The Seventeenth Swap Read Online Free PDF

old—?” Mr. Lee chuckled and muttered, “What next, boy?” but after a moment’s thought he headed for his workbench behind the partition. He came back with a thick curl of shoe-sole like the trimming from a giant fingernail, and an aromatic dirty rag. “There you are—you can have ’em if you’ll tell me what you want with ’em.”
    â€œI’ve got a friend who collects smells,” Ericexplained, and left the shop with Mr. Lee’s crack of laughter following him.
    He was getting hungry. A stop at Mulvaney’s might fix that, besides producing more information. He crossed the street at the corner by the bike store, slowing as he passed to run a connoisseur’s eye over the window-ful of shiny new Schwinns and racers, then walked into the covered shopping mall and through the big automatic sliding doors of the supermarket at its far end. His dad was filling in at Number Three checkstand, as he often did during the periodic little rushes when the handful of shoppers unhurriedly wandering the store simultaneously completed their purchases and became an impatient crowd lined up with loaded baskets. There was only one customer left at Number Three. As Mr. Greene waited for the computer-register to calculate the charges, he spotted Eric and raised a beckoning finger.
    Eric hung around the Daily Special display—canned smoked oysters, yuck —until the customer departed with the box boy at her heels, and his dad turned off the Number Three light and joined him. Reaching into the pocket of his green cotton jacket, he produced a Canadian dime and a buffalo nickel, which he flipped to Eric with a smile.
    Whenever Dad worked the checkstand he kept an eye out for oddball coins, replaced them in the cash register with ordinary ones of his own, and brought the funny ones home to Eric, who took them to Mrs. Panek next time he thought of it. Mrs. Panek’s brother was a disabled veteran of the Korean war, who lived with her in the cramped rooms back of the little newspaper-magazine-card-and-candy shop created fromone of the old houses on Heron Street just up from the post office. He collected coins.
    â€œMaybe I’ll walk up to the Paneks’ now. Only—is it okay if I dump my books here while I’m gone?” Eric asked his father.
    â€œIf Marvin says so.”
    Marvin wouldn’t mind. Giving a heave to his bulging ring binder and three outside reading library books, which were becoming a real drag to cart around, Eric headed through the bins and fruity pyramids of the produce department to the swinging doors at the rear of the store. Beyond them, in a cement-floored area stacked with boxes and untidy with vegetable trimmings, Marvin was unloading crated lettuces from a truck backed up to the open bay, and exchanging jocular insults with the driver. They had to yell over the throttled-down blare of rock music coming from the little radio on a shelf. Eric set his books down in a safe corner, unkinked his shoulders with relief, and glanced, he hoped not too obviously, toward the broad wooden counters flanking the sink, where discards were set aside.
    â€œThem Golden Delicious got to be throwed out,” Marvin called helpfully, swinging a final crate to the floor and waving all-clear to the driver. As the truck’s motor roared, he sent the big door rattling along its rails and came toward Eric, wiping his hands on his apron front. He still looked more like a high school linebacker than a department manager, to Eric’s prejudiced eye, but the bitter resentment he’d felt at first on his dad’s account had given way to a grudging admission of Marvin’s competence, and finally to a reluctant liking. You just couldn’t stay mad atsomebody as big as a moose and friendly as a cocker spaniel. “Go ahead,” he was urging Eric now, pushing one of the big knives toward him. “Take a couple apples—just trim them bruises