Me and Billy (5 page)

“You got to have a last name, Possum,” the fella said. “Everybody has one.”

Why wouldn’t he drop it? I was starting to get stubborn. “Maybe Possum isn’t my first name. Maybe it’s my last name.”

He thought about it for a minute, and then he shook his head. “Nope. Possum’s more of a first name. It don’t sound like a last name. Look at it this way: which sounds better, Possum McGillicudy or Herbert Possum?”

Neither of them sounded any good to me. I went on feeling stubborn. “I made up my mind. Possum’s my last name. I don’t care how it sounds.”

“Now you don’t have a first name anymore,” the fella said.

“Maybe it’s my first name, too.”

“Possum Possum. Who’s gonna believe that?”

“Why wouldn’t they?”

The fella laughed. “OK, Possum Possum. If that’s the way you want it.”

Well, it wasn’t the way I wanted it. “I didn’t say I wanted it for a last name. I only said it might be.”

He shrugged. “Have it any way you want. It’s no skin off my nose.”

I yawned. It was almost daylight, and we hadn’t had much sleep. I wasn’t feeling so nervous as before, for the fella didn’t seem about to take us to the cops. But I was mighty hungry.

Now the fella rubbed his hands together. “Let’s say I buy this here story about falling out of a window into a lilac bush. What sort of plans do you fellas have? Aside from stealing my purse. What did you aim to do with yourself once you got of that there home?”

Me and Billy looked at each other. He was a suspicious kind of fella, that was clear, and I wasn’t about to say anything about a lake full of gold. “We need to get a job.”

“So long as it isn’t washing pots and pans,” Billy said. “Or anything hard. We don’t want to do anything too hard.”

“To be honest,” I said, “we’d just as soon be moving on. We oughtn’t to be setting here like a couple of birds in the wilderness, with Deacon liable to come around the corner any minute.”

“Yes, that figures,” the fella said. He put his hands behind his back and began to whistle “The Bicycle Built for Two.” After a couple of minutes he stopped whistling. “I’ll tell you what. The truth is I got a use for a couple of boys with a little larceny in their souls. I don’t deny it, I put my hand in somebody else’s pocket a time
or two. I was particular fond of hoisting gold watches. You could get twenty-five dollars for a good one. There was a trick to it, though, for they was usually hitched on to the fella by a watch chain. The watch is in the vest, most usually, with the chain going through a button hole, or some such. You bumped into the fella like it was an accident, cut the watch chain with a little pair of wire cutters, and hoisted the watch out, all in one motion. Sort of like dealing from the bottom in a poker game—you got to have quick hands. But I gave that all up.”

“Why?” Billy said. The whole thing had caught his interest. “I bet I could learn how to do it.”

“Don’t bother,” he said. “Too risky. I got caught once and come close to going to jail. They gave me a lawyer, and he bought the watch off the jail keeper. They said it had got stole. There wasn’t any evidence anymore, and I got off. Of course the lawyer kept the watch, said he was entitled to it, for his trouble.” He rubbed his hands together again. “No, that game’s too risky. I got one now that’s safe as churches. But I could use a couple of boys who know how to look sharp and keep their mouths closed.”

I didn’t exactly like the idea. Whatever his game was, it was certain to be risky. Still, we needed jobs and couldn’t afford to be fussy. The best thing was to find out more about it. “How come you don’t have a helper now?”

“I did. He ran off last week with forty dollars and my best pair of boots. I should of knew better than to take on somebody who could wear my boots. I want somebody who wears a different size.”

“That’s us, all right,” Billy said. “Me and Possum are just what you want.”

“No more sliding down lilac bushes, though, Billy. You got to do just what I say.”

“How much do we get paid?” I said.

“Oh that,” the fella said. “Let’s say we split the take three ways.”

I didn’t trust that for a minute. “You mean you’d give each of us the same as you’d take for yourself?”

“No. Where’d I say that? I said we’d split it three ways; I didn’t say the shares was to be equal. A dollar a day for you each and eats.”

To somebody who’d never had more than a nickel at once, a dollar sounded fine. “I don’t know where we’d sleep,” I said. “There isn’t much room in the van.”

“Underneath it. I got a square of canvas to lay on and a horse blanket to throw on top of yourself.”

“That’ll be pretty cold in the winter,” I said.

