The Paper Cowboy (8 page)

TALKING TO MARY LOU

The next day, Monday, October 5, I was finally going to be allowed to visit Mary Lou. The first skin-graft operation had gone well and she was feeling a little better. It had been exactly three weeks since she'd gotten burned. Pinky and I had spent nearly every afternoon after school sitting in the hospital lobby. Mom wrapped up a couple of slices of pumpkin pie for me to eat with Mary Lou. I carried them carefully up the stairs and paused for a moment outside her door. The sun was shining in a hallway window, making the floor glow orange, just like Mary Lou had, just before she started shrieking.

“Who's there?” Mary Lou's voice called out. “Is someone lurking outside my door?”

She sounded like her old self. I shook off the memory of her screams and stepped inside her room.

“Tommy!”

Mary Lou was propped up on a bunch of pillows so she was half sitting, half lying on the bed. Her brown eyes were bright and clear this time. The scar on her forehead looked like a smudge of pink paint. I didn't dare look at her legs.

“It's so good to see you!” she exclaimed, a smile creeping over her face.

Until that moment, I hadn't realized how worried I'd been. “You're awake,” I said.

“Of course I'm awake,” she said. “I couldn't be talking to you otherwise.”

I smiled.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “I mean, are you managing okay at home with—”

“It's fine,” I said. Of course that would be Mary Lou's first question.

“Who's giving Pinky her bath?” she demanded.

“Me.”

“And are you really doing the paper route?”

“Yep.”

“Be careful. At first it's kind of hard to balance with all those papers.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I learned that one the hard way.”

We both giggled. She was the same old bossy Mary Lou. “Hey,” I said, “Mom made pie. Want some?”

“Sure.” She struggled to sit up a little straighter and winced in pain.

I put the pie down on a side table. “Let me help you with—”

“I got it,” she snapped. She struggled a bit more and the blanket over her legs fell off the bed.

I couldn't help staring. Her legs were covered in enough bandages for an elephant. Each one was almost as thick as her torso.

Mary Lou noticed. “They look bad, don't they?”

“No,” I lied.

“Tommy,” she sighed.

I avoided her gaze and didn't answer. They looked about fifty times worse than I'd imagined. How would she ever walk again if her legs were so swollen and . . .

“Hand me that pillow?” Mary Lou pointed to a pillow on a nearby chair.

I grabbed it and helped prop her up, grateful to have something to do.

Mary Lou resettled the blanket over her legs. I felt awful that
she
was trying to make
me
feel better. “Want some pie?”

“Sure,” she said.

I handed her a piece. We ate quietly for a minute.

“It's good, isn't it?” I said, just to break the silence.

“Mom's pies always are.” Mary Lou took another bite. “Did you know that wool doesn't burn easily?”

“No.”

“Yeah. The doctor said my wool sweater probably saved my life. It was why I didn't have more burns on my stomach and my back.” Her voice was calm and conversational, as if we were discussing the Lone Ranger, but there were tears on her cheeks, magnifying each of her freckles as they rolled by. “They took skin from my back for the grafts. I'm going to have a big scar there too. And on my stomach when they take the skin for the second graft. Sometimes, it hurts so bad I . . .”

She stopped talking.

I reached over and took her hand.

“I'm scared, Tommy,” she said finally. “I'm so scared. I can't even walk!”

“I know.”

The sun was still shining orange through the window. She turned her head to look at it.

All I could think of was the orange blooming of the paper as it caught fire. “If I'd just taken out the trash . . .”

“It's not your fault,” she said, wiping her eyes.

“Mom said it was.” I kind of thought it was too.

Mary Lou snorted, then winced in pain. “Mom always looks to find someone else to blame.”

That was true.

Mary Lou forced a smile and took a couple more bites of pie. “And what about school?” she said. “Are you behaving?”

I'd planned to tell her all about stealing the yo-yos and hitting Little Skinny as soon as she woke up. I wanted to get it off my chest. But now it didn't seem right to put any extra burden on her.

“Yeah,” I lied. “I've been an angel.”

HALLOWEEN, PART 1

Halloween was approaching and I was going trick-or-treating as a cowboy, of course. Eddie was planning on being a cowboy too, but I had the better costume: chaps, a vest, a hat, even spurs I could attach to my new genuine leather cowboy boots. I was just showing him the star Mary Lou had given me when Peter and Luke rushed over.

“Tommy, Tommy,” Luke cried. “Did you see the note in yesterday's
Downers Grove Reporter
?”

Of course I'd seen it. The local paper was published once a week, which meant on Thursdays I had three papers to deliver, not two. But I took the clipping from him and glanced at it.

Downers Grove Reporter

Thursday, October 15, 1953

Mary Lou Wilson suffered severe second-degree burns when her skirt caught fire last month. She is a patient at St. Charles Hospital. According to the latest reports, she is progressing satisfactorily and is expected home this weekend.

She wasn't coming home this weekend. I knew that. The day after I'd visited Mary Lou last week, she'd had the second skin-graft operation. It hadn't gone well. She'd developed an infection and had been put in isolation. Mom had kind of fallen apart, her optimism collapsing like a bubble in a cake. I wanted to cry too, but someone had to give Pinky her bath and feed Boots and deliver the papers. Mom had spent most of the past week in bed, complaining of back pain or headaches. Twice I came home from school to find Pinky still in her pajamas. I always got her dressed before Dad came home.

Mom and Dad had gotten in a huge fight over the newspaper article last night. “Why did you talk to that stupid columnist?” Dad had exclaimed. “Why did you say such a thing? Now everyone will be asking us when she's coming home!”

