I let him go on ahead of me. He crossed over to the other sidewalk, but I kept straight so as to go by Sam’s house. There was a light on in the back. I knew that was Gill. But the whole second story was lit up, too. As I got close and passed on the other side where the driveway was, I saw that the garage door was slightly open and that a car was inside. It was too dark to see if it was the Land Rover.
Joel stopped and watched me. “Come on. We got to hurry up and do this if we’re going to get it done.”
Farther down the sidewalk I could hear children talking. “I’ll be there in a minute,” I said to Joel.
He stood, still watching me in the dim light of only street lights and the porch light at Sam’s house. I wanted to go up and knock on the door. It seemed I could almost feel that he was there. Then Joel called to me again, and I was sure he was going to disturb the whole damn neighborhood.
I couldn’t go up to Sam’s door, anyway, and trick or treat like a little kid—even if I was only in the contest. Sam wouldn’t necessarily know that. I didn’t want him to see me dressed up in that stupid dress. The B.J. costume underneath was meant for him.
“Sally! We got to go.”
Joel was just about having a conniption fit on the other sidewalk.
A group of little kids came along and went up to the door on Sam’s porch. I stood and watched them—all five dressed like monsters and cowboys, or fairy queens.
My breath sucked in as the door opened and Sam stood there. He was tan and thin—looking wonderful. He was grinning and buying treats, handing out votes and offering candy.
I watched him bend down. “Now, just who do we have here? Buffalo Bill—maybe?” He was sitting on the back of his heels so he could be the same height as those kids. I was about to bust, silently crying out: “I’m here. I’m here, too.” I could hear him laugh. The sound of it was like something I was starving for and had been made to do without. He kept on saying silly stupid stuff that I could have listened to forever. His voice came straight to me and I could feel it spreading out inside me, moving around and playing in my head over and over. It was all I could do to not run up and put my arms around him and tell him that I was there, too.
Joel touched my hand, reaching for the hatbox. “I’ll take this. Now, come on; we got to go! It’s a long way down the highway.”
As I walked across the street with Joel I glanced back. Sam closed the door and the little kids headed for the next house.
Joel and I walked fast around the corner and ended up in front of Thompson’s Grocery. There were a lot of kids in costumes going into stores with their fruit jars. Being Saturday night, it was a good idea. Everything was open. The street was filled with farmers and Mexicans and town people. I tried to keep my mind on the contest and where we were going, but all I could think about was Sam.
Just as I suspected, almost everybody on the whole damn street stopped to put something in my fruit jar just because of who I was and the pitiful state of my family. There was Turly Caine, who came to my grandfather for arthritis. And Mrs. Kincaid, who had kidney stones. They all made a big fuss over my stupid-looking dress and asked what I’d heard lately from my parents. It was just about enough to make me throw up. I was glad that Joel had the idea of going to the pool hall. I couldn’t have taken a whole lot more of that sympathy junk.
A line of trucks was parked along the street. Mexicans were climbing in and sitting down. Some wore ponchos in the cool night air. On a Saturday night it seemed early to be taking them back to the farms. But they’d arranged themselves in bunches for the different farms that they worked on. Their wonderful staccato of words sounded to me half like a love song and half a cry of murder.
When Joel and I reached the highway the moon was shining, and the pavement stretched away like a dark ribbon. Tall weeds grew at the sides with ditches behind them. We walked on the gravel shoulder of the road, saying nothing. My fruit jar jangled and the empty hatbox thumped. Every once in a while a car or truck would come along, spraying us with its lights, then pass, leaving us watching the small red circles of its rear lights as it disappeared in the distance. Joel and I stepped toward the darkness, and the moon lit it just as we reached it, so that the trip seemed endless and blind.
“We’re going to spend all night walking this stupid highway,” Joel said. “We’ve got to do something.” He looked toward the train trestle as though now considering that. Behind us was the whine of an approaching car. Joel turned and held out his thumb, but the car didn’t stop.
