The Seventeenth Swap (3 page)

But—not yet.

There was still the triangle stamp. Eric looked at it and sighed. Willy Chung had been after him for that stamp for a year or more, ever since he first saw it. Willy collected triangle stamps—he had half a book full. Triangles from Liberia, from Monaco, from Hungary and Thailand, mostly with birds on; and one from someplace called Republik Maluku Selatan with a butterfly, which Eric thought the prettiest of all. But Willy had no stamp like Eric's. Eric's was sky-blue, and in the top point was the picture of a man in one of
those Arab headcloths, and below him an oil well inside a sort of fat fleur-de-lis. At one side, in the blue part, were a couple of tents with a flag on a pole, and at the other three palm trees and a sand dune. Along one edge it said “Qatar Scouts” and “Postage,” in English, and a big five, and just opposite there were squiggles that probably meant the same thing in Qatarese or whatever it was.

It was really interesting. And it was the only stamp Eric had—Willy had lots already.

“That's just the
point,
” Willy always argued exasperatedly. “I
collect
'em. I have a
reason
to want it. What good is it to you—just one dumb stamp?”

“If it's so dumb how come you're always after it?” Eric usually retorted, and that would be the end of it until the next time.

The fact was, he didn't have any better answer. He didn't know what good it was to him, or why he wouldn't give it even to Willy, who was his best friend. It was just
his,
that was all—and so few things were. Like the agate, it had come to him by chance—he'd found it wedged in the very back of a drawer the day Dad had brought his desk home from the second-hand shop, four years ago. It had seemed a dazzlingly good omen—not only was he getting a real desk of his own, he was getting a fascinating, mysterious little prize. The stamp had been his treasured possession ever since.

But now he wondered. It
was
a little silly to own just one stamp, when you were supposed to have whole books full. He'd never wanted any others; collecting things left him cold. But Willy wanted every triangle stamp he saw—he wanted every one in the world. He especially wanted Eric's, probably just because it was
right there, under his nose, and yet not his. He was always offering to swap something for it. He'd even offered to buy it.

All right, Eric thought. I'll sell it to him.

But for how much? If it had cost five cents at the Qatar post office (or probably five some kind of Qatarese coins) what would it be worth now, in US money? You heard about people paying thousands of dollars for just one stamp—some rare one. They were nuts, in Eric's opinion, but live and let live. Anyhow, he doubted that his stamp was rare, or the least bit valuable to anybody but Willy. And while Willy's folks were comparatively well-off—he not only had a good bike but was campaigning for a twelve-speed to replace it—the price he could actually scrape together would fall a good bit short of even eighteen dollars. He probably had something under fifty cents in mind, judging from the items he'd offered to swap, at one time or another. For instance, his skin-tattooing ink—what was left of it after the two of them had spent a week drawing pictures on each other. His ballpoint pen that said “Souvenir of Indianapolis” and needed a filler. His Corgi auto collection—six trucks and a Jaguar—which he'd abandoned when he began on stamps.

Too bad Steve Morris didn't own the Qatar stamp, Eric reflected. Steve would have swapped in a minute for one of Willy's Corgi cars.

It was right about then that the light bulb went on in Eric's brain. It went off again a second later, leaving him with just a glimpse of a great idea. Of something that
might
be a great idea. It might equally well be a dud. But for that brief instant he'd peered down a long, intriguing vista of swaps and double-swaps
and finagling, with a pair of red-and-black boots at the end. He was still staring hard at nothing, trying to make the vision come clearer, when he heard his dad's key in the lock.

By the time he'd put his possessions away and got to the entry hall, his dad was hooking his old red windbreak onto its nail and pulling on the even older turtleneck he always wore at home unless it was actually midsummer. He was a thin, middle-aged man and felt the cold.

“Hi,” Eric said. “I put the potatoes in at quarter of six.”

His dad smiled his slow, warm smile, gave him the usual penetrating glance, and nodded. It was at once a greeting, an acknowledgement of the potato report, and a gesture of satisfaction that Eric was there, was safe, that life was normal. He was a man of few words, but Eric was used to it.

