Free Edenville Owls by Robert B. Parker Page B

said.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    He nodded.
    “You stayed pretty cool, kid, pretty cool.”
    Then he nodded at the referee, and play resumed. Since there’d been a double foul, we had to jump ball to decide possession. With their center gone, Russell was six inches taller than anybody else on the floor. He won the tap easily, and moved down in close to the basket. Nick passed him the ball and he turned and put in a layup over some guy too short to guard him. In the remaining four minutes, Russell scored ten points and blocked half their shots, and we won by five.
    After the game when we changed and were leaving the building, the Grange Bay coach came and walked beside me.
    “You give him the elbow when you went down?” he said.
    I shrugged.
    “I guess so,” I said.
    “On purpose?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Worked pretty good, didn’t it?” the coach said.
    I looked up. He was smiling.
    “Pretty good,” I said.

CHAPTER 29
    JOANIE and I met as soon as it turned dark and stood around in the shadow of the bushes and watched Miss Delaney’s house.
    “Did Reverend Tupper really say ‘breeding stock’?” Joanie said softly.
    We stood close together in the darkness. I could smell the shampoo she used.
    “He said we should choose fertile, young white Christian women and form the breeding stock for a race of cleanliness and purity.”
    “Ick,” Joanie said.
    “Are you clean and pure?” I said.
    “I think so,” Joanie said.
    “Then you might do,” I said.
    “Moo,” she said.
    “That what breeding stock says?” I asked.
    Joanie nodded.
    “Was President Roosevelt really Jewish?” she asked.
    “I don’t think so,” I said.
    It was our fourth night standing outside Miss Delaney’s house. I didn’t mind. It meant I saw Joanie every night.
    “Is he saying we should have been allies with Germany?” Joanie said.
    “I think so,” I said.
    “He sounds crazy,” Joanie said. “All that stuff about Negroes and Jewish people and people from China. That doesn’t make any sense.”
    “I know,” I said.
    “And what has all that stuff got to do with Miss Delaney?” Joanie said.
    “Maybe we’ll find out tonight,” I said.
    The gray Ford Tudor came slowly down the street and pulled up in front of Miss Delaney’s house. The bottom seemed to fall out of my stomach.
    “Oh my God,” Joanie said.
    Were we going to really have to do it?
    Reverend Tupper got out of his car and looked casually up and down the street and walked toward Miss Delaney’s door. He rang the bell. The door opened and he went in. The door closed. I felt as if there were something stuck in my throat. I tried to say something, but made a hoarse noise. I cleared my throat.
    “If we’re going to do it, we have to go now,” I said.
    My voice was very scratchy.
    “You scared?” Joanie said.
    “Yeah,” I said.
    “Me too,” Joanie said.
    “Can we do it?” I said.
    “Yes,” she said. “We’ll do it together.”
    Staying in the shadows, we went along the hedge and around back to the tree beside the house. “You go first,” Joanie said.
    I nodded. I was supposed to go first. I was the boy. I was having trouble breathing. I paused and took a big breath, then started up the tree. It had plenty of branches and was easy enough to climb, except that my arms and legs felt uncoordinated. I looked down. Joanie was right behind me. She was right. She could climb a tree as good as I could.
    I got level with the roof of the porch, and held on to a branch above me while I stepped over onto the roof. I was wearing sneakers. So was Joanie, and dungarees. Joanie came right behind me, and the two of us crouched down by the attic window and listened. We heard nothing. Old Lady Coughlin’s dog didn’t bark.
    The attic window was still open a crack, the way I’d left it, and I slipped my hands under and eased it up. It went easy enough. Then we waited again and listened. I could hear Joanie’s breathing next to me. I could hear my own too. But neither of