Whistling In the Dark Page 13

  Artie headed over there with me like we were still in the sack tied together. Troo was sitting on the edge of a picnic table a ways away, giving me the evil eyeball, so I thought I better go talk to her.

  I said, “I’ll see you later, Artie.”

  He adjusted the ribbon around his neck and said, “You’re a nice girl, Sally.” Then he got in the hamburger line. And now maybe Artie Latour had the hots for me.

  Her arms crossed over her chest, her toe tapping, Troo looked very fired up. I knew what she wanted me to say and do. She wanted me to apologize for winning the sack race and give her the blue ribbon.

  I sat down next to her on the picnic table and tried to put my arm around her, but she shrugged it off. “You coulda waited for me, you know,” she said with flaring nostrils.

  “I called for you. Twice. You didn’t come and I was feelin’ bad for Artie since Reese pushed him down and called him a harelip.”

  “Suit yourself,” she said, and walked away. Troo gave up so fast and didn’t start a real fight because we both knew later that night, I would give her that blue ribbon that said CHAMPION on it in gold letters. That was the way it was with her and me. Just the way Daddy woulda wanted it.

  After the egg race and two hamburgers and a hot dog and a little dunk in the creek, we laid down in the grass under a big maple tree and I sniffed my sunburned skin, which I had always found to be a nice smell. We played crazy eights with Mary Lane and Mimi Latour until it started to get dark, and then Nell and Eddie came and found Troo and me and we went over to the lagoon to sit on a soft blanket next to the water and watch the fireworks.

  As I watched those red, white and blue stars burst up in the sky, I wondered about two things. The first was, how bad did it hurt when you got murdered and molested because we were sitting not far from the willow tree where Troo’d found Sara Heinemann’s shoe. And the second thing I wondered as I sat there, Troo’s head in my lap, a warm lagoon breeze running across my cheeks when all the fireworks went off at the same time and everybody’s faces were lit up and tilted toward the sky, I wondered could Mother see these fireworks from her hospital window and if she could, was she missing me the same way I was missing her?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  When all that was left of the fireworks was the smoke, Nell gathered up the blanket and said for me and Troo to walk home with the Latours because she and Eddie were going down to Lake Michigan to watch the submarine races. That was fine with me. It was a warm night and I liked to walk and look into people’s houses through their picture windows when their lights were on and there was a mother and the father and some kids and sometimes they looked just like a painting. I wasn’t a peeper like Mary Lane. I didn’t like to look that close. I just liked that feeling . . . that feeling of everything being the way it was supposed to be.

  Up the block the rest of the neighborhood was making their way home and I could hear Mrs. Latour yelling at one of her kids to shut up and quit their whining. Troo said, “I let Willie give me a smooch down by the creek.” I thought smooching with a boy was more disgusting than when Wendy Latour ate that dusty wiener she found underneath the picnic table today so I changed the subject.

  “Did you see Ethel and Ray Buck?” I asked. We were walking past the Fitzpatricks’, who lived a block down from their drugstore. Nobody home.

  “Yeah. Ethel says that Ray Buck is a fantastic bus driver. He has routes all over the city and has to remember them all by heart.” Troo kicked a rock. “And she told me that Mr. Gary is in town and asking about us, which is kinda nice because Mr. Gary is flush, Sally. We could ask him to borrow us some money after Mother dies and Hall gets into some trouble, because you know he’s going to, and then we can move to France.”

  And that’s why she was called a Troo genius because, you see, I never woulda thought of that. It was better than a good plan. Troo was especially right about Hall. I’d heard him talking to himself two nights ago in the bathroom when I was laying in bed, my sheets smelling like this bird’s nest I found once in the backyard. “That manager,” Hall said and then stopped to puke. “That big Shuster’s manager from Cincinnati, he’s got nooo idea who he’s dealin’ with. They’ll regret this when the best shoe seller west of the Mississippi is gone.” In the morning I found him asleep in the bathtub. Hall was very bad at directions.

