Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972
- Автор: Breese Edward Y., Бриттен Уильям
- Год: 1972
- Язык: английский
- Год: H.S.D. Publications
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 17, No. 4, April 1972». Краткое содержание книги:
“I’ve had bigger laughs,” I snapped.
“Now, don’t you worry,” she said confidently. “Earl was generous, if nothing else. I’ve got plenty of money stashed in a bank under another name. So we’ll hide until this blows over, and then we’ll sneak out of the country.”
“Great,” I said. “Just my style.” But I thought, It’s beginning again. And this time there’s no way out!
A Mutual Understanding
by James McKimmey
It takes but one friend to help a nobody become a somebody.
“I don’t want to do it,” Eddie Barrett said, staring from the near darkness of an alley into the old woman’s small livingroom.
“You have to!” said one of Eddie’s two companions — an exceedingly tall boy for his thirteen years, with long legs, long arms and long fingers, all of which had contributed to his nickname of Monkey.
“I just don’t want to,” Eddie pleaded.
“Now listen,” said the third youth, this one a fourteen-year-old called Piggo, a name derived from his short, fat body and his small, close-set eyes. “It’s a tough planet, a tough town, a tough neighborhood! You’ve got to learn how to be hard as diamonds, hard as granite! So you don’t want to be a Blue anymore, is that it?”
Eddie stared at Piggo, who was president of the Blue Monsters, and wagged his head in distress. “But I want to be a Blue!”
Eddie was neither tall nor short for his age. He seemed to blend into shadows and disappear, although that was only an illusion. He certainly did exist, and now they were asking him to do this.
“It’s just that I don’t want to do it,” Eddie repeated plaintively.
He really didn’t, despite the fact that Mrs. Scrant, the old woman in the livingroom who sat like a shawled skeleton on this spring evening, was mostly mean-tempered to anyone who came into her sweets shop behind which she lived. She complained and sneered and insulted while she extracted every penny due her. No matter how much anyone pleaded and begged, she would never give him an extra piece of candy — unless it was Eddie.
Curiously, she had always treated him in a different manner — undercharging him at times, sometimes actually giving him a chocolate bar or an ice-cream cone. Perhaps the reason for it, Eddie had sometimes thought, was because they were both lonely in their worlds. She’d been widowed long ago and lived alone now. He’d been orphaned early in his life, and now he lived with an aunt and uncle who wished he didn’t. So whenever they looked at each other, it was perhaps that they somehow understood what they shared — but Eddie, who was only twelve, certainly wasn’t sure.
“If you don’t do it,” Piggo said harshly and angrily, “you’re out!”
Monkey stifled a giggle by pressing a long hand against his mouth. “Out!” he said.
“Are you ready?” Piggo demanded.
Eddie’s shoulders drooped. “I guess.”
“Where’s your stuff?”
“In my pockets.”
“Get it out! Let’s get this done!”
“How do you know that bedroom window’s unlocked?” Eddie asked.
“Because I tested it three minutes ago, dummy! What do you think I was doing over there? Let’s get going!”
Eddie slipped an old pillow case with two holes cut in it over his head and stared miserably out through the holes. Piggo and Monkey masked themselves similarly. Then, when Eddie wouldn’t move, Piggo grabbed one of his arms and yanked him into action.
The three of them ran swiftly to the back of the building, slipped open a window and climbed in. They made their silent way through darkness to a closed door which would lead them into the livingroom. Then Piggo said in a whisper, “Now!”
Fuses of three strings of firecrackers were ignited, the door was thrown open, and the three boys leaped into the old woman’s livingroom, whooping and hooting as firecrackers began exploding around the room.
For Eddie, even though he was yelling and dancing up and down and waving his arms, the moment seemed suspended. He kept staring at Mrs. Scrant even in his motion, seeing that her eyes had become wide and frozen-looking as though she had suddenly died from the shock of the invasion and had not yet fallen. Eddie was frightened.
Then Monkey unbolted her front door, and they ran out of there and down the alley. They didn’t stop until they were blocks away.
“Oh, man!” Monkey said, doubling up and giggling, tears of joy running from his eyes.
“Oh, yeah!” Piggo said, despite his snuffling laughter.
Eddie stared at them for a time, then he turned, shoulders drooping again, and walked slowly away in the direction of home.
“Hey, Eddie!” Monkey called, and then convulsed into laughter again.
“Hey, Eddie!” Piggo managed, and then fell down on his knees in hopeless mirth.
When Eddie stepped into his own livingroom, his aunt and uncle were drinking beer and watching a movie on television. Both were lean and impassive, and they did not look at him as he went through to the hall and climbed the stairs to his small bedroom where he lay on his back on his bed and stared bleakly upward.
He was trembling inside, and he kept thinking of the way Mrs. Scrant had looked.
Finally, he forced himself not to think of that by thinking of the most pleasurable and delicious thought he owned: Mary Ann Thebold.
Mary Ann was fourteen, but she was in his class because she’d skipped a lot of school days to do... what? Eddie didn’t know, although he was certain that it had a lot to do with boys. That didn’t matter, though — the only thing that did was that she was prettier than any girl Eddie had ever seen before. When they were in class, he often failed to concentrate on anything other than her, staring at her so steadily that sometimes she would swing her long, straight hair from side to side to indicate that it made her angry.
Then, after he’d decided to let them initiate him as a Blue Monster, after they’d done all those things to him he wanted to forget, it had been different — because Piggo, who was also two years behind in school, and Monkey, who was one, both had stopped Mary Ann in the schoolyard and pointed to Eddie, telling her that he was now a member of the club.
“Him?” Mary Ann had said incredulously. “He’s a Blue?” But she’d looked at him differently then, altogether differently, so that Eddie had been forced to look down self-consciously at his worn shoes.
He still remembered that look, and he was remembering it now as he tried to forget about the way Mrs. Scrant’s eyes had become wide and frozen when they were jumping around her as the firecrackers exploded. But he couldn’t forget, so he finally got up and went downstairs and picked up the telephone in the livingroom.
Because he sometimes called to find out if she’d gotten in any new ice-cream flavors, he’d memorized her number, which rang in both her shop and house. So he dialed it, and then he was trembling inside again.
After listening to the tenth ring, he was so nervous he could barely hold onto the telephone, but then she answered in her rasping voice. He carefully put the phone down as his uncle called from his chair, “Who were you trying to get a date with, Romeo? Miss America?”
His uncle laughed derisively, and Eddie’s forgettable face colored because he had yet to phone any girl about anything, let alone a date.
“Out, huh?” his uncle called. “Or she knew who was calling and wouldn’t answer. How about that, Romeo?”
Eddie’s aunt giggled softly, then lifted her beer glass.