Johnny Long Legs (5 page)

Just then a man with a broad, happy smile on his face came forward and put an arm around Jim's shoulders. It was the man in
the shabby coat. The man who called Johnny “Leadfoot” and “Long Legs.”

“Beautiful game, Jim,” he said proudly. “You played like a champ.”

“Thanks, Pop,” said Jim.

J
ohnny stared. Then he turned and headed for the locker room.

So the man was Jim's father. He should have guessed.

“Hey, Johnny! Wait!”

Johnny looked behind him. Jim came running toward him. “My pop said that he's not going home right away. Want to come over?”

Again Johnny could hardly believe his ears.
What a change,
he thought.
He made me spill my milk, threw snowballs at me, scared a team of horses so that Toby and I
were nearly badly hurt. Now he's inviting me to his home.

“Okay,” he agreed. Suddenly a thought occurred to him. Since Jim's pop wasn't going home anyway, why not invite Jim to his
house?

Johnny posed the question, adding that Jim could eat there, too. He felt sure that Mom would cook enough food for an extra
mouth.

Jim's face colored slightly. “Oh. I don't know.”

He wants to come,
thought Johnny.
But he's ashamed to.

“Come on,” Johnny insisted. “I'll have you meet my folks.”

“You sure it's okay? About eating there, I mean?”

“Sure, I'm sure. Unless you eat like a horse!” laughed Johnny.

They walked to the locker room together. After they showered and dressed Jim asked Johnny for the use of his comb. Johnny
let him.
Doesn't he even own a comb?

Toby Johnny, and Jim walked home together. “You can telephone your mother from our house,” suggested Johnny. “She might wonder
what happened to you.”

“I don't have a mother,” said Jim.

Toby and Johnny looked at him.

“She died a while back,” Jim explained quietly. “There's only my pop and me.”

“Where are your grandparents?”

“They don't live around here.” Jim paused, scooped up a handful of snow, formed a ball out of it, and pegged it against a
light pole. Smack! It struck the pole and scattered in all directions, leaving a big white eye.

They arrived home and Johnny introduced
Jim to Mom and Dad. “Okay if Jim eats supper with us, Mom? You made enough, didn't you?”

She smiled. “I made plenty,” she said. “Do you like fried chicken and rice, Jim?”

“Oh, sure. I eat anything.”

Johnny saw how hungrily Jim tackled his meal, as if he hadn't eaten in days.

After dinner Toby showed Jim his new stamp album. He started to explain the history of each stamp he had placed in the album—both
United States and foreign—and got so enthusiastic about it that Johnny thought for sure that Toby would spend half the night
at it unless he was stopped.

“Okay, okay, Toby,” he said. “What do you want to do, turn Jim into a stamp collector?”

“I was just explaining…” began Toby.

“Sure you were. But maybe Jim isn't as nuts about stamps as you are.”

Jim grinned. “That's okay. Don't you guys go fighting about it.”

“Let's show him our aquarium,” suggested Johnny.

The brothers showed Jim their aquarium. It was a twenty-gallon tank, explained Toby, who took the job of describing it and
the fish in it as if they belonged only to him. Johnny stood back silently, feeling somewhat out of the picture. The aquarium
was here before he had come. Even though Dad had said that it was his as much as Toby's, Toby still seemed to think it was
only his.

“See that pair there?” Toby pointed at two silver-spangled fish with long blue dorsal and gold pectoral fins. “They're called
severums. And those pretty purple ones are guppies.”

“What do they eat?” asked Jim.

“Fish food,” said Toby.

“Frozen shrimp,” explained Johnny specifically. “We keep it in the refrigerator. There's also fish food in those boxes under
the aquarium.”

Jim watched the fish swimming around inside the tank for a long time. Now and then a fish chased its mate, then stopped and
nibbled at a green plant growing from the base of tiny blue and red stones. Johnny too, enjoyed watching them. The beautiful
angel fish with their long fins, the black-striped tiger barbs, the homely whiskered catfish lying quietly on the bottom.
They swam slowly, then darted swiftly; they romped like children.

“They're really pretty,” said Jim finally. “I've never seen tropical fish before.”

At eight o'clock Jim said he'd better go home. His pop was probably home by now, waiting for him.

