They took me inside the station. There wasn’t much to see. A fat cop who usually directed traffic at the school in the mornings was sitting behind a desk covered with papers. A radio sat on a table near to him. On one wall was a long bench, and on the opposite wall, a small table with a coffeepot on it, cups, a container of milk, and a box of doughnuts. Those doughnuts looked mighty good to me.
The cops who brought me in made me sit down on the bench, and then they went outside again. The fat cop at the desk didn’t even look at me. I just sat there alone, feeling lousy—not scared so much as just low as could be. Everything was finished and done with. They would call my dad, that was for sure, and he was bound to belt me a few times for getting him into trouble with the cops.
Oh, how I wished I’d never started the whole thing. Oh, how I wished I’d minded my own business and put up with being trash and gone along until I graduated and could get into the air force. Why had I started this crazy thing? Why hadn’t I had more sense?
But what had I really done wrong? Was there anything wrong with trying to catch the factory polluting the Timber River? That was against the law. Was there anything wrong with trying to stop people from breaking the law? Sure, I’d trespassed. That was true. But around Timber Falls everybody trespassed all the time. Outside of town there was nothing but woods and fields and mountains, and nobody knew who most of it belonged to, and nobody cared. They fished and hunted and went on picnics and walks wherever they wanted to go, and nobody paid any attention. Around there trespassing was hardly a crime. So what had I done wrong? Nothing, really. I was going to end up being convicted of stealing mainly because my name was White.
I began to get mad. It wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. I thought about standing up and telling the fat cop at the desk that I hadn’t done anything and they couldn’t keep me there. But I decided I’d better not make things worse, so I just sat there and waited to see what would happen.
Ten minutes went by and then twenty. I was surprised. It wouldn’t have taken Dad that long to come down there. But he didn’t come; I was trying to figure out why, when the door opened and Mr. Herbst came in. That was a shock all right. He was wearing his creased jeans and loafers and a fancy heavy sweater that buttoned up the front. The cops who had picked me up came in behind him. He looked like he’d got out of bed and dressed in a hurry. He stood in the middle of the room looking at me for a minute. Then he turned to one of the cops. “Where’d you actually find him?” Mr. Herbst said.
“We picked him up just as he was coming out of the woods.”
“The same place?”
“No,” the cop said. “Maybe a mile further back downstream toward town.”
Mr. Herbst put his thumbs in his belt and looked at me for a while. The cops didn’t say anything but waited for him to talk. It was clear enough that he was the boss there, not the cops, and he’d decide what was to be done with me. “Okay, Harry,” he said finally. “What’s this all about?”
“I was looking for birds,” I said.
“In the middle of the night?”
“Owls,” I said. “I was trying to photograph owls.”
He stared at me for a minute more, trying to decide what to believe. Then he said, “What gave you the idea that there are owls in there?”
“I know they’re there,” I said. “When I was there before, I saw owl pellets.”
Mr. Herbst looked at one of the cops. “I don’t know anything about birds,” he said. “Is that reasonable?”
The cop shrugged. “Could be. They have a bird club at school. Sometimes you see them along the roads with their field glasses.”
Mr. Herbst looked back at me. “You belong to the bird club, Harry?”
It made me blush to think about that, I don’t know why. “No,” I said. “I just study birds on my own.”
He stared me right in the face in that way he had, thinking. Finally he said, “Did you see any owls?”
“I think so,” I said.
“You can see in the dark?”
“On a bright night like this you can. They’re light-colored. That’s why I came out tonight, because it’s so bright.”
“And you took a picture of it?”
“I hope so,” I said. “I tried, anyway.”
He reached out his hand. “Mind if I have a look at the camera?”
I didn’t want to give it to him. I was suspicious of him. “I—”
But the cop shook a finger at me. “Give it to him, White.” I handed it over.
He looked it over for a minute. “Brand-new,” he said.
“The kid’s got a lot of new stuff,” the cop said. “Binoculars, big flashlight.”
I was beginning to lose my temper. “I bought that camera,” I said. “It’s mine.”
“Don’t get smart, White,” the cop said. “Where’d you get it?”
“It’s mine,” I said. “I bought it at the drugstore. I have a receipt.”
“Where’d you get the money?”
I knew I ought to be polite and not make everything worse, but I couldn’t help myself. “I don’t have to tell you that,” I said. “It’s none of your business.”
“Don’t worry, White,” the cop said. “We can find out.”
Mr. Herbst hadn’t been paying any attention but had been turning the camera over in his hands, examining it. Then he put the camera into the pocket of his jacket and said, “Let him go.” That was all; nothing more. But I knew what he was going to do. He was going to develop the film to see what I had been taking pictures of.
“Hey,” I said. “That’s my camera. You can’t take that.”
“Don’t worry, Harry. You’ll get it back. I’m just going to borrow it for a few days.”
“Hey, wait a minute,” I said. But he turned and walked out of the police station. “Hey,” I said to the cop. “That’s my camera. He can’t take it like that.”
“He’s just borrowing it, White,” the cop said. “Now you better get out of here before you get into real trouble. You’re lucky you got let off. We could have booked you for a dozen things. Now scram on home.”
