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The car drove slowly up the street, and Bob’s dad suddenly became silent and watchful. So did Bob—yet as the car came closer both turned their eyes away from the street and glanced at each other. Bob’s dad resumed telling his story about a friend of his and trying to get a used motorcycle running, but I could tell he was on full alert until the car passed by, reached the end of the street, and turned left. Toward Main Street.
Caleb Scruggins paused a moment as he looked at the now-vacant intersection, then went back to his story, telling his son and his son’s two friends—all of us sitting on the Scruggins’ front steps—about bad gas clogging an engine and how you shouldn’t leave old gas to sit for a long time.
Billy Ironwood waited for Caleb to finish the story, then looked directly at him and asked, “Who was that?”
“I don’t know,” replied the unshaven man. “This ain’t no pass-through street, and that wasn’t a Darrow County plate on that car.”
“Looked like cops,” said Bob, with a glance at me.
“State detectives,” I said. “My dad said there was some kind of case going on somewhere in town. The attorney general put old Judge Meade in charge of it, he said.”
Billy stared, but both Caleb and Bob looked away, watching me the way they’d watched the car. “Why would they come by here?” asked Billy. Caleb made a sound, and when I looked I could see he was suppressing a laugh.
I answered Billy. “They don’t know their way around Clearwater, and Dad says they don’t want any local cops helping them out. I don’t think he likes them being here.”
“They can’t read a map?” jibed Bob, and his dad laughed out loud.
“They’ll be outa here soon enough,” said Caleb. “Ain’t nothing to find. Billy, you ever get your mom’s okay to try out Bob’s dirt bike? Yeah? What do you say we haul it down to the river and you can give it a whirl?”
While Billy was kicking up dust among the willows under Caleb’s watchful eye, Bob nudged me. “Wiley. Wanna see something?”
He led me to a clump of trees under the bluff where a junkyard backed up against the flood plain, and pointed at a pile of old cardboard boxes and broken glass.
“Wow!" I exclaimed excitedly. “Trash!”
Bob gave a snarly laugh and punched me in the arm before lifting a big old former refrigerator box off the pile, revealing a ratty-looking soft-sided suitcase. “Don’t tell anybody I showed it to you,” he warned. “If my Uncle Seth found out Dad told me it was here, he’d beat us both half to death.” He leaned closer and added in a menacing whisper, “And don’t think ‘cause your dad’s a cop he wouldn’t come after you. Or him either.”
I didn’t like being threatened, but Seth Scruggins could make Darth Vader pee his pants. “What is it?”
“Money." Bob wasn’t foolish enough to pull the bag out of the dirt and open it, but he did bend down and poke it a little.
“Don’t get your fingerprints on it!” I warned. “You’ll be an accomplice.”
“And you’re a witness,” taunted Bob. “I’d be more afraid of my uncle than your dad or that old judge.”
I hated to admit it, but I agreed with him on that.
He dropped the cardboard back over the suitcase and kicked some of the other trash back over the cardboard just as we heard his dad yell and the dirt bike’s motor cut out, followed by a splash and a loud yelp in Billy’s voice.
When we got back around to where Caleb and Billy had been, there was a big cloud of dust and the bike lay in damp sand next to the water. Billy was picking himself up from the river’s edge, dripping wet. He was holding his left shoulder and limping a little. Caleb stood between us and the accident scene, watching Billy. “You all right?” I shouted, breaking into a run.
Billy glanced at me, grinned big, and yanked the bike off the ground as if it weighed no more than a tricycle—he was so skinny it was easy to forget he was also nearly Caleb’s height and wiry-strong. “I didn’t see the mud,” he called back, just as he started the bike up and rode away along the riverside.
Caleb whooped and hollered, “Attaboy! Ride ‘em, cowboy!” Over his shoulder to Bob and me he added, “I’ll make a biker out of that boy yet.”
“Coach won’t like it if Billy gets banged up fooling around before football tryouts,” said Bob as he walked up to his father. “Can’t throw the ball with a busted arm.”
