Whistling In the Dark

  “Wendy Latour, stop swinging and I’ll give you a candy bar,” I shouted.

  That got her attention, because Wendy loved candy more than sticks of butter or old hot dogs on the ground. Wendy adored candy. Troo came over and watched Wendy slowing down. “She’s just the happiest girl in the world, isn’t she?” she said in a sad, admiring way.

  “Everything is going to work out okay, Trooper, you’ll see,” I said.

  When Wendy came to a stop, I gave her the Three Musketeers bar I had in my pocket and then watched her while she sat there enjoying it, naked on the swing.

  “O’Malleys,” somebody hollered behind me. I turned to see Mary Lane making her way across the playground. She was looking unbelievably skinny. With her big black high-tops and white socks, she looked like an exclamation point! Troo and me hadn’t seen her since the Fourth, so when she came up next to me I was so happy to see her that I almost gave her a hug, but I didn’t because Mary Lane was wiry and would beat the hell out of you. The only person I’d ever seen beat Mary Lane in a fight was Troo, and that was only because Troo was fighting Irish.

  “What ya been doin’?” I asked, not sniffing Mary Lane’s usual stale potato chip smell but something a lot stronger.

  “Been secretly helpin’ my dad with the animal feeding because one of those goddamn flamingos bit him in the hand.” Mary Lane spat on the ground. “Goddamn it to hell, I hate those birds. They look so pretty but then when you get to know them they have the worst personalities. Kind of like somebody else around here.” She was watching Bobby turning rope for some little girls jumping double Dutch. Mary Lane despised Bobby.

  I looked back at Wendy, who had stuffed the Three Musketeers, that whole bar, in her mouth, and I realized that even though she was a Mongoloid, her bosoms had begun to grow. And since she was naked I could also see that she had some hair down below, and that was a very odd thing to me. Wendy’s body was growing up without her.

  I yelled over to Artie Latour, who was playing tetherball on the other end of the playground. “Artiiieee . . .” He didn’t hear me, of course, because of his ear that Reese had hit so hard, but then he just happened to look our way when he was changing sides and he came running.

  “Time to go home to Ma, Wendy.” As Artie helped his sister off the swing, he looked over at Troo and smiled. He still had the hots for her.

  Troo said, “We heard about Reese going away.”

  Artie’s smile smeared across his face like the chocolate did on Wendy’s. “Yeah, that’s something, ain’t it?”

  The three of us watched as he led his naked-as-a-jaybird sister toward home. Halfway across the street, Wendy got loose from Artie’s hand and ran back and grabbed me into one of her large hugs. When I could breathe again, I said to her, “So it was Reese that pushed you down the Spencers’ steps?”

  Wendy let go of me, looked me right in the eye and did something I didn’t know that a Mongoloid could do, something I’d never seen her do before. Wendy Latour gave me a huge wink! And in that moment, I knew for positive that Wendy had just fallen down the Spencers’ steps during one of her wanderings. She hadn’t been pushed. She’d just told her ma that made-up story about Reese so he would get blamed. Oh, Wendy! You stinker! I looked at her closely again just to make sure it wasn’t my imagination. She smiled and took off back toward her Artie. That girl had rescued her beloved brother from the always-evil Reese. I wondered if Artie knew that. I knew that. No matter what. That was not a flight of my imagination. That wink had said it all. And Wendy’s sly smile was like the amen on the end of a prayer.

  Sorta.

  Because then I realized that if Reese hadn’t pushed Wendy down the Spencers’ cellar steps, then he probably wasn’t the one who’d chased me down the alley that same night or grabbed at me in the Fazios’ backyard. There couldn’t be two loonies running around, could there? Naw. Troo had been wrong. Reese Latour wasn’t the murderer and molester after all. I didn’t want to wreck her afternoon. I didn’t want to tell her she was mistaken. She already had too much else on her mind what with Mr. Dave being her new father. I’d wait to tell her when the timing was right.

  After Troo and Mary Lane and me got onto the swings, Mary Lane said, “Did you hear about Father Jim and Mr. Gary Galecki?”

