in his hurry. He turned back, and yes, there he was-that narrow face, those faintly smiling, dedicated eyes looking out from beneath the bill of the cap.
To my good friend Brian, with best wishes, Sandy Koufax.
His fingers traced over the sloping lines of the inscription. His lips moved. He felt at peace again... or almost at peace. The card wasn't really his yet. This was just sort of a... a trial run. There was something he had to do before it would really be his. Brian wasn't completely sure what it was, but he knew it had something to do with the dream from which he had just wakened, and he was confident that he would know when the time (tomorrow? later today?) came.
He closed the looseleaf binder-BRIAN's COLLECTION DO NOT TOUCH!
carefully printed on the file card Scotch-taped to the front-and returned it to the dresser. Then he went back to bed.
Only one thing about having the Sandy Koufax card was troubling.
He had wanted to show it to his father. Coming home from Needful Things, he had imagined just how it would be when he showed it to him.
He, Brian, elaborately casual: Hey, Dad, I picked up a '56 today at the new store. Want to check it out? His dad would say okay, not really interested, just going along with Brian to his room to keep Brian happy-but how his eyes would light up when he saw what Brian had lucked into! And when he saw the inscription-!
Yes, he would be amazed and delighted, all right. He'd probably clap Brian on the back and give him a high-five.
But then what?
Then the questions would start, that was what... and that was the problem. His father would want to know, first, where he had gotten the card, and second, where he had gotten the money to buy such a card, which was (a.) rare, (b.) in excellent condition, and (c.) autographed.
The printed signature on the card read Sanford Koufax, which was the fabled fastball pitcher's real name. The autographed signature read Sandy Koufax, and in the weird and sometimes high-priced world of baseball trading-card collectors, that meant fair market value might be as much as a hundred and fifty dollars.
In his mind, Brian tried out one possible answer.
I got it at the new store, Dad-Needful Things. The guy gave it to me at a really WICKED discount... he said it would make people more interested in coming to his store if they knew he kept his prices down, This was good as far as it went, but even a kid still a year too young to pay the full adult price of admission at the movies knew it didn't go far enough. When you said somebody had given you a really good deal on something, people were always interested. Too interested.
Oh yeah? How much did he knock off Th' per cent? Forty? Did @if? 1 rty he give i't to you for half price? Thatd still be sixty or seventy bucks, Brian, and I KNOW you don't have that kind of money just laying around in your piggy-bank.
Well... actually it was a little less than that, Dad.
Okay, tell me. How much did you pay?
Well... eighty-five cents.
He sold you a 1956 autographed Sandy Koufax baseball card, i'n uncirculated condition, for eighty-five cents?
Yeah, that's where the real trouble would start, all right.
What kind of trouble? He didn't know, exactly, but there would be a stink, he was sure of that. Somehow he would get blamed maybe by his dad, but by his mom for sure.
They might even try to make him give it back, and there was no way he was going to give it back. It wasn't just signed; it was signed to Brian.
No way.
Hell, he hadn't even been able to show Stan Dawson when Stan came over to play pass, although he'd wanted to-Stan would have fudged his jockeys. But Stan was going to sleep over on Friday night, and it was all too easy for Brian to imagine him saying to Brian's dad: So howd you like Brian's Sandy Koufax card, Mr. Rusk.-' Pretty rad, huh? The same went for his other friends. Brian had uncovered one of the great truths of small towns: many secretsin fact, all the really important secrets-cannot be shared. Because word has a way of getting around, and getting around fast.
He found himself in a strange and uncomfortable position. He had come by a great thing and could not show or share it. This should