Mr. Was (8 page)

They were listening to an old radio.

Except it wasn't an old radio. It was a new radio.

When was I? I suppose I could've just asked somebody what the date was, but I didn't want to look stupid. I stepped back from the window and looked up the street. No stoplight. The semaphore, I remembered my mom telling me, had been installed when she was a kid. So it was sometime before the fifties, but after the invention of the radio.

The building I knew as Ole's Quick Stop was now called Gleason's Market. Maybe they would have a newspaper or a magazine. I opened the door and walked in. The woman behind the counter had on the ugliest dress I think I've ever seen, a dull-colored, flowered thing that made her overfed body look even lumpier than it probably was. Behind her, standing on a ladder and wiping the edge of the top shelf with a rag, stood a kid wearing a blue apron over a dingy white sleeveless undershirt and a pair of jeans that hung so low I could see the crack in his butt. His head was separated from his shoulders by a collar of lardcolored flesh. I was staring up at him when the head rotated like that of an owl and his dull brown eyes focused on me. He seemed familiar, as if I'd met him someplace before. I looked back at the magazines, searching for a date.

Time
magazine. The cover showed a painting of a tough-looking black man. The line under the picture read “Champion Joe Louis.” It was the boxer that
Scud had mentioned three years ago. I looked for the date on the cover. September 29, 1941.

I had gone back more than fifty years.

Then I saw something that practically stopped my heart. Batman and Robin swinging from thin black lines against a yellow sky, the city horizon red in the background. I read the number in the upper left-hand corner of the comic book

Batman No. 1.

I didn't know much about comic books except to read them now and then, but everybody knows about how the old ones, especially the number one issues, are worth big bucks. Some of them are worth thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars. The price on the cover said ten cents. Hands shaking, I opened it to the first page.

“Can ah hep yew?”

The woman pressed her belly against the counter and smiled at me, showing a set of bright yellow teeth, about twice as many as ought to have fit in her head.

“I think so,” I said, closing the comic book. “I'd like to buy this, please.”

“You from around here?” she asked.

“Just visiting.” I dug in my pocket for change.

“That's an old one,” said a voice behind me.

I turned and looked into a face identical to that of the kid on the ladder, only this one wasn't wearing an apron. For an instant I thought that the kid had somehow transported himself down from the ladder.
I was ready to believe just about anything. But then I saw that the kid on the ladder was still up there. There were two of them, twins.

Suddenly, I knew what they would look like in fifty years. Sitting in this same building, filling their ample guts with beer. The two old guys from Ole's.

“We had the new one, but somebody bought it.” I realized he was talking about the comic book.

“Yew shut yer mouth now, Hermie. He wants to buy it. He just said so, din't you, son?”

“That's right,” I said, handing her a quarter.

“The Batman, he can't really fly,” Hermie said. “Superman is better.”

The woman was staring at the coin.

“What's this?” she demanded.

“It's a quarter.” Even as I heard the words leave my mouth I realized that I might have a problem here. Did quarters look the same in 1941? The way she was frowning at it, I suspected they didn't.

“Don't look right,” she said. She pulled another quarter from a box under the counter and compared the two. “Don't look right at all.”

I started to back away.

She squinted at the coin, closing one eye. “Nineteen ninety-three? What are you try in' to pull on us, boy? This here's a phony!” she hissed.

Hermie snatched the comic out of my hand.

“You stay right there, boy!” The woman shouted at me. She grabbed my jacket sleeve and looked up at the twin on the ladder. “Harry, you get down from
there and go get Chief Smaby. You go get him now, boy!”

Harry started down the ladder. I jerked my sleeve out of her grip and took off, hit the door open with my shoulder, and was on the street running when she yelled, “Hermie! Harry! Get him, boys! Get that boy, you go get him now!”

I looked back and saw the twins barreling up the street after me. For a couple of jelly rolls, they could run like crazy. I ran up River Street, ducked down a side street, cut back on Middle Street, and headed for the bluff road. The twins weren't gaining on me, but they still had me in sight and they were yelling, “Stop thief!” even though I hadn't stolen anything. People were opening their doors and looking. The whole town would be after me soon.

I made it to the bluff road, my lungs burning, legs feeling like rubber. A car came rattling up behind me. The only thing to do, I decided, was to head for the trees and try to make my way back to Boggs's End through the woods. I hit the ditch running, then heard a voice shouting, “Hey! You need a lift?”

I stopped and looked back at the car. It was the same yellow Model A that had passed me on the way down. The blond kid was leaning out the window, grinning. “What you runnin' from?” he asked.

Now that I could see him better, I recognized that long, narrow face with the wide mouth. “Scud?”

He flexed his brow. “You know me?”

I looked back down the hill, breathing hard. “I'm Jack. You remember me?”

His eyes widened. “You still runnin' from that dog?” He laughed.

The twins were coming around the bend, followed by a man in overalls and, farther back, the fat woman from the store. I ran to the car and hopped in. “Let's go!”

Scud revved up the engine and popped the clutch. The tires gave a squeak and we started up the hill, slowly picking up speed.

“What'd you do, rob 'em or something?”

“I tried to buy a comic book,” I panted, trying to catch my breath.

He looked back down the road. “That's a lot of runnin' for one comic book.”

I sat back. “You can say that again.”

“So what did you do? Try to swipe it?”

“Something like that.”

Scud laughed. “So where you been? Me and Andie, we only seen you that one night, what, two or three years ago?”

“I've been busy.”

“Doin' what? Where you from, anyways?”

I hesitated, wondering whether I should tell him, thinking he probably wouldn't believe me if I did. Scud was helping me out of my current predicament, but I had no reason to trust him, especially after his stunt in the apple orchard. Of course, a kid can change a lot in three years. We were both older and, I hoped, smarter. But I decided to play it safe.

“I was just passing through,” I said.

“What, you run away again or something?”

“Yeah.”

“You need a place to stay?”

“Nah.”

“So where you want to go?”

We were coming up on the driveway leading to Boggs's End. “You let me out here,” I said.

“Here? Why? You want 'em to catch you? They ain't but a mile back. Old Mrs. Gleason, she's mad enough she'll run all night. And Harry and Hermie, they won't stop till she tells 'em.” He laughed.

We passed the driveway, still picking up speed.

Scud said, “What do you say we drop in on Andie? She'll be tickled to see you. She was mad as a cat that night. Boy, did you ever take off running! You shoulda seen yourself.”

“So what'd you do?”

He laughed again. I was getting tired of it.

“I watched you run is what I did. Old Red—that's Henderson's old mutt—he ain't never bit nobody.”

“Yeah, well, thanks for telling me.”

“Andie, she was all heated up over it. Said it was a mean thing to do. You still mad?”

“Nah.” I was, but not too mad.

“Well, we was just kids, y'know. So what do you say? Let's drop in on Andie. I was going up there anyways.”

By that time we were a good mile past Boggs's End, and I wasn't interested in heading back down that road just then with the Gleason clan in pursuit, so I said okay.

• • •

Andie lived about three miles up the road in a sprawling, dilapidated farmhouse, pigs and chickens running loose everywhere. A couple of the pigs came running up to the car. I hesitated, not liking the look of the one snuffling outside my door.

“She ain't gonna hurt ya,” Scud said, climbing out his side. “Just lookin' for food.”

I still didn't like it. I remembered the peanut butter sandwich in my pocket, unwrapped it, and sailed it out across the farmyard. The pig took off after it. I got out of the car and followed Scud toward the house. Now that we were out of the car, I noticed he'd gotten taller since I'd last seen him. He must've been close to six and a half feet.

Andie was sitting on the porch shucking sweet corn.

“Hey, Andie,” Scud said.

Her yellow cotton dress had little blue polka dots all over it. She stood up, leaned against one of the porch pillars, and crossed her arms. Her red hair was tied back, loose and full. Freckles spattered her sunbrowned skin. I remembered her as a wiry kid with sharp knuckles. She wasn't so wiry anymore. Her dress was maybe a size too small, her body pushing against it in all the right ways. I almost forgot to breathe. She smiled, and her white teeth cut right to my heart.

