He hooked a finger into the aluminum door handle of the Pepsi place and tugged, almost hoping it was locked. It opened easily, silently, so he had to step in.
He smelled new wood, french fries, cherry gum and sweat. Nearly blind from the sunlight, he could see little but a Pepsi logo shining garishly in the gloom, but it's familiarity at least gave him a reason for being there. Three dim, white faces turned toward him, reflecting the glow from a TV which roared with gunfire and French. The TV was on his right, behind a shiny plastic counter running the full length of the room. The faces instantly forgot him as something exploded.
He picked his way through a jumble of tables and chairs, grabbed a can from the cooler and returned to arch his eyebrows inquiringly at the television watchers. A short burst of French was thrown at him, but it was lost in the gunfire.
He shrugged helplessly. "How much?" he asked.
"Seven cents." Svend Sjonnasson leaned over the counter to smile down at the boy. "But you get two cents back for the bottle."
"Oh. I only got a penny. You got somethin' that costs a penny?" The boy shyly lowered his eyes to look at the coin in his hand.
"Hmmm. That don't buy much nowadays . . . . lets see . . . . how about candy? Two pieces of red licorice for one cent. How 'bout that?"
"We don't usually let him eat candy." The boy's mother plucked a Ladies Home Journal from the long wooden rack and started to thumb through it. "But I guess since it's his own money, he can spend it on whatever his little heart desires."
Svend let the boy choose his licorice from a long narrow box lined with waxed paper. In the box was a mountain of red snakes, all wonderfully soft and twisted and tangled together. He picked out the two twistiest, laughing at how they seemed to struggle to hang on to their neighbours. They were soft and warm and sweet.
He loved this long, narrow room. Everything anyone could want was stuffed into its gloomy, dusty shadows. The magazine rack was his favourite; it ran the length of the right side of the room and its lower shelf was solid comic books. Tons of them!
In the back were pinball machines, all painted with pictures of space ships and cowboys and sea monsters, and when you put money in them and pulled the handle to shoot the steel balls, their lights flashed and they dinged and whanged and bonged when the balls hit the colored things inside the glass and everything. He thought it would be fun to play the pinball machines but he didn't have the money. After school, the older boys crowded around to play and he would be afraid unless Bradley was with them. Bradley would lift him up onto a chair and let him watch.
Sometimes groups of men would crowd around the machines, shouting and screaming in French. They would pound on the sides of the machines and yell 'Maudit colis'!! and 'Maudit tabernac'!! and they would glare at him as if it were all his fault and he better watch out if he knew what was good for him. When they looked at him like that he would run home in terror.
"Uh . . . . seventy . . . . uh . . . . fi'?" One of the TV watchers groped uncertainly for the English words.
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