The Schwa Was Here

I already told you about Old Man Crawley—the hermit who lived on the second floor of his massive restaurant that took up a whole block on the bay. I think every neighborhood in the world's got a shut-in. There's all these reasons for it, y'know, like outdooraphobia, or whatever they call it. They love to make movies about shut-ins, and it always turns out that it's some lonely dude who's just misunderstood. But that wasn't the case with Charles J. Crawley. Nothing to misunderstand about him. He was old, he was rich, he was cranky, and although no one ever saw or actually spoke to him, he made it very clear he was not to be messed with.

There was this one Halloween, for instance, some of the neighborhood kids, including my brother, went on an egg pa­trol—and there are lots of windows to egg on that second floor of Crawley's restaurant. We never did see Crawley himself look­ing out of the windows, but there were always Afghans poking their noses out. So, anyway, my brother and some of his friends, they go out on Halloween a few years back, toss a few eggs at Crawley's upstairs windows, and run off. We heard nothing about it, except for one thing . . . from November 1 until New Year's Day, not a single market in the neighborhood had eggs— not even the big supermarket chains. "It's a local shortage," peo­ple were told—but everyone knew that it was Old Man Crawley He had pulled some strings and shut down the egg supply to the whole neighborhood. No one ever egged his windows again.

Which brings me to the biggest and potentially most profitable dare that our little invisibility enterprise with the Schwa took on. Like I said, it was Wendell Tiggor's dare. It was a pretty clever one, which makes me think he didn't actually come up with it, because Wendell Tiggor had about the intelli­gence of my mother's meat loaf if you took out the onions. It was at the bus stop after school that Tiggor came up to me.

"So, I've been hearing about this Schwa kid." (Tiggor begins every sentence with the word "so.")

"Yeah?"

"So, I hear he goes invisible or something."

"Why don't you ask him yourself?" I say. "He's standing right here."

"Where?"

"Right in front of your face."

"Hi," said Schwa, who happened to be next to me and, I might add, directly in Tiggor's line of sight.

"Oh." Tiggor squinted his beady eyes and looked him over. "So, he doesn't look invisible to me."

"Then why didn't you see him when you were staring straight at him?" Tiggor has to think about that one. You can almost hear rusty gears turning in his head, like one of those farm combines that sat out in the rain too long. I figured if I let those gears turn anymore, one might come flying out of his ear and kill some innocent bystander. "Never mind," I say. "What can we do for you?" By now a few other kids have started to take notice of our conversation.

"So, I hear you do stuff," he says to the Schwa.

"Talk to my manager," says the Schwa. Tiggor's lip curls in confusion.

"He means me. Is it a service you wish my client to provide? Because if it's a service, you'll have to clear it with the student officers, who have him on retainer. Government regulations. You know how it is. Of course if it's a dare instead of a service, we can do that, no problem." At the word "dare," even more kids moved into listening range. Six or seven were clustered around us, and as everyone knows, when there's a few kids in a group it draws more and more, like curiosity has its own gravity.

"It's a dare," says Tiggor.

"Dares come with a price, too; what do you want the Schwa to do?"

"You say he can do things and not be seen," Tigger says. "So let's see if he can go into Old Man Crawley's and bring some­thing back." A bus came and went, but none of the kids got on. The public buses run every ten minutes, and this was worth ten minutes of everyone's time.

"Let me consult with my client."

I pull the Schwa aside, and he whispers, "I don't know, Antsy."

Tiggor laughs. "See, I told you," he says to the other kids. "He's a fake. Ain't no such thing as an invisible boy."

"Well, he did walk through the girls' locker room without getting seen," one kid says.

"So," says Tiggor, "does he have the pictures to prove it?"

"Yeah," I tell Tiggor, "you wish you had pictures."

Tiggor looks at me and hooks his thumbs in his pockets like he's a gunslinger ready to draw. "Twenty bucks says he can't do it."

"You're on," I said without a second thought—such is my faith in the Schwa. But the Schwa tugs my sleeve.

"Antsy..."

"What do you want him to bring back?"

"So, how about a dog bowl," Tiggor says. Everybody agrees that's the perfect item. There's about twenty kids around us now.

"Anybody else care to take the wager?" I ask.

The kids who had seen the Schwa in action all looked down and shook their heads. Only those who were not yet believers would bet against the Schwa.

"I'm in for five bucks," says one kid.

"Two bucks over here," says another. And by the time the bet­ting frenzy's over, fifty-four bucks are on the line.

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