Last week was pretty miserable for me.
Wendy did not come to school the first two days after the party. Maybe she had a really bad hangover. I was relieved because I had no idea what to do—about her, about the college guy, about the whole humiliating scene.
That guy had broken up the most beautiful moment of my life. He had pulled Wendy away from me. He had called me her “little townie friend.”
So what was I supposed to do about all of that?
Wendy finally reappeared midweek, on the TV, giving the morning announcements. She was smiling and beautiful, as always. She talked up this week’s football game against North Schuylkill. (And she pronounced it right.)
I took my front-row seat in Mr. Proctor’s class and waited for her. She breezed in just seconds before the bell. She smiled at me and whispered a breathless “Hi,” like nothing was wrong.
I smiled back. I don’t know why; I just did. I couldn’t help myself. But I did not speak to her. I didn’t speak to her on Thursday, either. But by Friday, I had relented. I had basically forgiven her. She had kissed me, sort of. Twice. And then she had moved on.
It was what it was.
Make no mistake, though, I had not forgiven that scumbag college guy. I couldn’t. Maybe that’s how they do things in California, and in Florida—they forgive and forget and move on.
But it’s not how we do things in Blackwater.
Mr. Proctor began with vocabulary. He picked up his marker and wrote this on the whiteboard: docent—a museum guide. A decent docent doesn’t descend to dissent.
Wendy sounded as perky as ever. “Another good one, Mr. P.!”
We all started working silently on vocabulary. I finished mine quickly. I guess Arthur did, too, because he started whispering to me from my right side. “Did you hear, cuz? We’re going on another field trip.”
I stared straight ahead, but I whispered, “No, I didn’t hear.”
“Jimmy told his counselor lady that he’s scared of going down into coal mines.”
“Is he?”
“Yeah. Jimmy did some wildcat mining a few years back. The down shaft collapsed on him, and it took the other guys about an hour to dig him out. He was okay, but he quit mining. Anyway, he told Mrs. Lyle about it, so guess where we’re going next?”
“A coal mine?”
“Got it. Over in Ashland.”
Mr. Proctor interrupted us. He raised his voice and announced, “Okay! It sounds like you’re all finished.”
He returned to the whiteboard and wrote annus mirabilis—the year of wonders. He asked, “Who here remembers his or her Roman numerals?” About half of us raised our hands. “Okay. Call some out to me.”
We did, and he started to write them on the board, apparently in random order: C, L, X, V, I.
He turned back to us. “Come on, what are the bigger ones? M is a thousand, right? What about five hundred? What is that?”
Nobody answered, until Wendy told him, “D.”
“There you go!” He added M and D to the list. “That’s it. And that’s all of them. The Romans had no use for millions, or billions, or trillions. And frankly, neither do we.” He pointed at the capital letters, and we learned that they were not in random order after all.
“The Romans only needed these numerals. And only once in human history would each numeral appear only one time, in descending order, to designate a year. The year was MDCLXVI. Who can tell me what that is in our numbers? How about you, Tom?”
He caught me off guard, but I managed to work it out aloud: “Sixteen hundred and… sixty-six.”
“Correct! Good man! Sixteen sixty-six. It was expected to be the annus mirabilis, the year of wonders, and great things were expected to happen during it. However, because of what did happen during it, it has come down through history bearing another name. That name is …” He paused for effect before intoning in his horror-movie voice, “The plague year, 1666. One of the most deadly, destructive, devastating years in all of human history.”
He paused to write the plague year on the whiteboard.
Wendy raised her hand. “Mr. P.? What would that be in Latin?”
“I am not sure,” Mr. Proctor admitted. “I did look it up online”—he started to write again—“and I came up with three possibilities.” He read them out: “annus vomicam, annus pestis, and annus pestilentiae.”
Arthur pointed out, in what I guess was his Wendy Lyle voice, “Mr. P.? They’ve all got anus in them.”
A few kids sniggered.
Wendy turned and glared at him.
Ben said, “I like Annus Vomicam. It has, like, the plague and vomit in it.”
Arthur turned to Ben and added, “And anus. And cam, like in camera. Like you have a camera in your anus to record when you’re vomiting.”
Ben replied, “Awesome.”
Just about everybody laughed or groaned. Except Wendy. She threw up her hands angrily.
Mr. Proctor stopped the discussion, saying, “Okay. Okay. That one is particularly disgusting, yes. But so was the plague. Let’s remember what we already learned about it from Daniel Defoe.” He raised up his copy of A Journal of the Plague Year.
“The plague had devastated London the previous year. The English people knew they were in for it. They were aware of plagues that had ravaged Europe three hundred years before, when half the people in the Western world had died.
“Half the people in the world! Dead! For no apparent reason!
“Imagine what the plague would do to your town. Imagine half the kids in this school not showing up tomorrow, not because they were sick, but because they were dead. Half the members of your family not showing up for Thanksgiving dinner! Half the world… just… gone!
“It was devastating beyond belief. It appeared to be the end of the human race. Whole towns disappeared. Whole economies collapsed. There was no one left to bring in the crops, or herd the sheep, or milk the cows. Western society broke down completely, and it would stay broken down for generations to follow.”
Mr. Proctor held up his copy of The Roses of Eyam. “That brings us to my play. My play needs actors.” He looked right at me. “My play needs you.
“Now, do not worry if you have never acted before. I promise you, this will be a no-pressure production. All the actors will carry Bibles. Inside those Bibles will be your lines, typed out in big letters. You may simply read what you cannot memorize.”
Wendy didn’t like that, and she told him so. “That is so lame. Actors should memorize their lines.”
Mr. Proctor shook his head. “It will be fine. The message of the play is what matters.” He pointed his book at Wendy. “You know, I could see you and Tom Coleman in the lead roles.”
Wendy smiled delightedly.
I did not. I replied right away, “I’m sorry, Mr. Proctor. I can’t do it. I have to work.”
