Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing (9 page)

“You ain't heard, then?”

“No, I ain't.”

“It's about Sly's chain saw. A deputy sheriff come out and investigated.”

After presenting this teaser so I'd stay tuned for the news, Delmar took the Blight version of a commercial break. He dug out his can of chew and stood there thoughtfully studying the lid, as if he couldn't remember the combination. I expected him to say, “I'll be back with the chain saw story, right after this.”

“Skip the teaser, Delmar,” I told him. “What about the chain saw?”

“It got stole.”

“It got stole?”

“Yep. Right out of old Sly's garage. Somebody walked in and snatched it, pretty as you please.”

I was shocked, much to Delmar's satisfaction.

“Yep, stole it right out of his garage,” Delmar said, recapping the news.

“What did the deputy do?”

“Nothin'. He just looked in the garage and said, ‘You're right, ain't no chain saw in here. Guess it got stole.' Didn't dust for fingerprints or talk to nobody what might've been an eyewitness to the crime or check for tracks or nothin'. Can't tell but what the deputy might have turned up some of that DNA stuff if he'd investigated a little more careful.”

“Clearly a breakdown in law enforcement,” I said. “Chain saws are practically loaded with DNA.”

“Darn tootin'! Now, here's the peculiar thing.” Delmar took the lid off his snuff can and loaded up his lower lip.

I was getting a little irritated with Delmar's teasers. “So, what's the peculiar thing?”

“Well, it's just this. Old Sly had a brand-new five-horse
outboard motor settin' right there in plain sight in his garage, and the thief didn't take that. He took an old wore-out chain saw instead.”

“If I was a thief, I'd have taken the motor,” I said.

“Me, too!” said Delmar. “Ain't no heavier than a chain saw—and a lot more fun!”

“You're right about that,” I said. “From my vast experience with criminals, I know they'd rather steal things that are fun rather than things that are work. Back when I was in college, I actually shared an apartment for a while with a professional thief, and his specialty was sporting goods.”

“Wow! That's weird!”

“Yes, indeed, he was a real criminal and—”

“No, I mean—you went to college?”

“Yes, Delmar, I did. I hope it doesn't show.”

“Don't worry, Pat, it don't.”

“Good. Anyway, about my roommate …”

I had moved out of the university dorm and into a small hovel off campus. The dorm had gotten much too rowdy, with horseplay going on all hours of the night and endless practical jokes being played on serious students trying to get an education. The dorm supervisor narrowed down the problem to two instigators of the mischief, as is often the case, and to solve the problem, suggested that Duke and I find an apartment off campus. Well, we were both relieved, because it had become almost impossible for us to get any studying done with all that ruckus going on.

I didn't know much about Duke, except that he could short-sheet a bed in thirty seconds flat. And he was terrified of snakes, even the harmless garden variety. The mere mention of snakes would cause him to shudder. He would even check his shoes each morning to make sure a snake wasn't curled up in one, as if snakes commonly hung out
in a college dorm. Other than that bit of absurdity, he seemed okay, although something less than a serious student like myself.

“What's in that box?” he asked suspiciously as we were moving into the hovel.

“Books,” I said.

“Oh,” he said. “I thought it might be a snake.”

“Geez, Duke,” I said. “You've got to get over this abnormal fear of snakes. Besides, if it will make you feel any better, I sold the snake to Artie Feldman. Artie said he could put it to good use.”

For the first few weeks, Duke and I got along fine, even though he had quite a few irritating habits and wasn't all that keen on personal hygiene. But he had a car and I didn't, and a roommate with a car can be excused quite a few shortcomings. Duke was several years older than I, even though we were both freshmen. I wasn't sure whether he had been in the service or had just lingered a few years longer than normal in high school. I suspected the latter.

Shortly after our move into the hovel, Duke disappeared for a couple of days. Upon his return, he asked me to help unload his car. The trunk was full of golf clubs and tennis rackets.

“Holy cow!” I said. “Where did you get all the clubs and rackets?”

“My uncle died and left them to me.”

“How come he needed so many rackets?”

“Just liked to have some spares on hand.”

“Boy, I guess. He didn't even remove the price tags.”

“Yeah. You want a racket? I'll sell you one cheap.”

