Authors: M. E. Kerr

Dinky Hocker Shoots Smack! (9 page)

“Am I just going to go over there empty-handed?”

“Take Mrs. Hocker a plant. I’ll give you the money.”

“And a Merry Christmas to all,” Tucker said.

“Honey,” his mother said, “try to understand. Mrs. Hocker is a
good
woman. She’s trying to do what she thinks is best for both girls.”

Then she shook her head regretfully. “Your father and I shouldn’t have teased you about being in love. We didn’t know the circumstances.”

“What
are
the circumstances?” Tucker complained. “Natalia and I are just friends!”

“I’m going to take your word for that, Tucker.”

“Oh, thanks a lot,” Tucker said sarcastically.

When they were finished eating, Tucker walked his mother back to the bazaar. For a while he hung around hoping he would see Dinky. Then he saw the Hockers, who told him Dinky was home. They were both on duty at the DRI booth, with Marcus helping, too. There was a huge poster in front of the booth listing all the terms for dope, from “snow” to “smack.” By the time Mrs. Hocker was off working for another needy cause, everyone in Brooklyn Heights would know junky jargon as well as he knew the alphabet.

When Tucker arrived back at the town house, he sat down in front of the telephone. Then he paced around the room for a while, and finally he dialed.

Natalia answered.

“I hear I’ll see you Christmas Day,” he said.

He was almost sure she’d rhyme it with “Hooray,” or “You may,” but instead she said, “I’m making you a little gift.”

“I’m making you one, too,” he said, which was a lie, but not a lie he couldn’t make into a truth. No one had said he couldn’t present her with something homemade, only that he couldn’t
buy
her a gift.

“We both had the same idea,” she said.

“Yeah, we did,” he said.

“I’m alone here,” she said. “Just Nader and me. Do you want to come over for a while?”

“I better not,” he said.

“Can’t you?” She sounded disappointed.

“I’ve had a rough day,” he said.

“Why has it been rough?”

He felt foolish telling her anything had been rough for him, after what his mother said Natalia’d been through in fifteen years. He said, “It hasn’t really been that rough. What have you been doing?”

“After school I read this book:
The Little Prince
.”

“I’ve heard of that book,” he said. He didn’t tell her about seeing the excerpt from the book on the sermon board that day, and then rushing to the Hockers’ to bawl out Dinky over feeding Nader too much.

The Little Prince
had been responsible, in a way, for their meeting.

After the talk with his mother, Tucker felt self-conscious about their “relationship.” He didn’t know, himself, what kind of a relationship it was.

“It’s a beautiful book, Tucker,” she said.

He realized they were actually having a conversation. It was a lucky thing, too, because their chances of ever going off to play the Balloon Game quietly together were nil from now on.

“I’ll get a copy and read it,” he said.

“Really?”

“Sure,” he said.

“It’s starting to snow again.”

“It’ll be a White Christmas,” he said.

“I’m glad you’re coming over.”

“I am, too.”

“Well, I’ll see you then,” she said.

“Yeah. Great.”

“Great,” she said. “Good night, Tucker.”

For a long while after Tucker hung up, he just sat there. He realized he still had on his coat, but it didn’t matter. He felt very comfortable, and very happy.

It didn’t occur to him to wonder why Natalia was over there alone … or where Dinky was.

NINE

W
HEN TUCKER WOKE UP
the next morning, his mother was already at work. His father was sitting at the kitchen table sipping papaya-mint tea.

“Would it bother you if I made scrambled eggs and bacon for myself?” Tucker asked.

“No, go ahead,” his father said. “I already had groats.”

“Don’t you miss the old food at all?” Tucker asked, getting a carton of eggs from the refrigerator.

“That isn’t all I miss,” his father said. He pointed to a manuscript his mother had left on the kitchen table. “I miss the days when your mother didn’t have to waste her good mind doing that sort of work.”

The manuscript was called, “I Left My Husband for a Jesus Freak.”

“Hey,” Tucker said. “Mom was working on that last night. That’s a rush job for the April issue.”

