8
I ARRIVED at the gym well before the start of the next meeting. The doors to the school hadn’t even been opened yet. I ran around to the boiler-room door and tapped on its wire-reinforced window with a rock to wake Mr. Griswold, the janitor, a huge bear of a man whom I never saw anywhere but in the old school, usually in the basement. Now and then, if I stayed at school late for some reason, I would see him pushing a broom along one of the hallways, pushing piles of a bright green sweeping compound that was stored in the basement in huge pressed-cardboard drums. Once, Babbington Bivalve By-products had delivered to Mr. Griswold a dozen drums of a new product, KlamKleen, that the company hoped would replace the green sweeping compound, which, I suppose, school janitors all over the country then used. KlamKleen was a white powder made from finely ground clamshells. “Another Useful By-product from One of Nature’s Most Versatile Creatures,” the slogan on the barrels proclaimed. The powder rose in choking clouds as Mr. Griswold swept, drifting on the air currents in the old building and penetrating to every nook and cranny, requiring the closing of school for a thorough vacuuming. Eleven unopened drums of KlamKleen still stood in the storage room.
To my surprise, it wasn’t Mr. Griswold who came to the door; it was Porky White.
“Hi, Porky,” I said. “How come you’re here?”
“I’m the night janitor now,” he said. “I talked Grizzly into hiring me so that he could sleep. He pays me half of what he gets paid. I’ve got to get some money together to open a restaurant.”
“I heard about that,” I said.
“Interested in investing?” he asked.
“Well,” I said, “I—”
“That’s okay, Peter,” said Porky. “I was only kidding.”
“But I’d like to invest,” I said. “I’ve never invested in anything before.”
“Thanks, Peter,” said Porky, “but, really, I was only kidding.” He paused. “You don’t really have any money to invest, do you?” he asked.
“I got a savings bond for my birthday,” I said. “Twenty-five dollars. Would that be enough?”
“It’s a deal,” said Porky. He held out his hand, and I shook it. “You’re the first official investor.”
“The first?” I said. “Wow.”
“Hey,” said Porky, “you’re pretty early, aren’t you? The meeting doesn’t start till seven-thirty.”
“I wanted to make sure that I was the first one here,” I said. “I want everything to go the way it should this time.”
“Ahhh,” Porky said, folding his arms over his stomach. “A perfectionist.”
“A perfectionist?” I asked, of myself as much as of Porky. “I guess you’re right,” I said. “I am a perfectionist, I suppose.”
In Topical Guide 219, Mark Dorset considers Investing: “Getting in on the Ground Floor” from this episode.
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