The next did, though. It was a banged-up truck with wood sides for carrying cattle. The door to the cab swung open and we ran and jumped in, Joel first.
When we got settled, what I could see in the light before I closed the door was Joel squashed up against about a three-hundred-pound man with four teeth. “What you kids up to?” He glanced at Joel’s tail which was curled around his foot on the accelerator. He had on a baseball cap, and it looked greasy. Joel told him that we were headed for the pool hall, not quite a mile down the road. I sat by the door, listening to the rattles, being aware that at any minute the door could fly open and I might be sucked onto hard pavement.
“We’re running for Queen and King of October,” I said, always volunteering answers when I was nervous. I held up the fruit jar to the dashboard light. “Would you like to vote?”
“What you get if you win?” he asked.
“Our picture in the newspaper,” I said.
“And fifty dollars.” Joel said. “Each.” He pointed to where the man should stop. The pool hall was lit up like a skating rink. It was a square tin building with cars and trucks parked in front.
The man turned into the driveway and stopped. He put one fat arm over the steering wheel and flashed his teeth. The truck idled so rough his stomach vibrated. “Don’t hurry off now,” he said as we climbed out. “I want to give you a vote.”
I held out the jar. Joel had already started across the parking lot to the pool hall. I could hear him walking on the gravel.
The man slid across the seat and dropped a dime in the jar. Then he reached toward me and ran his hand down my cheek. He put his open palm on the back of my neck and pulled me toward him, flashing all four teeth. “You’re right pretty, Queen a October.” He laughed. He forced my head back and his face came close.
“You’re supposed to buy chocolate drops,” I said, pressing the hatbox up under his chin. “And you might just want to know, I’m Dr. Maulden’s granddaughter.”
He let go of my neck and put the truck in gear. “Good for you,” he said and drove off.
I hurried to catch up with Joel, feeling tough. And famous. Everybody had heard of my grandfather. As we walked near the door of the Lucky Lion, I said to Joel: “I know I’m not supposed to go in. I’ll wait out here.” Women were banned from the pool hall.
“It’s too cold.” He led me to the back of the building. “You can wait in the kitchen.”
We went in through the door there. The only windows were small rectangular slits near the ceiling. In summer it must have been hot enough to cook without the stove. Joel showed me a stool and I sat on it, holding the fruit jar while he went through the swinging doors into the other room. I could hear the tap of the cue sticks and then the clacking of the balls as they rolled on the tables. I looked around the kitchen and saw the big refrigerators that I thought Mrs. Weiss probably kept her foreign foods in. There were cases of beer stacked almost to the ceiling.
Joel came through the swinging door, and Mr. Weiss was with him. He looked good in his new glasses. His stomach was wide and soft like a sponge ball. Looking at me, he took the Mason jar out of my hand. “How’s your grandfather?”
“Fine,” I said.
“Your grandma get that outhouse moved?”
“Not yet.”
He shook the jar. “We’ll see what we can do about filling this up.”
He brought me a Pepsi. “Make yourself at home. It’s best you stay back here. It shouldn’t take long.”
He picked up the jar, and he and Joel went into the other room.
I pulled the stool close to the swinging doors where, through the space between them, I could see into the other room. It was smoky and dark and loud with men and a constant clack of billiard sounds.
Mr. Weiss waited until the bets had been made and then he rapped a cue stick on one of the tables and held up the fruit jar. The men stopped playing and looked at him. Mr. Weiss put his other hand on Joel’s shoulder. “My boy here’s running for the King of October.” Joel coolly whipped his tail like the whole thing was a joke. I guess it was.
“Long live the king!” someone yelled.
There was laughter, and a few beer caps popped. When they settled down, Mr. Weiss said in a voice that sounded a little hoarse. “I’ll give five free games to the winner of this game if he’ll put his win in this jar.” He shook the fruit jar and the coins inside it jangled.
There were a couple of cheers and the balls clacked again as they were made ready for a new game.
