Mr. Wicker's Window Read online

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  Transcriber's Note:

  Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.

  MR.

  WICKER'S WINDOW

  by

  Carley Dawson

  Illustrated by

  Lynd Ward

  1952

  HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON

  The Riverside Press Cambridge

  Copyright, 1952, by

  CARLEY DAWSON and LYND WARD

  * * * * *

  _For

  those at

  Second Family

  House_

  * * * * *

  CHAPTER 1

  Christopher Mason felt numb. It seemed to him that he was as good asan orphan already, for his father, a Commander in the Navy, was faraway at sea, and Chris's mother was in a hospital, not expected tolive.

  Chris scuffed along the brick pavements of Georgetown, but he did not,as he usually did, look about at its familiar houses. This friendlycore of the growing city of Washington, D.C., today seemed to himalmost hostile.

  Georgetown, where Chris lived, is the oldest part of the capital city,built by early English settlers long years before Washington itselfwas even planned. Grouped at the head of the navigable part of thePotomac River, above Georgetown's bluffs, the Potomac foams and dashesover wild rocks and waterfalls, and across the river, the countrystarts.

  Chris had just left his mother's sister, his Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel,white-faced, was preparing to go to the hospital to be with his motherand had asked him, "Don't you want to come too, Chris? For a littlewhile?" But a cold-edged wing of fear had brushed the boy like a batwing in the night. He had shaken his head, speechless, grabbed hissweater, and slammed the front door.

  Now he hesitated on a corner, suddenly dismayed, not knowing quitewhere to go or what to do. The whole city with its white marblebuildings and templed memorials, its elm-lined avenues, seemed all atonce very empty.

  He looked down to the Potomac, always, for Chris, just "the river,"where it glinted distantly blue and silver at the end of the street.Factories along the riverbank cut off all but the farthest stretchesof water as the river moved under bridge after bridge beside the banksof Maryland and Virginia.

  Chris made up his mind to see what might be in the Pep Boys' store,far down the hill and along traffic-filled M Street. Somehow thetawdry bustle of this street, with its many shops, appealed to the boywho carried misery inside him like a cold, heavy stone. Running, hestarted down the hill between the lines of old brick houses, left RockCreek Park behind him, and turning to the right up M Street, reachedthe hardware glitter of The Pep Boys'.

  And it was there, as he stood staring in at the chromium bicyclelamps, red glass tail lights, and wire baskets, that Mike Dugan foundhim.

  CHAPTER 2

  Mike was in his class at public school, the eighth grade. Mike was allright. Chris liked him.

  "Hya, Chris!"

  "Hi, Mike!"

  "Whatcha doin'?"

  "Nothin' much. Just looking."

  "Say--you know sumthin'?" Mike wiggled himself across part of the PepBoys' window to gain Chris's attention. "Old Wicker's got a sign inhis window--he needs a boy. For after school, I guess. Think he'd pay,huh? Whyncha try?"

  Chris looked from a nickel-plated flashlight to a car jack and sparkplug.

  "Oh--I don't know."

  Mike persisted. "Well, I'll tell you what. Know who needs a job bad?That's Jakey Harris. His mother's sick, and he's got that bad foot.Whyncha ask for him, huh? You sit next to him at school."

  All Chris heard was "--needs a job bad--mother's sick."

  "O.K.," he said. "Only why didn't you ask him yourself?"

  Mike became uneasy and fished an elastic band out of his pocket, madea flick of paper and sent it soaring out into M Street.

  "Well--" he admitted, "I did. Wicker's such a queer old guy. That ol'antique shop is dark an' spooky, an'--Well, I went in, and therewasn't nobody there, on'y him and me."

  Mike stopped, and after a pause Chris said, "So what?"

  "So--" Mike swallowed. "So I said I was there about the job, an' doyou know what he said? He said"--he went on without urging, but with afrown of perplexity ridging his forehead--"He said, 'Turn around andlook out that window, son, and tell me what you see.'"

  Mike stopped and looked at Chris with a comical expression. "Everybodyknows what's outside his window!" he burst out. "Of all the sillythings! But I turned around and looked, like he told me to, and ofcourse there was the traffic goin' by, and trucks, and cabs, andpeople crossin' the street, and the freeway overhead, an'--_you_know."

