Lee Child - First Thrills

The doorbell rang and I ran over, excited, and opened the front door even though Momma always tells me not to. A guy stood there. He wore overalls with stains on them and he had big shiny arms and black tangly hair down over his eyes. A silver pen stuck up out of the bibby part of his overalls. In front of our house was a beat-up brown truck.

He said, “Is your dad home?”

And I said, “I don’t have a dad. I live with Momma.”

And he smiled a real toothy smile like in the soap operas and said, “I fix driveway cracks. I finished the house up the street a bit early today and I noticed you had some in your driveway. Cracks.”

I said, “I didn’t do it.”

He stared at me sort of funny, then said, “Is your mom home?”

I said, “No.”

He ducked his head a little to look past me into the house and said, “It’s just you and your mom living here?”

I said, “Can I have your pen?”

He pulled the shiny silver pen from his overalls and turned it so it caught the light. It sparkled a bit. He said, “This pen?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “This one right here?”

I said, “Yeah.”

He said, “You won’t tell your momma I gave you this pen?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “No sir.”

He handed me the pen and walked back to his truck. After a few tries, his truck started and he drove off.

I went into Momma’s room and played in her closet. She’s got this one shirt that I like to pet that’s all shimmery like snakeskin. I took it a few times but she always notices right away so I don’t take it anymore. I wasn’t supposed to touch it neither but Momma wasn’t home and what was I supposed to do? Next I took the lid off the shoebox and looked at the rows of green bills. Momma gets paid a lot in cash-her tips, she calls it, but the tips of what?-and if she keeps it in the shoebox instead of a bank then she gets to keep more of it instead of the damn government stealing it, which is weird because I thought it was harder to steal from a bank. It’s the only time Momma says “damn” except when she’s talking about her damn life insurance which she has so she’ll know I’ll be taken care of if something ever happens to her. The damn life insurance costs her an arm and a leg and I don’t even know where to start with how many ways that doesn’t make sense. If something happened to Momma she’d go to heaven and I’d go to the home where some of the other kids in Mrs. Connelly’s class live and they get movie nights and chocolate ice cream if they earn points by behaving well. If I behave well I don’t get any points. But every Wednesday Momma buys me a comic book so I guess that’s something.

A couple nights later, Momma came in my room. She was wearing her shimmery snake shirt, and makeup, which was weird since it was her day off work.

She said, “Tommy, listen. I have someone coming over for dinner, and I’d really like it if you could behave.”

“Is she a waitress, too?”

“It’s a he, actually.”

“I don’t want him to touch my comics.”

“He won’t touch your comics.”

“Can we have pizza?”

“Sure. We can have pizza.” She stopped in the doorway and her eyes looked a bit tired, even with the makeup. She said, “This is important to me, Tommy,” and I wasn’t sure what that meant so I didn’t say anything.

I read Batman again, but still couldn’t get past page eleven where the Joker comes in smiling that smile. So then I read one of my Wolverines and that calmed me down so much I didn’t even notice Momma was at my door until she said, in a stiff voice, “Tommy, I’d like you to come meet someone.”

So I got up and followed her down the hall. Who do you think was there but the guy in the overalls who’d given me the pen! Except he wasn’t in overalls now. He was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a leather jacket and he smelled like cologne.

Momma said, “Tommy, I’d like you to meet Bo.”

I remembered about the pen and about how Momma wasn’t supposed to know, so I said, “Nice to meet you, Bo.”

And he shook my hand and said, “Good to meet you, Tommy.”

He came in and was all nice to me, slapping my knee and asking if I like football (no) or baseball (no) and saying he betted the girls were just crazy about me at school (no). Momma watched and smiled except when I said, “no,” then she stood behind him and gave me that angry scowl, which was weird because Momma always taught me not to lie. But she also taught me not to talk to strangers and now here she was wanting me to lie to a stranger. It was very confusing.

The doorbell finally rang and Momma said, “Oh, that must be the pizza,” and got up.

Bo said, “No, please, let me,” and he pulled a cool wallet out of the inside pocket of his jacket. The wallet was leather with pretty Indian-looking stitching on the back that showed a sunset, the sun all yellow and wobbly going down into the ocean. Bo took out a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to Momma and she bit her lip and smiled at him then went in the other room.

I said, “I can eat eight slices.”

Bo said, “I bet you can, chief,” and then Momma came back in with the pizza.

Momma put the pizza on the kitchen table and said, “Thank you.” Then she looked at me and said, “Say ‘thank you.’ ”

I said, “Say thank you.”

Momma hates when I do that but I pretend I don’t know any better. She smiled at him and said, “He doesn’t know any better.”

He said, “I completely understand.”

We ate. I ate a lot. Momma excused herself to the bathroom. Bo got up and looked around a little, peering through the door to the garage and into the closet door and the little den, checking out the rooms like he was gonna buy the place. When the toilet flushed, he sat back down in a hurry.

Momma came back in. She said, “I just need to clean up and read Tommy his story before bed. Unless…”

And Bo said, “What?”

Momma said, “Unless you want to read him his story. Then we could be done quicker and, you know, alone.”

Bo smiled extra-wide and said, “I’d love to.”

I went back and got in my jammies and he watched me while I changed, and smiled but it wasn’t a nice smile. It was like the Joker’s smile.

The water was running down the hall in the kitchen and Momma was humming to herself.

I climbed into bed and I said, “I want The Hardy Boys . The one about the missing gold. Momma and I are on chapter three.”

Bo said, “Tough luck, retard. I’ll read you Goodnight Moon .”

I think he picked that one because it’s the skinniest.

I said, “ Goodnight Moon ? You think I’m a baby?”

And he said, “No, I think you’re a retard.”

I told him he was jealous, but he just laughed.

He read it real fast, not even turning it so I could see the pictures. Then he put the book down on his knee. I could hear Momma putting the dishes away in the cupboards. He said, “This is a nice house. A real nice house.”

I said, “Uh-huh.”

He said, “I could get used to living in a house like this.”

Then Momma walked down the hall and leaned against the door and said, “How sweet .”

And he said, “It was nothing at all.”

He walked out and she stayed behind and whispered, “Remember the guest rule.” And then she closed my door.

But I didn’t want to sneak down the hall and listen to them. I didn’t like listening to him the way I liked listening to Ms. P.

The next day at breakfast, Momma said, “Do you like Bo?”

I said, “He’s mean.”

She said, “He’s not mean. He read you a story, didn’t he?”

And I said, “He’s mean.”