“Go look at your face,” Saul told me.
I went to the bathroom and looked in the mirror, and was sorry I had let her off so easy. It started just below my left eye and went straight down a good three inches. I dabbed cold water on it, looked for a styptic and found none, and took a damp towel back to the living room with me. Jimmy and Mom were at bay over by the table, and Saul, with Jimmy’s gun, was at ease near the arch.
I complained, “What for?” I demanded. “All I said was hello. Why the scratching and shooting?”
“He didn’t shoot,” Mrs. Sperling said indignantly.
I waved it aside. “Well, you sure scratched. Now we’ve got a problem. We can search your son all right, that’s easy, but how are we going to search you?”
“Try searching me,” Jimmy said. His voice was mean and his face was mean. I had tagged him as the one member of the family who didn’t count one way or another, but now I wasn’t so sure.
“Nuts,” I told him. “You’re sore because you didn’t have the guts to shoot, which shows how thick you are. Sit down on that couch, both of you.” I used the damp towel on my face. They didn’t move. “Will I have to come and sit you?”
Mom pulled at his arm and they went to the couch, sidewise, and sat. Saul dropped the gun in his pocket and took a chair.
“You startled us, Andy,” Mom said. “That was all. I was so startled I didn’t recognize you.”
It was a nice little touch that no man would ever have thought of. She was putting us back on our original basis, when I had been merely a welcome guest at her home.