From the back porch Lionel Granger’s hazel eyes swept across the lawn past the stable beyond the brook. The orchard awaited him­-plenty of work awaited him as well. Harvest meant not just apples but rounding up day labor to bring in the Jonathans and Winesaps, not to mention all the Delicious, Golden and Red. He didn’t relish the task, and to top if off he had to drive to town and check out those available­-and willing­-to work.

It wasn’t always this way. Before Pearl Harbor the town was a magnet for the surrounding communities. Plenty of laborers were on hand; no one turned down work after the nightmare of the Depression. He paid well and had his pick. But now almost every able-bodied young male was in the service, and pickings were lamentably slim.

From inside, the strains of “Paper Doll” issued from the kitchen radio. He loved that song, about a guy so fed up with other fellows trying to steal his sweetheart that he decides to buy a paper doll to replace “a fickle-minded real live girl.” Lionel didn’t have a gal for anyone to steal, hadn’t had one in a long time. For some reason the song prompted him to glance at his watch: 5:00 p.m. She’d be expecting him, Milly, his daughter, waiting for him to pull up in front of the beauty salon and give her a ride home. He’d told her to walk but she’d countered that her hair would be a mess for the prom. He didn’t argue, though her mother had always walked home from the beautician, and her hair looked fine. (Did she wear an invisible hairnet?)

He ambled to the barn in his faded dungarees and checked flannel shirt and hoisted himself into his Chevy pickup, Old Reliable. She’d never failed him, not even in the coldest weather when he’d forgot the antifreeze. He pushed down on the clutch and backed away from the barn toward the driveway, then headed for the country road leading to town.

Within minutes he was approaching the outskirts of what he jokingly called “civilization,” the town of ten thousand that might have never grown to that size if it weren’t for the military camp nearby. Many townsmen complained about the boys from the camp, but their patronage of local merchants brought the town prosperity.

Lionel Granger had no objection to the soldier boys. They’d always been polite and respectful. But Milly was turning womanly, and he’d begun to view them in a different light. They’d just been kids before­-now they were men. But he was close by if she needed him. He was five ten and built solid, 180 pounds and still had all his hair, though the brown was streaked with random grays. Yet secretly he rather felt for the man who’d win his daughter. Not that she wasn’t a healthy specimen and plenty smart to boot; too smart, you might say. She was a beauty into the bargain, if the opinion of the townsfolk counted. She was more robust, less finely featured than her mother had been, a Jennifer Jones to Vivien Leigh, but her creamy skin, blood-red lips, and amber hair brought to his mind fields of waving wheat.

When he spotted her in front of the salon they lurched to a stop, the truck and his heart. She’d covered her head with her mother’s scarf and, for a moment, the resemblance was too strong. He leaned across the seat to open the door but she beat him to it. Always did.

“Thanks for being on time, Pop.” She jumped in, slammed the door, trained her eyes ahead as he pulled away from the curb. Neither spoke for several minutes. Then she broke the silence.

“Something I’ve been meanin’ to bring up one more time …”

He looked across the seat at her but she kept those eyes straight ahead.

“I been thinking, … it’d be mighty nice if Tom could drive me to the prom.”

“Not going to happen,” he said, the hair rising on the back of his neck. They’d covered this ground. He was not about to lend his only vehicle besides the tractor to his daughter’s date during this era of tire shortages and gasoline rationing. No telling where a young man might go cruising with a pretty girl in tow.

“After all this time, and you don’t trust Tom with me­?” Milly pouted.

“I don’t trust you with Tom.”

They rode on toward home and he thought back to when his wife sat beside him on this same stretch of country lane. They had conversations then.

He swung off the road and onto the driveway. Someone was sitting on the steps of the porch, elbows on knees, chin propped on fists. Tom. He hopped up to greet them when the Chevy came into view and stuffed his hands in his overall pockets, as Lionel drove the truck toward the porch and parked it.

“What brings you our way?” Milly asked before she hopped down from the truck. It sounded to Lionel more like a challenge than a greeting.

Tom brushed a shock of sandy hair from his gentle brown eyes. “Need to talk with your pa about something, if I might.”