  I wished we were all going up and down at the same time but we weren’t. I was in the middle and Troo was on my right and Mary Lane was on my left and we were all pumping like crazy but at different times, so I had to wait until our swings crossed to say, “What about Father Jim and Mr. Gary?”

  Mary Lane said, passing by me, “They are light in the loafers together.”

  “What?” Troo yelled across from me. “What did you just say?”

  Mary Lane was the biggest, fattest liar. She could only go so long without tellin’ one, like she just had to do it or she would burst into flames, which probably woulda been okay with her. Next thing she’d say was that Mr. Gary kidnapped Father Jim and they were going to go make pot holders with Germans next to a big lake with slimy trout up in Rhinelander.

  “Father Jim and Gary Galecki run off together to Rhine . . . I mean, California, to get married,” Mary Lane yelled back to Troo. “I heard Ethel tellin’ Mr. Fitzpatrick at the drugstore this morning.” Mary Lane put on an Ethel voice and waggled a finger like Ethel did. “ ‘I had my ’spi cions ’bout Mr. Gary bein’ a little too dear to his mother, if you get my understandin’. Now everybody’s gonna know. That boy is a royal queen.’ ” Mary Lane looked at me and made a funny face, like what the hell is that supposed to mean? “Father Jim left a note in the sacristy saying he was sorry but he couldn’t help himself and that he knew it was a mortal sin but he was in love and runnin’ off with Gary Galecki to California.”

  Sweet Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Was that what Ethel’d meant when she said there’d been a little somethin’ somethin’ with Mr. Gary? I almost ran over to Mrs. Galecki’s to ask her, to see if Mary Lane was lying. But then Mary Lane said, “And you know what else?”

  She’d stopped swinging and so did me and Troo because Mary Lane was telling us some fantastic stuff and we wanted to pay very close attention.

  “What else?” Troo asked.

  “Big-shot Bobby is up to something,” Mary Lane said.

  Her hatred for Bobby had been going on for the last two summers. Bobby started it all one day when she was hanging upside down on the monkey bars and he said to her in a jokey kind of way, “Look at Mary Lane hangin’ around her home away from home.” And then he set a banana down on the ground and walked away scratching under his arms. Okay, I’m sorry to have to say this, but Mary Lane truly did look like a chimp with her skinny little body and long arms and spread-out nose, but Bobby shouldn’t have told her that. He musta been outta sorts that day, too.

  I asked, “What do you mean Bobby is up to something?” just to be polite, because after all Mary Lane was our best friend. I was pretty sure that this was gonna be another one of her whoppers.

  Mary Lane said, “I was peepin’ on him when he was in the shed yesterday and he was going through this Kroger bag.”

  “So?” Troo said.

  “He was touchin’ himself.”

  My head whipped toward Mary Lane. “What do you mean?”

  “You know what I mean. Like Reese Latour is always doin’.” Mary Lane put her hand down to the front of her shorts.

  Troo was leaning way back in the swing, her hair almost draggin’ on the ground. “What was in the bag?” I could tell Troo didn’t believe her and was just humoring her.

  Across the playground, Bobby must’ve felt me staring at him because he looked over at me.

  Mary Lane said, “He was takin’ stuff out of the bag and puttin’ it on the wooden table in there and lookin’ at it like it was something special.”

  “What was in the bag?” I asked her again.

  Bobby had set the jump rope down and was walking toward us.

  “You know the shed window is kinda dirty so it was hard
to see real clear, but I’m sure there was a shoe.”

  “What kind of shoe?” I was getting a very bad feeling.

  “A tennis shoe.”

  I shot out of that swing and knelt down in front of Mary Lane and said, “No kiddin’. You sure about that?”

  She nodded. “Now shut your trap about it, he’s comin’ this way.”

  I shoulda run over to Mr. Dave’s house right then and called him on his telephone at the police station and told him I knew who the murderer and molester was. But then again, I’d just about had it with everybody telling me that I had to get my imagination under control and maybe so did Mary Lane. Everybody calling her liar liar pants on fire. But I had to also face facts that Mary Lane could be telling one of her whopper weenie lies. There was just no way of knowing for sure.

  I got back into my swing to think it through. Bobby’d stopped walking toward us and was getting a drink at the bubbler. I felt guilty about suspecting him. He was a good egg even if he was a little out of sorts today. He was usually such a terrific friend to all of us and always dressed clean and nice. Mary Lane had to be making it up.

