Chapter One. Johnny held the shirt in his hand as he listened to the church bell toll

Johnny held the shirt in his hand as he listened to the church bell toll. Eleven o'clock. "Only forty minutes more to make the train," he thought as he savagely resumed packing. Angrily he threw his remaining clothing into the valise and snapped it shut. Placing one knee on its corner, he put his weight on it and cinched the strap around it. Finished, he straightened up and picked the valise from the bed and carried it out of the room through the store and placed it on the floor near the door.

He stood there a moment looking around him. In the dark the machines seemed to be mocking at him, jeering at his fail­ure. His lips tightened as he walked back past them and into the little room. There was one thing more he had to do. The most unpleasant part of this whole nasty business. Leave a note for Peter telling him why he was running off in the mid­dle of the night.

It would have been easier if Peter hadn't been so good to him. For that matter, if the whole family hadn't been so damned nice. Esther having him up for dinner almost every night, the kids calling him "Uncle Johnny." He could feel his throat tighten up a little as he sat down at the table. Somehow this was the kind of family he had always dreamed about in those long, lonesome years he had worked on the carnival.

He took out a sheet of paper and a pencil and wrote the words: "Dear Peter," across the top of it and then stared at the paper. How do you say good-by and thanks to people who have been so kind to you? Do you just casually write the words:

"So long, it's been nice knowing you, thanks for everything," and forget them?

He put the end of the pencil in his mouth and chewed on it reflectively. He put the pencil down on the table and lit a cigarette. After a few minutes he picked up the pencil again and began to write.

"You were right in the first place. I should never have opened this Goddamn place."

He remembered the first day he had walked into the store. He had five hundred dollars in his pocket, was nineteen years old and cocky with wisdom. He had worked in a carnival all his life and now, at last, he was going to settle down and get somewhere. A fellow he knew had tipped him off that there was a completely equipped penny arcade up in Rochester just waiting for him to take it over.

The day he met Peter Kessler. Peter owned the building and the hardware store that was the only other store in it besides the arcade. Peter had liked Johnny from the moment he saw him. Johnny was an easy person to like. He was tall, almost six feet of him; his thick black hair, blue eyes, and ready smile. With white even teeth made a quick pleasant impression. Peter had begun to feel sorry for the kid even before he rented him the store. There was something so eager, so intense about him.

Peter had watched Johnny walk about the store, touching the machines, testing them. At last he spoke. "Mr. Edge."

Johnny turned to him. "Yes?"

Mr. Edge, maybe it's none of my business, but do you think this is such a good location for a penny arcade?" Peter hesitated a little. He was thinking that he was a little foolish. After all, he was the landlord, his only interest in this boy was that he should pay the rent but—

Johnny's eyes grew hard. At nineteen it's hard to admit you might be wrong. "Why do you ask Mr. Kessler?" His voice was cold.

Peter stammered slightly. "Well, the last two fellers here, they didn't do so good."

"Maybe they didn't have the right idea for this kind of a business, " Johnny answered. "Besides, you're right. I don't think it’s any of your business."

Peter’s face froze. He was a sensitive person though he tried hard not to show it. His voice became brusque and business-

like, just as it was when Johnny had first stepped into his store and introduced himself. "I apologize, Mr. Edge, I meant no offense."

Johnny nodded his head.

Peter continued in the same tone: "However, in view of my past experience with the former owners of this place, I find it necessary to insist on three months' rent as security." That should stop him, he thought.

Johnny calculated swiftly. One hundred and twenty dollars from five hundred left three eighty. Enough for him to do what he wanted. He took his money from his pocket, counted off the bills, and placed them in Peter's hand.

Peter leaned against one of the machines and wrote out a receipt. Turning, he gave it to Johnny and held out his hand. "I'm sorry to seem so rude," he said, "but I only meant good." He smiled hesitantly.

Johnny looked at him intently. Seeing no sign of mockery on Peter's face, he took his hand. They shook hands quickly and then Peter walked toward the door.

At the door Peter looked back. "If you need me for anything, Mr. Edge, don't hesitate to call. I'm right next door."

"I won't, Mr. Kessler. Thanks."

"Good luck," Peter called back to him as he stepped out. Johnny waved to him. Peter's face was unusually thoughtful as he walked into his own shop.

His wife, Esther, who had been staying in his store while he had shown Johnny the arcade, came up to him. "Did he take it?" she asked.

