After scraping up the loose change （waste not, want not）， I opened the bottom drawer with my fingers crossed, knowing it to be a classic stowing spot. But there was no room for a bottle in there, because the drawer was filled to the brim with mail.
It didn’t take more than a glance to know what this mess was all about: unpaid bills. Bills from the power company and the phone company, and whoever else had been foolish enough to extend Mr. Watson credit. At the very bottom would be the original notices, then the reminders, while here at the top, the cancellations and threats of legal action. Some of those envelopes hadn’t even been opened.
I couldn’t help but smile.
There was something sort of sweet in how Mr. Watson kept this assortment in the bottom drawer—not a foot away from the trash can. It had taken him just as much effort to stuff the bills inside his desk as it would have to consign them to oblivion. Maybe he just couldn’t bring himself to admit that he was never going to pay them.
My old man certainly wouldn’t have gone to the trouble. As far as he was concerned, an unpaid bill couldn’t find its way into the garbage fast enough. In fact, he was so allergic to the very paper on which bills were printed, he would go to some lengths to ensure that they never caught up with him in the first place. That’s why the incomparable Harrison Hewett, who was something of a stickler when it came to the English language, was occasionally known to misspell his own address.
But waging a war with the US Postal Service is no small affair. They have entire fleets of trucks at their disposal, and an army of foot soldiers whose sole purpose in life is to make sure that an envelope with your name on it finds its way into your mitts. Which is why the Hewetts were occasionally known to arrive by the lobby and depart by the fire escape, usually at five in the morning.
Ah, my father would say, pausing between the fourth and third floors and gesturing toward the east. Rosy-fingered dawn! Count yourself lucky to be of its acquaintance, my boy. There are kings who never laid eyes upon it!
Outside, I heard the wheels of Mr. Ransom’s pickup turning into the Watsons’ drive. The headlights briefly swept the room from right to left as the truck passed the house and headed toward the barn. I closed the bottom drawer of the desk so that the whole pile of notices could remain safe and sound until the final accounting.
* * *
? ? ?
Upstairs, I stuck my head into Billy’s room, where Woolly was already stretched out on the bed. He was humming softly and staring at the airplanes hanging from the ceiling. He was probably thinking about his father in the cockpit of his fighter plane at ten thousand feet. That’s where Woolly’s father would always be for Woolly: somewhere between the flight deck of his carrier and the bottom of the South China Sea.
I found Billy in his father’s room, sitting Indian style on the bedcovers with his knapsack at his side and a big red book in his lap.
—Hey there, gunslinger. What’re you reading?
—Professor Abacus Abernathe’s Compendium of Heroes, Adventurers, and Other Intrepid Travelers.
I whistled.
—Sounds impressive. Is it any good?
—Oh, I’ve read it twenty-four times.
—Then good may not be big enough a word.
Entering the room, I took a little stroll from corner to corner as the kid turned the page. On top of the bureau were two framed photographs. The first was of a standing husband and seated wife in turn-of-the-century garb. The Watsons of Beacon Hill, no doubt. The other was of Emmett and Billy from just a few years back. They were sitting on the same porch that Emmett and his neighbor had sat on earlier that day. There was no picture of Billy and Emmett’s mother.
—Hey, Billy, I said, putting the photograph of the brothers back on the bureau. Can I ask you a question?
—Okay, Duchess.
—When exactly did your mother go to California?
—On the fifth of July 1946.
—That’s pretty exactly. So she just up and left, huh? Never to be heard from again?
—No, said Billy, turning another page. She was heard from again. She sent us nine postcards. That’s how we know that she’s in San Francisco.
For the first time since I’d entered the room, he looked up from his book.
—Can I ask you a question, Duchess?
—Fair’s fair, Billy.
—How come they call you that?
—Because I was born in Dutchess County.
—Where is Dutchess County?
—About fifty miles north of New York.
Billy sat up straight.
—You mean the city of New York?