“Naw. I don't tennis.”

About once a month, another of Duke's beloved uncles would die and leave him a bunch of brand-new sporting equipment, which Duke would store in our hovel. After a
while, we could hardly see the walls, there was so much stuff piled against them. I suggested to Duke that members of his family were dropping off with abnormal frequency.

“Yeah,” he said. “It's real sad. Wanna buy a bowling ball?”

Then one day Duke showed up with a whole carload of rifles, shotguns, binoculars, fishing rods, and reels. This was more like it.

“Another uncle die?” I asked.

“Yep. Dear old Uncle Fudd. I'll really miss him. This here was his favorite shotgun.”

“I can see that. He kept it in the box it came in.”

“That's right. Uncle Fred always said, you own a fine firearm, you got to take care of it.”

“Fudd,” I said.

“Who?”

“You first said your uncle's name was Fudd. Now you just referred to him as Fred.”

“Right. Fred Fudd. You wanna buy the shotgun? Since we're such good pals, I'll sell it to you real cheap.”

“Sorry. No money.”

I would dearly have loved to pick up a few of the guns real cheap, as well as some of the fine rods and reels. My heart ached with envy just looking at them, or at least at the boxes that contained them. My sporting needs would have been filled for life. On the other hand, not being entirely stupid—forget the unfounded rumors spread by my professors—I had belatedly arrived at the conclusion that my roomy was a professional thief. We had so much hot merchandise in our hovel, the heating bill dropped to practically nothing.

Still, I was reluctant to confront Duke about the matter. He was surly, large, and muscular, and I was mild, thin, and puny, about the right size, in fact, to fit nicely into the
trunk of a car, even when rolled up in a carpet. I could have called the cops, but I had no proof that Duke's sporting uncles hadn't had a sudden run on their mortality. On the other hand, I was expecting a police raid on our hovel at any moment. Surely they would suspect me as being an accessory to the crime. So there was nothing for me to do but bring the matter to a head with Duke, and sternly so, regardless of the consequences to myself. I only hoped I wasn't being too harsh.

“Say, listen, Duke, ole buddy. I got an idea. You have plenty of money, so why don't you move to a nicer and larger apartment and take your loo—uh, your stuff, with you?”

“Naw. I like it here. Besides, when I'm off going to funerals and like that, I got you here to keep an eye on my loo—uh, my stuff. Nope, I'm staying right here, ole buddy.”

What to do, what to do? There seemed no way out. Sooner or later Duke was bound to get busted, and I right along with him:

“You see, Officer, he said his nine uncles recently died and left him all this stuff, and I believed him. I had no way of knowing I was harboring a criminal and his loot.”

“Sounds reasonable to me, son. Cuff him.”

I began to see there was only one way out of the fix. I had to get rid of Duke. It was a terrible thing to contemplate, but there was nothing else to do. I'd just wait till Duke was asleep some night and … First, though, I had to arrange a rendezvous with a shady character of my acquaintance.

“You bring it?” I asked, glancing around the darkened alley to make sure we weren't under surveillance.

“Yeah. You bring the dough?”

“Yeah. Let's see the merchandise. Okay, looks good, this should do the job.”

“Worked for me. I got rid of my roommate with it.”

“It's untraceable, too,” I said.

“Sure. There are millions out there exactly like it, all unregistered.”

“You got that right, Artie.”

A day later, Duke was gone. The only damage was to the hovel walls, where Duke had ricocheted about trying to get a clean shot at the door. He later came back and collected his loot. And none too soon either. The police raided his new pad a couple of weeks later, and I never saw or heard from him again.

And now, more about our crime wave in Blight. Delmar rushed over to tell me the latest.

“Got some more news on Sly's chain saw,” he said. Then he took out his knife and began cleaning the dried mud from his boot cleats, this being his first opportunity to do so since buying the boots.

“Get on with it, Delmar,” I said.

“Oh, all right. Well, whoever stole the chain saw brought it back. Put it right in Sly's garage.”

“Now, that's really interesting. From my vast knowledge of psychology, Delmar, I can tell you that the thief probably felt guilty and realized how stupid it is to sneak around in the night stealing folks' tools.”

“I suppose. But then I guess he had second thoughts.”

“How so?”

