On The Wings of Heroes Read Online Free PDF Page A

Office of Civilian Defense, the OCD, showed how to duck and cover, grab your knees, tuck your head. Miss Mossman said to expect drills regularly. But we only had one, as it turned out.
    â€œWhen I blow this whistle three times, it could be a practice. It could be the real thing. Don’t tarry to find out,” she said. “Get under your desks.”
    They might not be incendiary bombs. The Germans had used poison gas before and might again. If anybody smelled it, he was supposed to yell “GAS!” We were to have handkerchiefs to stuff in our mouths so a bomb blast wouldn’t knock our teeth out. For the poison gas, we’d need them to cover our noses.
    Late one morning, Miss Mossman let fly with three blasts on her whistle. We peeled out of our seats and hunkered under our desks. Heads tucked, mouths full of handkerchief. Happy to. Anything for a change. They were the old-time desks with inkwells and scrolly iron sides, bolted to the floor.
    We all seemed to fit under there, even Hoyt Albers, who was the biggest boy. Even Beverly C., an eight-to-five orphan who sat across from me. I wondered if she would.
    Beverly C. was junior-high big and then some. Big and shapeless, like a boulder with hair. We wondered if she was even our age, and I still won’t give her full name for fear she’ll find me.
    Under our desks we were all quiet for once. But then Mervyn Krebs hollered out, “GAS!”
    He must have spat out his handkerchief. We all did, and heads banged the undersides of desks all over the room. This was our first real scare, and I got a whiff of something pretty bad myself.
    Then we got busy working our handkerchiefs over our noses in those close quarters. Above us, Miss Mossman sighed.
    â€œWalter Meece,” she said, “come up.”
    Walter said it wasn’t him, but he got up out of the desk in front of Mervyn’s and wandered up to the front of the room. Miss Mossman wrote him a restroom pass, and then we listened to Walter tripping over the bucket and shovel on his way out.
    When we scrambled up after the all-clear, Beverly didn’t. She was wedged in there tight as a tick, with parts of her bulging through the scrollwork sides. There wasn’t a cubic inch under her desk that wasn’t Beverly. She tried to move, but she was down there for the duration.
    When she saw, Miss Mossman moaned. “Oh, sweet heaven help me.” She too was afraid of Beverly.
    The room went dead. People got to work folding up their handkerchiefs. You didn’t laugh at Beverly, and people were scared they would. Or even smile. She had two sidekicks, a pair of eight-to-five stooges, Doreen R. and Janis W. They didn’t fight at Beverly’s weight, but they packed a wallop. Everybody owed them a dime apiece on War Stamp Thursday. They were on their feet, monitoring, checking to see if anybody laughed. They could spot a smirk rows away.
    I grinned. Before I could help it. The sight of big Beverly, almost a solid block in the shape of her space, made me grin before I thought.
    Doreen saw and pointed at me across the room, which was doom enough. But Beverly herself saw. Over her hunched shoulder one of her squinty eyes saw me through the iron curlicues. Her incendiary stare burned me to a crisp.
    â€œYou, Davy Bowman,” Beverly said, unblinking. She never called you by name. “At noon you’ll be picking up your teeth all over the school yard. You won’t have nothing left to grin with. And you’ll wonder where your nose went.”
    I heard her every word. She was only muffled by her shoulder. She didn’t own a handkerchief, as you could see by her sleeve.
    I fried through eternity while Miss Mossman and four boys tried to pry Beverly out of her desk. Why should I help? When she was free, she was going to kill me. And nobody to stop her. None of the boys would come up against her and Doreen and Janis. Scooter himself sat quietly at his desk, gazing out at