Another Homecoming Read online

  Joel was relieved when the man finally gave a curt nod and returned to his previous argument. “I told you, you don’t need to say sir to—”

  “Lay off the kid already,” the driver called from his place in the front of the van. “Nothing the matter with manners.” The driver was as heavyset as the first man, but his features were bright and smiling. “Thirteen’s pretty young for a route all your own. Think you can handle it?”

  “Yessir, I sure hope so,” Joel replied, handing back the pliers.

  “Sunday’s the worst,” the first man allowed. “Gotta remember to put a magazine and comics into each paper—they come separate. And don’t try to carry them all. Find some place to stash them where they won’t be seen from the road, otherwise some wise guy’ll come by and steal a couple.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Joel said, breathless with the fact that it was really and truly happening. “Thanks.”

  “Don’t mention it.” The gruff man pointed a gloved thumb at his chest. “Name’s Hank. The smart aleck up there driving is Julius.”

  “Nice meeting you, sir.”

  “Likewise, kid. And good luck.” Hank pounded the side panel, and with a gust of black smoke the van pulled away.

  For a moment Joel stood there, taking it in. The dawn was his and his alone. Finally he hefted half the bundle and carried the papers behind the nearby hedge. The others he coiled using the bag of rubber bands he had brought, then set the awkward rolls into his bike baskets. He had two of them now, one in front of the handlebars and the other over his back tire. He had borrowed money from his mom for them, promising to pay it back from his first paycheck.

  In the days leading up to this moment, Joel had done his best to prepare. He had mapped out his route and discovered that it was split in two, with the collection point set almost in the middle. He had spoken to the young man whose route he was taking over, a friend of Doc Austin’s who was headed for medical school up north. The young man had described the difficult people, especially the ones who called and complained to the paper’s circulation office. They were the ones who could cost him his job. Joel had also called the office himself, though the act had scared him.

  Joel mounted his bike and moved out on the route he had already committed to memory. A lot of his tosses didn’t land right, which meant stopping his bike and walking up the lawn, sometimes hunting through bushes, pulling out the paper, wiping it clean, and setting it on the front porch. Then he came to the first problem house, an old man who complained his papers were being stolen. Quietly Joel climbed the stairs, opened the screen door, and slipped the paper down where it couldn’t be seen from outside.

  Another block included the house of old Mrs. Drummond; he already knew about her from Doc Austin. She was not a complainer, but her arthritis was so bad that walking to the edge of her porch was very difficult for her. Joel did what Doc Austin had suggested, which was to slide her paper through her mail slot. As he walked back to his bike, he remembered what else Doc Austin had said, how the woman amazed him with her cheerfulness, how despite her pain she met each day with a smile and a prayer. Doc Austin said he could never understand how someone so afflicted could hold on to faith. Joel wondered what that meant, “hold on to faith.” But he didn’t ask.

  Joel finished the route’s first half and hurried back for the second load. His tires whispered down the empty street, and his speed blew up a gentle breeze. He pulled the papers from behind the hedge and began rolling them up. As he bundled them into the rubber bands, he wondered what it was about some people that made them believe in God like that. His parents never talked about religion. Never. His father worked almost every Sunday because he picked up time and a half for weekend work. Joel had seen people going to church, all dressed up and looking stiff and formal. To him it seemed like a strange way to spend a Sunday.

  Joel began the second sweep, not bothered by how long it was taking him. He was ready to spend as much time as it took in the beginning, determined to get things right. Besides, he loved having the morning to himself. As he biked down one quiet street after another, his thoughts stood out fresh and clean in the quiet air, and he could think clearly about things. It was even better than being alone in his small upstairs room, working over a new model plane at the desk beneath the window.

  His teachers at school said he was too quiet for his own good. He had overheard one of his teachers tell another that his withdrawn nature was a sign Joel did not feel things. Joel did not agree with that at all. As far as he was concerned, he felt things too much.

