In God we trust_ all others pay cash - Jean Shepherd [90]
Finally the Assessor closed his book.
“Well, that’s it. You’re not doing too bad.”
His feet dragged over our threadbare carpet, the worn linoleum, and out into the cold for another two years. The Assessor had come and gone.
A few hours later my father got the full report as he breezed in through the kitchen door, smelling of the outside and the office.
“What’s new?”
“The Assessor was here.”
“WHAT!”
He stopped in his tracks, his face suddenly white.
“The Assessor was here.”
The yellow light bulb grew dimmer. The refrigerator sighed deeply, going into action with a squeak of the pulley and thump of the compressor. The floor shook. Over the roar my father shouted:
“Who was it?”
“That tall thin man who lives in that brick house on the other side of the Schwartzes. Around the back, over the garage.”
“Oh, I’ve seen him around.”
He slowly removed his overcoat and plumped down in the one kitchen chair that was not broken somewhere, somehow.
“Did you get the radio in the coal bin before he got in?”
“Yep.”
“D’you think he saw it down there?”
“I don’t know. He looked in the coal bin.” There was a terrible fear that somehow somebody would get the impression that we lived like human beings.
“What’s for supper?”
“Meat loaf.”
Gradually the chill thawed. Finally it faded out completely as the months went by. Then, out of the blue, without so much as a murmur of thunder on the horizon, the hammer fell.
It was a crackling sunny clear-eyed Friday afternoon. Our mosquito swarm of kids slowly worked its way toward home, kicking, hollering, throwing stuff, looking for junk, drifting like rain through the alleys, over fences, under porches, down innumerable shortcuts; Schwartz, Flick, Alex, Junior Kissel, me, and a covey of lesser satellites.
At last we reached the block, ready to rush in to individual houses, grab some Graham crackers or fig newtons and out the back doors to begin whatever game was being played at that moment in time. Throwing rocks was an important way of getting home. Rocks were thrown at a regular established set of targets—Mrs. Schaeffer’s birdhouse, Pulaski’s Coca-Cola sign, and every telephone pole that got in our way. Our arms were sharp and rubbery and the rocks bounced and clanged. Every night the sparrows, robins, and wrens ducked and dodged, squawking raucously, urging us on, taunting, a barrel-rolling and skittering through the ambient air amid a hail of whizzing clinkers.
Occasionally a lucky shot shattered an insulator high up amid the crisscrossing tangle of telephone wires and then a frenzied roar of flight up the alley, out of the danger zone. Particularly delectable were the posters that festooned fence posts, garages, and telephone poles. Fat-faced seekers of county office were constantly peppered with a steady barrage of anything that could be picked up and hurled.
“Watch me get old Corngrass. In the ear!”
ZZzzzziiiizzzzz … THWONK!
“Wowie, what a lucky shot!”
“Lucky! That’s the third night in a row I got him. Lucky! Watch THIS!”
ZZZiiizzz K-THONK BONK!
Another blow for Anarchy was struck. Old Corngrass had run for mayor for as long as anyone could remember, each year using the same stolid, toad-like portrait; hair precisely parted with a thin, naked line down the middle of his skull, rimless glasses gleaming dully before beady, staring eyes. He never made it, maybe because he was so easy to hit with rocks.
Now we were on home turf.
“Watch me get that red one.”
ZZizzzz—the rock whistled past a new red cardboard poster, small, compact, with no picture.
ZZzzziiizzz
SSSSSiissss
Whooosh
Three projectiles simultaneously bracketed the target. All missed. We drifted idly toward the telephone pole, unaware of the disaster that was about to strike us all.
Flick arched an apple core toward the sign. It splatted on the post a few inches high. Schwartz slanted a bottle cap upward, curving nicely, trailing after a passing bluejay who yawked distainfully and continued on.
I don’t know who read it first. Maybe we all did; black print on red poster