“He’s right-handed,” said Caleb with a crooked smile. “Since when did you care about high school football anyway, Bob?”
“Thing is,” I put in, “it’s Bob’s bike, isn’t it?”
Bob looked at me for just a second, but he shrugged and observed, “Billy’s having more fun on it than I ever did.”
Caleb turned my way. “You getting anywhere on building that go-cart of yours, Wiley?”
I shrugged. “I guess I’ve got it started but I don’t know what to do next.”
Caleb looked at his son, who looked back at him, the whine of his dirt bike rising as Billy rode back up the river toward us. “I don’t know anything about building a go-cart.”
“You fixed that old riding mower for Mrs. Dempsey. You’ll figure it out.”
Billy wiped out a couple more times over the next hour or so, and got back on immediately every time. When we headed back into town he laughingly complained about having sand everywhere in his clothes, but either his injuries had stopped hurting or they’d evened out because he no longer limped as he walked. Where the rest of us turned down Bob’s street, Billy continued on, headed home because it was almost time for supper. Bob and his dad fell silent, and I didn’t have anything I cared to say. The money bag in the dirt was almost certainly just one of Bob’s tall tales, but everyone I knew tended to get real quiet whenever Seth Scruggins’ name was mentioned. They’d talk plenty about Caleb—about his drinking, about how they thought he was a junkie, about how Bob’s mother never should have left that boy in Caleb’s house when she ran off.
They didn’t know where she ended up, or where Bob would be now if he weren’t with his father. My dad knew, which was why he tolerated me hanging around with Bob and Caleb. And Caleb seemed to like the idea of his son having friends like Billy and me.
The three of us sat in Caleb’s living room watching an old monster movie and eating pizza we’d had delivered. Along about nine o’clock Caleb told us to hit the sack, and about half an hour later as we sat on the floor in Bob’s room with the lights out—talking about girls—we heard Caleb’s motorcycle start up and rumble off to one or another of his haunts.
As usual, there was a lull in our conversation until the last echoes of the old Harley died away, then we’d pick up where we’d left off, talking about girls. Bob seemed to hear all the talk about who had a reputation and who deserved it. Or he was just making it all up, neither one of us cared which.
After a while Bob reached way under his bed and brought out an old beat-up lunchbox with Speed Racer on it, and within minutes the whole house smelled of burning rope.
Bob’s dad still wasn’t home by the time I left the next morning, even though I delayed until I could be sure my folks were both gone to work. I could fool my dad by running my clothes through Caleb’s washer and dryer overnight, but the smell of my freshly washed jeans and T-shirt would arouse Mom’s suspicions immediately.
“You wanna come over?” I asked Bob as he closed the lid on the pizza box we’d just emptied of leftover slices. “You could take a look at my go-cart.”
“Nah, sorry,” he replied around a mouthful of cheese and pepperoni. “Old Man Luwengood wants to sell his old yard tractor and he thinks if I tune it up for him he’ll get more money for it.” He washed down the pizza with a swallow of orange juice and added, “Won’t be giving me any of it if he does.”
“You get paid whether he sells it or not,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, but that’s just for my time. If I do a really good job, why should he get to keep all the money from it?”
I wasn’t sure about his logic but I didn’t have a good answer either.
“What you doing today?” asked Bob as I headed for the door to leave.
I didn’t have a good answer for that either.
I avoided the park that was on the direct way home, because I didn’t want to run into my brother Eric or any of his little friends. They’d probably be along the tracks or down by the river pretending to be heroes or cowboys or whatever, but they might be in the park too. Summer was still new enough kids his age would be a while getting around to complaining about nothing to do. Once that ended I’d be enjoying my summer a lot less too, so the more I could avoid him for now, the better.
For just a moment I remembered when I’d been Eric’s age, and Jeff had been—well, he wasn’t as much older than me as Eric was younger, but he’d gotten pretty ticked off every summer right around the end of July when I stopped wanting to go to the same places I’d been going for the last few weeks. Finally after he’d got out of school he’d joined the Marines. I wondered if Eric would drive me to that too in four years’ time.
