3

Tutlow was wearing sunglasses.

March had “come in like a lamb” this year, and the days were kind of warmish and breezy, but it sure wasn’t any weather for sunglasses yet.

“What you got those on for?” Artie asked. “It’s not even summer.”

“We’re going to tail a man, aren’t we?”

“I doubt he’s going all the way to Florida.”

“Don’t be a sap,” said Tutlow. “You tail a man, you don’t want to be identified, do you?”

“Everyone in Town will identify a guy wearing sunglasses in March,” Artie said. “They’ll think you’re cuckoo.”

“Doesn’t matter what other people think. The idea is not to get identified by the man you’re tailing. Then he can’t accurately identify you later.”

“You’re trying to be like in the movies is all you’re doing.”

Tutlow whipped off the sunglasses and glared at Artie.

“You want me to do this job alone?”

“It’s my job!” Artie said. “I’m the one discovered the guy. I just invited you.”

“Invited,” said Tutlow scornfully. “This is no tea party, Garber.”

Tutlow put the sunglasses back on. Artie thought they made him look blind, but he decided not to mention it.

They walked out to the Hempstead Farm in silence, to wait for Clarence Foltz to take his mysterious daily walk during which he disappeared for several hours every afternoon.

Foltz came out in an old leather jacket that reminded Artie of the kind German flyers wore. He headed for Main Street, and after he had gone about the length of a football field, Artie started to get up out of the weeds and start tailing, but Tutlow pulled him back down.

“You got to give him enough of a lead so he doesn’t look back and see you,” he explained.

“If he can’t look back and see us, then how the heck can we see him?”

“I mean see us good enough to identify us.”

“I thought he’d never identify you anyway cause of those corny sunglasses,” Artie said.

Tutlow pretended he didn’t hear that, and instead of saying anything he just got up, pulled the collar of his coat around his neck, shoved his hands deep in his pants pockets, and started trailing.

“Some guys think they’re Humphrey Bogart or somebody,” Artie said under his breath, but he just went along and followed Tutlow; there wasn’t time now to mess around.

Artie’s strategy was to try and just look natural, especially when they were walking down Main Street. People kept staring at Tutlow in his wacky sunglasses and his counterspy walk, so Artie made a point of being real casual, swinging his arms and whistling “Deep in the Heart of Texas,” like there wasn’t even a War on.

Just then the last person in the world Artie wanted to run into came ambling out of Damon’s Drugs, right in front of him and Tutlow.

Caroline stopped and looked at them with a little smile, like she was highly amused.

“What do we have here?” she asked. “The Rover Boys?”

She was using this new kind of perfume that drowned out the smell of her Mild Camay Beauty Soap and reminded Artie of something Yvonne DeCarlo would wear in her harem.

“Sorry I can’t shoot the breeze,” Artie said. “We got business.”

“What are you going to do,” she asked, “hold up the First Federal?”

Tutlow shot her a corny comeback out of the side of his mouth.

“Take a powder,” he said.

Caroline threw back her lovely head, the shining hair swinging in the sunlight, and laughed like Bette Davis in Now, Voyager.

Artie slunk on beside Tutlow, feeling like the worst kind of worm. He took deep breaths of air, trying to get Caroline’s harem perfume out of his head, as they followed their man clear out of Town.

When they got to the edge of the woods by Skinner Creek, where Foltz had disappeared down the path into the trees, Artie stopped.

“Come on!” said Tutlow. “We’re hot on his trail.”

“I dunno,” Artie said.

“Don’t know!” Tutlow said in a hiss of rage. “You turning yellow on me?”

Artie supposed he was being really weird, but he had this funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. He knew he wasn’t yellow, he knew he wasn’t even afraid of risking his life for his country, but he still had this odd feeling, like something telling him not to go on any further. He couldn’t explain it, though.

“There’s nothing to sabotage at Skinner Creek,” he said feebly. “Maybe he’s just getting his exercise. They got to keep in shape, spies; it’s not just all glory.”

“You nit! He might be out to rendezvous with a paratrooper and help him hide the chute. You think the Nazis just parachute guys onto Main Street in broad daylight? Spies hide out in the woods, they make their plans in the woods, they keep their maps and explosives in the woods.”

Artie kicked his toe in the dirt.

“Okay,” he said, “I guess we should go ahead and see.”

Tutlow shook his head as he headed onto the path.