He raised up one eyebrow. “It may not be the big time commitment you think.”
“I have to work just about every day now.”
Mr. Proctor seemed genuinely disappointed. “Oh. Okay. I’m sorry to hear that.”
I thought, Yeah. Me, too.
He pointed to my right. “How about you, Arthur? I have a role in mind for you.”
“What is it?”
“The Bedlam.”
“Who’s that?”
“He’s a very important character.”
Arthur cocked his head. He asked, like he was horse trading, “If I played him, would I get an A for your class?”
“Yes, you would.”
“For both semesters? Because that’s what I really need.”
Mr. Proctor thought for a moment, but then he agreed. “Sure. Why not.”
Arthur slapped his desk. “Then sign me up.”
Mr. Proctor pointed his book at other students. “Ben, Jenny, you could have parts, too. Let’s talk about it. I’d like this class to take as many parts as possible. The remaining parts will be filled by members of the Drama Club.”
So, for the next fifteen minutes, everybody who was interested in a part got one.
Everybody but me.
Because I had to work. For no money. At a family business that my family doesn’t even own.
After school, while we were waiting to go into the conference room, Arthur said, “Check this out: Jimmy Giles had on a white shirt and tie this morning.”
“No way.”
“Yeah. He’s got a new gig with WorkForce.” He explained, “They do day labor.”
“I know. We use those guys at the Food Giant.”
“Jimmy doesn’t like it. He says it’s like government work.”
“What’s that mean?”
“It means you don’t really have to work. Close enough is good enough. That kind of thing.”
“Got it.”
Jenny came out of Mrs. Cantwell’s office. She joined Arthur and me and whispered, “Did you hear? Mike Szabo’s dad got arrested.”
I was shocked. “No!”
“Yes. Out on the turnpike. At a rest stop.”
“What did he do?”
Her voice dropped even more. “He tried to sell meth to an undercover cop.”
“Meth? Are you sure?”
“Yeah. Mike told me himself. His mom was in the car when it happened, so they both got busted. Taken to the police station, the whole bit. Anyway, they’re gone.”
I was really stunned. “They’re gone? What do you mean? He has no parents, just like that?”
“Yeah. They had no money for bail, so they’re in the county jail, awaiting trial.”
Arthur, always skeptical, demanded to know, “How did you hear this?”
“Like I said, I talked to Mike. And his parents talked to my parents from the jail. They asked if Mike and the twins could stay with us.”
“The twins?”
“He has twin sisters. Two-year-olds.”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “So they’re all moving in with you?”
Jenny acted like it was no big deal. “They already have. The two little girls—Maggie and Dollie—and Mike.” She looked around furtively. “Anyway, don’t say anything to Mike. We’re doing a presentation today. He’s already nervous enough.”
Mikeszabo walked in shortly after. He had three white posters rolled up under his arm. If he was broken up about losing his parents, it did not show on his face. He joined Jenny at the front of the room, where they huddled with Catherine Lyle.
The rest of us took our seats. (They were the seats we had taken the very first day, back on September 10. No one in the group ever deviated.)
Catherine Lyle began, “We have been talking about drugs and how they can destroy a community. Jenny Weaver suggested to me that we could do more than just talk. We could take action in some way; perhaps sell T-shirts that warn people about getting involved with drugs. I thought that was a great idea. So today Jenny, with Mike’s help, is going to open our meeting. Jenny?”
Jenny and Mikeszabo stood up and unrolled one poster. It had a black-and-white drawing on it. The drawing looked like a robot bug, with round pods sticking out. Jenny said, “This is the molecule for dopamine. That’s the hormone that sends feelings of pleasure to the brain.”
Jenny held on to the poster while Mikeszabo unfurled the second one. The drawing looked like the first one, but with a slight variation. “This is the molecule for methamphetamine,” Jenny explained. “As you can see, it is very similar to the dopamine molecule, similar enough to fool the brain into thinking it is the pleasure molecule.
“But it is not. And the brain won’t stay fooled for long. The brain realizes it has been tricked by the meth molecule, and it shuts down. It refuses to send any feelings of pleasure to the brain.”
Mikeszabo put down the second poster and unfurled the third. In its center was a drawing of some drug paraphernalia—pipes, cigarette papers, needles. On top of the pile were three giant blue letters: NEO. Underneath the pile were the words, also in blue, Not Even Once.
Jenny put down her poster and explained. “Your own brain, your own body, will turn against you if you mess with drugs. It will shut down your ability to feel pleasure. It will make your life so much less than it could have been. That’s why we need to send out this message to everyone we can, in every way we can: NEO—Not Even Once.” She bowed slightly. “Thank you.”
The group applauded. Catherine Lyle positively beamed. Spontaneously, she said, “No, thank you! I would like to see this drawing, and this slogan, on a T-shirt. If it’s all right with you, I will advance the money to get those shirts made.”
Everyone approved of that.
Catherine Lyle then elaborated on the theme. “All it takes is one time for certain things—drugs, suicide, choking, sexually transmitted diseases. You don’t get a second chance with these things. These are things you cannot do even once.”
After thanking Jenny and Mikeszabo again, Mrs. Lyle switched gears. “Okay. Last month was Halloween, and we all got scared of vampires and zombies and other pretend monsters. Those were irrational fears.” Then, attempting a joke, she added, “Unless you happen to know any real monsters.” No one laughed. She went on. “This month we will face a real fear called claustrophobia. Who can tell me what that is?”
Wendy gave the answer right away: “Fear of confined spaces.”
Catherine frowned at her, I guess for not letting one of us answer. She continued: “Fear can be a major trigger for drug use, or for a drug relapse. So our next field trip will be to a local coal mine in order to face the fear of confined spaces. Anyone who would benefit from that should sign up and come along.”
