START HERE: Excerpt from The Penny Crusade

Four boys in an Oklahoma oil town form a secret club that changes their lives.

***

In a world plunged into the darkness of a horrible war, Hitler’s war, Tom Jackson was a figure of shining light.To us kids, he was a hero like Babe Ruth, Joe Louis, or Joe DiMaggio. Even grownups admired him. We’d go to the football games at the Bartlesville high school stadium on Saturday night to watch Tom Jackson quarterback. He had flash and dash.

My family had just moved to this new neighborhood in town. Tom Jackson lived there with his younger brother Norm, who was my age.

That was when I found out about Tom’s lucky penny. It was an old Indian head. His father got it in the first World War, in 1916. He was a new soldier on a troop train heading to New York City, where he would be shipped to France. Kind of worried.

Going through a small town in England, the train slowed. Tom’s dad was at an open window, waving to kids. One kid held out his hand and gave Tom’s dad that Indian head penny. He kept the penny and survived the war, came home, got a good job, married and had two sons. He gave the penny to Tom on his 13th birthday. Tom’s life definitely got much better.

Them came the last game he played just before Thanksgiving, in November 1943.

That night, Tom picked up a fumble on our 12-yard line in the last five minutes of the game; it was a fumble by the other team, which was ahead by three points.

Tom shifted his hips and stutter-stepped his legs so fast that the tacklers’ hands slipped off. He was running down the field, crossing the white lines of the yard markers, the 40, the 50, the 40, the 30, and the crowd was jumping up and down on the wooden bleachers and we were screaming so loud into the cold night air it was like one loud voice.

The enemy was chasing him, two big guys. One of them made a lunge. His hand caught Tom’s foot. Our hearts stopped; we thought Tom’s big run was over. We went AWWWW!

Tom lurched forward and one hand touched the ground. Tom staggered a few feet and got his legs under him just as the other enemy leaped at him. Tom swung his hips sideways, reached out his right arm to shove the guy’s helmet, and the guy nose-dived into the grass.

Amy on the sideline ran parallel to him, shouting cheerful encouragement.

Tom crossed the goal line. He knelt in the middle of our roars like big ocean waves breaking over his bowed head. Then, knowing it was real, he spread his arms and Amy leaped with joy.

We ran out on the field. At first his face was quiet, dark, and then, as he felt our cheers and love, his face cracked a big toothy grin. He waved and waved. He danced around, celebrating. Football scholarship to OU for sure! Cheerleaders led by Amy danced around him, flashing their golden arms and legs.

The players lifted Tom on their shoulders and some grownups were there too: the coach, the mayor, the principal of the high school, Tom’s dad. They marched around the stadium carryingTom.

In the spring of 1944 Tom was graduated. He planned to go roughneck on an oil field for the summer and then either go play football at college or enlist in the Navy. Instead, that week, he got his draft notice. He kissed his best girl, Amy Malone (his cheerleader) and went to Louisiana for Army training.

Norm watched for the mail each day and read Tom’s letters aloud to us:

Louisiana was hot and sweaty and full of mosquitoes. Tom was in a unit with a great bunch of guys from all over the U.S. of A. The food was mostly awful “Nothing like your cooking, Mom,”…though there was plenty of it. Once, on leave in New Orleans, he and two buddies bumped into some sailors. “We dusted the sidewalks with them,” Tom wrote. “Glad I didn’t join the Navy.”

Then, silence. D-Day had come. Tom had gone to war.

No more letters.

It was Saturday morning. As usual, our parents dropped us off at the Lyric Theater downtown, with a quarter in our hot little hands.

One dime bought admission and the rest was for popcorn, candy and soda. They didn’t have to worry about us until they picked us up. There was always a black-and-white cowboy movie

(starring Hopalong Cassidy, Lash Larue, Bob Steele, Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, John Wayne or Bob Mitchum) and then a serial (Nyoka the Jungle Girl, Flash Gordon or Tarzan) and a cartoon (Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, Donald Duck {cheers!}) and then we trooped out into sunshine and our parents’ cars. After lunch, we read comic books in the Jackson back porch. Then …

Two men on horses galloped across the valley.

Clouds of dust spurted behind the horses’ hooves making a sheet of midday haze over the distant purple bluffs.

