really like. When Buddy Dietrich tried to steal my transistor radio over at the playground, Wendy picked him up and tossed him into the sandbox like he was a used toothpick. If this bowling job doesn’t work out for her, I’m going to suggest to Mrs. Latour that Wendy try becoming a strong girl in the freak show at the State Fair.
“Okay, you can let go of me now, ” I tell her. “I’m not kiddin’. I can’t breathe.”
“Thorry, thorry,” she says, letting her arms drop down to her sides.
“Just hold my hand, okay?” When she puts hers in mine, I can feel that she’s not wearing that plastic ring on her wedding finger anymore. It musta broke. I’m gonna have to start eating Cracker Jack again to see if I can find her another one.
Artie is still on the step looking lost, so I say to him, “C’mon,” and then tell the both of them, “I gotta do something real quick before we go lookin’ for Troo. I promised Mrs. Goldman that I’d check on her house while they’re gone and I forgot today.”
I already decided that cutting through people’s backyards would be the fastest way to go. I don’t want to waste time saying hello to our neighbors who are out on their front steps trying to catch a breeze on this muggy night. I take off and Artie comes right after me, but Wendy, who broke outta my grip, is lagging behind because she has the goofiest way of running. We make our way through the Sheldons’ and the Mahlbergs’ and the other backyards without any problems except for a near beheading from Mrs. Frame’s clothesline.
When we get to the edge of the Kenfields’ property, I stop. I haven’t gotten this close a look at their place for a while. It’s not so dark that I can’t see the house needs paint and the grass is anklehigh. The garbage cans out by the alley are lying on their sides and a tiger cat is picking through what’s spilled. It really does look like a ghost house now, the way Fast Susie used to tell me it was. Mr. Kenfield used to take pride in his property. Mother told me he cut his lawn with scissors. Before his daughter, Dottie, disappeared, he loved it when kids played catch back here and would sometimes grab his glove and join in, but I heard if your ball wanders back here now, he goes crazier than Lizzie Borden.
I kiss Daddy’s watch for luck and point across the yard that seems wider now than center field. “I don’t have to go all the way over to the Goldmans’. If we make it to the other side, I can just look through the hedge.” It’s gotten overgrown like the rest of the yard and doesn’t look at all like Henry’s new haircut. “Ready?” Both of them nod even though only one of them knows what the Sam Hill I’m talking about. “You gotta keep up with us, Wendy,” I say, scared about what might happen if she doesn’t. “No dawdlin’.”
“Yeth, Thally O’Malley. No dawdlin’.”
When I make a dash for it, I can hear Artie panting right behind me, but I realize too late that there’s not a peep coming from where Wendy’s supposed to be. When I turn around to see what happened to her, she’s in the middle of the Kenfields’ yard, hopping from foot to foot.
“Wendy… c’mon.” I wave my arm and whisper-yell.
She looks up at me and then back down at the grass and then back at me and starts yelling, “Thnake… thnake!” really, really, loud.
Keeping my eye on the house, I hurry to her. “No… no…
Mr. Kenfield comes banging out the door, weaving in his boxer shorts. He doesn’t have on a shirt or shoes, just a beer can in his hand. I don’t think he can see us because the porch light reaches only so far and I bet his eyes are blurry from drinking, but when he cocks his head at the hedge, I’m sure it’s because he must hear my heart beating.
“Who’s out there?” he says, slurry. “I… iden… identi… who’s there?”
I press my hand even harder over Wendy’s mouth so she can’t jump up and holler, “Thee the U Eth A in your Thevrolet.”
“Dottie?” Mr. Kenfield calls out again, not mad-sounding this time. More like the way you would call out if you were lost in the woods and given up all hope of ever being rescued, but then you spotted a plane flying overhead. “That you, sweetheart?” he says, coming down the steps on legs that look delicate.
Since we spent so many nights together in the olden days, I’m not hard on him like the other kids are. I don’t fill a grocery bag up with Lizzie’s poop and set it on fire on his steps. I don’t call him names like Loopy Lou or In the Can Kenfield behind his back either. I am just about to call out,
She shouts from inside the house, “Chuck? What’re you doin’ out there? The show’s back on.”
He looks around his yard one more time, squinting especially hard into the hedge shadows where we’re hiding. “Goddamn kids,” he says, throwing down the beer can and going back into the house hunched over. He forgot to switch off the porch light. Two moths are circling it.
I take my hand off Wendy’s mouth and wipe it on my shorts. She licked me. She always does that. She thinks I taste good.
Artie whispers, “Geeze, that was close.”
To the bone. I especially understand how Mr. Kenfield is feeling and Troo does, too. It’s so hard to lose someone you love. Our hearts growl for Daddy the same way our tummies do when we’re hungry. It must be even worse for Mr. Kenfield. I know my daddy’s gone forever in the deep blue of the western sky. I’ll never hear the sound of his voice again or feel his late-day whiskers on my cheek or spend time after supper curled up on his lap listening to his happy shouts when Hank Aaron hits a homer on the radio. But Mr. Kenfield’s daughter is not dead. She’s out there somewhere. I bet if my old neighbor had it to do all over again, he wouldn’t have sent Dottie away to the unwed mothers’ home the way the church told him to do. He doesn’t even go to Mass anymore.
“We gotta get back,” I tell Artie, when I hear screams coming from up the block. “Sounds like Troo’s tagged someone.”
I spring up to peek at the Goldmans’ house to check to make sure everything’s okay, but he yanks me back down before I can see a thing.
“What’re you doin’?” I say, jerking my arm away.
“I… I’m sorry. It’s just that… I need to tell you something in the worst way,” Artie says. “I already tried once, but you didn’t answer me.”
He did not. I haven’t hardly seen him at the playground or anywhere else. He’s been acting too pooped to participate ever since Charlie Fitch disappeared. “What do ya mean you tried to tell me something in the worst way? When?”
“On Mimi’s birthday. We had beans and wienies for supper and… and my brothers kicked me outta our room because… ya know.”
I do. Beans are the musical fruit. The more you eat, the more you toot. Our cabin at camp smelled worse than the outhouse.
“Didn’t you hear me scratchin’ on your screen?” Artie asks.
It takes me a second to put together what he’s telling me, but then that night comes whipping back. “That was
“I… I needed to talk to you in private,” he says. “I thought that’d be a good time to tell you what I gotta tell you without Troo hearin’. I know ya don’t sleep so good.”
Everybody around here knows that about me. After one of Troo and my overnights at the Fazios’, Fast Susie spread around that I scream in my sleep.
I peek around Artie at Wendy. Nothing we’re saying seems to be bothering her in the least. She’s squatting next to her brother, happily sucking on a cherry Life Saver and waiting for the skeeter she swatted to fly away again. I don’t think she really gets death. Sometimes I think being a Mongoloid is not such a bad deal.
“Why can’t you tell me whatever it is in front of my sister?” I ask, less mad and more curious.
Troo and Artie were an item once, but that ended when she wrestled the coonskin cap away from him last Fourth of July. Maybe he’s decided to forgive her and wants my opinion on how to get her to like him again in the same lovey-dovey way.
Artie says, “Because Troo likes Father Mickey so much and… I know she’s been goin’ up to church a lot to see
