The Paper Cowboy (11 page)

FISHING

I didn't know what to do. I barely managed to pull myself out of bed the next morning. On the paper route, Ma and Pa told me I looked pale and Mrs. Scully invited me in for a doughnut and a cup of hot chocolate. Even though it wasn't that cold, I couldn't stop shivering. If I turned in Mrs. Glazov, she might go to jail, or even the electric chair like the Rosenbergs! But if I didn't report her, Mr. McKenzie might lose his store.

I didn't know what to do. I picked arguments with the choirboys twice on the playground, though when Eddie asked me what it had been about afterward, I couldn't remember. I yelled at Pinky in the bath and fussed at Susie when she wouldn't nap. She was five months old now and kept sitting up when she was supposed to be sleeping in her crib. I even snapped at Mary Lou when she reminded me to put a small plastic tarp over the basket for the papers when it rained.

Boots was the only one I could tolerate. In the mornings, his nose was always warm against my cheek as he woke me up, usually just before my alarm. His quiet presence kept me company, even if it was cold or rainy, as I pedaled through the darkness, delivering the papers.

The next Saturday at McKenzie's was tense. Ever since the Halloween candy incident at school, Little Skinny wouldn't speak to me. Mr. McKenzie must have noticed, but he didn't say anything, just gave us jobs that kept us apart. I thought about how much fun we'd had carving the pumpkin and wished it could be like that again.

Only three people came in all morning. One of them was Mrs. Glazov. “Hello, Tommy,” she said, friendly as ever.

“Morning,” I managed to choke out, unable to look her in the eye. It was her fault Mr. McKenzie had no customers. Except it wasn't. Not really. Mrs. Glazov might be the communist, but I was the one who'd put the newspaper in the store. I was the one who'd started the rumor.

When Mrs. Glazov left, Mr. McKenzie, Little Skinny and I looked at one another. The floors were clean, the windows sparkling. Mr. McKenzie put up the
CLOSED FOR LUNCH
sign and made us sandwiches early that day.

“I still have some time,” I said as I chewed my ham-and-cheese. “Got any boxes to unload?”

Mr. McKenzie shook his head. “No point in ordering any more supplies if I can't unload the stock I already have.”

“Oh.”

When I finished my sandwich, Mr. McKenzie sighed. “Might as well go on home, Tommy.”

“See you next week,” I said as I left.

“Yeah,” said Mr. McKenzie flatly. “See you next week.”

His tone felt like a knife at my back, urging me to make a decision. But I couldn't figure out which friend to save and which to sacrifice.

At home, Dad suggested we skip church the next day and go fishing. “Eddie and his dad are busy,” said Dad, “so it'd just be the two of us.”

I knew this was an apology of sorts, for going off with Pinky and not helping me when Mom lost her temper five days before. I was still angry with him for that. But a fishing trip wasn't offered often, so of course I said yes.

The next day we were out of the house by seven. We didn't talk at all in the car. When we got to Mud Lake, we parked the car at the side of the road and walked down a narrow, shaded path to the water. Dad carried the tackle box and I took the poles. He had a varnished-cane casting rod with a cigar grip and a Zebco spinning reel, and a whole collection of lures. I only had a simple bamboo pole with a fishing line and hook, but it worked all right.

Mud Lake was really just a big pond, surrounded by reeds and bushes. But it was quiet and usually deserted. Only the serious fishermen came out in mid-November. We sat down on the old wooden dock and started fishing.

Dad and I didn't talk much, just “Pass the worms,” and “Do you have some more line?” and stuff like that. But it was a good quiet, calm and peaceful. I'd almost managed to stop thinking about Mrs. Glazov when Dad cleared his throat and asked, “How's it going with Mr. McKenzie?”

“Fine,” I said.

“I talked to him yesterday,” he said. “You can stop going after next week.”

