The good news was, for several weeks after that night, neither Willard nor Catherine saw a single roach.
The bad news…in the middle of February, it began to rain.
The first few days of February were fortunately clear, relatively warm, and dry. The skies were the deep blue portrayed in the more touristy postcards that touted Southern California as a perpetually green, perpetually blooming paradise. One of the neighbors down Oleander Place even had a beautiful large tree in the front yard that was laden with bright, ripe oranges. From a certain angle it was silhouetted against the Coastal Range across the freeway and could itself have been the star of just such a post card.
Once school resumed, the neighbor kids-occasionally including the Huntley four-were able to play outside wearing only light jackets well into twilight. Not that Will, Burt, and Suze seemed drawn to any of the pro tempore, shifting gangs that formed and re-formed along the short street. The older three Huntleys stayed pretty close to home, satisfied with brief forays into the backyard for tag or wildly awkward attempts at badminton…played mostly without the benefit of nets-or rules.
Sams, however, seemed delighted by the limitless prospects from the front yard. His favorite Christmas present had been a brand-new, battery-powered, ride-on car. The thin plastic body was molded in bright-red with mock-chrome details, then finished in the general outlines of a classic 90s Chevy Corvette, sleek, low to the ground, looking like it was racing even when standing still, with the promise of infinite, lightning-fast speed.
Well, perhaps very slow lightning.
“Willard, he’s too little for something like that,” Catherine had protested when Willard caught her arm and guided her over to where a floor model sat gleaming on the top shelf in a Wal-Mart display. “He’ll get hurt.”
“Nonsense, he can probably walk faster than that thing can go, and anyway it has seatbelts. Safety first, you know.” He laughed and pointed at the specifications on one of the boxes.
“And it’s way too expensive,” Catherine responded, not willing to give up the battle just because of a little laughter.
“Yeah, it’s more than the bikes we got for the other kids,” Willard agreed, “but not that much more. And besides…”
“And besides, you always wanted something like that when you were a kid, didn’t you?” This time Catherine laughed.
“Okay, you caught me. But they didn’t make motorized cars then. The only thing we had were clunky, pedal-driven sedans and fire-trucks. One of the kids on my block had one when I was six or seven and it broke my heart that I didn’t.
“Of course, when he let me try once, I was almost too big and the pedals stuck and I ended up pushing it along with my feet, which wasn’t all that much fun. But it was the principal of the thing.”
Catherine was silent for a second before she sighed and nodded. “All right. At least we live in a safe neighborhood now. No one racing up and down the streets.”
The car came home with them that day.
The moment he opened the huge box on Christmas morning, Sams seemed possessed by the car. He sat in it through all the morning festivities, even though the battery hadn’t been connected and not even the horn would work. He sat in it mock-steering and making his own hooting horn sounds while the rest of the family trooped out to the garage to be surprised by their own sets of wheels, bicycles in a variety of styles, colors, and sizes. He wanted to sit in it when Catherine called everyone in for the traditional Christmas breakfast of freshly baked cinnamon rolls and hot chocolate.
“No you don’t, buster. No spilling on my brand new carpet,” Catherine had said, trying to sound stern but failing so miserably that both she and Sams burst out in hysterical laughter.
But he was allowed to take it outside right after breakfast and, while the other three pedaled up and down Oleander Place, occasionally joined by other small riders on other pristine bicycles, Sams drove his Vette in tight little circles on the driveway, beeping away and waving at Catherine every time he passed her standing by the garage door.
It had been a very good Christmas.
By early February, Sams was allowed to ride not only on the driveway but for three yard-lengths on each side of Oleander. At the end of the rose border on one side, he would dutifully turn around-staying carefully on the sidewalk-and ride back around, past his own driveway, and down the other side to where the white picket fence began, then turn around and repeat the process.
Left to himself, he would probably have been happy to putt around all day. Still, an hour or so in the afternoons usually satisfied him.