Edenville Owls

Chapter 23

“My uncle John was in the war,” Joanie said. “My mother’s brother. He saw one of those Jewish prison camps.”

We were on the bandstand. It was sunny, and pleasant for winter. Joanie was sitting in the sun on one of the bandstand railings. I was walking around the perimeter of the bandstand as we talked.

“Concentration camps,” I said. “What did he say about them?”

“He wouldn’t talk about them,” Joanie said. “Just that they were awful.”

“I think they killed Jews there,” I said.

“That’s what Uncle John says.”

There were a lot of veterans around Edenville. Guys who’d been on ships. Guys who’d been waist gunners in B-17s. Guys who’d been in North Africa. Guys who’d been in Italy and Europe and the Pacific. Some of the guys had been wounded. Some of the guys who’d been in the Pacific were still kind of yellowish from some jungle disease they’d got. Philly DeCosta was deaf in one ear from being an artillery gunner. Most of them wore some part of their old uniforms around. Leather flight jackets, pea coats, and a lot of old field jackets with the insignia still on them. I still knew most of the patches the way I knew all of the airplanes. Screaming Eagle for the 101st Airborne; blue and white stripes for the 3rd Division. Corporal’s stripes. Captain’s bars. I always wanted a field jacket, a real one, worn by a real soldier. But the war was over, and I had missed my chance. Unless there was another one. I felt sort of guilty, and I never said it, but I hoped there’d be another one.

“Do you suppose this man is a Nazi?” Joanie said.

“Hard to figure a Nazi preacher,” I said.

“Maybe he isn’t really a preacher,” Joanie said.

“He says he is. He gave a sermon. People come to listen.”

“Still doesn’t make him a real minister,” she said.

“No.”

“Are you going to go back for the youth meeting?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Are you afraid?”

“No.”

“I would be,” Joanie said. “He sounds awful.”

I shrugged.

“Remember we promised never to lie to each other,” Joanie said.

“Maybe I’m a little scared,” I admitted.

She smiled.

“Maybe,” she said.

“But I don’t know what good it would do me to go,” I said.

“Because you know all you need to know about him?”

“I guess.”

“I agree,” Joanie said. “What we need is to know what’s going on with Miss Delaney.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you have a plan?”

“I’m figuring,” I said.

“If you go to that man’s youth meeting ever,” Joanie said, “I could go with you.”

Wow!

“I think it’s only for boys,” I said.

“Isn’t it always,” Joanie said.