Chapter 26

"Can we have a Victory Garden, Mom?"

"Sure, Bud, that's a good idea." She moved the shirt on her ironing board to get at the back of the collar.

"They're doing a big one at school, out by the baseball field, and each class has a third of it."

"Where do you want to make it? Have you thought about that?" His mother rubbed the last wrinkle from the starched cloth and picked up a metal hanger that had barely escaped the last scrap drive.

Bud nodded and laid his plan on the kitchen table. "It's about twelve by twenty, back behind the garage."

"Have you checked on when it gets sun?" his mother asked, setting her iron on the metal plate and turning the plan around so she could read the rows.

"Yep," he said, feeling pretty good about himself since what his mother was looking at was his sixth try to lay out the garden.

"Carrots aren't a good idea," she said, tapping her finger on the paper, "our soil's full of clay. They'd have a hard time."

"I could dump in a bunch of sand."

"You can try."

"So it's OK?"

"You'll have to stake up the peas you know, but it's good you put them on the north edge there."

Bud nodded. "I'm going to start digging."

"If you find any treasure, we can share," said his mother as he hurried out the back door, and she lifted another of her husband's clean shirts from her laundry basket.

An hour or so later, with about half his plot spaded up, Bud came back to the kitchen for a drink of water, his shoes ridged with dirt and his face dripping sweat.

"Don't forget, you've got the store at eleven," his mother said. "How's it going?"

"I'm just turning it over. The dirt's kind of orange, but there aren't many big rocks."

"Dig deep," she said. "I'll call you about ten-thirty."

He gulped down the last of the water in his glass, wiped his mouth with his hand and hurried back to his garden-to-be, leaving a few blobs of dirt behind him on the linoleum.

At school they had given every kid a packet of seeds, and Bud had traded his green beans for yellow squash which he liked a lot better. "A hundred days" was what it said on the seed package, and Bud looked forward to harvesting his vegetables in July or August. His father had plenty of seeds in a rack in the store, and Bud was sure he would not miss a few.

When he reported to his father to mind the store while he went home to eat with Polly as was his weekend habit, Bud told him about his morning's work. His back ached and his hands were blistered, but he had turned over the whole garden and chopped up some of the bigger clumps of clay with his spade.

"I'll go take a look," Sammy said. "You still working on that airplane?"

"Yes sir," Bud said, tying on his apron. "Got the wing struts all cut out and the formers pinned in place."

"Mrs. Mason said she would be by. Her order's in the box by the door."

Bud nodded. "Somebody's at the pump." He hurried toward the front door.

"Don't forget to get his ration coupon," his father called after him. Sam Williams stood and rubbed his chin. He had mixed feelings about his youngest child who recently had started growing again and was looking more like a man every day. What was he, thirteen? His father tried to remember being that age and thought about the girls he had known, especially about the one he thought he was going to marry before he met Polly, that blonde one. He sighed and shook his head, trying to recall her name.

It rained that Sunday so Bud could not hoe his garden, but he had been pleased that his father praised both the site and the neatness of his digging.

"Might do with some fertilizer," Sammy had said.

"What kind?" Bud asked, removing his elbows from the table at his mother's throat clearing noise.

"And some lime. I'll ask around. See what the local farmers are doing. Oh, and help yourself to any seeds you need."

Bud nodded, felt the beginnings of embarrassment, finished his vegetable soup, ate the last corn muffin, drank his milk and asked to be excused. His mother nodded, and he took his dishes to the kitchen and went up to work on his model airplane. With the radio tuned to the Senator's game, he finished the body with its long stringers of balsa wood, set it off to the side and got back to work on the wings which were taking shape on waxed paper spread over the plans that came with the Guillow kit.

The Spitfire's elliptical wings were a problem but the kit maker had provided flat sheets of wood with the shape of the wingtips stamped on them. Bud cut them out carefully with a Gem razor blade and pinned them in place.

Dihedral, he said to himself as he read the instructions for the next steps, what the heck is dihedral?