Midwestern Fourth Got A Lot Of Hits...

So here is some more:

Still, something made me say “When she comes back, bring her by…I think we stay four houses down from you.”'

    Perry frowned, concentrating.  “Three houses. You’re in the one with the big tree out front.  The fourth one is a day-care now. People might push you around sometimes, but you’re no baby.”  I was almost ready to decide that maybe he hadn’t gotten a fair shake in school, and his diagnosis, whatever it was, had been misapplied, when he jiggled his foot, as he must have seen a relative do, and said to the doll.” Shh.  Daddy will leave in a minute.” 

Tommy came back, dispersed the ripe melon, and I tried to hide my irrational disappointment. His mother had probably been through all that and more—I should stop judging her too. We oohed and ahhed at the fireworks, and we headed back to the house. From time to time, in my next day’s sight-seeing, I wondered if Tammy would make it back, but my years of urban life had taught me most encounters with strangers were stories without ends. After a long day of wedging my chair into picturesque candle and jam shops that were too narrow for it, I just wanted to put all the souvenirs inside, but Mrs. Baxter next door accosted us. “Oh, my God, Tom, did you hear? They arrested that retarded boy down the street last night…I think they caught him interfering with Tammy Belinsky, that little brunette. Can you believe that?”

Tommy grunted, and tried to help me move my chair forward, but I used my chorus voice that had been trained to reach to the back of the theater and said “No, I don’t,” as clearly and emphatically as if I were on a Norman Lear sitcom and the studio audience would applaud any second. Mrs. Baxter just looked surprised, her faded blue eyes getting wide under her glasses. “Don’t get me wrong,” she said, more softly.  “He always seemed like a nice enough young man… but the cops get there, and Tammy’s all upset with her blouse unbuttoned, and he doesn’t have much to say for himself…”'

Emotion made my body slip forward in the chair, and I had to grab my new, embarrassingly phallic strawberry candle so it wouldn’t hit the dirt, but I still asked Mrs. Baxter how she knew all that stuff. “My daughter Debbie is a part-time dispatcher for the sheriff’s department.”'

“But if it was just him and Tammy there, who called the sheriff?”

“Believe it or not, he did.” Mrs. Baxter stroked her chin.  “Sometimes they want to be caught.”

“Really?” I’d taken a deep breath and counted to five, but something still made my temper spark.

“Oh, yeah, I saw it on “Dateline.”