Huh. Imagine me as a Marine. Might as well imagine me as a superhero in tights and a cape.
As expected, the house was empty. I still didn’t have my own key yet, but the back door was always unlocked and there was always a note from Mom about whatever she wanted me to do that day. This time it was yard work. If she knew about the magazines Dad kept hidden in the backyard shed, she wouldn’t keep asking me to go in there for the lawn mower or the rake or whatever.
Business before pleasure. I dragged out the mower, checked the gas tank, checked the oil, made sure the spark plug connector was on properly. Pumped the priming button a few times, and went to work yanking the starter cord. Sputter, bangbangbangbangbang, sputter. Pump the button again, yank the cord some more. Eventually I got it started.
Dad usually ran the sprinklers for a while every night, but he made sure not to do it when I was supposed to cut the grass the next day. And if I didn’t get it done when he expected it, I got an earful. Clearwater’s in the middle of high desert country, and if you didn’t keep your lawn watered it would die out quick.
Up the yard, turn around, go back. It wasn’t quite mid-morning but it was June and the sky was all but cloudless. By the time I finished the front yard I’d tossed my recently washed T-shirt on the porch railing and the dust and clippings that got kicked up and then settled on my skin were plastered down by a healthy coating of sweat. I took the mower back around to the fenced-in back yard and started in on it. I was going to have to take another shower.
“Wiley!”
Billy Ironwood had lifted himself onto the back fence and now hung by his shoulders with just his head visible to me now that I knew he was there. He laughed at my reaction as I let the mower’s engine die.
“What the hell you do that for?” I demanded. “You like to scared the crap outa me!”
“I’m sorry,” said Billy, still laughing. “I came over and heard that motor and I thought maybe you had your go-cart running finally.”
“What, in half a day? Are you nuts? I ain’t even got it built yet.”
He managed to shrug despite hanging on the fence. “I thought Bob was gonna help you.” Then he lifted himself the rest of the way onto the fence and slid over into the yard.
“No, he has to work.” I gestured at the half-mowed yard and added, “So do I.”
He looked around and gave a kind of a half-laugh. “Maybe I should get a job. Only been out of school two weeks and I’m already bored.” He walked over to where I’d left the rake leaning against the back step, and started raking up grass clippings while I restarted the mower. Dad didn’t believe in mulching and the bag on this old machine had fallen apart years ago, so it was the rake and the compost box. I didn’t mind Billy taking on part of my chore, seeing as how he was already bored and reduced to trying to turn me into an old man before my time.
Once the cutting and raking was done, I got us each a bottle of pop and we sat in the shade on the front porch for a little while to cool down.
“You gonna go back to work at Safeway?” I asked him when he mentioned again about maybe getting a job.
“Maybe. I don’t know. I’d rather be outside while the weather’s nice.”
“You could lie about your age and go to work for the highway department,” I suggested with a smirk. “Jeff actually did that one time. Except he was sixteen and said he was eighteen. It helped, being able to drive.”
“My folks would go ballistic if I did something like that.” Then he looked at me and asked, “Speaking of Safeway, nobody ever did figure out why you quit after just a couple of weeks last year.”
“All they ever had me doing was bagging groceries. You got to hang out in the back with the cool guys and use the pallet jack, and I was always up in front with smelly old Charlene and the Food Stamp Parade.”
He gave me a look like he thought I was completely out of my mind. “What about Sally and Dominique? They’re pretty dang cute, you have to admit. And sometimes you got to go out in the lot and gather the shopping carts. I would’ve given anything to get out there sometimes.”
“Sure, it’s a real party, especially in the middle of a hailstorm.” Then I shrugged. “Sally’s twice my age and she already had one kid last summer. Probably got more by now. Dominique’s too stuck up, never really paid any attention to anybody but her boyfriend.”
