gone on to say itâout loudâthat
name
âwell, she had been having a very tough time, ever since, with her face. She was having to bite the inside of her lips very hard.
"Why?" asked J.P. He was walking beside Caroline, clutching his clanking suitcase. "Why won't we be able to miss your car? I don't even know what kind of car you have." Then he stopped walking and stood still. "Oh," he said. "I see what you mean."
Caroline stopped, too, and looked. The car was a gray station wagonânothing extraordinary about that. But it was covered with writing. On the driver's door, it said, in dark red letters: MAKE A DATE WITH HERBIE TATE.
On the door behind that: MEET YOUR FATE AT HERBIE TATE.
Silently, Caroline and J.P. walked around to the other side of the station wagon and looked. On one door: DON'T BE LATE FOR HERBIE TATE.
And on the other: WE'RE CUT-RATE AT HERBIE TATE.
Across the back of the car, in larger letters, it said simply: HERBIE TATE'S SPORTING GOODS.
Caroline's face failed. She couldn't bite the inside of her lips anymore. She started to giggle. She glanced at her brother. J.P. wasn't a giggler; he didn't even
laugh
very often. But he glanced back at Caroline and lost control of himself. He set his suitcase down in the parking lot and doubled over, clutching his stomach. Together Caroline and J.P. laughed until tears appeared on their cheeks. When, breathless, they finally managed to stop, they saw that Herbie and Lillian Tate were grinning proudly at them.
"You like it, huh?" said their father. He opened the backâ HERBIE TATE'S SPORTING GOODS âand put their suitcases inside. "Lillian just had it done, as a surprise for my birthday. Her uncle's a sign painter."
"He would have painted footballs and baseballs and basketballs all over, but I thought that would be too much," Lillian explained.
"We'll have to have it all redone in a few years," Herbie Tate said as he lifted his little boy, who was sucking his thumb, into the back seat. "When my boy gets old enough to come into the business, then we'll have new signs. Right, fella?" He tickled his son under the chin, and the little boy nodded, still sucking noisily on his glistening thumb.
"And the new signs will sayâ" Herbie Tate went on. Then he stopped and gestured to Caroline and J.P., so that they could guess the ending.
" HERBIE AND POOCHIE TATE'S SPORTING GOODS, " they said together and bit their lips so that they wouldn't break up again.
"Come on," called Lillian from the front seat. "Let's go home!"
Caroline and J.P. climbed into the back of the station wagon beside the little boy, whose curly hair was damp with sweat. He glanced over at them shyly. Finally he removed his thumb from his mouth and revealed missing front teeth. "Hi," he said nervously, the way you might say "hi" to someone who had just appeared in a dark alley, pointing a gun in your direction.
"Hi, Poochie," Caroline replied. She felt a little sorry for someone who was so terrified and who had to be named Poochie, as well. She also felt a little sorry for herself.
The car moved along through the streets, which were very, very different from the familiar streets of New York. Caroline pushed her hair back under her headband with a moist hand and watched through the windows. Shopping centers. Schools. Churches. Apartment complexes. And more shopping centers, shopping centers, shopping centers. Apparently people in Des Moines did nothing but go shopping.
"There's a Radio Shack, J.P.," she whispered, pointing. He nodded. But he looked as if he felt just as depressed as Caroline did.
"I'd take you by the store," their father said, turning to glance at them from the front seat as he drove, "but it's a little out of the way. And everything's a mess there this week, anyway. I know you saw it when you were here lastâwhen was that? Two years ago?"
"Three," Caroline said. "It was three years ago."
"Well, we've expanded a lot since then. We used to be