The Seventeenth Swap (9 page)

Eric could see that. He didn't know why he was asking these questions when they weren't really the ones he wanted answers to, but now he couldn't seem to stop. “I bet you could've been dairy foods manager at
Mulvaney's.
After Mr. Johnson died. Or produce manager! Instead of Marvin.”

His father smiled, mostly with his eyes, which dwelt warmly on Eric for a moment, and he seemed about to say something, but instead settled back in his chair and drank some coffee. Eric had hardly expected a reply. His dad knew his feelings on these subjects and had tried patiently to explain before, mentioning hassle, mentioning finding your niche and making your peace, saying he'd had enough ups and downs and backs and forths in his life and preferred it uneventful. Obviously he'd decided not to repeat himself.

Still wandering mentally among a scatter of facts that seemed to have no connection, Eric said, “But you did quit Mulvaney's once—when you went to work at the library. When you went to the University for library training.”

“Not the same thing. That was just moving on. To a lifelong career. Or so I thought.”

Eric glanced quickly at his father's expression, wary of the flat note that had come into his voice. Why am I giving him all this flak? he asked himself. I'm kind of nagging.

But now might be the chance to solve a mystery he'd never understood. “Dad?” he said. “How come you
never went back? To the library job? I mean—they laid everybody off, but then they got voted more money and people got their jobs again—”

“By that time I was working for Mulvaney,” Mr. Greene said quickly. He moved in his chair as if he found it uncomfortable. Even more abruptly, he added, “They didn't lay everybody off.” He glanced at his paper, then almost pleadingly at Eric. “It's all over long ago. You got a problem you want to talk about? Or—”

Or do I just want to nag, Eric finished to himself. “Not really,” he mumbled. “I just—got to wondering. Sorry.” He got up, went to the cupboard and got the cereal box and a bowl.

Obviously, the mystery wasn't going to be solved today, either. Or maybe ever, if it was up to Dad to explain. He didn't want to talk about it. Or just—
couldn't.

They didn't lay everybody off.
Was that an explanation? As he munched his cornflakes, Eric tried to imagine being laid off from—well, from Language Arts class, which was his favorite and the one he was best at. Say they had to change that hour to Independent Study because they couldn't pay the teacher. Only they didn't lay off
everybody.
Angel Anthony got to stay, and Debbie Clark and a couple others who always got A's on every single paper. They got to go to the teacher's house and have Language Arts there. But the rest were out in the cold. Okay. Then say the school got money again and the teacher came back, and the rest of the kids could come back if they wanted to. So—would they? Would
I
? Eric asked himself.. How would I feel by that time?

He found he couldn't answer for himself, because after all, Language Arts class was a lot different from a lifelong career, and anyway, how did he know how he'd feel? But he knew how some people would feel—Melinda Jones, for instance, or Willy. They'd get mad. They'd ask everybody in sight how come Angel Anthony got to stay in that class, and they didn't. And even if they knew—(Willy would; he always got C-minuses)—they'd be too proud to go back, or too sulky.

But, thought Eric, groping, but what if they
didn't
know why they'd been—well, weeded out.

That would be scary. It would hurt. It kind of hurt Eric right now, just thinking about it. What if you'd always thought Language Arts (or library work?) was your very best thing? Then you might never go back, because you couldn't risk being weeded out again when you least expected it. Instead you might stick forever to something you
knew
you could do. Do with both hands tied behind you. You might be bored but you'd be safe. Like Dad.

For just an instant Eric saw that vividly, like a landscape in a flash of lightning. Then it all went murky again and he wondered if he'd seen anything at all. He was tired of thinking about it anyhow. And tired of the cornflakes, which had gone all soggy.

“Guess I'll go out and walk around a little,” he told his dad, who studied him questioningly a moment, hesitated, then nodded and folded the paper another way.

Outside, it was more like June than early April. Eric unzipped his jacket and let it flap, wishing he'd left it behind. The firs all had little bright green tips on their branches, and the other trees showed a mist of
green caught in their bare black limbs. There were azaleas out—just since yesterday, it seemed like, though yesterday he hadn't really been looking. Too busy running all over the place swapping things and trying to climb Mount Everest without equipment.