There wasn’t anything I could do about it, and so I left, feeling sore and scared and pretty mixed-up. It wasn’t right for them to take my camera, and it wasn’t right for them to treat me the way they did. They were the ones who were breaking the law, not me; but still, somehow I felt that everything was all my fault, that I was some kind of a criminal. The only luck I had was that Mom and Dad didn’t hear me come home.
I woke up late the next morning. I realized right away that I’d missed the school bus. Dad was already gone, and Mom had forgotten I was there. When I came down, she said, “Oh, dear, I didn’t realize you were still here. I thought you’d gone.”
I didn’t want to go to school. Everything from last night was still bothering me too much. “I don’t feel good,” I said.
She put her hand on my forehead. “You aren’t hot,” she said.
“I feel like I’m getting a cold,” I said. “I think I’ll stay home.” I ate two peanut butter sandwiches on toast, which was all there was for breakfast, and then I went upstairs and lay on my bed and thought.
The whole thing had come to nothing. Mr. Herbst had the film and my camera. I figured he’d give the camera back, but he sure wouldn’t give the film back. He would burn it, and there would go my proof. I couldn’t possibly dare to go back out to the carpet factory to take more pictures. If I got caught out there one more time, they were bound to do something to me. I didn’t know what, but something.
Why hadn’t they arrested me last night? Why hadn’t they charged me? The answer was pretty clear. If they took me to court, it was bound to come out about the way the factory was polluting the river. So Mr. Herbst didn’t want to make a fuss over it. He just wanted to keep the whole thing quiet. He would destroy the film, and give me my camera back so I wouldn’t make a fuss about that either. And that would be the end of the whole thing.
I didn’t se
e how I could stand three more years of high school—three more years of no friends, and nobody talking to me except to say something snotty about Helen; three more years of knowing that everybody was looking down on me, of knowing that when I went into a store the owners were particularly keeping an eye on me all the time I was in there. And now Helen was gone, and I didn’t even have her to talk to. I missed her all right.
I wondered where she was and what she was doing. I hoped she wasn’t getting into some kind of trouble. All that money she had, had made me pretty suspicious. I just hoped she wasn’t dealing drugs. She could get into bad trouble for that.
I went along for three or four days to make myself forget it, and then one day when I was coming out of school and heading across the parking lot to get on the bus, a big Mercedes pulled up beside me. Mr. Herbst was driving. He opened the door on the passenger side. “Get in,” he said. He was used to giving orders, I could tell. The way he did it you just automatically did what he told you. So I got in and slammed the door. When I looked out the side window, there was a bunch of kids staring at me. They were pretty surprised to see trash like me getting into a car like that. I didn’t want to smile, because I wanted them to think it was a normal thing for me, but I couldn’t help it.
Mr. Herbst pulled out of the parking lot. “I think we need to have a talk, Harry,” he said. “Let’s go down to my office where we won’t be interrupted.” He drove through town and out along the road to the carpet factory. All the way he asked me questions about myself—how I was doing in school, what my hobbies were—and about our family and so forth. I didn’t trust him and I didn’t tell him any more than I had to, and finally we got to the carpet factory. He pulled into a parking space by the front door that had a little sign on it saying MR. HERBST. We got out, and I followed him into the front corridor past a desk where a receptionist sat answering the phone. Down at the end of the corridor there was a door with a glass panel in it. On the door was lettered FREDERICK J. HERBST, PRESIDENT. He was a biggie all right, and I was going to talk to him in his office. The whole thing puzzled me.
We went into the office. There was a big desk, a sofa, a big glass table with fancy magazines lying on it, a bookcase full of books, a thick blue carpet on the floor, and a couple of easy chairs. It was more like a living room than an office. I wondered if presidents of companies always had offices like that.
Mr. Herbst sat down behind the desk and told me to sit in one of the chairs. Then he leaned back in his chair with his hands behind his head and stared at me for a while. He did a lot of staring at people. I figured he did it to worry you. Finally he said, “I got that film developed, Harry. You weren’t taking pictures of owls.”
I didn’t say anything. There wasn’t anything I could say.
“Who put you up to this?” he said.
“Nobody,” I said. “I did it on my own.”
He shook his head. “No, you didn’t, Harry. No high school kid is going to start an investigation like this on his own.”
“Nobody put me up to it,” I said. I didn’t like being called a liar, and I was starting to get sore. “It was my own idea.”
He sat there with his hands behind his head staring at me for a while. Then he said, “Harry, you’d better tell me the truth. I can make life pretty tough for you. I have a lot of power in this town. If I tell those cops I want you booked, they’ll book you. We’ll get you for something. Trespassing, malicious mischief—something. We’ll put you down as incorrigible and send you off to a juvenile home for a couple of years. That’ll be on your record for the rest of your life.”
I didn’t know if he really could do it, or was just bluffing, but it scared me plenty anyway. “I told you the truth,” I said. “I can’t help it if you won’t believe me.”
He took his hands from behind his head, put them on the desk, and leaned forward, watching my face. “Did your dad put you up to it? Was it that?”
“Dad doesn’t know anything about it,” I said.