“You won’t be around by winter. You’ll run off before then—soon as you find something worth running off with.”

I didn’t like him saying that. He didn’t know anything about me. “How do you know we’d do that?”

He laughed. “If you was the kind of person who wouldn’t run off with valuable goods, you wouldn’t of hired on with me in the first place.” He rubbed his hands once more. “OK. Let’s go get the mules out of the stable and get moving before this here Deacon What’s-his-name comes sailing around the corner.”

The van was pulled by two mules. We got them out of the stable where he’d been keeping them. We helped him hitch them up, as good as we knew how, and set off through the town. The fella sat up on the driver’s seat, flicking a whip at the mules from time to time to remind them of their business, and we trotted alongside to spare the mules, for in town we couldn’t make much time, anyway. The mules were dark brown and ornery. They kept looking at me and Billy like they wished we hadn’t come along. Billy said under his breath, “Soon as I get a chance I’m going to kick ’em both in the slats.”

“You better watch yourself, Billy,” I told him. “They can kick a blame sight harder than you can.”

But to tell the truth, tired as I was and hungry enough to eat mud, I felt good. We’d done it. We’d run
off from the Home a whole lot younger than most boys did. And we’d got some kind of a job already. Of course it was Billy’s kind of job, not my kind of a job. I’d try to get Billy to branch off from this fella and go for the lake when I could. I’d just have to see how it went.

But we were free. Free. I could hardly believe it. No more bread and molasses. We could eat pie and ice cream all day if we had the money for it. Blame if that wasn’t the nicest part of it all.

We went along for a couple of hours, with the sun rising higher and higher in the sky. Me and Billy were feeling mighty hot, tired, and hungry, but we didn’t complain, even though we each knew what the other was feeling and ought to have complained. For every step we took put us farther away from Deacon Smith. I wondered, would he put up posters with our pictures on it, saying
RUNAWAY BOYS
: $10
REWARD
? I reckoned he wasn’t likely to go more than ten dollars. Although where he’d get pictures of us I didn’t know. Maybe his sister would draw them. She was artistic and always puttering around with a paint box, painting pictures of vases full of flowers, usually, that looked like the vase was on fire. It would be kind of interesting to get your picture painted, but not for a reward poster.

By about ten o’clock the houses were thinning out. The paved street ended, and pretty soon we were going along a dirt road between fields of corn, which at that
time of year was up about a foot. Ahead there was a patch of woods. We came up to it. The fella pulled the mules off the road into the shade of the trees and climbed down. He stretched and yawned. “I guess Deacon What’s-his-name won’t bother us out here. It’s time for breakfast.”

“That’ll suit me,” Billy said. “I’m starved.” The fella climbed into the back of the van and in a minute came out with a jug of cider, a half-loaf of bread, a chunk of cheese, a jar of mustard, and a piece of ham, all wrapped up in oilcloth. “Here we are, boys, a veritable feast.”

“What’s a
veritable
mean?” Billy said.

“It don’t mean anything. It goes along with
feast.
That’s the only kind of feast I ever heard of—
veritable
feast. It’s like
fatal error.
If it’s an
error
, it’s got to be
fatal.
Stands to reason, don’t it? Or
treasure trove.
Did you ever hear of a plain
trove
? No, you didn’t. That’s because there ain’t any such thing.”

“How can it be a word if there isn’t any such thing?” I said.

“All right, Mr. Smarty-pants, what’s a trove?”

“Well, I don’t exactly know, but it’s got to mean something.”

“No, it don’t. A whole lot of words don’t mean anything. Like what I said before,
veritable.
It don’t mean anything by itself. It’s just meant to hang on to the front of
feast,
to bolster it up. If I told you this here bread and cheese and jar of mustard was a feast, you’d
look at me squint-eyed. But if I say it’s a
veritable
feast, you’ll believe it. That’s the thing in my business—making things believable.”

I didn’t want to argue about it anymore, for I was dead hungry and wanted to use my mouth for other purposes. So we sat down on the ground. The fella took out a good-sized barlow knife; whacked off slices of bread, cheese, and ham; and while me and Billy sat there ramming the food home, he told us about the business.

His name, he said, was Professor Alberto Santini. “Of course that ain’t my real name—it ain’t nowhere so fancy as that. You don’t need to know my real name. No reason to spread it around. The wrong people might remember it. You boys can call me Professor, so we all keep in mind who’s top dog around here.” He took a swallow of cider.

