Beat the Turtle Drum Read Online Free PDF Page B

bike thief loitering around my house. And you know what the guy said? He said, ‘Sonny, see if you can catch him in the act, then give me a call and I’ll send somebody over.’ How do you like that?” Sam can get very indignant at what he considers injustice.
    â€œYou know who you remind me of?” I asked Sam again. The lock was jammed and took a while. I could see Joss waving her arms at us, heard her holler, “Hurry up!”
    â€œNo, who?” Sam said absent-mindedly.
    â€œPaul Newman,” I said.
    â€œPaul who?” Sam asked.
    â€œPaul Newman,” I said slowly and distinctly.
    â€œIs that that new kid in Miss Costello’s home room?” Sam wanted to know.
    I knew it.
    â€œSam,” I said, “you live in another world. You know that?”
    â€œAnd when I went outside to see what the guy was up to,” Sam continued, as if I hadn’t asked him a question, “you know what? He turned out to be a vacuum-cleaner salesman.
    â€œâ€˜Your mother home, kid?’ he said to me. ‘I got a special on these machines. I sell ten, I get a free trip to Atlantic City. The wife and kids included. Frankly, I’d rather go without the wife and kids, but the boss, he’s a family man.’”
    Sam put his bicycle lock in his pocket.
    â€œHow do you like that?” he asked me again and rode to meet Tootie and Joss.
    â€œGet a move on,” he called back to me. I had a hard job catching up to him, I was so mad.

The two best things about Joss are her eyes and her smell. She smells like a puppy that’s just had a bath. She also smells of chewing gum that’s been chewed awhile. I love Joss’s smell.
    Everybody has a smell of their own, I’ve decided. My mother smells of Femme, a French perfume she’s addicted to. When the bottle is almost gone, she puts it in her underwear drawer so she gets the benefit of the last drop.
    My father smells of his hair tonic, which has saved him from going the route of all the other men in his family, mainly: bald. When his father and two brothers and he get together, they sort of circle him suspiciously. Once in a while they feel his hair gingerly. I think they think it’s a wig. But it’s all his own. He owes it all to this hair tonic, which he orders by mail.
    My mother’s cousin Mona has a glandular condition. She’s been to lots of doctors, specialists, to see if they can help her. So far, no luck. Mona smells peculiarly unpleasant. She takes about ten baths a day. She uses gallons of deodorants and lotions. Nothing does any good. Her glands work overtime, I guess.
    After Mona comes for a visit, which isn’t often, my mother opens the windows and says, “Poor Mona, she’s such a nice person, such a sweet girl. It’s a shame.”
    My mother has been trying to find a husband for Mona for a long time. Mona is also not a girl, being twenty-nine. Joss and I are on the lookout for some guy whose sense of smell is all whacked out. If we find one, we figure Mona could move in on him, and as long as he couldn’t smell her, she could win him easily. Mona runs a telephone-answering service, which means she doesn’t have to mingle with people. Which is good in one way but bad in another. She doesn’t get a chance to meet new men. I figure if Joss and I really set our minds to it, we could dig up some man whose nose is out of commission, due to an accident at birth or something. Mona wears pretty clothes and makes terrific lasagna. It’s only her glands that are against her.
    When I asked Joss what she thought I smelled like, she thought for a minute. Then she wrinkled her nose and said, “Salami.” We’d had salami sandwiches for lunch.
    â€œI don’t mean that,” I said. “What does my own personal smell remind you of? Everybody has a smell. Someday I’m going to write a murder mystery, and the way they trap the murderer is by his