“You think he’s gonna die?” Barney said, just as we started down the tracks.
“I don’t know.”
“Maybe we should turn him in. Maybe that really would be doing him a favor.”
“What if he killed himself?”
“You heard him. He said he didn’t have the guts.”
“No, he said maybe he didn’t have the guts. There’s a difference.”
We came to Spring Street, my street.
“Night,” Barney said.
“Night,” I said, and started to walk away.
When I was out of the streetlight and walking in the shadows, I heard Barney say, “You really think he looks like Mitch?” and I called back, “Yeah, I think he looks a lot like Mitch,” and then we were both lost to our respective blocks, just footsteps now in the summer night.
Our house has a lot of gables and gingerbreading which should make it a Victorian, I guess, but my mom says it’s not really a Victorian, at least not a regular one anyway. She always says this whenever somebody visits us for the first time and says “I just love Victorian houses.” Most of us in the family just close our ears when she starts in.
Mom and Dad were in the living room with my eight-year-old sister, Debbie, watching the Late News with Earle Rochester who my dad says is a) a Democrat and b) a funny-looking gink who can’t keep his opinions to himself (“See how he sneers whenever he says the name Eisenhower?” he always says to my mom, by which you can guess that Clarence is a Republican).
Dad was sitting in the leather recliner, which is his sacred chair, and wearing his Purple Passion (as Mom calls them) Bermuda shorts and a sport shirt.
The first thing he said to me was, “How come you were buying hydrogen peroxide and boric acid and gauze and stuff like that at Hamblin’s tonight?”
He kept staring right at the TV, as if he wasn’t missing a word, but asking me his question and then waiting for an answer.
I was ready for him. On the walk home I’d thought up a good one. “Barney and I were going to fix up this tackling dummy like it got all beaten up and then hang a sign on it that said ‘This is what happens to bullies, Maynard’ but Barney got scared and chickened out.”
“You’re just begging Maynard to come after you again,” Clarence said.
I said good night to everybody and went upstairs. Things had gone much easier than I thought they would with Dad, I thought, as I went in the bathroom and peed and brushed my teeth and washed my face.
Mom had turned the fan on in my bedroom so it was going to be pretty good for sleeping.
I got the light on and stripped down to my underwear and picked up a new issue of Imagination, which had a lead novel by one of my favorite writers, Dwight V. Swain. I started to lie down when the door eased open and Dad stuck his head in.
“All right if I come in and talk a minute?”
“Sure.” So it wasn’t over. And I knew what was coming.
He sat on the edge of the bed and looked at me. He’s not a very big guy but boy can he scowl.
“I’m going to ask you one question, one time only and if you ever told the truth in your life, it had better be this time. You understand?”
“I understand.”
“Hamblin said you had a lot of money on you. Twenties and fifties. Is that true?”
“Yessir.”
“Care to tell me just where the hell you found that kind of money?”
“Out by the old fairgrounds.” I’d been ready for that one, too.
“The fairgrounds?”
“Down by the crick. In a paper bag. Nearly three hundred dollars.”
“Is that the truth?”
I didn’t feel good about lying to Clarence but I didn’t have any choice. “That’s the truth.”
“That money should have been turned over to the police.”
“We tried. We went to the police station and asked for Sergeant McCorkindale but he went fishing for a couple of days.”
“There are other policemen there.”
“Yeah but then Cushing came in and started calling us girls and insulting us the way he usually does.”
“Cushing’s a jerk. You shouldn’t pay any attention to him.”
I shrugged. “I get tired of being insulted.”
“I’m going to speak to the chief about that. I’ll tell him I want Cushing to keep his tongue off my son.”
I shook my head. “That’ll just make it worse, Dad. Cushing’ll get me alone somewhere and then make fun of me for siccing you on the chief.”
He nodded. “I suppose you’re right.” He glanced around the room. “Where’s the rest of the money?”
“In my jeans pocket.”
“How much did you spend?”
“Fourteen bucks.”
“I’ll take the rest of it over to the chief in the morning.”
“Fine.”
He thought a minute and said, “I wish I could tell you that the next time Cushing says something to you I’d clean his clock for him.”
“I know, Dad.”
“I’m just not very tough.”
“Neither am I, Dad. I guess it runs in the family.”
“But guys like that usually get theirs in the end. One way or another, they get it.”
ii
The next morning around ten, I met Barney by the water fountain in the town square. As usual, a lot of the old men who play checkers all day long had pulled their green park benches up so they could be closer to the fountain. I’ve never figured that out. All these old-timers must have had a bad drought when they were kids because they sure do treat the fountain like somebody was going to sneak up and take it away.
The first thing Barney asked, his red hair brilliant in the hot August sun, his blue-and-white striped polo shirt already showing little patches of sweat here and there, was “Clarence ask you about the money?”
“Uh-huh.”
“You tell him what we talked about?”
“He was pretty cool about it, actually. I’m going to get a paper bag and stuff the rest of the money in it and give it to him. Roy won’t need it. He’s got plenty more.”
“So old man Hamblin called him then?” Barney said.
“Sure. Did you think he wouldn’t?”
“I wish we could go out there. To see Roy, I mean.”
“So do I.”
“I woke up in the middle of the night. I had this dream that Roy was dead.”
“He’s pretty tough. Did you read the newspaper this morning?” My dad subscribes to the Des Moines Register. Even though it’s pretty much a “Democratic rag” as he frequently calls it, it’s the only daily we can get in this part of the state.
“Yeah,” Barney said. “He really is a tough guy.”
Right there on the front page, in a big black blaring headline, it had said: State Police Seek Fugitive and just below this was a picture of Roy looking more like Mitch than ever. The story told of how Roy had been a war hero in Korea but that he’d drifted into crime with his older brother and how authorities suspected that they’d been responsible for at least ten bank robberies in the past six months.
“He’s a pretty cool guy, no doubt about it,” Barney said.
“Very cool guy,” I said.
“What’re we gonna do all day?”
“You wanna see a flick?”
“Which one?”
“Blackboard Jungle is back at the Rialto.”
“And there’s another one,” Barney said.
“What’s the other one?” In those days, the Rialto always played two and sometimes three movies. Of course, when they had three of them, you could bet that two of them were real dogs, usually something with Bing Crosby and a lot of nuns.
“It’s a western with Rory Calhoun.”