Westlake, Donald E - Novel 25

Philip

D. E.
Westlake

 
          
 
To Sean and Steven,

 
          
 
before
they outgrow
it

 
          
 
Philip lived in a huge apartment house. It was
taller than a spaceship and wider than a movie theater and it had more windows
than you could count if you counted all day.

 
          
 
Out in front of this apartment house there was
one skinny tree and a long canopy and a large doorman named Mister Neep. Mister
Neep wore a bright blue uniform with shiny buttons on it. He also wore a bright
blue hat with gold trim of which he was very proud.

 
          
 
All along the block there were other apartment
houses just like the one Philip lived in. Way down at the corner there was a
board fence around a deep hole in the ground. Big machines and husky men were
building a brand new apartment house there.

 
          
 
Standing in front of the apartment houses were
doormen just like Mister Neep, except that none of them were quite as big or
quite as shiny as Mister Neep.

 
          
 
Philip liked Mister Neep because he was the
biggest and shiniest doorman on the whole block.

 
          
 
The apartment where Philip and his mother and
father lived was on the seventh floor. There was a big living room. There was a
kitchen with a little corner where the family ate breakfast. There was a
bathroom with white tiles. There was a large bedroom where Philip's mother and
father slept. And there was a not-quite-so-large bedroom where Philip slept.

 
          
 
And besides all this there was a terrace, which
was like a front porch way up on the side of the building. From the terrace
Philip could see lots of other buildings in the city, all of them full of
apartments very much like his.

 
          
 
On the kitchen wall there was a round thing
called a speaker, which Mister Neep used when he wanted to tell Philip's mother
something. One day, as Philip sat at the kitchen table licking out a bowl,
there was a buzzing noise from the speaker. That was Mister Neep's signal.

           
 
Philip's mother went over to the speaker and
said, "Yes, Mister Neep?"

 
          
 
Mister Neep's voice said, "There's a
package down here, just delivered."

 
          
 
Philip's mother said, "What sort of
package, Mister Neep?"

 
          
 
Mister Neep said, "It's a package for
Philip. Has his name on it. I daresay it's a present."

 
          
 
Philip said, "I heard that."

 
          
 
"Trust you," said his mother. To
Mister Neep she said, "We'll be right down."

 
          
 
Philip and his mother rode down in the
elevator. There by the front door stood Mister Neep, with the package in his
hands.

 
          
 
"Do you suppose," Mister Neep said
to Philip, "do you suppose you could carry this package upstairs
yourself?"

 
          
 
"Sure I could," said Philip.

 
          
 
So Mister Neep handed him the package. It was
much heavier than Philip expected. He and his mother went back upstairs.

 
          
 
"You'd better open it on the kitchen
table," Philip's mother said, "so we won't have a mess
anywhere."

 
          
 
Philip opened the package completely by
himself. It took longer than he had thought it would. When he had it open at
last he discovered that inside the package there was . . . a truck.
A very large, a very beautiful, a very complicated truck.
It
had batteries in it, and it had lots of space for carrying things, and it had a
big scoop on the top that could reach down and pick up a whole gob of dirt and
dump it into the back of the truck, and it had a button you could push to make
the back of the truck lift up and dump the dirt out again.

 
          
 
It was the most beautiful and useful truck
Philip had ever seen.

 
          
 
There was a card in the package with the
truck. Philip's mother picked it up and read it. She said, "Oh! It's from
your Uncle Fred."

 
          
 
Philip said, "Who's he?"

 
          
 
"He's a man who used to be in college
with your father. He visited here one time when you were still a baby. I guess
you wouldn't remember him."

 
          
 
"I guess not," said Philip.

 
          
 
He didn't worry about it. He knew the world
was full of people named Uncle
This
and Aunt That,
grown-ups who seemed to know him even though he didn't know them and who
weren't really his uncles and aunts at all.
And every once in
a while one of these make-believe uncles or aunts would give Philip a present.

 
          
 
Like this dump truck, which happened to be the
first dump truck Philip had ever owned. He'd seen dump trucks, of course, on
television and down at the corner where men were digging for the new apartment
house, but up until now he'd never actually owned a dump truck for
himself
.

 
          
 
Philip took his dump truck into the living
room and put it down on the floor. He pushed the button that started it and it
ran across the rug and stopped at the sofa. He

 
pushed
the other
button and the scoop made pick-up motions. Then he got some blocks and put them
in the truck. He pushed the last button and the back of the truck lifted up and
the blocks slid out onto the rug.

 
          
 
The truck worked all right, but somehow Philip
wasn't pleased.

 
          
 
He did it all again. He made the truck move,
and stop, and dump blocks out. He made the scoop move.

 
          
 
But something was wrong. And Philip knew what
it was.

 
          
 
Dirt.

 
          
 
The main point about a dump truck, it's
supposed to carry dirt. You put it down on the ground, and the scoop picks up
big mouthfuls of dirt and fills up the truck, and then you push the button and
the truck drives across the yard to where you want to move the dirt, and then
you push the other button and the back of the truck lifts up and all the dirt
slides out. That's what a dump truck does.