“May I go with him, Ma?” asked Johnny.

“Okay. But don't stay long. It's getting late."

Jim's house was on a country road, a ten-minute walk from Johnny's house. The wind was blowing hard, singing around Johnny's
ears and whipping snow against his face. He remembered the night he had fallen in front of the moving snowplow because of
Jim's throwing snowballs at him. Now suddenly they were friends.

Mr. Sain wasn't home. “Hell be home soon,” said Jim. “He's probably visiting some friend of his.”

“Want me to stay awhile?” asked Johnny. “Till your father comes home?”

Jim shrugged. “Sure.”

They took off their boots in the kitchen, hung up their coats and hats, then sat at the kitchen table. The room was large,
the stove was an old range, the wallpaper old and drab.

“Just a second,” said Jim. He hurried out of the room and Johnny heard him climbing stairs. There was an ashtray on the middle
of the table, partly smoked cigarettes in it. Johnny remembered the butt he had picked up when he and Toby had gone tobogganing.
He went to his coat and unzipped the pocket. There was the butt. He took it out just as Jim returned, carrying several large
sheets of paper.

“I did these,” he said, placing the pile in front of Johnny.

They were pencil drawings of ships—passenger ships, clippers, and sailboats. There were also drawings of the sea—the high
waves, the rockbound coast with the waves lashing furiously against it, lighthouses, and men harpooning a whale.

“Hey, they're terrif,” exclaimed Johnny. “Did you really do these?”

Jim nodded proudly. “I like anything to do
with the sea. I'd like to be a sailor when I get older.”

He saw the butt in Johnny's hand and his eyebrows arched. “Hey, do you smoke?” he asked curiously.

“Used to. Do you?”

“No. Those butts are my father's. Go ahead. Smoke if you want to. I won't squeal.”

Johnny thought about it a minute. “Used to,” he had said. He remembered the time. There were he and two other boys. The other
boys had cigarettes and had dared him to smoke. And he did, just to win the dare. He had almost gagged from the smoke and
the taste. He had smoked a couple of times after that but only in the presence of the two boys.

They had thought it was smart. Grownup. If Mom had known he had smoked she would have skinned him alive. There was
Dad to think about now, too. Neither one would want him to smoke.

“No,” he said. “I don't know why I even picked it up. I thought I would put it in here.”

He reached over and squashed the butt into the ashtray. Squashed it so that the paper got all torn and the tobacco fell out
of it.

N
ow come you asked Coach Smith to let me play again?” asked Jim. “After what I did to you and Toby.”

“Forget it,” said Johnny.

“I can't forget it. How come?”

Johnny took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Well, I remembered how you looked at me after I was hit by the snowplow.
And how you looked when Toby and I fell off our toboggan.”

“How did I look?”

“You looked scared to death.”

“I was.”

“Anyhow, I knew you were sorry. That's why I called up Coach Smith.”

Jim slid back on his chair and stretched his legs out under the table. “I'm sorry I did all those crazy things to you,” confessed
Jim. “And for making you spill the milk too. Guess it was all kind of stupid.”

“Well, let's forget it,” said Johnny. “Let's not talk about it anymore.”

They were silent awhile. There was no sound except the wind howling like a hungry animal outside.

Finally Johnny broke the silence. “When is your father coming home?”

Jim looked at the clock on the wall. “Anytime now.”

He had said that before.

“He really roots for you at the basketball games, doesn't he?” smiled Johnny.

Jim laughed. “Yeah, I know. And I heard
him calling you `Long Legs' and `Leadfoot.' Before the game tonight I told him not to call you those names again. He forgot,
I guess.” He rose from the chair. “Come on. I have some stuff in my room I'll show you.”

Jim's bedroom walls were shabby too. Besides the bed there was a chair, a nightstand with a lamp on it, and two orange crates
standing on end with books and magazines and a couple of cigar boxes in them.

Jim took two cigar boxes out of a crate, put them on the bed, and opened them. Colored rocks and fossils practically filled
each box.

“I like collecting rocks and fossils too,” he said proudly.

While looking at the collection Johnny began to smell a strange odor. He lifted a rock to his nose and sniffed at it. There
was no smell.