From behind the chair on my front porch I aimed, pulled the trigger, but my cap didn’t explode, it just smoked and stank.

I shouted, “Bang!”

One of the men rose out of the saddle, arms flung wide.

“You got him!” Benjy shouted, crouched beside me. The man fell off his horse.

If you didn’t know Norm, you’d think he’d hurt himself. He fell over the curb onto the grassy lawn instead of on the concrete street.

“Wow!” Benjy whispered.

I snorted. “He practiced that.”

“Bet you can’t do it.”

“Bet I could!”

Norm rolled back to the bike, pulled his pistol and I heard the snap of his exploding cap.

Beside me, Benjy ducked his head and said, “Ptowee! Missed!” as the bullet ricocheted off the chair’s back and hit the front door.

The second horseman was John Stone. He leaped off his bike, landed on his feet, dropped flat, then shimmied fast as a snake on his belly toward the same bush. Benjy and I couldn’t shoot him because Norm fired again. “Bam!” “Ptowee!”

John Stone disappeared behind the bush. Benjy whispered, “They’re planning something.”

My back tingled. I tapped Benjy’s arm and whispered, in cowboy lingo, “If they rush us, you shoot the Injun and I’ll shoot Norm.”

John Stone crawled from behind the bush to a tree, his elbows pushing him fast. I nudged Benjy and he stood to shoot but Norm popped up and fired a cap before I could.

“Gotcha!” Norm shouted.

“OWWW!” Benjy lurched, staggered, dropped his pistol, sagged against the screen door. His feet slid out and he sat hard. “He got me!” he gasped.

I crawled to his side. I grabbed his right shoulder and shook it twice. “Fix, fix,” I said.

That always worked when any of the cowboy stars got shot by bad guys. Good guys only got wounded in the shoulder.

Benjy staggered to his feet. He fired again. “Bam, bam!”

Norm popped out the other side of the bush and fired a cap and said “Gotcha again!”

“No you didn’t!” I said.

Norm never let me win an argument. “I got him, fart-face!”

I whispered loudly: “Hey, stop that! My mom can hear you!”

“He’s dead!”

“The bullet went through my hat!” Benjy said, grinning at me.

“Liar!” Norm shouted. “You’re not wearing a hat!”

“I’m i-i-invisible!” Benjy said, grinning more intensely. “I took an invisibility p-p-p-pill!”

I grinned too; Norm wouldn’t allow that. He raised his head from behind the bush and looked sternly at us.

“Bull Stuff! You can’t do that!”

'Why not?” I asked.

“Because!” Norm’s lean face got his thinking look. “Cowboys don’t have invisibility pills. They weren’t invented yet.”

Then I saw John Stone was running fast and low to blindside us. I turned to shoot just as he bumped into the postman who was walking toward our front door.

“Sorry, Mr. Bailey,” John Stone said. He was almost as tall as the postman. John is ten but looks older. Grown women are friendly to him, while they treat the rest of us like kids.

“That’s okay, son.” Mr. Bailey pulled out a letter from his huge leather pouch and handed it to John. “Say — how ‘bout you give this to Norman? Letter from Tom.”

John held the letter. Mr. Bailey waved to us and crossed the street to the next house.

Benjy yelled, “Hey, Norm, it’s from Tom!”

Norm stood. I pointed at him and fired. He brushed the bullet aside.

“It’s time out, fart-brain!” Norm said, walking toward John Stone.

“You didn’t call it!” In a loud whisper: “Don’t talk like that!”

Dad says there are two kinds of people in the world: they’re either Good or Bad. Hitler is bad so we’re good because we’re fighting World War Two to stop him from killing people.

But I say the two kinds of people are small guys like me and Benjy, who never will be as perfect as tall, athletic guys like Norm and John Stone. They think they were born to push us around. Plus Norm is like his brother Tom: they both act like they know people are watching them all the time.

Norm took the letter. Benjy and I jumped off the porch and ran to them.

Norm looked at both sides of the letter, to let us get impatient. He pulled out his knife (a gift from Tom) and sliced the envelope open.

Inside was a folded sheet of lined yellow notepaper. As Norm unfolded it, something dropped to the grass.

