Oh gosh, it’s summertime, summertime, sum-sum-summertime, and on Poplar Street the living is easy.
Gary Ripton checks his rearview mirror for traffic, sees none, and swerves easterly across the street to the Carver house. He hasn’t bothered with Mr Marinville because, at the start of the summer, Mr Marinville gave him five dollars not to deliver the Shopper. “Please, Gary,” he said, his eyes solemn and earnest. “I can’t read about another supermarket opening or drugstore jamboree. It’ll kill me if I do.” Gary doesn’t understand Mr Marinville in the slightest, but he is a nice enough man, and five bucks is five bucks.
Mrs Carver opens the front door of 248 Poplar and waves as Gary easy-tosses her the Shopper. She grabs for it, misses completely, and laughs. Gary laughs with her. She doesn’t have Brad Josephson’s hands, or reflexes, but she’s pretty and a hell of a good sport. Her husband is beside the house, wearing his bathing suit and flipflops, washing the car. He catches a glimpse of Gary out of the corner of his eye, turns, points a finger. Gary points one right back, and they pretend to shoot each other. This is Mr Carver’s crippled but game effort to be cool, and Gary respects that. David Carver works for the post office, and Gary figures he must be on vacation this week. The boy makes a vow to himself: if he has to settle for a regular nine-to-five job when he grows up (he knows that, like diabetes and kidney failure, this does happen to some people), he will never spend his vacation at home, washing his car in the driveway.
I’m not going to have a car, anyway, he thinks. Going to have a motorcycle. No Japanese bike, either. Big damn old Harley-Davidson like the one Mr Marinville keeps in his garage. American steel.
He checks the rearview again and catches sight of something bright red up on Bear Street beyond the Josephson place-a van, it looks like, parked just beyond the southwestern corner of the intersection-and then swoops his Schwinn back across the street again, this time to 247, the Wyler place.
Of the occupied houses on the street (242, the old Hobart place, is vacant), the Wyler place is the only one which even approaches seedy-it’s a small ranch-style home that could use a fresh coat of paint, and a fresh coat of seal on the driveway. There’s a sprinkler twirling on the lawn, but the grass is still showing the effects of the hot, dry weather in a way the other lawns on the street (including the lawn of the vacant Hobart house, actually) are not. There are yellow patches, small right now but spreading.
She doesn’t know that water isn’t enough, Gary thinks, reaching into his canvas bag for another rolled-up Shopper. Her husband might've, but-
He suddenly realizes that Mrs Wyler (he guesses that widows are still called Mrs) is standing inside the screen door, and something about seeing her there, hardly more than a silhouette, startles him badly. He wobbles on his bike for a moment, and when he throws the rolled-up paper his usually accurate aim is way off. The Shopper lands atop one of the shrubs flanking the front steps. He hates doing that, hates it, it’s like some stupid comedy show where the paperboy is always throwing the Daily Bugle on to the roof or into the rosebushes-har-har, paperboys with bad aim, wotta scream-and on a different day (or at a different house) he might have gone back to rectify the error… maybe even put the paper in the lady’s hand himself with a smile and a nod and a have a nice day. Not today, though. There’s something here he doesn’t like. Something about the way she’s standing inside the screen door, shoulders slumped and hands dangling, like a kid’s toy with the batteries pulled. And that’s maybe not all that’s out of kilter, either. He can’t see her well enough to be sure, but he thinks maybe Mrs Wyler is naked from the waist up, that she’s standing there in her front hall wearing nothing but a pair of shorts. Standing there and staring at him.
If so, it’s not sexy. It’s creepy.
The kid that stays with her, her nephew, that little weasel’s creepy, too. Seth Garland or Garin or something like that. He never talks, not even if you talk to him-hey, how you doin, you like it around here, you think the Indians’ll make it to the Series again-just looks at you with his mud-colored eyes. Looks at you the way Gary feels Mrs Wyler, who is usually nice, is looking at him now. Like step into my parlor said the spider to the fly, like that. Her husband died last year (right around the time the Hobarts had that trouble and moved away, now that he thinks of it), and people say it wasn’t an accident. People say that Herb Wyler, who collected stamps and had once given Gary an old air rifle, committed suicide.
Gooseflesh-somehow twice as scary on a day as hot as this one-ripples up his back and he banks back across the street after another cursory look into the rearview mirror. The red van is still up there near the corner of Bear and Poplar (some spiffy rig, the boy thinks), and this time there is a vehicle coming down the street, as well, a blue Acura Gary recognizes at once. It’s Mr Jackson, the block’s other teacher. Not high school in his case, however; Mr Jackson is actually Professor Jackson, or maybe it’s just Assistant Professor Jackson. He teaches at Ohio State, go you Buckeyes. The Jacksons live at 244, one up from the old Hobart place. It’s the nicest house on the block, a roomy Cape Cod with a high hedge on the downhill side and a high cedar stake fence on the uphill side, between them and the old veterinarian’s place.
“Yo, Gary!” Peter Jackson says, pulling up beside him. He’s wearing faded jeans and a tee-shirt with a big yellow smile-face on it. HAVE A NICE DAY! Mr Smiley-Smile is saying. “How’s it going, bad boy?”
“Great, Mr Jackson,” Gary says, smiling. He thinks of adding Except that I think Mrs Wyler’s standing in her door back there with her shirt off and then doesn’t. “Everything’s super-cool.”
“Are you starting any games yet?”
“Only two so far, but that’s okay. I got a couple of innings last night, and I’ll probably get a couple more tonight. It’s really all I hoped for. But it’s Frankie Albertini’s last year in Legion, you know.” He holds out a rolled copy of the Shopper.
“That’s right,” Peter says, taking it. “And next year it’s Monsieur Gary Rip ton’s turn to howl at shortstop.”
The boy laughs, tickled at the idea of standing out there at short in his Legion uniform and howling like a werewolf. “You teaching summer school again this year?”
“Yep. Two classes. Historical Plays of Shakespeare, plus James Dickey and the New Southern Gothic. Either sound interesting to you?”
“I think I’ll pass.”
Peter nods seriously. “Pass and you’ll never have to go to summer school, bad boy.” He taps the smile-face on his shirt. “They loosen up on the teacher dress-code a little come June, but summer school’s still a drag. Same as it ever was.” He drops the rolled-up Shopper on to the seat and pulls the Acura’s transmission lever down into drive. “Don’t give yourself a heatstroke pedaling around the neighbourhood with those papers.”
“Nah. I think it’s gonna rain later, anyway. I keep hearing thunder off and on.”
“That’s what they say on the-watch out!”
A large furry shape bullets by, chasing a red disc. Gary leans his bike over toward Mr Jackson’s car and is just feathered by Hannibal’s tail as the German Shepherd chases after the Frisbee.
“He’s the one you ought to warn about heatstroke,” Gary says.