M
onroe had been home from his grandparents’ for only a week when, much to Bobby’s regret, September came rolling around again and, as it must, school started. But for his sister, this year was a completely different story. Anna Lee was now a senior in high school, with all the rights and privileges the name implies. Seniors were a special breed apart. Unlike the rest of the students, who were still having to slug through the long boring days, every minute of their school year was filled with football games, excitement, pep rallies, dances, romances, and anticipation. They don’t know it yet but for many it would be the happiest year of their lives.
But Bobby was still in sixth grade. Right now all he had to look forward to was Halloween and scaring mean Old Man Henderson.
Several weeks into October, Dorothy opened her Monday morning broadcast with “Good morning, everybody. Oh, did you all see that beautiful harvest moon last night? I just love it this time of year, when, as Mr. James Whitcomb Riley says, the frost is on the pumpkin . . . and I have some good news this morning. Elmwood Springs finally won a football game, thanks to young Mr. Macky Warren kicking the ball and saving the day. In fact, making the day. So hooray for us. Anna Lee and her crowd are having their own wiener and marshmallow roast out at the lake this Friday and Doc and I are chaperones, so if I can get through this month without gaining twenty pounds I’ll be lucky. Later on, Beatrice, our Little Blind Songbird, will be singing ‘In the Shadow of the Whispering Pines’ for you, but meanwhile a seasonal message from Dr. Orr, our dentist here in Elmwood Springs. He writes, ‘October is the month for candied apples, taffy apples, and parties where bobbing for apples is often featured. I strongly advise denture wearers to abstain from these foods and activities.’ Thank you, Dr. Orr, for that reminder. Of course, we all remember last year when Poor Tot Whooten lost a perfectly good front tooth eating a candied apple at the state fair. Personally I would just as soon take a bite out of the dining room table than to eat one of those things. And what else do I have?
“Oh, here it is. Doc said to remind you that all the money collected at the Lions Club Haunted House this year is going to the Crippled Children’s hospital, so be sure to come by. But he says all the people with bad hearts should stay home, so it sounds like it’s going to be another scary one. You can be sure I won’t be going in. I’ll just give my nickel at the door and go on home, thank you. Last year Bobby drug me through that thing and it nearly scared me to death. Things jumping out at you from every which way but for those of you who enjoy having the wits scared out of you, take it from me, the Lions do a good job at it. Mother Smith says she will be in the haunted house this year but she won’t say doing what.”
On October thirty-first at 5:30, Bobby, dressed as Abraham Lincoln, was standing around in his black suit and the two-foot-tall black stovepipe hat Jimmy had made him out of cardboard. He was busy eating big orange-colored marshmallow peanuts from a bowl on the entrance hall table when his mother came out of the kitchen and caught him. “Bobby, stop that! That’s not for you. That’s for my trick-or-treaters.”
He looked at her indignantly. “But I
am
a trick-or-treater.”
“You know what I mean.” She glanced down in the other bowl on the table and he took off in a shot. She would really be mad when she saw he had bitten all the white tips off the candy corn. He was right. He heard a loud “BOBBY!” but he was out the back door, on his way over to Monroe’s with a sack. Inside the sack were two large pieces of cardboard shaped like gorilla feet, or what he thought looked like gorilla feet, which he had cut out of the side of a box. Doc should have known something was up when Monroe had started coming into the drugstore every other day buying large economy-size containers of baby powder.
Around midnight, as soon as they knew Old Man Henderson was in bed, Monroe and Bobby did what they had been planning for weeks, then ran home to Monroe’s house, where Bobby was to spend the night. The next morning Old Man Henderson was in for a shock—and got one. His entire front porch was completely covered in white powder, smooth except for the paw prints of a few cats and the enormous footprints of what must have been a giant monster. Old Man Henderson never did figure out just what had walked across his front porch that night—but for the next few months he kept his shotgun by the door in case it came back.
