’s got a radio, too.” He walked around to the driver’s side of the car and pressed his face up to the window. “Heck, I told you. Look, there it is, right there.”

  Joan felt her face flush at all the fuss Leroy Price was making over Daddy’s car. Modesty was impressed upon the Baum girls with as equal weight as reading and good penmanship, and it made Joan feel uncomfortable to be singled out for something she had that others didn’t. Although there was some admiration in Leroy’s voice for the car and the radio, there was something else, too, an accusation perhaps, that Joan didn’t recognize. But she knew she didn’t like it. “Go on,” she said, swatting the window from her seat. “I don’t think my daddy would appreciate you pawing all over his car. Don’t you have something better to do?”

  Marty pulled again at Leroy’s arm. “Let’s go.”

  Leroy slipped out of his grasp and puffed up his chest. Then he grinned, showing his crooked teeth, and said, “I’m not afraid of that German.”

  Joan gasped. “What did you say?”

  “Your daddy is a German,” he said slowly, letting each word sink in.

  The last word made Joan wince. She brought her hand to her mouth.

  Leroy Price watched her and waited. Boys like Leroy wanted nothing more than to see you cry. But Leroy Price did not get to see Joan cry that day, no sir, he absolutely did not. Why? Because at that precise moment, Daddy and Fritz came out of the shop. Daddy smiled at the boys and called them by name, for he knew of the Price boys, in particular their father, Sullen Waterford Price, Esquire, who was president of the Hagerstown Chamber of Commerce. Mr. Price had recently announced his bid for mayor in the upcoming city-wide election, and had papered the town’s storefronts with campaign signs and banners bearing the slogan The Price Is right With Sully W. Price! There was even one hanging in the window of Fritz’s spirit shop, just above Daddy’s shoulder.

  Upon Daddy’s greeting and steady gaze, all Leroy Price could do was back away from the car and shrug. And when he did, his shoulders stayed up by his ears for some reason, like they were frozen in place, which made his neck sort of shrink. And when Daddy raised his hand and yelled, “So long, boys!” Leroy turned and ran, with Marty lumbering behind.

  “Strange,” said Daddy as he climbed into the car. He placed a square package wrapped in brown paper on the backseat. “What was that all about?”

  “I don’t know,” Joan said quietly. She kept her eyes on her bare knees peeking out from under her dress hem. Joan knew that Daddy’s parents, Otto and Beate Baum, whom she’d never met, were from Bavaria. But Daddy, Aunt Dottie, and Uncle Reinhart were raised right here in America. So that didn’t make him a real German, did it? Not the kind that she’d heard people talking about, anyway. Right?

  “Well,” said Daddy, “are we ready?”

  Joan cleared her throat and tried to sweep Leroy Price from her thoughts. What did Leroy Price know, anyway? She nodded and said that yes, she was ready. As ready as she ever would be.

  Daddy released the brake and off they motored, heading north to Pennsylvania. He pressed the buttons on the Motorola radio until they heard singing voices on the advertisement of Continental Baking’s Wonder Bread: Yo-Ho! Yo-Ho! Yo-Ho! We are the bakers who mix the dough and make the bread in an oven slow!

  “Can we listen to Pretty Kitty Kelly?” asked Joan, hoping that the drama of her favorite soap opera would help make the trip seem shorter.

  “Pretty Kitty who?” said Daddy.

  “You know, Pretty Kitty Kelly. She’s the Irish girl who comes to America but has amnesia and doesn’t know that she’s really the Countess of Glennannan.”

  “Amnesia?”

  “Yes, Daddy,” said Joan. “That means she can’t remember that she’s sort of royalty and doesn’t know she’s not supposed to pal around with regular people.”

  “Of course it does,” said Daddy, smiling.

  “Last week, Kyron Welby, that’s her cousin, tracked her down. She was engaged to him before she lost her memory, you know. I’m not sure what the police inspector thinks of that. She’s gotten quite friendly with him lately.”

  “Has she, now?” said Daddy.

  Joan nodded. “Yes, and he
’s so much better for her than that Welby person. Did people really used to marry their cousins? Elizabeth says that people who marry their cousins have babies with eleven fingers or no tongues. Is that true?”

