Read Online The Shadow Cabinet by W. T. Tyler - Free Book Online Page B

gray-haired motorist, who immediately fixed her sharp censorious eye upon Wilson. After she’d slid by, Willard quickly cranked down the glass and let fly with the butt aimed at her rear window.
    Mrs. Fillmore didn’t notice. “Willard’s my little computer,” she was saying. “He can beat his daddy at Atari, and Albert’s a missile ordnance man. Totes up a Piggly Wiggly bill faster’n IBM, don’t you, son?”
    â€œYes, m’am.”
    â€œIt’s not addin’ them bills up that worries me,” said her thin companion. “It’s payin’ ’em.”
    â€œHe can add up a license plate quicker’n you can read him out the numbers. Show Mr. Wilson, hon.” She leaned over the front seat, pointing through the windshield. “What’s that car up ahead say?”
    â€œWhich one?” Willard sat alertly on the edge of his seat, like a dove hunter at the edge of a cornfield.
    â€œThe van.”
    â€œThat’s not no van, it’s a combie.”
    A sharp knuckle cracked the skull above the right ear. “All right, but what’s it say, dummy?”
    â€œFour hundred and eleven one way, twenty-four the other.”
    The Virginia license plate read 327-84 . Wilson frowned, trying to interpret Willard’s calculus sets.
    â€œYou see? You see what I’m telling you, Mr. Wilson?” Mrs. Fillmore sat back, gratified.
    â€œThree hundred and twenty-seven plus eighty-four is four hundred and eleven,” Willard explained. “Three and two plus seven is twelve. Add eight and four and see what you get, sucker.” He turned to the backseat to look at his mother. “He’s moving his lips, same as you an’ Albert do.”
    â€œFaster’n an IBM, ain’t he, Mr. Wilson? He did that all the way from Oklahoma to Nashville, where we throwed a rod. Laid over for three days, but it wasn’t too bad. You ever been to the Grand Ole Opry, Mr. Wilson?”
    Wilson admitted he hadn’t.
    â€œYou ever seen the President?” Willard asked.
    â€œNo, not much. He doesn’t call me into the Oval Office much these days.” It was the kind of reply he might have given his own sons over the breakfast table years earlier, but Willard was insulted.
    â€œTell me something I don’t know, sucker,” he whispered vehemently. “Who’d ever think I was talking about you being in the White House?”
    â€œWhat’s that you’re saying, Willard?” Mrs. Fillmore demanded from the backseat, her Arkansas drawl full of heavy metal, threatening retribution.
    â€œWe were just talking,” Wilson explained, conscious of Willard’s shrinking head and shoulders. With two sons out of college and out of his tool chest, his sock drawer, his tie rack, and his bank account, he had little patience with someone else’s gamy little problems, but the error had been his, not Willard Fillmore’s.
    Mrs. Polk was waiting for them in front of her house.
    â€œNow you say goodbye to Mr. Wilson,” Mrs. Fillmore instructed as she left the rear seat, turning to her son, who still hovered near the front door he’d slammed closed with all of his rebellious strength.
    â€œYes, m’am,” Willard said eagerly. Sedition was in the bright little eyes and some NCO club slur was forming itself in the quick little mind, but then his mother moved in suspiciously behind him, brought back by the false octave in her son’s enthusiastic reply, and he seemed to change his mind. “Goodbye, Mr. Wilson,” he said, and sped off like a scalded cat toward Mrs. Polk’s new bronze station wagon.
    â€œThat boy’s a handful,” Mrs. Fillmore declared, retrieving the yarn cap from the front seat. “This here traveling around has got him all jarred loose.”
    â€œI suppose so,” Wilson said, trying to ignore the small denim-clad rear end that was so energetically mooning him