Billy and the Bearman. David A. Poulsen

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СКАЧАТЬ guided the pick-up down a side street and parked it behind a bread delivery truck where it was well-hidden from the main street.

      “No sense drawing attention to ourselves,” he said. “Let’s go. First stop, grocery store.”

      It was the smallest supermarket Billy had ever seen, an IGA store, two buildings in from the corner. The lone clerk in the store was a teenaged girl with a ponytail and a fair sized wad of bubblegum in her mouth. Billy guessed she was a couple of years younger than Bearman. She looked bored and uninterested, not the type to pay a whole lot of attention to the two of them. She didn’t look up as they entered the store. A couple of women pushing grocery carts and an elderly couple arguing over what detergent to buy were the only other people in the store.

      “Since we don’t have any way of keeping anything cold, we’ll have to buy stuff that won’t go bad,” Bearman said quietly as he led the way down the first aisle.

      For the next quarter of an hour, they weaved their way up and down aisles, Bearman selecting the items and dropping them into the grocery cart, Billy keeping track of how much they had spent. Bearman had allotted thirty dollars for groceries. They took no meat; Bearman was sure they’d be able to trap or shoot that part of their diet. He filled the shopping cart with canned and packaged goods, bread, several boxes of macaroni and cheese and a large bag of potatoes.

      “We don’t have any butter,” Billy said. “Don’t we need butter for macaroni?”

      “Not the way I make it, Kid.”

      “Yuk.”

      Bearman added a small jar of peanut butter to the contents of the shopping cart.

      “Twenty-seven dollars,” Billy announced.

      “Right,” Bearman nodded. “And that about does it, so I figure we oughta splurge with the last three bucks.”

      “Sounds like a good idea to me,” Billy nodded. “How about we splurge on butter?”

      “Nope, tonight we dine in style,” Bearman said, holding up a pound of hamburger. “Grab some buns and we’re outa here.”

      The store clerk, intent on reshaping the wad of gum, barely looked at them as she checked their purchases through the till. On their way out of the store the boys passed a table near the door where a tiny, old lady with a wrinkled, grandmotherly smile was selling fresh-baked blueberry pies.

      Bearman stopped to examine the pies. “How much?” he inquired.

      “Two dollars,” the lady replied, “and they’re guaranteed good.”

      “They look good,” Billy swallowed.

      “I’ll give you a dollar fifty,” Bearman told the lady.

      “Not if you want one of these pies, young man.” The sweet smile never left the lady’s face, but Billy sensed that she wasn’t about to let any of her pies go for less than the quoted price.

      “Well,” Bearman started, rubbing his chin deliberately, “you see, ma’am, my little brother here is in need of an operation and if I pay more than a dollar fifty for your pie, not sayin’ it ain’t worth the full two dollars understand, but if I pay more than that dollar fifty, I’ll have to dig into little Billy’s operation fund.”

      The pie lady seemed about to laugh, but she didn’t. Instead she turned in her chair and looked sternly at Billy. “And what sort of surgery is it that you’re requiring, Billy?”

      Billy tried to think fast. “Brain!” he blurted. “Brain surgery. I . . . uh . . . fell off my bike.”

      This time the old lady did laugh. Bearman smacked the palm of his hand against his forehead and rolled his eyes.

      “Two dollars,” the lady said again.

      Bearman nodded and reached into his pocket and took out a two dollar bill.

      As they made their way toward the door with their grocery bags, he shook his head. “Brain surgery, I can’t believe you said that.”

      Billy shrugged. “It was all I could come up with on short notice.”

      Bearman grumbled all the way to the pick-up. “You need brain surgery, that part’s true.” He laughed then and Billy did too. He started to get in the truck, but Bearman stopped him.

      “We’ll leave it where it is,” he told Billy. “It’s almost out of sight here. We can walk to the clothes place.” They set the groceries inside and started back toward main street.

      As they walked, Billy kicked a couple of stones, then turned to look at Bearman. “Before . . . when we were talking about the treehouse, you said the wood and tools would be no problem.”

      Bearman nodded and kicked a stone of his own.

      “How are we going to get them?” Billy asked.

      “We’re gonna steal ’em,” Bearman said.

      Billy was silent for several minutes. “You’re kidding, right?” he said finally as they crossed main street in the direction of the Goodwill store.

      “Nope, I’m not kidding. Although it’s not exactly stealing, seeing as I cut most of the wood and paid for at least half of the tools.”

      “I don’t get it.”

      “We’re going to pay a visit to my old man’s place.” Bearman lowered his voice. “After dark he’ll be drunk and we’ll be able to load up everything we need and be out of there before he knows what happened.”

      Billy swallowed hard and recalled the ugly welt on Bearman’s back. “Uh . . . when were you thinking we should do this?”

      “Tonight.”

      The Goodwill store was a small, wooden building that had been brown a long time before, but now was in need of a coat of paint. A large woman in a multi-coloured dress and almost as many shades of makeup greeted them as they entered.

      “Something I can help you with?” she asked, studying first one, then the other.

      She seems friendly enough, Billy thought.

      “Yeah, we . . . uh . . . need some clothes. Some good warm clothes for the outdoors,” Bearman explained to the woman.

      Her expression didn’t change. “You two on the run from the law, is that it?”

      Billy blinked and looked carefully at the woman. Maybe she hadn’t meant anything by the remark. Maybe she was just kidding around, just making conversation, or maybe . . .

      Bearman appeared to be having the same thoughts. His cheeks coloured and he stammered out a response to the question.

      “Uh . . . no . . . we . . . uh . . .”

      Billy was afraid that in his anxiety, Bearman might say the wrong thing. He knew he should help. But what should he say? It didn’t matter. He had to say something.

      “It’s СКАЧАТЬ