Edenville Owls (9 page)

I
was walking Joanie home from school. I knew Nick saw us. And I was pretty sure he didn’t like it. But I had to talk with her. And I couldn’t wait. I felt as if my skin were stretched too tight over the rest of me. I talked all the way to the corner of her street and down, and stopped outside her house and kept talking. Joanie listened and nodded and listened.

Finally she said, “Let’s go down to the bandstand, I don’t want to go in yet.”

I could have kissed her. The thought startled me a little in the middle of my long talk. I could have kissed her. I wanted to kiss her. I had never really kissed a girl before. A few on the cheek at spin the bottle games. But real smoochy kissing, no. I wasn’t exactly sure how to go about it. Besides, if I kissed her, it would change everything. She might get mad. And even if she didn’t, she wouldn’t be my best friend anymore. She’d be…I wasn’t sure what she’d be. It made me feel strange.

The bandstand was empty as usual. And the harbor was where it always was, empty in winter, only a few boats at mooring.

“So I don’t know if I’m doing the right thing or not,” I said. “I have to do so many wrong things to do it.”

“You think too much about things,” Joanie said.

“You have to,” I said. “I mean a man has to. How else can he be a good man?”

“Maybe he just is a good man,” Joanie said.

“And I haven’t even told you yet about the guy,” I said.

“Is he bothering you?”

“In a different way,” I said. “Wait’ll you hear.”

“Finish telling me about what’s bothering you so far,” Joanie said. “Then we can talk about Oswald whosis.”

“Well, so far I’ve lied and broken my word and skipped school and broken into Miss Delaney’s house,” I said. “I mean, am I a good guy or a bad guy?”

“You’re a good guy, Bobby. You know it and I know it.”

“How do I know it?”

“You know,” she said. “Sometimes you have to do bad things to do good things. It’s bad to kill. But my uncle John killed people and he’s not bad. What he did was good. He had to kill people to defend us. All the soldiers did. During the war it was right to kill. Nazis and Japs.”

“But now it wouldn’t be,” I said.

“That’s right. Things change. You know you’re trying to do a good thing, because you’re a good kid who will grow up to be a good man.”

I felt my eyes start to fill. I went and leaned on the railing of the bandstand and looked down at the harbor. I nodded my head for a while. But I couldn’t think of anything to say.

Joanie came and patted my shoulder.

Finally I said, “The Reverend Oswald Tupper is some kind of crazy man.”

I told her about the youth meeting.

“That was really brave,” Joanie said. “To go up there like that alone.”

I nodded.

“He talks like that,” I said. “And yet he’s got a Medal of Honor.”

“He says.”

“I saw it,” I said. “He was wearing it on a ribbon around his neck.”

“If it really was one,” Joanie said.

“You think he’s lying?”

“My uncle John got some kind of medal too,” Joanie said. “I don’t know what. He never shows it to anyone. He never talks about it, and he never ever wears it.”

“You think he stole it?”

“Maybe,” Joanie said. “Or maybe he bought it from somebody who needed the money. Or maybe he won it for being a hero. I’m just saying that you don’t know yet, just because he wears it and says he won it.”

“How are we gonna find out?” I said.

“I’ll ask my uncle John,” Joanie said.

“Don’t tell him about me.”

Joanie smiled.

“No,” she said. “We’re friends. We keep each other’s secrets.”

“And you think I should sneak in there next time he shows up and listen in.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t know if I dare.”

“I’ll do it with you,” Joanie said.

“You?”

“Me.”

“You’d sneak into the house with me and spy on them?”

“Yes,” she said.

“You’d have to climb a tree,” I said.

“I can climb a tree,” Joanie said.

“And you’re not scared to?”

“Not as long as we do it together,” she said.

“Same with me,” I said.

WE
were down by three points to the Grange Bay JVs, with ten minutes left. Grange Bay had a center almost as tall as Russell, and he was too good for Russell one on one. He was getting a lot of points. And we decided the only way to deal with him was to go straight at him. Wear him down a little. Maybe get him in foul trouble.