  Daddy gave Joan a sideways glance and told her that he didn’t think he could stomach this conversation or a soap opera for the length of the trip, unless the latter starred John Wayne. And so he came up with a compromise: the Arrow News Show broadcast from Baltimore for the first thirty minutes, and then any music program of Joan’s choosing for the remainder of the drive. Joan agreed, and although normally she would have blocked out the news events of the world with daydreams or the passing scenery, this time, after what Leroy had said, she couldn’t help but listen with a keen ear.

  3

  SUNDAY MORNINGS MEANT TWO things for Frankie Baum: Flash Gordon and church. One she couldn’t wait for, and the other, to be honest, she couldn’t wait for to be over. It wasn’t that she minded the idea of church so much, but she could have done without all the fuss Mother made about getting gussied up with hair ribbons and petticoats. And then there was all the sitting and thinking about all the bad things you’ve done over the course of the week before. For goodness’ sakes, an hour was a long time to try to remember those kinds of things. Frankie could usually remember eight or nine at most, but after she said sorry to God for those, she often spent the rest of the hour inventing some more, you know, just to fill the time. Boy oh boy, could she make up some doozies.

  “You two get yourselves cleaned up for church,” Mother said to Frankie and Elizabeth as she cleared away the breakfast dishes. “Since you’re singing today, your white eyelet dresses with the pink sashes would do nice.”

  Frankie was deep in the Sunday funnies with Flash, Dale, and Dr. Zarkov on their latest adventure with Fria, the Snow Queen of Frigia. It was only a matter of time till Flash Gordon would go up against Ming the Merciless once again. And when you’re that deep in the planet Mongo, you don’t hear your mother talking about singing at church.

  “The famous Baum girls,” said Daddy, smiling at Elizabeth and Frankie over his newspaper. “Well, two-thirds of them.”

  “Mother, aren’t I too old to be dressing like her?” asked Elizabeth. She kicked Frankie under the table. “I’m nearly fourteen, you know.”

  “Ow!” Frankie dropped her newspaper. “What did you do that for?”

  “You better come in at the right time,” said Elizabeth. “Last time you were two beats late.”

  “Wait, we’re singing?” said Frankie. “How can we sing without Joan?”

  “Same as you do with her, I’d gather,” said Mother. She had her back to the kitchen table as she poured from the box of powdered soap into the porcelain sink and turned on the hot spigot.

  “But Joan’s got the voice,” Frankie said. “She always sings the main parts; we just fill in the rest behind her. Who’s going to sing the main part, I want to know, because without Joan we stink.”

  “Speak for yourself,” said Elizabeth. “Robbie McIntyre thinks I sing like Judy Garland.”

  “Robbie McIntyre has a brain like a—”

  “Frances Marie,” said Daddy, laying the newspaper on the table. “You and Princess have fine voices. And besides, the Good Lord does not care what your voices sound like, or for that matter the size of your brain, as long as you put your heart into it.” He winked at Frankie. “And the Baum girls have got stout hearts.”

  Well, the Good Lord may not care if they sounded like a couple of sick crows, Frankie thought, but she happened to know that the people sitting in the pews at St. John’s Lutheran would think different.

  Frankie knew she’d been right about that after she saw the look on Reverend Martin’s face when he greeted the Baums at the church door and asked Mother and Daddy of Joan’s whereabouts. “She’s spending the summer with her Aunt Dottie in Pennsylvania,” Mother explained. “Been gone four days now.” Mother poked Frankie in the back to stop tugging at her petticoat, which was tickling her bare legs.

  “Oh, I see,” said the reverend. “How nice.” He looked at Elizabeth and then at Frankie and then at Daddy. “So, just Elizabeth and Frances will be singing for us today?”

  Frankie wished right then and there that she could bottle the look on the reverend’s face and mail it to Joan so she could see. He might as well have swallowed a spoonful of castor oil. Daddy put his arms around Elizabeth’s and Frankie’s shoulders. “That’s right,” he said.

  “How nice,” said Reverend Martin again, clearing his throat. “And they’ll be singing . . .” He paged through the printed program he had tucked inside his Bible.

  “‘How Great Thou Art,’” said Mother. It was one of her most favorite hymns. Frankie couldn’t think of a worse hymn to sing without Joan, because this one had a mess of high notes. Frankie hated the high notes and most of the time just skipped over them and let Joan take them on. Mother poked Frankie again and she stopped scratching at the back of her legs.