Christmas came and went with a hundred more socks, endless underwear, again not one genuine Jungle Jim pith helmet, but there was snow on December twenty-eighth. That was something, at least. On New Year’s Eve, James Whooten got drunk and fell down the back stairs of the VFW hall and broke both his elbows and lost his job as a house painter. To make ends meet Tot had to start doing shampoos and sets in her kitchen. “Poor Tot, now she has to support the entire family,” they all said, and everyone went to her to get their hair done, even if they did not need it. Tot had been to beauty school before she married and figured it was the only thing she was good at. Unfortunately, she was wrong. Mother Smith and a number of gray-haired ladies had come home from their appointment with bright purple hair, but none complained, and they went back anyway. It was a small price to pay to help out a friend.
After an unusually cold February and March, spring finally decided to come back again and all of April and May were busy months at the Smith house. As the time drew near for Anna Lee’s graduation, there was constant shopping for clothes to wear to dances and parties and the senior prom. Among the seniors themselves there was the drama of wondering who would be voted what in the “Who’s Who” section of the senior yearbook, the hysteria when the school rings arrived and they had a blue stone instead of the red one they’d ordered and they had to be sent back. Norma and Macky were voted “Cutest Couple,” Patsy Marie tied with Mary Esther Lockett for “Smartest Girl,” and Anna Lee was “Class Beauty.” Dixie Cahill had her spring tap and twirl recital and the high school graduation went off without a hitch. Dorothy and Doc gave Anna Lee a Lady Bulova watch, Mother Smith and Jimmy both gave her money, and Bobby, following a suggestion from his mother, bought her a bottle of White Shoulders perfume with his paper route money. The last day of school came and, as always, Bobby was eternally grateful. But for Anna Lee, after all the excitement and fun of graduation had died down and she had time to think, she started the summer in a somewhat sad and melancholy mood. It dawned on her that her life as she had known it for the past twelve years would never be the same.
On the other hand, Bobby worried that his life would always be the same.
The first warm Sunday after school let out, while everyone else was at church, Bobby rode his bicycle out to the water tower with his pockets stuffed with red balloons and string, determined that today would be the time he would climb all the way to the top and do the deed. Ever since the time he had climbed it with Monroe, he had been living with a terrible secret that even Monroe did not know. Nobody knew. He was scared to go back up. Not only that: Now he was scared of being scared. He had ridden out there at least a dozen times determined to climb it, and each time he had failed. But today, he vowed, would be different. Today he would just go right to the top.
But it wasn’t. It was just like all the other times. He stood at the bottom, trying with all his might to muster the courage to go back up, but no matter how hard he tried he just could not do it. The minute he put one foot on the ladder his heart would start to pound and he’d break out in a cold sweat and could not go any farther. After trying for more than an hour, he gave up and rode back home, defeated and humiliated again. He began to fear the one thing in the world that terrified boys the most. He was afraid that down deep he was a coward. Maybe Luther Griggs was right: Maybe he was a sissy.
After each defeat he worried that people would be able to tell just by looking at him. But the farther away from the tower he got, the better he felt. When he got back to town and rode past the barbershop and the theater and saw people he knew, his defeat began to fade a little. Dixie Cahill came out of the drugstore and waved at him. He waved back. He began to feel more relieved. People were not looking at him funny. Nobody knew. Next time, he vowed. He would do it next time. Besides, he could not really be a coward; he had too much to do. He had to fly planes, sail the ocean, and ride in rodeos, save girls, beat up bullies. He had to pitch winning games and make touchdowns, round up cattle and command spaceships to Mars. By the time he reached home he had convinced himself that it could not possibly be true: He was not a coward.
But not quite persuasively enough, because a few nights later he had the same old dream. The one where he was climbing up the tower and the rungs of the ladder started to drop off one by one and he fell. Each time he would wake up with a start just before he hit the ground.
He started to hate that water tower.
The Salesman
J
ULY TURNED OUT
to be hot and dry that year and by ten o’clock in the morning it was already boiling hot, without a cloud in the sky. That day the young man in the black Plymouth was driving about fifteen miles outside of town when he spotted a small cloud of dust moving way off in a distant field. As he got closer and slowed down he saw that the dust cloud was exactly what he’d suspected. A lone man in overalls and a straw hat was plowing behind a two-mule team. The young man glanced at his watch. He had time. He turned around and parked on the side of the road.
