Whistling In the Dark Page 6

  “How about a game later, Sally?” Bobby asked.

  He’d recently begun to teach me how to play chess, which was not at all like checkers even though it looked like it might be. I loved it when we played. How he’d bounce his legs up and down and rub his hands together like they were cold and he’d think so hard, like capturing my queen was so important that his forehead got papery lines in it.

  I said, “Chess sounds great.”

  “It’s a date.” Bobby laughed, because he laughed almost all the time, that’s how cheerful and full of energy he was, and then he walked off toward the baseball diamond where some kids were screaming at him to come over because it looked like they needed a pitcher. What a good egg Bobby was! So different from the other boys his age in the neighborhood. When I was grown up enough to go out on a real date, I was planning to take the bus over to the east side of town where Bobby was from. These west side boys, they could be trouble.

  Mary Lane came up and knocked the red rubber ball out of my hand. “What was jerky Bobby talking to you about?”

  Fast Susie was standing next to Mary Lane with her hands on her hips. Staring at Bobby’s back, which was very long since he was pretty tall, Fast Susie whistled, whoot woo, and said, “I wouldn’t throw that cat outta bed.”

  “When did you get a cat?” I asked.

  Fast Susie looked back at me and shook her head and said, “Boy, you are such a square, O’Malley,” and then she pulled me toward the yellow box. “Get it?” she said. “Square.” She pointed down at the box. “Square.” She pointed at me. “Get it?”

  Fast Susie was always making fun of me like that because I didn’t get half of her jokes. Troo said that was because Fast Susie was très chic and I was not at all très chic. I would have to agree with her because I didn’t feel at all très chic, and I thought I would know if I did. I wondered where the heck Troo was coming up with all these new words. She was starting to sound an awful lot like a French librarian.

  Fast Susie got into the server’s box. “Did you hear that Sara Heinemann’s mother sent her over to Delancey’s for some milk, and guess what?” She smacked the red ball right at me, her long black hair going every which way, the sun sliding off it like a newly waxed car.

  “What?” I asked, and smacked it right back at her.

  “Sara disappeared into thin air. Poof!” Fast Susie caught the ball and threw it up high and waited for it to come down before she said, “Remind you of anybody?”

  She meant Dottie Kenfield, but I didn’t want to say that because then it made it seem true.

  “When it got dark and Sara didn’t come home,” Fast Susie went on, “Mrs. Heinemann called the cops to start lookin’. They’ve been searching everywhere for her.”

  Mary Lane musta been eating something yellow, cuz when she stuck her tongue out at me it looked like that iguana’s tongue up at the zoo. “Told ya,” she said.

  Fast Susie said, “And ya know what that means, right?” She dropped the ball and walked over to Mary Lane and put her hands around her neck and started choking her. They all laughed. Not me. I knew better than anyone that Fast Susie was probably right. Sara Heinemann was probably dead. And they might never find her, because I would bet my bottom dollar that one of the cops that Mrs. Heinemann had called to go looking for her daughter’s choked body was Rasmussen. The murderer and molester himself.

  After a long day of braiding lanyards with Barb, playing chess with Bobby and a wild all-playground game of red rover, we headed over to the Fazios’ for some of Nana’s excellent lasagna. During supper, Troo and Nana had a very big discussion about Doris Day movies and Nana got all silly over the actor Rock Hudson. After we’d helped Fast Susie dry the dishes, Troo and me left and didn’t say much on the walk home because I thought we both regretted having to leave that nice Italian kitchen with good smells and arms waving all over the place like they were directing downtown traffic.

  We found the door to our house wide open, but when I called up the stairs, “Hello? Anybody home?” there wasn’t. Hall had definitely taken a long walk off a short pier. I figured it was because Mother was dying. But then that didn’t seem right either because Hall and Mother were fighting and taking the Lord’s name in vain all the time before she went into the hospital, so what did he care if she died.

