The Brandywine Prophet

3.1 Whitaker & Reid

CHAPTER THREE

WHITAKER & REID

Bev and Sir were not readers. They weren’t illiterate either, but apart from the phonebook and Billy’s National Geographics, books were scarce around the house. The few times Billy saw his parents reading, the books seemed heavy in their hands and they both squinted as if they needed glasses. “Carmels and books is like oil and vinegar,” Sir would say with his best hillbilly impression. They encouraged Billy when he took up reading outside of school, but didn’t have the means to spend as much as he read. The nearest library was twenty miles away and the school spent more money on rat traps than books. 

Luckily, the Marion Hill Shoppe ‘n Fill kept a tall wooden spindle filled with dozens of used books for only a quarter apiece. The station was hardly within walking distance from the Carmel home--Billy could either scale the hill or ride his new bike around it--but once a week he took an hour off work to trade his finished book for a new one.

One Tuesday, Billy returned a book titled The Indian Way and perused the spindle for an adventure or serial; but a different book caught his eye that afternoon. It had a hard cover. The title was small with capital letters. It was called “A Pictorial History of American Theater 1900-1950.” It didn’t have a picture on the cover, but the inside was filled with black-and-white images of a world that seemed to exist well outside the cornfields of home and the wood chips of school. It was fifty cents; twenty-five more than Billy would have after selling “The Indian Way.” He scrounged his overalls’ pockets, but if he was carrying an extra quarter, he woulda known it.

Little Billy’s internal debate over whether or not to switch the price tags brought him to and from the candy display where he pretended to decide between the Tootsie Rolls and Juicy Fruit. The price tags were small green circles with legibly handwritten prices in the center. Whoever placed the tags did it carefully, always in the corner about an inch from the top and an inch from the right. Billy became intimately aware of the position of these tags after months of peeling them off, placing them on the inside of the cover, then pressing them firmly in the original spot for his weekly exchange. The ritual was rather unnecessary, but he figured it saved the owner some extra work with every trade, and the practice could be useful now.

The tag marked “50¢” was already peeling off the theater book; the half circle unhinged and drooping toward him, practically screaming “Peel me off, Billy! Just grab my ear and peel me off!” and after one more round trip to the candy rack, he deftly swapped the fifty-cent tag for a twenty-five-cent tag and worked up the nerve to approach the counter. 

“That’s a heftier book than your usual,” said the man behind the counter. Billy never learned his name, though they conversed about books and the weather once a week.

“I’m getting older. I can handle it.”

“Might not be too interesting to a nine-year-old.”

“I’m ten-going-on-eleven in five months.”

“Well damn. Why am I talkin’ down to a nearly eleven year-old? That’s a hardcover, tiger. It’ll be fifty cents.”

Billy slid the book across the counter, price tag up. “It says twenty-five cents, sir.”

“Twenty-five? That must’ve been a mistake.” He took the book and turned it over in his hands. “I price these damn things myself...” his voice trailed off and he set the book back on the counter. “It was my mistake, so you get the book for half off. Looks like it’s your lucky day, kiddo.” 

Billy smiled. His insides ached. “Thank you, sir.”

The guilt wore off in time and Billy read the book, carefully at first because it had words he didn’t understand and the only pictures were either of women he didn’t recognize or technical drawings of theaters. Nevertheless, it consumed him and filled his mind with the the glamor of the stage and screen. After hours of pouring over the pages, the heroes in Billy’s TV shows were no longer characters; they were actors looking for work. The wolf-man’s gnarled fur had a zipper! Someone wrote the words that came from the character’s mouths.

When Billy showed the book to his mother, Bev patted his hair down, scratched the back of his neck and repeated, “You dream big, Billy. And do what you love.”

Urban sprawl moved in like a set of adult teeth, painfully pushing out the crooked shops with cleaner, more reliable buildings. The Shoppe ‘n Fill survived several reincarnations but was inevitably replaced by a Shell station. The faceless owners installed eight new pumps but saved the original red Gilbarco pump as a souvenir of a different time.

Those untainted memories of adolescence became an epoch William referred to as “Before Ray-Ray.” They came and went more gracefully than the narcotic-blurred memories of the late seventies, and he visited them often. They came now, standing atop his hill with the morning sun on his back and his world spread before him. It was summer in West Michigan and nostalgia was being written in the backyards of the Brandywine homes. There were new slides and swing-sets, light blue kiddie pools, and birthday parties with blow-up moon-bounces. From the top of the hill the town was a hodgepodge of monochromatic homes with bright backyard toys like sprinkles on an ice cream cone. 

He watched a canary-yellow Hummer pull into his driveway. He watched two men in suits step out; one carried a computer and a mess of cords, the other carried a briefcase. The men rang his doorbell and peered inside his windows. He watched as the shorter man, Jaxon Silverman, removed a piece of paper stapled to the front door. He read it. 

Will tucked his childhood memories back where they belonged and started down the hill to greet the enemy.