John D. MacDonald
Looie Follows Me
I remember that it promised to be a terrible summer. I had squeaked through the fifth grade and I was going to be eleven in July and I had hoped that on my eleventh birthday my parents would come to visit me at Camp Wahmbahmoo, bearing gifts.
It was our third year in the big house twelve miles from town. Dad called it “a nice commuting distance” in summer and “too rugged for a dog team” in winter.
One of the main reasons for my wanting to go to Wahmbahmoo was on account of the Branton twins, Kim and Cam, who lived a couple of hundred yards down the road. I knew that if they went for two months and I didn’t go at all, they’d make my life miserable all winter yapping about the good old days at the camp. They were twelve years old, and Dad said he could never look at them without wondering when they’d be the right size for a harness and bit. The second reason was that if I stayed home all summer, Looie, the five-year-old kid sister, would tag around after me all day with her hand in her mouth. Her real name is Louella — but Looie suited her better when she was five.
The big discussion came in May. I was called into the living room and told to sit down. While Dad took off his glasses and stowed them in his coat pocket, I made a quick review of recent misdemeanors and couldn’t decide which one to think up a defense for.
“Jimmy, your mother and I have been discussing the question of camp for you this summer,” Dad announced.
I dropped defensive plans and went on the offensive. “I can hardly wait to go,” I said.
Dad coughed and looked appealingly at Mother. “The fact of the matter is, Jimmy, we feel you’re a little young. We think you should wait one more year.”
Then they told me that I would have fun during the two weeks at the shore and I made a low-voiced comment about a hotel full of old ladies — and besides the Branton twins were going and I played with them and how did that make me too young?
And so after I lost the discussion, I had nothing to look forward to but mooching around our childless neighborhood all summer with the clop-clop of Looie’s feet behind me. The folks had been pretty mysterious about something nice that was going to happen during the summer, but I had a heavy suspicion about anything they called “nice.” They even called sending me to Syracuse to visit Aunt Kate “nice.” And I was prepared to resist going to Aunt Kate’s to my dying breath.
The mysterious “nice” thing arrived on the fifth of July. Its name was Johnny Wotnack and it came from New York City. It climbed out of Mrs. Turner’s blue sedan and it stood in our driveway and stared suspiciously around at the big yard, the oaks, and the orchard on the hill behind the house.
Dad had stayed home from the office that day. He started out and so did I, but just as I got to the door, Mother grabbed my arm and hauled me back and said, “Now wait a minute, Jimmy. That little boy is going to stay with us for a few weeks. You are going to share everything with him. One of the social agencies tries to place city children in the country for the summer. And we agreed to take this boy in here for a while and make him feel at home. So you be nice to him. Understand?”
“Why did he come here?”
“For fresh air and sunshine and good food so he can be healthy.”
“He looks plenty rugged to me.”
Johnny Wotnack had a small black shiny suitcase. Dad spoke to Mrs. Turner and she waved to Mother and drove off. Dad picked up the suitcase and said, “Glad you could come, Johnny. This is my son, Jimmy. And his mother. And the little girl is Looie.”
“Please to meet you,” Johnny said politely enough. He was sort of thin, but his face had a seamed, grayish look like a midget I saw once at the side show. His hands were huge, with big blocky knuckles on them.
Johnny gave me one cool glance. “Hi, kid,” he said.
“Hi,” I said.
His hair was cropped short, and he wore blue jeans and a white sweat shirt. Dad took him upstairs right to my room, went inside and pointed to the extra twin bed and said, “You’ll bunk in here with Jimmy, Johnny.”
For the first time I thought the pictures that I had cut out and taped to my walls looked sort of childish. I wished I had known about him so I could have taken them down. Johnny slowly surveyed the room. “This’ll do okay,” he said.
Mother went over to him and gently pulled his ear forward as though she was lifting a rock under which she expected to find a bug. Johnny snatched his head away. “What’s the gag?” he demanded.
Mother gave her telephone laugh. “Why, I just wondered how dirty you got on the trip. Those trains are a fright. I’ll start hot water running in the tub.”
She hurried out of the room. Johnny said weakly, “Wait a minute, lady.” But she was already gone. In a few seconds we could hear the heavy roar of water filling the tub.
The three of us stood there, sort of embarrassed. Dad said, “Well, Johnny, make yourself at home.” He went on downstairs, leaving me there with this Johnny. Looie was with Mother.
Johnny sat on the edge of his bed. He kicked at the suitcase with his sneaker. I looked at him with fascination. There were two deep scars on the back of his right hand and one finger was crooked. He was the toughest-looking kid I’d ever seen. It seemed somehow to be an insult that Mother should shove him into a bathtub the first minute.
I said, “It happens to me too. The baths, I mean. Until they’d drive you nuts.”
He looked at me without interest. “Yeah?”
“I’m going to be eleven in July. July fourteenth,” I said. “How old are you?”
“About twelve, I guess.”
I was horrified. “Don’t you know for certain?”
“No.”
Now I knew that this was really a tough kid. I had never met anyone before who didn’t know his own birthday. I decided right then and there to forget my own.
When he came downstairs for lunch, his hair was damp. But his face still had that grayish, underground look. He sat silent at the table while Mother and Dad made a lot of gay conversation about how nice it was in the country. He pushed his glass of milk aside. Mother said, “Don’t you like milk?”
“Never could get used to the taste of the stuff.”
“In this family,” Mother said in her don’t-cross-me voice, “the children eat what is placed before them — without question. We hope you’ll do the same, Johnny.”
He raised one eyebrow, grinned at her almost as though he was humoring her. He drank the milk down and wiped his mouth on the back of the scarred hand. “I still don’t like it,” he said.
Dad quickly changed the subject. After lunch he said, “Now you kids run out and play.”
Johnny headed for the garage. Once upon a time it was a barn. He went around behind it, dug a cigarette butt out of his pocket along with a kitchen match. He lit it carefully after striking the match with his thumbnail. He took one long deep drag, puffed out the smoke, butted the cigarette and put it back in his pocket just as Looie came around the corner of the barn, her face screwed up ready to cry if we were out of sight. She came toward us with a wide happy smile.
“ ’Fraid she’d snitch,” Johnny said.
“She would,” I agreed.
“I’m going to get sick of this Johnny, Johnny business,” he said. “The name’s Stoney. Stoney Wotnack.”
“Ha! Stoney!” Looie said. “Stoney, Stoney, Stoney.”
“That’s right, sis,” he said.
I couldn’t think of what to say to him. He said, “What’s to do around this dump, Jim?”
I said eagerly, “Well, we can climb the apple trees, find there’s a crick the other side of the hill to fish in, and I’m making a cave in the crick bank and...” My voice trailed off. There wasn’t the tiniest gleam of interest in his eyes. “What do you like to do?” I asked weakly.