Producing a butcher-wrapped package from the pocket of the red jacket, he held it up, announcing, “Steak!” and started for the kitchen, with Eric trailing him.

“Wow! Great!” Eric didn't have to ask the reason for the treat. His father worked at Mulvaney's supermarket, and sometimes got first crack at meat that had stayed overlong in the display case and was due to be marked down. It was always sort of purple instead of red, but there was nothing wrong with the taste. His dad got bargains in day-old bread, too, and lettuce past reviving, and vegetables going limp. Neither he nor Eric was fussy. Food was food.

“Jimmy doing okay?” he asked Eric as he unwrapped the package on the drainboard.

“Yeah. We made paper airplanes half the afternoon. He's decided to collect smells. I'm supposed to think of smelly things to bring him.”

Mr. Greene shook his head, chuckling. “Take him some garlic.”

“Hey, I will! Could you get a discard from Marvin?” Marvin was a former Iron Mountain High School linebacker, now produce manager at Mulvaney's—to Eric's intense but private disapproval. In his opinion Dad should have had the job, and
could
have, if he'd just pushed himself forward a little at the right moment. But that was two-year-old water under the bridge. As his dad nodded, he went on with the news bulletins. “I got a B on the Social Studies test. That's a
little
better anyhow. We didn't have the math one—they took the school pictures today.” Then he was sorry he'd mentioned that, because the amusement faded from his dad's face, leaving it tired and impassive again, not even pleased about the steaks. He was always that way when Eric automatically passed up something they couldn't afford. Eric said quickly, “I was glad
I
got out of
that.
I wouldn't give you a dime for any dumb pictures of me. They always turn out lousy.”

“I'd've kinda liked one,” said his dad unexpectedly. Before Eric could do more than stare—because why would he want one when he saw Eric every day?—he added, “Time to make the salad,” and the subject was closed.

Eric took the lettuce out of the refrigerator and got busy. That was enough jabbering for tonight anyway. Dad had probably said that to make him feel
somebody
would want his pictures. But
he
didn't, and he wished Dad would believe it. In fact of all the
things Dad's salary wouldn't run to, he probably cared least about those pictures. He hadn't got around to mentioning Jimmy's cowboy boots, and he now realized he wasn't going to—at least not yet. But as he worked with the salad and later as he sat opposite his dad chewing steak, his mind kept going back to his maybe-great idea, trying to see it clearly, trying to pin it down.

It had to do with Steve Morris wanting something Willy had, but having nothing to swap that Willy wanted—and with Eric being middle-man. That much he knew. And he could plainly see that Willy and Steve would be delighted with the transaction. But where would it leave
him?
That's what he couldn't figure. How could it get him any closer to those boots?

He squinted his eyes and concentrated. Suppose he swapped the stamp to Willy for the Corgi cars, and swapped the cars to Steve for something else. Then, if he could find somebody who wanted the something else . . . He could see right now he was going to have to do a little research.

After dinner, he phoned Steve Morris and asked him what he'd give for any one of six Corgi trucks, or a Jaguar.

“Wow! You mean that kind of Jaguar Willy Chung has? Have
you
got one?”

“I think I can get one,” Eric said cautiously. “How much would you—”

“Are any of the trucks those milk trucks? Or a moving van? I been looking all over for a moving van.”

“I don't know. I'll find out. If one of 'em was, how much would you—”

“Only place around here that sells Corgi cars is the variety store, and they don't keep enough in stock.
I've already got everything they have! And I can't get Mom to take me down to Tony's Toytown because she says . . .”

With difficulty, Eric got him back to the point.

“Oh. Well, I already spent my allowance. I could swap you a box kite, though. It's only got one little tear in it. Or my thunderegg rock. Or a Swiss Army knife with two blades and a screwdriver and bottle opener. One of the blades is broke, but . . . Oh yeah, or I could let you have a T-shirt with Mount St. Helens on it. It says ‘I survived.' Only washed a couple times. I outgrew it.”