Lionel liked the boy’s deferential manner although he wondered whether a more assertive posture might equip him better to take on his daughter. “Come on in when you’re ready,” he returned, figuring that the youth would probably want first to sit a spell with Milly. “I’ll be in the kitchen.”

He left the two on the porch. In the kitchen he made ham sandwiches for supper, wrapped them in wax paper, and put them in the ice box. Then he took a Bud from the frigidaire, opened it with the churchkey that always hung on a nail by the fridge­-the kitchen crucifix, he called it­-and sank down at the large table in the center of the room. It had been covered with oilcloth for so long he couldn’t remember what kind of wood it was made of.

Why did Tom need to speak with him now? Was it about his wages for helping out in the orchard? He’d paid him fair and square. The boy had named his price; it was below what the other men were getting. Yet he worked harder and faster than his elders, and Lionel gave him a supplement to make up the difference. Tom seemed embarrassed and pleased in equal measure, and his face took on a glow burnished by the sun as the two of them stood at the edge of the orchard late that afternoon. Gazing upon that face lit by the sun as if it intended to spotlight the boy, Lionel thought he noticed a resemblance to his own son, dead at two years from diphtheria. His heart contracted, bringing back the old pain. And as complex thoughts and concepts can compress themselves into a second or two, he wondered as he looked upon his young helper how his life might have turned out if he’d had a son to raise to manhood.

While gathering apples over the past several days, he and Tom had gravitated together, gradually moving apart from the other men. He was impressed not only with Tom’s dexterity on the ladder, a perch from which he plucked the fruit from the higher branches, but by his high-mindedness as well. Tom explained that he planned to remain in the town but would leave for a few years to earn a degree in animal husbandry. He might even become a vet. He could make a contribution to the community. Milly’d be lucky to have such a fine young man.

For all her excitement over the prom­-it was the social event of the year­-Milly spent more time worrying about her dress and the dance partners she’d snared than talking about her date. Several of the girls had gotten together and made “official” dance cards to wear around their wrists. The idea had caught on and now it seemed that no self-respecting young lady would appear on prom night without her dance card, her social badge of admission. Lionel caught a glimpse of Milly’s card as it lay on the dining room table; eight of the twelve dances had been reserved for other boys besides Tom.
He’d finished half his beer and was starting to feel a buzz by the time Tom joined him. “May I come in, sir?” Tom asked politely from the doorway.

“Grab a Grapette from the fridge if you’d like,” Lionel returned cordially. “There’s Dr. Pepper in there too.”

Instead Tom took a seat catty-cornered from him and folded his hands on the table as if to pray.

“Something I’ve wanted to speak to you about, sir …,” he began hesitantly, and Lionel wondered whether Milly had put the boy up to something. She’d probably inveigled him into asking whether he could drive her to the prom in Old Reliable. He hated to refuse him but he’d dug in his heels, and he was not going to lose the battle to his headstrong daughter.

But instead Tom said, “It’s about money, sir …”

Lionel took another swig of his Bud and sat straighter, expecting the hit.

Instead Tom said, “I’ve been thinking, you paid me too much for working in your orchard …”

“I paid you what I owe you.”

“Yes, sir,” Tom returned agreeably, “but as I see it, what with you chauffeuring me and Milly to the prom tonight, I’m much obliged to you, sir. Dad took the Nash to Fort Smith on business, and I’d ‘a had no way to go if it wasn’t for you. So seems like I owe you something, you having to stay up and wait around for us to finish dancing, after you been working all day-­”

“You think I’m too old to be driving around at that hour?” said Lionel.

“Not at all, sir …!”

He was joshing. Tom was too good for his own good. One more swig of his Bud and Lionel declared, “Son, that money’s yours. I parted with it gladly. But thanks for your offer. B’sides, don’t I owe you something for taking charge of my daughter tonight …?” He stifled a smile. “You’re a good man, Tom Stevens.…You know, for a moment there, it’s the darndest thing­-but when you come through that door I thought you was going to ask to drive my pickup to the prom.”

Indignation spread across Tom’s face. “Well, sir, Milly wanted me to ask you about that. I told her nothin’ doin’.”

The two men exchanged glances and each thought he saw a gleam of recognition in the other’s eye.