It was a small packet of tinfoil from a chewing gum wrapper. I gave it to Norm. He unwrapped it and held up a penny. He frowned. He said: “It’s Tom’s lucky Indian head!”

“Why’d he send it to you?” I asked.

“Maybe he figures he doesn’t need luck any more,” John said quietly. John Stone is Osage Indian so he never gets excited.

What’d he mean? That maybe Tom was --? I felt the hairs stand on the back of my neck.

“R-read it!”

“Don’t get your balls in an uproar.”

Norm read aloud: “Dear Mom and Dad (and you too, squirt), “I’m doing fine. The food’s okay in the Army, no matter what some jerks say, even — something crossed out — My weight’s up to 175 and I grew another half inch. Hey Norm, I learned some wrestling moves you’d like, new stuff they teach us for hand-to-hand combat.

“Then something else crossed out. Darn censors! Dad says they cross out too much unimportant stuff.

“Anyway, Dad, I thought you’d like to know I’m thinking about college again. I realize now how much I can learn after high school. It can change my life! You know I didn’t want to go to college, but after this is over if I can still get a scholarship to OU, I’m going. I’d like to major in languages, learn to talk French — even learn to talk to the British, thank yew veddy much! Sometimes you can hardly figure out what they say.

“Norm, hang on to my lucky Indian for me. Some more stuff’s crossed out... Lots of it crossed out. I really hope we can end this now, put old Adolf in a cage and throw away the key so Norman and kids like him don’t have to fight in another war ever again, God willing. I’ll bid you farewell in French, ah revwah.”

“He put in a photo.”

Norm looked at the snapshot, then handed it to us. It showed Tom in his Army uniform. He was grinning in the bright sun with a shadow across his face from his helmet, but the teeth showing bright. He was holding something between two fingers. It was his lucky penny.

“I don’t get it,” I said. “Is he fighting or what?”

Norm held out the sheet of paper. We could see where the military censor had made thick lines of black ink over Tom’s penciled handwriting.

John Stone took the sheet and held it up to the sun. He stiffened. He shook his head as if to shake off a buzzing mosquito. The letter trembled in his big brown hand.

John’s gray eyes usually look friendly like a dog’s, but now they looked like gray skies. He dropped to his knees and sat on his haunches.

“Tom’s fighting right now,” John said in a deep voice. “He’s in France… No, he’s in Germany!”

Norm grabbed the letter. “He didn’t say that!”

“I saw it in the crossed-out parts,” John muttered.

Benjy smirked. “Indians think they know all this mystical stuff!”

Norm turned on him. “Oh yeah? Hey, if Jews are so smart how come they got into trouble and we have to go to war to get them out?”

“H-hey! D-Don’t talk like that!” Benjy flushed red. “Tom is s-sending kind of a code. L-like where he talks about studying language?”

Norm considered it; he nodded.

Benjy said, “He doesn’t care about that s-stuff! That means he was stationed in England and then he was leaving to invade France.”

I clapped my hands: “I bet Tom was at D-Day!” We’d seen newsreels of the Normandy invasion. Landing crafts, hundreds of them, surging through the surf. Exploding shells. Some boats got hit and sank, while others grounded on the beach. the front opening up like a truck’s tailgate and the men spilling out into the water, wading ashore, some falling, most standing again, some not. “Maybe Tom will get Hitler!”

Norm grabbed my shoulder. His grip was as quick and deadly as a snakebite. then Norm saw me and his eyes got puzzled. He took his hand off me, turned, bumped into John Stone and dropped the penny.

“Tom!” Norm called. “Tom, I’ll help you!”

John Stone carefully pulled Norm’s hands from his arms. Norm stood still. He trembled, and panted like a dog without the tongue action.

I picked up the penny. ”Hey, Norm, cut it out.”

“He’s j-just p-p-pretending,” Benjy said, “It’s sooo n-n-n-n-n-not f-funny, Norm.”

I held the penny out to Norm. His eyes stared through me.

“Guys!” I croaked, “He’s sick or something!”

Benjy put his small hand on Norm’s arm. “Let’s take him home.”

John Stone turned in a slow circle. He stared at bushes, trees, houses, as if enemies were hiding there.

