Mr. Was by Pete Hautman Page B

in her voice, but it might have been my imagination.
    She went on, “They won’t sell him any beer in there anyways. I could’ve told him that, on account of my cousin Teddy works the bar and he knows Scud’s not of age. But it doesn’t pay to argue with Scud. You get to know him better, you’ll find that out.” She wrinkled her nose. “But one thing for sure, he isn’t boring.”
    Andie was right on all counts. Scud wasn’t in theroadhouse two minutes before they kicked him out. He opened the door and got behind the wheel, saying, “Bunch of country jerks.” I didn’t say anything to Scud, but I was glad he hadn’t gotten the beer. I didn’t want to be drinking beer, not after seeing what it did to my father, and I didn’t want to be riding around in a car being driven by a drunken Scud. I got the impression that Andie wasn’t too disappointed, either.
    So we got to the Metro theater in Red Wing in plenty of time to buy a couple boxes of popcorn for a nickel each and grab the “good seats” which, according to Andie, were the ones in the front row. She said she liked to fill her eyes up with the movie and nothing else. The lights went down a few seconds after we took our seats, Andie sitting between me and Scud, and the newsreel started up.
    Movie theaters don’t have newsreels anymore, not since television got started. But back then, just about any movie you went to would start out with a newsreel, a five-minute movie about something that was happening in the world. This one was about the war in Europe. It showed German tanks rolling across Eastern Europe, columns of war prisoners, fleets of destroyers in the North Sea, soldiers firing mortars, all with this hokey-sounding drum music in the background and an announcer with a super-deep voice going on about “Hitler’s war machine” and “courageous British defenders.” One clip showed the president, Franklin Roosevelt, saying that the UnitedStates would not be drawn into needless conflict. Knowing as I did that the United States would soon be in the thick of it, I could feel the hair standing up on the back of my neck.
    Right about then, I got hit with the first piece of popcorn.
    I didn’t know what it was, I just felt something bounce off my head.
    The newsreel ended and a cartoon came on. I noticed Andie give a little jerk, then brush at her hair. I turned around to look behind us. Two rows back, three guys about our age sat grinning at us. I smiled back at them uncertainly, thinking that they might be friends of Scud or Andie, then I recognized two of them: Harry and Hermie, the twins from Gleason’s Market. The other kid, older and bigger than the twins, flicked another kernel at me but missed. Andie put her hand on my wrist. “Ignore them, Jack,” she whispered.
    Scud leaned over. “What’s going on?” he asked.
    â€œNothing,” Andie said. “Watch the movie.”
    A piece of popcorn bounced off her head and fell onto her lap. Scud looked back at the popcorn throwers and started to get up. Andie grabbed his arm and pulled him back down. “Don’t start anything, Scud. Please! The movie’s starting. Hush up and watch it!”
    So we watched the movie. Every few minutes a popcorn kernel would fall among us. Each time that happened, Andie would give my hand a squeeze. It wasn’t a bad trade-off, but I sure wasn’t able to concentrateon the movie, which was pretty silly, anyway. I had never seen an Abbott and Costello movie before, and I wasn’t sure I ever wanted to see another one. After a while, the popcorn bombardment stopped, either because they got tired of throwing the kernels, or because they ran out of popcorn. A little later, Scud whispered something to Andie, got up, and left the theater.
    â€œWhere’s he going?” I whispered.
    â€œHe says he thinks he left the headlights on,” Andie