Heinrich took me by the elbow. I turned and now saw the inner Long John Silver after all. He only needed a parrot on his shoulder to make the picture complete. According to Silver, his parrot had seen as much wickedness as the devil himself. I guessed Wilhelm Heinrich had seen his share of wickedness… but you have to remember that I was seventeen, and waist-deep in matters I didn’t understand. In other words, I was scared to death.
“How much gold does he have?” Heinrich said in a low, guttural voice. His occasional use of German words and phrases had felt like an affectation to me, but just then he really did sound German. And not a nice German. “Tell me how much he has and where he gets it. I’ll make it worth your while.”
“I’ll be going now,” I said, and did.
Was Christopher Polley watching as I mounted my bike and rode away with the remaining gold pellets in my backpack? I wouldn’t know, because I was looking back over my shoulder at Heinrich’s pale, pudgy face suspended above the CLOSED sign in his dusty shop door. Maybe it was imagination—probably it was—but I thought I could still see the greed on his face. Furthermore, I understood it. I remembered plunging my hands into that bucket and letting the pellets run through my fingers. Not just greed, but gold-greed.
Like in a pirate story.
6
Around four o’clock that afternoon, a van with ARCADIA OUTPATIENT on the side pulled up to the curb. I was waiting on the walk with Radar on her leash. The gate—now rust-free and newly oiled—was standing open. An orderly got out of the van and opened the back doors. Melissa Wilcox was standing there behind Mr. Bowditch, who was in a wheelchair with his fixator-encased leg outstretched. She unlocked the wheelchair, pushed it forward, and hit a button with the heel of her hand. As the platform and wheelchair started to descend, my stomach also sank. I’d remembered the phone, the urinal, even the call-bell. His check from Heinrich was safe in my wallet. All good, but there was no wheelchair ramp, not in front and not in back. I felt like an idiot, but at least I didn’t have to feel that way for long. I had Radar to distract me. She saw Mr. Bowditch and launched herself at him. No sign of arthritis in her hips just then. I managed to snub the leash in time to keep her from getting her paws squashed by the descending lift, but I felt the shock go all the way up my arm.
Yark! Yark! Yark!
These weren’t the big-dog roars that had so frightened Andy back in the day but cries so plaintive and human that they wrung my heart. You’re back! those yarks said. Thank God, I thought you were gone forever!
Mr. Bowditch held out his arms to her and she jumped up, paws on his outstretched leg. He winced, then laughed and cradled her head. “Yes, girl,” he crooned. It was hard for me to believe he could make a sound like that even when I was hearing it, but he did; that grouchy old man crooned. There were tears in his eyes. Radar was making little sounds of happiness, her big old tail swishing back and forth.
“Yes, girl, yes, I missed you, too. Now get down, you’re killing me.”
Radar dropped back onto all fours and walked beside the wheelchair as Melissa rolled it up the walk, bumping and yawing.
“No ramp,” I said. “Sorry, sorry, I can build one, I’ll look up how to do it on the Net, everything’s on the Net.” I was babbling and couldn’t seem to stop. “I think everything else is more or less ready—”
“We’ll hire someone to put in a ramp, so quit fussing,” Mr. Bowditch interrupted. “You don’t need to do everything. One of the perks of being an amanuensis is delegating tasks. And there’s no hurry. I don’t go out much, as you know. Did you take care of that business matter?”
“Yes. This morning.”
“Good.”
Melissa said, “You two should be able to lift that chair up the steps, strong guys like you. What do you think, Herbie?”
“No problem,” the orderly said. “Right, chum?”
I said sure and took one side. Radar scrambled halfway up the steps, paused once when her back legs betrayed her, then got it back in gear and made it the rest of the way. She looked down at us, tail thumping.
“And someone should fix that path, if he’s going to use it,” Melissa said. “It’s worse than the dirt road I grew up on back in Tennessee.”
“Ready, hoss?” Herbie asked.
We lifted the wheelchair up to the porch. I fumbled through Mr. Bowditch’s keys and finally found the one that opened the front door.
“Hey,” the orderly said. “Didn’t I see your picture in the paper?”