Peter nodded his head slowly. "Yes," he answered, "he took it, the poor kid. I hope he makes out."

Johnny lit another cigarette and began to write again.

"Believe me, I'm not sorry about the dough I've lost, only the dough I've cost you. My old boss, Al Santos, is giving me back my job at the carnival and as soon as I get paid I will send you some money on account of the rent I owe you."

He didn't want to go back to the carnival. It wasn't that he didn't like the work, but he would miss the Kesslers. He didn't remember much about his own parents. They had been killed in an accident at the carnival when he was about ten years old. AI Santos had taken him under his wing then, but Al was

a very busy man and Johnny had to shift pretty much for himself.

He had been a lonely child, for there weren't many children hisown age around the carny, and the Kesslers seemed to fill a niche in his life that had been empty until now.

He remembered the Friday-night dinners with Peter and his family. He could almost smell the chicken cooking in its own soup and the taste of those matzoh balls or "knedloch," as Esther called them. He thought of last Sunday, when he had taken the children to the park. How they laughed and how proud he felt when they had called him "Uncle Johnny." They were nice kids. Doris was about nine and Mark was three years old.

He didn't want to go back to the carnival, but he couldn't sponge on Peter forever. He owed him three months' rent now, and if it weren't for the fact that Esther had him up to eat so often he would have spent many a hungry night.

Again the pencil scrawled its way across the paper.

"I m sorry I got to go off like this but some creditors are coming tomorrow with a judgment against me so I figure this the best way to do it."

He signed his name at the bottom of the note and looked at it. There was something empty about it. It was no way to say good-by to friends. Impulsively he began to write again just below his name.

"P.S. Tell Doris and Mark if the carny ever gets to town they get all the rides for free. Thanks again for everything. Uncle Johnny."

Now he felt better. He stood up and tilted the note against an empty tumbler on the table. He looked around the room carefully. He didn't want to forget anything; he couldn't afford to, there wasn't enough money left for him to replace what he might forget. No. Everything was all right, he hadn't forgotten anything.

He looked at the note lying on the table again, then reached up and turned off the light and walked out of the room and shut the door behind him. He didn't see the note flutter off the table and fall to the floor, sent there by the draft from the closing door. Slowly he walked through the store, his eyes wandering from side to side.

On his right he could see the one-armed bandits, the slot

machines, and next to them the French-postcard moving pictures. A few steps farther on were the games of skill, the baseball machine with its batter and nine men facing him, the prize fighters with the long metal buttons on their jaws. On his left was the row of benches he had put in for the flicker projector he had ordered, which hadn't come yet, and at the door stood Grandma, the fortune-telling machine.

He stopped and looked through the glass at her. Her head was covered with a white shawl from which dangled peculiarly shaped coins and symbols. In the dark she seemed almost alive, her painted eyes staring out at him.

He fished in his pocket for a coin. Finding one, he placed it in the slot and pushed the lever. "Let's hear what you got to say about it, old girl," he said.

There was a whir of machinery, then her arm lifted and her thin iron fingers went skimming over the rows of neatly stacked white cards in front of her. The noise of the machine grew louder as she selected a card and laboriously turned her body and dropped it into the chute. The noise stopped as she turned back to face him. The card came out of the chute in front of him. He picked it up. At the same moment he heard a train whistle in the darkness.

"Golly," he said to himself, "I gotta run." Frantically he shoved the card in his jacket pocket, picked up his valise, and went out into the street.

For a second he looked up at Peter's windows. All the lights were out. The family had gone to sleep. A chill had come into the night air. He put his coat on, turned the collar up, and started walking rapidly to the station.

Upstairs in her bed Doris suddenly woke up. Her eyes opened; the room was dark. Uneasily she turned on her side toward the window. In the light of the street lamp she could see a man walking up the street. He was carrying a valise. "Uncle Johnny," she murmured vaguely as she drifted back to sleep. By morning she had forgotten all about it, but her pillow was damp as if she had wept in her sleep.

Johnny stood on the platform as the train rolled in. He reached in his pocket for a cigarette and found the card. He took it out and read it:

You are going on a journey from which you think you will never return, but you will come back. Sooner than you think. The Gypsy Grandma Knows All.

Johnny laughed aloud as he climbed up the steps of the train. "You came pretty close to it that time, old girl. But you're wrong about my coming back." He threw the card into the night.

But it was Johnny who was wrong. Grandma was right.