Tom Gunnarson called to his wife from the front door. She called back from the nursery, told him to try to get home early enough for a good night’s rest. Then he was gone. Rolf sat in the kitchen. Alone, he thought, again. He pushed his chair back from the table and, without a word to his mother, went out the back door.
He was getting his bike out of the garage, when Rita came up. She was just Rolf’s age—in fact, they had grown up together, but now she looked to him like a stranger.
“Hi,” she said.
“Hi,” he answered, busy rolling his bike out.
“Say, he was neat on television, last night,” she said.
“Who?” he grunted, without looking at her.
“Your dad!” she looked surprised. “Didn’t you watch him on TV last night? We saw him on the later news. And they had the same thing on again this morning, on the network show. Everybody in the country must have seen him this morning.”
“Big deal,” said Rolf.
“What d’you mean—big deal?” She stared at him.
“Big deal,” he insisted. “You know what’s important in the world today? Ecology, that’s what. But you think you’d see anyone on the tube because he’s doing work in ecology? But anybody connected with a space launch—that’s neeaat.” He drawled out the last word, sarcastically.
“Rolf, you—” She almost exploded. He looked at her, then. Rita Amaro was a happy girl, always smiling, her teeth flashing brightly against the dark tan of her skin. Rolf had decided secretly, last term in school after they had more or less gotten out of touch with each other, that she really was a pretty girl. When she grew up, she’d probably be beautiful enough to be a movie star or a stewardess, or something like that—and forget she had ever known anyone like him. Right now she looked ready to lose her temper. But she did not.
“He’s your father, Rolf!” she said. “I’d think you’d be proud. Man, you’re weird!”
“He doesn’t know anything about ecology,” muttered Rolf. “What’s more, he doesn’t care. He’s just an engineer.”
She opened her mouth and this time he did brace himself for an explosion, but instead, she closed her mouth again.
“Rolf,” she said, almost gently. “You’re… I don’t know what—”
“Weird,” Rolf got up on his bike and pushed off. “That’s what I am. Weird. And my father’s famous. Big deal!”
He left her standing in the driveway, looking after him as if she was still half-mad, half-something to which he could not put a name.
Shep appeared from somewhere as Rolf pedaled down the street toward the center of town, and raced alongside the bike. The morning sun wasn’t too high yet; the day was still cool. A good breeze was blowing. Rolf wanted to get to the hardware store just as they were opening up. But he had to stop at the bank first.
There was a big cherrypicker crane standing in front of the hardware store, and the hard-hatted electrician up in the cab was yelling down to his assistant on the truck:
“I tell ya I can’t find nothin’ wrong with it! Whoever called in and said this lamp was out must’ve been kiddin’!”
“It was the cops called in,” his helper yelled back.
The electrician shook his head. “Half the burglar alarms in town on the fritz and what’re the fuzz doin’? Sendin’ in phony complaints about street lamps!”
Rolf tried not to grin as he leaned his bike against the store front and walked in. Shep settled down on his belly beside the bike.
The pile of material was still on the back counter, beside the cash register. One of the young salesboys had just spotted it, and was standing there looking puzzled.
Rolf hurried back to him. “Uh, that’s my stuff,” he said. “I was in here yesterday just as they were closing up, and I didn’t have enough money to buy all that stuff, so I asked the man to leave it there so I could pick it up this morning.”
The salesboy frowned. He looked at the pile of electronic components, then at Rolf, then at the pile again.
“I was here last night, and I helped clean up after we closed shop. I don’t remember…” Then, with a shrug, he said, “Well, whatever. I’ll ring it up for you.”
It came to exactly $13.13, which didn’t leave much in Rolf’s savings account.
Shaking his head unhappily at the thought of how long it had taken him to save that money, Rolf stashed the paper bag on his bike’s rattrap and pushed on for Playalinda Beach.
“Come on, Shep,” he called. “I want to see what they’re going to do with this stuff.”
5
As he pedaled out toward the Playalinda Beach area and the Gremlin Hollow, Rolf heard Shep mumbling under his breath while the dog trotted alongside the bike.
“What’s the matter now?” Rolf asked.
“Your manners,” answered Mr. Sheperton. “An absolute disgrace. The way you treated that girl…”
“Who? Rita?”
“You know very well that I mean Rita. You were shockingly rude to her.”
Rolf felt a twinge of guilt, but he said nothing. With a shake of his head, he said, “Ahh… who cares?”
“You should,” Mr. Sheperton replied. “And you do, I know. You can’t hide your feelings from me, Rolf. You like her very much. She’s the one you were showing off for when you took that fall off the high board—”
Rolf’s bad leg ached suddenly at the memory of it. “I wasn’t showing off!” he growled. But both he and the dog knew he didn’t mean it.
Mr. Sheperton kept grumbling as Rolf pedaled along the highway.
“Uh, Shep—I mean, Mr. Sheperton,” Rolf said after a few minutes of hard pumping up a small rise in the road. “Don’t say anything to the gremlins about me and Rita, will you? They don’t have to know that she was even around when I hurt my leg.”
Shep snorted. “It’s a bit late to keep the matter secret, with that trickster Baneen riding around on your handlebars all this time.”
“Baneen? Handlebars?” Rolf blinked.
Something like a small noiseless explosion popped in front of him and Baneen was suddenly smiling up at him. Just as Shep had said, the gremlin was perched on the right handlebar of Rolf’s bike.
“Well, well, well, well!” cried Baneen cheerfully. “And a beautiful day it is, to be sure. Ah now, and why would you be wanting to keep the fact of your friendship with such a fine young lady a secret, lad?”
“Never mind,” snapped Rolf, recovering from his surprise. “What about you? Where did you come from? And how come you’re here, anyway?”
“Why it’s pure chance, pure chance—and just a mite of worry mixed in,” said Baneen. “We gremlins having the second sight and all, it was a bit of a blow to me when I chanced to look in on you this morning and found you hadn’t got the wee things we asked you to pick up for us. Ah, what will we do now, poor, helpless gremlins that we are—I asked myself? Lugh must hear of this, I said; and I went to find him. But before I did indeed find him, I changed my mind. It’s a terrible thing, the wrath of mighty Lugh—”
“Poor, helpless gremlin that he is, of course,” sneered Shep.
“Ah, don’t be twisting my words now, don’t,” said Baneen. “I thought of the wrath of Lugh and I thought of the lad, here, and I thought it would do no harm to speak to Rolf first. So I made a small spell in a twinkling to bring me to you—and here now, I find you have the little things after all.”
“That’s right,” said Rolf. “They’re on the back of my bike, there.”
“So indeed I see,” said Baneen, casting a bright inquisitive glance past Rolf’s elbow to the brown paper bag pinned in the bike’s rattrap. He switched his gaze to the scrub grass and bushes beside the road. “You can turn off here, lad.”