“For a minute there,” he whispered, “I thought you’d gone yellow in the belly.”

“Oh, go button your lip,” said Artie, following along reluctantly but dutifully, wondering how come he had this funny feeling in the pit of his stomach.

They had lost sight of Foltz, but automatically figured he must still be following the trail, otherwise they’d have heard him if he suddenly dashed into the woods. The boys walked stealthily, keeping their eyes peeled for a glint of silver parachute silk.

The path was leading them straight to the clearing with the rock where Roy used to go to think about life, or lie on the ground beneath blankets with a beautiful girl and do the most wonderful thing in the world. Tutlow had bent to a crouch as he walked and Artie had done the same and now he felt a crick in his back and stopped a moment, straightened up, and looked around him. He blinked in the brightness, wishing he had a pair of sunglasses. The afternoon sun lit the trees and Artie felt caught and suspended in the eerie brightness, when suddenly the sound came, a song, from a tenor voice that was pure and high but not a girl’s, a voice that was only a stone’s toss away in the woods:

So come ye back, when summer’s in the mea-a-dow,

Or when the vall-ey’s hushed and white with snow—

Tutlow sprang erect, then crouched again and scuttled into the woods, throwing himself behind a large rock. Artie scooted after him, his breath coming hard, burrowing against the cold stone next to Tutlow.

It’s I’ll be there, in sunshine or in sha-a-dow,

Oh, Danny Boy, oh, Danny Boy, I love you sooooo.

Tutlow nudged his elbow into Artie’s ribs.

“It’s a signal!” he whispered. “He’s calling his accomplice with code!”

“Shhhhhh!” Artie hissed.

Another voice spoke now, softly.

“Oh, Clarence. That was wonderful.”

Artie froze.

Tutlow dug his fingers into Artie’s shoulder and blasted a whisper into his ear.

“It’s a girl!”

Artie lay there rigid and breathless, afraid to move or speak.

The spy’s accomplice was not just “a girl.”

It was Shirley Colby.

There had to be some mistake, or explanation.

Artie lifted his head, straining to hear what was said.

“… for so long, I didn’t know if I could do it anymore,” came the voice of Foltz.

“Mmmmm, but you did, you did, so beautifully,” Shirley said.

Her voice sounded far-off and dreamy, like it was lulled by some kind of dope.

That must be it. The crafty Nazi agent had doped up Shirley and lured her to the woods against her will.

“Beautifully for you, because you’re so beautiful,” Foltz said.

His voice was not clipped and military now like it was when he was ushering, it was soft and bleary. It almost sounded like he was doped! Maybe that was it. Maybe Shirley was playing a double agent’s game, pretending to be taken in by the spy and all the time slipping some kind of dope into his Cokes and luring him into the woods to crack the secret of the whole Nazi network of sabotage in America.

“With your beautiful talent for it, you should do it all the time,” said Shirley. “You were born to sing—and write, and paint, and all those beautiful things.”

A bitter, choked kind of laugh came from Foltz.

“I was born to be miserable,” he said.

“Stop saying that!”

Shirley’s voice sounded sharp and clear now, untainted by any trace of dope.

“I’m sorry,” said Foltz. “It’s how I feel.”

Just then Tutlow blasted another whisper right into Artie’s eardrum.

“I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s wrong with the guy?”

“Shut up and listen!” Artie hissed back at him.

Shirley was speaking again—softly, gently.

“Clarence—if we did what you want to do—would it make you happy?”

“I should never have even asked you. I should be ashamed.”

“Stop talking that way. Did you bring what you need—to do it?”

“Yes,” Foltz said in a kind of choke, “I brought it.”

“Well, then,” Shirley said. “Go ahead. Do it.”

Tutlow grabbed Artie’s arm and squeezed so hard Artie had to bite his own lip to keep from yelling.

“She told him to do it to her!” Tutlow whisper-shrieked.

“Shut your dirty mind!” Artie said with a croak.

His own mind was a jumble. He couldn’t believe that the “it” Shirley just asked Foltz to do was really It. But what if it was? Should Artie try to save her from doing something she’d regret for the rest of her life? Would she thank him later for protecting her from the dreadful power of her own passion? Or would she hate him forever? And what about Roy? What would he want his loyal brother to do at a time like this?

Artie couldn’t move or think. It was like being caught in a bad dream.

“What kind did you get?” Shirley asked.

“Here—they said it was supposed to be the best.”

