Early Warning

All through second grade, he had walked to school, at first with Mom, then with Barry Clayton, who was in third grade, and, a few times when Barry was sick, by himself. He went out the front walk to Tuxedo, then walked north on Glen Road. There were six dogs on the way to school. Only one of them was scary, a large brown dog with black on his face who was inside a fence, but as Charlie walked along, the dog ran beside him behind the fence, with his nose to the ground, growling and barking. Charlie said, in his bossiest voice, “Shh, shh, shh, shh,” as he walked along, and he didn’t run. If you ran, that made the dog more ready to jump the fence. Glen Road went along the railroad tracks, and he was not allowed to climb the hill to the railroad tracks, though sometimes he did. He passed Clark, where Ricky Horner lived on the corner (Mom always laughed at this rhyme), then passed Atalanta, and came to Marshall. No cars. It was a quiet morning. He had no idea what time it was. If you walked all the way to Marshall and turned right, you could get penny candy at that store. Charlie liked Mary Janes, Pixy Stix, and candy buttons. If you turned left and crossed Glen Road (which he was not allowed to do), you could walk under the tracks and down to Deer Creek, which was deep and had steep sides, but Ricky Horner said there were fossils in the banks if you looked hard enough. He had shown Charlie two he’d found. Several kids in his class lived on the other side of the tracks, and they walked to school every day, so Charlie didn’t understand why he wasn’t allowed to go there.

The bus stop to the swimming pool was across from the playground. There was nobody standing there, but it was in the shade. He decided it was too risky to stop for candy — besides, he had his Rice Krispie treat — so he went and stood right next to the pole that said “Bus Stop”; those words he could read, though they could also be “suB potS” if you wanted them to be. He was in the lowest reading group, and had been all year. Miss Lewis was not happy when he told her all the words he saw on the page. She wanted him to see “words” when he might really be seeing “sword.” And she always wanted him to read the words in order, from the left side to the right side, even when it might be more fun to read them from the right side to the left side. That was why he had to go to summer school. But, as Mom said, there was no reason to get mad, and so he never did, and so Miss Lewis liked him anyway, more than she liked John King, who was also in his reading group and spent a lot of time snapping his fingers and drawing pictures of men parachuting out of airplanes, and more than she liked Billy Swenson, who just stared at the book and picked his nose. No girls were in their group.

The bus came, and halted, and the door opened. The driver, who was a fat man, leaned forward and looked around Charlie to see if there was a grown-up with him, but when Charlie handed him the dollar, he took it and gave him three quarters, two dimes, and a nickel. Charlie reached up and put his dime and his nickel in the machine, where they rattled down through the glass part, and then he put the rest in his pocket and went and sat down. Five other people were on the bus; two of them were Negroes, one was a very old lady, and two looked like high-school kids. When Charlie was sitting in his seat, the bus pulled away, and his mom’s car went by, going the other direction. Charlie sat back in his seat and arranged the rolled-up towel on his lap. It was very important not to forget it or lose it. He thought he was doing a good job.

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