  He finished the route, almost sad that it was done. But school would start soon, so he gathered up the wire and the scraps of paper and started home. As he did, he thought about the call he had made to the newspaper office. The woman had been astonished to hear from him. She had dug up the complaints and read them over the phone to Joel. She said it was the first time she had ever been called for this information by a new paper boy, and that she was going to mention his name to her boss. Joel felt anew the glow over that and resolved that everything was going to go well. There would be no complaints on his route. Not one.

  When he turned onto his street, for some reason Joel found himself thinking about old Mrs. Drummond. Strange how she could be so sick and still be happy. Joel parked his bike on the front walk and wished there was some way he could make his parents happy. He’d give anything to have people speak about them the way Doc Austin had talked about the elderly lady.

  6

  MARTHA STARED WITH UNSEEING EYES out her kitchen window. The morning sun had pushed up to a sitting position and was taking stock of the brand-new day. Seeming pleased with what it saw, it rose on the eastern horizon to flex its muscles of warmth. But Martha had no interest in the day’s beauty. She seldom did. From her place by the sink she turned back to her morning duties. Joel would soon be home from his paper route. Already the smell of breakfast coffee wafted on the morning air. It was her way of getting her day going. It was also the silent signal that drew Harry from his bed to dress for another day of work. A day he never seemed to look forward to with any kind of anticipation. And his mood splashed over on Martha, burdening her with the same sense of resignation.

  Martha saw Harry exit the bedroom, still tucking in his shirt and stifling a yawn. She turned away from him in pretense of stirring the morning porridge. Joel would be hungry and perhaps just a bit chilled. The sun had not yet warmed the outside world.

  Silently, Harry poured himself a cup of coffee and took it outside to the back porch. The sun struck there first and warmed their postage-stamp backyard before the rest of the house. Harry had come and gone before Martha had time to sense the mood of the morning. Would he be simply taciturn, or would he be surly and quick to criticize? Joel usually returned from his morning route seeking for the signs that would give him the same information. He would stop by the porch, eyes quickly flicking over his father’s face.

  A sudden thought pulsed through Martha: Joel’s getting so tall. He’s growing up—my little boy.

  The thought caught her totally off guard. She’d had no intention of starting her day with maudlin thinking. She had no intention of thinking at all. She did not like to think. She found it far too painful.

  She tried to force her attention back to the softly bubbling porridge. She nearly swished the steamy contents from the pot with her vigorous stirring. But even with the increased activity she could not divert her thoughts. I should have two of them. He should not have been an only child. My little girl—my Katie . . .

  In those chance moments when she did consciously think of her vanished daughter, she was amazed and devastated anew at how deeply the loss still hurt. Martha had been so certain that the passing of time would dim the pain of her heart, ease the emptiness of her arms. But the agony remained so intense it was a physical wound. Her tightened heart seemed to pinch against her rib cage. Her arms literally ached with the absence of a bundle of life, even years after she knew that the little bundle had gro
wn to girlhood. Her throat constricted so she could hardly swallow back the threatening tears.

  At such times Martha became even darker of mood than her husband. Even more testy and cutting. It was her only line of defense.

  “He’s late again,” she heard her own harsh voice chiding her absent son. “How on earth am I supposed to have breakfast ready when he won’t hold to a proper schedule?”

  From the back porch, Harry spoke his first words of the morning. “Sounds like you’re riding the boy pretty hard.”

  She turned to where he sat at the back table and through the open door gave him a hard, cold look. There was no use trying to explain to Harry that it wasn’t the time that bothered her. Not the time at all.

  It was the high chair tucked away in the pantry—though why she kept it there since Joel had outgrown it, she would not have been able to explain. The high chair that first should have held a baby girl. The high chair that should have been pushed up close to the table, holding another chortling infant thumping an impatient spoon as she waited for her morning porridge.

