Slap Your Sides Read online

  Slap Your Sides

  A Novel by

  M. E. Kerr

  FOR MICHELLE KOH,

  VALUED FRIEND AND SUPERIOR WEBMASTER

  Contents

  Part One

  One

  I was thirteen the winter everything changed. I knew, even…

  Two

  While my father parked the car, Tommy, Hope, Bud, and…

  Three

  Aunt Lizzie didn’t have any qualms about wearing furs. She…

  Four

  “Lizzie, would you mind coming to the Sweet Creek meeting…

  Five

  We headed away from the meetinghouse in silence. There was…

  Six

  The window soaping had punched the breath out of Dad.

  Seven

  YOUR SON IS YELLOW was the next graffito to appear…

  Eight

  That was the beginning of my fascination with Daria Daniel.

  Nine

  When I got back to Pilgrim Lane, the police were…

  Part Two

  Ten

  That February I got a letter from Natalia telling me…

  Eleven

  Daria came to ride Quinn every Saturday after that. When…

  Twelve

  I was still mulling over the idea of Daria “fraternizing”…

  Thirteen

  Our first day in New York, Bud invited Tommy and…

  Fourteen

  That afternoon Natalia took Tommy and me for a walk…

  Fifteen

  I tried to explain to Daria what a Broadway musical…

  Sixteen

  That summer Daria worked on the New Jersey shore as…

  Seventeen

  The next afternoon, a Sunday, I carried a macaroni-and-cheese casserole…

  Eighteen

  That Christmas was the first year Natalia didn’t come to…

  Nineteen

  Christmas night Lizzie and Mom planned to play Monopoly. Dad…

  Twenty

  Dear Jubal,

  Part Three

  Twenty-One

  Happy New Year!” Rose Garten said. “This is the first…

  Twenty-Two

  Some afternoons I timed Mahatma’s walks so my chances of…

  Twenty-Three

  Both Tommy and I took the day off to drive…

  Twenty-Four

  Hello, listeners. This is Radio Dan, your Home Front Man,…

  Twenty-Five

  “Daria?”

  About the Author

  Other Books by M. E. Kerr

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  PART ONE

  If you want to win the war, clap your hands,

  If your heart is with the corps,

  clap your hands,

  If your heart is with the fleet,

  if you’ll never face defeat,

  Clap your hands! Clap your hands!

  Clap your hands!

  This is Radio Dan, listeners, making an announcement I never dreamed would come over this or any other microphone in the U.S. of A.

  You may already have heard that on April 9, 1942, just two days ago, 75,000 of our brave boys surrendered to the Japanese on Bataan.

  It is the largest United States military force ever to surrender!

  Listeners, in honor of those courageous servicemen, I am changing the name of this program to “Slap Your Sides.”

  We’ll only clap our hands again when our soldiers, sailors, and marines are all safe and on their way back to us!

  You will be hearing a new theme song, soon as we on the home front do all we can to help win this war.

  And in that spirit, listeners, this broadcast will be sponsored by Wride Foods, which as you know has been transformed into a vital war industry.

  Let’s hear it for our guys: Slap your sides! Slap them hard! Slap your sides!

  —Radio Dan broadcast, April 1942

  ONE

  I was thirteen the winter everything changed. I knew, even on the cold December night Bud left, that our family would never be the same again. Everyone was at the dinner table: Bud, me, Mom, Dad, my other brother, Tommy, and Hope Hart, from the next town over, Doylestown, Pennsylvania.

  No one was saying anything except what began with “Please pass the…” I hated the way no one would talk about it, but not enough to mention it myself. Someone had left the radio on in the living room. We could hear Radio Dan signing off. He was a number-one cornball, but I listened to him sometimes, secretly. He was the only celebrity I had a personal acquaintance with, despite the fact that he wasn’t always sure which Shoemaker kid I was. He lived down at the end of our street. He had this deep, friendly voice. You’d think he’d understand anything you told him. But I knew better. He wouldn’t understand what Bud was doing, that was for sure.