I resisted the urge to look at Wendy. Was she looking at me? Was she thinking I would go, and sit with her, and be totally fascinated by everything she said and did?
Yeah. She probably was. But that wasn’t going to happen. At least I didn’t think so.
During my break at work, I grabbed my PSAT book and headed out back, hoping to do some vocabulary. But, to my surprise, Reg was there on the loading dock. He was standing with his back to me, posing like he was on a stage. His left arm extended outward, like it was the fret board of a guitar. His right arm was striking that guitar with sweeping blows. His voice, somewhat higher than normal, belted out the chorus of Ted Nugent’s “Wango Tango.”
He knew someone had joined him on the dock, because he stopped singing. But his arm crashed down on a few more chords before he turned to see who was there.
“Tom! Hey, I was just doing some Nugent for the fans.”
“The fans?”
“Right. The produce. They love it, especially the potatoes.”
Reg pulled out a Marlboro and lit it. He pointed to my book. “Okay, enough culture. What are the words today?”
I opened the book and read one aloud. “Puerile.”
Reg took a deep drag. “Sounds like pubes. Puberty.”
“Close. It means ‘childish, juvenile.’ ”
“That’s me. What’s next?”
“Pusillanimous.” Before he could put an obscene twist on that, I added the definition. “ ‘Lacking courage, cowardly.’ ”
“Being a pussy, in other words.”
“Right. In other words.”
“That’s a good one. What else you got?”
“Pernicious. It means ‘highly destructive.’ ”
“Ah, no. No way. That’s not me.” Reg took a final, long drag, burning up about an inch of tobacco. “There’s not a pernicious bone in my body.” He pitched what was left of the glowing cigarette into the truck bay, then saluted comically and walked back into the storeroom with all that smoke still inside his lungs.
I did manage to memorize a page of words before it was time to go in. Then I stashed my book on a shelf, pushed open the door, and saw two people standing by the bakery—Reg and Bobby. Never a good combination.
Reg was holding up a plastic bottle of Gold Bond talcum powder. He was pointing to it and talking, like a TV pitchman. “Bobby, you need to try this. You owe it to your customers.” He turned to include me. “Right, Tom?”
“What is this about?” I asked.
“I am trying to get Bobby to sprinkle some of this down his pants to relieve his chafing. I do it all the time, Bobby. I go through three or four bottles of this stuff every week. You owe it to your customers not to be irritable due to chafing in the crotch area. Did you ever hear the word crotchety?”
Bobby squirmed. “Yeah. I’ve heard that word. So what?”
“Well, that’s exactly what it means. Tom knows lots of big words.” He asked me, “Do you know the word crotchety?”
“Leave me out of this.”
“It means some guy has neglected to take proper care of his crotch, and he has become crotchety, irritable, unpleasant to customers. Do you think that’s good for business?”
I continued past them and got to work.
Reg, apparently, did not. Ten minutes later, he was at register two, bothering Lilly. I heard him say, “I can help you get a used car. Then we can go out together, now that you’re legal.”
Lilly, barely acknowledging him, muttered, “How do you know that?”
“What? That you’re legal? Uno told me.”
She didn’t like that. “John said I was legal?”
“In so many words. He said you turned eighteen.”
“That’s not the same. Anyway, I wouldn’t go out with you.”
“Well, we wouldn’t have to go very far. We could just go to the parking lot, to your car, where you could express your gratitude.”
Lilly shook her head. She replied matter-of-factly, “You are such a pig.”
“I am not a pig. I am merely puerile.” He turned to include me. (I wished he would stop doing that.) “Right, Mr. Tom?”
“Leave me out of this.”
“Come on, Lilly,” Reg continued. “Why are you so mean? You don’t talk like this to Uno.”
“He’s going by John now, not Uno.”
“Why?”
“That’s a boy’s nickname. He’s a man now.”
“Yeah? You made him a man?”
Lilly was starting to lose her cool. “Shut up.”
“Or did the other one finally drop?”
“Shut up!”
I looked over toward the customer-service desk and saw a stocky guy standing there. Something about him bothered me; it took me a second to realize why. It was Rick Dorfman. He was pointing at Walter and talking to him in an animated way.
Walter is a mild-mannered older guy. He’s retired, after working thirty-five years at the post office. He smiles at everybody, but he wasn’t smiling now. He looked scared. I thought about calling Dad to intervene, but Dorfman suddenly stopped pointing and talking, and stomped out of the store.
I got well out of his way, thinking, Good riddance.
A few minutes later, when Bobby came through the register line, I was sorry to see that he was carrying a bottle of Gold Bond talcum powder. I probably should have stopped him then and there, but I didn’t. I was afraid that would only make things worse.
Reg called after him, “Now don’t be stingy with that stuff, Bobby. Apply it liberally.”
Bobby replied, “Yeah. Okay.”
Reg waited until Bobby exited the store. Then he picked up the register phone and punched in the public-address number. He intoned, “Cleanup in Bobby’s room!” and hung up. With a final chuckle, he stuck a cigarette in his mouth and walked outside.
Lilly turned to me. “He is a pig. Piglike. Not that other word.”
“Puerile?”
“Yeah.”
Lilly pulled out her cash drawer and waved to Dad. He came over and asked, “Are you ready to close?”
“I am way beyond ready.”
Five minutes later, Lilly and I were standing outside, waiting for Mom. As we watched Reg drive away in his pickup, Lilly asked, “Did he show you that website?”
“Who, Reg?”
“Yeah.”
“No. What website?”
“It was some gross thing, of course, just like Reg. John and him were looking at it on the office computer. John showed it to me, so I figured they showed you.”
“No. Not yet, anyway.”
“Some guy at Blackwater University made it. He put pictures of girls on there, and he rated them on what they’d do to guys on dates.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like sex stuff.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It’s gross. So, I was looking at some of the girls, and… that Wendy girl is on it.”
I tried to remain calm. I just repeated, “Really?”