Usually, Norm strutted like big brother Tom the football hero, with his shoulders back. Now, his feet had no confidence. His head and shoulders slumped. Mr. Tough Guy, who always led us, let Benjy lead him.

The Jackson’s house was red brick. The front window had a blue star flag in it for Tom.

In the sunken garage, Tom’s ‘32 roadster, parked up on blocks, waited for him.

We went through the garage door to the den, where before he was drafted, Tom loafed with jazz records and car magazines.

As we pushed Norm up the stairs, we heard the radio playing organ music. It was a soap opera mothers listen to. Yucky stuff: “Can Sally find true love with Raymond Martin, the handsome stranger from out of town? Or with Steve, the boy next door? Will Doctor Dudley realize in time that he’s given the sleeping pill prescription to suicidal Marian Anderson instead of Mary Ann Samson? Will Ted ask Carol to the Sock Hop? Tune in tomorrow...” KRUNCH.

His Mom saved every tin can, She washed them, cut out the ends, and stomped them flat for the war drive. The President said every can helped — that the tin went into radio parts and the steel made tanks and helmets. Maybe the one that held our peaches ended up on some Jeep in France.

The sound came through the floorboards just as we got to the top of the stairs. Norm’s mother was flattening tin cans, saving metal to make guns and tanks. KRUNCH.

Buddy barked a welcome. John Stone opened the door and pushed Norm into the kitchen.

Mrs. Jackson said, “Hi dear.” Then — “Something wrong?”

Benjy told her, “Tom sent a letter.”

“Oh good!” she said. Buddy barked again.

Norm held out the letter. His face had no expression.

“Hon — is he okay?” She rubbed her hands on her apron and took the letter. She looked long at the photograph. Then she read the letter, moving her lips a little. She turned it over and then read it again. She looked up, her eyes glistening. “Honey, he’s fine! At least he was when he sent this…two weeks ago.”

“Mom — ” Norm said, shuffling toward the table, reaching out his hands for it when he was three feet away, like he might fall forward.

“Norm says he SAW Tom!” I said. “And John Stone says–”

“Shut up, Hank!” Norm said. Buddy barked at me. Benjy poked my belly.

Mrs. Jackson put her hand on Norm’s shoulder.

Benjy whispered, “Let’s leave.”

“Norm’s okay, Mrs. Jackson,” John Stone said. “Tom is too.”

She smiled at him, then quickly hugged Norm “You boys need lemonade,” she said.

“We don’t want to be a bother,” I told her.

She gave me a big grin and pinched my cheek. “Oh piffle, Hank! That’s what boys are for!” I grinned back. You had to grin with her. She was the best mother in our neighborhood..

“You can help me by squashing the rest of those cans,” she said. “Norman, you chip some ice.”

I sat at the table. John Stone pulled my chair out with me in it and said, “We’ll smash the cans.” I got up.

On the counter next to the kitchen sink were a dozen tin cans with both ends cut out, and on the floor, five more, flattened. She had a piece of iron pipe a couple feet long with a piece of metal welded to the bottom. Norm made it for her in Shop.

I stood a can on the floor, and John lifted the pipe with one hand and smashed it down: KRUNCH. One flat can. I pushed it aside and plopped another down.

Norm took the pick off the top of the icebox, and opened the freezer door. A 50-pound block of ice sat there. He chipped at it, pieces flying, until he filled the pitcher. Buddy ate chips that hit the floor.

The announcer’s voice on the radio said, “Meanwhile forward elements of the Allied Armies, including General Patton and British General Montgomery, report heavy resistance from battle-hardened German units. On the East, Russian soldiers are on the outskirts of Berlin and fighting bitter resistance as they try to reach the Reichstag and Hitler’s Chancellery, where it is believed the Führer is making his last stand. Hitler is defended by elite units of SS and resistance fighters, making each yard gained a bloody one.”

Norm stood next to his mother, watching her squeeze juice out of lemons into the pitcher. He whispered something..

She said, “You mean —  in the photograph?”

“No. Mom,” Norm said. “I saw him like I see you!”

She looked at John Stone and said, “What are you boys playing at?”

John said, “Norm got Tom’s lucky penny and uh…”

Norman’s mom said, “Tom sent you his lucky penny?”

“I saw him!”

