The Luck of the Buttons (13 page)

Granny hobbled into the house and hung her cane over a kitchen chair. “She’s going to write a letter to a Millhouse?” She wobbled around the room looking for her stationery box. “Who does she think she . . . ?”

Mother Button interrupted her. “Aggie Millhouse has written to Tugs from camp. We need some nice paper, now, Granny. The best you’ve got.”

“It’s
all
the best,” Granny sniffed. “Here.” She held out a long, thin box. “I suppose you’ll want to use one of my nice ink pens, too.”

“Oh, no,” said Tugs, taking the box from Granny. “I’ll use pencil. And an eraser.”

She looked through the papers. There was white, cream, light blue, and green. She liked the green best, but Aggie, she thought, would prefer blue.

She pulled out one blue sheet and a matching envelope.

“What are you going to say?” asked Granny, standing over Tugs as she picked up her pencil. Mother Button stood by, too, watching.

“I don’t know,” said Tugs. “But I think I need to write it in private.”

“Well!” said Granny.

“Let her be,” said Mother Button. “Here, Tugs. Take a magazine to your room to write on.”

Tugs took the
Good Housekeeping
and her paper and pencil to her room and shut the door.

She propped herself on her bed and poised her pencil over the page again. Aggie was just the person she needed to talk to. But how to start? Tugs set the stationary down and got up to move her ribbon from her dresser pull to her bedpost like Aggie’s. There.

Tugs read over her letter three times. Then she folded it and put it in the envelope. She licked it shut and wrote
Aggie Millhouse
on the front. She copied the camp address from Aggie’s envelope and went back to the kitchen.

“Well,” said Granny. “Took you long enough. What did you say? Did you spell everything right? I’d better check it over.”

“I already licked it,” said Tugs. “Do we have any stamps?”

“Here,” said Mother Button, rooting through the whatnot drawer. “Yes. Here we go. If you run down to the post office now, it may still go out with today’s mail.”

Tugs ran out, letting the screen door slam behind her. Her legs carried her past Granddaddy’s cottage and Ned’s house, past a pair of snarling dogs and a wailing baby in a carriage. If she took the shortcut through Carl’s Alley, she would avoid all of Main Street and come out right at the post office. Tugs usually avoided Carl’s Alley because it was narrow and dark and the back doors of businesses opened onto it. There were piles of boxes and trash and always the threat of rats, whether real or imagined. But if she got to the post office in time, Aggie would get her letter tomorrow.

Tugs turned into the alley.

She heard a noise and stopped, straining her ears and waiting for her eyes to adjust to the dimness. She could turn around. But the letter. She was so close. It must have been her imagination. Then she heard it again. It was low voices, not rats. Just behind a pile of boxes, a clump of people huddled. Tugs stopped again, but she’d been spotted.

“Well, if it isn’t the fancy writer!” said a familiar voice. “Where are you off to in such a hurry? Got a letter for the president?” It was Harvey Moore, with the Rowdies. G.O. Lindholm was there, too.

Tugs took a deep breath. She thought about Aggie Millhouse standing up to G.O. in her own alley. But this was G.O. and the Rowdies and Mr. Harvey Moore, and it was Carl’s Alley. Her legs wanted to turn and run, but she resisted.

“Going to the post office. Mailing a letter for my mother. She writes letters all the time. Going to mail it to her. FOR her. Urgent. Very urgent.” She walked quickly, but Harvey Moore stepped in her path.

“Come join us,” said Harvey. “We were just having a little fun.”

Tugs looked nervously from Harvey to Luther to Bess and Finn and Frankie. Bess looked away. Finn and Frankie made a face at her.

“I can’t stay. I have to get to the . . . I thought you were rats!” Tugs said. “I mean I didn’t think you were rats when I saw you, but I thought . . . I mean, when I heard noises, and it’s always dark here and . . .”

“Rats!” howled Harvey. “Did you hear that, gang? Rats. That’s rich. I was just showing the fellows here a slick card trick. Let them try it out on you. Come on, who wants to be first?”

“Let her go,” said G.O. quietly. Harvey turned sharply to G.O.

“What did you say?”

“Let her go,” said G.O. again, a little louder. “She’s going to be late for something.”

Harvey looked hard at G.O., then back at Tugs. He laughed.

“What was I thinking? You’re too young anyhow. You boys should practice on some regular folks. Let’s go down to the pool hall. I’ve got a few fancy things I can show you there, too. Run along now, girly. Mail the letter for your mommy.”

Tugs ran for the end of the alley and straight into the street. A Pontiac honked and screeched out of the way. Tugs looked down at the letter. She’d been holding it so tight, it was crumpled and dirty with the sweat from her hand. Nothing to be done about it now. She pulled open the heavy door and walked into the coolness of the post office.

“I’d like to mail a letter,” she said to the clerk, holding out the blue envelope.

“You’re just in time,” said the clerk. “Hank! Wait up. Got one more here.” He turned back to Tugs. “Relax,” he said. “You made it. It’s your lucky day.”