“Yeah. I saw her picture. She was wearing, like, a purple Halloween costume. I told John, ‘Hey! That girl’s in our counseling group. She’s Mrs. Lyle’s daughter.’ ”
“Uh-huh.”
“She’s like fourteen or fifteen years old. Right?”
“Yeah.”
Lilly shook her head. “That’s not right. I bet that’s not even legal. It’s like abusing a minor.”
I chose my words carefully. “What does it say about her?”
“It says the same stuff about every girl on there. It has columns with check marks. She’ll do this—like French kissing—but she won’t do this—like, you know. It’s gross, stupid guy stuff.”
Suddenly I felt like somebody had cut open the back of my head and sucked out my brain. I was totally numb.
Then I got angry.
I got angry at Wendy. For flirting with me. For making me think I had a chance with her. For asking if I had a zero sex drive. (Yeah, maybe I did, after watching her puke up those candy corns. That’ll do it.)
But I got more angry—enraged, violent angry—at that college guy. That scumbag. For calling me a townie. For making out with my girl—even if she was only my girl for ten minutes—and then posting lies about her on a website. A dirty sex site. What kind of scumbag would do that?
And, more important, what was I going to do about it?
I got to class early. I sat in the front row and stared up at the bars of the TV test pattern: ROY G BIV.
Wendy came in at the last second and sat next to me. I couldn’t even look at her.
Mr. Proctor wrote out today’s vocabulary word and sentence without comment: eschew—avoid. The shrewd shrew eschewed the chute.
Wendy, apparently, was not impressed. She didn’t say anything about it. We worked in our vocab books for ten minutes. Then I couldn’t take it anymore. I leaned my head toward Wendy and kept it there until I knew she was listening. Then I whispered in a quick, flat monotone exactly what Lilly had told me. Every word.
Wendy’s blond head stayed frozen in place until the end of my monologue. Then she whispered back, “First of all, if I am on that site, that guy is lying about me.”
“So you know about the site, and the guy? Is he your boyfriend or something?”
“That would fall under the category of none of your business.”
I pulled away, angrier than ever. I leaned back and demanded to know, “It was that guy at the Halloween party, wasn’t it?”
After a moment, she conceded, “Yes.”
“You were making out with him.”
She finally answered, “I was drunk. I was making out with you, too.”
“Yeah. I remember. So, did he ask you out after that?”
“Yes, he did. He wanted me to go back to his room that night, and I said no, and I guess that’s why he’s telling lies about me.”
“So he did this as revenge?”
“I guess, yeah.” After a long pause, she looked straight at me. She softened her voice. “Look, Tom, I’m really sorry about what happened at the party. I was drinking, and I should not drink. It’s a problem for me.” She added, “That’s why I’m in the counseling group.”
After a long pause, I finally managed to mumble, “Okay.”
Mr. Proctor walked over and stood right in front of me. He rarely got annoyed at talkers, but he was today. He asked coldly, “Are you two finished?”
I answered for both of us. “Yes.”
“Then let me get your attention up here.” He raised his voice. “Let me get everybody’s attention up here, please.” Mr. Proctor pulled out his marker and stepped to the whiteboard. He drew a rectangle with a curvy right side. He called over his shoulder, “What does this look like?”
Ben answered, “A rectangle?”
“No. What state in the United States does it look like? I’ll give you a hint: We’re living in it now.”
Several people chorused: “Pennsylvania.”
“That’s right. Your state. My state. Now listen to this, because it is important: Pennsylvania was once considered to be a Garden of Eden by Europeans. Many religious communities, utopian communities, settled here. They lived off the bounty of the land, in a Garden of Eden, just like the villagers of Eyam. Then, just as in Eyam, just as in Eden, something evil arrived, something so horrible that it was able to destroy everyone and everything.
“For the town of Eyam, that something was the bubonic plague. For Pennsylvania, that something was methamphetamine. For both places, it signaled the start of a plague year.”
He looked out at the class. “Those of you who are writing journals, I want you to keep this in mind.” He picked up a leather-bound classic. “In Paradise Lost, John Milton describes man’s fall from the Garden of Eden. So… who will tell the story of man’s fall from the beautiful land that was Pennsylvania? Will it be one of you?”
He looked right at me. On another day, I might have been excited. I might have been honored. But right then I couldn’t even register what he was saying.
I was in my own world, and it was a world full of pain.
All I could think about was that college guy. And what he had done to Wendy. And what he had done to me. And what he had said to me. And what I should do about it.
By the end of class, though, I had my answer. I turned and asked Arthur urgently, “Will you drive me to the college on Saturday?”
“Why?”
“I think I need to beat a guy up.”
“Righteous! Who is it?”
“A guy who started a website.”
“Really? Why?”
“He put lies on it about Wendy.”
Arthur looked disappointed. “The Grape? Come on, cuz. Can’t we come up with a better reason than that?”
“And he insulted me at the party.”
“There you go. What did he say?”
“He called me her ‘little townie friend.’ And he told me to go home.”
Arthur practically snapped to attention. “Oh, did he now?”
“Yeah. Can you help me? I’ve never done anything like this before.”
“Definitely. You leave everything to me.”
“No. No, I want to do this myself. I just want you to drive me there. And maybe help me find him.”
“Yellow Corvette.”
“What?”
“Are we talking about the dude who was making out with the Grape?”
“Yeah.”
“Little curly-haired guy?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I saw him get into a yellow Corvette.”
“So we just need to find that?”
“Yeah. Then what?”
I heard myself say, “I’ll take care of the rest.”
I couldn’t even look at Arthur. He might have been laughing at me. But he sounded serious enough when he replied, “I’ll do whatever you need me to do, cuz.”
The field trip to the Ashland coal mine began just like the one to the flight 93 crash site. There were three fewer passengers, though, since the high school stoners had not signed up.