Joel stood in front of the room, holding the jar. Mr. Weiss sat down in a big easy chair in one corner and read a magazine. The games seemed to take a long time. I finished my Pepsi and set the bottle on the table.
The games at the tables each ended with a round of cheers. One man from each of the tables picked up the dollars that had been waiting all that time on the beer cooler and took them to Joel. Joel quickly stuffed them into the fruit jar, and Mr. Weiss wrote out the passes for the free games.
I pushed back from the door just as Joel walked into the kitchen. He unscrewed the jar and spilled out the money onto the table. We bent over it, counting.
Then we busted out laughing. “How’s that for a winner?” Joel said. We had forty-one dollars and twenty-two cents.
Out on the highway, Joel flagged down a farmer’s pickup with a load of Mexicans in it. The farmer had forgotten to pick up a prescription at the drug store and had to drive back to town for it. The moonlight and the truck lights on the highway made the pavement look like the silver scales of a fish. Cushioned by the net petticoats, the Mason jar bumped on my lap. I straightened my hat, pulled at my sleeves, and felt the eyes of the Mexicans in the back of the truck looking in the window at us. But, if anything, it was Joel’s getup they were fascinated with.
We pulled up to the drugstore. Joel and I slid across the seat and got out where the farmer parked. For a minute the Mexicans studied us in the artificial street light. Most of them smiled.
The clock inside the drugstore said nine o’clock. We’d finished so early that we’d have a long wait before heading to the school gym. With as much money as we had we couldn’t trot up there until the last minute, or it would seem suspicious.
I looked at Joel. The lights from Main Street made him seem older. The shape of his face was so fine. He leaned against the wall of the drugstore. He glanced at me. “We got a long time. What you want to do?”
I made myself look straight at him. I smiled. My voice was low but it wasn’t anywhere near a whisper. “Bust into my grandfather’s office,” I said.
I didn’t have to convince Joel about what I had in mind. We took off at a fast walk to the alley between my grandfather’s office and my grandparents’ house. Everything was quiet and dark, except for the light in the sun porch and the one in the kitchen, which were meant for me. My grandmother had on her reading light in her bedroom.
Joel pointed to some bushes, then saw a better hideout—the outhouse. All afternoon my grandmother had watched it nervously because it had not been moved. Then she decided that she shouldn’t get too worried until Sunday and instead had poured all her energy into getting me ready to be the Coldwater October Queen.
From the side of the outhouse, Joel peeked around it to make certain that everything was quiet. Then he skulked to a back window of my grandfather’s office, carrying a brick he’d found in the alley, and broke it. The glass tinkled to the ground. When he got the window unlocked and open we climbed through. Joel helped me get my dress through the window. The petticoats got stuck on the windowsill, and he lost his temper and cussed a little. It was like stuffing cotton into a medicine bottle. When we got me through, Joel stared at me a few seconds. Until then I don’t think he’d looked at my costume, even with all the fuss that everyone had been making over it.
Joel had plenty of matches for his Winstons and he lit our way through the lab as I led the way to the storeroom. “Holy Christ!” he said after striking two matches and catching a glimpse of the bottles shelved all the way to the ceiling. “Anything likely to blow up if I keep using these?” He held the match close to my face and waited for my answer.
“I don’t know,” I said.
When the match burned down to his fingers and nothing had blown up, he lit another. “You going to pour it out?”
“No.” I had several possibilities in mind. And when I told them to Joel, he added to them. Finally we settled on the idea of selling the medicines and mixing in the proceeds with our pool hall donations. For a minute I had a touch of bad conscience thinking about breaking the Missionary Society’s rules. I was afraid of turning in so much money to Miss Pankhurst at the high school gym that it would look suspicious—as if we hadn’t sold just candy. But Joel said that he thought the Missionary Society rules meant you could sell anything fit for human consumption and that didn’t rule out a little yellow liquid. And as far as the pool games went, he assured me that we hadn’t broken any rules at all. Pool was essential to the mental health of the whole community. Without it, Joel said, some men would go mad. Without those free games his father had just given out, some of those men wouldn’t have gotten back to the pool hall for a game for weeks. Then Joel added that no one would ever suspect us of doing anything wrong, because who in the whole town of Coldwater would ever think that Dr. Maulden’s granddaughter wasn’t doing things exactly right?