  "So what did he say?" Chris asked, and for the first time that day theheavy weight he carried within him lifted and lightened a little.

  Mike examined the toe of his worn shoe. "Oh, he just smiled, thatfunny little crackly smile, and said, 'I'm sorry, young man, you won'tdo.'"

  For a moment both boys stared into one another's eyes, eachquestioning, wondering, and neither being able to supply the answer.

  At last, Chris broke the silence.

  "Queerest thing I ever heard. Gee! Whaddaya suppose?"

  Mike took heart, his experience believed and his bafflement shared. Hespoke cheerfully. "It doesn't make sense, but old Wicker's so old hemay be addled, don't you reckon? Who else would keep an antique storewhere nobody ever looks? All the other antique places are alongWisconsin Avenue where people go to shop."

  "You reckon Jakey really could use the job?" Chris asked, his courageebbing as he pictured to himself the dark little shop with its bowwindow of small panes, and Mr. Wicker, so thin and wizened he seemedonly bones and wrinkles. "Think he really needs it?" he pursued.

  But Mike was certain, or perhaps he needed a companion in this curiousexperiment.

  "You bet he does! He tol' me at noon today he wished he could findsomething that would help bring some money in. His mother's sick," herepeated, "an' Jakey don' look so good himself."

  "Well--" Chris said, half agreeing.

  "I'll go with ya!" Mike announced, as if that finished the argument;which, as a matter of fact, it did.

  Chris did not feel too happy about his mission and hung back a momentlonger, looking in the Pep Boys' window at things he had already seen.He would have liked to get the job for Jakey, who needed it, butsomehow the task of facing Mr. Wicker, especially now that the lightwas going and dusk edging into the streets, was not what Chris hadintended for ending the afternoon. Although he had not been quitecertain how he had meant to spend the rest of the remaining daylight,Mike's plan did not seem to fit his present mood.

  "Are you coming?" Mike challenged, with a hint of derision.

  "Yes," said Chris suddenly, "I'm coming. I'll ask for Jakey."

  Mike's expression changed at once to one of triumph, but Chris wasonly partly encouraged.

  The two boys walked to the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue.Traffic roared up the first short block of Wisconsin from under thehigh steel freeway down to their left.

  Chris glanced down the slope of Wisconsin. Houses and shops thinnedsuddenly on both sides of the street. Far down at the very end, on hisside, he could see the brick walls and slate roof of Mr. Wicker'shouse. Chris knew it well, for times without number he had presse
d hisnose to the square Georgian panes of Mr. Wicker's window to gaze atthe strangely fascinating jumble of oddments that were displayed. Now,however, he felt in no mood to visit the curiosity shop and stoodshifting his feet and looking aimlessly about. Mike, beside him, wasbecoming restive, and gave him a poke.

  "Betcha aren't goin' after all!"

  Chris turned on him. "Am too!"

  Mike looked disdainful. "Aw--you're stalling!"

  "Not any sucha thing. I'm going now."

  "O.K. Let's see you."

  Chris turned his back on Mike and started down the hill. After a stepor two, not finding his friend beside him, he turned. Mike wasstanding on the corner.

  "Hi!" Chris called, indignant. "You said you were coming with me!"

  "Well, I was," Mike howled back, "but I just remembered. My mothertold me to bring her some stuff from the Safeway. I'll run all the wayand come back and meet you."

  "Aw shucks!" Chris kicked at a nonexistent pebble and scowled. But achore was a chore, and was never worth discussion.

  "I'll meetcha in fifteen or twenty minutes," Mike shouted. "It won'ttake me long," and throwing out his hands to signify that there wasnothing he could do about it he disappeared.

  Chris started off once more, passing the bleak little Victorian churchperched on the hill above Mr. Wicker's house. An empty lot cut into byChurch Lane gave a look of isolation to the L-shaped brick buildingthat served Mr. Wicker as both house and place of business. Chrispaused to look below him. Even from where he stood, fifty feet abovethe house, the slope of the hill was sharp and the plan of the housebelow him could be plainly seen.