Eric absorbed this information in doubtful silence.

“Well? Is it a deal?” Steve asked him anxiously.

“I'll let you know.” Eric hung up, found a pencil and his ring binder, turned it upside down and wrote on the back page:

THINGS PEOPLE WILL SWAP

1. 
Triangle stamp

2. 
Corgi cars

3. 
S. A. knife (one blade broke)

4. 
Thunderegg rock

5. 
Box kite (small tear)

6. 
Mt. St. H. T-shirt, good cond.

He studied his list, then on the opposite side of the page wrote:

THINGS PEOPLE WANT

1. 
Triangle stamp

2. 
Corgi cars (esp. Jag. & Mov. van)

After some thought, he added to the second list:

3. 
Cocktail picks

4. 
Cigar boxes

5. 
Smells (?)

That last one didn't really count. What else? He dimly remembered Angel yakking on and on about somebody being crazy about little china dogs. But was it her sister or her aunt from New York, or her sister's friend's boyfriend, or . . .
Now
he wished he'd listened. He'd better let her catch him tomorrow, and see if she'd say it all again. Meanwhile . . .

“Homework done already?” Dad asked as he came in wearing his robe and slippers, and dropped into his TV-watching chair.

“Just about to start,” Eric told him, and turned his ring binder right side up.

He'd already made a start, of sorts, on what he was beginning to think of as The Great Double Multiple Swap. Tomorrow he'd better get busy with that research.

Eric learned a lot the next day about finding out what you want to know without quite knowing what it is you want to find out.

He filled all the cracks of the forenoon with asking questions of people—sometimes direct ones, like “If you could have anything you wanted for under a dollar, what would it be?”, sometimes leading ones like “Would you rather have a Swiss Army knife with one blade broken instead of your little one?”

By lunchtime he was just making random remarks to see what came of them, and discovering that a great deal did. “Chris Donaldson's grandpa's got about a hundred old license plates nailed up in his garage,” he told Melinda Jones, who retorted, “That's nothing,
my
grandpa's got
his
garage full of old radios he's rebuilding—he has to keep his car in the street.” Later when he happened to mention to Ms. Larkin, the school librarian, that his dad's old copy of the
Just-So Stories
didn't have colored pictures like the library's, she exclaimed, “I'll bet his has Kipling's own black-and-white
drawings! Oh, what I'd give for a good copy of that edition!”

By the time Eric started home from school he'd added several items to both his lists and was counting on Angel to add some more. It was a letdown to spot her trotting off in the opposite direction, jabbering ninety-to-nothing at Debbie Clark as they both headed for Debbie's mother's car and, presumably, Debbie's fancy house down beside the lake. After a little thought, Eric changed his own direction, crossed at the light, and started up Lake Street toward the stores. At least it wasn't raining, though the day was overcast and chilly.

A couple of blocks along, nearly opposite Mulvaney's Supermarket where Eric's dad worked, was Mr. Lee's little hole-in-the-wall business, squeezed between a copy shop and a sandwich bar like a thin burger in a bun. Eric peeked through the space separating the big “E” of “SHOE” from the “R” of “REPAIR” lettered on the smudgy display window and saw that no customers were waiting in the narrow space in front of the counter. The bell jingled as he pulled open the door, producing a brief shout of acknowledgement from the depths of the shop, unintelligible over the whine of one of the machines.

“It's only me, don't hurry,” Eric shouted back. He leaned his elbows on the scarred wooden counter, smoothed over and dark with multiple coats of varnish. Waiting for the whine to give way to the flapping sound that meant the machine was idling, he shut his eyes and drew a deep, analytical breath of the pungent atmosphere. Leather, of course—new and old. Machine oil. Shoe polish. A hint of French fries, probably left over from Mr. Lee's lunch, always sent in from Shari's
Sandwich Express next door by his wife, who was Shari. And something like glue—maybe all those plastic sacks encasing arch supports and things, hanging from the pegboard at his elbow. Anyway, lots of smells for Jimmy.