  “Are you really, really sure about this?” I asked her again. I’d started to doubt her even more because she had just told us that story about Father Jim and Mr. Gary, and that was such an out-and-out lie. Father Jim and Gary Galecki? Light in their loafers? But then I remembered Father Jim’s fluffy white dress with the petticoats and high heels. And Mr. Gary’s smooth skin and high voice. According to Willie O’Hara, that was how you could tell if someone was light in their loafers. Because his mother knew a lot of loafer-light people who seemed to be on the artistic side. Smooth skin, high voice, and then Willie made his wrist floppy and said, “And that’s what they do with their hands. And oh yeah, they really like flowers.” Flowers? Mr. Gary love flowers. So did Father Jim! He’d planted over ten purple snowball bushes in the rectory backyard. Oh boy. I had to talk to Ethel.

  “You’re not making this one up, are you, about Bobby?” I asked Mary Lane again, keeping my eye on Bobby, who was up on the balls of his feet, bouncing along toward us with his electric energy.

  “No,” she said. “And I didn’t make that up about Father Jim and Gary Galecki either. Go over to Ethel’s and see.”

  So maybe Mary Lane was lying, and maybe she wasn’t. Bobby was about a hundred feet away and taking giant steps toward us.

  It was just too hard to believe that Bobby with hair that went in tight curls on his head like a soprano choirboy would have a Kroger bag with Sara Heinemann’s tennis shoe in it. Nobody would believe us. I wouldn’t. And for sure Mr. Dave wouldn’t. And I really wanted to get off on the right foot with him and not get him sad that he let Troo and me move in with him, or maybe he would change his mind and then what would we do? Mother would be so mad.

  “What’s buzzin’, cuzzin? Anybody up for a game of tetherball?” Bobby asked when he got to us. “Or maybe you wanna head over to the monkey bars?” He smirked at Mary Lane.

  Troo said, “Ah . . . thanks. But we were just talkin’ about headin’ over to the zoo.”

  Bobby was so handsome. So ooh la la, Troo said. He looked at the three of us one at a time in a strange kind of way, and then said, “Maybe when you get back?”

  “That sounds great,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said, backing up, “catch you later.”

  “Boy, I hate him,” Mary Lane said once he was out of earshot. “He reminds me of a boa constrictor, all cold and slithery. Did you know that over in Africa boas grow so big that one of those things can swallow a child whole?”

  I sighed and started doubting her all over again, about what she’d said about Bobby and Mr. Gary and Father Jim. “That’s not true.”

  “Is too.”

  “Is not.”

  The three of us got up off the swings and started walking toward the end of the playground through the waves of shimmery heat that were like in that French Foreign Legion movie we saw over at the Uptown.

  “Is too.”

  “Is not.”

  I spent the way over to the park feelin’ like we shouldn’t be doing this. Mr. Dave had warned us at breakfast about staying away from the zoo, but boy, I sure was missing Sampson and had a desperate, desperate need to see him. Troo kicked a rock all the way over so I could tell she was thinking. Mary Lane kept running off and peeping into people’s yards, reporting back nothin’ too exciting except for the peeing boy statue she saw over at the Raymonds’.

  We stopped at a couple of the other cages on the way to Sampson’s. The lion’s fur was all falling out and he looked like he had ringworm or something. And the elephants didn’t move at all and looked kinda fake. The hippos were underwater and I couldn’t blame them because if it got much hotter, I could fry an egg on my face.

  After we climbed up into our tree across from Sampson’s cage, I felt so relieved to see the King that I almost started to cry. He was laying on his back singing, but he turned toward me when I called his name and in his eyes I could tell that he’d missed me as much as I missed him, like anybody would miss a long-lost relative. And then he went back to sucking on his toes. That made me laugh, seeing Sampson like that, not a care in the world. It made everything that was worrying me—Bobby rubbin’ himself in the shed and Mr. Gary and Father Jim being light in their loafers together and how Mr. Dave and Troo were getting along worse than the Bat tling Bickersons—just sorta fly out of my head.

