Chapter Four

“I like your lady friend,” Mr. Richards said the next day when I took a bunch of towels down to the dryer for my mother. I had stopped at Al’s to ask her to come along, but she had said, “My mother has a rule. She says we have to spend Sundays together. She says she doesn’t see enough of me during the week.” She made a face. So I went alone.

“She’s a humdinger,” Mr. Richards said. “A regular lollapalooza.”

My mother has a thing about me visiting him. It’s not just that he’s a retired bartender. My mother takes a drink now and then. It’s mainly because whenever she sees him around, he’s always got a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. He is almost never without a toothpick. She thinks it’s common. It makes me nervous. Some day he will swallow it. Or get a big hole in his gums.

Anyway, she thinks the combination does not make for a very good companion for me. She doesn’t really know Mr. Richards.

“I like that Al,” Mr. Richards said, fixing me a piece of bread and butter and sugar. He didn’t even ask if I wanted it. He slapped on the butter and put about ten inches of sugar on top. My mother would have exploded.

“Al is a very interesting person,” I said. “She is a nonconformist.”

“That so?”

One thing about Mr. Richards, he is a very good listener. I mean, he really hears you and he never interrupts.

“You probably won’t believe this,” I said, biting into my second piece of bread, “but Al wants to take shop instead of sewing and cooking, and they won’t let her.”

“Who won’t let her?” Mr. Richards asked.

“The principal, that’s who. No girls get to take shop.”

Mr. Richards scratched his head. “Seems like a perfectly normal thing. A young lady wants to take shop, then I say let her take shop. A girl like Al, she doesn’t want to waste her time with ladylike pursuits. She wants to get out and live life, change a tire or two, cut down a few trees.”

Mr. Richards was warming up. He started to skate. He tied his rags on and off he went.

“Why, she wants to scale a couple of mountains, dig for buried treasure, sail to the South Seas in a twenty-foot sloop. Stuff like that.”

He glided around nice and easy and after five minutes the floor gleamed and he wasn’t even out of breath.

“You think it would do any good if I went down to this here school and talked to the principal?” he asked.

I figured he might do more harm than good, so I said, “No, no, that wouldn’t be such a good idea. The only thing is, Al wants to make a bookshelf like the guys in shop are making.”

“Well now,” he said, putting on the pot for soup, “that’s all they’re doing? That’s not so much.”

When Mr. Richards makes soup it is something to watch. He keeps a bag of stuff in his refrigerator. Like celery tops and old bones and carrots and onions. If it’s around holidays, he throws in the leftover turkey. Then he scrapes plates and if there’s any spinach or mashed potatoes or salad left, he throws it all in.

I nearly got sick the first time I saw him do it. It looked pretty disgusting. Then I ate some once when he hadn’t told me he had made it and it was the best soup I ever ate. I don’t exactly know how to describe it, but it was delicious.

“I could teach her how to make a bookshelf,” he said, pouring salt into the pot, “if her daddy isn’t handy. I’m no slouch with the tools. I got a hammer, some nails lying around somewhere. I might just hunt them up and teach both you young ladies a thing or two.”

“Her daddy isn’t around,” I said. “He is divorced from her mother. He travels a lot.”

“Well,” said Mr. Richards, “then we will do it.”

Another thing about him. He doesn’t say he’s going to do something and then forget it. Like lots of people do. Mostly grownups.

He never says, “Some other time.” He never says that. He does what he says he’s going to do.

He is really very refreshing.