Barney sat on the porch. He wasn’t reading or eating. He was just staring.
When he saw me, he said, “You hear about the governor?”
“Yeah.”
“God.”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll bet Cushing buys a new suit.”
“I’ll bet he does, too.”
I went up and sat next to him on the porch.
“You tell George the truth yet?” I said. Obviously, he hadn’t told his father the truth last night.
“Not yet.”
“When you going to?”
Barney didn’t say anything for a long time. We just watched the traffic.
“I’ve been thinking,” Barney said.
“About what?”
“About maybe not telling George the truth.”
“What?”
He looked over at me. “Who’d believe us, anyway?”
“That’s not the point.”
“Sure it’s the point. My mom says the governor’s probably going to give us a reward or something. Wouldn’t you like to get a reward?”
“Not this way. God, Barney, we owe it to Roy.”
“I’ve also been thinking about Roy.”
“What about him?”
“Now, don’t go getting pissed.”
“I’m going to sock you right in the mouth, Barney. You wait and see.”
“All I mean is—”
“All you mean is that you’re a chickenshit little bastard with no principles at all.”
And then I hit him, and hard enough to bring forth some blood from his nose.
And right away I was sorry. And said so: “I’m sorry, Barney.”
“Fuck yourself.” He sat there dabbing at his nose with a finger. He looked like he wanted to cry.
“Maybe I’d better go,” I said.
“Yeah. Maybe you’d better.”
“You wanna go to a movie this afternoon?”
“No.”
“You wanna—”
“I don’t wanna anything, Tom. You’re a spoiled prick is what you are. Maybe you don’t need the reward but I do. I don’t live in any fancy-ass house the way you do.”
“Our house isn’t fancy. It’s plain.”
“Plain hell.”
Every time we got in a fight, no matter what it was about, it ended up about where I lived and where he lived. I tried to understand but I couldn’t. Where I lived didn’t make any difference to me; and I sure didn’t care where Barney lived.
I went down the stairs and got on my bike. “I’m sorry I hit you.”
“Yeah.”
“I am.”
“Just go, Tom. Just go.”
“OK. And if you change your mind about going to the pool tonight—”
“I won’t.”
Everywhere I went that day, people kept stopping me on the street and congratulating me for helping brave Detective Cushing capture the notorious bank robber.
When I couldn’t stand it anymore, I went home and sat on the screened-in porch reading Double Star and thinking about how Barney looked just after I’d slugged him.
A couple times I got up and went inside and called Barney but his mom very carefully told me that he was out somewhere, which meant that he was hanging around the house but that he didn’t want to talk to me.
After I finished Heinlein, I picked up a Rex Stout novel. I really liked Nero Wolfe, which is to say that like a lot of mystery readers I really hated Nero Wolfe... but I thanked Rex Stout for giving me so many opportunities to hate the fat man in such a pleasant way. I hoped I could be just like Archie when I grew up — acid-tongued and really successful with women.
The Stout novel gave me the idea for the letter. Nero Wolfe was looking into some poison pen letters and I started thinking... what if somebody left the governor an anonymous letter on the podium next Tuesday? And what if the letter told the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about Roy Danton and how he’d come to be shot and where the money really was right now?
Wouldn’t such a letter force the governor to look into the case more closely?
Around four that afternoon, the sunlight just starting to cool, I got up and mowed the lawn. Mom had been after Dad for two years to buy a power mower. Western Auto always has them on sale, she’d say. But Clarence could be real stubborn about some things and power mowers was one of them. I don’t want to see any of Tom’s fingers or toes getting ground up in those blades, he’d say. And when he put it that way, I wasn’t sure I wanted a power mower, either.
That night I called Barney three times. He still wouldn’t come to the phone. The next day I called him six times and the day after that I called him four — and he still wouldn’t come to the phone. He was still mad at me for hitting him.
I spent most of Sunday cruising around on my bike and about two in the afternoon, I ended up at the Dairy Queen.
And who should be sitting on one of the benches, surrounded like two teenage rock-and-roll stars, but Barney and Cushing?
They each had tall twenty-five-cent cones and they each had their own little gaggle of admirers. Barney’s were girls our age... and Cushing’s were older women in their early twenties.
That’s when I decided I wanted to punch Barney all over again. The way he was looking over at Cushing, it was easy to see they’d become friends.
Didn’t Barney remember what Cushing had done to Roy?
Didn’t Barney care anymore?
Monday, the day before Labor Day, I didn’t do much. I didn’t call Barney because I was afraid that if he did come on the phone I’d start yelling at him. I went down to the drugstore and bought a Lionel White Gold Medal novel called Murder Takes the Bus and went home and read it. At the time, I had just started reading Gold Medals and this one was very, very good. Not as good as Shell Scott, who managed to be tough and funny and sexy, but good nonetheless.
I guess I should tell you that people were still stopping me on the street and pumping my hand and saying how proud they were and wasn’t it neat that the governor was coming — and what else could I say? I said I was glad they were proud and I pumped their hands right back and I said it was indeed neat that the governor was coming.
Monday night, I wrote the letter. Four times I wrote the letter. I knew it had to be short and to the point but I also knew that it had to shake him up when he read it.
Now all I had to do was figure out how I was going to get it up on the podium without anybody seeing me.
As I was sealing it, there was a tiny, soft knock on my door. I said come in and Debbie appeared. She wore her old faded WinkyDink T-shirt (remember the TV show where you drew on this plastic sheet you put over the TV screen?) and a pair of jeans and no shoes. Her hair was done in pigtails.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“About what?”
“The Tooth Fairy.”
“What about him?”
“Well, on Christmas Eve Santa Claus gets around on a sleigh and on Halloween witches get around on brooms — but how does the Tooth Fairy get around?”
“He takes the bus.”
She giggled.
“Really,” I said. “He’s got one of those twenty-trip passes you can buy for two bucks.”
She giggled some more.
“I think you left that dollar under my pillow.”
“Me? Nah. Where would I get a dollar?”
“I just wanted to thank you.”
“Thank him. Not me.”
“The Tooth Fairy? The one who rides the bus all the time?”
“That’s the guy.”
She smiled. And then she said it: “Mrs. Kelvin at the church is having me carry some flowers up and set them on the platform just before the governor gets there.”