2

On his way home fex cut through soderstroms’ yard, hoping their German shepherd was chained and sleeping off his dinner. All was quiet. God was with him. The long grass waved its green tentacles at him, imitating an octopus. Mr. Soderstrom was, as usual, a week behind in his mowing.

Charlie Soderstrom scaled the sides of his sandbox, making guttural noises to indicate his troops were lined up against his dinosaurs and the dinosaurs were probably winning.

“How’s it going, Charlie?” Fex said.

Charlie stood up. His stomach peeped out from between his cowboy shirt and his jeans like a little face with only one eye, smack in its middle. He jabbed his thumb down at the bodies of his fallen soldiers.

“They got the flu,” he said. Charlie always made excuses for them. “They’re throwing up all over my monsters.” Charlie was four. His mouth was very red, and curled up at either end when he was happy. Now it had turned itself down at the corners, getting ready for trouble. His cheeks were round with baby fat.

“Tough,” Fex said. “Try a shot of ginger ale. It’s very good for flu.”

Charlie nodded, cheered up immediately, and trotted inside for a shot of ginger ale. His mother left him a lot with sitters when she went shopping or to bridge luncheons. He was good at playing by himself. Sometimes Fex baby-sat when the Soderstroms went out. They paid him. He would’ve done it for nothing.

Fex crossed the single-plank bridge that spanned the stream, peering down into the bright water. No fish today. They smelled him coming, he was sure, and passed the word along. Then each fish hid behind its own special rock, thumbing its nose (if fish had noses) at him.

Up ahead he saw the outlines of the house, snuggled against the side of the hill. When he got there, he squashed his nose against the window to see inside.

The woman there, bending over, looked up, startled. When she saw him, she dropped the bundle of clothes she was carrying.

“You! Francis!” she hollered. “Stop spying on me!”

The spell broken, he hotfooted it for freedom. But the woman was fleet of foot and long of arm. Even after she grabbed him, Fex’s legs continued to churn, his muscles straining against captivity.

“Hey, Mom,” he said, “it’s only me. Your son, Francis Xavier. What’s the matter, can’t you take a joke?”

Somewhat reluctantly, she released him. He rubbed his ear, hoping it was still in working order.

“One of these days, Fex,” she said, “you’ll go too far. You’ll pull that trick on someone and they’ll think you’re an escaped convict and call the police, and from then on it’ll be curtains,” and she drew her finger across her throat and made a gurgling sound which he fully understood.

“As long as you’re here, help me pick up this stuff.” They bent and made a big pile of blue jeans, shirts, and underwear. Fex’s clothing was marked with red tape, Pete’s with blue, and Jerry’s yellow. His mother was taking a business management course in adult education and applying things she learned there to her home.

After her first lesson the tempo of living in the O’Toole household had picked up considerably. “The secret is,” Mrs. O’Toole told anyone within range, “do not waste a moment. Time is money, as we all know. Every minute counts.”

Last year a course in nutrition had commanded her attention. With it came hot cereal, no junk foods, no sugar, whole wheat bread. She stood over them with her arms crossed on her chest, watching them like a prison warden as they shoveled down their throats the goodies she’d decided they should consume.

“Your brain works better if you have a nice hot breakfast,” she told them. “None of that sugar-coated, packaged junk for my family.” She had become a fanatic on the subject. For snacks they ate saltines. Once, in a sugarless-induced frenzy, Fex had driven an ice pick through the top of a can of mandarin oranges and had drunk the juice like a man straight out of the desert.

No amount of protesting did any good. The only one in the family who escaped was Mr. O’Toole.

“How come Dad doesn’t get any?” Fex had asked, noting the jaunty manner in which his father hid behind his newspaper and managed to snag his cup of coffee without revealing himself. It was as if there were nothing behind the paper but a disembodied hand.

“I think Dad needs hot cereal more than we do. We all count on Dad. Where would we be without him?” Fex warmed to his subject. “He brings home the bacon, doesn’t he? You should pay more attention to what he eats, Mom.”

Dad rattled his paper and stayed hidden. And avoided the hot cereal treatment.

Now Fex and his mother carried the clean clothes up the cellar stairs and into the kitchen.

“How was your day, darling?” She sometimes called him darling when they were alone.

“Lousy,” he said. “Absolutely lousy.”

“That bad? What happened?”

He shrugged. “Nothing I can put my finger on. I’ll take the laundry upstairs,” and he grabbed a bundle and climbed the stairs two at a time, before she had a chance to question him further.

After he’d gotten rid of the piles of clean clothes, Fex fell back on his bed and stared at the underside of Jerry’s bunk.

Gimme a break, he thought, one crummy break. Not two or even three. One. To see me through.

Through what? He began to kick the wall, as if he were getting even. He concentrated on one fat clown face on the wallpaper that had always irritated him. The clown stopped smiling in that ridiculous way, and Fex felt a small stab of pleasure which increased when he saw that the plaster behind the clown’s sad face had begun to crumble. Good. Fex kicked a couple more times, for good measure.

He heard the sound of feet running up the stairs and hastily got up. Whoever it was, he didn’t want to be caught lying down in the middle of the day.

“Your mother said you were up here,” Audrey said. She stood in the doorway. “You want to come over? I’ve got some new records.”

Audrey lived two blocks away on Perry Avenue. She had short, crisp black hair, very dark eyes, and narrow arms and legs. Her eyebrows, Fex thought, looked as if someone had taken a black crayon and drawn a straight line over each of her eyes. She was two months older than Fex and, he suspected, much smarter than he. They’d been friends since kindergarten.

“Nah.” Fex opened his bureau drawer and rummaged through it as if he expected to find buried treasure in its depths. “I got stuff to do.”

Audrey crossed her arms and leaned against the door.

“Fex,” she said.

“What?” he snarled.

The room seethed with her silence. “Nothing,” she said and thundered down the stairs. He heard the front door slam.

That’d bring out his mother, wanting to know what was what. His mother liked to keep her finger on the pulse.

He waited. In a few minutes she called, “Want some cocoa?”

“No,” he shouted. “Thanks anyway.” He lay down again and picked at the hole in the plaster, enlarging it.

“I don’t want any lousy old cocoa,” he whispered. “You know what you can do with your lousy old cocoa.”

But what good was it to assert yourself, play tough, when there was no one to hear you? He got up, went into Pete’s room, and checked all the usual hiding places. No Playboy there. Pete must’ve taken it to school to show the centerfold. That was some centerfold. Either that or the old man had latched on to it. Fex had thought his father was too old for that kind of stuff. Pete said nuts to that, you’re never too old.

Pete thought he knew everything.

Here I am, Fex thought, almost twelve. I’ll be twelve next month. Big deal. He thought about the piece of paper on Mr. Palinkas’ desk. I don’t know anything.