On Christmas Day he cut a little spruce sapling, made a wooden base for it, and decorated it with painted fir cones and acorns. For tinsel he used the foil wrappings from chewing gum, cut into narrow strips.
While the wind howled outside and the snow pattered against his walls, he sang "Silent Night," "O Little Town of Bethlehem," "Old Black Joe," "Git Along, Little Dogie," and a tune whose name he did not know, the, one his father had taught him that summer when they went camping in the desert:
I love the flowers, I love the daffodils. I love the mountains, I love the rolling hills. When all the lights are low, I love the picture show, Boomelay, boomelay, boomelay, boom..
Chapter Four
The disappearance of Gene Anderson was a seven days' wonder in Dog City. In six months even the children had forgotten him. Grownups sometimes said to each other, "Wonder what ever happened to that kid?" The reply was usually, "Guess he'll turn up." After a year it became: "Must be dead by now."
The only ones who did not forget were the Andersons and the Cooleys. Ellen Cooley, whose health never had been strong, grew increasingly despondent after the death of her son. She was not able to care for the house; her sister, Mrs. Williams, had a husband and children of her own to worry about. Cooley hired a woman, Agnes Yount, the widow of a railway telegrapher, to come in by the day, take care of the children and prepare meals. A year after the accident, Ellen seemed to he better, but in January she had a minor automobile accident near the Safeway store: her little Ford struck a car driven by Orville Newcome as Newcome was pulling out of the parking lot, damaging his right-front door and crumpling the fender of the Ford. Ellen Cooley got out of the car and walked away, ignoring Newcome's shouts. She was found hours later walking hatless down by the railroad tracks; she did not seem to know where she was or what had happened. Dr. Phillips treated her for a few days, and when there was no improvement, he sent her to the State Hospital in Salem for observation. When it became obvious that she was not coming home, her sister took the two children in.
Cooley let Mrs. Yount go and stayed on in the house by himself, cooking an occasional meal and washing the dishes every four or five days.
On a Monday in March, he walked into the "Dog River Gazette" office after lunchtime. The two printers looked up incuriously; one of them was sitting at the linotytype keyboard, the other was feeding the job press in the back. There was a smell of ink and hot metal. Cooley knocked on the door of the glass-enclosed office where Desmond Pike sat with his bookkeeper, Miss Knippel. Pike looked up, beckoned him in.
"Yes, Chief? What can we do for you?"
Cooley sat down in the oak chair and put his hat on his knee. "Like to see your subscription list, Mr. Pike."
"The list? What for, may I ask?" Pike was a tall white-haired man with an abrupt manner; he did not like Cooley.
"Police business. I have an idea somebody we're looking for might of took out a subscription under a phony name."
"You don't intend to make any other use of this information?"
"I don't get you."
Pike looked sour. "Show him the card file, would you please, Miss Knippel."
"It isn't up to date. I'm trying to catch up on the ledgers." She pulled out a long file drawer and brought it to the desk. "We file these by expiration, and under each date they're alphabetical."
Cooley leaned forward, fingered the cards. "How do you tell which ones are new?"
"Hard to say. Most folks subscribe for a year, but some for six months, some for two years. Expiration date is what we go by. That's when the subscription runs out." She pushed a strand of hair back behind her ear with a pencil.
"You say this isn't up to date. You got some subscriptions you haven't filed yet?"
Miss Knippel glanced at Pike; he nodded, and she went to the filing cabinet for a folder. Inside were a few letters, each with its envelope attached by a paper clip. Cooley looked through them, got out his notebook and wrote slowly. "California," he said. "You get many from there?"
"Folks move away, like to keep up with the hometown paper."
Cooley put the file down and began to turn over the cards at the back of the box. "Canada," he said. "Wyoming. Utah. What about back issues? Any call for them?"
"Once in a while."
"You keep a record of those?"
"Depends. If it's just for a back issue, there wouldn't be any record. But suppose somebody orders a subscription and asks for some back issues at the same time, then you could tell by the card -- the amount would be different." She came around the desk and looked over his shoulder. "Like here, two fifty, that's just a year's subscription. But if it was two sixty-five, say, that'd mean they got an extra paper."
Cooley went through the cards again and made more notes. "Much obliged," he said finally, and stood up.
"Any time, Chief."
"Might take you up on that," Cooley said.
In the spring of his second year in the woods, Gene explored farther north than he had ever done before. At last he came to open fields, saw houses and a line of trees in the distance. It was a disappointment at first to find that his domain was so small; then he began thinking about those houses on the county road. He knew that the "Dog River Gazette" was published on Fridays and mailed to subscribers, and he wanted a copy so badly that he made up his mind to take a risk.
Early one morning he hid in the brush across the road from a cluster of mailboxes. The mail truck arrived about an hour after noon. When it was gone again, he walked across the road. No one was in sight. He found a copy of the newspaper in the first box he opened, along with some letters and a magazine in a paper wrapper. He copied the newspaper and the magazine as well, put the copies in his jacket and hurried home.
There was nothing in the paper about him, or his parents or Chief Cooley, or in fact about anybody he knew. He was tormented by the thought that there might have been something important to him in the issues he had missed, or indeed that there might be something next week or the week after. He made up his mind that he would go back for another paper next week, but the moment he had decided this he became frightened. He had done it once, but how many times more could he do it without being seen?
That night he dreamed that he had his own mailbox in a tree, where every day letters and packages were delivered. He woke up very happy, and his disappointment was acute when he realized that the dream was not real. It was so vivid that in his mind he could see the very tree, an oak like his own but much smaller, and the mailbox, nailed to a plank between two branches, with his name on it in red letters. That much was wrong, he knew; it would have to be some other name.
He remembered the cluster of mailboxes on the county road; they were on a long plank supported by three uprights, and there was room on the plank for several more boxes. Why should he not put his there?
Late that afternoon, carrying tools in a gunny sack, he went to the county road again. Each mailbox was nailed at the sides to a plank which in turn was nailed to the crosspieces. Gene pried one up with a screwdriver, plank and all, put it in his gunny sack and carried it home. In his house, by lantern light, he pried out all the nails and copied both the mailbox and the plank. In the mailbox he found two stamped letters; he copied them too. He carried the original mailbox back through the woods and nailed it up again before dawn.
At home again, he painted in red enamel on the side of his mailbox the name he had chosen, "J. Hawkins." He enlarged. all the nail holes in the plank so that the nails could be tapped in easily. When the paint was dry, he took the mailbox back to the county road and set it up beside the others. His was on the end, and the name was plainly visible.