He asked us, “Are we going to live in this car?”
I said, “You’ve got in with a tribe of wild scouts. Do you know what they are? They inhabit the marshes and the woods and the candy stores and ice cream parlors——”
“We have ice cream every Sunday,” he piped up. “But only one helping. We have doughnuts, too. Do they inhabit the river?” he wanted to know.
“Who? The doughnuts?” I asked him. “Not the ones around here. They inhabit the bakery stores.”
He said, “After I invent that submarine I’m going to invent an engine.”
Westy said, “What do you say we invent some supper?”
So then Westy and I went out on the platform of the car. We told the inventor to stay inside.
I said, “What are we going to do about this kid? I don’t want to take him to my house because I don’t want anybody to know yet. But if we go home to supper and leave him here he’ll invent a way to escape.”
“Or else he’ll set fire to the car,” Westy said.
“Once we hand this kid over,” I said, “that lets us out of the arson business and it also lets Charlie Slausen out. And we’ll get three hundred dollars’ reward, too, for finding the inventor.”