Walking up to talk to Harry takes a little planning. If you’re too quiet, he jumps at the first word, and then it’s hard to get his attention. I sang a line from the current popular song, coughed, and did a little dance step as I approached. Harry had tears of laughter in his eyes and was doubled over but I didn’t mind, as long as I could get his attention.
“Harry, the word is out Lamont is going to get Fast Freddie. I know you can’t say anything about it, but just suppose Fast Freddie didn’t take the fifty?”
After a decent pause to allow Harry to get serious, I continued.
“Fifty dollars is hardly worth hurting a man for.” (I didn’t want to come out and say “killing.”) “Especially if the man didn’t do it.”
Harry knew the whole town had Fast Freddie tried and convicted. He said, “If Fast Freddie didn’t do it, who did? Mollie? Miss Mary? You, Alfred? You grab that fifty?”
“Harry, you know I wouldn’t take it. Mollie is mean, but I don’t think she would. I have a plan that may help you be sure if Fast Freddie took the fifty, and if we can pin him down on it, we can make him pay it back rather than... hurt him.”
I proceeded to show what kind of trouble Lamont would make for himself, with this being a small town and all, and how things would be different here than in the big cities where he works. I revealed my plan. Talk Lamont into giving another fifty dollar bill for the collection to use as “bait” money. I would arrange with the deacon to get the fifty back if he asked for it. The deacon could be trusted to keep it quiet, and we could use his eyes in order to catch the thief. They all asked the same question. “You don’t really think the thief will try the same thing twice, knowing we’ll all be watching like hawks, do you?” I assured them a little confusion would break out and that’s probably when the thief would make the move. I did not elaborate.
The next first Sunday arrived and we were prepared to lay the trap for sticky fingers. Reverend Jones opened the service, starting slowly as usual, preparing to gradually build the emotions until they reached a frenzy. Already his white shirt was a dull gray from perspiration. The happy spiritual began with a clap-dah, clap-dah, clap-dah, and Fast Freddie, seated in front of me, began wiggling his shoulders and glancing back at Miss Mary as usual. The deacon brought the basket down to our row with the fifty dollar bill planted by Harry. I had to time the disturbance just right. Now! Mollie jumped up with a bloodcurdling scream and commenced what looked like an Indian rain dance. Fast Freddie, who had been glancing over his left shoulder waiting for his cue from Miss Mary, was caught unprepared for Mollie’s scream behind his right shoulder and sat paralyzed with shock. Suspects one and two accounted for so far. I caught a movement to my left and dropped to my knees as Miss Mary’s fat arm whiffed over my head, which popped up like a periscope swiveling to survey the action. Mollie still dancing and screaming, Fast Freddie still staring paralyzed. Miss Mary’s arm whipped back, my head ducking under and looking up at the blur of fingers racing by... without the fifty. Up periscope, swivel, Mollie still dancing and screaming, Miss Mary sitting still and rolling her eyes at Mollie, remembering their confrontation and knowing Mollie could not be sincere, she had to be faking it. Fast Freddie was still paralyzed. The deacon stood at the end of the row with eyes as big as saucers, even bigger than the last time. I eased back into my seat, craning my neck to see the collection basket, and was shocked to see not one but two fifty dollar bills. Suddenly it was quite clear. Miss Mary’s words back at her store, “The world has come to beg, borrow, or steal.” I wonder if she considered herself borrowing or stealing the fifty. At least she paid it back.
Miss Mary is going to get awfully upset when she gets my anonymous letter explaining that her tricky business was observed and so don’t try it again. She’ll end up spending another seventy-five dollars that she tried to collect from my parents for doctor bills when Mollie upset her, and she is going to be a little embarrassed at showing her face around town for a while.
Lamont won’t have to deal with Fast Freddie. Fast Freddie will go on being Fast Freddie, that’s a fact. Mollie? Well, ever since Mollie did her scream and dance, people around town have looked at her in a different light. They swear she has religion and is a new person. Mollie is getting more attention than she has all her life, and for the first time has a little self-esteem. She carries herself like a little lady. And best of all, she never told anyone that on one particular Sunday, timing it just right, I threw my frog right into her lap.
A Glass Act
by Lyn Peters
The day was hot, too hot to find comfort anywhere but skinny-dipping in Carter’s Creek, or lying in the shade of a big old oak. It was too hot to be expected to sit quietly in that stuffy little box of a room and concentrate on sums and such. But Miss Abigail Hornfellow stood before us, dressed in her customary long-sleeved black dress and heavy black stockings, expecting us to do just that, concentrate.
Jimmy Bufort, a heavyset boy with the great misfortune of being one of Miss Homfellow’s least favorite students of all time, was having an especially hard time that day coming up with the correct answer to a problem he’d been told to solve.
“Concentrate, Mr. Bufort,” Miss Hornfellow demanded, when he’d stammered out an incorrect answer. “Concentrate!”
Jimmy tried to oblige. Straining and sweating, he bent over his paper and laboriously worked through the problem again. With obvious relief, he supplied an answer, different from the first, believing it to be correct. It was not. Miss Hornfellow promptly informed him that he was either not trying hard enough, or he was indeed as stupid as she suspected. Miss Hornfellow said she was rather inclined to believe the latter.
We all felt bad for Jimmy, he was trying so hard and Miss Horn-fellow and the heat were not making things any easier for him.
“Again, Mr. Bufort,” she demanded, “you shall do the sums again and again until you give me the correct response. In the meantime, your classmates will suffer at your hand, no one will be allowed to move, until you have supplied us with the correct answer. If, Mr. Bufort, that means your classmates will be forced to miss their recess period, they will have you to thank.”
Jimmy bent closer to his paper, trying to hide his tears of shame and frustration. Sums had always been dreadfully difficult for him. Try as he might to keep the figures in neat, manageable rows, they just wouldn’t stay that way. A fourteen would somehow turn itself around into a forty-one, his columns would stray and cause him confusion, his papers would always turn into jumbled messes. Poor Jimmy, we all tried to help him out, after school and during recess, tried to make things easier on him. But Jimmy just couldn’t catch on no matter what we did. It wasn’t his fault, he couldn’t help it. Miss Hornfellow didn’t understand Jimmy’s dilemma; she believed he was too lazy to try. To make matters worse, counting on fingers was not allowed in class. Miss Hornfellow believed anyone who’d reached the age of twelve should surely be capable of doing simple additions and subtractions in their heads and not need the assistance of their fingers. A lot of us had trouble with sums and, in spite of what she said, needed that little extra help from our fingers. Most of us had been caught at some point during that year, using our fingers to count, and had received a sharp rap on the knuckles with the long, stiff ruler she always carried with her. Jimmy got hit more than the rest of us that year, most every day as a matter of fact. Things were already going so badly for him on that day in June that Jimmy didn’t want to make matters worse by counting on his fingers. That added to his troubles, though, because he wasn’t even coming close to the right answer.