I was the best dribbler on the team, so I did the most of it. He blocked my shot twice, and one of Russell’s, when I passed off to him. But he picked up two fouls in the process, and had only one left. Next time down the court, with four minutes left, we were hanging in there. Nick and Billy were hitting outside shots, and Manny was doing his usual work on the rebounds. Bringing the ball up, I faked right, dribbled left. Beat my man and ran hard into the Grange Bay center as he moved over to cut me off. Both of us went down, and as we did, I jabbed him hard in the ribs with the elbow away from the ref.

The ref blew the whistle. The Grange Bay center got up and smacked me hard in the mouth. My upper lip started to bleed. Russell jumped in between us with his hands up and his fists clenched, and I grabbed him around the waist and pulled him back.

“No,” I said. “No. We got no subs. We got no subs.”

The referee stepped in and called a double foul. Me for charging, my third, the Grange Bay center for fighting. His fifth, so he was ejected. Which didn’t really matter because he had already fouled out.

“I’ll see you after,” the Grange Bay center said. “You little creep.”

I still had my arms around Russell’s waist.

“You’ll see all of us after,” Russell said, “freaking sucker puncher.”

The coach of Grange Bay came out on the court to get his center.

“Settle down,” he said. “I’ll be around afterward, too, and if there’s any fighting, I’ll kick everybody’s little ass on my team and yours.”

He handed me some wadded tissue.

“Stuff that in your nose,” he said. “Then wad some up and stick it under your upper lip.”

I did as he told me. He watched.

“You ready to go?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He nodded.

“You stayed pretty cool, kid, pretty cool.”

Then he nodded at the referee, and play resumed. Since there’d been a double foul, we had to jump ball to decide possession. With their center gone, Russell was six inches taller than anybody else on the floor. He won the tap easily, and moved down in close to the basket. Nick passed him the ball and he turned and put in a layup over some guy too short to guard him. In the remaining four minutes, Russell scored ten points and blocked half their shots, and we won by five.

After the game when we changed and were leaving the building, the Grange Bay coach came and walked beside me.

“You give him the elbow when you went down?” he said.

I shrugged.

“I guess so,” I said.

“On purpose?”

“Yeah.”

“Worked pretty good, didn’t it?” the coach said.

I looked up. He was smiling.

“Pretty good,” I said.

JOANIE
and I met as soon as it turned dark and stood around in the shadow of the bushes and watched Miss Delaney’s house.

“Did Reverend Tupper really say ‘breeding stock’?” Joanie said softly.

We stood close together in the darkness. I could smell the shampoo she used.

“He said we should choose fertile, young white Christian women and form the breeding stock for a race of cleanliness and purity.”

“Ick,” Joanie said.

“Are you clean and pure?” I said.

“I think so,” Joanie said.

“Then you might do,” I said.

“Moo,” she said.

“That what breeding stock says?” I asked.

Joanie nodded.

“Was President Roosevelt really Jewish?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” I said.

It was our fourth night standing outside Miss Delaney’s house. I didn’t mind. It meant I saw Joanie every night.

“Is he saying we should have been allies with Germany?” Joanie said.

“I think so,” I said.

“He sounds crazy,” Joanie said. “All that stuff about Negroes and Jewish people and people from China. That doesn’t make any sense.”

“I know,” I said.

“And what has all that stuff got to do with Miss Delaney?” Joanie said.

“Maybe we’ll find out tonight,” I said.

The gray Ford Tudor came slowly down the street and pulled up in front of Miss Delaney’s house. The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach.

“Oh my God,” Joanie said.

Were we going to really have to do it?

Reverend Tupper got out of his car and looked casually up and down the street and walked toward Miss Delaney’s door. He rang the bell. The door opened and he went in. The door closed. I felt as if there were something stuck in my throat. I tried to say something, but made a hoarse noise. I cleared my throat.

“If we’re going to do it, we have to go now,” I said.

My voice was very scratchy.

“You scared?” Joanie said.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Me too,” Joanie said.

“Can we do it?” I said.

“Yes,” she said. “We’ll do it together.”

Staying in the shadows, we went along the hedge and around back to the tree beside the house. “You go first,” Joanie said.

I nodded. I was supposed to go first. I was the boy. I was having trouble breathing. I paused and took a big breath, then started up the tree. It had plenty of branches and was easy enough to climb, except that my arms and legs felt uncoordinated. I looked down. Joanie was right behind me. She was right. She could climb a tree as good as I could.

