“What’s wrong with you today, boy?”
“It’s not me. It’s the name is out of hand. Just listen. Ralph.” I grrred it. “Rrrralph.”
“Ain’t exactly harp music . . .”
“Sounds like a mad dog.” I caught myself.
“No offense, Dog.”
Mr. Wyneski glanced down. “He seems pretty calm about the whole subject.”
“Ralph’s dumb. Gonna change my name by tonight.”
Mr. Wyneski mused. “Julius for Caesar? Alexander for the Great?”
“Don’t care what. Help me, huh, Mr. Wyneski? Find me a name . . .”
Dog sat up. I dropped the broom.
For way down in the hot cinder railroad yards a train furnaced itself in, all pomp, all fire-blast shout and tidal churn, summer in its iron belly bigger than the summer outside.
“Here it comes!”
“There it goes,” said Mr. Wyneski.
“No, there it doesn’t go!”
It was Mr. Wyneski’s turn to almost drop his scissors.
“Goshen. Darn noon train’s putting on the brakes!”
We heard the train stop.
“How many people getting off the train, Dog?”
Dog barked once.
Mr. Wyneski shifted uneasily. “U.S. Mail bags—”
“No . . . a man! Walking light. Not much luggage. Heading for our house. A new boarder at Grandma’s, I bet. And he’ll take the empty room right next to you, Mr. Wyneski! Right, Dog?”
Dog barked.
“That dog talks too much,” said Mr. Wyneski.
“I just gotta go see, Mr. Wyneski. Please?”
The far footsteps faded in the hot and silent streets.
Mr. Wyneski shivered.
“A goose just stepped on my grave.”
Then he added, almost sadly:
“Get along, Ralph.”
“Name ain’t Ralph.”
“Whatchamacallit . . . run see . . . come tell the worst.”
“Oh, thanks, Mr. Wyneski, thanks!”
I ran. Dog ran. Up a street, along an alley, around back, we ducked in the ferns by my grandma’s house. “Down, boy,” I whispered. “Here the Big Event comes, whatever it is!”
And down the street and up the walk and up the steps at a brisk jaunt came this man who swung a cane and carried a carpetbag and had long brown-gray hair and silken mustaches and a goatee, politeness all about him like a flock of birds.
On the porch near the old rusty chain swing, among the potted geraniums, he surveyed Green Town.
Far away, maybe, he heard the insect hum from the barbershop, where Mr. Wyneski, who would soon be his enemy, told fortunes by the lumpy heads under his hands as he buzzed the electric clippers. Far away, maybe, he could hear the empty library where the golden dust slid down the raw sunlight and way in back someone scratched and tapped and scratched forever with pen and ink, a quiet woman like a great lonely mouse burrowed away. And she was to be part of this new man’s life, too, but right now . . .
The stranger removed his tall moss-green hat, mopped his brow, and not looking at anything but the hot blind sky said:
“Hello, boy. Hello, Dog.”
Dog and I rose up among the ferns.
“Heck. How’d you know where we were hiding?”
The stranger peered into his hat for the answer. “In another incarnation, I was a boy. Time before that, if memory serves, I was a more than usually happy dog. But . . .!” His cane rapped the cardboard sign BOARD AND ROOM thumbtacked on the porch rail. “Does the sign say true, boy?”
“Best rooms on the block.”
“Beds?”
“Mattresses so deep you sink down and drown the third time, happy.”
“Boarders at table?”
“Talk just enough, not too much.”
“Food?”
“Hot biscuits every morning, peach pie noon, shortcake every supper!”
The stranger inhaled, exhaled those savors.
“I’ll sign my soul away!”
“I beg your pardon?!” Grandma was suddenly at the screen door, scowling out.
“A manner of speaking, ma’am.” The stranger turned. “Not meant to sound un-Christian.”
And he was inside, him talking, Grandma talking, him writing and flourishing the pen on the registry book, and me and Dog inside, breathless, watching, spelling:
“C.H.”
“Read upside down, do you, boy?” said the stranger, merrily, giving pause with the inky pen.
“Yes, sir!”
On he wrote. On I spelled:
“A.R.L.E.S. Charles!”
“Right.”
Grandma peered at the calligraphy. “Oh, what a fine hand.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” On the pen scurried. And on I chanted. “D.I.C.K.E.N.S.”
I faltered and stopped. The pen stopped. The stranger tilted his head and closed one eye, watchful of me.
“Yes?” He dared me, “What, what?”
“Dickens!” I cried.
“Good!”
“Charles Dickens, Grandma!”
“I can read, Ralph. A nice name . . .”
“Nice?” I said, agape. “It’s great! But . . . I thought you were—”
“Dead?” The stranger laughed. “No. Alive, in fine fettle, and glad to meet a recognizer, fan, and fellow reader here!”
And we were up the stairs, Grandma bringing fresh towels and pillowcases and me carrying the carpetbag, gasping, and us meeting Grandpa, a great ship of a man, sailing down the other way.
“Grandpa,” I said, watching his face for shock. “I want you to meet . . . Mr. Charles Dickens!”