  “Mr. Gary has very dreamy eyes,” Troo said in her sleepy voice, the one she got when she listened to Bobby Darin on the blue Motorola transistor radio that Mr. Gary brought us last year all the way from California for no reason at all. I thought that maybe Troo had a crush on Mr. Gary even if his ears stuck out and . . . Eureka! That’s who the other boy was in Mother’s graduation picture. It was Mr. Gary! I had no idea that he knew Mother. He’d never said anything. I should’ve paid attention to details because all you had to do was look at those ears that stuck out of his head like rowboat oars. I became extra excited to see him because I’d ask him questions about Mother and probably, because I had to know, the guy who was standing in the top row. Rasmussen.

  When we walked by Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore, we waved through the window at Henry Fitzpatrick, a boy in my class. The drugstore had a soda fountain and Henry was sometimes the soda jerk, which was not a very nice thing to be called. I felt bad because Henry also had some disease called homofeelya and he had to be careful not to fall down on the playground because with this homofeelya you could start to bleed until all your blood was gone. So Henry was kind of pale and knobby and was especially careful when he opened a can of any kind.

  But Henry liked to read just like me, so sometimes we sat on the front step of the drugstore and talked about books. A lot of the other kids called him Homo Henry, I think because of his bleeding disease, so he didn’t have a lot of friends. He wanted to be a pilot when he grew up so he read a lot about airplanes, which reminded me of my Sky King. But Henry had to know that no homofeelyas would get to be a pilot because what if he crashed or something and started bleeding all over the place and left a trail into the woods so the Russians could find him and then torture him to tell government secrets. I figured that Henry would grow up to be a pharmacist like his father and I bet he knew that too, and that’s why he looked kind of sad most of the time.

  Henry stuck his head out the drugstore door and said, “Come on in.”

  I waited while Troo propped her bike up on the side of the building and then I pulled open the drugstore door and it was so cool inside, just like the “Icy Cold Refrigeration” sticker on the door promised. Henry was sitting at the countertop and sipping on a chocolate phosphate.

  “You want one?” Henry asked, pointing down at his glass.

  “That’d be swell,” I said.

  “How were the fireworks?” Henry got up off his stool and went behind the countertop. He took two glasses from a stack, wiped ’em off with a towel and set them on the counter.

  “Better than last year,” Troo said. I think she must’ve known that Henry hadn’t gone and was too afraid it might have something to do with his bleeding disease, so she didn’t ask why because Troo wasn’t all that good with sick people. Except for Mrs. Galecki, who was stiff with oldness and got me and Troo mixed up sometimes, but did not look sick.

  Henry squirted some chocolate into the tall glasses. I could see his face in the big mirror above the stack. Henry was darn good-looking. A little ghosty, but darn good-looking. If Troo and Willie were going to be girlfriend and boyfriend, then maybe Henry and I could do the same. No smooching allowed, though.

  Henry used a long, skinny spoon to stir up the bubble water and chocolate. “Are you going to Sara’s funeral tomorrow?”

  It felt funny to be sitting in Fitzpatrick’s Drugstore like this at night, the lights down so low and that witch hazel smell and the air conditioning making my arms bumpy in a good way. I wished I could’ve slept right there on that freezing cold counter instead of going home.

  I took a sip of my phosphate and was impressed with what a good job Henry had do
ne and was pleased that he had handed mine to me before he handed Troo hers. “Are you?”

  “Yeah. I have to,” he barely said. “Sara Marie was my cousin.”

  “Oh,” I said. “We’re definitely going to the funeral then, right, Troo?” Not paying attention to me, she’d slipped her hand into the Dubble Bubble bowl next to the soda fountain and was helping herself.

  “The funeral is at nine o’clock,” Henry said. I looked over to where Mr. Fitzpatrick usually sat handing people their medicine. I thought I saw him just for a second, or maybe that was just a shadow from the big glowing red Coke clock that hung on the wall.

  And then all of a sudden Henry’s thin homofeelya shoulders started bouncing up and down like one of my fishing bobbers. I got up off my stool and walked around the end of the counter and got up next to him. I just stood there for a minute trying to think of something to say. “Don’t cry, Henry. Just remember what Sister Imelda always tells us in catechism class. How when people die it’s okay because they go back home with God. That’s probably how Sara feels right this minute, like she just got home after a hard day. Her and God are probably just laying around on clouds watching I Love Lucy.”