  My father got up, went in, and turned him off. He hardly ever listened to the radio anymore. Everything was about the war.

  A rib roast, Bud’s favorite, was being slowly eaten in silence. Even Mahatma, our old collie, who favored Bud over all of us, seemed to sense something dire was taking place. He lay just outside the dining room, his eyes fixed on Bud.

  When we finally left the house to take Bud to his train, Mom was crying and hanging on to him. Bud didn’t want Mom to see him off. She said she’d send him some of her gingerbread and macaroons.

  “I don’t even know if we can get packages from home,” Bud said.

  “Of course you can!” Mom said.

  Dad said, “Maybe he can’t. We don’t know how they feel about it.”

  “Well, he’s not going to prison, Ef.”

  “No, he’s not—and he’s not going to Boy Scout camp, either.”

  “Ef, what a mean thing to say!”

  “I didn’t mean it mean.”

  “Don’t send me anything, okay?” Bud said.

  Mom cried out, “Come inside, Mahatma! You can’t go with him!”

  I thought I’d get to ride in back with Bud. I couldn’t get used to Bud having a steady girl. He’d been with Hope almost two years, but I kept thinking it was like a case of measles or chicken pox—it’d go away in a while.

  “Jubal, ride up here with me and Tom,” Dad said to me.

  Tommy put the radio on. There wasn’t going to be any conversation on the way to the train.

  In the back of the Buick, Bud and Hope were sitting so close, you’d think there were passengers on either side of them. They were holding hands. Earlier that evening Hope had given Bud a silver identification bracelet with their initials on the front and “MIND THE LIGHT” on the inside.

  Hope Hart was a Goody Two-shoes and an optimist, the kind whose sunny ways wore you down eventually. She had hair a color in between red and brown, and brown eyes. She always knew the right way to walk in and out of rooms, and what to say in them. It was a skill Bud didn’t have. He scowled his way through most social gatherings.

  Hope was a year older than Bud, and she already had a college degree in home economics. I wanted to like her. I didn’t want to blame her for everything that was happening to Bud.

  “‘Remember Pearl Harbor,’” a male chorus sang on the radio.

  Dad snapped, “Shut that off!”

  “I’ll change the station,” Tommy said.

  “It’ll be the same everywhere,” Dad grumbled.

  Tommy tried, got “Silent Night,” tried again and got “White Christmas,” tried again and got some news commentator saying production of automobiles had stopped and the factories were being changed over to airplane and tank factories. In a short time production of new radios for home use would be cut in half because the materials were needed for the war. Rubber, tin, and aluminum had become precious and were being saved
for only the most important uses. Men’s suits—

  “Turn it off, Tom!”

  “Yes, sir.”

  I glanced up at Tommy, and he gave me a weak smile. He was seventeen. Bud was twenty. I was the baby. But all of us looked alike. We all had thick black hair, sturdy builds, and the Shoemaker light-blue eyes.

  Anyone in Sweet Creek could spot us as Efram Shoemaker’s kids. E. F. SHOEMAKER was the sign over the only department store in town. My father called himself E. F. because he’d never liked the name Efram. Most people called him that, anyway. If you never liked the name, why did you give it to Bud, I’d asked him? Tradition, the answer came back. There’d been an Efram Shoemaker in Delaware County since the sixteen hundreds. Bud was Efram Elam Shoemaker. Elam after our grandfather, just as I was Jubal after our great-great-grandfather. Lucky for Tommy that our great-grandfather was named Thomas.

  TWO

  While my father parked the car, Tommy, Hope, Bud, and I went into the station.

  When everyone sat down, I asked Bud, “Aren’t you going to get a ticket?”

  “I already have a ticket, Jube.”

  “When did you get it?”

  “The government’s paying his way,” Tommy said.

