tell their kids sooner or later, but I doubt if any of them believe it.”
“I believe it,” I said, and I did, although it was amusing to visualize my father as a five-foot-five shrimpsqueak back in the age of landlines.
“Tell me one thing, at least. Your mother would be mad at me for even asking, but since she’s not here . . . did you hit him back?”
“Yes. Only once, but it was a good one.”
That made him grin. “Okay. But you need to understand that if he comes after you again, it’s going to be a police matter. Are we clear?”
I said we were.
“Your teacher—I like her—said I should keep you up at least an hour and make sure you don’t go all woozy. Want a piece of pie?”
“Sure.”
“Cup of tea to go with it?”
“Absolutely.”
So we had pie and big mugs of tea and Dad told me stories that weren’t about party telephone lines, or going to a one-room school where there was just a woodstove for heat, or TVs that only got the three stations (and none at all if the wind blew down the roof antenna). He told me about how he and Roy DeWitt found some fireworks in Roy’s cellar and when they shot them off one went into Frank Driscoll’s kindling box and set it on fire and Frank Driscoll said if they didn’t cut him a cord of wood, he’d tell their parents. He told me about how his mother overheard him call old Philly Loubird from Shiloh Church Big Chief Wampum and washed his mouth out with soap, ignoring his promises to never say anything like that again. He told me about fights at the Auburn Rollodrome—rumbles, he called them—where the kids from Lisbon High and those from Edward Little, Dad’s school, got into it just about every Friday night. He told me about getting his bathing suit pulled off by a couple of big kids at White’s Beach (“I walked home with my towel wrapped around me”), and the time some kid chased him down Carbine Street in Castle Rock with a baseball bat (“He said I put a hickey on his sister, which I never did”).
He really had been young once.
* * *
I went upstairs to my room feeling good, but the Aleve Ms. Hargensen had given me was wearing off, and by the time I got undressed, the good feeling was wearing off with it. I was pretty sure Kenny Yanko wouldn’t come back on me, but not positive. What if his friends started getting on his case about the shiner? Teasing him about it? Laughing about it, even? What if he got pissed and decided Round 2 was in order? If that happened, I would most likely not even get in one good blow; the shot to his eye had been kind of a sucker punch, after all. He could put me in the hospital, or worse.
I washed my face (very gently), brushed my teeth, got into bed, turned off the light, and then just lay there, reliving what had happened. The shock of being grabbed from behind and shoved down the hallway. Being punched in the chest. Being punched in the mouth. Telling my legs to hold me up and my legs saying maybe later.
Once I was in the dark, it seemed more and more likely that Kenny wasn’t done with me. Logical, even, the way things lots crazier than that can seem logical when it’s dark and you’re alone.
So I turned on the light again and called Mr. Harrigan.
I never expected to hear his voice, I only wanted to pretend I was talking to him. What I expected was silence, or a recorded message telling me the number I’d called was no longer in service. I’d slipped his phone into the pocket of his burial suit three months previous, and those first iPhones had a battery life of only 250 hours, even in standby mode. Which meant that phone had to be as dead as he was.
But it rang. It had no business ringing, reality was totally against the idea, but beneath the ground of Elm Cemetery, three miles away, Tammy Wynette was singing “Stand By Your Man.”
Halfway through the fifth ring, his slightly scratchy old man’s voice was in my ear. The same as always, straight to business, not even inviting his caller to leave a number or a message. “I’m not answering my phone now. I will call you back if it seems appropriate.”
The beep