  It was built like an inverted L, the short wing faced towards thestreet and the traffic of Wisconsin Avenue. The longer wing, towardthe back, had a back door that opened onto Water Street. The spacebetween the house and Wisconsin Avenue had been made into a neatoblong flower garden, fenced off from the sidewalk by box shrubs and awhite picket fence. Behind it, along the other side of the long wing,lay a meticulously arranged vegetable garden and a few apple trees.

  His gaze moved back to the house itself. It seemed to have been builtat about the same time as the vacant storehouses opposite, for theyhad a similar look of design and age. The windows of Mr. Wicker'shouse had smaller panes of glass than were used nowadays, and like thewarehouses across from it, Mr. Wicker's had many dormer windowsjutting out from the slated roof. Unlike the warehouses, however,which were rickety and down-at-heel, Mr. Wicker's home was well caredfor. The windows--except for the bow window of the shop to the rightof the front door--had shutters painted a pleasing bluey-green, and attheir sides could be seen the edges of gay curtains. The trafficfreeway rose high above the roof, dwarfing the old house and castinga deepening shadow over the whole length of Water Street, shading evenMr. Wicker's back door, so close did it rise beside the house. The airwas filled with mechanical sounds--the roar of cars speeding up thehill, the grind of gears, the shuddering throb of wheels along thefreeway, and the clanking bang of chains and weights in the factoriesalong the shore.

  The sun was dropping, and the sky behind Chris made a sinister promisefor the following day. A livid yellow stained the horizon beyond thefactories and gray clouds lowered and tumbled above. The air wasgrowing chill and Chris decided to finish his job. All at once hewondered how his mother was, and everything in him pinched andtightened itself.

  At the foot of the hill he reached the house. As he came to the bowfront the old familiar excitement that always seized Chris when helooked in Mr. Wicker's window touched him again, and he stopped tolook at its well-memorized display.

  For as long as he had stopped to look into Mr. Wicker's window, whichwas as far back as he could remember, Chris had never known theobjects to vary or be changed. There were three things that alwayscaught his eye, amid the litter of dusty pieces. On the left, the coilof rope; in the center, the model of a sailing ship in a green glassbottle, and on the right, the wooden statue of a Negro boy in baggytrousers, Turkish jacket, and white turban. The figure was holding upa wooden bouquet, the yellow paint peeling from the carved flowers.The figure's mouth was open in an engaging toothy smile, and its righthand was on one hip, on the chipped red paint of the baggy trousers.The ship, so often contemplated by Chris that he knew every tinythread and delicately jointed board, was a three-masted schooner,sleek of line, painted--at one time--a dazzling white. Now with dustdulling the green sides of the bottle, its sails looked loose, itssides grimed. But the name still showed at the prow, and many a timeChris, safe at home in bed, had sailed imaginary voyages in the_Mirabelle_. It lay there snug and captured, as if at the bottom of atropical sea, seen through the glass sides of the bottle, and Chrisnever tired of looking at it.

  But perhaps the coil of rope, so meaningless, so meaningful, held hisimagination by an even stronger hold. Why a coil of rope in an antiqueshop? Who would want it? People bought rope in a hardware store--therewas one farther along M Street near the old deserted Lido Theatre. Buthere, in an antique shop? Chris shook his head as he stared. He hadnever seen anyone go into Mr. Wicker's shop, now he thought of it.How then, did he live, and what did he ever sell?

  A sudden car horn woke him from his dream. He looked up, seeing forthe first time the small card hung at eye level in the window. In abeautiful script such as Chris had never seen before, but verylegible, the card read:

  Boy Wanted.Good Pay._W. Wicker._

  Jakey Harris came back into Chris's thoughts. He looked over hisshoulder at the darkening sky streaked luridly with citrous strokes;noticed the wheel and tackle high up at the loft door of the warehouseopposite, and put his hand on the doorknob. The last flicker of lightscudded across the steel sides of the freeway to pick out thelettering above the shop window.

  W-LLM. WICKER, CURIOSITIES

  Chris opened the door and a bell jangled, very faintly, but withpersistence, far away in some distant part of the house.