The Honor of a Newsboy (Stories) by Kurt Vonnegut

Author:Kurt Vonnegut [Vonnegut, Kurt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-440-33948-9
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2009-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Just about the time that was settled, up the road came Earl Hedlund’s old coupe. Earl got out grinning, and Satan whimpered and got up and licked Earl’s hand. Earl was the village bully of thirty-five years ago—gone to fat and baldness. His grin was still the bully-boy’s grin, daring anybody not to love him. He’d never been able to bluff Charley, and he hated Charley for that.

His grin got wider when Charley, as a precaution, reached into his car and took out the ignition key. “You see a cop do that on television, Charley?” said Earl.

“Matter of fact, I did,” said Charley. It was true.

“I’m not running off to nowheres,” said Earl. “I read in the Providence papers about poor Estelle, and I figured you’d be wanting to see me, so I came back. Thought I could save you from wasting time—thinking it was me that killed her.”

“Thanks,” said Charley.

“I been at my brother’s place in Providence all week,” said Earl. “My brother’ll swear to that. Every minute’s accounted for.” He winked. “O.K., Charley?”

Charley knew Earl’s brother. Earl’s brother had a mean streak, too—but he was too little to beat up on women, so he specialized in lying. All the same, his word might stand up in court.

Earl sat down on his doorstep, took the top paper off the pile, turned to the financial page. Then he remembered it was Saturday. There weren’t any market quotations on Saturday. It was easy to see he hated Saturday for that.

“You have many visitors up here, Earl?” said Charley.

“Visitors?” said Earl scornfully. He was reading what little financial news there was. “What I want with visitors?”

“Repairmen? Strangers out for a walk? Kids?” said Charley. “Hunters maybe?”

Earl puffed himself up for his answer. He really enjoyed the idea that everybody was too scared to come near his place. “Anything needs repairing, I repair myself,” he said. “And strangers and kids and hunters and anybody else finds out pretty quick from the dog that we don’t want no visitors up this way.”

“Then who picked up the paper Wednesday night?” said Charley.

Earl let his paper sag for just a second, then he straightened it out again, pretended to read something a lot more important than anything Charley was saying. “What’s this bushwah about a Wednesday paper?” he grumbled.

Charley told him what the bushwah was—told him that it might prove that Earl had been back on Cape Cod the night Estelle was murdered. “If you did come back on Wednesday,” said Charley, “I can’t see you passing up the chance to look in the paper to see what the market was doing.”

Earl put down the paper, and he looked straight at Mark. “There wasn’t any Wednesday paper on account of the kid was too lazy to bring one,” he said.

“He gave his word of honor he brought one,” said Charley.

Earl started reading again. “The kid’s not only lazy,” he said, “he’s a liar besides.”

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