  Troo and me didn’t bother washing up because the last time we’d tried, the water came out all warm and orange. We just took off our clothes and laid down in our bed and listened to the creak creak creak of our neighbors’ porch swing. Mr. Kenfield sat out there by himself almost every summer night, just rocking and smoking. The sound and the smell always traveled up to our bedroom window and reminded me of loneliness. Especially that night, because me and Troo were all by ourselves and it felt so much like that was how it would be from now on.

  Troo rolled onto her stomach and pulled up her T-shirt, letting me know she wanted me to rub her back, which was something I’d done every single night since I could remember. “Do you know why Fast Susie is called Fast Susie?” she asked.

  I thought about that afternoon. “Because she is an excellent person to have on your team for red rover?”

  “No,” Troo said and laughed. “It’s because she lets boys get some of the sex.”

  Fast Susie was three years older than me. Thirteen. A teenager. Different things happened when you got that old. Gettin’ some of the sex must be one of them.

  “Fast Susie goes to second base,” Troo said.

  What the heck was she talking about? Everybody knew that Fast Susie didn’t like baseball and what did baseball have to do with the sex? “What do you mean Fast Susie goes to second base?”

  For a minute, I got worried that talking about baseball like this would make Troo remember the day her and Daddy and Uncle Paulie didn’t make it home after the game. Right after the crash I tried to ask her what happened. How come Daddy smashed into the elm tree? Wasn’t he paying attention? But Troo wouldn’t talk to anybody for a long time after the accident and now if I tried to bring it up she’d just get mad or pretend she didn’t hear me.

  “Going to second base is when you let a boy touch your titties, which is another word for bosoms,” Troo said.

  “Ohhh . . .” I tried not to act too disgusted. To be more très chic. “Is there a going to first base?”

  Troo stretched out next to me, long and lean. “Frenchie kissing is going to first base. That’s when a boy puts his tongue in your mouth.”

  I would never, ever let somebody touch my titties when I grew them or do Frenchie kissing to my mouth.

  “And third base?” I asked. Eddie Mathews was the third baseman for the Braves and Daddy’s absolute favorite. I really missed listening to the ball games on the radio with my Sky King. His beer in his hand, his gal Sal on his lap. I didn’t really understand baseball but Daddy, he was an adorer of baseball. And I was an adorer of Daddy. The farm porch at night always smelled of his hard day in the field and the yellow light on the radio shined on his excited face when Hank Aaron would hit a home run and Daddy would jump up out of his chair and his gal Sal fell onto the floor. Especially the summer he died. Because that summer the Braves were gonna be in the World Series, he said, and we would go and eat salted peanuts and hot dogs with mustard and pickle relish. Which were my absolute favorites.

  “Third base is when a boy touches you down there.” Troo pointed to my undies.

  I would never, ever let anybody touch me down there.

  “So is a home run gettin’ some?” I asked, finally catching on.

  “Yup, a home run is gettin’ some.”

  When hell froze over.

  Troo asked, “You know that Junie was molested, right?” She rolled over and ran her fingers down my neck like it was a piano.

  I hadn’t known Junie like a friend. But I’d seen her at the playground sometimes and she seemed really nice and loved lanyard making as much as I did and was very good at it.

  Troo said, “Do you even know what molested
means?”

  “No.” I stuck my face into my pillow, until I reached the Aqua Velva smell.

  “Fast Susie said that when a girl is molested it means that somebody touches her in her private parts and hurts her real bad. And then he gets some sex from her even though she doesn’t want to give it.”

  I turned my head and looked out my window over to Dottie’s bedroom. Her ghost had started crying.

  “Sally?” Troo whispered, pulling the sheet up over our heads.

  “Yeah?”

  “You hear that?”

  “It’s Dottie’s ghost.”

  Troo moved a few inches closer. “That would be a real bad thing.”

  I wasn’t sure if she meant Dottie disappearing into thin air or what happened to Junie. But it didn’t matter because they were both real bad things. “I won’t ever let anything happen to you. You know that.”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about how Rasmussen had touched Junie when she hadn’t wanted him to. How scared she musta been. “Are you sure about that?” I asked. “About that molesting part?” I stopped rubbing her back because just then the thought of touching skin made me feel a little sick to my stomach right below my wishbone.