Lionel offered Tom a Dr. Pepper but he refused again. He had chores to do and wanted to grab a bite before they picked him up for the prom. Lionel opened another beer. He was ever so lightheaded and was thriving on the festive feeling. You’d think he was going to the prom.

He turned the radio dial and found a station playing “Glow Worm.” He twirled the dial; his wife used to play that one. Then he remembered he’d meant to bring down a large roasting pan from the top shelf of a cabinet. He pulled the stepstool over to the counter and mounted it while treading his fingertips for balance along the cabinet’s mullioned panes.

“You lookin’ for apples up there, Mr. Granger …?” Tom’s soft, friendly voice rose to his ears from the doorway.

“You back, son?” Lionel stared from atop the stool, pleased by the boy’s return. But just as he was taking the pan from the shelf, he lost his balance and started to fall. In one of those compressed moments he saw himself descending and simultaneously wrenched himself sideways to land on his feet. To no avail: he knew before he hit he was going to crash-land.

But just before a bone-splattering landing Tom leapt to his side and caught him, or at least got a good grip on his chest and shoulders. Only his legs and butt struck the floor and not as hard as you might have thought.

“Y’okay, sir­-?”

From his contorted expression Tom appeared to have been the one who crashed.

“Pop­-you all right …?” Milly stuck her head in the doorway.

For several seconds he sprawled in Tom’s arms and enjoyed a sensation he’d known only with his wife: security. He started to laugh and soon Tom was laughing with him, but more from relief than mirth. Milly had already returned to whatever she was doing.

“Can you make it up, sir?” Tom asked solicitously.

“Why not?” he replied. “Heave ho­-”

He sensed Tom’s arms tightening around his chest then felt himself rising off the floor as if he weighed only half of what he actually did. It was a nice sensation, one he already knew would stick with him.

Later that evening as he was washing the dishes, he found himself keeping time with his foot to the tune on the radio, tapping out the rhythm:

I’m gonna buy a Paper Doll that I can call my own
A doll that other fellows cannot steal

He’d gotten over his fall and wasn’t even sore where he’d landed, thanks to Tom. Could it have been the beer? He’d heard that drunks who pass out in the snow often survive several hours in the cold because of the alcohol in their blood. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to have one more? He’d already polished off three; one more to make it an even number? He could hold it; he wasn’t drinking on an empty stomach, and he had an hour before collecting the kids at the prom.

He opened the bottle with the churchkey and enjoyed the sensation of cold beer prickling down his throat. He then took a broom from the closet to give the floor a once-over. The song had gotten into his bloodstream along with the alcohol, and he found himself dancing around the kitchen with the broom as his partner, stiff but complaisant.

They made a handsome couple, his daughter almost as tall as her beau in the heels she was wearing, a pair of black sling-backs that had belonged to her mother. And her dress that fit almost too well, Christmas red taffeta. When they drove to Tom’s house a half-mile down the road, he hardly recognized the boy when he came out to the pickup. With hair slicked back Tom looked ever so distinguished in dark suit and white shirt, his shoes polished to a high luster.

Tom had thanked him profusely when Lionel dropped them off at the high school and instructed them to wait for him a block away when he’d return for them at midnight. “Bye, Pop,” was all Milly could come up with before she entered the gym, a bit wobbly in her mother’s heels and a touch churlish at having to be driven to the dance by her dad.

And then the flirty, flirty guys with their flirty, flirty eyes
Will have to flirt with dollies that are real

What a song­-he’d kept to its rhythm with his broom partner and made several turns around the kitchen. He imagined his wife in his arms but that made him feel lonely, so he conjured up Milly. He’d danced with his daughter at church socials. She knew the steps but he had the impression she’d just as soon not be dancing with him because she asked to sit out the next dance­-every time.

When I come home each night she will be waiting
She’ll be the truest doll in all this world

His body swayed to the music; he was a strong lead and the broom did its part. But was it fair to be holding Milly in his arms, or pretending to, when he knew she’d rather not be there?

Yet his feet wouldn’t stop dancing him round the table, round the room, and soon the convergence of music, beer, and happiness enveloped him and, despite the stiffness of the broom, he felt not alone but safe and loved for the first time in he didn’t know when. Milly had left him, they’d changed partners, he couldn’t keep track of what young buck she was dancing with at the moment, but that was okay, he was now dancing with Tom.