CHAPTER 34

In spite of it only being early May, the sun beat down something fierce while Ricky and I walked the eggs to the grocer. Ricky was in the middle of telling me about the garden his mama and Betsy were home planting when we heard wild screams coming from the store. We ran toward the commotion, but before we even opened the door, I could pretty near tell the screams weren’t bad screams. These screams sounded like somebody had found gold.

“Hallelujah!”

“It’s true!”

“Praise the Lord!”

When we walked in, I saw Mr. Green, another man, a lady, and Berta all jumping up and down, hugging on each other.

“Shh.” One of them hushed the others. “I want to hear President Truman’s speech.” A bunch of folks were facing the radio. We walked closer to them and listened.

“Let us not forget, my fellow Americans, the sorrow and the heartache which today abide in the homes of so many of our neighbors—neighbors whose most priceless possession has been rendered as a sacrifice to redeem our liberty . . . If I could give you a single watchword for the coming months, that word is work, work, and more work. We must work to finish the war. Our victory is but half-won.”

The woman cried. One of the men looked like he was about to do the same. For once, I wanted Berta to talk, but she was quieter than I’d ever thought she could be.

I looked at Ricky, whose smile was about to crack his face before he spoke in a shaky voice. “Is it true? Is it over? Is the war over?”

The grocer shook Ricky’s hand like he’d had something to do with it all. “Not officially, son. Not officially for us. But today there’s victory in Europe. It’s a matter of time for the rest.”

I was happy the war was over, or almost over, and soon all the soldiers could come home, but I wanted an announcement to come on the radio telling me polio was over and Charlotte could come home.

While they all patted each other on the back, I looked at a poster by the register. It had a picture of a woman with her sleeve rolled up and her arm bent like she was showing her muscle. The words We Can Do It! were written on top. Made me wish I had some of that confidence. I shook my head, not hearing someone sneak up beside me.

“You just takin’ them eggs for a walk, or might ya want my daddy to buy ’em?” Berta stood next to me, laughing at her own joke. She was so dang confident all the time—I’ll bet she could have posed for that poster.

I shook my head. “I didn’t want to bother your daddy, what with him celebrating and all.”

She looked me up and down. “Aren’t you happy the war’s almost over? You don’t look happy.”

At that moment, I was glad to see Ricky appear. ’Course, Berta was glad too. She smiled a smile that I thought was so big and forced it shouldn’t be called a smile. “Hi, Ricky!” she said as she put her hand on his shoulder, like she always did. “Isn’t that great news?”

Ricky grinned back at her and nodded. “It is! It sure is.” They stood there smiling at each other for longer than seemed natural.

But Berta couldn’t stay quiet for too long. “Maybe we should talk about this in our speech?”

I’d been surprised that over the last month, the three of us had managed to get some good thoughts down about our heroes speech. I had to admit that Berta was pretty smart—but I also had to admit she sure liked letting us know it.

Berta was talking in that voice of hers that’s always telling something, never asking. “I was practicing what we have—since I know I will be the one who presents it.” Ricky grinned at me while Berta kept right on talking. “But I’ve decided it seems a little slow . . . a little boring. I think we need to do something to make it different from everybody else’s speech.”

My heart was so full of missing Charlotte that my head couldn’t begin to think about schoolwork right then, so I just shrugged and said, “Well, what do you want us to change? Should we do a dance? Sing a song? Maybe turn our speech into a big ole poem?”

“That’s it,” Berta yelled. “That’s a good idea! The poem thing—not the dancing and singing thing—although I am a good singer.”

I was about to tell her I was joking when Ricky added, “Yeah! A poem could be nice.” He looked at me. “You know how much you like Charlotte’s poems? I’ll bet if we wrote a poem for part of our speech, it’d make people remember it more.”

I did like Charlotte’s poems. And I figured it might be nice to think of Charlotte while I was writing one of my own.

But before I could think any more about it, Ricky turned back to Berta. “But now, me and Pixie better be getting these eggs sold and the sugar her grandma needed.”

I was happy to move on, so I headed to the counter. Grandma’s ration book was inside the basket with the eggs. I pulled out the stamp for our allowed amount of sugar and handed both the stamp and the basket to Berta’s daddy.

Mr. Green smiled a real nice smile. “Maybe before long we won’t need these here ration books anymore, and people can buy any amount of anything they want.”

I nodded, ’cause it seemed the polite thing to do, but truthfully, I couldn’t remember when we didn’t have to take the stamps and the book to the grocer with us. The idea of not doing it that way, and buying any amount you wanted, seemed strange to me.

He handed me the sugar and some change for the eggs, then winked and said, “Mark my word, everything will be back to normal one day soon.”

As much as I wanted to believe yet another grown-up’s promise, I had to wonder if I’d even recognize what normal looked like if it ever did decide to come back into my life again.