  But Martha could not put her deep feelings into words. She could scarcely form coherent thoughts. At such times the pain was so gripping that she felt she would smother with its force.

  She sighed hard, pushing the thoughts and the feelings away as she would a lingering nightmare. “Never mind,” she said dully. “I’ll make do. That’s what I’m best at, I suppose. Making do with what I have.”

  After a year of delivering papers, the work had become routine, the time cut by two-thirds. By now his bicycle seemed like an extension of himself. Had he been given to whistling, Joel might have sent a quivering tune into the stillness of the spring morning. There was a song running through his mind in time to his pumping legs, “Oh Yes, I’m the Great Pretender.” It already felt like the song was written for him. But Joel made no sound. He had spent his years learning to hide all emotions.

  He tossed out the last few papers, his arm cocking and throwing in smooth, automatic sweeps, the papers landing perfectly on the front porches. A year of biking through every kind of weather had brought him a very special knowledge of his little town.

  Riverdale was located midway between Baltimore and Washington and had no historical past or town center. It had probably begun as an intersection of Kenilworth Avenue and Riverdale Road, then sprawled out to take over adjoining farmland. Now it was the center of a postwar building boom. Hundreds and hundreds of square saltbox houses lined consecutively numbered streets. With time, the houses became different; people added on summer terraces and winter sun-rooms and patios. The white clapboard exteriors were trimmed with different colored paints. A bush sprouted, another hedge was cut back. But there remained a sameness to the streets and the houses and the neighborhoods.

  It was a family town, set in the Maryland countryside about twenty miles north of Washington, D.C. Many were second-generation folk, brimming with the memories of grandparents and great-grandparents having arrived from the old countries to make a new life.

  In Riverdale it was probably best to be Irish and have an Irish-sounding name. Joel Grimes was close enough to fit in, though his own ancestors had come from Germany, at least those he knew about. Fathers mostly had jobs the kids could understand. They clerked in hardware stores, fitted pipes, worked at gas stations, put out fires. Some traveled to the iron and steel works in southwest Baltimore, willing to put up with the long commute to give their families a better place to live. The mothers mostly stayed home to mind the children. Laundry hung out behind the homes, and fences were places for neighbors to lean on and gossip.

  Joel left his bike on his front walk and picked up his last paper. His father was working the middle shift, which meant Harry left the house after Joel did. Joel usually scanned the paper before he got home and tried to find something in it to talk about. It was a way of testing the waters, passing over some bit of information, seeing if his father felt like talking. Most mornings Harry replied with a grunt, but occasionally his father would continue the conversation. Those days, Joel felt as though he had won a secret battle.

  Joel entered the house and heard his mother moving about the kitchen, preparing their breakfast. He gave her cheek a quick kiss as he passed, and she responded with her quiet little smile. Everything was the same, just another morning in their silent house. Yet for some unexplainable reason Joel had the feeling that something was different. Something very big. Maybe even something good.

  When Joel entered the kitchen he could see his father out on the back veranda, a steaming cup of coffee on the small table at his elbow, the latest issue of Argosy magazine opened in his lap. Harry read Argosy and the paper, nothing else. He called Argosy the only real man’s magazine.

  Joel set the paper down on the table and pushed open the screened veranda door. “Pop, did you hear? The Fairey Delta 2, a British plane, it’s set a new speed record. One thousand, one hundred and thirty-two miles per hour.”

  A frown furrowed Harry’s forehead until the eyebrows met. “I don’t need to know anything about a Limey plane.”

  Usually a response like that was enough to push Joel back inside. But today the feeling of something important happening kept him there, fishing for whatever it might be. “But, Pop, you’re always saying the Brits were good fighters.”

  His father slapped down the magazine and rattled the paper open. The tall sheets hid his scowl. “Maybe so, but mark my words, the good old US of A will have that record back in a jiffy.”