  “They are?” I was surprised. I thought that was the last thing the government would do: spring for a ticket for a conscientious objector.

  “How long do you have to wait in New York before your train to Colorado?” Hope asked. She was wearing her hair pageboy style. She was in a red-plaid pleated skirt with boots and a white turtleneck sweater under a navy-blue pea jacket.

  “It’s just a few hours’ wait,” Bud said.

  “But what will you do at this time of night?” Hope asked.

  Bud tried a grin but didn’t quite manage it. “There’s always something to do in New York,” he said, making it sound as though he knew all there was to know about Manhattan. He’d been there only once, years ago, for a Boy Scout jamboree.

  Tommy said, “You could call Aunt Lizzie.”

  “I don’t think she’d want me to call her,” Bud said.

  “Sure she would. You were always her favorite.”

  “Was,” said Bud. “Now, who knows?”

  Bud was the tallest, six foot four. He beat dad by two inches and Tommy by four. I was five five, still growing, but of all of us I was the muscle man…the strongest…the champion weight lifter at Sweet Creek Friends School. Although we three boys had gone to Quaker school, when Sweet Creek High was built, Tommy transferred because their basketball team was tops. Tommy was a top player.

  Dad came in from the parking lot, and right behind him was Radio Dan and one of his kids.

  If you didn’t know Dan Daniel, you’d never expect that voice. He sounded like Orson Welles, Lowell Thomas, or any of the others who would keep you glued to the radio.

  In person Radio Dan was plump and medium height, balding with a beer belly. He always wore polka-dot bow ties, blue ones, green ones, yellow ones. Were they clipons? He liked to wear V-neck sleeveless sweaters, the same color, with them. Under his right eye was a red birthmark shaped like Lake Ontario.

  “Ssshoot!” Tommy said. “Radio Dan and Dean!”

  “So act like who cares,” I said.

  “Who does care?” Bud shrugged.

  You had to cross a bridge to New Jersey to get to the Trenton train station. Everyone seemed to be saying good-bye at railroad or bus stations those days. There were uniforms everywhere. Some of the guys wearing them looked to me like kids dressed up to play war games in their backyards.

  That’s what Dean Daniel looked like that evening. This skinny boy dressed up like a Marine. His ears stuck out at the sides of his cap. He’d been my junior counselor in Cub Scout camp one summer, but he’d called for his folks to come and get him because he was terrified of spiders. Dean was a twin, but when you saw him with Danny Jr., they didn’t even look like brothers. Danny Jr. looked tough, and he was.

  The Daniels said hello to us and sat down on a bench nearby. Radio Dan was lighting a cigarette and passing the pack to Dean.

  My father’s ears were red. I’d always thought he wasn’t comfortable with what Bud was doing. He’d never said as much, but I’d overheard conversations between Mom and him, and I’d heard him say he wasn’t sure he’d have made the same decision.

  “Is the train on time?” Dad asked Tommy. His voice was so low, Tommy had to ask him what he said.

  He said it again, then shuffled his feet and stole a glance back at the Daniels.

  Everyone in Sweet Creek knew about Bud, particularly Radio Dan. He knew all the town gossip. Nothing was secret for long in a town of twenty thousand. Bud had been asked not to lead his Scout troop last fall. When he drove up to Texaco in his old Ford, with the A gas rationing sticker on the windshield, the help took their time coming out to collect his coupon and gas him up. It was the same when he stopped at The Sweet Creek Diner for coffee, or went into Acme Food Stores for groceries. No one wanted to be of service to Bud Shoemaker.

  “Please don’t wait for the train,” Bud said.

  “We want to wait with you, Bud,” Dad said.

  “We’re waiting,” said Tommy.

  “I don’t want you to wait,” Bud said.

  I sang a little of “Wait Till the Sun Shines, Nellie,” trying to provide some comic relief. But I knew there was no such thing as relief for Bud’s situation. It was just going to get worse every day the war lasted.

  I went into the men’s, and Tommy followed me.