  That only made him cry harder. Might be that Henry Fitzpatrick was sensitive just like me.

  In the mirror above the soda fountain, I could see Troo stuffing her pockets with things she was taking off the shelves.

  “We gotta get goin’. So we’ll see ya tomorrow morning, okay?” I patted Henry on the back and went back to my stool because it’d felt so awful to be behind the counter. Like when you do or say something you’re not supposed to and you get that dumb feeling in your stomach. I had that dumb feeling about what I’d said to Daddy the day of the crash.

  “Yeah, see ya tomorrow, Henry,” Troo called, waiting at the door for me, her pockets bulging with stolen goods. I bet Troo never got that dumb feeling in her stomach.

  We left him there like that, his head still on the counter. He didn’t really say good-bye, because he was probably thinking of his cousin in her small coffin, the same kind Junie Piaskowski had. That worried me at her funeral because I’d thought coffins only came in one size, grown-up. But somebody knew that kids died all the time and that was their job, to make little coffins for dead kids that were lined inside with pink and had a pillow of stiff lace.

  I looked back at Henry through the drugstore window. He hadn’t moved his head off the counter. It must feel great on his hot eyes. I bet by now he probably felt real bad about crying like a girl because everyone knew that if boys cried it meant they could be what Willie O’Hara called “light in their loafers,” which was another way to say homo, and maybe that’s why the other kids called him Homo Henry after all, which would certainly put the kibosh on us being boyfriend and girlfriend. Willie said he’d seen light-in-their-loafers men in New York City. He’d even taken a taxicab ride once with one of them who was dressed up like a woman and called him kitten! I knew that being a homo meant you loved other homos. But why would a man do that? Get all dressed up like that? Willie had to be wrong.

  The man in the taxi had probably gotten all dressed up like that for a play. Like with Father Jim. One night Mary Lane went up to church to pray for her mother to make fried chicken, and when she was done she decided to do a little peeping. So she creeped over to the rectory and peeked in the window and there was Father Jim dressed up in a fluffy white dress with petticoats and high heels, dancing around the living room to “Some Enchanted Evening.”

  When Father Jim saw Mary Lane, he invited her in and made her a big ham and cheddar cheese sandwich on rye bread, even though it was Friday. He told her that the church’s Men’s Club was putting on a play and made her promise not to tell anybody that she had seen him dressed up like that because the play was a surprise and she would wreck it if she told. Mary Lane promised by crossing her heart and hoping to die, but the next day she came over to our house and told me and Troo the whole story. And she’s still alive. So that whole “Some Enchanted Evening” story was probably just another one of Mary Lane’s big fat lies.

  “So,” said Troo, balancing her bike against her leg and lighting up an L&M from a new pack she had taken from behind Fitzpatrick’s cash register, “Henry and Sally sitting in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g.” Her face grew bright in the match flame. I knew she’d bring up Henry giving me my phosphate first. Troo was famous for never lettin’ go of something. “First comes love, then comes marriage . . .” I stopped walking and lifted my CHAMPION ribbon over my head and slipped it over Troo’s because it was more important to her than to me and I also knew she’d stop singing that stupid song if I did. But most of all I did it because Daddy was right this minute looking down from Heaven and giving me a double thumbs-up.

  Troo ran her finger down the ribbon and had another puff of her cigarette and said, “You know what, Sal? You are the best big sister in the whole world and don’t you forget. . . .” And then something jumped out of the bushes and Troo was knocked flat onto the sidewalk and a big black shape stinking of pepperoni was all over her, grunting and pinching at her, the muscles in his arms tight like a tug-of-war rope.

  Greasy Al was sitting on top of Troo and holding her hands to the sidewalk. I jumped on his back and he flipped me off like a bucking bronco. I landed face-first in the bushes that he’d been hiding in next to the drugstore. Troo tossed and turned and yelled, her legs marching up and down. “You fucking dago, let me go.”

