Forming bonds in a time of war
It's the summer of 1943, and for twelve-year-old Celie Marsh the war seems awfully close to her coastal Massachusetts home. She worries about bombs and submarines, and about her big brother, who can't wait to go off and fight. Her little brother doesn't seem to need her anymore, and her best friend has moved away. When her father brings Charley, a monkey, home from work one day, Celie finds the comforting companion she has been missing. But more upheaval is in store: irritating Joey Bentley moves in with his crabby grandmother next door, her mother takes a job building warships, and worst of all, Charley proves to be too wild for Celie to manage. A near disaster forces Celie to make a heart-wrenching decision that teaches her painful lessons about friendship, family, and the meaning of love.
This tender novel about relationships, based on the author's mother's experience, is elegantly crafted and suffused with warmth, as well as with a powerful sense of time and place.
Forming bonds in a time of war
It's the summer of 1943, and for twelve-year-old Celie Marsh the war seems awfully close to her coastal Massachusetts home. She worries about bombs and submarines, and about her big brother, who can't wait to go off and fight. Her little brother doesn't seem to need her anymore, and her best friend has moved away. When her father brings Charley, a monkey, home from work one day, Celie finds the comforting companion she has been missing. But more upheaval is in store: irritating Joey Bentley moves in with his crabby grandmother next door, her mother takes a job building warships, and worst of all, Charley proves to be too wild for Celie to manage. A near disaster forces Celie to make a heart-wrenching decision that teaches her painful lessons about friendship, family, and the meaning of love.
This tender novel about relationships, based on the author's mother's experience, is elegantly crafted and suffused with warmth, as well as with a powerful sense of time and place.
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Overview
Forming bonds in a time of war
It's the summer of 1943, and for twelve-year-old Celie Marsh the war seems awfully close to her coastal Massachusetts home. She worries about bombs and submarines, and about her big brother, who can't wait to go off and fight. Her little brother doesn't seem to need her anymore, and her best friend has moved away. When her father brings Charley, a monkey, home from work one day, Celie finds the comforting companion she has been missing. But more upheaval is in store: irritating Joey Bentley moves in with his crabby grandmother next door, her mother takes a job building warships, and worst of all, Charley proves to be too wild for Celie to manage. A near disaster forces Celie to make a heart-wrenching decision that teaches her painful lessons about friendship, family, and the meaning of love.
This tender novel about relationships, based on the author's mother's experience, is elegantly crafted and suffused with warmth, as well as with a powerful sense of time and place.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781466894426 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Farrar, Straus and Giroux |
| Publication date: | 08/18/2015 |
| Sold by: | Macmillan |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 165 |
| File size: | 251 KB |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Jane Buchanan is the author of Gratefully Yours and Hank’s Story, both novels about children who ride the orphan train in 1923. She lives in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Read an Excerpt
Goodbye, Charley
By Jane Buchanan
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2004 Jane BuchananAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-9442-6
CHAPTER 1
Celie looked up at the gulls circling overhead and breathed deeply. There was nothing to compare to the rich, earthy smell of the salt-marsh flats, thick with the scent of fish and decay.
She wiggled her toes and felt the fine gray muck slide between them. Her mother wouldn't approve, she knew, of her going barefoot in the marsh. Ma worried about sharp shells and rusted fishhooks. But Celie loved the feel of the stuff on her feet. Besides, since rubber was rationed because of the war, the only boots she had were her brother Ben's, and they were so big the suction kept pulling them off.
Celie stabbed the pronged clamming shovel into the mud. Water bubbled up through small round holes, a sure sign that clams were there. She turned over the forkful and pawed through, quickly picking out the clams before they burrowed out of reach. Clamming was one of the things she loved most about summer in Gloucester, second only to eating the clams dipped in batter and fried in oil.
Celie picked up a particularly large clam and gazed at it admiringly. Its fat neck retracted into its shell, and she tossed it into one of the pails she had lined with seaweed to keep the clams moist. She wished she could show that monster to someone, but her best friend, Rita, had moved away right after school had ended, and now she had to go clamming alone. Now she did most everything alone. She'd never been much good at making friends, and these days her little brother, Andy, spent most of his time collecting junk for the Junior Commandos with his friend Rufus. Her older brother, Ben, who used to be okay, had turned into a big bully. Besides, who wanted to hang around with a bunch of boys? Not Celie!