“She forgot it this morning,” his father said. “Would you mind taking it into New York, Tucker?”

“No. I’ll take it in right after breakfast.”

“Tucker,” his father said, “how are you? I feel as though I’ve lost touch with you, too.”

“I’m okay, Dad.”

“Maybe this health-store thing was a bad idea,” Tucker’s father said.

“Why don’t you just let Jingle run it?”

“I can’t do that, Tucker. If Jingle had his way he’d mark up everything way beyond cost. He’d claim things were organically grown that weren’t organically grown. I don’t want our name on a crooked health store.”

“Then what are you going to do?” Tucker said.

“I’m going to go through with what I started,” his father said. “I’m going to run it as well as I know how. I’m going to personally sample everything I sell, too.”

Tucker groaned.

“I didn’t say you and your mother had to sample all of it,” his father said.

“She’ll go along with it, though,” Tucker said.

“Yes, she probably will,” his father agreed. “She’s a great woman. I don’t know how she ever got a brother like Jingle.”

“Who won the argument over the sleigh bed?” Tucker asked.

His father said, “I told Jingle that thing has to be out of there no later than Christmas Day.”

The telephone rang then, and Tucker’s father went into the living room to answer it. Tucker put some bacon in the frying pan, and glanced down at his mother’s manuscript while he waited for the bacon to cook. The story had been written by a woman from a small town in Texas. The opening sentences read:

He had a lopsided grin and round brown eyes, with golden hair below his shoulders and tight ragged jeans clinging to his long, strong legs. He was telling me about Jesus in a low, purring voice, and for a slow second, while my heart beat like a tom-tom, I forgot I was a married woman with a baby on the way.

Tucker’s father reappeared in the kitchen and said, “It’s your friend the Nazi on the phone. I told him you were making breakfast, but he says it’s urgent.”

“Watch my bacon, okay?” Tucker said.

When Tucker said “Hello,” P. John said, “I have to see you right away, Tucker. There’s been a lot of trouble, thanks to the Hockers.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“Trouble with the police and everything,” P. John said. “I can’t go into it. I’m at work. Can you meet me during my lunch break?”

Tucker agreed to meet him outside Brentano’s bookstore in Greenwich Village at noon.

He went back to the kitchen. His father was busy at the stove.

“Tucker, do you want fried or scrambled?”

“Scrambled, thanks.”

“Tucker,” his father said, “I’m not going to dictate to you what kind of friends to pal around with. But that particular fellow has problems, if you want my opinion.”

“Who doesn’t?” Tucker said.

“That’s right, who doesn’t,” his father said. “But you have to choose between people with sympathetic problems, and people with unsympathetic problems. How can you sympathize with someone whose problem seems to be that he thinks he’s superior to the underdog?”

“Don’t understand him too quickly,” Tucker said.

“Well don’t
you
waste too much time understanding him, either.”

“I won’t,” Tucker said. “Hey, I can’t eat six eggs, Dad!”

“Then I’ll have to help you,” his father said.

Tucker left the manuscript with the receptionist at
Stirring Romances
, and then took the subway to the Village.

When he reached Brentano’s, he saw P. John already out front waiting for him. P. John was eating a hot dog.

“I thought we were going to eat something together,” Tucker said.

“We are. I’m just warming up to it.”

“What happened to Weight Watchers?”

“I’m too nervous to eat legal food today,” P. John said. “C’mon, we’ll go down the street to Nathan’s. I can eat ten more of these.”

“What happened?” Tucker said.

While they stood at the counter in Nathan’s, waiting for their food, P. John told him.

Dinky had appeared suddenly at the Knights’ apartment last night while they were all having supper. Mr. Knight had invited her to stay. Dinky, P. John, Mr. Knight, Mac, and Dewey were sitting around the table in the kitchen, after an immense spaghetti dinner, when the police arrived.

At the Hockers’ request, the police were looking for Dinky, but when they saw the posters of Mao, and the
BEAT THE SYSTEM!
posters, they began questioning everyone. The man named Dewey was a Mexican who had entered the country illegally.