“Who you got there, Scudderoo?” I could feel her voice in my chest, deep and clear.

”This here's your friend Jack. You remember Jack, doncha? He runs like a deer.” Scud let loose again with that irritating laugh.

Andie peered more closely at me, shading her green eyes with one hand, then stretched her lips into an impish grin. “Is that Jack?”

“That's me.”

Scud said, “Where's your old man?”

Andie tilted her head. “Out cuttin' hay.” She looked at me again. Every time she did that I got this buzz running up through my body. “You hungry? I got a pot of soup goin' inside.”

We were hungry. Andie served us up huge bowls of chicken soup with thick slices of chewy, tasty bread that she'd baked herself. I couldn't keep my eyes off her. Scud told her that I was a fugitive from the Gleasons.

“They looked like they was likely to lynch him,” he said.

“What did you do?” Andie wanted to know.

My instincts told me not to tell them where I was from, but I really wanted to impress Andie, so I reached into my pocket and fished out another quarter.

“Looks sort of odd,” Andie said. “Looks like it ain't real silver.”

Scud examined the coin. “Is it a phony?” He held the quarter closer to his face. “Nineteen ninety-three? Not a very good counterfeit, they can't even get the date right.”

“It's no counterfeit,” I said. “I'm from the future.”

He gave me a look, then burst into laughter.

Andie started laughing, too. “You had him going for a second there, Jackie,” she said.

Just then, the door banged open and a tall, grayhaired man wearing soiled overalls stepped into the kitchen. He glared at Scud.

Scud stood up. “Good afternoon, Mr. Murphy.”

He snorted, then said to Andie, “Feeding the pigs again, eh, girl?”

I thought he was talking about us, but Andie gave out a squeak and ran out the door. The pigs had gotten into the corn she'd been shucking. Mr. Murphy watched her through the door, a bemused expression on his weather-lined face. After a few seconds, she came back inside, her face red with anger and embarrassment.

Mr. Murphy grinned, showing us his set of enormous white teeth. “I'm s'prised there's any left, girl, what with you feeding the animals with one hand and your friends with t'other.”

“Sorry, Daddy.” She noticed he was staring at me. “Daddy, this is Jack.”

He looked me up and down. “Never seen ya b'fore,” he said.

“I'm just passing through.”

“Drifter, huh? You lookin' for work?”

“Not just now.”

“On account a I got work. I got more work 'n you can shake a stick at. Now Franklin here”—he indicated Scud with a jerk of his head—”he don't believe in work, do ya, son?”

Scud grinned uncomfortably. Andie was setting out another bowl of soup.

“He'd rather be gallivanting 'round in that old jalopy a his, scaring hell out of the animals.” Mr. Murphy took a seat at the table. “You boys done eating my food? 'Cause if you are, I don't mind you hit the road. Me'n Andrea here, we got a farm to run.”

Scud and I made our way out the door. We'd just got into Scud's Ford when Andie came out, tried to kick one of the pigs, missed, then ran up to the car. She looked quickly back at the house, then threw her arms around Scud's neck, planted a loud kiss on his lips, then ran back into the house.

That kiss echoed like a shattered gong in my chest. As we drove away, Scud said, “Me and her, we're gonna get married once she turns eighteen.”

I felt like throwing up.

I made him drop me off at Boggs's End.

“What you want to go there for?” he wanted to know. “Ain't nobody lived there since the Boggses. That was really something, them disappearing like that.”

“What do you think happened?”

“I dunno. Some people say they went to California. Me, I figure they maybe got murdered and buried in the woods someplace.”

“How come you figure that?”

“What else? They wouldn't a just left their house and all their stuff behind. The bank, they sold off all
the furniture, but nobody wanted to buy the house so they just let it go for taxes. Look, why don't you stay with me? My ma won't mind.”

“That's okay. I want to stay here.”