On The Wings of Heroes Read Online Free PDF Page B

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    When I was just drifting off, some sound from his room stirred me, some small sound. At first I thought Bill was back, home from a date or a night game—something. Now I was wide awake, eyes peeled in the dark.
    There was nothing to hear now. Still, somebody was in Bill’s room. Why didn’t it scare me under my bed?
    I eased the sheet back and slid out. Stepping over the squeaky floorboard, I waited and watched in the doorway between my room and his.
    The streetlamp from out on the corner threw a shape of light across the angled wall. There was the dark triangle of a Fighting Illini pennant, and the shape of somebody sitting on Bill’s bed. Slumped there.
    A hand rested on the pillow, and the streetlamp caught the diamond glint in the Masonic ring. Dad was sitting on Bill’s bed. There was enough light to see he had Bill’s letter sweater pulled over his shoulders. Dad, sitting there in the dark, where Bill had been.

Scooter Put a Pin in Midway Island . . .
    . . . and school was out. The radio said the tide in the Pacific was beginning to turn.
    Two days into summer, and we forgot where school was. But it was too quiet, this summer, though we’d waited and waited. The world emptied out. Jinx Rogers had gone from commencement to basic training at Camp Leonard Wood, Missouri. Big Cleve Runion was up at Great Lakes.
    Bill was out in Santa Ana, California, writing back:

    Dad worked a longer day. Everybody was waiting for gas to be rationed, but he said it wouldn’t be till after the election. Only kids played hide-and-seek now, so Scooter and I didn’t. We played some catch in the street, fed each other some fast-balls. But I was used to three-corner with Dad and Bill, and the Packard for a backstop. August was on the way already, and there wasn’t even a state fair, not for the duration.
    When we got tired of nothing happening, Scooter and I set off to collect enough of whatever it took to win the war.
    â€œLet’s get this war over with,” Scooter said. “I’m sick of it.”
    â€œGAS!” I said to liven things up, and we rummaged around for handkerchiefs we naturally didn’t have.
    Then we went off collecting. We were tired of rubber, but we’d take anything that wasn’t nailed down. Especially scrap metal because if you turned in twenty-five pounds of it, the Varsity Theater would give you a free ticket for a Saturday matinee.
    We started with our own street, skipping the Hisers, who always used everything up. They were laying out a victory garden that ran back to the alley. By the end of the summer, rows of sweet corn rustled like open country, and there were tomatoes enough for all. Mrs. Hiser put up fifty-two bottles of her own ketchup, one for every week, in recycled Royal Crown Cola bottles. The summer smelled like spiced tomatoes simmering.
    We had our Number One ration books now, after the big sugar panic of the spring. Sugar was down to a trickle, so Kool-Aid was out. Everything on the table was going to be rationed sooner or later, canned goods because of the tin—everything. The Hisers were ready.
    Mr. Hiser said he’d retired from retirement. He was in bib overalls again and his Purina Chows cap.
    â€œYou boys are welcome to do some digging and weeding,” he told us, so Scooter and I got busy collecting scrap farther down the street.
    The oldest house dated from before bungalows, like a house in the country before the town crept up. An old man lived there alone. Mr. Stonecypher. And if any house in town was haunted, here it was. So Scooter and I dared each other to begin at Mr. Stonecypher’s. It sounded swell till we got there.
    We pulled our Radio Flyer wagons around to the back. We’d tried hitching the wagons to our bikes, but that hadn’t worked. “You knock.”
    â€œNo. You.”
    The back door flew open, and we fell off the step and grabbed each other.
    Mr. Stonecypher glared out. He