Jimmy Giles was sitting up front again with his hand on the door. Catherine Lyle was driving. Wendy Lyle was sitting alone behind her, reading a novel. (Maybe it was another novel about someone who was beautiful on the outside but ugly on the inside.)
I was in the back row, next to Arthur. Jenny was right in front of me, between Ben and Mikeszabo. Her hair was hanging over the back of the seat, just inches in front of me. It looked and smelled really nice. Long and brown, with highlights. Very shiny. In fact, all of Jenny looked nice. I haven’t mentioned that before, but I should have.
Arthur was asleep with his head against the glass the entire way up there. I pulled out my PSAT book and tried to do some math problems, but I was way too distracted to work. I was still angry, scared, and pumped up about our plan to go after that college guy.
It wasn’t long before we were cruising down the main street of a small town. Catherine Lyle found the mine quickly and pulled into its parking lot. It was a pretty small operation, with a gift shop, the mine itself, and a train ride. I guess it gets crowded some days, but on this day the lot was empty.
Mrs. Lyle parked the Suburban in a space right across from the gift shop and we trooped in. All the gifts in the shop—and there were hundreds of them—were based on anthracite coal. They even had coal candy.
A short, skinny woman with a pointed nose stood behind the cash register. We lined up in front of her and purchased tickets for the next tour. A guy in coveralls and a miner’s helmet sauntered in and watched us, smiling. As soon as we all had tickets, he announced, “Are you ready to get to work? Okay, come on, then!”
He led us outside toward the mine entrance. A small engine was sitting there on railroad tracks. It had three yellow coal cars attached to it. The guy climbed into the engine cab and called out, “Hop on board, you coal miners!”
Wendy Lyle and her stepmother got into the first coal car. Arthur and his stepfather chose the second, and I joined Jenny and the guys in the last one.
The guide told us, “This is a real coal mine, folks, although no one is currently working it. It has been in operation in various forms for nearly one hundred years.
“We’ll be following the tracks of the coal cars down into the mine, where the temperature is always fifty-two degrees Fahrenheit. We will get out, walk around, and see the sights common to coal miners approximately seventy-five years ago.”
The little train took off with a lurch. We pushed through a pair of wooden doors, leaving the daylight behind. We rolled past walls of rocks and wooden beams, moving steadily downward, our way lit by a series of red lanterns hanging on the walls.
The guide pointed out, “Those lanterns are electric, folks, but back in the day they would have been kerosene.” Then he added, “Those wooden beams you see won’t really help you in a cave-in, though. Nothing will. They are there mostly to make noise before they crack. The miners had a saying: ‘When the timbers start talking, you’d better start walking.’ ”
The train came to a halt in an open area crammed with prop items—tools, wheelbarrows, dummies of men and mules. The guide got out and walked over to a wall of pure anthracite. We followed and formed a semicircle in front of him.
“Seventy-five years ago,” he began, “coal miners and their helpers would chip away at veins of anthracite just like this one. They would fill carts with it, and mules would drag those carts to the surface.”
He pointed to Ben, Mikeszabo, and me. “The mules wouldn’t stop there, though. They’d keep pulling the coal up the hill to the breaker house. That’s where boys like you would be waiting. For ninety cents a day, you would sit in the breaker house and sort out the good coal from the rocks and dirt.”
Mikeszabo looked at me and whispered, “That’s not such a bad deal.”
I whispered back, “No. That’s more than I make.”
Jenny asked the man, “What about girls? Could they do that?”
The guide was adamant. “No, ma’am! There were no breaker girls. Just boys. The girls were back home learning how to cook and wash and sew.”
Arthur muttered, “Righteous.”
Jenny sneered at him playfully. But then she complained, “That’s not fair.”
The guide repeated, “No, ma’am. But that’s how it was, and everybody went along with it. Men and women. Boys and girls.”
It was at this point that I first noticed Jimmy Giles.
He did not look well. His face was pale and he appeared to be sweating, despite the fifty-two-degree temperature. His eyes were darting around.
But everybody else was focused on the guide, who continued talking. “And while we’re discussing what’s fair and what isn’t, here’s a question: Who can tell me how many pounds are in a ton?”
Wendy answered before anyone else could. “Two thousand.”
The guide nodded. “Well, you kids know that, and I know that, but the mine owners did not. They insisted that there were two thousand two hundred pounds in a ton. They called it a ‘long ton,’ and they made the miners add another two hundred pounds to every ton if they wanted to get paid.”
As we all contemplated that injustice, Jimmy took a big step away from the group.
Catherine Lyle asked him, “Are you okay, Mr. Giles?”
He whispered hoarsely, “Doomed. I’m doomed to die down here.”
“What’s that?”
“I gotta get out!”
Catherine Lyle turned to the guide. “Where is the nearest exit?”
He looked puzzled. “Well, there’s the way we came in, and there’s the way we’ll go out.”
“This man needs to go out. It’s an emergency.”
I guess it took the guide a moment too long to respond. Maybe he was hoping to finish his speech—I don’t know—but Jimmy could not wait. He squeezed behind the last coal car, got onto the tracks, and started back the way we’d come—walking first and then running.
The guide yelled, “Sir! You can’t do that.” He told us, “Everybody hop back in. I’ll get us out right now.”
We all clambered back into our cars, except for Arthur. He took off after Jimmy, scrambling as best he could over the wooden rail ties.
The train lurched forward and quickly picked up speed. We barreled around several curves before we hit another pair of doors and broke into the daylight.
The guide screeched to a halt, jumped out, and ran to the entrance. We all followed.
The guide pushed open the left wooden door and peered inside. He called over to us, “I see them! They’re okay!”
A minute later, Jimmy and Arthur emerged, blinking in the sunlight. Arthur had his hand cupped under Jimmy’s arm. Jimmy was covered with sweat and he was breathing hard, but he did manage to say, “I’m all right. I’m sorry, everybody. I’m sorry.”
