For a while, Porky Pete and his gang stopped bothering George. But before long, news got out that he didn’t have his Amazing Boomerang anymore, and the thin veil of fear that had so briefly covered him dissolved like a summer puddle.
“Not so tough without your boom-boom, eh Georgy?” Jeered Porky and his posse.
“It’s called a ‘boom – er – ang’.” George corrected them, as they dunked his head in the toilet.
For two weeks, George went to school, got pounded, and had his head put down the toilet. For two weeks, he paid a tributary of precious lunch-money, and subsisted on the revolting gleanings of his classmates’ lunches. Porky Pete’s gang had declared him a marked man, and the rest of the student body respectfully withdrew to leave them to their prey.
On Friday morning, something truly mysterious happened; something not even remotely expected. George remembered for many years afterwards that it was a Friday, that most unlucky of days. It started off normally enough; George was sitting at the kitchen table, somberly spooning Froot Loops and soy milk in to his mouth, wondering what new devices of torture Porky and his gang may have invented within the past 16 hours.
“George!” he heard his mother call from the front hall-way. “What in tarnation is this doin’ on my front porch?”
George felt a funny, shivery feeling go up his spine, then down again, and a ticklish, constrict-y feeling in his throat. Swallowing his Froot Loops like a lump of sawdust, he went to the front door where his mother stood.
There it lay, that cardboard specter …. A medium-sized box, worn with marks of travel but still addressed in an oh-too-familiar school-boy hand, to: “Marvelous Tricks & Gadgets Mail Order.”
George’s mother (fearless woman, she!) picked up the box with her own hands and inspected it.
“That’s funny.” She said, “There’s no ‘return to sender’ stamp.”
George saw that this was true. By what dark, postal arts had the ghostly thing come back to him?
“Well, for heaven’s sake get it off my porch.” Said his mother, absolutely oblivious to the cryptic significance of this moment.
“It looks like it’s been to Brazil and back.”
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