Free On The Wings of Heroes by Richard Peck Page B

her. But water stood in her basement, and the newspapers had mostly turned into towers of foul mush. We took from the top and were up and down her back stairs with yellow piles.
    Then she sent us up to her attic. “While you’re up there, bring down my dress dummy.”
    We moaned.
    â€œAnd my sewing machine. I’ve got to start making my own clothes again,” Old Lady Graves hollered. “There’s a war on, you know.”
    Her dress dummy looked like her, but better. It had no head. Her sewing machine was a foot-pedal Singer with a rubber drive belt. It would be swell scrap, and it outweighed us. It barely budged, but we got it down, a stair step at a time. Only then could we go back for her collection of Saturday Evening Post s and Ladies’ Home Journal s.
    Hefting a stack higher than his head, Scooter tripped over something and fell flat. Magazines flew. I didn’t laugh, but it was funny, and he’d skinned his knee. He’d tripped over a bag of something. “What is it anyway?” he said.
    It was a hundred pounds of sugar.
    â€œOld Lady Graves is a hoarder,” Scooter whispered, which was no big surprise. We looked closer at the dusty bag. It was hard as a rock, and moth- and mouse-eaten. The lettering on it was faded. Scooter smacked his forehead. It was from World War I.
    We sat on it, wringing wet from all our work. Scooter still thought we were giving too much to the war effort. But we wanted those medals of General Eisenhower’s.
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    We were even-steven about it, piling half our paper on Scooter’s back porch, half on mine. We’d finally figured out we had to take twine and tie our scrap paper into bundles. We were dragging full loads home one afternoon when a big stake-bed REO truck pulled up beside us. Three Boy Scouts from Troop 15 were up in the cab. The one at the wheel was an Eagle Scout, old enough to drive. He had badges all over him.
    We were pulling these puny Radio Flyer wagons that kept tipping over, and now we looked up. It was a marvel how much paper you could get with a truck and a whole troop collecting together. Six or eight Scouts stood up there in the truck bed in the paper piles. The Eagle Scout leaned out from the driver’s seat.
    â€œYou two. We’ll take your paper.”
    We tried not to get any smaller when the Scouts jumped down off the truck.
    â€œIt’s ours,” Scooter said. “We collected it.” But his voice hadn’t changed yet.
    â€œYou want to fight eleven of us for it, squirt?” the Eagle Scout said. “Put up your dukes.” And they all snorted. Scout snorts.
    They were already heaving our bundles up into the truck. They’d been heavy to us, but nothing to the Scouts. And what could we do? It was Troop 15 too, Carlisle Snyder’s troop.
    If he was here, he wouldn’t let them pull this on us, I thought.
    I looked up, and he was right there, in uniform, our paper in his arms. One of the gang.
    Scooter saw. Who could miss our so-called Cubmaster? We stared, which is all we could do. But he never looked us in the eye. After they’d gunned off, we still watched all the way to the corner, but he wouldn’t look back.
    We were both about to cry, but not over the paper. Scooter unknotted his Cub neckerchief. He went up to a Dutch elm growing next to the Friedingers’ curb and tied the neckerchief to the highest limb he could reach. It had something to do with not being a Cub if it led to being a Scout. Anyway, we didn’t mess much with Cubs after that, but I know for a fact that Carlisle Snyder never came to another den meeting.
    We got our General Eisenhower medals. The paper wasn’t the problem. When they weighed ours, we were way over, but I never wore the medal. I figured Carlisle Snyder was wearing his.
    Scooter and I went on home that afternoon. Our empty wagons rattled, and we were back in time for The Lone Ranger on the radio. So that part was the