Close to the Broken Hearted Read Free

money we’re savin’ her.”
    â€œHow do you figure?” I asked.
    â€œOn a satellite dish.”
    â€œShe ain’t buyin’ no satellite dish.”
    â€œExactly.”
    â€œ Why aren’t we doing this at your place?” I asked him.
    â€œAbe, my mom’s home . It’s hard enough to do anythin’ at my place when my mom ain’t home,” he said. “You’re lucky your mom works all day shootin’ people.”
    â€œShe don’t shoot people all day,” I said. “I don’t reckon she’s ever actually shot anyone .” My mother was the only detective the Alvin Police Department had, and, if she had shot anyone, she certainly hadn’t told me about it. And it seemed like the sort of thing she’d probably mention.
    â€œI reckon she has.”
    â€œShe hasn’t,” I assured him.
    â€œI bet she thinks about it, though,” Dewey said. “A lot.”
    â€œCan we just get this finished so I can have it cleaned up ’fore she gets home?” I asked him.
    Dewey was taking the aluminum foil and rolling it into a sort of shiny rope. He made sure all the new pieces fit tightly against the old ones, making one solid snake that ran around the inside of my living room, starting and ending at the back of the television set.
    â€œSo why was they all blue?” Dewey asked. “The knights, I mean. Or was there other colors, too? They can’t all be on the same side. Be awful confusin’ if they was all blue.”
    â€œThe other ones were red. I saw one of them later.”
    â€œWhich ones were the good guys?” Dewey asked.
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œThere’s always a good side and a bad side, Abe. Were the blue ones the good ones or the bad ones? These colors make it hard to know. Usually they use somethin’ obvious like black and white. Then you know who you should be rootin’ for.”
    â€œDo you root for the good guys or the bad guys?” I asked.
    Dewey stopped laying down his aluminum foil pipeline and considered this. “That depends on when in my life you had asked me. When I was little I always wanted the good guys to win. Then I went through a phase where I secretly hoped for the bad guys.”
    â€œAnd?” I asked. “What about now?”
    â€œNow I guess I just want to see a fair fight,” he said. “Did the blues and the reds both have swords?”
    I started to get excited. The swords had been the best part. “You shoulda seen the swords,” I said. “The red blades actually glowed the same color as the knights, and they were huge. They looked so big I doubt I coulda lifted one off the ground. And each sword had a different gem in its pommel and smaller ones all over its hilt. They actually had real swords for sale in Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, but Mom refused to buy me one. She told me I’d wind up takin’ somebody’s eye out with it or somethin’.”
    â€œWow,” Dewey said, looking off into the distance and seemingly speaking to himself. “A real sword. That would be somethin’.” His attention came back to the living room and all the foil. He looked me straight in the eyes. “Especially if we both had one. We could have sword fights.”
    â€œAre you even listenin’ to a word I’m sayin’?” I asked him. “These were real swords, Dewey. We couldn’t have sword fights with ’em. We’d wind up killin’ each other.”
    â€œStill, it’s fun to think about.”
    I hesitated. “You’re right. It is fun to think about.”
    Dewey’s aluminum foil rope ran along the walls of the entire living room, running behind the big stuffed chair and coming right up to the back of the TV. We’d even pushed the sofa away from the wall so that we could make sure it was as long as possible.
    â€œOkay,” I said, just in case Dewey had other