  “Fast Susie says that the man molested Junie and then had the sex with her and when he was done he wrapped her undies around her neck and pulled on ’em until she couldn’t breathe anymore.”

  After Troo fell asleep, I laid there in the dark and listened to Dottie’s ghost crying, hoping so bad that Fast Susie was wrong. Because I knew that if somebody didn’t listen to me, if somebody didn’t stop Rasmussen right away, me and Junie Piaskowski would soon have a lot more in common than our love of lanyards.

  CHAPTER TEN

  It was hot for late June, much hotter than it shoulda been. Ethel said that it was so hot and humid that it reminded her of Mississippi, where she was born and raised. Like we did every Wednesday, Troo and me had spent the morning being charitable with Mrs. Galecki, who Ethel had been taking good care of for a long time. The reason why we did that, besides adoring Ethel, was when we got back to school in September, Sister Imelda would make all us kids read out loud our stories entitled “How I Spent My Charitable Summer.” What with everything that’d been going on, I hadn’t worked on my story for a while, so I promised myself that I would do that tonight even if Hall was there. It was gettin’ harder and harder to figure exactly when Hall might show up. When he did come home, you could figure on him being what Mary Lane called “sloshed to the gills.”

  After we were done helping Ethel out, she gave us each a peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich, like she always did, and then Troo and me went over to the zoo to watch Sampson get fed, which was the other thing we did every Wednesday.

  We’d just come out of the Honey Creek that ran behind the whole park and the air felt cool and nice on our bare legs. Troo had recently started smoking L&Ms that she’d stolen out of Hall’s pocket when he was passed out on the couch. She had also found a flat little blue French cap to wear that she said was called a beret. Troo just went ape for hats of all kinds. “I’ve been think ing,” she said, lighting up.

  “About what?” We were up in our favorite zoo tree and I was admiring Sampson while eating my sandwich. Troo had eaten hers on the way over.

  “About Sara Heinemann disappearing.” Troo took a puff off the cigarette and made the smoke go up her nose the way Mother did sometimes. “It’s called French inhaling.” She coughed and did it again. “I think Fast Susie is right. I think Sara has gotten herself murdered and molested just like Junie.”

  I thought Sara had gotten herself murdered and molested, too, but I didn’t want to scare Troo by agreeing with her. And I also thought—no, I knew—that Rasmussen had done it, just like Junie. And that he’d also pushed Wendy down the Spencers’ root cellar stairs because it had been so stormy dark out that night that he probably hadn’t realized it was Wendy until it was too late. He probably hadn’t gone ahead and murdered Wendy because he knew a Mongoloid couldn’t point him out in a lineup, which was what happened if you got arrested in the movies.

  Troo spat her cigarette down to the ground and wiggled off her tree branch onto mine. She pointed over at Sampson and made a surprised face and said, “Oh, look, Sally!” When I turned, she grabbed the other half of my sandwich out of my hand and stuck it in her mouth before I could stop her.

  “Troo!”

  She grinned and said with her mouth full, “Remember how Junie was found over by the lagoon?”

  I didn’t answer because I was mad. I’d been really looking forward to the rest of that peanut butter and marshmallow sandwich.

  “Maybe that same guy who took Junie took Sara,” Troo said, fingering my braid, which was her way of saying sorry. “If we could find Sara’s body, we’d probably get a reward and our pictures in the newspaper like Mary Lane did when she called in that fire she set.”

  “It’s Rasmussen, Troo. Rasmussen is that guy.” I brushed her hand away, worn out with her not believing me.

  A couple of other people had come for Sampson’s two o’clock feeding. Two ladies with little kids I didn’t know. And also Artie Latour, who was one of Wendy’s brothers. Artie was two years older than me and was a really goofy tall guy with an Adam’s apple that was so big all you could do was stare at his skinny neck when he talked to you, getting hypnotized by this thing moving up and down like the grain elevator out at the farm. Artie also had a harelip from when he was born. Not too much else to keep in mind about him except he walked with his toes pointed in.