Anyhow, it had been good clamming. She'd been at it since daybreak and had a couple of pails full. She would take them home so Ma could shuck them and fry them up for supper. Fat was hard to come by since the war. Ma always managed to find some for frying clams, though. It was, hands down, Celie's favorite meal. The only thing that could make it better was some fresh fried flounder dunked in ketchup. But today was Wednesday. Papa wouldn't be able to take her out in the boat until Saturday.
Celie swatted at the greenhead flies buzzing hungrily around her looking for blood. She pulled on Ben's boots and tucked the clamming fork under her arm. Her fingers were raw from the salt and sand, and when she picked up her pails the handles dug into her skin. She was hot and tired and hungry. Her back and shoulders ached. It had been a great morning. She carried the pails down to the shore and filled them with seawater to clean the clams, then headed for home.
Celie crossed the drawbridge and walked past the statue of the fisherman that stood at the entrance to the harbor. She couldn't avoid seeing the navy ships anchored there, gray and constant as barnacles, a reminder of the war her big brother was so eager to go off and fight in. She shook her head, flinging her long red braids back over her shoulders, and shifted the pails in her hands. At the same time, she stepped on a clamshell a gull had dropped on the sidewalk and nearly lost her balance. She kicked the shell hard, and it went skittering away with a clatter, her boot along with it. "Shoot," she said. She put down the pails and pulled the boot back on.
By the time she got home, Celie felt as though her arms had stretched five inches from the weight of the pails. She leaned the clamming fork against the house and pushed open the front door with her foot.
Ma was standing at the kitchen sink up to her elbows in suds. Her long hair was coiled like a pinwheel at the back of her neck. "Take off those boots before you go another step," she said sternly. Then she smiled. "Good clamming?"
"Great," said Celie, kicking off her boots and plunking the pails down on the counter.
Ma admired the clams and put a cold meat-loaf sandwich on the table. "Wash up and eat some lunch," she said. "And scrub those feet! I don't suppose you were clamming barefoot again." It was more of a statement than a question.
Celie went to the bathroom and washed her feet one at a time under the tap in the sink. She splashed cold water on her flaming cheeks. Her braids flopped over her shoulders into the running water. She squeezed them out and popped the end of one into her mouth. It tasted salty from the damp ocean air at the marsh. She dried her feet on the clean white towel, then hung it back on the towel bar with the used side down so Ma wouldn't notice the smudges of marsh mud.
Celie sat at the table and spit out the braid to make room for a large bite of her sandwich.
"Papa called," Ma said. "Something about a surprise." Ma didn't look too thrilled. She always said Papa's surprises meant more work for her.
"Did he say what kind of surprise?" Celie asked. Unlike Ma, she usually liked her father's surprises. "Animal or mineral?"
Ma shrugged. "Didn't say," she said.
Celie took another bite of her sandwich. It wasn't bad considering that the meat loaf was more oatmeal than meat. It was the summer of 1943. The country had been at war for a year and a half, and meat was only one of the things that were scarce. Celie sometimes thought it would be faster to list what hadn't been rationed since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and President Roosevelt talked on the radio about a day that would live in infamy. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had a butter-and-sugar sandwich or worn a new pair of shoes. Not that she cared much for shoes, but sometimes they were necessary and the less they pinched her toes, the better.
She finished her sandwich and washed it down with a glass of milk. Then she went up to her room and changed into dry clothes — a yellow blouse and a pair of her brother's hand-me-down dungarees rolled to her ankles and cinched around her waist with a worn leather belt. She slipped her sneakers on over her bare feet and, grabbing her baseball and mitt, ran back down the stairs.
"I'm going to the park," she said. "See if there's a game."
"I was hoping you'd help me in the garden," Ma said. "And the dandelions out front need to be dug."
"When I get back," Celie said. "I promise."
"Uh-huh," said Ma. She'd heard that before. "Dinner's at five." Celie was nearly at the door when Ma added, "Did you hang your wet things to dry?"
"Mmm," Celie said, hoping Ma would take the noncommittal grunt as a yes, which she told herself was not technically a lie.
The damp chill of the early morning had long burned off and been replaced by the hot, humid air of a summer afternoon. As Celie started out the door, Ma yelled after her, "Go down to the beach and see if Andy's there! See if he wants to play."
