Stumptown Kid Read Online Free

just wish she’d get rid of Vern Jardine.”
    “Who’s that?” Luther took a drink of the lemonade.
    “He’s her friend. He travels around and sells brushes and vacuum cleaners. When he’s in town, he comes around at suppertime, and Mom invites him to eat.”
    “He nice to you?”
    I thought about that. “Well … he acts friendly, I guess. But you ever look into somebody’s eyes and know that behind their eyes, they’re different than they want you to think?”
    Luther kept his eyes steady on me. “Yes, I do.”
    “Well, that’s Vern,” I said.
    Luther and I didn’t talk a lot after that. We sat on the grass with the breeze brushing against our faces and worked on our lemonade. I couldn’t see Mrs. Banks at the window, but I figured she was still there. I felt like walking right up on her porch, knocking on the door, and saying, “What’s the matter? Ain’t you never seen a colored man before?” She probably didn’t like colored people either. Vern Jardine should take her out instead of Mom. They’d make a good pair.
    Petey Wilder, who lives about a block away, came galloping along the street wearing his cowboy hat. He’s five years old, and I’ve never once seen him without that hat. He must think it makes him look like Hopalong Cassidy or something. He took out his popgun, pointed it at a robin, and made the sound of a gun blasting away. The cork flew out of the gun and he nodded, looking pleased with himself. Then he looked over at us. He squinted hard at Luther and grabbed his cowboy hat like the wind just came up.
    “Hey!” he hollered. The cork from his gun was swinging back and forth in front of his knees.
    “Hey, Petey,” I said. I didn’t know what he was about to say, but I guessed it wasn’t going to be polite.
    He ran over to the edge of the yard and stared at Luther. “How come he’s brown?” he asked.
    I couldn’t think of what to say. Poor Luther must have felt like an animal in the zoo with everybody staring.
    I frowned and said in a loud voice, “Petey, why don’t you go on home?”
    “That’s okay,” Luther murmured. “He didn’t mean anything bad.”
    Petey walked into the yard and stopped. He was still staring at Luther, and he scratched his cheek. “How come he’s all brown, Charlie?” he asked again.
    “Some people just are,” I said.
    “Oh.” He stared a couple more seconds. Then he nodded and galloped off again up the street.
    I didn’t know what to say to Luther, so I said, “Sorry.”
    Luther closed his eyes and held the lemonade glass up to his face, feeling the cold. “It’s all right. I guess you don’t have many colored people living here.”
    “No,” I said. “We don’t have any.”
    I wondered about that. Why didn’t Holden have colored people? The town had a population of more than two thousand, but even with that many people, we didn’t have a lot of things. One drive-in movie but no indoor theater. One bookstore. One dime store. Two markets and one elementary school. The high school kids were bused into Mt. Vernon. If we wanted clothes other than Sears & Roebuck, we usually drove to Cedar Rapids.
    A sign on the highway coming into town says “Welcome to Holden: Population 2,100. The Town of Flowers.” Somebody wrote BLOOMING IDIOTS on it in big letters, which made people really mad. The mayor ordered the sign to be repainted and offered a ten-dollar reward for anybody who would tell who did the vandalism. Nobody’s spoke up yet. So anyway, I guess not everybody thinks highly of Holden.
    Mom called us in to supper after a while. Luther took off his baseball cap when he came inside. The kitchen smelled like tomatoes and spices.
    The kitchen table is small, and I hate being so close and bumping knees when Vern’s over. But with Luther sitting there, it felt kind of cozy. The oilcloth on the table was clean, and the daisies were standing in water in a canning jar on the middle of the table.
    We sat down, and Mom and I reached for