Catherine asked, “Is there anything I can get you, Mr. Giles? Some water?”
Jimmy nodded, so Catherine and Wendy took off for the gift shop.
Jimmy repeated, “I am really sorry. I guess I wasn’t ready to go back down there. I messed up everybody’s trip.”
We all gathered around and assured him he hadn’t.
“It’s okay.”
“We saw enough.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
We moved toward the gift shop in a bunch. Catherine Lyle met us at the door. She was holding Jimmy’s bottle of water. No one else had money, so we just stood around and watched him drink it.
I should say no one else had money except Wendy. She went back in and shopped for jewelry. She wound up purchasing an anthracite heart on a silver chain.
A black heart.
Yeah.
When we were all back in the Suburban, Jimmy apologized some more, and everybody reassured him some more.
Arthur, who hadn’t said a word on the ride up, talked the whole way back. In a lowered voice, he told me, “Jimmy Giles was a wildcat miner when I first met him, but I don’t think he did it for too long.”
“Well, it’d be tough to be a miner if you were afraid of tunnels.”
“Yeah. It’s like if you were a roofer and afraid of heights.”
“Or a sailor afraid of water.”
“Right. So then Jimmy and Warren bought the flatbed truck. They hauled pine trees for the government, to make turpentine. They were supposed to haul a hundred trees at a time. They hauled maybe sixty, but they still got paid for a hundred. Jimmy used to say it was close enough for government work.
“Then they started moving college kids in and out of frats and dorms. They moved them in in September and moved them out in June. But you can’t work for just two months a year, so they came up with the idea of the Christmas-tree run.”
Arthur’s eyes lit up. “And they let me in on that deal! On the day before Thanksgiving, we load up with Frasier firs and Douglas firs for seventeen dollars each,” he explained. “Then we drive to a lot in Orlando and sell them for eighty to a hundred dollars each.”
“Florida—that’s cool. That’s a cool profit, too.”
“It can be, yeah. Unless there are problems. Last year, a Boy Scout troop staked out a lot next to us and really hurt our business. These Boy Scouts had an air horn that they blew whenever somebody bought a tree. That must be some kind of Florida thing. I never heard of blasting a damn boat horn over a Christmas tree. That horn was getting on my last nerve.
“One night, right before closing, Jimmy fell asleep in a chair tipped back against the truck. Two Boy Scouts crept over and blasted that air horn in his ear, making him crash to the ground, hurting his neck and ear something serious. Then they ran away, laughing.
“Jimmy and Warren and me all walked over and complained to the Scout master, some fat dude. A buncha Scout mothers started yelling that it wasn’t true, like their precious little darlings would never do that, so the Scout master started saying it wasn’t true, too. Then a bigmouth woman asked us, ‘Why don’t you go sell your trees someplace else? Let the Scouts make their money. They need it for camping and equipment and stuff.’
“Warren said, ‘We rent this lot every year from Mr. Peterson. We pay good money for it, so we have a right to be here.’ Then Warren called this Peterson dude and told him what was going on and told him to get out there and talk to the damn Scout mothers.
“Well, when Peterson arrived, he got all scared of the Scout mothers because they all had big mouths and they were all yelling and calling us liars and out-of-staters and crap. He backed down right away. He told us, in front of them, ‘Y’all will just have to make the best of the situation. Let these boys sell their trees. It looks like they’re about to run out. Then you can sell yours.’ ”
Arthur shook his head. “Well then, don’t another shipment of Boy Scout trees arrive the next day?
“Warren called Peterson back. Peterson told him he was sorry again. He said it would never happen again, because a Jiffy Lube was going up on the Boy Scout lot. So we decided to let it slide, but it did hurt our business. Near the end, we were selling those trees for forty bucks each.”
“That’s tough.”
Arthur assured me, “God will visit his wrath upon the infidel, upon those damn Boy Scouts, wherever they are.”
I looked at him curiously. “Arthur, do you really believe all those things you say about God and heaven and hell and all?”
He seemed confused. “Of course I do. I live in Caldera, cuz. I know there’s a hell. I grew up with it under my bed.”
It was dark when we arrived back at the school. Mrs. Weaver was parked there, waiting. So was a guy who turned out to be Ben’s father. (At least Ben got in the car and left with him.)
Arthur was giving me a ride home, which was a major concession from Mom. I was heading for his car when I heard a voice behind me.
Wendy’s voice.
She hadn’t even looked at me the whole trip, but now she was standing next to the idling Suburban, demanding to know, “Hey! What’s going on with you?”
I mumbled, “Not much.”
“Are you not talking to me or something? I thought we were good.”
I answered as evenly as I could, “I thought you weren’t talking to me.”
She shook her head no. Then she shrugged in a Whatever gesture. She pointed over my shoulder toward the Geo Metro and said, “How about poor Mr. Giles, huh?”
I turned and looked. Wendy said, “Catherine has been working with him, trying to desensitize him, but I guess he wasn’t ready. It was too much too soon.”
I watched Jimmy talking to Arthur at the car. I finally answered, “Yeah. That was rough.”
Wendy sounded empathetic. “It’s so sad. He takes two field trips, and he has two breakdowns. If I were him, I wouldn’t take a third.”
I actually considered correcting her grammar, “If I were he,” but I didn’t. Instead, I said, “Well, they say you have to take it one step at a time.”
She frowned at my cliché of an answer, but I didn’t care. Then Catherine Lyle beeped the horn, causing Wendy to turn and glare at her. She wasn’t even looking at me when she said, “Okay. I guess I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I didn’t answer. I watched her climb into the passenger seat and ride away.
By the time I got over to the Geo Metro, Arthur and Jimmy were sitting inside with the engine running. Arthur opened his door. He leaned forward and unlatched the seat so I could squeeze into the back. He pulled me into their conversation right away. “So, cuz, I just talked to Jimmy, and we got a proposition for you.”