  Joel returned to the kitchen, wondering why he still felt a sense of specialness to the day. He slid into his customary place at the kitchen table, where his mother had already placed a steaming bowl of oatmeal. Joel felt her hand brush against his shoulder as she put two slices of buttered toast at the side of his plate. It was so rare, a touch like that, it seemed as though it was intended to confirm that the day was indeed unique. He nearly started whistling.

  He left for school without hearing a single sharp word, a single whiff of discontent. Surely this day held something good in store.

  But when he came around the final corner, and his school stood just ahead, the song in his heart was squelched as completely as the one on his lips. Before him, almost blocking the concrete path leading to the building, was a cluster of boys. As soon as he saw them, Joel knew they were up to no good. His stomach knotted in response to the sight, and for one awful moment he feared they were waiting for him.

  He wanted to stop, to run, to fly. But he did none of those things, though he could not understand why. His steps faltered, but something kept him going, walking toward them, his whole body tensed in anticipation of what might come.

  To this point he had avoided the nasty gang that teased and tormented other kids. They loved to prey on the smaller, the quieter, the more introspective, the loners. Joel was all of those things and would have made good prey. By dodging them at every opportunity and ignoring them whenever they were close, he had so far managed to escape notice. But now he was walking directly toward them, for reasons he could not fully understand. He steeled himself, hoping with all his heart that whatever was drawing their attention would continue to hold their focus.

  They were laughing, the kind that rang with a hateful sound. Joel knew it was not shared mirth over some boyish joke. Nor was it good-natured banter. It had a bitter quality. One that left a bad taste in Joel’s mouth and formed a knot in the pit of his stomach.

  “Hey, farmer,” Joel heard one of the larger boys jeer. “Where’d you come from?”

  “Looks like he crawled out of a haystack,” said their leader. Herman Gadsby was a red-faced bully, a slow-moving football player with a misshapen nose. “Either that or from under some rock.”

  The laughter rose like a dark ominous wave. “What do you think we oughtta do with him?”

  It was then that Joel spotted the object of their ridicule. A boy stood almost surrounded by the crowd. His dark suspendered pants met a simple blue shirt. A black felt hat was pu
lled down, almost covering the squared haircut. A battered tin pail was clasped tightly in a white-knuckled hand.

  Joel had never seen the boy before. For a moment he wished he was not seeing him now. He did not like the feel in the air. All the bullies wore their hair in elaborate pompadours, with the hair in back slicked into flat ducktails. Most kids knew to disappear whenever guys with hairstyles like that came into view. Obviously this guy didn’t know any better.

  Joel had no idea what to do. He stood quietly, licking dry lips, working to swallow saliva that wasn’t there. He felt tension crawl up his spine like a garter snake shivering through meadow grasses. Clammy moistness dampened his hands.

  Deliverance came with the loud donging of the school bell. The tangle of boys unravelled and spilled toward the schoolhouse steps at about the same rate that the knot in Joel’s stomach unwound.

  The next thing he knew, he was staring into a pair of solemn gray eyes. Neither boy spoke a word. They just stood there, measuring each other. In the background the bell stopped ringing, and the silence fell in around them like a living thing. It stirred something in Joel, that silence.

  Together they turned and moved toward the red brick school. If they were late for class, there would be trouble. Their steps quickened, and side by side they hurried off to join the clatter as students pressed down the dusty, dark-paneled halls. Joel stopped only long enough to hastily toss his cap toward his assigned wall hook. He saw the boy remove his black hat and look about for a place to deposit it.

  “There.” Joel pointed at an empty spare peg, and the black felt settled with a gentle rocking motion. The two boys surged

  ahead to pass through the classroom door, just as Mr. Murdoch stretched out a hand to close it against latecomers.

  Joel slid into his assigned seat. The new boy stood silently by the door. As Mr. Murdoch turned to address the new student and assign him a place, the two boys’ eyes connected. Some sort of communication passed between them, though Joel was not sure about the message.