Kirby Larson - Code Word Courage

For the Code Talkers
Ah hee for your service

The dog did not want to leave the vehicle. Did not want to follow the man. But the rope prevented any other option.

Pa! a voice cried from the backseat. Pa! Dont. Please dont!

The dog whined to hear his boy so upset. As soon as the man loosened the rope from his neck, he scrambled to return to the car.

The man raised his arm. Hollered. Git. He pelted the dog with rocks scooped up from the highway shoulder.

Too many of the sharp edges found their marks. And then a large stone cracked something in his side. Try as he might, the dog could no longer stand his ground. Panting to ease the pain, he limped out of range.

A door slammed, then the vehicle sped down the highway. The dog struggled to follow. But his legs gave way and he collapsed in the dirt. He didnt try to get up again.

Without his boy, there was no point.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

Eleanor Roosevelt

Friday, September 22, 1944

Billie Packer didnt need to be a detective to figure out whod shot the spit wad now glued to her pigtail. Not from the way Spinner Greeley and Del Randall were yukking it up a few seats back.

Doff said such attentions were a boys way of saying he liked a girl. But Doff was somewhere north of seventy years old, and didnt realize that, in 1944, most boys did not shoot spit wads as a sign of affection. Nor did they steal milk money or accidentally-on-purpose trip people.

Billie pulled her hair away from her face, trying to summon the courage to touch the disgusting thing stuck there. This was more than a potential case of boy cooties. Spinner and Del suffered from a fatal case of the stupids, a disease she definitely didnt want to catch.

The new kid reached across the bus aisle. Here, he said.

She hesitated. What kind of fifth grader carried handkerchiefs? Its all ironed and everything, she protested.

Mam would iron me if I stood still long enough. His smile lit up brown eyes behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Go on. Take it.

Thanks. They were practically neighbors, but this was the first time theyd spoken. Tito.

Spinner shot another spit wad, which bounced off the back of Billies seat. Kit McDonald giggled. Nice shot! she said. Hazel French joined the laughter.

Billie squinched her eyes in her former best pals direction. Right about the time Leo left for boot camp, Hazel had fallen under Kits spell and her brain had been turned to mush over boys and movie stars. And bras. At least Kit needed the one she wore. Billie glanced down at her own chest, which, like Hazels, was as flat as a game board.

She used the handkerchief to pry the disgusting object from her hair, nodding toward the back of the bus. Those guys are louts.

Fancy word. Tito nodded appreciatively. Not sure what it means, but I like the sound of it.

Awkward and ill-mannered fellows. Billie shook the spit wad from the carefully ironed hanky and kicked it under the seat in front of her. Describes them to a T.

When Billie turned eleven, her great-aunt Doff deemed her old enough to touch the whisper-thin pages of the ancient dictionary enthroned on the stand in the parlor. Deemed to give or pronounce judgmentwas another of the words that had snagged Billies attention. When she peered through the antique bone-handled magnifying glass, she felt like a true explorer, discovering new continents in the worlds of microscopic black-and-white print.

Another spit wad bounced off her saddle shoe. Despite the fact they couldnt hit a target at five paces, the baboons in the back howled even louder. She scooted away from the aisle, closer to her little second-grade seatmate. It would take more than a few spit wads to ruin Billies day.

The minute her brother stepped on that bus for San Diego, six long weeks ago, Billie had begun her countdown. That first night, the one red X on the Feed and Seed calendar looked utterly lonely. But now it had forty-one brothers and sisters. And Leo was on his way home on a weekend pass. She had everything planned: a drive into town, with time on the pier, a picnic out beyond the avocado orchard, and lots of rounds of Criss Cross Words. She was determined to make each moment count.

Leo bragged that once he got to fighting, the Germans and the Japs would hightail it for the hills. Itll be over like that, hed said, with a finger snap. But nobody knew when the war might end. Not even Mr. Edward R. Murrow, whod been covering it since before Uncle Sam got in the fight.

Mr. Murrows broadcasts were the only ones Doff trusted. Last Sunday, hed reported live from a C-47 airplane as nineteen American paratroopers parachuted into Holland. Billie held her breath as she listened. Theyre getting ready to jump, hed said in his strong voice. There they go! Three, four, five Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen! When hed described the men dropping down beside a windmill, near a little church, Billie felt shed been right there with them. Shed hardly slept that night, thinking of those brave soldiers stepping out of a plane, held in the air like tiny spiderlings by those fine silk chutes. Mr. Murrows reports were enthralling, but Billie had listened to them for three long years. Leo could brag all he wanted, but Billie worried that the war might never end.

The bus bounced past the Stewarts house, jostling Billie back to the present. There was Stanley riding his trike around his little sister, Didi, clutching her beloved MuMu Monkey. Stanley bumped into his sister and she ran for the house to tattle. It was a situation Billie knew all too well from hours of babysitting those two.

The bus juddered onto the shoulder, wheezing to a stop. Hazel and Kit hopped off, arm in arm. Mrs. French probably had some icebox cookies waiting for them. Though Billie knew why, it still hurt that Hazel had stopped saving seats for her. Stopped wanting to have sleepovers, or debating which was the best Wizard of Oz story. No more cutting pictures out of the Monkey Ward catalog, dreaming of what theyd buy if they had one hundred dollars. Clearly, Hazel had written Billies name in pencil in her book of life, easy to erase.

After her seatmate got off, Billie slid over to the window, resting her head. Perhaps the jostling would bounce worries about Hazel right out of her mind.

The bus hit a pothole and Billie grabbed the armrest to keep from flying off the seat. A magazine landed in the aisle. Sky and Telescope.

She picked it up and handed it to Tito.

That was a good film strip today. He pushed his glasses up on his nose. My old school was for Mexican kids only. No film strips. Or even a library.

Every school has a library!

Tito peered at her, as if inspecting a strange bug. One time, some church donated books theyd collected. He shrugged. Pap says his job for your aunt is an answer to our prayer. A good school for me and good work for him.

Well, with Leo in the Marines, Doff needed help. Titos father was the third ranch manager hired since August. No local man would take the job; Doff was that hard to work for. But, after his first week, Mr. Garcia had taken home a jar of Doffs prize-winning preserves. A sure sign of her approval.