"Okay!" Celie called back, tearing down the gravel driveway as the screen door slapped shut behind her and nearly running smack into old Mrs. Bentley from next door. "Hey, Mrs. B.," Celie said, forcing a smile to her lips.
Mrs. Bentley could teach the crabs down at the marsh a thing or two, Celie always thought. She was about as hard and spindly as a crab, too. She spent so much time with her lips pursed that she had permanent wrinkles all around her mouth. She was pursing them now.
"Hay is for horses," she said.
Celie gritted her teeth. Mrs. Bentley had lived next door forever. She'd had a husband once, but that was before Celie was born. He'd died years ago, when his boat went down in a storm. As long as Celie had known her, Mrs. Bentley had been old and crabby and alone. And she seemed to like it that way. Before Ben got old enough, Mrs. Bentley had been their babysitter. These days, though, when Ben wasn't around, Ma trusted Celie to watch Andy. She was twelve and three quarters, plenty old enough to babysit a six-year-old.
"I'm going to the beach," Celie said, because she couldn't think of anything else to say that wouldn't cause Mrs. Bentley to make disapproving comments, and dashed off before the old sourpuss had time to notice the baseball mitt tucked under her arm. Mrs. Bentley definitely didn't approve of girls playing baseball.
The beach was across the street and over the hill. Celie always took the shortcut through the cemetery. A couple of new graves had appeared since the war started. Small, faded American flags fluttered in the summer breeze.
At the bottom of the hill, near the beach, was a little shop that served sandwiches and ice cream. Ice cream was hard to come by these days, what with sugar and dairy rationing, but you could still get it, though not as much as you might like, and not in all your favorite flavors. It didn't make sense to Celie. How come she couldn't have a butter-and-sugar sandwich, but anyone with a nickel could go to the Cupboard and buy a cone? "Has to do with morale on the home front," Papa had said. "Have to keep folks happy at home so they'll keep supporting the war effort, and everyone knows that ice cream is essential for morale." He'd tugged Celie's braid and grinned.
At the beach a few families had spread out their blankets like patchwork. There was no sign of Andy. At least she could tell Ma she'd looked for him.
She started toward the park. Maybe there was already a game going. She ran into Andy and Rufus making their way up the sidewalk, hauling a rusty red wagon heaped with junk.
"How's it going?" she asked them. Like most of the kids in America nowadays, Andy and Rufus went around collecting things for the war effort: bacon grease, tin cans, worn-out pots and pans, ladies' nylon stockings, even old rags. It was hard to believe the government could win a war with all that old junk, but Papa had said they made bombs from the bacon fat and parachutes from the nylon. She didn't know what else they did with the stuff, but she figured Andy and Rufus had gathered tons of it over the last year.
"Okay," said Andy, pulling up the wagon so Celie could see.
"Great!" said Celie, pretending to admire the jumble of stuff. It looked like a mess to her, and the smell of rancid bacon grease nearly made her gag. "I'm going down to the ball field," she said, backing away. "Wanna come?"
"Nah," said Andy. "Ben's there. He told us to scram."
Celie reached out and tousled Andy's hair. "Don't mind Ben," she said. "He's too big for his britches, that's all."
It was true. Ben had become an air-raid warden when the war had started, and he thought he was the cat's meow. Ma just shook her head when the sirens went off and Ben came in ordering the family under the kitchen table while he searched the attic for incendiary bombs. Celie wasn't sure how they were supposed to have gotten there, but it was part of the drill. Ben never let them skip it. Celie would climb under the table and hold her hands over her ears. She hated these drills. They were like dark clouds hanging over their lives, reminding them that the Germans could attack for real any minute, dropping bombs on their houses and destroying everything. Drills were the only times she wished they didn't live on the coast, where they'd be the first targets in an attack. It didn't help that people had started to think maybe Massachusetts wouldn't get attacked by the Germans; Celie knew that U-boats had sunk plenty of ships along the East Coast. There was no telling when the Germans might decide to invade. So she still got a cold chill when she heard that siren go off.