Grandpa stopped for a long breath, looked at the new boarder from top to bottom, then reached out, took hold of the man’s hand, shook it firmly, and said:
“Any friend of Nicholas Nickleby’s is a friend of mine!”
Mr. Dickens fell back from the effusion, recovered, bowed, said, “Thank you, sir,” and went on up the stairs, while Grandpa winked, pinched my cheek, and left me standing there, stunned.
In the tower cupola room, with windows bright, open, and running with cool creeks of wind in all directions, Mr. Dickens drew off his horse-carriage coat and nodded at the carpetbag.
“Anywhere will do, Pip. Oh, you don’t mind I call you Pip, eh?”
“Pip?!” My cheeks burned, my face glowed with astonishing happiness. “Oh, boy. Oh, no, sir. Pip’s fine!”
Grandma cut between us. “Here are your clean linens, Mr. . . .?”
“Dickens, ma’am.” Our boarder patted his pockets, each in turn. “Dear me, Pip, I seem to be fresh out of pads and pencils. Might it be possible—”
He saw one of my hands steal up to find something behind my ear. “I’ll be darned,” I said, “a yellow Ticonderoga Number 2!” My other hand slipped to my back pants pocket. “And hey, an Iron-Face Indian Ring-Back Notepad Number 12!”
“Extraordinary!”
“Extraordinary!”
Mr. Dickens wheeled about, surveying the world from each and every window, speaking now north, now north by east, now east, now south:
“I’ve traveled two long weeks with an idea. Bastille Day. Do you know it?”
“The French Fourth of July?”
“Remarkable boy! By Bastille Day this book must be in full flood. Will you help me breach the tide gates of the Revolution, Pip?”
“With these?” I looked at the pad and pencil in my hands.
“Lick the pencil tip, boy!”
I licked.
“Top of the page: the title. Title.” Mr. Dickens mused, head down, rubbing his chin whiskers. “Pip, what’s a rare fine title for a novel that happens half in London, half in Paris?”
“A—” I ventured.
“Yes?”
“A Tale,” I went on.
“Yes?!”
“A Tale of . . . Two Cities?!”
“Madame!” Grandma looked up as he spoke. “This boy is a genius!”
“I read about this day in the Bible,” said Grandma. “Everything Ends by noon.”
“Put it down, Pip.” Mr. Dickens tapped my pad. “Quick. A Tale of Two Cities. Then, mid-page. Book the First. ‘Recalled to Life.’ Chapter 1. ‘The Period.’”
I scribbled. Grandma worked. Mr. Dickens squinted at the sky and at last intoned:
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter—”
“My,” said Grandma, “you speak fine.”
“Madame.” The author nodded, then, eyes shut, snapped his fingers to remember, on the air. “Where was I, Pip?”
“It was the winter,” I said, “of despair.”
Very late in the afternoon I heard Grandma calling someone named Ralph, Ralph, down below. I didn’t know who that was. I was writing hard.
A minute later, Grandpa called, “Pip!”
I jumped. “Yes, sir!”
“Dinnertime, Pip,” said Grandpa, up the stairwell.
I sat down at the table, hair wet, hands damp. I looked over at Grandpa. “How did you know . . . Pip?”
“Heard the name fall out the window an hour ago.”
“Pip?” said Mr. Wyneski, just come in, sitting down.
“Boy,” I said. “I been everywhere this afternoon. The Dover Coach on the Dover Road. Paris! Traveled so much I got writer’s cramp! I—”
“Pip?” said Mr. Wyneski, again.
Grandpa came warm and easy to my rescue.
“When I was twelve, changed my name—on several occasions.” He counted the tines on his fork. “Dick. That was Dead-Eye Dick. And . . . John. That was for Long John Silver. Then: Hyde. That was for the other half of Jekyll—”
“I never had any other name except Bernard Samuel Wyneski,” said Mr. Wyneski, his eyes still fixed to me.
“None?” cried Grandpa, startled.
“None.”
“Have you proof of childhood, then, sir?” asked Grandpa. “Or are you a natural phenomenon, like a ship becalmed at sea?”
“Eh?” said Mr. Wyneski.
Grandpa gave up and handed him his full plate.
“Fall to, Bernard Samuel, fall to.”
Mr. Wyneski let his plate lie. “Dover Coach . . .?”
“With Mr. Dickens, of course,” supplied Grandpa. “Bernard Samuel, we have a new boarder, a novelist, who is starting a new book and has chosen Pip there, Ralph, to work as his secretary—”
“Worked all afternoon,” I said. “Made a quarter!”
I slapped my hand to my mouth. A swift dark cloud had come over Mr. Wyneski’s face.
“A novelist? Named Dickens? Surely you don’t believe—”
“I believe what a man tells me until he tells me otherwise, then I believe that. Pass the butter,” said Grandpa.
The butter was passed in silence.
“. . . hell’s fires . . .” Mr. Wyneski muttered.
I slunk low in my chair.
Grandpa, slicing the chicken, heaping the plates, said, “A man with a good demeanor has entered our
