Squirrel Bait and Other Stories

by Thomas P. Hanna

  You Can’t Go Home Again - Without a Tour Guide

  Pithmann’s Corner, N.J. wasn’t much to see when I was growing up there and it still wasn’t much to see on my return. But it had changed in my absence. It had gotten some notoriety and a big new spotlighted sign proclaiming it the birthplace of J. Alfred Alfred, noted author. That’s me. I had moved away when I was sixteen and hadn’t been back for two dozen years. I had never made a big thing about my place of origin but, as I found out on this warm Saturday afternoon, they had.

  Traveling between Washington and New York on business I had decided on impulse to get off the turnpike and drive the few miles out of my way to see what the old house in which I had been born looked like after all these years. I hoped the diversion would help me to overcome a bad case of writer’s block.

  Finding oneself a local celebrity without warning is a bit of a shock, if a somewhat pleasant one. Or so I thought at first. Somehow I had remained innocently ignorant of what was going on here in Pithmann’s Corner and I was surprised, even amazed, that my publisher or one of my friends hadn’t brought it to my attention.

  It started at McPherson’s Drug store (it used to be Sharkey’s), which still contained the only lunch counter in town. Things had been spruced up a bit over the years - a new aluminum siding facade had been put on the building and the pharmacy area counter top now contained prominent displays of items that were always carefully hidden away under the counter before. The marble top lunch counter was the same but the stools had been recovered in artificial leather and a few booths had been added, each one named for one of my books in large letters on the aisle side. I didn’t recognize any of the people, although everyone behind the counter looked old enough to have been around when I lived there.

  What particularly attracted my attention was the large display of J. Alfred Alfred and Pithmann’s Corner, N.J. souvenirs. All the usual kinds of things - ashtrays, wall plaques, paperweights, and luggage stickers but all with my name on them in a bold script quite unlike my own.

  A sign calling attention to autographed copies of my books caught my eye. Curious I went to investigate. I had never signed any books for this purpose so I wondered whose copies they had obtained. Much to my surprise I found a trite little comment and my name scrawled on the flyleaf of each book - a different comment for each title - in a hand that didn’t vaguely resemble mine.

  As I was trying to decide just how I felt about this situation one of the clerks approached, a stout, red-faced man in his late fifties. “Can I help you with something, friend?”

  “I was just looking at the books. Are you sure that they’re autographed by the author? I’ve seen his signature and as I remember it doesn’t look like this.”

  “Surely you’re mistaken, sir. The gentleman signs each and every one of these especially for us. Sort of a friendly gesture for the folks in the old hometown you might say. He thinks very highly of us and tries to do what he can to help us out. It’s a shame you weren’t here a few weeks ago. He stopped by and signed this whole batch then. It’s a special treat for all of us when he makes one of his visits.”

  “Does he do so regularly?” I inquired, my curiosity stirred up now.

  “Regularly? Yes, I suppose you could say that. A couple of times a year as he comes and goes. He’s very busy you know.”

  “Do you know him personally?” I asked, really anxious to know at this point.

  “Well I’ve seen him a good many times and talked with him and all but I’m not an old drinking buddy or anything like that you understand. I imagine that most people in town have met him at least a few times.”

  Now I couldn’t stop myself. “What does he look like?” I asked, all innocence.

  The clerk rubbed his hand across his chin for a second as he thought. “Well he’s a good head shorter’n you are. Sort of pot bellied. Kind of a five-by-five type if you know what I mean. Bald as a watermelon, with little blue eyes that sparkle and dance around in their sockets when he laughs. How’s that?”

  “Fine,” I assured him. “That gives me a picture so I’ll know him if I see him around town while I’m visiting.”

  Another clerk had walked up behind us while we were talking. His face was all scrunched up because he was concentrating and thinking very hard. “Aren’t you..? I can’t quite place you,” he mumbled. “You look familiar. That is, like someone I should remember although not someone that I’ve met recently. But I can’t be sure. I can’t quite place the face.”

  I was blushing profusely now. What was I to do, contradict this other man and his elaborate story in front of his friend? Or perhaps make them all aware that someone else, some imposter J. Alfred Alfred, had been putting one over on them all and they were too dumb to even do a preliminary check on his identity?