“Really?”
“The Christmas-tree run this year is gonna start on November twenty-first.”
“The day before Thanksgiving?”
“Correct. We will drive down to sunny Florida in the big truck. Jimmy and Warren will stay for twelve days”—he turned toward me—“but I won’t. We are going to tow the Geo Metro, so that I can leave after five days. I’ll be back on November twenty-fifth, the following Sunday, in time for school on Monday.” Arthur paused for dramatic effect. “And Jimmy here says you can join us if you want.”
I was astounded. “Me?”
“Yep. Jimmy says they will even pay you for your labor.”
Jimmy confirmed this. “Three hundred dollars for five days’ labor.”
“Wow! Really?”
Arthur said, “Yeah. And it ain’t hard labor, cuz. People point at a tree; you pick it up and tie it to their roof.” He smiled and asked, “What do you say?”
I was thrilled. Three hundred dollars! Florida! But I must admit, I was a little scared, too. I didn’t really know Jimmy and Warren, except as people my parents kept me away from. I asked, “Are you sure we would be back in time for school?”
“Yep. Most trees get sold the first few days after Thanksgiving. That’s when they need our help. Jimmy and Warren will keep selling trees for another week after that. What they haven’t sold at eighty bucks by then, they’ll sell at forty and skedaddle.”
Jimmy repeated, “Skedaddle.”
Then I heard myself say, “Okay. Yeah. Count me in. Absolutely.”
It all sounded really really great to me.
Of course, it would not sound great at all to Mom and Dad.
Mom tries to do a traditional Thanksgiving at our house. But here is how it usually goes: Dad, Lilly, and I work late at the Food Giant on Wednesday night. Dad goes in for a few hours on Thursday morning, too, to catch up on Centralized Reporting System stuff.
I get up early and play video games on the TV in the parlor (like Banjo Kazooie on my old Nintendo, or Super Mario Brothers on my N64). Mom has her portable TV in the kitchen, blaring the Macy’s parade as she cooks. I’m not sure what Lilly does, but it probably involves hair and makeup.
Dad times things so he arrives at home just as Santa arrives at Macy’s. We gather in the kitchen. We fill our plates with food and carry them into the dining room. We hold hands (which is always a bit awkward), and Dad prays.
Then we have dinner—just the four of us—because our only other relatives are Aunt Robin and her crew from Caldera, and Mom doesn’t want them in the house.
It’s a tradition, I guess, but it’s a tradition that nobody seems to like, so why do we keep doing it?
I sure don’t want to do it this year. I have a better idea.
I want to go to Florida.
I was hoping to plant the idea of the Florida trip at dinner—to plant it with Mom, at least, since Dad couldn’t get away from the store. But before I even had a chance to speak, dinner took an awkward turn.
Mom suddenly asked Lilly, “So, are you and this Uno boy a serious couple?”
Lilly did not explode, as she normally would have. Instead, she answered calmly, even maturely, “He’s going by his real name now—John.”
“Good. Uno makes him sound like a Puerto Rican.”
Then Lilly exploded. “Mom!”
“What?”
“What is the matter with you?”
Mom held out her hands. “What?”
“That’s a racist thing to say.”
“No it isn’t. Ooh-no is Spanish. That’s a fact. There’s nothing racist about a fact.”
Lilly stopped talking.
After a few minutes, Mom tried another line of conversation, as if the first one had never happened. “You know, your uncle Robby and your aunt Robin met when they were very young.”
Lilly clenched her jaw.
“Robin snagged him when he was seventeen, and she was only sixteen. Some girls think they have to snag their men fast, because the bloom is quickly off the rose. Personally, I don’t agree with that. I think a girl should take her time.”
Lilly just stared at her food glumly.
Thankfully, the phone rang in the kitchen. I was relieved to get up and answer it. I leaned against the refrigerator and said, “Hello.”
I heard a familiar perky voice. “Tom?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Wendy.” She started in chattily, like nothing was wrong. “Did you hear Ben Gibbons on the ride home today?”
“No.”
“He described eating a chair—a whole wooden chair—when he was two years old. It took him, like, six months, but he did it.”
“No. I didn’t hear him. I was listening to Arthur.”
“Catherine says Ben is a classic example of a designated patient.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s a disorder. Not as weird as pica, though. It’s when a whole family—parents, siblings, everybody—has serious issues but won’t admit it. Instead, they pick one family member to be the designated patient. They pretend that only that one family member has a problem, so the rest of them can pretend to be okay.”
All I could think of to say was a generic “That sucks.”
After a few seconds of dead air, Wendy finally got down to business. “Hey, I talked to Joel about that website. He was really embarrassed and, like, really sorry. He said he must have been wasted when he put me on there, because he didn’t even remember doing it, and he didn’t mean any of it.”
I interrupted. “Joel? That’s his name?”
“Yeah. He’s one of Dad’s top students. Really brilliant but, like, really immature.”
“And he lives across the street?”
“Yeah, in one of the frats. Anyway, Joel promised he’d take the whole website down. Like, permanently.”
I didn’t respond, so she went on. “But, you know, none of that stuff about me was true. I don’t even know what some of that stuff means. Okay? I am not like that. Okay?”
“Okay.”
“So will you stop being mad at me all the time? And start talking to me again? Because now you know that none of this is true?”
I thought to myself, I have no idea if this is true or not. But I finally repeated that everything was okay.
After a pause, she answered, “Okay. We’re good, then?”
“Yeah. We’re good.”
“Good. Well, see you at school.”
“Yeah. Bye.” I leaned against the refrigerator for one more minute. I let myself fantasize one more time about a kiss from Wendy Lyle. A beautiful piece of candy corn rising up toward me. The feel of her tongue in my mouth. Then I thought about that same piece of corn lying on the ground, in front of the railing. It’s just not the same after it’s been thrown up.
