Penny From Heaven by Jennifer L. Holm

Author:Jennifer L. Holm [Holm, Jennifer L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Newbery Honor, Ages 10 and up
ISBN: 9780375849268
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2006-07-25T07:00:00+00:00

Mr. Mulligan doesn’t stay long. He eats the key lime pie Me-me made in two bites. When my mother asks him if he wants a second cup of coffee, he says he really needs to get home.

I wave as Mr. Mulligan’s car drives away. I figure there’s nothing to worry about after all.

I don’t think he’ll be back anytime soon.

CHAPTER TWELVE

No Poking

It’s late, nearly midnight, but I can hear the soft staticky sound of the radio.

I step into my slippers and walk down the hallway to the parlor.

Pop-pop is sitting in his chair next to the radio, ear as close to it as possible, listening intently. Our radio’s big, a Philco. Pop-pop’s nodding like someone’s talking to him, except no one’s there. I stand in the doorway for a moment, watching. He doesn’t notice me.

“Talking to Mickey, Pop-pop?” I ask.

He looks up, startled.

“Are you talking to Mickey?” I ask again, more loudly.

“What else would I be doing?” he barks back, and then rubs his bald head tiredly.

My grandfather thinks that his nephew, Mickey, who was killed in Germany during World War II, sometimes talks to him through the radio static. Pop-pop was heartbroken when Mickey died; he always says that Mickey was like the son he never had. There’s a picture of Mickey in the upstairs hallway wearing his pilot’s uniform, looking all dashing.

Pop-pop started hearing Mickey a few years ago, and at first he was real excited about it, until he told Me-me.

“You keep talking like that and they’ll be sending you to the funny farm,” she told him.

But sometimes he’ll sneak down late at night when everyone’s asleep. He maneuvers the dial back and forth, over static and music and announcers and preachers. The voices are kind of like ghosts, the way they come out of nowhere.

There’s a hiss and Pop-pop’s eyes light up.

“See?” he says excitedly. “There he is!”

All I can hear is static.

“What do you and Mickey talk about?” I ask.

“The war, of course,” he says, and frowns at me. “If it weren’t for all of them hooligans, he’d be alive right now. He’d be sitting right here eating a piece of your grandmother’s apple pie.”

Not if he was lucky, he wouldn’t. Me-me’s pie is mushy and the crust is hard as a rock.

A warbling sound comes over the radio.

“What’s that you say, Mickey?” Pop-pop asks loudly.

I kiss him on the head and say, “I’m going back to bed.”

Me-me is standing at the top of the stairs in her bathrobe.

“He listening to that box again?” she asks.

I nod.

She shakes her head. “I just don’t understand why he can’t get over that boy.”

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