We stood there for a while. Guppa leaned on the handle of the mattock. I scuffed my shoes in the dirt and wiped my hands on my pants. The unspoken hung in the air around us. One of us had to say something.
“So—” I said.
“Mm?”
“What do you call it?” I knew that he would know what I meant this time.
“Automatic Garden Waterer.” Poor Guppa. He hadn’t caught on to the Flo and Freddie style. He didn’t understand snappiness.
“How about ‘The Gardener’s Pal’?” I suggested.
“I know what you mean,” he said. “‘Automatic Garden Waterer’ isn’t snappy.”
“No,” I said.
“I did have something else in mind. You might like this. How about ‘The Watering Can That Can Water When You Can’t’? Get it?”
“It’s—um—it’s kind of long,” I said, imagining Freddie rolling his eyes.
“Hey, Peter! Peter!” Guppa and I turned to see Marvin running across what was left of the lawn. He was holding a piece of cloth and waving it like a flag.
“That’s my friend Marvin,” I said to Guppa. “Marvin Jones. He’s in the where-do-you-stop group with me. He’s going to help me build the lighthouse. Watchtower.”
“Mm,” said Guppa.
“Take a look at this,” said Marvin, panting, when he reached us. He handed me what he’d been waving, and I took it.
I examined it and reached a quick conclusion. “It’s a dirty rag,” I said.
“Right!” said Marvin, beaming. He seemed so delighted and excited by this dirty rag, or, even more than that, by the whole concept of dirty rags, that I was sorry I hadn’t paid more attention to them myself.
“Smell it,” he said.
I did. “It’s kind of sweet-smelling,” I said. “I think I recognize it, but I can’t be sure.”
Guppa took the rag, looked at it, sniffed it, and said at once, “Car wax.” He looked at it again, squinted, twisted his lips into the musing expression of a movie detective during heavy ratiocination, and said to Marvin, “You—or someone else—used this rag to wax a green Studebaker Champion.” He unfolded the rag slowly and held it up to the light, turning it this way and that, examining it minutely. With the rag as a shield, his face out of Marvin’s sight, he winked at me. Oh, how that wink—his whole performance!—exhilarated me! I’d been wrong about him—he was going to be terrific on Flo and Freddie’s show. “I’d say it was a two-door sedan,” he said, nodding slowly. “Three—no—four years old.” He handed the rag back to Marvin.
“Wow,” said Marvin. “What an astonishing set of deductions.”
“This is my friend Marvin,” I said to Guppa, as if I’d never said it before. “He and I—”
“I’ll bet you two are in the where-do-you-stop group together,” said Guppa.
“Yeah,” I said. Darn it. Guppa had gone too far. He forgot that he was supposed to have been making deductions from the evidence of the rag.
“That’s right,” said Marvin. He wore his mother’s smile. “So,” he said to me, “what do you notice about this rag that was used to wax a four-year-old green Studebaker Champion?”
“Notice?”
“Yup. What do you notice?”
“Well, it’s dirty—”
“You’re warm.”
“It’s got old wax on it—”
“Getting colder.”
“And some of the paint—”
“Hot! Very hot!”
“The paint!” I said. “Of course!” Some of the paint had come off on the rag when Marvin’s father waxed the car, just as it did whenever my father waxed our car. “Ah-ha!” I said. “It’s part of the car! Part of the car is here on the rag.”
“Right!” said Marvin. “The car has been extended! It doesn’t stop where it used to.”
“Say! You’re on to something, boys,” said Guppa.
[to be continued]
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🎧 612: We stood there ...