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Authors: Jeremiah Healy
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only the times when you do what they don’t want. Enough subtractions and there’s a new chief to do the arithmetic. I don’t know what happened between His Honor, Smollett, and Blakey.”
While I decided not to push my luck any further, al walked over to a locker at the end of the range and Came back with a stapler and two bigger cardboard targets. He stapled them onto the target easels. They were full-sized, human silhouettes.
“Why these?” I asked.
“You didn’t do real well on those first two strings, John. Never can tell when you might need to be better.” We turned and walked back toward the firing line.
“Combat string,” he yelled to the tower man.
Fordham Road was a short street of older houses three blocks from the center of town. I parked and rang the bell marked V. Jacobs.
“Oh, John, I’ve been leaving messages for you all morning. Where have you been?” She was dressed in a halter top and shorts. Both were pastel and the colors clashed a bit.
“What’s the news?”
She ran back down the hall, disappeared, then reappeared with a picnic basket and a beach bag. |
“I ran into Miss Pitts this morning in the market You remember, the retired teacher who had Stephen in the fifth grade? We have to go see her right away. 1
She was past me and halfway to my car. I shrugged and followed after her.
The living room was filled with the kinds of thing* one obtains with trading stamps. Plastic-brass floor lamps, plastic-walnut cocktail tables, and plastic Hummel-like sculptures on eight separate knick-knack-holding shelf arrangements. My rocking chair, however, was built of massive pine. It must have gone for twelve and a half books, minimum.
Miss Pitts was plump and spoke in a soft purr. The three of us held teacups and coffee cakes in our hands and on our laps in a precarious balance that I’ve never been able to master. Miss Pitts had thus far covered her brightest class (1959), and her catlike voice was slowly putting me to sleep. I began to wonder why the hell she had the cocktail tables if she wasn’t going to use them for the tea and cakes. I was giving serious consideration to cutting a fart to change the direction of the conversation, when Valerie mercifully jumped first.
“Miss Pitts, what year was it you had Stephen?“
“Ah, Stephen, Stephen. What an unfortunate story. Oh, one of today’s wicked novelists would have a field day with his sad life. But the brightest boy, the absolute brightest I’ve ever seen. No one, not even in the class of 1959, could touch him.”
“Actually, Miss Pitts,” I broke in, setting my cup, saucer, and goodies on the floor, “what I’m interested in is whether anyone has touched him. In the unfriendly sense, I mean.”
“Uh, quite,” said Miss Pitts, a bit miffed, I thought. Well, as I told Miss Jacobs this morning, two weeks ago, on the twelfth, I was taking my evening exercise. I used to call it my constitutional, but after the way some groups have twisted one meaning of that word, I nave ceased to use it at all. In any case, while I was talking down Ballard Street, I saw Stephen ahead of me, carrying his books. No doubt he was so late in heading home—it was nearly five-thirty, you see— because he had visited the library after school. Well, seeing him I was about to call to him, when a black sedan screeched to a halt on the street beside him. He took one look at the driver and was gone.”
“Did the driver go after him?” I asked.
“Hah, not likely. Stephen is as springy and quick as an antelope. That Gerry Blakey couldn’t have caught him on horseback, assuming a horse could bear him any better than this town can.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, Blakey, who’d gotten half out of the driver’s side, muttered something, slid back in, and drove off.”
I leaned back. Miss Pitts’s eyes might be getting a little weak, but she wouldn’t be likely to mistake Stephen, and no one could mistake
While I decided not to push my luck any further, al walked over to a locker at the end of the range and Came back with a stapler and two bigger cardboard targets. He stapled them onto the target easels. They were full-sized, human silhouettes.
“Why these?” I asked.
“You didn’t do real well on those first two strings, John. Never can tell when you might need to be better.” We turned and walked back toward the firing line.
“Combat string,” he yelled to the tower man.
Fordham Road was a short street of older houses three blocks from the center of town. I parked and rang the bell marked V. Jacobs.
“Oh, John, I’ve been leaving messages for you all morning. Where have you been?” She was dressed in a halter top and shorts. Both were pastel and the colors clashed a bit.
“What’s the news?”
She ran back down the hall, disappeared, then reappeared with a picnic basket and a beach bag. |
“I ran into Miss Pitts this morning in the market You remember, the retired teacher who had Stephen in the fifth grade? We have to go see her right away. 1
She was past me and halfway to my car. I shrugged and followed after her.
The living room was filled with the kinds of thing* one obtains with trading stamps. Plastic-brass floor lamps, plastic-walnut cocktail tables, and plastic Hummel-like sculptures on eight separate knick-knack-holding shelf arrangements. My rocking chair, however, was built of massive pine. It must have gone for twelve and a half books, minimum.
Miss Pitts was plump and spoke in a soft purr. The three of us held teacups and coffee cakes in our hands and on our laps in a precarious balance that I’ve never been able to master. Miss Pitts had thus far covered her brightest class (1959), and her catlike voice was slowly putting me to sleep. I began to wonder why the hell she had the cocktail tables if she wasn’t going to use them for the tea and cakes. I was giving serious consideration to cutting a fart to change the direction of the conversation, when Valerie mercifully jumped first.
“Miss Pitts, what year was it you had Stephen?“
“Ah, Stephen, Stephen. What an unfortunate story. Oh, one of today’s wicked novelists would have a field day with his sad life. But the brightest boy, the absolute brightest I’ve ever seen. No one, not even in the class of 1959, could touch him.”
“Actually, Miss Pitts,” I broke in, setting my cup, saucer, and goodies on the floor, “what I’m interested in is whether anyone has touched him. In the unfriendly sense, I mean.”
“Uh, quite,” said Miss Pitts, a bit miffed, I thought. Well, as I told Miss Jacobs this morning, two weeks ago, on the twelfth, I was taking my evening exercise. I used to call it my constitutional, but after the way some groups have twisted one meaning of that word, I nave ceased to use it at all. In any case, while I was talking down Ballard Street, I saw Stephen ahead of me, carrying his books. No doubt he was so late in heading home—it was nearly five-thirty, you see— because he had visited the library after school. Well, seeing him I was about to call to him, when a black sedan screeched to a halt on the street beside him. He took one look at the driver and was gone.”
“Did the driver go after him?” I asked.
“Hah, not likely. Stephen is as springy and quick as an antelope. That Gerry Blakey couldn’t have caught him on horseback, assuming a horse could bear him any better than this town can.”
“What happened then?”
“Well, Blakey, who’d gotten half out of the driver’s side, muttered something, slid back in, and drove off.”
I leaned back. Miss Pitts’s eyes might be getting a little weak, but she wouldn’t be likely to mistake Stephen, and no one could mistake
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