“Now up ahead here is a little one-horse town called Sabbath. Been through it now and then, but never gave it the benefit of my ministrations. Slim pickings, most likely, but it’ll do to break you boys in. First thing we got to do is have a look around and see what sort of business might go. Maybe there’s been a epidemic of whooping cough or measles. If that’s the case, we go into business with Dr. Cornflower’s Purgative Compound, a secret formula of roots and berries that was tortured out of a Nipmuck Indian medicine man. Or maybe you notice that the weather’s been dry and the flowers in the yards and window
boxes is a little faded and lifeless. In that case we sell ’em Growmore Elixir, scientific miracle imported direct from Gotinbad Laboratories in Germany, where they got peonies ten feet high and rosebushes taller than a house. Or let’s say the cattle round about has all got the bloat from eating sour apples. This time we’ll bottle up Uncle Fred’s Mixture Sixteen, a blend of sixteen different sea salts and minerals passed down for six generations in our family—you boys get to be my nephews for this one—which I got from my old daddy’s lips with his last breath. See how it works?” he said, looking from one of us to the other.

Like I figured, it was a skin game. Mighty risky, all right. But I couldn’t say that, so to be polite I said, “I guess that’s why you got to carry so many different kinds of ingredients in the van.”

He laughed. “What ingredients? You wouldn’t want to put actual ingredients in these here compounds. Why, you might hurt someone that way. No, it’s much the best to stick with water and vegetable coloring, and maybe just a little gunpowder or molasses to liven up the taste. That’s where the artistry comes in. You take Dr. Cornflower’s Purgative Compound. People don’t think nothing of a medicine if it don’t taste bad. If it swallers down easy, they figure it can’t do them no good. So for the Purgative Compound we aim for a dark brown color and heave in a little shoe polish to give it a real ugly taste.”

“Shoe polish?” I said. “Mightn’t that poison you?”

“Shoe polish?” the Professor said. “Why, lord no, Possum. A little shoe polish never harmed anyone. Ever see a sick shoe-shine boy? All healthy as horses.”

“Maybe you wouldn’t see sick ones because they stayed home.”

But before the professor could explain that, Billy said, “What about the stuff for the cattle bloat?” He was mighty interested in the whole thing and was following it close.

“Well, there you got something that people ain’t likely to taste themselves. Some will, some of these here old farmers are so cheap they’ll use cow medicine on themselves when they feel poorly. They figure if it’ll fix a cow, it’ll fix a human being. But most of ’em got enough sense to see that there’s a difference between cows and human beings and will save it for the cows. What you got to do here is make sure there’s a powerful smell to the stuff, something that’ll knock you down when you open the bottle. Onion salts mixed into kerosene’ll do it.”

“Pure kerosene?” I said. The whole thing was beginning to worry me. “I know for sure kerosene’ll kill you.”

“No, no, you got to have some sense about it. You don’t want them cows’ stomachs catching on fire. You got to put in four or five times as much water. Besides, kerosene costs money. You don’t want to eat into the profits by putting in stuff that costs. Use as much water as possible.”

Billy was really caught up in it—his eyes were shining. “What about the flower stuff?”

“That should be pretty much all water. It don’t do to kill flowers, not until you get out of town, anyway. We sell ’em a bottle of sugar pills with the writing rubbed off. Tell ’em to put one in a gallon of water and pour a quart of the stuff on each flower box every day. You water flowers regular like that, especially during a dry spell, they’ll perk right up. Why, it’s an act of kindness to these here housewives to take their money, if you look at it that way.”

Billy rubbed his hands together and laughed. “It’s a humdinger,” he said. “Did you think it all up?”

“No, no,” Professor Santini said. “I learned at the feet of a master. Dr. Helmut Wolfgang, formerly professor of medical philosophy at the famous Wurtzburger Institute in Darmstadt. A great, great man.” He put his hands behind his head, leaned back against a wheel of the van, and gazed up at the sky, like so much greatness was too much for him. “Of course he was from Allentown, Pennsylvania. Ray Cranberry was his real name. But when he swung into that accent, you’d never of guessed that in a million years. He had a spiel that could make a divorce lawyer break down and sob.”