“This time he took Sly's motor.”

So the crime wave in Blight continues.

If it hadn't been for Lester Osgood, I would have been just another happy-go-lucky fourth-grader without a care in the world, except possibly for long division. Instead, I had to worry constantly about being nabbed by the evil Stamp People. Hard telling what the Stamp People might do to me, but it wouldn't be anything pleasant, I was sure of that.

I lived on a little farm and Lester lived in town. One day after school, he invited me home with him. I was surprised to discover he lived in a fine house surrounded by huge trees and a lawn the size of our cow pasture. His bedroom was filled with games and toys of all kinds, including an electric train so wonderful it could eat your heart out from pure envy. For the first time I realized that Lester was rich. But was he happy? You bet!

“Wow!” I said. “Let's play with your train, Lester.”

“It's kind of boring,” he said. “It just goes around and around on the tracks. What I want to show you is my stamp collection.”

Stamp collection? Why would Lester want to collect stamps, unless, of course, he wrote a lot of letters and didn't want to be caught short of postage?

Lester took a large album from his bookcase and opened it on the bed. I was amazed. It contained beautiful stamps from all over the world: big stamps, little stamps, square stamps, oblong stamps, and even triangular stamps. Lester flipped through the pages, pointing out stamps from Brazil and Africa and India and New Zealand, just about anyplace I could imagine and even places I couldn't imagine.

“This is wonderful!” I cried. “Gee, Lester, you're so lucky to be rich enough to collect stamps!”

“Oh, you don't have to be rich to collect stamps,” he said. “It helps, of course, but it doesn't cost much at all to get started. Here, I'll give you one of my old beginner stamp albums.”

I opened the album and stared down at all the little spaces practically crying out to be filled with stamps. “Gee, thanks, Lester,” I said. “But I better not take the album. I don't have any money to buy stamps.”

“Sure you do,” Lester said, thereby revealing he hadn't a clue as to the meaning of the word “poor.” He opened a copy of his
Magazine for
Boys. “See this advertisement? ‘Send only twenty-five cents to the Stamp People for a packet of two hundred assorted stamps!' Surely you have a quarter, Patrick.”

“Oh, sure, I have a quarter,” I said, chuckling. I didn't mention the quarter was about half of my life's savings.

Lester tore out the page with the stamp advertisement
on it and gave it to me. “You can't go wrong on two hundred stamps for twenty-five cents,” he said.

Lester was pretty smart about most things but, boy, was he ever dumb about that!

The very next day I sent off my quarter to the Stamp People. Several weeks went by with no response, and I was beginning to think the Stamp People had stolen my quarter. Then one day a bulky little packet arrived. My fingers trembling with excitement, I tore it open and dumped the stamps out on our kitchen table. Ahhh! My stamp collection had begun! The stamps weren't nearly so beautiful as Lester's, and many were duplicates of the same stamp. But there were a few nice ones, too, and even a few from foreign countries. “Neato!” I said to myself.

I found it strangely satisfying to paste my stamps into the album. Afterward, though, I felt mildly depressed. My stamp collection had both started and stopped with the twenty-five-cent packet.

Scarcely a week later another packet of stamps arrived from the Stamp People. There were no duplicates this time, and all of the stamps were practically new. Obviously, the Stamp People had got to thinking that maybe they should have sent me a better grade of stamps in the first place. Now they were trying to make up for their error. I tossed the empty packet and the few papers it contained into the wastebasket and happily began pasting the stamps in my album.

Soon another packet of really terrific stamps arrived! And then another! And another! My bedroom was practically aflutter with stamps. Frantically, I pasted stamp after stamp into my album, rushing to keep up before still more packets arrived. But after a while, I began to get this uneasy feeling. Why did the Stamp People keep sending me stamps? Maybe I had misread the ad. Maybe it had said,
“Send us a quarter and we will send you stamps forever!” Or maybe the Stamp People were simply kind and extremely generous folks, wishing nothing more than to help a boy get started on a wholesome and educational hobby like stamp collecting. It finally occurred to me that the papers I'd discarded with the latest packet might contain some explanation of the Stamp People's generosity, but, as bad luck would have it, Mom had already emptied the wastebasket. I did vaguely recall some fine print on one of the papers.