Mike was in his class at public school, the eighth grade. Mike was all
right. Chris liked him.
"Hya, Chris!"
"Hi, Mike!"
"Whatcha doin'?"
"Nothin' much. Just looking."
"Say--you know sumthin'?" Mike wiggled himself across part of the Pep
Boys' window to gain Chris's attention. "Old Wicker's got a sign in
his window--he needs a boy. For after school, I guess. Think he'd pay,
huh? Whyncha try?"
Chris looked from a nickel-plated flashlight to a car jack and spark
plug.
"Oh--I don't know."
Mike persisted. "Well, I'll tell you what. Know who needs a job bad?
That's Jakey Harris. His mother's sick, and he's got that bad foot.
Whyncha ask for him, huh? You sit next to him at school."
All Chris heard was "--needs a job bad--mother's sick."
"O.K.," he said. "Only why didn't you ask him yourself?"
Mike became uneasy and fished an elastic band out of his pocket, made
a flick of paper and sent it soaring out into M Street.
"Well--" he admitted, "I did. Wicker's such a queer old guy. That ol'
antique shop is dark an' spooky, an'--Well, I went in, and there
wasn't nobody there, on'y him and me."
Mike stopped, and after a pause Chris said, "So what?"
[Illustration]
"So--" Mike swallowed. "So I said I was there about the job, an' do
you know what he said? He said"--he went on without urging, but with a
frown of perplexity ridging his forehead--"He said, 'Turn around and
look out that window, son, and tell me what you see.'"
Mike stopped and looked at Chris with a comical expression. "Everybody
knows what's outside his window!" he burst out. "Of all the silly
things! But I turned around and looked, like he told me to, and of
course there was the traffic goin' by, and trucks, and cabs, and
people crossin' the street, and the freeway overhead, an'--_you_
know."
"So what did he say?" Chris asked, and for the first time that day the
heavy weight he carried within him lifted and lightened a little.
Mike examined the toe of his worn shoe. "Oh, he just smiled, that
funny little crackly smile, and said, 'I'm sorry, young man, you won't
do.'"
[Illustration]
For a moment both boys stared into one another's eyes, each
questioning, wondering, and neither being able to supply the answer.
At last, Chris broke the silence.
"Queerest thing I ever heard. Gee! Whaddaya suppose?"
Mike took heart, his experience believed and his bafflement shared. He
spoke cheerfully. "It doesn't make sense, but old Wicker's so old he
may be addled, don't you reckon? Who else would keep an antique store
where nobody ever looks? All the other antique places are along
Wisconsin Avenue where people go to shop."
"You reckon Jakey really could use the job?" Chris asked, his courage
ebbing as he pictured to himself the dark little shop with its bow
window of small panes, and Mr. Wicker, so thin and wizened he seemed
only bones and wrinkles. "Think he really needs it?" he pursued.
But Mike was certain, or perhaps he needed a companion in this curious
experiment.
"You bet he does! He tol' me at noon today he wished he could find
something that would help bring some money in. His mother's sick," he
repeated, "an' Jakey don' look so good himself."
"Well--" Chris said, half agreeing.
"I'll go with ya!" Mike announced, as if that finished the argument;
which, as a matter of fact, it did.
Chris did not feel too happy about his mission and hung back a moment
longer, looking in the Pep Boys' window at things he had already seen.
He would have liked to get the job for Jakey, who needed it, but
somehow the task of facing Mr. Wicker, especially now that the light
was going and dusk edging into the streets, was not what Chris had
intended for ending the afternoon. Although he had not been quite
certain how he had meant to spend the rest of the remaining daylight,
Mike's plan did not seem to fit his present mood.
"Are you coming?" Mike challenged, with a hint of derision.
"Yes," said Chris suddenly, "I'm coming. I'll ask for Jakey."
Mike's expression changed at once to one of triumph, but Chris was
only partly encouraged.
The two boys walked to the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue.
Traffic roared up the first short block of Wisconsin from under the
high steel freeway down to their left.
Chris glanced down the slope of Wisconsin. Houses and shops thinned
suddenly on both sides of the street. Far down at the very end, on his
side, he could see the brick walls and slate roof of Mr. Wicker's
house. Chris knew it well, for times without number he had pressed his
nose to the square Georgian panes of Mr. Wicker's window to gaze at
the strangely fascinating jumble of oddments that were displayed. Now,
however, he felt in no mood to visit the curiosity shop and stood
shifting his feet and looking aimlessly about. Mike, beside him, was
becoming restive, and gave him a poke.
"Betcha aren't goin' after all!"
Chris turned on him. "Am too!"
Mike looked disdainful. "Aw--you're stalling!"
"Not any sucha thing. I'm going now."
"O.K. Let's see you."
Chris turned his back on Mike and started down the hill. After a step
or two, not finding his friend beside him, he turned. Mike was
standing on the corner.
"Hi!" Chris called, indignant. "You said you were coming with me!"
