colorful but hard little gourds on top of May Salonen, Augie's least favorite classmate, knocking her down just as she was about to make her big speech, causing her to forget her lines, burst into tears, and resist any attempts at comforting by our teacher. This had forced down the curtain on the stupid play, and given us the rest of the afternoon off.
More important these days, Augie was a solid and accepted member of the rest of the fourth-grade boys. Not that I thought much of that undistinguished ragtag bunch. But after a year-long infatuation with Grace Del Verdi, which had kept me in her and other females' company, what I needed more than anything else in the world now, for my sanity as well as for my reputation at school, was the company—and the acceptance—of boys my age.
I turned left and desultorily fell in with Ronny Taskin and his friends, who walked home the same way I did. Ronny was a tall, skinny boy who worked out with Indian clubs, a holdover from his father's days as a circus stuntman. That remnant of carnival glamour was all I could see in Ronny to give him precedence among us.
"Magnets? What's magnets?" Ronny turned all the way around to ask me.
"Those things that make iron stick to them," I explained. "Augie and I are fooling around with them. Trying to make things move. We broke a light bulb last time."
That last detail seemed to satisfy him that ours was an acceptable activity.
"You should be practicing batting for Saturday," Tony Duyckman said.
"I'll always be a lousy batter. My left eye's too bum," I added, referring to an infant accident which had left me astigmatic and, while dramatic enough in the telling, unfortunately hadn't left a scar, except inside my eyeball, where no one but an ophthalmologist could see it.
The boys broke off in twos and threes, leaving me to dawdle the rest of the way home with Kerry White, a small, thin boy with excessive blond hair, himself a hanger-on of the group. We were silent until I reached the path to our door, where I left him with a curt "Bye," to which he responded with a sunny smile and overeager farewell.
Too bad for Kerry, I thought, even lower than me with the other guys. I opened the screen door, hoping I'd never fall so low as to walk home with five other kids without being spoken to and then be satisfied with someone saying good-bye. I grabbed the kitchen door handle and it didn't open. It was stuck or—locked!
Café curtains misted the kitchen-side windows. Even so, peering through I didn't see my mother anywhere in the room. So I knocked on the door. Then on the kitchen window. When that didn't work, I dragged my schoolbag to the front of the house and tried that door. Also locked. I rang the bell, knocked, shouted, and walked all over the grass down the slope to the garage door, located under the living room windows. No car in the garage. And the door was also locked.
I sat down in despair awhile, reading into these locked doors, that empty garage, the worst: my mother had left. Or, some terrible accident had befallen my father and sister and she'd rushed out to the hospital. I'd not been very nice to anyone in my family of late, and I was feeling guilty. Finally I got up and slogged over to our neighbor's house.
Mrs. Furst didn't know anything. Or said she didn't. She was busily entertaining a bevy of women in their mid-sixties, all of them sipping coffee out of narrow porcelain cups as they eyed an orange-frosted angel food cake. No, Mrs. Furst assured me, she had not seen my mother leave, and she had no message for me. In fact, she seemed to have but one thing on her mind: how long she could keep those biddies from attacking her culinary masterpiece.
Which reminded me that I was hungry too. My pockets contained only nine cents, not even enough for a Mars bar, but I knew that my mother kept a charge account open at a local grocery. I brazenly charged a Yoo-Hoo chocolate soda, a rectangular single-serving pineapple pie, and just to
More important these days, Augie was a solid and accepted member of the rest of the fourth-grade boys. Not that I thought much of that undistinguished ragtag bunch. But after a year-long infatuation with Grace Del Verdi, which had kept me in her and other females' company, what I needed more than anything else in the world now, for my sanity as well as for my reputation at school, was the company—and the acceptance—of boys my age.
I turned left and desultorily fell in with Ronny Taskin and his friends, who walked home the same way I did. Ronny was a tall, skinny boy who worked out with Indian clubs, a holdover from his father's days as a circus stuntman. That remnant of carnival glamour was all I could see in Ronny to give him precedence among us.
"Magnets? What's magnets?" Ronny turned all the way around to ask me.
"Those things that make iron stick to them," I explained. "Augie and I are fooling around with them. Trying to make things move. We broke a light bulb last time."
That last detail seemed to satisfy him that ours was an acceptable activity.
"You should be practicing batting for Saturday," Tony Duyckman said.
"I'll always be a lousy batter. My left eye's too bum," I added, referring to an infant accident which had left me astigmatic and, while dramatic enough in the telling, unfortunately hadn't left a scar, except inside my eyeball, where no one but an ophthalmologist could see it.
The boys broke off in twos and threes, leaving me to dawdle the rest of the way home with Kerry White, a small, thin boy with excessive blond hair, himself a hanger-on of the group. We were silent until I reached the path to our door, where I left him with a curt "Bye," to which he responded with a sunny smile and overeager farewell.
Too bad for Kerry, I thought, even lower than me with the other guys. I opened the screen door, hoping I'd never fall so low as to walk home with five other kids without being spoken to and then be satisfied with someone saying good-bye. I grabbed the kitchen door handle and it didn't open. It was stuck or—locked!
Café curtains misted the kitchen-side windows. Even so, peering through I didn't see my mother anywhere in the room. So I knocked on the door. Then on the kitchen window. When that didn't work, I dragged my schoolbag to the front of the house and tried that door. Also locked. I rang the bell, knocked, shouted, and walked all over the grass down the slope to the garage door, located under the living room windows. No car in the garage. And the door was also locked.
I sat down in despair awhile, reading into these locked doors, that empty garage, the worst: my mother had left. Or, some terrible accident had befallen my father and sister and she'd rushed out to the hospital. I'd not been very nice to anyone in my family of late, and I was feeling guilty. Finally I got up and slogged over to our neighbor's house.
Mrs. Furst didn't know anything. Or said she didn't. She was busily entertaining a bevy of women in their mid-sixties, all of them sipping coffee out of narrow porcelain cups as they eyed an orange-frosted angel food cake. No, Mrs. Furst assured me, she had not seen my mother leave, and she had no message for me. In fact, she seemed to have but one thing on her mind: how long she could keep those biddies from attacking her culinary masterpiece.
Which reminded me that I was hungry too. My pockets contained only nine cents, not even enough for a Mars bar, but I knew that my mother kept a charge account open at a local grocery. I brazenly charged a Yoo-Hoo chocolate soda, a rectangular single-serving pineapple pie, and just to
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