Welcome to Fred (The Fred Books) Read Online Free Page B

started making regular Saturday trips to the library, ten blocks downtown.
    Sometimes we took detours, exploring sections of downtown. One of our favorite spots was next to the theater, which was in the middle of the block. The parking lot was in the back by the alley, but the entrance was in the front on the street. A long corridor through the building provided a shortcut. It was paved in small, white ceramic tiles, the floor undulating in gentle waves. The sides jutted in and out at sharp angles, with columns against the walls at regular intervals along the way. It was enclosed with a glass door at each end.
    The corridor provided a great setting for reenacting episodes of
I Spy
, the old spy show with Robert Culp and Bill Cosby. M thought it was amusing and appropriate that Cosby was the intelligent one in the show. I didn’t concur.
    We would traverse the corridor, running and ducking behind columns, shooting at imaginary villains or, sometimes, at each other, an inexplicable plot development for which the scriptwriters had not provided. Before long our territory for spying extended down the alley and out several blocks, past the back doors of cleaners, diners, barbershops, and five-and-dimes.
    Late one Saturday afternoon, as the shadows were stretching to the horizon, I was eluding M, who stalked me down the corridor. In a bold move I rushed the alley door, almost colliding with a couple on their way to see
Fantastic Voyage
. Their confusion delayed M, allowing me to round the corner before he could see which way I went. I had a plan. I sprinted down a dead-end alley, thinking he would never expect me to trap myself. At the end, I climbed some trash cans and dropped over a dilapidated wooden fence into a neglected area behind an auto shop.
    It was the perfect refuge, one I had discovered the week before when I was the hunter instead of the hunted. I planned to crouch along the back fence, watching for M’s approach. For cover, I had my choice of a fifty-five-gallon oil drum or a large cardboard box that had once held a washing machine. It lay on its side, old rags spilling out onto the ground. I chose the oil drum, from which I could peek through a knothole in the fence. I checked my surroundings. The asphalt faded a few feet from the shop into dry, cracked, packed dirt broken up with weeds and littered with rusted transmissions, wheels, mufflers, and other detritus. A metal door padlocked on the outside broke the brick wall of the shop, which had been painted white a long time ago. The only other access to this area was a two-foot gap between the shop and the liquor store that ran the length from the alley to the street.
    I watched for M’s shadow on the bricks of the alley, the rags in the box rustling in the wind. Then I realized there was no wind. I jerked away from the fence and looked at the rags. From the shadow of the box a raspy voice asked, “What’s yer name, boy?”
    I couldn’t have been more startled if the oil drum had started to spontaneously play “Wipe Out.” I was poised to jump and run when a face materialized among the rags and shadows. A woman’s face. Green eyes burned from sunken wells of eye sockets. A wealth of nascent wrinkles was evident on the leathery skin, skin that had seen many a day in the open sun and more than one night under the stars. Short brown hair, matted and tangled, disappeared into the tattered brown blanket draped around the woman. But what held my eye captive was the large purple-red birthmark that ran from her left eyebrow to her cheek in a meandering splotch.
    “Yer name. What’s yer name?”
    I said, as if in a trance, “Mark.”
    “Ah, the Mark. The Mark. It’s got the Mark.” An emaciated hand fluttered to her left temple and dropped down like a bird frozen and falling from a branch.
    “Well, Mark, do you have anythin’ so much as a fiver on yer?” I shook my head slowly. “I could use a bite to eat, yer know. How ’bout some change?” Her eyes