  Troo hopped down from the tree after me and started over to where Artie was standing in front of Sampson’s cage, which wasn’t really a cage at all. In the winter Sampson stayed in his cage in the monkey house. (Heartbreak ing.) But in the summer, he liked to be outside where there were big orange boulders and a little pool of water and some shade off to the side where he could get out of the heat and eat his lunch in peace.

  “Artie,” Troo called over to him.

  Probably he didn’t answer because one of his older brothers, Reese, was the biggest bully in the whole world. Reese was always picking on Artie and had given him a good whack on the side of the head at the playground last year after he lost to Artie in Battleship. His ear swelled up to the size of a peach and now Artie didn’t hear so hot sometimes.

  “Artiiieee,” Troo screamed.

  He jumped away from the black iron railing. When he saw who it was, his face turned the same color as an orang utan’s butt. Artie had what Fast Susie called “the hots” for Troo.

  “Wendy okay?” I asked, coming up next to him.

  Artie shrugged. “She got some stitches.” He was such a good brother to Wendy, not like Reese, who always called her the idiot. Reese Latour would go to hell eventually, on this I would bet a million dollars.

  Sampson was eating a banana, not singing while he ate, showing a lot better manners than those Latour boys. Troo had snuck us in for supper a couple of nights ago with the help of Mimi Latour, who was in the same grade as Troo. The Latours were having something called slumgoodie, which was in this big glass bowl and couldn’t hold a candle to Mother’s tuna noodle casserole. There was also a big stack of Wonder Bread and oleo and powdered milk to drink that tasted so much like I imagined melted chalk would. Reese Latour stared at Troo the entire supper, smiling at her like she was a piece of cherry cobbler.

  Artie asked, like he didn’t care at all, “What’re you doing for the Fourth of July, Troo?”

  The man who was feeding Sampson was Mary Lane’s father. I thought he should take some of that food home and feed it to Mary Lane so she wouldn’t be the skinniest darn kid in the world anymore.

  Troo said, “The Fourth? Why, Sally and me wouldn’t miss the bicycle parade for all the tea in China.” She winked at him and Artie’s Adam’s apple gave his gum a little ride down his throat, he got so flusterated. He’d come in second last year to Troo in the bike-decorating contest and had won a subscription to a magazin
e called Boys’ Life. Troo had won a new set of streamers for her bike and a five-dollar certificate to the Five and Dime since the bike-decorating contest was sponsored by Kenfield’s Five and Dime . . . We Have What You Need!

  Artie pulled on his bad ear, which he did all the time because he was sorta high-strung, like a racehorse. “Did you hear about Sara Heinemann bein’ missing?”

  Troo was resting her arms on the iron railing, watching Mr. Lane toss Sampson’s lunch to him. “Yeah.”

  “The cops came by this morning and said to make sure we lock our doors.” Artie bent down and began rolling up his pants legs. He was probably gonna go do a little cooling off over in the Honey Creek just like we had. “You and Sally should be careful. My ma says she’s not gonna let my sisters go out alone anymore after the streetlights come on. She says it’s not safe. That there’s a nut runnin’ around with a couple of loose screws.”

  I was staring at Sampson and thinking about how he could keep anybody safe. How just to see his big hands and black hairy arms you’d know he’d never let anything bad happen to you. And then, like he knew what I was thinking, he looked at me and waved. And I waved back.

  “Quit it,” Troo said, and knocked my hand down and looked around to see if anybody was watching. Her little blue French cap fell over her eye and she shoved it back. “He’s not saying hello to you. He’s just a gorilla batting at a fly, for Chrissakes.”

  “No, Troo,” I said, reaching as far as I could over the railing toward him, wanting so much to stroke his smooth hair. “He’s much, much more than just a gorilla.” I waved one more time, and in answer Sampson ran to the edge of the pit and looked me straight in the eye and beat his chest over and over. “He is magnificent.”