Rodney Parish for Hire

packed maybe one of that kind of card in a box, and nobody else in the whole neighborhood had it but Arville Hickerson, and that was only because he had a rich old man.

So Rodney Parish made it known to Arville that he was available. For a price.

With the Mickey Mantle card safe inside the stack of pictures, the rubber band holding it snugly between Johnny Logan and Roy McMillan, Rodney waited for his time. He had become an expert, in his way. He was the smartest kid in the block, no matter what that snotty old Miss Dexter said!

The time came.

Leroy Tarvish had to wait for his older sister Sophie one afternoon. All the rest of his gang had gone home, and he was just sitting around the schoolyard, doing nothing very much, just waiting for his old sister to come on out so he could go home and watch TV for a while.

“Hey, Leroy!”

Leroy looked up from his game of mumbledy-peg and saw that old Owl Eyes coming across the schoolyard. Leroy didn’t like Owl Eyes; he gave him the scrimmies, somehow. There was something real-whatchamacallitqueer about Owl Eyes. He was all the time collectin’ something.

“Whatcha want, Owl Eyes?” he said the name nasty, because he was sure it would bother Owl Eyes.

“Wanna play?”

“Play what? No, huh-uh, I don’t wanna play nothin’. I’m waitin’ for my sister, then I’m goin’ home to watch TV.”

“Thought’ch’d like to play for a while before your sister comes out. Why’d she hafta stay after school?”

“None’a your business, Mr. Big Eyes.”

“Bet she was bad!”

“You’re stupid, too. She’s beatin’ erases for Mr. Hollowell, that’s why, you stupid dope.”

But after a while, he gave in, and they teeter-tottered for a few minutes, and ran around until Leroy tripped Rodney Parish and made his glasses all dirty. Then Rodney said, “Hey, get onna swing. I’ll make you go high.”

“Okay.”

So Leroy Tarvish went high. Very high and very fast, and at just the right moment, at just the right speed, Rodney Parish slammed the swing sidewise, flinging Leroy Tarvish into the metal pole bracing the swing. Leroy Tarvish’s head hit with a crunch and stuff came out even after he lay there in the dirt.

And not till he had straightened up, after crouching for a long time watching the gray stuff, did Rodney Parish realize Leroy Tarvish’s sister, Sophie, was standing by the school door, giggling.

Rodney grew tired quickly, perhaps because Sophie was older. But he did not catch her that afternoon. And the next day no one said anything to him about Leroy Tarvish, so he knew Sophie Tarvish had not ratted on him. But she was a stinker, and he knew she would have to die.

He thought he had her that afternoon, when he followed her into the girl’s toilet, but Mrs. Kneipper saw him and dragged him out with indignation. He could have shoved Sophie out the window and she would have died beside the flag pole on the sidewalk.

It made Rodney feel high and warm and nice to think about it.

But she continued to elude him, and it wasn’t until three days later that he saw her going down to the basement of the school. He followed her.

She went into the big room that said No ADMITTANCE, where the coal bins were, under the manholes on the “pussy-inna-corner” game. It was dark and scary in there, but he went in, too.

“Sophie? You in here?” he asked.

“I’m in here, you stinky you!” she answered.

“I’m gonna kill you like your old brother, just like him, and you’ll bleed and be dead and rot and stink too, you’re such a—”

There was such a rush of chill air, that Rodney for a moment did not realize Sophie had crept up on him, and swatted the air in front of his face.

She was taunting him. She ran farther back into the bins.

“I’ll get you, you old rat-stink you! I’ve killed lotsa other kids and got paid for it, too, so that’s how much you know! So you ain’t so good!”

He was back in the bins, feeling the pieces of hard black coal under his shoes. The bins were almost empty. He’d catch her and smash her old head in.

There was a distant muttering from above. He looked up and all there was to see was the light-line made by the circle of the coal bin manhole cover. He stretched his hands out in front of him to find her, but it was so very dark.

Then, abruptly, Sophie was behind him, and she swatted at him again, calling him dirty names, and he was going to say, “Sticks and stones can break my bones—” but her hand knocked off his thick glasses, and he was stumbling around in the darkness, crying.

Then somebody pried off the manhole cover, and he heard the distant thunder that was the truck rolling up, and as Sophie ran back out through the door she yelled, “You old dope, you! I knew they’d be bringin’ it today!”

And Rodney Parish stumbled around with the word dope in his head, crying to be let out, until they dumped three tons of hard, black anthracite on him.

Sophie stood by the swings and watched the truck roll away. Then she turned and started home. That stupid boy! If he hadn’t kept bothering her, she wouldn’t have had to do anything bad to him. She wasn’t going to tattle; she didn’t like Leroy Tarvish, her brother, very much, anyhow. He was always kicking her.

But that had been interesting, what Owl Eyes had said about killing kids and getting paid. A new two- wheeler, and the extra clothes for the Barbie doll she’d gotten for her birthday, and…

She wondered, as she hurried home, if she should have cards made up, like that cowboy on the TV.