“Gosh.”
“It’s all right. Happy tears.”
Mr. Mysterious got out of the last Studebaker then and touched at his invisible nose and dabbed at the cloth in front of his unseen eyes.
“Quintessential Quint,” he said. “No one else like you in the whole world.”
“Heck, that goes for everyone, don’t it?”
“If you say so, Quint.”
Then he added:
“Got any last things to upchuck or confess, son?”
“Some silly stuff. What if—?”
I paused and swallowed and could only look ahead through the steering wheel spokes at the naked silver lady on the hood.
“What if, a long time ago, you never needed the Hood?”
“You mean never? Never ever?”
“Yes, sir. What if a long time ago you only thought you needed to hide and put on that stuff with no eyeholes even. What if there was never any accident, or fire, or you weren’t born that way, or no lady ever laughed at you, what then?”
“You mean I only imagined I had to put on this sackcloth and ashes? And all these years I been walking around thinking there was something awful or just nothing, a blank underneath?”
“It just came to me.”
There was a long silence.
“And all these years I been walking around not knowing or pretending I had something to hide, for no reason, because my face was there all the time, mouth, cheeks, eyebrows, nose, and didn’t need melting down to be fixed?”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You did.” A final tear fell off the bottom rim of his Hood. “How old are you, Quint?”
“Going on thirteen.”
“No. Methuselah.”
“He was real old. But did he have any jellybeans in his head?”
“Like you, Quincy. A marvel of jellybeans.”
There was a long silence, then he said:
“Walk around town? Need to flex my legs. Walk?”
We turned right at Central, left at Grand, right again at Genesee, and stopped in front of the Karcher Hotel, twelve stories, the highest building in Green County or beyond.
“Quint?”
His Hood pointed up along the building while his voice under observed. “Thomas Quincy Riley, you got that one last thing look. Spit it out.”
I hesitated and said, “Well. Up inside that Hood, is it really dark? I mean, there’s no radio gadgets or see-back-oscopes or secret holes?”
“Thomas Quincy Riley, you been reading the Johnson Smith & Co. Tricks, Toys, Games and Halloween Catalogue from Racine, Wisconsin.”