"Well, I was," Mike howled back, "but I just remembered. My mother
told me to bring her some stuff from the Safeway. I'll run all the way
and come back and meet you."
"Aw shucks!" Chris kicked at a nonexistent pebble and scowled. But a
chore was a chore, and was never worth discussion.
"I'll meetcha in fifteen or twenty minutes," Mike shouted. "It won't
take me long," and throwing out his hands to signify that there was
nothing he could do about it he disappeared.
Chris started off once more, passing the bleak little Victorian church
perched on the hill above Mr. Wicker's house. An empty lot cut into by
Church Lane gave a look of isolation to the L-shaped brick building
that served Mr. Wicker as both house and place of business. Chris
paused to look below him. Even from where he stood, fifty feet above
the house, the slope of the hill was sharp and the plan of the house
below him could be plainly seen.
It was built like an inverted L, the short wing faced towards the
street and the traffic of Wisconsin Avenue. The longer wing, toward
the back, had a back door that opened onto Water Street. The space
between the house and Wisconsin Avenue had been made into a neat
oblong flower garden, fenced off from the sidewalk by box shrubs and a
white picket fence. Behind it, along the other side of the long wing,
lay a meticulously arranged vegetable garden and a few apple trees.
His gaze moved back to the house itself. It seemed to have been built
at about the same time as the vacant storehouses opposite, for they
had a similar look of design and age. The windows of Mr. Wicker's
house had smaller panes of glass than were used nowadays, and like the
warehouses across from it, Mr. Wicker's had many dormer windows
jutting out from the slated roof. Unlike the warehouses, however,
which were rickety and down-at-heel, Mr. Wicker's home was well cared
for. The windows--except for the bow window of the shop to the right
of the front door--had shutters painted a pleasing bluey-green, and at
their sides could be seen the edges of gay curtains. The traffic
freeway rose high above the roof, dwarfing the old house and casting
a deepening shadow over the whole length of Water Street, shading even
Mr. Wicker's back door, so close did it rise beside the house. The air
was filled with mechanical sounds--the roar of cars speeding up the
hill, the grind of gears, the shuddering throb of wheels along the
freeway, and the clanking bang of chains and weights in the factories
along the shore.
[Illustration]
The sun was dropping, and the sky behind Chris made a sinister promise
for the following day. A livid yellow stained the horizon beyond the
factories and gray clouds lowered and tumbled above. The air was
growing chill and Chris decided to finish his job. All at once he
wondered how his mother was, and everything in him pinched and
tightened itself.
At the foot of the hill he reached the house. As he came to the bow
front the old familiar excitement that always seized Chris when he
looked in Mr. Wicker's window touched him again, and he stopped to
look at its well-memorized display.
For as long as he had stopped to look into Mr. Wicker's window, which
was as far back as he could remember, Chris had never known the
objects to vary or be changed. There were three things that always
caught his eye, amid the litter of dusty pieces. On the left, the coil
of rope; in the center, the model of a sailing ship in a green glass
bottle, and on the right, the wooden statue of a Negro boy in baggy
trousers, Turkish jacket, and white turban. The figure was holding up
a wooden bouquet, the yellow paint peeling from the carved flowers.
The figure's mouth was open in an engaging toothy smile, and its right
hand was on one hip, on the chipped red paint of the baggy trousers.
The ship, so often contemplated by Chris that he knew every tiny
thread and delicately jointed board, was a three-masted schooner,
sleek of line, painted--at one time--a dazzling white. Now with dust
dulling the green sides of the bottle, its sails looked loose, its
sides grimed. But the name still showed at the prow, and many a time
Chris, safe at home in bed, had sailed imaginary voyages in the
_Mirabelle_. It lay there snug and captured, as if at the bottom of a
tropical sea, seen through the glass sides of the bottle, and Chris
never tired of looking at it.
But perhaps the coil of rope, so meaningless, so meaningful, held his
imagination by an even stronger hold. Why a coil of rope in an antique
shop? Who would want it? People bought rope in a hardware store--there
was one farther along M Street near the old deserted Lido Theatre. But
here, in an antique shop? Chris shook his head as he stared. He had
never seen anyone go into Mr. Wicker's shop, now he thought of it.
How then, did he live, and what did he ever sell?
A sudden car horn woke him from his dream. He looked up, seeing for
the first time the small card hung at eye level in the window. In a
beautiful script such as Chris had never seen before, but very
legible, the card read:
Boy Wanted.
Good Pay.
_W. Wicker._
Jakey Harris came back into Chris's thoughts. He looked over his
shoulder at the darkening sky streaked luridly with citrous strokes;
noticed the wheel and tackle high up at the loft door of the warehouse
opposite, and put his hand on the doorknob. The last flicker of light
scudded across the steel sides of the freeway to pick out the
lettering above the shop window.
W-LLM. WICKER, CURIOSITIES
Chris opened the door and a bell jangled, very faintly, but with
persistence, far away in some distant part of the house.