Tugs reached to push open the door, then stopped. Harvey Moore and the Rowdies were just passing. She stepped backward into the lobby. She read all the notices and Wanted posters on the wall. Then she read them again. She stood at the window and looked down the street. Life outside was going on like normal, people going about their business, while her world was one knotted mess.

“Anything wrong, young lady?” the clerk said.

Tugs hesitated. “No.”

“Well, then, you’d better get along. Your mother is probably expecting you.”

“Yes,” said Tugs. “I just . . . Yes.” She pushed open the heavy door and felt the hot air hit her face. She walked slowly down the steps.

“Tugs,” came a voice from behind her. She jumped. It was G.O.

“Hold up!” he said. “I’m not after you.”

G.O. slouched toward Tugs, his hands in his pockets.

“Thanks for sticking up for me back there,” said Tugs. “But . . .”

“You don’t have to worry about them. They’re on their way to the pool hall with Mr. Moore. He’s got some tricks to teach them. I’ll walk with you if you want.”

“Why aren’t you with them?”

G.O. was quiet.

“Oh,” said Tugs. “You shouldn’t have said anything.”

“Yep,” he said. “Mr. Moore doesn’t like people messing in his business.”

“Why did you?”

“You saved me at the three-legged when you hollered at Lester. My dad says pay back a bad deed once, a good deed twice. I guess I still owe you one.”

“There is one thing,” Tugs said, thinking about the Lindholms and their scavenging ways. “Do you think my camera box could be at your house? I left it at the park on the Fourth of July.”

G.O. looked at the ground. His ears reddened.

“Probably it is,” he said. “I’ll see.”

“OK,” said Tugs. “But about Luther and them, I thought you wanted to be a Rowdy. You can’t stir the pot like that if you want them to let you hang on.”

“Yep, I know. But funning around is one thing. I just want to hang out with Luther and them. Have a smoke. Pal around. So I followed them to the alley today. But Mr. Moore was talking about doing some kind of work, anyhow, and that’s not for me. Going to people’s houses. My ma says to stay out of other people’s houses or else. Though earning some coin is tempting. Finn and Frankie said maybe they’d come by for me tomorrow, and maybe they’ll let me help. I don’t know.”

“What kind of work was he talking about? Did he want them to do a crime?”

“Nah. Doesn’t sound illegal. People said they’d give Mr. Moore money for the paper. Now he’s got to collect it. But he’s got to hustle back to Chicago in a couple of days, he says. And it’s too much to do all on his own.”

Tugs studied the pavement as they walked.
Collecting money at people’s houses.
The Rowdies didn’t know that the money wasn’t really for the newspaper, and she was pretty sure Mr. Moore would find a way out of paying them, too. She nearly felt sorry for the Rowdies. They didn’t know a please from a thank-you. Most people probably wouldn’t even open their doors.

“G.O.,” said Tugs, “I don’t think that money is for the newspaper at all.”

“Then what’s it for?”

“I think he is going to steal it.”

G.O. whistled. “Try telling that to anyone in this town. No one will believe you. Everyone thinks Mr. Moore is the king’s pajamas.”

“My granddaddy Ike says that,” said Tugs.

“Says what?”

“The king’s pajamas.”

“So does my dad,” said G.O.

“But we have to tell someone,” said Tugs. “If Mr. Moore is hustling back to Chicago, everyone will lose their money.”

“Who are you going to tell?” asked G.O.

Tugs thought about the people she knew who could solve a problem. Aggie was the main one, and she’d written to Aggie. Thinking about Aggie made her think about her Fourth of July ribbons, which made her think about Miss Lucy and the display case. Miss Lucy was just the person. And she could watch out for the Thompson twins.

“We could tell Miss Lucy, at the library,” said Tugs.

“I don’t have a card,” said G.O.

“That doesn’t matter,” said Tugs. “Come on!” Tugs turned to start for the library, then stopped abruptly. “But if it is too late to mail a letter, it’s too late to go to the library today.”

“It’s probably all right,” said G.O. “Who is going to hand over money to the Rowdies anyhow?”

“I was thinking that, too,” said Tugs. “I guess it’s OK. I’ll tell my parents about Mr. Moore tonight. Just stay home tomorrow. Don’t go out with the Rowdies.”

“I don’t know,” said G.O. He turned to walk toward his house. “See you.”

“And stay away from Mr. Moore,” Tugs called after him.

“You think I like this any better than you do?” said Granny, poking a needle up through a circle of stretched fabric and handing it to Tugs. “I don’t know how you managed to get yourself stranded here all day, but wipe that sour look off your face. This hurts me just as much as it does you.”

It was Thursday morning. Tugs and Granny were sitting on the davenport, dutifully trying to master a needlepoint pattern Mother Button had pulled from a box of unfinished projects under her bed. Mother Button had gone to get the pie Aunt Mina was baking for the occasion of this predicament.