Free Whistling In the Dark by Lesley Kagen Page B

sponsored by Kenfield’s Five and Dime . . . We Have What You Need!
    Artie pulled on his bad ear, which he did all the time because he was sorta high-strung, like a racehorse. “Did you hear about Sara Heinemann bein’ missing?”
    Troo was resting her arms on the iron railing, watching Mr. Lane toss Sampson’s lunch to him. “Yeah.”
    “The cops came by this morning and said to make sure we lock our doors.” Artie bent down and began rolling up his pants legs. He was probably gonna go do a little cooling off over in the Honey Creek just like we had. “You and Sally should be careful. My ma says she’s not gonna let my sisters go out alone anymore after the streetlights come on. She says it’s not safe. That there’s a nut runnin’ around with a couple of loose screws.”
    I was staring at Sampson and thinking about how he could keep anybody safe. How just to see his big hands and black hairy arms you’d know he’d never let anything bad happen to you. And then, like he knew what I was thinking, he looked at me and waved. And I waved back.
    “Quit it,” Troo said, and knocked my hand down and looked around to see if anybody was watching. Her little blue French cap fell over her eye and she shoved it back. “He’s not saying hello to you. He’s just a gorilla batting at a fly, for Chrissakes.”
    “No, Troo,” I said, reaching as far as I could over the railing toward him, wanting so much to stroke his smooth hair. “He’s much, much more than just a gorilla.” I waved one more time, and in answer Sampson ran to the edge of the pit and looked me straight in the eye and beat his chest over and over. “He is magnificent.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN
    “How I Spent My Charitable Summer” by Sally Elizabeth O’Malley
    Almost every Wednesday this summer, me and Troo, which is short for Trooper and not for Trudy, which everybody thinks, go to Mrs. Galecki’s. Troo’s real name is Margaret. Our daddy, before he died, gave her that name, Real Trooper, because she didn’t cry when she stepped on that rusty nail in the Am bersons’ backyard and had to have that shot. Then the whole family started calling her Trooper and when that took too much time to say, Troo. I also call her Troo genius, because she is really, really smart and knew all the state capitols by the time she was seven years old. So Troo and me almost every Wednesday go to Mrs. Galecki’s to help Ethel take care of her. I read books to her once Ethel gets her into her wheelchair out on her back screened-in porch where Mrs. Galecki likes to stare at that crab-apple tree. Her head is wobbly but her mind is still smart and not like the other grandmother of ours, who had hardening in her arteries and for a while made us call her Gramma Marie Antoinette. That was my daddy’s mother. She’s dead now. Both our grampas are dead. Our mother is dying. Troo and me go visit our other granny up on Fifty-ninth Street, who is not dead yet but is getting closer by the minute. She is eighty-four years old and can’t bend down anymore or go to the grocery store, and she has arthritis and palpitations so we have to pick things up off the floor for her and wring out her underwear and Uncle Paulie’s socks. Uncle Paulie is not exactly right in the head because of his brain being damaged, so he has to live with Granny where she can keep an eye on him. Here is another charitable thing
    I did. I wrote a letter to my mother. They don’t let kids in the hospital unless someone is pounding down heaven’s door so I have to send it in the mail and I don’t have any money for a stamp, but as soon as I can find one I am going to send it.
     
    DEAR MOTHER,
    HOW ARE YOU FEELING? A LOT OF THINGS HAvE BEEN GOING ON AROUND HERE. DADDY TOLD ME TO TELL YOU HE FORGIvES YOU. I MISS YOU. PLEASE COME HOME.
    YOURS IN CHRIST,
    YOUR DAUGHTER,
    SALLY O’MALLEY
    That’s what I wrote that night before Troo came back from the bathroom and Nell came in smelling like the brewery over near