Except how did he know his mother was taping money into the underwear pages of the Sears catalogue on the top shelf of her closet? How did he even know the catalogue was up there? She’d never told him about it. She’d never told him about the blue pitcher where she put her quarters, either, but of course he had known about that for years, he wasn’t blind even though he had an idea she sometimes thought he was. But the catalogue? The quarters rolled and changed into bills, the bills then taped into the catalogue? There was no way he could know about a thing like that, but as he lay here in his bed, listening while ‘Earth Angel’
replaced ‘Twilight Time,’ he knew that the catalogue was there. He knew because she knew, and it had crossed the front part of her mind. And on the Ferris wheel he had known Carol wanted him to kiss her again because it had been her first real kiss from a boy and she hadn’t been paying enough attention; it had been over before she was completely aware it was happening. But knowing that wasn’t knowing the future.
‘No, it’s just reading minds,’ he whispered, and then shivered all over as if his sunburn had turned to ice.
Watch out, Bobby-0 — if you don’t watch out you’ll wind up as nuts as Ted with his low men.
Far off, in the town square, the clock began bonging the hour of ten. Bobby turned his head and looked at the alarm clock on his desk. Big Ben claimed it was only nine-fifty-two.
All right, so the clock downtown is a little fast or mine is a little slow. Big deal, McNeal.
Go to sleep.
He didn’t think he could do that for at least awhile, but it had been quite a day —
arguments with mothers, money won from three-card monte dealers, kisses at the top of the Ferris wheel — and he began to drift in a pleasant fashion.
Maybe she is my girlfriend, Bobby thought. Maybe she’s my girlfriend after all.
With the last premature bong of the town square clock still fading in the air, Bobby fell asleep.
5
Bobby Reads the Paper. Brown, with a
White Bib. A Big Chance for Liz.
Camp Broad Street. An Uneasy Week.
Off to Providence.
On Monday, after his mom had gone to work, Bobby went upstairs to read Ted the paper (although his eyes were actually good enough to do it himself, Ted said he had come to enjoy the sound of Bobby’s voice and the luxury of being read to while he shaved). Ted stood in his little bathroom with the door open, scraping foam from his face, while Bobby tried him on various headlines from the various sections.
‘VIET SKIRMISES INTEN SIFY?’
‘Before breakfast? Thanks but no thanks.’
‘CARTS CORRALLED , LOCAL MAN ARRESTED?’
‘First paragraph, Bobby.’
‘”When police showed up at his Pond Lane residence late yesterday, John T. Anderson of Harwich told them all about his hobby, which he claims is collecting supermarket shopping carts. ‘He was very in teresting on the subject,’ said Officer Kirby Malloy of the Harwich P.D.,
‘but we weren’t entirely satisfied that he’d come by some of the carts in his collection honestly.’ Turns out Malloy was ‘right with Eversharp.’ Of the more than fifty shopping carts in Mr Anderson’s back yard, at least twenty had been stolen from the Harwich A&P and Total Grocery. There were even a few carts from the IGA market in Stansbury.”‘
‘Enough,’ Ted said, rinsing his razor under hot water and then raising the blade to his lathered neck. ‘Galumphing small-town humor in response to pathetic acts of compulsive larceny.’
‘I don’t understand you.’
‘Mr Anderson sounds like a man suffering from a neurosis — a mental problem, in other words. Do you think mental problems are funny?’
‘Gee, no. I feel bad for people with loose screws.’
‘I’m glad to hear you say so. I’ve known people whose screws were not just loose but entirely missing. A good many such people, in fact. They are often pathetic, sometimes awe-inspiring, and occasionally terrifying, but they are not funny. CARTS CORRALLED, indeed.