For a minute, we were both quiet. He lit another match and, in the sudden flare of that small lighted circle, we looked at each other. We were both grinning. I led our way to where my grandfather kept his files. We got Mrs. Clayton’s phone number and Joel called her and said that he was a friend of Dr. Maulden’s. He said he was sorry that he didn’t know anything new about her galdbladder, but he did know that for some time she’d been wanting some of Dr. Maulden’s medicines. And then Joel told her that tonight only there would be an unlimited quantity available. It was not for sale, she had to understand. But for the next twenty minutes she could pick up whatever amount she wanted. She could not come to the office to pick it up, because of how it might look. But she could come to the front of the outhouse in the alley behind Dr. Maulden’s office. Yes, the same outhouse that Mrs. Maulden had been writing so much about in the newspaper. And from there she could take whatever amount of the medicine she wanted. And too, she could leave a small donation, if she wanted to. In fact, it would be very nice.
I couldn’t believe the sound of Joel’s voice. It was deep and foreign and I figured that he must be calling on some hidden hormones. When he hung up, we rolled around on the floor for a while with our hands on our mouths trying to laugh without making any sounds. We had to hurry and get the medicine set up on the ground in front of the outhouse where it faced the newspaper office, so that no one nor the medicines could be seen from the alley. We took as many bottles as we could. The brick we’d used to break into the office we put on the ground and then put our fruit jar on top of it for donations. We watched from the dark of the office while Mrs. Clayton quietly came down the alley and slipped in front of the outhouse. I called Turly Caine and talked to him about his arthritis. I used a voice straight out of Hollywood. I sounded like Kate Smith with a cold, and when I hung up I delivered two dozen bottles of the Outside Medicine to the ground in front of the outhouse. It kept going on like that until we decided we had to slow up the traffic or we might be noticed. We told the next patient to stock up by bringing a suitcase to carry it away in. We found an empty galvanized tub with handles on it and fille
d it full of bottles as though we were icing beer. We carried it then, carefully, slowly, to the outhouse.
“No,” Joel said, “put the Outside kind on that side of the brick.”
“How about this?” I stacked the bottles up in a pyramid.
“This ain’t no art show.”
“Shhh,” I said. “Listen.”
We froze, bottles in mid-air. There was a clanking like chains being moved. I imagined someone dressed up like a ghost walking down the alley. Suddenly we heard talking—men’s voices, mumbled. We were hunched over, squatting on the ground with the bottles of medicine around us. Then someone walked up to the back wall of the outhouse and began rocking it slowly. I saw a big shoe come around one side of the outhouse and then stop, as though whoever was wearing it had seen us.
“Oh-my-God!” Joel whispered. “They’ve found us and are going to tip this over on us!” He put one hand against the front of the outhouse to try to hold it off if it came smashing down on us and the medicines. But the outhouse now seemed stuck, leaning slightly as though whoever was messing with it had stopped, at least for a moment.
I was terrified. My legs shook.
“Make a run for it.” Joel looked at me. “Get a bottle by the neck and if someone grabs you, bust it over his head.”
We each grabbed a bottle. I got the Outside kind because I knew that when it touched newly cut flesh, it burned. Joel took the fruit jar with all our money in it. And we took off around the side of the outhouse, aiming for the bushes behind the post office, because we didn’t want to head back to my grandfather’s office for fear of incriminating ourselves.
But as we ran nothing happened. No one tried to stop us. I heard “Oh-my-God” again, but it was not in Joel’s voice. It came from a dark, startled, liquid voice, male and old. On the way I ran into someone in a poncho. He immediately bowed and said: “Commo talley voo, amigos.”
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