  What I did was meekly concede that I had lived in the town many years before but I expressed doubt that anyone would actually remember me since I had moved away when I was only in my teens. I did plant several clues if they cared to pursue them. To my surprise - I’m still not sure if my relief also - that settled the matter for them. They never asked my name or anything else about my association with the town.

  Up the street was the house where I was born except that it wasn’t the house where I was born. It was actually the big old house that was originally two houses down the block from our place. The spot where our house had been was now a parking lot for a small shopping center.

  When I approached, an official looking elderly gentleman whom I didn’t recognize emerged from the house. He wore dark blue trousers and a white shirt with Official Tour Guide embroidered on the sleeve. This time I decided to be a bit more direct and raise an objection before this man had a chance to dig himself a pit of prevarications to fall into.

  “Say, this isn’t the old Alfred place,” I said, “That was up the street a little farther. Just a little place with a green porch.”

  He gave me a look that said that he knew a troublemaker when he saw one, then he said, “Yeah, but the furniture and all are in here now. That place got torn down because it wasn’t safe anymore.”

  Now what should I do? I knew darn right well that we had taken everything with us when we moved out. I didn’t leave alone. The whole family moved out bag and baggage. So what did they have in the McCarthy Sisters old house that they were trying to palm off on the world as being memorabilia of me? I just had to find out. If I left at this point, I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night wondering.

  “Can you take me on the tour?” I asked. “Is there a charge?”

  “Tour is one dollar, cash money,” he responded. “Next tour is this afternoon. Two o’clock.”

  It was 12:15.

  “Can I go in and look around on my own then?”

  “Nobody’s allowed in except on an official tour,” he snapped. “That’s the rule.”

  “Is there any way that I could persuade you to give me a special tour?” I continued. “I have a rather special and personal interest in this whole thing.”

  “Next tour is two o’clock,” he said crisply.

  “Are you absolutely sure that the furniture and all that are in here belong to J. Alfred Alfred?” I persisted.

  “Yup. All his stuff. Guaranteed.”

  “Then I must insist on going in and examining it,” I said firmly, “because it’s mine then and I wish to see that it is being properly cared for.”

  His eyes had squinted down to little slits as he studied me but he didn’t say a word.

  “I’m J. Alfred Alfred, the author, I stop in this town for the first time in many years and find all of these unauthorized shenanigans going on using my name and capitalizing on my fame. None of this was ever cleared with me and most of it, maybe all of it, is in fact abso¬lutely fraudulent. To say the least I’m unhappy about my name being used in this crass commercial manner. Doubly so when most of the business is a fake. Like autographed copies of my books with a signature that isn’t even a decent attempt at a forgery and a house
that I only set foot in two or three times in sixteen years being billed as my birthplace. Before I decide what steps I’m going to take in this matter I insist upon seeing what all you’re passing off as mine in this house. Will you show me through or will I have to bring in the law and make a big fuss about this?”

  I was thoroughly worked up by then. More than I had intended to allow myself to become. But the old man infuriated me by the way that he just stood and stared at me without any display of emotion or reaction to what I had told him.

  Slowly he took the pipe he had been puffing on from his teeth and said, “Next tour is two o’clock, whoever you are.”

  “I’m J. Alfred Alfred, the writer,” I yelled at him.

  He shook his head a little. “Can’t be,” he said. “You’re too tall. I know you’re story and your measurements inside and out, all the details. Talk about you on my tours all the time. You can’t be him. You don’t fit the description I give. Or look like the drawing we had made up. Whoever you are, you’re somebody else. Old Mother Jackson, she should know. She took care of you when you were just a wee tyke. She was the one pointed you out to the rest of us and told us all about you. Surely you’re not going to call that dear saintly old lady a liar.”

  “Where is this Mother Jackson?” I asked. “Maybe I can get this whole thing straightened out through her without causing a big fuss. I’m not trying to cause trouble,” I added defensively.

  “Oh, she’s dead. About two years ago now. It’s a shame.” With a little glint in his eye he added, “But come back at two o’clock for the tour and I’ll tell you all about yourself. You might learn something.”