I got level with the roof of the porch, and held on to a branch above me while I stepped over onto the roof. I was wearing sneakers. So was Joanie, and dungarees. Joanie came right behind me, and the two of us crouched down by the attic window and listened. We heard nothing. Old Lady Coughlin’s dog didn’t bark.

The attic window was still open a crack, the way I’d left it, and I slipped my hands under and eased it up. It went easy enough. Then we waited again and listened. I could hear Joanie’s breathing next to me. I could hear my own too. But neither of us heard anything else.

I put my mouth next to Joanie’s ear.

“There’s boards on the floor,” I whispered. “To walk on. Be sure to stay on them.”

“Can we see in there?” Joanie whispered.

“There’s a window at the other end too,” I said. “Once we get in, we should stay still until our eyes adjust. Then I think we can see.”

“Okay.”

I still felt shaky inside. But there was something about being with Joanie that made me less scared. I wondered why. If we got caught, she couldn’t fight Reverend Weirdo any better than I could. But I realized suddenly that I couldn’t do this without her. Not with the reverend downstairs. I didn’t know why that was. And I couldn’t be thinking about that now.

I’ll figure it out later.

We stood quietly in the dark and waited until we could see. I was right. There was enough light coming in the front window from the streetlights, and enough light coming in the back window from the moon and stars and whatever, that we could see enough to move around.

I knew there were four rooms below us. Kitchen and dining room in the back. Bedroom and living room in the front. I pointed toward the right front corner of the attic and we went along the boards to the space above the living room like we were walking on a bomb. We stopped above the living room. We could hear people talking. Both of us lay down carefully. There was insulation between the rafters. As carefully as I could, I picked some up and moved it until the back of the ceiling showed. We barely breathed as we lay there…and we could hear.

“You have no right to keep a boy from his father,” Tupper said.

“And you have no right to take him from his mother,” Miss Delaney said.

“He belongs to me,” Tupper said. “He belongs moreover to the movement.”

“Which is why I won’t share him with you,” Miss Delaney said. “He belongs to no movement.”

“You will bring him up to be a whimpering one-world liberal fool,” Tupper said.

“I will not permit him to be turned into one of those pathetic little Nazis in your youth group,” Miss Delaney said.

I could hear footsteps. It sounded like Tupper was pacing.

“I want my son,” Tupper said kind of thoughtfully.

“We’ve had this conversation before, Richard…” Miss Delaney said.

“Don’t call me Richard,” Tupper said.

“I don’t care if you call yourself Batman,” Miss Delaney said. “I married Richard Krauss. How did you turn into Oswald Tupper?”

“There was a war,” he said.

“There was,” Miss Delaney said. “But it didn’t turn everyone into…whatever you are.”

“There are ways to make you tell me,” Tupper said.

“And there are police to be called,” Miss Delaney said.

“And I tell them that you are a divorced woman with a child? How long do you keep your job when that gets out?”

“You won’t do that,” she said. “You’re too afraid.”

“What am I afraid of?” Tupper said.

“I don’t know. But you don’t want the police involved any more than I do.”

Nobody said anything for a moment. Then footsteps, and then it sounded like he slapped her.

“I will do what I must to keep you from the boy,” Miss Delaney said. “You bastard.”

We heard what sounded like another slap.

Then Tupper said, “Put that down.”

“No,” she said. “I will not let you hit me again.”

“You haven’t the guts,” Tupper said, “to stab anyone with that.”

“If you try to hit me again,” Miss Delaney warned, “I will use it.”

“You bitch,” Tupper said. “You hid that in here before I came, didn’t you.”

“You’ve hit me before,” Miss Delaney said.

It was quiet below us for a bit.

Then Tupper said, “Perhaps an anonymous letter to the school board…”

“If I have any trouble with the school board or anyone else, I tell everyone about you.”

Again it was quiet. Then there were footsteps and we heard her apartment front door open.

Tupper said, “If you ever tell anyone about me, I will kill you. And I will kill them.”

Then we heard the door close, and very faintly, his footsteps going down the front stairs.

We stayed where we were, trying not to move at all. Below us we heard Miss Delaney walk across the room. And we heard her turn the key in the front door. Then there was silence, as if she might still be standing at the front door. And then she began to cry. Joanie and I stood up carefully and headed for the window. I was pretty sure she wouldn’t hear us.

She was crying really loud.