“Great.” But it didn't feel great. I liked helping Mr. McKenzie. “No one goes there anymore anyway,” I said. “He doesn't need the help.”

“Yes,” said Dad. “It's unfortunate. I had hoped no one would believe those rumors.”

A duck quacked in the distance. No one else was there. The sun shone on our faces. The wind whispered of winter, but it wasn't quite cold yet. I believed, just for a moment, that I could get the guilt off my chest. “It's my fault.”

Dad laughed. “Tommy, stealing is bad, but a few yo-yos won't make or break a business. Officer Russo said some public school boy was playing a joke and—”

“No,” I said. “It was me.” And then I told him.

Dad's hands gripped his fishing pole tighter and tighter, till his knuckles turned white. “Thomas John Wilson.” He shook his head.

“I didn't mean—”

“You've destroyed a man's reputation!”

“I know. I feel terrible about it.”

“Terrible!” Dad ran his hands through his hair. “Tommy, have you ever heard of Milo Radulovich?”

“Radulo-who?” I asked.

“Milo Radulovich,” Dad continued, “was a lieutenant in the United States Air Force. He recently lost his job over communist allegations.”

“Well, he must have done something to make them suspect him,” I said, trying not to remember that Mr. McKenzie hadn't done a thing. It had all been me.

Dad shook his head. “He did nothing. His sister and father might have—
might have
—attended some sort of a communist meeting. Or read a communist newspaper. No one really knows because he was not allowed to see the evidence against him. Basically, he was found guilty by association. You've done the same thing to Mr. McKenzie.”

If I felt bad before, I felt even worse now. But cowboys don't admit they've made a mistake. They just press on. “I'm trying to make it better,” I argued. “I've found the real communist!”

“What?” Dad turned to look at me and, if anything, he looked even more surprised than before.

“Yeah,” I said. “It's Mrs. Glazov.”

“The Russian lady who lives next door?”

And then it all came tumbling out. “I started giving her reading lessons so I could get inside her house and investigate and I found this book,
Das Kapital,
and now I don't know what to do because she's so nice and I don't want to turn her in, but I don't want Mr. McKenzie to lose his store either.”

“Tommy,” Dad said sternly, “Mrs. Glazov is not a Soviet spy.”

“How do you know?”

“You're being ridiculous!”

“That newspaper had to come from somewhere!”

“Tommy!” Dad roared, as angry as I'd ever seen him. “No more of this investigating or pretending you are some sort of avenging cowboy who can just swoop in and make everything okay!”

Dad never yelled. Never. His tone hurt more than his words. Thank goodness I pulled in a fish then, and another one, in quick succession. I didn't want to talk to him, or even look at him. Then I volunteered to gut the fish, even though I usually hate that part.

While I cut up the fish, Dad prepared the fire, building a ring of stones and pulling out his cast iron frying pan. He hesitated a moment before he threw the match in. As the flames licked the dry leaves and sprang to life, I wondered if he was thinking about Mary Lou. It was chilly and the fire felt nice, but it seemed wrong to enjoy something that had hurt my sister so much.

Later, after we had eaten the hot fried fish, Dad finally spoke again. “Tommy. We've all been under a lot of stress. The hospital bills for Mary Lou . . .” He trailed off.

She'd been in the hospital for two months now. I knew Dad was worried about how we were going to pay for that. I was worried about it too. But I didn't think that was why he had barked at me. “What about Mom?”

“What about her?”

“She's always yelling and crying.”

“Mom's always been like that.”

“No. She's worse. She threw those pierogi. And broke a vase. She even kicked Boots when she was mad at me!”

“Tommy, you provoke her.”

“Dad, some days she forgets to do the dishes. Or get Pinky dressed!”

He said nothing.

“Something's wrong with her. She insulted our guests at the party. She cursed out the judge!”

“I already called the doctor,” Dad said quietly. “He couldn't find anything wrong. We just need to give it time and . . . ignore her outbursts as much as possible.”

How was I supposed to ignore getting beaten? “But—”

“I mean it, Tommy. You need to let it go. It's not your problem. I don't want you to worry about Mom. And I don't want you to investigate this communist thing anymore.”

“Fine.”

We didn't speak the rest of the way home.

SEE IT NOW

On Monday, I was still feeling out of sorts. I slept through my alarm and was late for my paper route. I barely got it done in time, and I didn't even have a second to grab a banana as I ran for the bus.

“Late again, Tommy,” Lizzie teased as I climbed onto the bus, my heart pounding like a galloping horse.

“Shut up, Lizard-Face,” I said.

Lizzie pouted. “Don't call me Lizard-Face,” she said. “My name is Elizabeth.”

“No one has called you that since you were two,
Lizzie,
” I said, sliding into the seat next to Eddie. “Besides, I wasn't referring to your name.”

She turned back in her seat to face us. “Then why—”

“Well, if you took a pen and connected all the dots . . .” I pantomimed drawing a line from one freckle to another, all over Lizzie's face.

Eddie laughed. “Yeah, exactly like a lizard!”

Lizzie gasped in indignation and turned as red as her hair.

Behind Eddie and me, Peter laughed. It irked me. He should be defending his sister. That's what I'd do if someone were teasing Mary Lou.

“You think it's funny, Peter?” I asked, twisting around to face him.

“Yeah.” He chuckled.

“I wouldn't laugh if I had so much pepper on my face,” I said. “Ah-choo!”

“Stop it,” Peter said, turning as red as his short curly hair.

“Or . . .” I picked up my imaginary pen and started drawing again. I nudged Eddie. “What do you think, Eddie? Monkey-Head?”

“Oh yeah,” Eddie agreed. “I can see the big ears and the tail right there.” He pointed.

“Your freckles do kind of look like a monkey,” Luke said.

“Luke!” Peter fumed.

“I'm just saying . . .”

“Luke doesn't have any freckles,” I pointed out. “Maybe Peter'll give you a few.”

“Nah,” Luke said. “I like my face how it is.”

I don't know what made me say it, but I added, “And you like your arm too?”

Luke turned as pale as a polar bear. His bad arm from the polio hung at his side. He looked out the window, pretending his eyes weren't filling with tears.

“You're an idiot,” Peter said, and turned his body in the seat so he couldn't see me anymore.

I sat back down. My heart was beating quickly again, even though I'd recovered from the bike ride. I wiped my palms on my pant legs and they left two little stains of sweat.

“What's got into you?” asked Eddie.

“I don't know,” I said. We didn't tease people about polio. That was off-limits. I wasn't sure why I had crossed that line.

Eddie sighed. “Didn't see you at the Tivoli this weekend.”

“Went fishing with my dad,” I said. Then, grateful to change the subject, I added, “Why didn't you come?”

Eddie looked sick, kind of green, like he'd swallowed a rotten sardine. “Don't tell anyone.”

“'Course not!”

“My dad lost his job.”

“What? Why?”

Eddie shook his head. “Dad said the boss had it in for him. But Mom said he was drinking at work.”

“Sorry.”

Eddie shrugged. “Next-door neighbor needed his basement painted. So I spent all Sunday doing that. Earned a few extra dollars for my mom.” He looked at me. “Think I could get a paper route like you?”

“Huh.” I snorted. “You don't want one.”

But as we filed off the bus and into Mass, I remembered how good it felt to hand over my wages every other week to Mom. For a minute or two, when I gave her the money, she looked at me like she actually liked me. Maybe the paper route wasn't such a bad thing after all.

At recess, Peter and Luke asked Eddie to play marbles with them. They didn't say a word to me, and after how I'd acted on the bus, I didn't think I should join them. So I walked around like I didn't care, from one end of the school yard to the other. Little Skinny was sitting under the elm tree, doing his homework or something. He was concentrating really hard, I guess, so I snuck up on him and announced, “You're the one!”