What's more, thought Eric, suddenly kicking a fallen fir cone so hard it sailed clear across the street, I wish I was still doing that today! Instead of making my peace with this.

Restlessly he swerved and crossed the street after the fir cone, kicked it again and kept it going in a wrathful zigzag until all its stiff little pointy scales began flying off this way and that and there was nothing much left to kick. So. Now I've planted little fir trees all along the Fifth Street sidewalk, he told himself with a half-grumpy, half-amused glance behind him. Old Johnny Firseed. All I need is a fiddle in a green baize sack and a charcoal stove to mend pots and pans.

Pots and pans. Cholly.

Eric looked up from the sidewalk. Less than a block ahead, the dilapidated old house nestled under its huge maple tree like a frowsy chick under a swan—and Cholly never went anywhere on Sunday mornings. Eric swerved back across the street, trod down the sloping path, and stuck his head inside the basement doorway.

“Thought I knew that footstep,” Cholly remarked from the workbench, restoring a handful of nails to a coffee can and reaching for his teakettle. “Ready for your cuppa, are you?”

“Okay—if you're not busy.” Eric descended the two crumbling steps, dropped down on the hard old daybed, and almost at once got up again and began
wandering around, staring at this thing and that without taking much note of what he was seeing, while Cholly went through his tea-making routine and talked about the price of sugar and the trilliums blooming in the ravine and the raccoon he'd surprised that morning nosing around his garbage can.

“Really? A real raccoon?” said Eric, momentarily diverted.

“A real fat rascal, a-wearing his robber mask. I sent him packing, let me tell you. Else he'd bring all his cousins and his uncles and his old maiden ahn-ties tomorrow. You mean you never spotted any raccoon-robbers down around that flat of yours?”

“No, never,” Eric answered. Cholly had more to say about it, but Eric's gaze had fixed on the Old English Stone Ginger Beer bottle and his thoughts moved on. At the next pause he said, “I went to that shop the other day, that Hobbyhorse place you told me about.”

“Did you now! And how did you get on with Maggie Teggly?”

“Fine.” Eric felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth in spite of everything.

“Ah. Thought you might. Which cup you want, son, the plain or the fancy?”

“Fancy.” Eric accepted his tea in a cup with a gilded rim but only half a handle, and sipped it gingerly. He didn't really care for tea, but had never found a way to tell Cholly so. “I saw the old telephone, and the naked baby pictures and all. And she showed me an old, old wind-up beetle made all of metal—not a bit of plastic on it. It still worked, too.”

Cholly chuckled, set his tea mug on the workbench,
and himself on the old carpet-covered stool in front of it. “I'll have to tell me artist friend, Robert Sparrow. He likes wind-ups.”

“He collects them?” demanded Eric, suddenly attentive.

“Well, not to say collects. He likes to draw 'em. Don't ask me why, but he'd ruther make a pitcher of them little gadgets than of a nice buncha flowers or a tree or something. He's a got a shelf full of the things—old 'uns, new 'uns, in-between. He'd show 'em to you, was you to stop in there one day. Nice chap. Bit odd, but you got to make allowances for a artist. Lives in Diamond Street, or back from it, alongside that Garden Shop yard where they keep all them little trees in pots. Sparrow's place used to be somebody's garage—maybe still is. But he lives up above.”

“Oh—that place. Is it painted yellow? With a little sign on the side?” said Eric, all the while telling himself to forget it, he wasn't going there anyhow, never mind if Robert Sparrow liked wind-ups, he probably wouldn't have a thing to swap, and besides that was all over.

“That's the place. You stop in. Tell 'im I sent you to see all them little scoot-arounds. Care to have that cup freshed up?”

“No, thank you,” Eric said hastily. “Cholly—how'd Maggie Teggly ever get started in a shop like that? It seems such a kind of—kind of funny—”

“Don't it? I know what you're sayin'. A real odd business for a young lady—all them old bits and pieces like I use meself. When here we are in this ee-lectronic age. I don't rightly know how she started. But I'll tell you one thing—that shop's what they call a shoe-string
operation. Yep.” Cholly wagged his bushy head and took a long, expressive slurp of tea. “Hate to say it, but betwixt you and me, I look to see her go broke one o' these days. She can't hardly help it. Too bad. Nice young lady. But impractical, you know. She just don't face facts.”