“Hey, look!” Jim exclaimed suddenly.

Johnny looked at the base of the door where Jim was pointing. Smoke!

He dropped the rock into the cigar box and started to run after Jim. Jim flung open the door, but a thick cloud of smoke drove
them back into the room. Jim slammed the door shut.

He stared, petrified. “It's our furnace pipes,” he said. “Pop kept saying he'd get new ones but he never did.”

Johnny paled. “We'd better phone the fire department or this house will burn down to the ground.”

“Can't,” said Jim. “Our phone was disconnected last week. We can't get out of here, anyway. There's too much smoke coming
inside.”

Johnny stared at the smoke seeping in underneath the door and curling into the room. The boys covered their eyes against
the stinging fog. They coughed and backed against the farthest wall.

“We have to get out of here!” yelled Johnny. “We'll burn to death if we don't!”

“We'll have to jump out of the window!” cried Jim.

“Jump that far? We'll break every bone in our bodies!”

Nevertheless, he went to the window, the only one in the room. It was latched securely on top and at the two lower sides.
He unlatched it at the top and tried to lift the window.

It was stuck solid.

J
im! Help me!”

Jim grabbed hold of the right side and lifted and Johnny did the same on the left side. The window suddenly broke loose and
the boys lifted it as high as it could go.

Cold, refreshing air gushed into the room. The boys inhaled it deeply, let it clean out their lungs. At the same time smoke
swirled out in a thick, swirling fog.

Johnny looked out. “The snow looks deep down there, Jim,” he said. “We could jump and may not get hurt at all.”

“Hurt or not, I'm going to jump, anyway,” replied Jim.

Johnny stepped out onto the windowsill, crouched to clear his head from the window above him, and jumped. He sank into the
snow. It was deep and he didn't get hurt. Then Jim landed beside him.

“Let's get to a phone,” said Johnny, wading through the soft feathery snow toward the sidewalk. He looked over his shoulders
at the tongues of flame leaping out of the first-story windows and lapping at the wood frame wall.

“My drawings! My rocks!” screamed Jim, his eyes blurred with tears.

“C'mon!” yelled Johnny. “Let's run to that house and call the fire department!”

“It'll be too late!”

“We still should do it! C'mon!”

They raced to the small house a short distance
up the road. The wind snarled around their ears, lashed at their unprotected bodies. Their boots, coats, and hats were in
the burning house.

“Jim! Wait!” a voice yelled in the darkness behind them.

They looked back. Mr. Sain was running toward them, his hat gripped in his hand. “Thank the Lord you're okay!”

“We're going over to the Burks' to phone the fire department,” said Jim.

“Go ahead. And stay there. I'll stay here and wait for them. And you, Johnny. Better call your parents from there, too. They'll
have to come and take you home. You're not going to walk through this cold night like that.”

“You won't go into the house for anything, will you, Pop?” inquired Jim worriedly.

“No, son. Don't you worry. It's burning
too hard. There's nothing real important in there, anyway.”

Except Jim's drawings,
thought Johnny.
And his rocks and fossils.

They ran to the Burks'. Mr. Burk immediately put in a call to the fire department, then pulled on his boots and winter clothes
and dashed out into the night. Johnny telephoned home. He explained to Mom what had happened.

“Dad will come right over,” she said in a hurried, nervous voice.

Two fire trucks arrived. They couldn't save the house. The Burks and Jim and Johnny watched through the windows of the Burks'
house as the flames devoured it. It was a sad, heartbreaking sight.

Dad had coats and caps for both boys. They met Mr. Sain outside. He was weeping.

“I should've fixed those pipes,” he kept saying sadly. “It was my fault.”

“Mr. Sain,” said Dad, “you and Jim come over and stay with us tonight. We have room.”

“No. We can't do that. We'll be imposing.”

“Imposing, nothing. Come on. Get into my car. There's no sense standing here any longer.”

Mr. Sain got into the car and Jim got in beside him. Johnny sat in front with his father. Mr. Reese started the car and headed
for home.

M
r. Sain wanted to look for an apartment right after breakfast the next morning. He said he and Jim didn't need a house anymore;
a furnished apartment would do. The insurance money that he was going to receive for the burned-down house would be put into
the bank for Jim's college education.