“Is he trying to blackmail me? Is that his game?”
“I told you, I did it on my own. Dad doesn’t know anything about it.”
“Harry, I’ve tried to be easy with you, but if you go on lying to me, I’m going to have to get tough.”
“I’m not lying,” I said.
“Yes, you are,” he said.
I jumped up. “Don’t call me a liar,” I shouted. “I never did anything wrong. You’re the one who’s doing wrong. You’re dumping stuff into the Timber River. I saw that stuff coming out of that pipe. You’re the one who’s doing wrong, not me.”
He leaned back in his chair again. “Okay,” he said. “Calm down. Let’s try to keep it on a friendly basis.” He reached into a drawer and took out my camera. “Here’s your camera.” He slid it across the desk, and I picked it up and stuck it in my jacket pocket. He took his wallet out. “I owe you for a roll of film,” he said. “Is ten bucks enough?”
“It was only three-fifty.”
He handed me the ten across the desk. “Keep it,” he said. “Call it even for the loan of the camera.”
I didn’t want to take the extra money, but I didn’t have any change, so I put the ten in my pocket. Then he picked up his phone, pressed a button, and said, “Get a driver to take Harry White home.” He got up, came around from behind his desk, and shook my hand. I didn’t want to do that, either, but there wasn’t any way out of it. “No hard feelings,” he said. “We’ll talk about it some other time. I sympathize with your viewpoint, but you’ve got to understand ours too.” He let go of my hand. “Go out to the receptionist. Somebody will take you home. And when you see your dad tonight, ask him to give me a call.”
TEN
I hated being pushed around that way. I hated being called a liar. I hated having him threaten to put me in jail and all the rest of it. He was the one who was breaking the law, not me. I’d seen that green stuff coming out of that pipe, even if I didn’t have the pictures to prove it. I was a witness. And I knew where the pipe was—I wouldn’t have any trouble finding it now. Suppose I went down to the newspaper and told them what I knew. They were bound to run a story about it, and then people in Albany would hear about it and send somebody out to investigate. I could show them where the pipe was, and in the end the people from Albany would make them stop the pollution. It might work after all. But should I do it? Maybe it would just get me in more trouble. Maybe I ought to forget the whole thing and just sweat out three more years of being trash. The more trouble I got into, the more I was likely to ruin my chances of getting into the air force.
That night, when Dad came in, I told him that Mr. Herbst wanted him to call. I didn’t say anything about going to his office or any of that. I just said that I’d bumped into him on the street after school.
Dad said, “I don’t like working for that rich slicker. He’s too smooth for me, with those two-hundred-dollar shoes and those hundred-dollar shirts. What did he want?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do his shoes really cost two hundred dollars?”
“What difference does it make to him what they cost?” Dad said. “He’s taking the money out of the hides of working people anyway.”
“Do you work for Mr. Herbst a lot?” I said.
Dad shrugged. “I got to make a living,” he said. He sat down and began taking off his shoes.
“I didn’t mean that,” he said. “I just wondered if you knew him.”
“Yeah, I know him,” Dad said. “I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. He’s slick.”
For the first time I began to think that maybe there was something to what Dad always said about the biggies taking it out of the hides of the workingman. Herbst was doing something wrong, and he was going to a lot of trouble to cover it up. That didn’t exactly mean that he was taking it out of anybody’s hide, except the ones who wanted to fish in the Timber River. But it did seem like he didn’t mind breaking the law and lying about it. Would he ever get caught? When the stars b
egan to fall would the sinners really be judged?
For a couple of days I thought about it. Was there any way Herbst could get me into trouble if I went to the editors of the Timber Falls Journal and told them what I’d seen? Could he go back now and get me for trespassing or something, or was it too late? He had a lot of power in town, he said, and I knew he was right, from the way the cops had let him decide what to do about me—letting him take my camera, which he had no right to, and all that. But what could he actually do to me?
I couldn’t figure it out, but it worried me, and I kept wondering if I ought to drop the whole thing. For a while I thought about sending the newspaper an anonymous letter. There wouldn’t be much use in that, though. In the first place, they wouldn’t know who it was who could show them where the pipe was. In the second place, I wouldn’t get any credit. Besides, Herbst was bound to know who had sent in the letter anyway.
The sensible thing, I knew, would be to drop the whole idea. But I didn’t want to; I was tired of being pushed around and called a liar. So in the end I decided I would do it. I would write a letter to the paper and sign my own name to it. It might be risky, but it was better than being pushed around.
The next day I bought some letter paper and envelopes at the drugstore, and went home and sat up in my room writing the letter. It took me a long time to get it right. I didn’t want to tell any lies about it, because if they caught me lying about part of it, they wouldn’t believe any of it. But I didn’t want to tell the whole truth, either—about how I’d started the whole thing to get people to respect me, or about being caught by the cops, and all of that. In the end I wrote:
To the Editor:
The carpet factory is deliberately polluting the Timber River. I know because I saw a green liquid coming out of a pipe in the riverbank near the factory. This is illegal, and somebody should tell the people at Albany about it.
Yours truly, Harry White.
When the Stars Begin to Fall Page 9