dashed to the front door, leaving Andy trying to remember the answer to a question that had just popped into his mind: Did I or didn’t I tighten the clamps on the starter battery terminals when I put the battery back in the car Saturday?
“What happened to the car?” Susie was asking breathlessly.
“Never mind about the car,” Andy heard his mother say. “Are you all right, Will?”
“Not a bruise anywhere except to my patience, Mother,” said Mr. Carter reassuringly. “It was just the old car showing signs of old age. I got somebody clear over on the south side to give me a push to get started. Then it died, smack in the middle of Washington and Meridian streets, and a taxi gave me another push to get started again. But it finally died for good down the street. And there’s where it is now.”
“Well, at least it got you within two blocks of home,” said Susie comfortingly.
“That doesn’t solve tomorrow’s problem,” said Mr. Carter with a worried headshake. “The district supervisor is coming from Chicago on the morning train to help me close a big fire insurance policy. I’ve got to find some garage that will work on it tonight.”
Andy walked over to his father and held out his hand. “Let me have the car keys, Dad. I’ll run down there and take a look while there’s still daylight.”
“It acted to me as if the battery had gone completely dead,” said his father, and handed over the car keys. “But I hope I don’t have to buy a new battery and pay for a repair bill too—not this month, anyhow.”
Andy started for the basement to get some tools, and his mother said, “If it isn’t something you can fix right off, hurry back so your father can get on the telephone and find a garage that is still open.”
Actually it only took Andy just long enough to lift the front-seat floor mat to find the trouble. It was what he expected. He remembered now that just as he had put the battery back into the car Saturday morning, and had tightened only one of the heavy starting wires, he had stopped to throw a few passes to Cornstalk Shaw, who had come by to show him his new football.
A couple of turns of a wrench was all that was needed. Andy turned on the ignition switch, stepped on the starter button—and the engine was running!
As he turned in the family driveway he tooted the horn twice as he passed the dining-room window, then put the car in the garage and came in to his dinner.
His father looked sheepishly at his mother and said, “I fussed and fumbled with that car for over an hour and almost got arrested for blocking traffic during the rush hour. But it only took a high school boy five minutes, all told, to fix it from the time he left the house until he was back again.” He nodded across the table to Andy. “Thanks, Son. It would have been a serious matter not to have my car tomorrow morning when the supervisor arrived.”
Susie gave her older brother a quick, sidelong, half-teasing, half-admiring smile. “If this gets around the neighborhood, look out! People will be calling you out of bed on c-c-o-o-l-d winter nights to get their cars started for them. And just think——”
Much to Andy’s relief the telephone began ringing just then. Susie jumped up, saying, “It’s probably for me, anyhow,” and went out to answer the call. Meanwhile Andy had been wanting to say something to his father that he would almost rather lose his right arm than say in front of Susie.
He looked across the table at his father, then down at the fork in his hand, then back up at his father before he could get the words out. “I’m sorry, Dad, about the trouble you had with your car today. It was my fault. I forgot to tighten one battery connection when I worked on the car Saturday.”
“Lucky it didn’t wait to go dead tomorrow, after my asking the district supervisor to come down all the way from Chicago,” said his father unsmilingly. He gave Andy a serious look. “Closing that insurance contract tomorrow represents the biggest single commission I’ve ever had a chance to make. Remember, in business, Son, a man gets paid only for good results, not for excuses.”
Andy’s mother said diplomatically, “Perhaps it was the long drive we took Sunday afternoon over that rough road that shook something loose.”
“I should have tightened the connection so it couldn’t shake loose,” said Andy, suddenly getting up from the table and going upstairs to his room.
Even though he had no written homework to turn in for the next day Andy opened his new advanced algebra book and with his elbows resting on his small study desk, which he had built as a sophomore in his woodworking course at Riverford High, he tried to dismiss from his mind what had happened that day. But the first chapter was just a review of his last year’s mathematics course, so he skipped that chapter and turned to the next.
Immediately he ran into an equation that had him completely baffled. He was tempted to put his algebra book aside and pick up the latest issue of his amateur radio operator’s magazine. In fact, he was actually reaching for the magazine when he slowly withdrew his hand and opened his algebra book again.
Andy knew he was not a brilliant mathematics Student. His average, though still in the upper half of his class, was only a “fat” B—but not quite a B plus, which would have put him in the upper third of his class. What Andy lacked in natural aptitude for mathematics he made up for by extra study. It wasn’t that he liked to study, but somewhere inside he had a streak of what grownups sometimes mistook for stubbornness. It wasn’t exactly that; it was really that Andy felt uncomfortable when someone else among his friends could do things in a way that made it look easy. Like the way Ken Blair threw long forward passes so casually that it looked as if anybody ought to be able to do it.
Andy was just finding out by rereading the first chapter of his new algebra course how to work that first equation in Chapter Two when his father came into the room and put his hand on his son’s shoulder.
“I’m sorry if I said anything, Son, at the dinner table that hurt your feelings,” said his father.
Andy shook his head slowly. “It wasn’t anything you said, Dad. It was—well—I mean, I got to thinking about what happened at school today.”
His father glanced at the half-solved equation on Andy’s scratch-pad and smiled slowly. “By the looks of things you’ve already managed to get your mind off whatever unpleasant thing happened.”
Andy rolled his pencil across his scratch-pad with the palm of his hand before saying, “Dad, I want to drop that two-period machine shop course and take something else instead. Mr. McCall, the principal, says I can do it if I get your written permission.”
“Drop that machine shop course?” Andy’s father gave his son a puzzled look. “Why, ever since you were in the sixth grade you’ve been talking about the time when you would be a senior in high school so you could take the machine shop course. What has changed your mind so suddenly?”
Andy rolled his pencil back down over his scratchpad and said, “I can’t remember the time, either, Dad, when I didn’t want to be quarterback of the football team, and this season is my last chance.” Then Andy went on to explain that the only machine shop class which did not conflict with his other courses came during the seventh and eighth periods. Then he added gloomily, “Our new coach told us, in so many words, that any boy who could not report every day for practice immediately after the close of the sixth class hour did not have a ghost of a chance to make the first-string varsity.