But not Ma. "I have too much to do to be hiding under the kitchen table, Benjamin Marsh," Ma would say, wiping her hands on her apron. "As if a table is going to save us from a German bomb." That didn't make Celie feel any better. She liked to think that even if the house was demolished, the kitchen table would protect them. She knew, if she thought about it, that it didn't make much sense, but she needed to believe it. She wished Ma believed it, too. Eventually Ma would shake her head and get down on her hands and knees and climb under the table with the rest of them. "Lord," she'd say, looking up at the underside of the table as though heaven were made of maple boards and smeared with Andy's greasy fingerprints, "if this war doesn't kill us, these air-raid drills will!"
Ben said Ma was being unpatriotic when she talked like that. He said it was her duty as an American to take these things seriously, just as it was her duty to draw her blackout curtains every night to keep the light from showing.
"As if the Germans don't know we're here," Ma would say, tugging the heavy black curtains across the windows.
Celie worried sometimes that Ma would get into trouble for talking that way. She wished her mother would be more careful. There was a war on, after all. There were billboards and signs everywhere to remind you that the enemy was listening. It made Celie nervous.
Down at the ball field, the guys were well into a game. No chance for Celie to play now. She sat on the bench behind home plate, next to Billy Jessup, who was there in his wheelchair. His sister, Ina, always brought him over to watch the games.
"Hey," Celie said as she brushed off the bench and sat down. Billy and Ina both smiled, but they kept their eyes on the game. Celie tried not to look at Billy's legs — or rather where his legs had been. She hated to think about what it must have been like losing them the way he did in the war. He was lucky to be alive, people said. She wondered if he felt lucky. She watched the game, tossing her ball back and forth from her hand to her glove. She wished she had someone to play catch with, but Ina didn't play ball, and Billy couldn't unless you threw the ball right to him.
The game was close. One team was Portuguese boys from up on Portagee Hill. The other was mostly what Papa called WASPs — like them, white Anglo-Saxon Protestants. The Portagee Hill team was winning, and Ben looked glum. He hated to lose, but he especially hated to lose to the Portagees. That had gotten worse since the war started. There was talk that the Portagees weren't real Americans and couldn't be trusted. People said some of the Portuguese fishermen who went out looking for U-boats were really passing on classified information. Celie didn't believe that, though, and she didn't see how hating people for being Portuguese was any different from hating people for being Jewish, and wasn't that one of the things we were over there fighting about?
Celie watched and cheered Ben's team on. She cheered the Portagee Hill team, too. Jimmy DaSilva was playing third base. He tipped his chin in Celie's direction and winked. Celie looked down at her mitt and tossed her ball back and forth. Jimmy was what Celie's ma called a real charmer. Celie'd known him since she was a little kid. He and Ben had been friends until Ben got in with a crowd that didn't have much use for the Portuguese — and Jimmy showed that he wasn't crazy about Ben's girlfriend, who was part of that crowd. But Jimmy had always been nice to Celie, like a big brother — the big brother that Ben wasn't much anymore. Jimmy looked out for her. He was eighteen and would have been off fighting if he hadn't lost the last two fingers of his throwing hand in a fishing accident. He could still throw a baseball, though. He'd given Celie plenty of pointers on pitching. Jimmy was a lobsterman. He didn't play ball much these days, but sometimes, when the younger guys needed a ninth man, he'd fill in if he wasn't too busy.
In the end, Ben's team lost on a hard liner to third. Ben went off with friends, and Jimmy headed down to the docks. Ina and Billy Jessup said goodbye and left. Celie sat slumped on the bench, her chin propped in her glove hand.
CHAPTER 2Celie was about to get up and start home when she noticed her father walking down the street. She hadn't realized it was so late. From the pucker of his lips, she could tell he was whistling. He was carrying a big square box. The surprise. She'd forgotten all about it.
"Papa!" Celie called. She stood up on the bench and waved both her arms over her head. Her father stopped whistling and broke into a broad grin. Ma always said he looked like a little boy when he did that. Sometimes she said he acted like one, too. Celie wondered whether it was a compliment when Ma told her, "You're just like your father." Doing things without thinking about the consequences was probably what she meant.
"What's in the box?" Celie asked when he finally reached her. "Ma said you were bringing a surprise. Can I see it?" She grabbed on to his forearm. Papa's shirtsleeve was rolled up and his arm, damp with sweat, was solid as a tree trunk.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Goodbye, Charley by Jane Buchanan. Copyright © 2004 Jane Buchanan. Excerpted by permission of Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
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