He figured he might as well try and do a little business. He looked at the mailbox on the post and read the name printed in white paint on the side.
He got out and climbed over the fence and headed out toward the man plowing. When the farmer looked up and saw him coming, he stopped his mules. “Whoa. Whoa.”
The younger man knew to immediately put a big smile on his face and wave to let him know he was friendly and not from the government or the bank. He took no chances; from his past experience he knew that, depending on their situation, farmers would sometimes call the dogs on them or shoot at them. As he got closer he called out, “Mr. Shimfissle?”
The farmer nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said slowly and waited to see what the caller wanted.
As he reached the farmer he said, “How are you doing today? It’s a hot one, ain’t it?” and took a business card out of his shirt pocket and handed it to him. He then walked over and patted one of the mules on the hindquarters. “Hey, boy . . . you’re a big son of a gun, ain’t you,” he said while the farmer read his card. It introduced him as a salesman for the Allis-Chalmers tractor company. The farmer was not surprised. This was not the first tractor salesman who had stopped by trying to sell him something and he wouldn’t be the last but to be cordial he asked, “What can I do for you today?”
“Not a thing. I was passing by on my way to Elmwood Springs when I saw you out here and I wondered if it would be all right if I was to walk along with you for a bit?”
The farmer, who was not interested in buying a tractor, knew what was coming but said, “Nope, come right ahead if you want to.”
“Thanks, I sure appreciate it,” the salesman said, and sat down and quickly took off his shoes and socks and rolled up his pants legs. As they walked along, he said, “To tell you the truth, Mr. Shimfissle, I haven’t seen one of these old plows since I was a kid. I spent many a day behind one of these things. My daddy had about twenty-five acres outside of Knoxville but we lost all of it to the TVA—it’s all under water now.”
Shimfissle shook his head in sympathy. He knew what losing your land meant to a farmer. After they had walked and plowed for a while and after they had discussed the price of corn, the weather, and the best time to plant which crop, the salesman said, “Do you think I could try my hand at it for a minute . . . just to see if I remember how?”
The farmer stopped the team again with a “Whoa” and handed him the reins. “Here you go. But don’t be afraid to prod them a bit. They can be as stubborn as hell.”
The salesman took the reins and stepped behind the yoke, gave a whistle, a few clucks, and after a small tap on their backsides, off they went just as lively as they had been at 5:30 that morning. They even picked up their pace as he talked to them like old friends.
Shimfissle was impressed. This was not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill tractor salesman that didn’t know a cornrow from a teakettle. This boy was a farmer. After about ten minutes the younger man slowed them down and stopped. “I sure do thank you, Mr. Shimfissle. It felt so good to get hold of one of these things again I hate to quit.”
“I hate to have you quit. I was enjoying the rest. Anytime you get the urge to plow, come on back.”
“Yessir, thank you, I will. You’ve got yourself a couple of fine mules. You just don’t see them much anymore . . . everybody’s in a hurry, everybody wants to speed up nowadays.”
The farmer took the reins back. “Well, enjoyed talking to you.”
“Same here.” The salesman had to slap some dust off himself. “I’m a mess, ain’t I? You wouldn’t have a place where I could wash up a bit, would you? I’ve got a date with a lady in town and I better not show up looking like this.”
“Sure, go on in the house and tell the wife I sent you. She’ll fix you up.”
“Much obliged.” He picked up his shoes and socks and headed toward the white farmhouse. Will Shimfissle continued on, somehow sorry that the Allis-Chalmers man had not even tried to sell him a tractor.
In fact, he had not even mentioned it once. For that very reason, Will made a note to himself: If he ever was in the market for a tractor, this is the guy he would buy it from.
When the salesman reached the house he stamped off as much dust as he could, then knocked on the back door. He could hear the radio being turned off and a few seconds later a large woman in a cotton housedress came to the door.