  Reverend Martin nodded and smiled, but Frankie noticed that he was blinking an awful lot. Which Frankie knew was something people did when they were nervous or weren’t telling the truth. Like the time Reverend Martin found a Toby Wing pinup stuck in the altar book in the middle of Sunday service. He had held it up in front of the entire congregation and asked the owner to come forward to claim it and beg the Lord for forgiveness, but no one budged an inch in their pews. The reverend barely held the picture by its very corner so as to not have his fingers touch any part of Miss Wing, who was wearing nothing but sparkly shorts and a bathing suit top made from a single piece of Christmas ribbon.

  Reverend Martin’s eyelids fluttered like butterfly wings the whole time. And as he waved the picture around, the temperature in the sanctuary seemed to go up ten degrees. Frankie, along with Joan, Ava, and Martha, could tell that every boy in the entire place was sweating. “That’s the hellfire, most likely,” Ava whispered to Martha, who then assumed they were all about to burn and immediately began to bawl.

  In the middle of all that heat, Robbie McIntyre’s eyelids were blinking rapid-fire. Everybody between eleven and fifteen years of age knew the pinup belonged to Robbie, had seen him the night before at choir practice bragging about it and offering a peek for a penny. He’d nearly been caught by Miss Fisk, the church organist, and so he hid it in the altar book and forgot to get it afterward. But he would never admit to it. Never in a hundred years.

  That blinking, though, sure as the sun will rise, spelled G-U-I-L-T-Y.

  Now Mother and Daddy ushered the girls to the sanctuary, and they sat in their regular pew in the first row. Daddy always said that on Sunday mornings he wanted to get as close to God as he could without crossing Heaven’s gates. But Frankie and Joan knew that it was because he only had one good eye—the other being made of glass—and he wanted to sit up front so he didn’t miss anything. You see, when Hermann Baum was a boy, he and his friend Charlie Lohman were playing with pocketknives, as young boys back in those days often did. They practiced throwing the knives at tree trunks to see whose blade would stick fast in the bark. They sharpened their blades on fieldstones and tried to see whose knife could saw through the most black locust saplings in ten seconds. Hermann’s record was eight saplings, but he knew he had it in him to cut through eleven or twelve.

  One afternoon, after they’d cut through a handful of saplings from Charlie Lohman’s backyard and whittled them into spears for throwing at each other, young Hermann thought of a new game. “Toss your knife in the air and try to catch it one-handed,” he told Charlie. Hermann flipped his pocketknife a few inches into the air and as the blade fell, he pulled his hand out of the way before it nicked his skin. He tried it again, this time catching the knife rather clumsily by the smooth, wooden inlay handle.

  Charlie, not the sort of boy to be outdone, grinned and tossed his knife up higher, so that the blade surpassed the top of his head by at least a f
oot. He grabbed the handle with ease on its way down. “Beat that,” he told Hermann.

  Hermann sucked in air through his teeth and dried his palms on his pants. Then, after counting to three, he let go of the knife with enough force to send it high above his head. As he tilted his head back to gauge the blade’s trajectory, the sun came into his eyes for a few unfortunate moments.

  Remember this, boys and girls: it only takes a few seconds to lose something.

  Hermann wore an eye patch for a couple of months after and then was fitted for a glass eye the color of an emerald, which was close, but not an exact match, to his real eye. His glass eye wasn’t immediately noticeable to others if they didn’t know to look for it—but because the iris didn’t move in concert with the good eye and could “look” only straight ahead, never up or down or side to side, it became obvious soon enough.

  While Elizabeth had her eyes on the program during the opening hymn, Frankie shifted in her seat to relieve herself from the increasing irritation caused by her petticoat. “When do we go on?”

  Elizabeth pointed to the place in the program where it said “The Baum Girls.” Right after Reverend Martin’s homily and just before the offering. “Not until then?” Frankie said, because she really wanted to get this over with.

  “Shh,” said Elizabeth, and then she nodded at the hymnal to let Frankie know she should be singing and not talking. If they weren’t in church right then, Frankie would’ve given her an earful about how Elizabeth wasn’t the boss and should stop acting like she was. But instead, Frankie just stared at the paintings on the arched ceiling.

  Reverend Martin’s homily was about the troubles overseas and the Golden Rule. And he asked God to bless the people in Europe, in particular the Jewish people who were on a ship called the St. Louis, who were trying to get away from the Germans but were turned away from Cuba and then weren’t permitted to come here. Reverend Martin also blessed President Roosevelt. And it made Frankie wonder why the president wasn’t doing something more to help those people.