That had an astonishingly familiar ring. Eric examined Cholly all over again, feeling he couldn't quite have seen him before. But there he sat, looking exactly like himself and as different from Dad as anybody could look—yet saying the very same things. Unless I misunderstood, Eric thought. Cautiously, he asked, “You mean—Maggie's trying to climb Mount Everest without equipment?”

Cholly choked on his tea, splashed the workbench setting the mug down, and groped for the old rag he used to clean his tools, coughing into it while turning an alarming crimson—from choking or laughing Eric couldn't tell. As the color faded back into his normal rosy tan, he mopped tea droplets from his whiskers and the worktable with fine impartiality, shoulders shaking and eyes glistening with amusement. “Oh, me, oh, my! Sorry, son. Just hit me funny bone whilst I was swallerin'. ‘Tryin' to climb Mount Everest . . .' Now, that's a good 'un! I couldn'ta said it better meself.”

“I didn't make it up,” muttered Eric. “My dad says it all the time.”

“Does he, now. Well, son, he's got his head screwed on. Yessir. You mind what he says—it'll be worth hearin'. I'll wager he knows a thing or two.”

Eric nodded reluctantly. But he didn't like the turn this conversation was taking. Not that he'd come here expecting anything in particular . . . he guessed . . .
but he'd have thought Cholly would have given him exactly the opposite advice.

Because—well,
look
at him, he told himself indignantly. Look at this place he lives—and I bet he lives on nearly nothing—but he
likes
it this way. He likes to be
free,
not—not safe and bored. He likes adventure! When he wants to move on, he just goes! Never mind finding his niche. Never mind making his peace, and having enough of ups and downs and hassle. Never mind . . .

“And I'll tell you another somethin' that's worth hearin',” Cholly went on—solemn now, and tossing the rag back on its shelf with an impressive gesture. “You can say what you like about gettin' up in the world. But what most folks are clawin' each other aside for, why it a'nt worth havin'. Success! Bein' boss of somethin'! Lot of cars and clothes nobody needs! Why, you can spend your life just fightin', and get nothin' but a heart attack! Not for me, nossir. I like my peace and quiet.” Cholly pointed a work-grimed finger at Eric. “You take a lot of folks, they'll tell you I'm a loser. Oh, I've heard 'em! I see it in their face. But I'm no loser. I'm a winner! I got it made.”

Again, Eric nodded. This time it was because he didn't trust himself to speak. It was a terribly mixed-up morning, because instead of being angry, now he felt like crying. And he didn't exactly know the
why
of either one.

A few minutes later he murmured something about homework, thanked Cholly for the tea, and after more or less promising to call on Robert Sparrow one day soon to see all them scoot-arounds—though he doubted he would ever do so—he trudged up the two steps out
of the basement dimness and back to the street. The morning was still bright with spring, the maple tree still glorious with all its coppery little leaves unfurling, daffodils still made patches of sunshine everywhere. But Eric's mood was basement-gloomy—even worse than before, he realized, half-bewildered, half-resentful. He was not accustomed to moods, being mostly an even-keel sort of boy, like a ship with a gyroscope built in, but today seemed full of tossing emotions, with himself pitching helplessly about on them, too disoriented to do much of anything but wish it would stop.

He turned on Governor Street and wandered on toward the center of town, tugged by a need he didn't identify until he found himself standing in Long Alley outside the Hobbyhorse Shop—looking straight at the “Closed” sign hanging crooked inside the glass-paneled door. Of course. Sunday morning. Why couldn't he use his head, he asked himself crossly, with his heart dropping like a stone—like an anchor. He wanted to moor right
here
for a while, Sunday morning or not; his ship didn't want to move on. Against all reason and common sense he peered through the glass panel, hands cupped beside his eyes to cut the reflection. He was rewarded by a glimpse of Maggie Teggly in person, briskly sweeping her way—in a quick, uneven rhythm—across the doorway of the farthest room.