“Oh, here it is. Doc said to remind you that all the money collected at the Lions Club Haunted House this year is going to the Crippled Children’s hospital, so be sure to come by. But he says all the people with bad hearts should stay home, so it sounds like it’s going to be another scary one. You can be sure I won’t be going in. I’ll just give my nickel at the door and go on home, thank you. Last year Bobby drug me through that thing and it nearly scared me to death. Things jumping out at you from every which way but for those of you who enjoy having the wits scared out of you, take it from me, the Lions do a good job at it. Mother Smith says she will be in the haunted house this year but she won’t say doing what.”
On October thirty-first at 5:30, Bobby, dressed as Abraham Lincoln, was standing around in his black suit and the two-foot-tall black stovepipe hat Jimmy had made him out of cardboard. He was busy eating big orange-colored marshmallow peanuts from a bowl on the entrance hall table when his mother came out of the kitchen and caught him. “Bobby, stop that! That’s not for you. That’s for my trick-or-treaters.”
He looked at her indignantly. “But I am a trick-or-treater.”
“You know what I mean.” She glanced down in the other bowl on the table and he took off in a shot. She would really be mad when she saw he had bitten all the white tips off the candy corn. He was right. He heard a loud “BOBBY!” but he was out the back door, on his way over to Monroe’s with a sack. Inside the sack were two large pieces of cardboard shaped like gorilla feet, or what he thought looked like gorilla feet, which he had cut out of the side of a box. Doc should have known something was up when Monroe had started coming into the drugstore every other day buying large economy-size containers of baby powder.
Around midnight, as soon as they knew Old Man Henderson was in bed, Monroe and Bobby did what they had been planning for weeks, then ran home to Monroe’s house, where Bobby was to spend the night. The next morning Old Man Henderson was in for a shock—and got one. His entire front porch was completely covered in white powder, smooth except for the paw prints of a few cats and the enormous footprints of what must have been a giant monster. Old Man Henderson never did figure out just what had walked across his front porch that night—but for the next few months he kept his shotgun by the door in case it came back.
Christmas came and went with a hundred more socks, endless underwear, again not one genuine Jungle Jim pith helmet, but there was snow on December twenty-eighth. That was something, at least. On New Year’s Eve, James Whooten got drunk and fell down the back stairs of the VFW hall and broke both his elbows and lost his job as a house painter. To make ends meet Tot had to start doing shampoos and sets in her kitchen. “Poor Tot, now she has to support the entire family,” they all said, and everyone went to her to get their hair done, even if they did not need it. Tot had been to beauty school before she married and figured it was the only thing she was good at. Unfortunately, she was wrong. Mother Smith and a number of gray-haired ladies had come home from their appointment with bright purple hair, but none complained, and they went back anyway. It was a small price to pay to help out a friend.
After an unusually cold February and March, spring finally decided to come back again and all of April and May were busy months at the Smith house. As the time drew near for Anna Lee’s graduation, there was constant shopping for clothes to wear to dances and parties and the senior prom. Among the seniors themselves there was the drama of wondering who would be voted what in the “Who’s Who” section of the senior yearbook, the hysteria when the school rings arrived and they had a blue stone instead of the red one they’d ordered and they had to be sent back. Norma and Macky were voted “Cutest Couple,” Patsy Marie tied with Mary Esther Lockett for “Smartest Girl,” and Anna Lee was “Class Beauty.” Dixie Cahill had her spring tap and twirl recital and the high school graduation went off without a hitch. Dorothy and Doc gave Anna Lee a Lady Bulova watch, Mother Smith and Jimmy both gave her money, and Bobby, following a suggestion from his mother, bought her a bottle of White Shoulders perfume with his paper route money. The last day of school came and, as always, Bobby was eternally grateful. But for Anna Lee, after all the excitement and fun of graduation had died down and she had time to think, she started the summer in a somewhat sad and melancholy mood. It dawned on her that her life as she had known it for the past twelve years would never be the same.
On the other hand, Bobby worried that his life would always be the same.
The first warm Sunday after school let out, while everyone else was at church, Bobby rode his bicycle out to the water tower with his pockets stuffed with red balloons and string, determined that today would be the time he would climb all the way to the top and do the deed. Ever since the time he had climbed it with Monroe, he had been living with a terrible secret that even Monroe did not know. Nobody knew. He was scared to go back up. Not only that: Now he was scared of being scared. He had ridden out there at least a dozen times determined to climb it, and each time he had failed. But today, he vowed, would be different. Today he would just go right to the top.
But it wasn’t. It was just like all the other times. He stood at the bottom, trying with all his might to muster the courage to go back up, but no matter how hard he tried he just could not do it. The minute he put one foot on the ladder his heart would start to pound and he’d break out in a cold sweat and could not go any farther. After trying for more than an hour, he gave up and rode back home, defeated and humiliated again. He began to fear the one thing in the world that terrified boys the most. He was afraid that down deep he was a coward. Maybe Luther Griggs was right: Maybe he was a sissy.
After each defeat he worried that people would be able to tell just by looking at him. But the farther away from the tower he got, the better he felt. When he got back to town and rode past the barbershop and the theater and saw people he knew, his defeat began to fade a little. Dixie Cahill came out of the drugstore and waved at him. He waved back. He began to feel more relieved. People were not looking at him funny. Nobody knew. Next time, he vowed. He would do it next time. Besides, he could not really be a coward; he had too much to do. He had to fly planes, sail the ocean, and ride in rodeos, save girls, beat up bullies. He had to pitch winning games and make touchdowns, round up cattle and command spaceships to Mars. By the time he reached home he had convinced himself that it could not possibly be true: He was not a coward.
But not quite persuasively enough, because a few nights later he had the same old dream. The one where he was climbing up the tower and the rungs of the ladder started to drop off one by one and he fell. Each time he would wake up with a start just before he hit the ground.
He started to hate that water tower.