Mom only cried.

I thought it was pretty dumb of Dad to go on and on about it. I knew why Mom had said it. She wanted it to be true.

Luke's clipping had been cut out with pinking shears. The edges curled up as I held it.

“Wow,” Eddie said as he read over my shoulder.

“Pretty cool,” Peter said enviously. “I've never been in the paper.”

I wanted to yell at him.
She almost died. It's not cool at all!
But I didn't say a word.

The article was passed around the circle. Even Little Skinny took a look at it. “She's not coming home this weekend,” he said.

“That's what it says, stupid. It's in the paper,” Eddie said.

He shook his head. “Not if she was burned as bad as they said she was. Those things take a long time to heal. I know.” The scars on his face seemed to burn extra-red for a moment as he handed the slip of paper back to Luke.

“You don't know nothing,” I said, even though I knew he was right. Somehow, his being right made me even angrier, and I gave him a shove. He lost his balance and fell into the dirt. It had rained the night before, and when he stood up, one side of his body was covered with mud.

When Sister Ann punished Little Skinny for getting dirty on the playground, I laughed like everyone else. But I kept seeing the scar on his face, glowing like a hot coal as he flushed red with embarrassment.

The rest of October flew by. Doing the paper route wasn't as bad as it had seemed at first. I liked being alone in the quiet of the morning, and Ma and Pa often gave me a cup of hot chocolate or a fresh hard-boiled egg. Mrs. Scully liked to get up and work early in the morning. As a joke, she'd started asking me my opinion of different fabric choices. I laughed the first time I saw one of the ladies at church wearing the style I'd picked out. Working at McKenzie's was more of a mixed bag. I liked restocking the shelves and scrubbing the floor, because when I was there, I didn't have to think about Mary Lou or my mother or anything else. I just completed the tasks I was given. And Mr. McKenzie always made me a sandwich when I was done. But there were fewer customers each week, and try as I could, that fact got harder and harder to ignore.

The best part of October were my Sunday afternoons with Mrs. Glazov. She was getting so she could read all of
Kid Colt Outlaw,
and even most of an article in the paper, if it didn't have too many big words. And I was getting really good at the accordion. Apparently, I had a hidden talent for it. Mrs. Glazov only had to show me a chord fingering once and somehow my hands knew what to do. It was really nice to be good at something.

I made no progress in proving that she was a communist. Sometimes, when I lay in bed at night, I wondered if I really wanted to. I liked her. If I did find evidence of a communist connection, maybe Officer Russo would arrest her and cart her off to jail. Surely that would bring the customers back to Mr. McKenzie. But sending an old woman to jail didn't sit quite right with me either. And if Mrs. Glazov were gone, who would teach me the accordion?

All month my thoughts went round in circles, like Boots chasing his tail. October 31 fell on a Saturday, so I spent Halloween day working at Mr. McKenzie's store. His shop was still full of candy. And costumes. But no customers. And while the hardware store and the drugstore and all the other shops on Main Street had Halloween displays in their windows, Mr. McKenzie's front display case was bare.

He caught me looking at it. “Usually the shop owners get the schoolkids to create a Halloween display for their windows,” I told him.

“I know,” said Mr. McKenzie. “I called St. Joe's, but no one ever got back to me.” He was trying hard to sound like he didn't mind, but I knew he did.

Little Skinny was sitting bored behind the cash register. It
was
Halloween. Kind of felt like we should do something special.

“We'll do it,” I said.

“Do what?” asked Little Skinny warily.

I made him go upstairs and find some old clothes. We stuffed them with a bale of hay. Little Skinny opened a can of paint and drew bats and skeletons on the front window.

“You can paint!” I marveled.

He shrugged. “Yeah, I guess I can.”

I hadn't known that about him. It made me think of the accordion. I wondered if there were other hidden talents Little Skinny—or I—might have.

“All we need now is a pumpkin,” said Mr. McKenzie, smiling a little.

“Give me twenty minutes,” I said.

I rode my bike to Mrs. Glazov's house and banged on her door. The pumpkin she gave me barely fit in my basket, but somehow I managed to ride back to McKenzie's.

Little Skinny was excited. He studied the pumpkin from every angle before announcing, “That bump there. That'll be the wart on her nose.” On the leathery orange skin he drew an elaborate witch with big, sharp teeth. He carved, I scooped out the goop and Mr. McKenzie baked the seeds in the oven.

When we were done, the three of us stood there admiring the pumpkin, crunching the hot, oily seeds between our teeth, grinning like the jack-o'-lantern. “It looks a little bit like Sister Ann,” Little Skinny said.

I laughed. It did. It even had her pickle nose.

“But don't tell her I said that!” Little Skinny said nervously.

“Your secret's safe with me,” I said, and pounded him on the back, just like I would have done with Eddie. It was only when he gave me a surprised look that I remembered that Little Skinny and I didn't like each other.

“It's a great window display,” Mr. McKenzie said.

But though passersby stopped and looked and many of them smiled, very few of them opened the door and came inside.

When it was time to go, Mr. McKenzie shook my hand. “Thank you, Tommy,” he said. “Sam and I haven't had that much fun in a long time.”

“The display will be sure to bring the customers in!” I said.

His smile faded a little. “Yeah, maybe.”

“Did you need me to speak to Officer Russo again?”

“No,” he said quietly. “I don't think that did much good.”

I'd had fun, but I felt awful as I walked home. Nothing I did seemed to make a difference. And I didn't know much about running a store, but I was pretty sure about one thing: you needed customers.