Free End of the Tiger by John D. MacDonald Page B

the evening.
    I was looking at Dave when it was announced that seven had won. I saw the life come back into him, saw his shoulders straighten and his color come back. He gave us all a big wide grin. One hundred down at twenty to one would clear up the shortage and give him eight hundred gravy.
    A half hour later I stood in the shadows of the stand on the parking lot side and waited for Joe Stack. I had seen Dave drive out with Joanne. I had heard her laughter, like clear silver in the night. I felt abused and tired and shabby. I leaned against a pillar and smoked and waited for Joe. The lights were out, the fountains still.
    Joe came walking heavily out. “Oh, there you are. Wait long?”
    “Not too long.”
    We walked to his car. We got in and he put the key in the ignition but he didn’t turn it on. He turned toward me. I couldn’t see his face in the darkness. “Don’t let it get you, kid.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “It didn’t happen this time. It didn’t happen tonight. It might not happen next time, but it’s going to happen. You can bank on that. It’s as sure as sunrise. Don’t play dumb with me, either. I mean Dave. Like with Henny Penny, the sky is going to fall on his head. Tonight he has the money and the girl and everything.”
    “I guess he does.”
    “You don’t have to see it happen, do you? I mean you don’t have to have it driven into your skull.”
    “No, I don’t, Joe.”
    “And when it happens, will it teach him anything?”
    “It might.”
    “Don’t kid yourself. He’s had the smell of it. He’s had the fever in him. They don’t ever get over it. I’ve been waiting for a word from you, and you haven’t given it. Maybe I like that. Anyway, I’m firing him.”
    I couldn’t even feel good about that. “That’s too bad,” I said.
    “I think we’ll see a lot of him. On the other side of the windows.”
    “But not for very long.”
    “No, Johnny. Not for very long. Now you can take your innings with blondie. That make you feel good?”
    I sat and thought it over. He was waiting for an answer. I remembered the sound of her laugh in the night. I had kissed her twice, and I remembered both those times.
    “I guess it doesn’t make me feel good, Joe.”
    “You off blondes?”
    “I … I guess I’m off that one. I guess she’s more than I can afford. Maybe I can find one that looks like that sometime—but a girl who’ll settle for a hamburger and a bus ride.”
    He laughed and he started the car. We didn’t talk on the way back. When he let me off he said, “I do a little betting myself. I bet on you, Johnny. And I think I’ve won—all the way across the board.”
    He let me off on the usual corner, and I walked back through the campus to my room. I thought about Dave and Joanne, and I found that I didn’t feel bad at all. I’d dropped a strange weight off my shoulders. I didn’t feel tired, abused, or shabby. I felt pretty good. There seemed to be some likelihood I was growing up.

Looie Follows Me
    I remember how it promised to be a terrible summer. I had squeaked through the fifth grade and I was going to be eleven in July and I had hoped that on my eleventh birthday my parents would come up to visit me at Camp Wah-Na-Hoo, bearing gifts.
    It was our third year in the big house twelve miles from town. Dad called it “a nice commuting distance” in summer and “too rugged for a dog team” in winter.
    One of the main reasons for wanting to go to Wah-Na-Hoo was on account of the Branton twins, Kim and Cam, who lived a couple of hundred yards down the road. I knew that if they went for two months and I didn’t go at all, they’d make my life miserable all winter yapping about the good old days at Camp. They are twelve years old, and Dad says that he can’t ever look at them without wondering when they’ll be the right size for a harness and bit.
    The second reason was that if I stayed home all summer, Looie, the five-year-old kid sister, would tag around