“He isn’t supposed to be working here, either,” P. John said. “When the police found out he had a job, they arrested him.”

“Why did he tell them he had a job?”

“They knew by looking at him,” P. John said. “He’d just come from work. He’s been working as a Santa Claus in a department store.”

The police took Dewey away, and the Hockers were called to pick up Dinky.

“That’s bad,” Tucker sympathized. “What did the Hockers have to say when they got there?”

“They fell all over my father when they found out who he was.”

“Who is he?” Tucker said.

“Perry Knight. It wouldn’t mean anything to you. But they knew his books. Some people think he’s this great thinker,” P. John said. “That’s why I never call myself Perry. I don’t want people identifying me with him.”

“So the Hockers weren’t mad?” Tucker asked.

“Wrong! They felt really bad because Dewey was arrested. Dewey is this big liberal, too. He works with those migrant workers. My father’s friends are all involved in politics. They’re always hanging around our place sponging off us.”

“Well, tell me what happened!” Tucker said.

“The Hockers heard me fighting with my father. They heard me say I was glad Dewey was arrested. I was, too. I am! I’m tired of Mac and Dewey and all of them!” P. John said emphatically. “My father cares more about what happens to them than he cares about me! The only reason I can afford to go to a school like Richter is that my mother’s insurance money was left to me! My father would have given that money away!”

“Go on,” Tucker said.

P. John shrugged. “They took Susan back to the Heights. They told my father they’d prefer me to stay out of her life. You know what he said?”

“What?”

“He said he knew what they meant, that I had a lot to learn. … Susan was crying. She said she’d saved up all the money she used to spend on snacks to buy me a gold watch. She said her mother returned it.”

“
That’s
where she got the money. You mean she was spending that much money a week on food?”

“A week. Ten days. Sure. It isn’t inexpensive to be fat, you know.”

P. John poured the mustard over four hot dogs and passed it to Tucker.

He said, “And then my father made this little speech. He said the trouble was, we were both fat cats. He said we were overweight and overprivileged. He said whole families lived for months on what that gold watch had cost Susan. He said two young people who had to put good money into an organization that kept them from making pigs of themselves were two very self-indulgent teenagers. He was furious, you know, because of Dewey’s arrest, and he just let fly.”

“Is Dewey going to stay in jail?” Tucker said.

“Mr. Hocker’s going to try and help him,” P. John said. “But he’ll probably be deported again. I don’t care what happens to him. I’m going away.”

“Where?”

“I have an aunt in Maine. I’m going to go there. I’ll probably stay there.”

“Are you going to tell your father?”

“He suggested it,” P. John said.

“Gee, I’m sorry, P. John.”

“I’m not,” P. John said. “She’s my mother’s sister. … Make sure Susan gets my Christmas present, okay?”

“Sure.” Then Tucker said, “I’ll miss you, P.”

“My mother was a Republican,” P. John said. “I don’t know what she saw in
him. …
Love is blind, all right.”

“Susan will miss you, too.”

“Thanks for finally calling her Susan,” P. John said. “Do me a favor and always call her that from now on.”

P. John went back to Brentano’s, and for a while Tucker wandered around the Village looking for last-minute stocking gifts for his mother. Every year he and his father made a stocking for her from “Santa Claus.” Tucker had promised to pick up a few things for it.

His heart wasn’t in it at all. He kept thinking over what P. John had said, trying to sympathize with the things Mr. Knight had told the Hockers. All of it was true, Tucker knew, but there was P. John working during his Christmas vacation, and Tucker was just hanging loose; and there was P. John being called a fat cat, and Mr. Knight cooking up pots of spaghetti.

Tucker felt more and more down, and even worse when he spotted this old man with bloodshot eyes standing on the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue.

He was unshaven and dressed in an overcoat several sizes larger than he was. His breath smelled like Jingle’s after five o’clock in the afternoon. He was giving away red and green balloons, and croaking out “Merry Christmas from Shipp’s” to anyone who would take one.

Written on every balloon were these words: