4
EITHER ... OR
“Did you see that? Did you see that?”
“What?”
“He tried to strangle me!”
Herculeah and Meat were now outside Hidden Treasures, on their way home. Meat had stopped Herculeah as soon as they were away from the window and out of sight of Mrs. Jay and, more importantly, Mr. Mathias King.
“He didn’t try to strangle you. He was just kidding. I could tell from the expression on his face that he was putting on an act for Mrs. Jay and me.”
“You call that kidding? Putting a rope around someone’s neck and choking them?”
“It wasn’t a rope and it wasn’t that tight, Meat. And it was only, like, two seconds and the cord disappeared. I never did see where it went, did you?”
“It felt tight.” He walked slower. “I’ve never told you this, but fear sort of causes my throat to close up. Even now I can’t swallow without making a sound like this—glunk.”
Herculeah said, “Oh?” as if she wasn’t aware of the affliction. She had actually heard that glunk many times.
“My throat tends to tighten up, too,” she said. “Everybody’s does, but Mathias King was just ... Oh, I don’t know.” She shrugged. “He’s a writer, Meat. Writers are weird.”
“He’s weird, all right; I agree with that. But not all writers are weird,” Meat said.
“I didn’t know you knew any writers.” She looked at him, as if studying his truthfulness.
“One or two.”
“You never told me you knew any writers.”
“You never asked.”
“I’m asking now. Name one.”
“You don’t believe I know writers?” Meat said, his mind racing for a literary name. To his great relief, he got one. “Elizabeth Ann Varner?”
“Who’s she?”
He smiled, remembering. “She was a very nice author who came to my first-grade class.”
“That was the year you were in Miss Stroupe’s room, and I was stuck with Deviled Egg. So what kind of books did Elizabeth Ann Varner write?”
“Funny ones.”
“Go on. I could use a laugh.”
“She had a series about two donkeys.”
“Donkeys?”
“Yes,” Meat said, warming to his story. “Their names were Hee and Haw, and Hee had a louder hee-haw than Haw, and that’s how they told them apart, but one day Haw’s hee-haw—”
He saw the way Herculeah was looking at him, and he said quickly, “Oh, never mind.”
“No, you’ve got me interested. Did Haw ever get as loud a hee-haw as Hee or—”
“I said never mind!”
He could tell from her voice that she was amused. First she had belittled his getting strangled—calling it kidding and an act—and now she was belittling Hee and Haw, two of his favorite characters in the world. One of the books about Hee and Haw was the first book he had read by himself, and he read it well, too. Even his mom had described his hee-haws as forceful.
They walked to the corner in silence, then Herculeah said, “Getting back to our original topic...”
“Please,” Meat said.
“Authors—some authors,” she corrected herself, “are a little weird. They have to be. They sit in front of their computers all day and write about life instead of going out and experiencing it.
“And,” she went on as they crossed the street, “mystery writers are perhaps a little weirder than the others.”
“Why? Because they sit in front of their computers writing about murder instead of going out and doing it?”
Herculeah stopped. She thought for a minute and then said, “You’ve got a point, Meat.”
“I do? What?”
“Well, when I saw Mr. King with the golden noose, as he called it, he really seemed like a different person. And when he threw it over your head, well, I thought, wow, this is a writer who really knows his characters—this is a writer who gets inside his characters’ minds.”
She took in a deep breath. He could tell she had something to add, and Herculeah’s additions were usually important.
“Go on.”
“Either he really does get inside his characters’ minds or—”
“Or what?”
“Or he’s a murderer.”