  Until Troo lit up a cigarette and blew out one of those French smoke rings and said, “Girls . . . I got me a plan.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  It was warm that night. The heat wasn’t giving up like it did sometimes after the streetlights went on. And the air around me smelled like just-cut grass and the macaroni and cheese Mr. Dave had made us for supper with a slice of Ethel’s black-bottomed pie for dessert.

  Mary Lane and Troo and me were sitting on top of the monkey bars closest to the shed, watching Bobby play checkers with Mimi Latour over on the benches, and going over Troo’s genius plan one more time.

  Everybody knew there was a padlock on the shed door, but it had a chain that was loose and you could pull it apart pretty far. Not real far, a kid couldn’t sneak in between the chain and the door or anything. Not a regular kid. But a kid like Mary Lane, the skinniest kid in the whole world, she was pretty sure she could get in there, and once she did she was gonna get her hands on that Kroger bag and take it to the cops.

  “You ready?” Mary Lane asked as she swung down off the monkey bars.

  This was one of the reasons Troo and me loved Mary Lane, because she was always ready for anything. Like ringing doorbells and running away, or kicking car tires up at Fillard’s Service Station and then laying down on the ground and moaning like she had got run over. And one time she even said she was a crippled child and went door to door collecting pennies that she used to buy herself licorice. She was a wild little monkey that Mary Lane! Especially when it came to peeping.

  “I’m ready,” I said. But I wasn’t. I felt scared the same way I did after I climbed those steps to the high dive over at the swimming pool, walking slowly across that rough board over to the edge. Then I’d just stand there, bouncing in the breeze, waiting for my courage to come push me off. I can’t tell you how many times I backed down those steps, my head hangin’ low and embarrassed.

  But I wasn’t gonna back down tonight. I could feel it. I wondered why that was. Maybe it had something to do with Mr. Dave being my father or Mother getting better or both those things getting put into one big bowl and mixed up together to make a batch of a different, braver Sally O’Malley. Was that how growing up worked?

  Across the street, the big lights were on at the playground. The ones they put on when there was a softball game being played by the men in the neighborhood. Tonight it was the Feelin’ Good Cookie Factory against the policemen. Mr. Dave was up there. He was playing third base. All the men were yelling baseball words at each other. C’mon, Gil, just
a little hit. Pitch, you got about as much control as two rabbits on a first date. Hey, ump, if you’re just gonna watch, buy a ticket. And a lot of hootin’ and hollerin’ from the benches. When the wind changed directions, I was sure that the cookie factory team would win. The smell of those chocolate chip cookies would give those factory men strength.

  I jumped down from the bars and looked over at Mr. Dave in his baseball uniform with the red stripes and thought I’d just run over to third base real quick and tell him about Mary Lane seeing that Kroger grocery bag in the shed.

  Troo did some of the mental telepathy on me and said snippy-like, “Forget it, I don’t care if he is your daddy, he’s not gonna believe you and he’s gonna get mad that you bothered him while he’s playing ball.”

  “Who’s your daddy?” Mary Lane asked.

  Troo said matter-of-factly, “Rasmussen is her daddy.” Mary Lane nodded like Ethel did sometimes, all low and wise. “Yeah, I knew that.”

  “You did not, Mary Lane. That is your biggest lie ever,” I said.

  “Did too know that. For Chrissakes, Sally, who are you? Helen Keller? Look how much you two look alike.”

  I looked over at the softball field. Mary Lane was right. Mr. Dave was crouched over at third, smacking his hand into his glove. He’d told me and Troo that we could come over and watch the game but not to leave the playground under any circumstances. Eddie Callahan was playing for the cookie factory because his dad used to work up there before he got all caught up in that cookie press, so Nell was sitting in the bleachers, waving at Eddie every two minutes. I wished Mother could be here to see Mr. Dave. He looked so handsome with his honey-colored skin, his hair almost as white as mine now with just the right amount of muscles, the kind that didn’t look like he wanted to punch you, but that he’d be handy if you needed him to lift furniture. It would make Mother feel a lot healthier just looking at him. I bet they ended up getting married and then they would go on a honeymoon to someplace they both would really like, maybe someplace glamorous like Miami Beach, Florida, and when they came back they—