  “I bet Dad hates having Radio Dan here!” Tommy said.

  I knew that Tommy hated it too. Dean was home on leave from boot camp on Parris Island, South Carolina. Danny Jr., his twin, had joined the Marines when he was seventeen.

  A few days ago Tommy and I had run into Dean in town. He was with his kid sister, Darie. She was my age but older-looking and -acting, the ways girls have of becoming people before boys do. She hadn’t bothered to greet me, just stood there regarding me with these cool, bored eyes, as though in her short time on this planet she had rarely been subjected to an encounter with anyone as ordinary as I was.

  Dean had punched his palm with his fist and told us he couldn’t wait to kill a Jap. Then he’d covered his mouth with his hand and said, “Whoops! Wrong person to tell that to!”

  Tommy had shrugged and said, “I’m not partial to Japs.”

  “You’d never kill one, I bet!” Darie Daniel had piped up. She was always in Sweet Creek High plays, particularly the ones with music. Twice a night, there was a recording of her singing Radio Dan’s theme song: “Slap Your Sides.” I’d seen her in a few Gilbert and Sullivan operas. She was cocky and a little tomboyish, and she could belt a song so you’d hear it down to City Hall.

  Tommy’d answered her, “I doubt I’d ever kill anyone.”

  “Even if someone was holding a gun to your mother’s head?” Darie Daniel had said. “What would you do then?”

  “I’d sic my bulldog, here, on him.” Tommy had ruffled my hair and grinned down at me.

  I remembered Bud had said the draft board had asked him those kinds of questions. What would you do if you saw a man raping a woman? Et cetera.

  “Let’s drop the subject,” Dean’d said. “It’s the last thing I want to talk about when I’m home on leave.”

  “I know how to shoot a gun,” Darie Daniel had said. “And I’d have no compunction about blasting away if anyone dared hurt a member of my family!” She had a smart-aleck way about her, but she was cute; she could get away with it.

  On the way back from town, Tommy had said, “This damn damn war!”

  That night while he washed his hands beside me in the men’s, Tommy muttered, “Radio Dan’s going to mention this, wait and see!”

  “Probably.”

  “At least Darie wasn’t with them.”

  “Who cares about Darie?”

  “I have to go to school with her,” said Tommy. “You don’t.”

  “It’s B
ud I feel sorry for,” I said.

  “Nothing fazes Bud as long as he’s got Hopeful.” Tommy laughed.

  “That’s the truth,” I said.

  When we came back out, Tommy checked on Bud’s train and called out, “Track Three. All aboard, Bud!”

  The Daniels got up too. There was only one train heading for New York.

  I was watching a woman in a fur coat hanging on the arm of a soldier. I remembered when Aunt Lizzie had sent Mom a coat one winter, saying she’d bought it on sale and couldn’t return it. She didn’t fool Winifred Shoemaker. My mother knew that was Lizzie’s way of sharing her good fortune with her sister. Aunt Lizzie’s husband was a successful artist, and she had a good job in advertising. My mother had no sooner taken the coat from its box and shaken out the wrinkles than Bud had snapped open his Scout knife and cut off the fur collar.

  “Mom, you don’t want animals killed so your neck can be warm, do you?” He’d tossed the fur in the wastebasket.

  “I’d like to be asked first, Bud,” Mom had said.

  “Next time I will. I promise.”

  But he wouldn’t. Dad claimed Bud had a self-righteous streak. Once some hunters had left dead fowl in their station wagon and gone back to the woods to shoot more. Bud had passed the car, and he’d taken the pheasants, brought them home, and buried them in the backyard.

  “How do you know they weren’t planning to have pheasant for their suppers?” Dad had asked. My father was not against hunting for food on your table.

  “They were going to sell them!” Bud had insisted.

  “How do you know, Bud?”

  “I just know.”

  Suddenly, servicemen seemed to come from everywhere, all heading for Track 3.