Little Skinny jumped and his papers flew everywhere.

I leaned over and picked one up.

“Don't touch that!” he snapped.

I'd never heard him speak so forcefully. So of course that made me want to look at the paper instead of just handing it back to him. It wasn't a school assignment. The paper was different and it was mimeographed, just like the weekly church bulletin my mother received.

“Give it back!” he screamed, and then he started crying and wailing, like I was hitting him.

The Adventures of Cowboy Sam
was written across the top, as if it were the first page of a story. “Did you write this?” I asked. I was trying to make it sound like I thought it was really stupid, but I couldn't hide my admiration. I struggled to write a paragraph in school—and he'd practically written a whole book. Not that it mattered how I said it. Little Skinny was screaming so loud, you'd have thought he was being scalped. He couldn't hear a thing.

Sister Ann came running toward us. Little Skinny was practically hysterical now, tears running down his face, yelling “Give it back!” over and over again. He was crying so hard, you could barely understand the words.

“Tommy, what's going on?” asked Sister Ann.

“I don't know,” I said. “There was a big gust of wind and his papers blew away. And I came to help him pick them up and he just started . . .” I waved my hand at him.

Sister Ann looked at me, uncertain what to do.

Suddenly Little Skinny grabbed the paper from my hands.

“Samuel!” said Sister Ann sternly, in her no-nonsense voice, the one she used with the first graders. “That's not how we treat our friends. Apologize.”

Little Skinny sniffled.

“Oh, that's okay—” I started.

“Tommy was trying to help you clean up,” Sister Ann said to Little Skinny. “You grabbed the paper from him. You need to apologize.”

“Sorry,” whispered Little Skinny. His whole face was red and flushed, the same color as his scar.

Me too,
I wanted to say. It didn't seem fair that Sister Ann was scolding him, when he hadn't done a thing. But I couldn't get the words out.

That Friday, Dad and I were watching TV in the living room. Mom had gone to bed early, and we'd just had sandwiches for dinner, so there weren't many dishes. I was sewing a button back on one of my school shirts, badly, but I'd rather do it myself than risk Mom asking me why I'd been so careless.

Douglas Edwards with the News
came on. We watched the show most nights at 6:30. “Good evening, everyone, coast to coast,” Mr. Edwards intoned seriously.

I didn't pay much attention. At least not until I heard a name I recognized: Radulovich. I looked up at Mr. Edwards.

“U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Milo Radulovich was reinstated today, as a direct result of the program done by our very own Edward R. Murrow on October 20, just one month ago.” Murrow was a TV newsman, so famous even I had heard of him.

Dad sat rigid next to me. I could tell he was paying attention because he didn't move a muscle.

Apparently, Radulovich had been featured on this show called
See It Now.
They played a clip from it. Radulovich was a young man with dark hair. “If I am being judged by my relatives,” he said, “are my children going to be asked to denounce me?”

“He got his job back?” I asked Dad.

“Shhh,” he hissed, his eyes fixed on the program.

A clip of Edward R. Murrow came on again. His voice was deep and gravelly. He was talking about how no one had seen the evidence against Radulovich. “Was it hearsay, rumor, gossip, slander, or hard, ascertainable facts that could be backed by credible witnesses? We do not know.”

“Murrow investigated,” I said to my dad. “And he got Radulovich his job back!”

Dad got up and turned off the TV. He walked out of the room without saying another word.

For a moment, I felt strangely happy. Someone had looked for the truth and it had made a difference. My dad was wrong. And if Dad was wrong about Radulovich, maybe he was wrong about Mrs. Glazov too. Maybe she really was the communist.

And then I started worrying again. Because even if I could get my hands on that book, I wasn't sure what I should do with it. All that night, as I tried to fall asleep, I kept hearing Mr. Murrow's voice repeating: “We do not know. We do not know.”