“Oh, yes—I’ve heard of this kind.”

“Shall I do it now?”

“Be gentle,” she said. “I know you will.”

Tutlow reached down and grabbed his own gonads, protectively.

“Holy Horseradish!” he gasped.

Artie lay frozen, trapped in the nightmare.

The whole woods were still now, not even a breeze stirring.

Foltz spoke again, in a low, excited voice that sounded like he was gargling Listerine.

“I dreamed of this, I dreamed of it,” Foltz said.

“And now you’re doing it,” Shirley said soothingly.

“You’re wonderful. Oh, God, you’re wonderful. No other girl would let me do this, I know.”

“There, there.”

“Is that too much?”

“No. It feels fine.”

“It’s not too cold?”

“No. The sun is warm.”

“Oh, God.”

“Mmmmm. Feels good.”

“A little higher?”

“If you want.”

“Oh, God. I’ll never forget this.”

“They’re doing it,” Tutlow gasped.

“You don’t know what it is they’re doing,” Artie said desperately.

“It ain’t touch football,” Tutlow said hoarsely.

Artie couldn’t stand it any longer.

“Don’t move,” he told Tutlow. “I’m going to see.”

Artie crept forward, moving dreamlike over the moist brown earth that smelled headily of spring, till he came to a rise in the land. He crawled to the top and peered over.

The first thing he saw was that Shirley and Foltz had all their clothes on, thank the Good Lord.

They were not doing It, but they were sure doing something weird and unnatural. Shirley was sitting on the rock, her skirt lifted halfway up her thighs, and Foltz was on his knees in front of her. He was rubbing his hands slowly, tenderly, on one of her legs. He was rubbing something onto the leg, some cream or lotion from a jar. Where he had rubbed, the leg was darker.

Now Artie got what was happening. Foltz was applying “leg makeup” to Shirley’s legs. Artie knew all about how nylon stockings had got too expensive because of the War so companies invented leg makeup for women to wear instead of stockings. Not many women in Birney used it, but evidently lots of working girls in cities who had to wear stockings to offices every day had gone in for leg makeup for the Duration. So that’s what Foltz had “dreamed of”—putting leg makeup on a girl’s legs! And that’s what Shirley was talking about when she asked him “what kind” he had got, and said she had heard of that kind—there were different brands of the stuff, like “Legstick” and “Stocking Fizz.”

Artie tried to tell himself that what Shirley and Foltz were doing was helping the War Effort by conserving the vital material of nylon, but he knew darn well that didn’t have beans to do with what was going on.

In his heart, Artie knew that he was watching something really pre-verted. In a way, this was even worse than doing It because this was so oddball. Shirley didn’t seem to be doped, but Artie hated to think she would do such a thing—or let such a thing be done to her—of her own free will. Maybe the insidious Foltz had weakened her will by using some secret Nazi methods of mind control. Maybe this was just a technique for getting her all sexed up so she’d really do It when he finished with her legs.

Whatever the case was, Artie, didn’t want Tutlow or anyone else to find out that Shirley was the girl in the woods with the German saboteur. Nor did he want the demented Foltz to do anything else to the girl that Roy Garber was going to come home to before he even had a chance to come home. Without exactly planning what to do, just knowing he had to do something, Artie leaped up and screeched out the Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko tribal war cry:

“Eeeeeee-yaaaaaa-yoooooo!”

Then he turned and took off like sixty, hurling his body forward, putting his whole throbbing heart and blanked out mind into running.

Tutlow answered the cry with his own bloodcurdling rendition of the Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko whoop, and at the same time, Shirley Colby screamed. Clarence Foltz, his voice undoped and militarily usherlike again, yelled, “Dirty bastards!”

The woods, so quiet and still only a moment ago, was now thrashing with runners. Artie could see Tutlow charging ahead of him toward Town, not even looking back to see if his counterspy comrade was okay or in trouble. Artie not only heard the noise of his comrade fleeing ahead of him, he heard the mad galloping steps of his pursuer pounding behind him. Artie looked over his shoulder and saw, only about a first-down’s distance away, the wild eyes and furious mouth of Clarence Foltz, charging for him like a skinny Bronco Nagurski gone berserk.