  “You want me to let you go, you little mick? Your wish is my command.” Greasy Al let go of Troo’s hands and hauled off and socked her. And then he got up off her. Troo had dropped her bike on the ground and he was limping his way toward it, but then like he wanted to beat on Troo some more, he limped back. He was laughing his greasy laugh. I ran at him, and then Troo, who had gone quiet, moaned, so I stopped, not sure who to go to. Then a voice in the darkness said real softly, “Leave her alone.”

  At first I thought I hadn’t heard right and that I’d made it up because I was always imagining getting saved. But then he stepped underneath the streetlight and I saw his white skinny legs and my eyes traveled up his body to his chest that was barely wider than a cigar box. He was holding a gun in his two pale hands. Henry Fitzpatrick said louder, “Leave her alone, Greasy Al.” And then the whole world stopped and all you could hear was us breathing hard and all you could smell was Troo’s cigarette burning in the grass and that’s when Mr. Fitzpatrick came out of the drugstore and ran over to see what was happening.

  He took the gun out of Henry’s hand and said, “It’s okay now, son. I can take it from here,” and he moved Henry behind him.

  Greasy Al got up and hunch-limped off into the dark.

  Mr. Fitzpatrick looked after him to make sure he wasn’t coming back and then said, “I’ll call Dave Rasmussen as soon as we clean Troo up here.” He picked her up in his arms and Henry ran ahead of him to hold open the door. I looked down and there were my and Troo’s handprints that we had done last summer when Mr. Fitzpatrick had the sidewalk patched because it had a big hole in it and he said he didn’t want anybody to twist an ankle. Our hands looked so small next to Troo’s coonskin cap laying there like it was dead.

  Henry stuck his head out the drugstore door and said, “You better get in here. Pop says we might have to take Troo to the hospital. She could have a broken nose.” Then he went back inside.

  I was holding on to Troo’s beautiful Schwinn for dear life. I didn’t want to go back in there. I just wanted to run home and go down into the basement and crawl into that hidey-hole because I had let something bad happen to my little sister.

  Henry came out of the drugstore and walked over to me. “It’s okay. She’s going to be okay. Pop says now that maybe it’s just a bad lump. He’s gonna go get the car and take the two of you home and you won’t ever have to worry about Greasy Al again.”

  That wasn’t true. Because last year Greasy Al stuck Teddy Mahlberg in the leg with his switchblade and nobody did a darn
thing about it. I was there at the playground when it happened. Saw the whole thing. Greasy Al got mad because Teddy beat him in the Mumbly Peg knife game they played sometimes on the grass next to the steps. Bobby called the fuzz, but nothing happened to Greasy Al because Mr. Molinari of Molinari’s Ristorante Italiano was friends with police sergeant D’Amico and they laughed and said boys will be boys and slapped each other on the back right in front of me.

  I let Henry lead me back into the drugstore. Mr. Fitzpatrick had laid Troo out right on the soda fountain counter. How nice of him not to mention all the stuff falling out of her pockets. Band-Aids and Dubble Bubble and that pack of red-and-white L&Ms like somehow she knew she might need them later. She turned her head toward mine when I sat down on the red counter stool. “Stop crying,” she said, all persnickety. Henry went over to one of the shelves and picked up a box of Kleenex and brought it back to me. Mr. Fitzpatrick put some ice he got from behind the soda fountain on Troo’s nose and then said he had to go make a phone call. “Did he get the bike?” Troo whispered. “Did he?”

  I shook my head.

  Troo smiled, and if she coulda she woulda laughed out loud, because that’s the way Troo was. She didn’t ever seem to feel pain all that much. But it would have driven her Virginia Cunningham insane if Greasy Al had limped off with that bike.

  With the drugstore lights real soft, I thought how much Henry looked like Earl Flynn, who was Earl Flynn no matter what Nell said. No, not actually looked like him. But Henry had that kind of bravery. So right at that moment I knew I would marry Henry Fitzpatrick even if he was a homo because nobody could ever impress me the way he had when he stood up to Greasy Al Molinari. I picked up his hand and held it hard until what little blood it had went somewhere else in his body, hopefully to his heart.