Kindred Spirits by Julia Watts Page B

but that time of
month hasn’t rolled around yet.”
    We sit down in the chairs
across from his desk. His tie, I notice, is untied and stained, and I can see
patches of his round white belly peeking between the buttons of his dingy
shirt.
    “So,” he says, “what can
I do for you young people?”
    I look at Adam, whose
lips are clamped shut. Clearly, I’m going to have to do all the talking. “Well,
sir,” I say, “we’re working on a project about the history of Wilder. And we
were wondering if we could maybe interview you.”
    Roy Silcox chuckles.
“Figured an old coot like me might be able to tell you what you want to know,
huh? Well, I’m always happy to help out young reporters such as yourselves. Go
ahead fire away.”
    “Okay,” I say, not sure
what to say next because I didn’t really plan out any questions. “What was it
like living in Wilder when you were a kid?”
    “Well,” he says, chewing
on his cigar, “you kids would probably think it was right boring because you’ve
got all your ready-made entertainment now, TV and computer games and what have
you. But we didn’t have any of that, so we had to make our own fun playing
ball, fishing, riding our bikes all over town. And I’ll tell you what: we were
never bored. Me, my brother Eugene, the boys we ran around with’ we always had
something going on.”
    He looks over our
shoulders for a minute, as though he’s looking into his own past. “Of course,”
he says, “back then it was different. The world wasn’t as dangerous as it is
now, and a little bitty town like Wilder wasn’t dangerous at all. Now parents
feel like they’ve got to keep their kids home where they can keep an eye on
‘em. But back then shoot, in the summertime, we’d get on our bikes after
breakfast, take off somewhere, and not come back till suppertime.”
    “And
your mom didn’t worry?” I ask.
    “No,” Mr. Silcox laughs.
“Course, she probably should have, given some of the stuff we were getting
into, but it was all innocent fun, really. And Ma knew that Wilder was a safe
place to run around in, that nobody would bother us.”
    “So,” Adam says, finally
deciding to help me out, “there wasn’t any crime in Wilder back then?”
    “No big crimes,” Mr.
Silcox says. “Maybe some old boy might get picked up for being drunk and
disorderly, or maybe some kids might get in trouble for vandalizing school
property, but that was about it.”
    I figure now is as good a
time as any, so I say, “But wasn’t there a murder here back in the thirties?”
    “Oh,” Mr. Silcox says.
For a moment, his mouth is clamped shut in a straight line, and I’m afraid he’s
going to tell us to get out of his office. But then he takes a deep breath and
says, “You want to know about the Jameson murder. Now that was a strange thing.
People couldn’t hardly believe such a thing could happen in Wilder. And to two
maiden ladies who wouldn’t hurt a fly! Why, Helen Jameson had taught me and
Eugene both in grade school, and she was such a sweet little thing. Her sister
Mildred was a little crotchety, but she was basically a good woman. Nobody
could figure out why somebody would want them dead. When it happened, Eugene
had already left home he’d quit school and joined the army. He was over at Fort
Campbell doing basic training. Ma sent him a newspaper clipping about the
Jamesons, and he wrote back saying he couldn’t believe such a thing had
happened in the quiet town he had grown up in. He said he didn’t know what the
world was coming to.”
    As Mr. Silcox gazes at
some faraway moment from the past, Adam and I catch each other’s eye: time to
cross Eugene Silcox off our list. “Mr. Silcox,”I say, “did you know the boy who
got arrested for the murder?”
    “I
knew who he was, but of course I wasn’t hardly out of diapers when it happened.
I knew Charlie T delivered papers and did odd jobs for folks. He seemed like a
nice, quiet boy. He never seemed like the type to