“At least you got to look at them.”
I chuckled. “Yeah.” Except that every time I had a moment to just stand around and look, Charlene always came up with some stupid little job for me to do. She acted like it was her job to keep the wicked little eighth-grader from ravishing the helpless college-age checkout girls. In retrospect I always saw her not so much in a Safeway employee uniform as a nun’s habit.
Billy finished his drink and stood up. “If you hear about an outdoor job for somebody our age, let me know, okay?”
“If my mom doesn’t make me apply for it first.”
#
The inside of the bar was so dark that when the door opened it let in a blazing, blinding dazzle of daylight—even though it was nearly sundown and there wasn’t a surface to be seen out there that received direct sunshine. As much as the people in the bar might have wanted to know who was entering, none looked until the door had closed and the darkness had been restored.
His was a familiar face, though not remembered from here; seeing how he was dressed, those who knew him well spared him no second look. He walked along until he came to a shaggy-looking man hunched over a glass of beer, and sat down next to him. The shaggy-looking man noticed him and offered a goofy smile.
“Honest, Officer, I didn’t know I was loaded.”
Frank Calhoun chuckled and signaled to the bartender for a beer. To Caleb Scruggins he said, “Be careful how you go home. Dawson’s on duty tonight.”
Caleb saluted tipsily and nodded. “‘Less he wants to harass me for no good reason, he won’t pull me over.”
Calhoun shrugged companionably. Caleb had been both a biker and a heavy drinker for all of his adult life and way too much of his pre-adult life. The only times he’d ever been charged with DUI had been when he was pulled over for some other reason and turned out to be utterly pickled. His ability to operate a motorcycle safely in that condition was an exasperation to good citizens everywhere, and he reveled in it.
The policeman sipped from his beer and after a satisfied sigh he asked, “Wiley behaving himself all right when he’s over at your place?”
“‘S a good kid. Good friend to my boy.”
Calhoun nodded and grunted agreeably. Took another sip. As competent as Caleb’s motor skills were when he was drunk, he ran a little slow on logic. Calhoun waited.
Both were on new glasses of beer before Caleb turned and stared at Calhoun for a full five seconds. “So how come you’re in this dive, Frank? They close down the Ranger?”
Every town with a big enough population got enough different bars that their clientele began to stratify. Clearwater had three or four bars frequented by bikers, and Soapy’s was Caleb’s favorite of those. The Ranger was the local “cop bar.”
Calhoun shook his head, glancing at the mirror behind the bar as he did so. It was a quiet night, though the place wasn’t exactly deserted and the jukebox was kept busy. There was only one pool table in use and the players hadn’t even begun to raise their voices.
“You heard from your brother lately?” he asked Caleb quietly.
Judging from the look in the biker’s eyes this was another of those funny ways in which he could never really quite be drunk. Whatever weaknesses he might display in realizing that his drinking buddy wasn’t usually seen in a biker bar when off-duty, didn’t extend to answering questions candidly about Seth Scruggins. “Not even a Christmas card,” said Caleb. “Ain’t much for writin’.”
Calhoun nodded absently and took another sip of his beer.
“You’re waitin’ for me to ask why you’re askin’,” said Caleb, still staring at his son’s best friend’s father, the cop.
Calhoun took another sip, still watching the goings-on in the mirror. The body language at the pool table was starting to get a little loud, but the voices weren’t.
“If I knew he’d been in town I wouldn’t tell you,” said Caleb. “You know that.”
“If he’d been in town, would you know?”
Caleb snorted good-naturedly but didn’t answer.
“I heard your son might be interested in helping Wiley finish his go-cart,” said Calhoun, changing the subject.
“Might be,” said the drunken biker. “Wiley says he’s got the frame done but doesn’t know what to do next.”
“I think he’s lost interest,” said Calhoun. “Damn thing’s taking up room in my garage. Maybe I can lean on him to take it over to your place, maybe Bob can get him interested in it again.”
