“Just so long,” I said, “as it is understood Bowser will tell no one.”
“Oh, he won’t,” Hiram promised. “I’ll warn him not to.” And having said this, he turned his full attention to the stack of cakes, shoveling up great mouth-fills of them, leaving a smear of syrup clear across his face.
Nine cakes later, he was ready to resume the conversation.
“You said there was something important I should talk to this Catface about?”
“Yes, there is,” said Rila, “but it’s a little hard to explain it exactly right.”
“You want me to talk to him about this thing you have in mind, then tell it back to you. Just the four of us will know …”
“The four of us?”
“Bowser,” I said. “You are forgetting Bowser is the fourth.”
“Oh, yes,” said Rila, “we must not forget old Bowser.”
Hiram asked, “It will be a secret just with the four of us?”
“That is right,” said Rila.
“I like secrets,” Hiram said, delighted. “They make me feel important.”
“Hiram,” Rila asked, “you know about time, don’t you?”
“Time is what you see,” he said, “when you look at a clock. You can tell if it’s noon or three o’clock or six.”
“That’s true,” said Rila, “but it’s more than that.
You know about us living in the present and that when time goes by, it is known as the past.”
“Like yesterday,” Hiram suggested. “Yesterday is past.”
“Yes, that’s right. And a hundred years is the past and so is a million years.”
“I don’t see what difference it makes,” said Hiram.
“All of it is past.”
“Have you ever thought how nice it would be if we could travel to the past? Go back to the time before the white men came, when there were only Indians.
Or back to a time before there were any men at all.”
“I have never thought of it,” said Hiram. “I have never thought of it because I don’t think it can be done.”
“We think Catface may know how to it. We’d like to talk with him to find out how to do it or if he’ll help us do it.”
Hiram sat silently for a moment, struggling visibly to let it all sink in.
“You want to go into the past?” he asked. “Why would you want to do that?”
“You know about history?”
“Sure, I know about history. They tried to teach me it when I went to school, but I wasn’t any good at it, I never could remember all them dates. It was all about the wars they fought and who was president and a lot of stuff like that.”
“There are people,” Rila said, “called historians who make it their business to study history. There are a lot of things they are not sure about because people who wrote about it wrote it wrong. But if they could go back in time and see what happened and talk to people who were living then, they would understand it better and could write better histories.”
“You mean we could go back and see what happened a long, long time ago? Actually go and see it?”
“That’s what I mean. Would you like to do that.
Hiram?”
“Well, I don’t rightly know,” said Hiram. “Seems to me you could get into a lot of trouble.”
I broke in. “As a matter of fact,” I said, “you wouldn’t have to go unless you wanted to. All we want you to find out, if you can, is whether Catface really knows how to do it and if he can show us how.”
Hiram shrugged. “I’d have to prowl around at night.
Probably out there in the orchard. He shows up sometimes in the daytime, but it’s mostly at night.”
“Would you mind doing that?” I asked. “You could sleep daytimes.”
“Not if Bowser could go with me. Night is a lonesome time, but if Bowser was with me, I wouldn’t feel so lonesome.”
“I suppose that would be all right,” I said, “if you put a leash on Bowser and keep him close beside you.
And another thing: when you see the Catface, just stand there talking to him. Never walk toward him.”
“Mr. Steele, why shouldn’t I never walk toward him?”
“I can’t tell you that,” I said. “You’ve just got to trust me. We know one another fairly well and you know I’d never tell you wrong.”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Hiram said to me. “You don’t need to tell me why. If you say so, it’s all right.
Me and Bowser will never walk toward him.”
“And you’ll do it?” Rila asked. “You’ll talk with Catface?”
“I’ll do what I can,” said Hiram. “I don’t rightly know what’s going to happen, but I’ll do my best.”
TEN
Willow Bend is a small town, its business section no more than a block long. On one corner stands a small supermarket, across from it a drugstore. Straggling up the street are a hardware store, a barber shop, a shoe store, a bakery, a clothing shop, a combined real-estate and travel bureau, an electrical store and repair shop, a post office, a movie house, a bank and a beer joint.
I found a place to park the car in front of the drugstore and went around to open the door for Rila.
Ben Page came hurrying across the street to intercept. us.
“Asa,” he said, “it’s been a long time since I’ve seen you. You don’t get down this way too often.”
He held out a hand and I took it. “As often as I need,” I said. I turned to Rila and said, “Miss Elliot, meet Ben Page. Ben is our mayor and the banker.”
Ben thrust out his hand to Rila. “Welcome to our town,” he said. “Are you staying for a while?”
“Rila is a friend,” I said. “We were in the Middle East together on a dig some years ago.”
“I don’t know how long I’m staying,” Rila said.
“You from New York?” asked Ben. “Someone told me you were from New York.”
“How the hell could anyone know?” I asked.
“You’re the first person she has met.”
“Hiram, I guess,” said Ben. “He said the license plates were New York plates. He told me someone had shot Bowser with an arrow. Is that right?”
“Someone did,” said Rila.
“I tell you we got to do something with these kids,” said Ben. “They’re up to something all the time. They have no respect for nothing. They are just running wild.”
“Maybe it wasn’t a kid,” I said.
“Who else would it be? It’s just the kind of thing they’d do. They’re a bunch of monsters, I tell you.
Some of them let the air out of my tires the other night. Came out of the picture show and I had four flats.”
“Now why would they do that?” asked Rila.
“I don’t know. They just hate everyone, I guess.
When you and I were kids, Asa, we never did stuff like that. We used to go fishing, remember, and hunting in the fall. And there was the time you had all of us digging in that sinkhole.”
“I am still digging in it,” I said.
“I know you are. Finding anything?”
“Not much,” I said.
“I got to be getting on,” said Ben. “I have some people coming in to see me. It was good to meet you, Miss Elliot. I hope you have a pleasant visit.”
We watched after him as he went bounding down the sidewalk.
“An old pal of yours?” asked Rila. “One of the gang?”
“One of the gang,” I said.
We went across the street and into the supermarket.
I got a cart and started wheeling it down the aisle.
“We’ll need potatoes and some butter,” I said, “and soap, and I guess a lot of other things.”
“Don’t you make out a list?”
“I’m a disorganized housekeeper,” I said. “I try to keep it in my head and I always miss an item or two.”
“You know a lot of people in this town?”
“Some. Some from when I was a boy, folks who stayed on and never left. Other new ones I have met since I came back.”