"What's the law coming to?" he asked. "I suppose you're out on good behavior? No old men or young girls to sniff in prison, I suppose! Or some lawyer got you off on some slick technicality? That poor child traumatized for all her years and you're free to roam the parks!"
"You've made a mistake," Garp told him.
"Yes, this is Mr. Garp," the druggist said. He didn't add, "the writer." If he'd considered adding anything, Garp knew, it would have been "the hero," because the druggist had seen the ludicrous newspaper headlines about the crime and capture in the park.
UNSUCCESSFUL WRITER NO FAILURE AS HERO!
CITIZEN CATCHES PARK PERVERT;
SON OF FAMOUS FEMINIST HAS KNACK FOR HELPING GIRLS...
Garp was unable to write for months because of it, but the article impressed all the locals who knew Garp only from the supermarket, the gymnasium, the drugstore. In the meantime, Procrastination had been published--but almost no one seemed to know. For weeks, clerks and salespeople would introduce him to other customers: "Here's Mr. Garp, the one who nabbed that molester in the park."
"What molester?"
"That one in city park. The Mustache Kid. He went after little girls."
"Children?"
"Well, Mr. Garp here is the one who got him."
"Well, actually," Garp would say, "it was the policeman on his horse."
"Knocked all his teeth down his throat, too!" they would crow with delight--the druggist and the clerk and the salespeople here and there.
"Well, that was actually the horse," Garp admitted, modestly.
And sometimes someone would ask, "And what is it you do, Mister Garp?"
The following silence would pain Garp, as he stood thinking that it was probably best to say that he ran--for a living. He cruised the parks, a molester-nabber by profession. He hung around phone booths, like that man in the cape--waiting for disasters. Any of this would make more sense to them than what he really did.
"I write," Garp would finally admit. Disappointment--even suspicion--all over their once-admiring faces.
In the drugstore--to make matters worse--Garp dropped the package of three prophylactics.
"A-ha!" the old man cried. "Look there! What's he up to with those?"
Garp wondered what options there were for what he could be up to with those.
"A pervert on the loose," the old man assured the druggist. "Looking for innocence to violate and defile!"
The old geezer's self-righteousness was irritating to the point that Garp had no desire to settle the misunderstanding; in fact, he rather enjoyed the memory of unpantsing the old bird in the park and he was not in the least sorry for the accident.
It was some time later when Garp realized that the old gentleman had no monopoly on self-righteousness. Garp took Duncan to a high school basketball game and was appalled that the ticket-taker was none other than the Mustache Kid--the real molester, the attacker of that helpless child in the city park.
"You're out," Garp said, amazed. The pervert smiled openly at Duncan.
"One adult, one kiddy," he said, tearing off tickets.
"How'd you ever get free?" Garp asked; he felt himself tremble with violence.
"Nobody proved nothing," the kid said, haughtily. "That dumb girl wouldn't even talk." Garp thought again of Ellen James with her tongue cut off at eleven.
He felt a sudden sympathy for the madness of the old man
he had so unpleasantly unpantsed. He felt such a terrible sense of injustice that he could even imagine some very unhappy woman despairing enough to cut off her own tongue. He knew that he wanted to hurt the Mustache Kid, on the spot--in front of Duncan. He wished he could arrange a maiming as a kind of moral lesson.
But there was a crowd wanting basketball tickets; Garp was holding things up.