Slightly confused, she said, “Tom was here?”

“No! I was there where he is!” Norm said, in the loud voice that he used when you didn‘t understand him.

His mother put on a sweet smile, like he’d hit her on the head with the can smasher.

I said, “He was with us the whole time but — ”

Benjy said, “ — he s-s-started talking like T-Tom was there — ”

And I said, “ — but we didn’t see Tom.”

And John Stone stepped on my toe. “OUCH!”

Mrs. Jackson sounded like my mom when she’s fed up. “That’s enough! You fill your heads with nonsense from those comic books! Now you sit down.” She poured sugar into the pitcher and stirred it.

Norm sat, scowling. He laid the penny on the table in front of him. I sat opposite him, John Stone sat next to him on one side. Benjy shifted his feet for a few seconds then sat next to me.

Mrs. Jackson poured four glasses of lemonade. When she set a glass in front of Norm she saw the penny. She handed glasses to the rest of us. “There’s plenty more so don’t be shy.”

She has a friendly smile. It’s hard not to do what she says. My mom can’t smile like that. She mostly frowns because she’s pregnant so I don’t do much of what she says until she scolds me.

I gulped half of the lemonade before the cold sour hit my stomach and I gagged.I didn’t see that Norm had picked up the penny again until he shouted: “TOM! WAIT!”

Norm knocked his chair backwards and started to run out the back door until John Stone grabbed his arm. Buddy barked and jumped against the back door.

Norm’s face was wild. He struggled and tried to pull away from John Stone. John pried open Norm’s fist. As soon as the penny dropped, Norm stopped struggling.

Mrs. Jackson said, “Norman, what’s wrong? What is it? You’re scaring the sweet Jesus out of me!” She’d spilt lemonade on the table.

Norm looked at each of us. “Nothing,” he said. “I’m okay.” He picked up the penny and dropped it in his pocket.

Mrs. Jackson’s eyes were full of questions. She put her hand on his face like she was feeling for a fever, then started for the hallway. “You sit down and stay there. I’m calling your father.”

None of our fathers had to go to the war, but not because they were too old or had flat feet or bad eyes or something. Mr. Jackson, like my dad, was an accountant at the oil company, so they were deferred because it was defense work.

“Mom! I’m okay. Really.”

“Why don’t you go lie down?”

“Nah… Yeah, okay, I’ll take a nap. See you later, guys.”

Agreeing to take a nap in the middle of the day? Us guys looked at each other.

When Norm left the kitchen, Buddy whined and followed, wagging his bushy tail slowly.

Norman’s mom followed him with her eyes. “Norm’ll be fine after a rest.” She looked at us. “I guess you were playing soldiers?”

No, we were playing cowboys, but I nodded and said, “Uh, yeah! Thanks for the lemonade.”

“We can flatten the cans for you,” John Stone said, like a perfect brown-nose.

“No, dear, let’s be quiet while he rests.” She put her hands on John’s and Benjy’s cheeks. “Thank you for being his good friends.”

Outside the house, we stood in the driveway. Benjy said, “What h-happened to N-N-Norm?”

“He saw Tom,” John Stone said.

“G-gosh!” Benjy said. “C-Could he do that? Really?”

I thought “bullstuff!” but didn’t say it because John Stone could whip my butt six days from Sunday. “I’ll get his bike,” I said.

I ran to where Norm had left his trusty steed Schwinn, stood it up and then — .

And then I saw Norm drop from his bedroom window at the back of the house.  A short drop.

“Hey!” I shouted.

Norm got to his feet as Buddy leaped out after him. He ran until he disappeared behind the next house.

John Stone saw Buddy and kicked off. He ran with long hard strides. Benjy’s legs were shorter. On the bike I passed him quickly but had to duck under a clothesline.

Things changed.

Now there were no fences in anyone’s backyards all the way to the corner seven houses down. Ahead, I saw a soldier running. He ran like Tom, zigging and zagging to confuse tacklers. Behind him by a backyard was Norm with Buddy, and after them, John Stone.

Suddenly I realized it was raining and that what had been the Kendrick’s grassy back yard was slick mud.

I heard Benjy shout, then —

A big explosion knocked me sideways off the bike.

From the novel The Penny Crusade