In a desperate maneuver to shake the enemy, Artie cut off the narrow path and plunged into the underbrush, flailing through tangles of bushes and branches that whipped against his face and arms, lashing and cutting. His throat and lungs were burning with the gasping sucks of breath as he forced every muscle forward, fleeing, knowing no matter how much he hurt it was nothing compared to being captured by a Nazi spy who would have no mercy, who might punish a counterspy to death, or even worse, by beating his privates to jelly. The pursuer was gaining ground, the heave of his breath and the crash of his furious steps coming closer. Artie bent forward as he ran, like he was stretching for the tape at the finish line of a dash, but then hands were on him, not around his ankles like a real All-American tackler would do it, but on his back, grabbing, pulling him down.

“Eeeeeeeyaaaaaa-yoooooo!” Artie screamed, but there was no reply, only the faint, distant sound of dashing feet as Tutlow fled to freedom. Hands were on him, jerking and pulling him over onto his back, pinning his shoulders into the hard ground. The enraged Foltz, gasping and trembling, bent over Artie, the features of his Nazi-disciplined face contorted with hate.

“Bastard. Dirty little bastard,” Foltz whispered with evil intensity.

“The other guy’s name is Warren Tutlow!” Artie blurted out, at once feeling sick with shame, knowing he had not for even a second been able to carry on the mute tradition of courageous silence pioneered by the former Boy Scouts who refused as soldiers to give information to the enemy even though their privates were beaten to jelly. The next thing that came to his mind made Artie fear he was going crazy, for instead of thinking up a cunning plan of escape or at least a cutting remark like something Bogart would say from the side of his mouth if brought down by a Nazi pursuer, all he thought of was the dumb line of a silly song: It must be jelly since jam don’t shake like this.

“Get up, ya little punk,” ordered Foltz, yanking his arm and then twisting it behind him so hard it felt like his shoulder was being yanked from its socket.

“March!” came the clipped command of the Nazi agent and Artie stumbled ahead, coughing, the efficient Foltz twisting his arm as he pushed from behind.

The one thing almost as bad as having his privates beaten to jelly was being brought to face Shirley Colby as a captive counterspy. She was standing on the rock, wearing her sweater and coat and skirt just like a normal pretty All-American girl except one of her legs was tan and one was white. When she saw Artie, her mouth opened like she was hit on the head and then her whole face turned from shock to the sour look of hate, making her almost ugly.

“Artie Garber,” she said. “You little sneak.”

Anger flooded Artie so quickly and fully that instead of looking down at his shoes in shame and sorrow he stared right back at her, his jaw jutting out defiantly, and said, “Takes one to call one!”

Whap!

Foltz gave Artie a sharp cuff on the ear, and Shirley shouted, “No!”

She rushed to Artie, falling to her knees in front of him and throwing her arms around him. She was crying now and squeezing him, and he didn’t know what to do, didn’t know who was in the power of whom, which one was doped or mind-controlled by which, or what in the heck was going on here anyway, so he just stood there, stiff, silent, suspicious and totally confused.

“Oh, Artie,” Shirley said, pulling back and looking at him through her tears, “I’m so sorry. I know you don’t understand. But I want to explain. I want to explain everything.”

“You traitor!” yelled Foltz.

Great Balls of Fire. Artie’s worst fears were true.

Shirley put an arm around Artie and held him beside her, like they were both on the same side against the Nazi agent.

“Artie’s my friend,” she said bravely. “He’ll understand.”

“He’s only a kid, for chrissake!”

“He happens to be the brother of Corporal Roy Garber, United States Marine Corps.”

“Oh, so we’re back to that,” said Foltz in a pouting voice. “The big War Hero. I should have known.”

“You should have known I’d be loyal to the man I intend to marry, since I told you all about it.”

“Ha,” Foltz said in that bitter, choked laugh of his.

“I think you’d better leave me and Artie alone for a while,” she said to Foltz.

“Sure! I’ll go, I’ll go all right, I’ll get my stuff and hit the road and go to the next lousy town in my lousy life.”

“You’ll do nothing of the sort, Clarence Foltz!”

Foltz put his hand over his face. He was sobbing. Shirley got up and went to comfort him.

“There, there,” she said. “You just run along to your room and read some poems, and I’ll see you tonight at the Strand. I have to explain this to Artie alone now, and then he’ll understand everything.”

“I don’t want him to understand! I don’t even want him to know. It’s no kind of thing for a kid, anyway.”

“Oh, yeah?” said Artie. Made bold again by Shirley’s taking his side, and her obvious power over the Nazi agent, Artie spoke his mind.