“Let me know if I can help.” Caleb drained his glass and caught the barkeep’s eye for another. “Bob’s got him a knack for small engines.”
“Wonder where he gets it,” said Calhoun, grinning at Caleb.
“Beats me,” chuckled Caleb as his beer arrived. “He don’t like ridin’. I dunno how a Scruggins can not like ridin’.”
“Seth drives an old Camaro these days, doesn’t he?”
That earned him a double take and a horse laugh. There was no way Caleb was going to tell a cop anything about his brother. Not even if that cop’s son was his own son’s best friend.
#
“Wiley?"
I knew that tone. It was Mom’s way of starting a conversation she knew I wasn’t going to enjoy. I was reading a comic book so I just grunted as agreeably as I could, putting a question mark at the end of it.
She came to the door of my room and stood, half-leaning on the door jamb as she looked at me with all the affection she could put on her face. A cold lump of dread formed instantly in my stomach. “Wiley, have you got anything lined up for a summer job?”
“I’ve been a little busy,” I said over my shoulder, waving vaguely at the grass-stained jeans I’d left on the bedpost when I finished the yard work and changed into my last year’s gym shorts.
“You did a good job out there today,” Mom said. “You even raked up the clippings, it looks like.”
“Billy did that. He came over while I was working and he pitched in ‘cause he didn’t have anything else to do.”
“I hope you thanked him.”
“Well yeah,” I said, finally rolling half over to face her and putting a hint of hurt in the answer. “He says he wants to find a job where he can work outside. Maybe if I get a paying job he can do our yard work.”
“I doubt that’s what he has in mind,” she said. “The reason I asked about a job is, I ran into Megan McTyghe today at work, and she says Phil is interested in hiring some teenage boys to work in his store.”
“McTyghe’s?” I sat up and couldn’t help frowning openly at my mother. “How would I get there? It’s all the way over in Cachevale.”
“He bought the old drug store on State Street that closed last year and he’s going to have a store here in Clearwater now.”
Phil McTyghe was Mom’s cousin or something like that. He was Jeff’s godfather because Mom and Dad were living in Cachevale back then and Mom worked in the pharmacy in McTyghe’s Mercantile there, before she got her job at the hospital here. The old Clearwater Drug and Discount Market was a little farther away than school, or Bob’s house, but I’d be able to ride my bike to and from without too much trouble—unless it was storming. And as far as I knew drug stores didn’t have baggers or cart wranglers, so I probably wouldn’t be out front all day under the watchful eye of whoever “Uncle Phil” made manager in his new store.
“Wiley?" asked Mom after she’d watched me think it over for a few seconds.
I shrugged. “At least it’s not Safeway again.”
A little later Dad came home, and as we were all sitting down to dinner he came out of the kitchen and said to me, “Yard looks good, Wiley.”
“Thanks. Billy helped.”
“Billy?"
“Ironwood. From school.”
“That was nice of him.” He sat down, and I saw Mom glance at the beer bottle he put next to his water glass.
We started dishing up, and Mom said, “They’ll be taking applications at the store tomorrow, Wiley. I told them you might come by.”
Dad glanced at me, a little warily. “Not Safeway again?” He’d been a little tough on me for quitting last summer, and maybe he was afraid I’d do the same thing again.
“No," I said. “Uncle Phil’s re-opening that old drug store on State Street, Mom says.”
“Oh," said Dad. “First I’ve heard of it,” he added, with a glance at Mom.
“Megan mentioned it when I saw her today,” she said offhandedly—but Dad suddenly went still. He caught her eye and tilted his head in that Let’s go in the other room a minute way he had, but Mom shook her head.
The rest of dinner was quiet. Mom never served herself much, and she ate almost nothing. What little of Dad’s first helping he hadn’t eaten when the conversation stopped, was still on his plate when Eric and I were excused and took our plates into the kitchen.
I didn’t know what they were going to fight about now, and I wasn’t really interested. At least it wasn’t going to be beer at the dinner table this time.
#
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