The Adventures of Flash Jackson by William Kowalski Read Free Book Online

It told me she must have been all right, because Brother was an excellent judge of character. For another thing, she’d been everywhere. She’d gone to places I hadn’t even heard of before—where the hell was Kuala Lumpur? Where was Singapore?—but she didn’t talk about them like a regular tourist would. She just mentioned them, as casual as if she was talking about going to Buffalo. And I couldn’t forget that fellow she’d talked about earlier, the one she’d called Flash, who ended up getting shot by the East Germans. Now, how on earth did she even know someone who would find themselves in that kind of predicament? I barely knew what an East German was. I knew that once upon a time there’d been a wall dividing Germany down the middle—the good ones lived on one side and the bad ones on the other, or so I heard it, and the wall ran the length of the country. I figured they hadto put it up after Hitler came along, to keep all the Nazis in line. They’d taken it down since, though. If I thought about it, I could recall hearing stories about people trying to escape from the bad side onto the good side, and sometimes getting shot at. I wondered if this Flash fellow had been an East German himself and was trying to make it over to the West. I made up my mind to ask her later, when Mother wasn’t around. Mother had a way of taking a conversation over and making it sound stupid, no matter what it was about.
    After about eighty years of us sitting around and making nicey-nice with each other, Miz Powell said she had to be getting along home. I hopped up on my crutches and said I would walk her out the door. I said it fast because I didn’t want Mother coming along.
    â€œRawthah delighted to meet you, Ms. Powell,” said Mother. “Do come by again.”
    Oh, Lord, just shoot me now , I thought.
    But Miz Powell nodded and smiled. If she’d picked up on what a fruitcake my mother was, she didn’t let on. “I shall, my dear Mrs. Bombauer,” she murmured. “I shall.”
    â€œLet’s skedaddle,” I said, and I headed through the screen door and down the steps as fast as I could.
    â€œThank you, dear,” said Miz Powell, when we were outside. “It’s not necessary for you to walk with me, though. Your leg must be quite painful.”
    â€œIt ain’t that bad,” I said.
    I usually never said ain’t. I prided myself on speaking better than most of the yahoos in this pisswater burg, because of all the reading I’d done. But Ms. Powell’s speech and accent and everything else about her were so dandified and high-toned that it kind of brought out the worst in me. “I didn’t fall down no stairs, neither,” I said.
    â€œYou didn’t?”
    â€œNo, ma’am.” I picked my way down the porch steps and crutched along the driveway to the road, Miz Powell walking beside me. “I fell through the roof of that there barn.”
    â€œYou fell through the—” She cut herself off as she looked at the barn. “Why did your mother tell me you fell down the stairs?”
    â€œShe gets kind of embarrassed at me,” I said. “I’m too boyish for her liking, I guess. Doesn’t want to admit she has a daughter who likes climbing things.”
    â€œWhy, it must be fifty feet high!”
    â€œAt least,” I said. I dropped my local-yokel act. It wasn’t lost on her, but suddenly I felt pretty stupid.
    â€œWhat were you doing up there?”
    â€œJust looking around,” I said. “I was bored.”
    â€œAh, yes. I see.”
    â€œYou see what?”
    â€œI mean, I understand how easily one grows bored around here. Don’t forget, I grew up here myself…although that was a very long time ago.”
    Miz Powell was starting to sound less foreign and more normal, though maybe that was just me getting used to her. She took a moment to look around