“I may only be twelve years old, so I’m just a Boy Scout now instead of a soldier, but I’m still an American citizen, and I have a right to know about anything that threatens American freedom and democracy. Also, I have served as an Assistant Junior Air Raid Spotter.”

Both Foltz and Shirley looked blankly at Artie, like he’d just spoken Chinese or something.

Foltz cleared his throat.

Shirley made a dainty little cough into her fist, then spoke to Foltz softly.

“You go on to your room, Clarence. Artie and I need to have a long talk.”

Foltz sighed, and raised his hands about to his waist, turning the palms up, in a sign that meant What the heck, anyway. Then he shoved his hands in the pockets of his leather German aviator jacket and walked away, kicking at rocks as he went.

When Foltz was out of sight, Shirley sat down on the rock and lit a cigarette.

“Artie,” she said, “you have to trust me. You have to promise you won’t ever tell a soul about this.”

“That you were fooling around with a German spy?”

“A what?”

“It’s no use lying. I know darn well that guy is no veteran of Guadalcanal.”

“All right, but he’s no German spy, either, for Heaven’s sake.”

“Well, what the heck is he, then?”

“You mustn’t ever tell. He’s so ashamed.”

“Is he some kind of criminal?”

Shirley shook her head, then she looked Artie right in the eyes.

“Clarence is Four-F,” she said.

Artie knew she was telling the truth, or at least what Foltz had convinced her was the truth, but Artie smelled something fishy about it. He figured a guy who was classified 4-F in the Draft and couldn’t go to War had to really have something terribly wrong, like be missing an arm or a leg or be so blind in both eyes he could only walk with a cane and a dog. The only 4-F guy he knew was Ribs O’Mahoney, and even though he could see all right and get around pretty good, at least he had a pretty bad limp.

“So what’s wrong with the guy, anyway?” Artie asked suspiciously. “He sure can run fast, I’ll tell you that.”

“It’s nothing you can see, that’s what makes it so awful for him. People think a boy his age who’s not in uniform is a slacker, a Draft-dodger. Unless of course they think he’s already been in and discharged because of a wound. Which is why he pretends that’s what happened.”

“But what did happen? To make him Four-F?”

“Clarence has a punctured eardrum.”

“He stole that!” Artie shouted, seeing through the phony story right away. “He copied it from Leo Durocher!”

“What in the world are you talking about?”

“Leo Durocher is Four-F because of a punctured eardrum. It was in all the magazines. Foltz must have read it and used it for his own excuse for not going in the Army!”

“Who’s Leo Durocher?”

For a split second Artie thought Shirley was pulling his leg, but then he realized that smart as she was, she was still a girl, and so there were really important things she just didn’t know about.

“Leo Durocher,” Artie said patiently, “is the manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

“Well, that should show you that even real he men can have punctured eardrums, and there’s nothing they can do about it.”

“But how do you know he isn’t lying, just to dodge the Draft?”

“Because he showed me:”

“His punctured eardrum?”

“No! You can’t even see it. He showed me his letter from the Draft Board.”

“Well, if it’s true, what’s he doing here? In Birney?”

“Running away. Everyone made fun of him. In his own hometown.”

“Maybe his punctured eardrum’s not the only thing wrong with him.”

“What do you mean?”

“Maybe he’s some kind of pre-vert.”

“He’s nothing of the kind. He’s just very sensitive.”

“You mean he’s like a girl?”

“No! Lots of men are sensitive. Well, not lots of them, but the ones I care about. You are yourself. Sensitive. So is your brother, but he tries to cover it up, not to show it. When I saw that side of him, that’s when I cared.”

“You care about Foltz, then?”

“Yes. I worry about him. He’s all bottled up inside.”

“He must be pretty sad, I guess.”

Shirley suddenly threw her cigarette away, only half-smoked. She got up and stamped her foot on it.

“He’s lonely. I’m lonely too. Don’t you see? We’re both lonely.”

She burst out crying and bent over, holding her face in her hands as she sobbed.

Artie stood up, feeling helpless, feeling like he was all thumbs. He squeezed his hands into fists and went to Shirley and placed a fist gently on her back, moving it a little ways up and down.

She sniffled and coughed, then straightened up and wiped at her eyes.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I just wish this horrible War was over. I don’t know how long I can stand it.”

“Don’t worry,” Artie said. “Everything will be fine.”

He knew it would. It was up to him to see that it was, and he was going to do his duty.