Free Keep Smiling Through by Ann Rinaldi

Singer.
    Why didn't Nana want him to go? What bad thing could happen on a sun-filled day in the country? Maybe Nana was listening to too many radio programs, I thought. She liked her radio, too.
    Her favorite was
The Adventures of the Thin Man.
Nick and Nora Charles were the happiest, merriest married couple in radio. Nick was a private eye who was always coming upon dead bodies.
    Did Nana think we'd come upon dead bodies in the fields behind our house? All we came upon were chirping birds, droning bees, and a sun that seemed to have stopped in its tracks as we walked along the path that mid-April afternoon.
    Well, if we came on a dead body, I'd know what to do, all right. I'd act just like Betty and track down the criminals before they got away. No, I didn't have a luminous bracelet, but Martin had given me his magic pedometer again that morning. I guess he felt sorry for me because I couldn't go to Brooklyn.

    I got my ice cream. Strawberry. Two scoops.
    Ernie's is a pretty place. It's a roadside stand where you can get good sandwiches, root beer, the real kind of beer for grown-ups, and ice cream. It has a small lake out back where there are picnic tables.
    Grandpa set my ice cream down on a picnic table and told me he was going to talk to his friend. "Will you be all right?"
    How could I not be all right? It was a sunny day, I had just been bought ice cream, and there were ducks on the lake, and a couple of picnicking families at other tables.
    Better yet, Amazing Grace was nowhere in sight to tell me I wasn't holding my spoon right or I was eating too fast. I was in heaven. "Yes," I said.
    He went off to see his friend, and I ate my ice cream. I took my time finishing it, walked down to the lake, watched the ducks for a while, and walked back to my table again.
    Grandpa had been gone an awful long time. I decided to go and see if he was okay.
    I came around to the side of Ernie's just in time to hear Grandpa talking through the little window where you give your order.
    "So how is he doing, then?" he was asking. "Is he making a new Germany?"
    I couldn't see Ernie's face on the other
side of the window, but I could hear his voice.
    "He is trying, but it isn't easy, with the war. My friend Hauptmann writes that our people back there are suffering. Not enough to eat. They work long, hard hours, and the Americans are bombing the factories."
    "Hauptmann?" Grandpa asked.
    "Ya," the voice from behind the window said. "He used to be a professor at Rutgers. He is now back in the Fatherland, in charge of cultural interests for the Third Reich."
    Grandpa said something then, but I did not hear it. All I heard was a buzzing in my ears and the pounding of my own heart.
    They are talking about Hitler. And Germany,
I thought.
    They are talking about how the German people are suffering! And a man named Hauptmann, who does something for the Third Reich!
    Grandpa cares about these people? He asked how Hitler was doing with his new Germany! How can he care?
    The sun felt so hot on my head! My palms were sweating. My knees were weak.
    How can they be talking about such things, right here at Ernie's where strawberry ice cream
is served to people and there are ducks swimming in the lake?
    "Hauptmann has sent me pamphlets," the voice behind the window went on. "They tell of the wonders of the new Germany. He wants me to distribute them. Will you take some back to Brooklyn?"
    "Let me see one," Grandpa said.
    A paper was shoved through the window. Grandpa took it and looked at it briefly.
    All I could think of for one terrible moment was,
I'm behind enemy lines. I must do something.
    But what?
    I tried to speak. I wanted to scream out, "No, don't take it," like Mary did when Uncle Hermie offered the coupons to my father. But just as I was about to do so, there came a squeal of brakes as a car pulled up in front and raised dust on the gravel.
    At the same time, Grandpa folded the paper, then turned, saw me standing there, and scowled. "What are