The Wendy thing was over.
But the Joel thing was not.
He had called me a “little townie.” Then he’d made out with Wendy right in front of me, like I didn’t exist. He would have to answer for those things. And for the website.
You don’t do that kind of stuff around here and get away with it. Maybe in California, and Florida, but not here.
I went in to work with Dad at 7:00 a.m. and stocked shelves for five hours.
Arthur picked me up in the parking lot a little after noon. The first thing he said was, “You ready to go up there and kick some ass, Tom?”
“Uh, yeah.”
“Uh, yeah? What kind of answer is that? You ready or not?”
“I’m ready.”
“Do you know what you’re going to do?”
“Not exactly. I’ll figure that out when I get there.”
Arthur sounded doubtful. “Okay. So, we are gonna go to the campus and look for a yellow Corvette.”
“Right. Wendy told me the guy lives in a frat house across the street from her, so it shouldn’t be too hard.”
“We just have to find the right frat boy and let the mayhem begin. Let the wrath of God befall him.”
I gulped. “Yeah.” Then I asked him, “Do you think we’ll get in trouble?”
“I don’t know. I don’t care. This is a matter of honor, right?”
“Right.”
“Then you got to do it. End of story.”
“Yeah. I know.”
We retraced the route we’d taken on Halloween—up the main road leading to Blackwater University, around the big quadrangle, then onto Wendy’s street. This time, in the light of day, I could see that many of the brick houses were frats. They had banners with big Greek letters hanging over their front doors.
We passed the Lyles’ house, with its three-sided porch, its white railing, and the dirt below it. I wondered if they’d cleaned up that candy corn.
Up on the left, just as Wendy had implied, was a frat house with a yellow Corvette in the driveway. Arthur pulled the Geo Metro in behind it and turned off the engine. He looked at me expectantly.
I said, “What do we do now?”
He laughed out loud. “Well, I’d say we go inside.”
“We can do that?”
“No, but we’re gonna do that. Right?”
“Right.”
Arthur leaned in front of me. “You sure you’re up to this?”
“Yeah.”
His gray eyes bored into mine. “First, tell me something: What’s this really about?”
“It’s about… personal honor.”
“Okay. Righteous. Now, do you remember what he did to dishonor you?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Okay. You think about that, right now, in detail. And you keep that thought in your head when we go inside.”
“What if somebody stops us?”
“You let me worry about that. Tell me: Do we know the dishonorer’s name?”
“Yeah. It’s Joel.”
“Okay. So we walk in there like we own the place. We are here to see Joel. Got it?”
“Yeah.”
Arthur exited the car and set off on a determined march, his shaved head held erect, his black boots pounding on the sidewalk. I scrambled out and followed him.
We climbed the stairs, passed under a Greek banner, and stopped before a tall wooden door. Arthur grasped the glass door handle, turned it, and pushed.
The door opened.
Arthur and I stepped into a wood-paneled foyer. We didn’t see anybody. We didn’t hear anybody. He pointed silently to a staircase on the right. As we climbed the steps, I did start to hear sounds—a TV set, a stereo.
At the top, Arthur pointed again and smiled. There were several doors around the landing, and each had a nameplate telling who lived behind it. The first two had pairs of names. But the third had only one, and that name was JOEL.
The door was slightly ajar. I stepped in front of Arthur and leaned forward to hear. A faint rhythmic sound was coming from inside, a clicking sound, like typing.
I put my hand on the knob and paused, remembering the Halloween party, and Wendy, and my humiliation. I relived that moment, and then I opened the door all the way.
A curly-haired guy was sitting at a desk. It was Joel, all right, working at a laptop. A messy bed was behind him, and a row of gadgets—a TV, a stereo, an exercise bike—stretched from the right side of the room to the left. I stepped inside and said, “Hi, Joel. Do you remember me?” He cocked his head. I added, “The little townie?”
Arthur stepped in behind me and closed the door with a click.
Joel shook his head. He answered, “No. No, I don’t. What are you doing here?”
I spoke slowly, haltingly. “I came here… to talk to you about… that night.” I groped for something else to say. I was losing it. I came up with “And about a website that you put up. A website that… slandered the good name of a friend of mine.”
I think Joel did remember me, and that night, because he replied, “Do you mean Wendy Lyle?”
“Yes.”
“We talked about that. The website is gone. We’re good.”
“Yeah? Well, you and I are not good.”
Joel closed the laptop and pushed back his seat. He looked warily at Arthur as he stood up. “You need to get out of here, both of you. Right now.”
Arthur sniffed the air. “Have you been smoking in here, Joe?”
“Do you know how old Wendy Lyle is?” I asked.
Joel’s eyes darted to Arthur and then back to me. “Yeah. She’s sixteen.”
“No. She’s not. She’s fifteen.”
“Hey, what’s the big deal here? I’m just messing around with my laptop.”
“By talking about underage girls in dirty and disgusting ways?”
Joel pointed at the laptop and shrugged. “It’s the Wild West out there. People can do whatever they want.”
I informed him, “No. No, they can’t.” But then I had no clue what to do or say next. I turned to Arthur and pleaded with him silently to step in.
And he did.
He crossed over to the desk, scrutinizing the laptop like he had never seen one before. He muttered, “What is this here contraption for?”
Joel snapped at him, “Don’t touch that!”
“Why?”
“Because you don’t know the first thing about it.”
Arthur pointed back at me. “Tom came all the way up here to talk to you, Joe.”
“It’s Joel. And you need to leave that alone and get out of here.”
“We’ll be leaving shortly, right after you apologize to Tom for calling him a townie. We don’t like that word.”
Joel’s jaw dropped open. Then he spat out the words “Screw you!” But he didn’t sound like he meant them.
Arthur picked up the laptop with his left hand and ripped it away from its power cord. With his right hand, he gave Joel a shove, driving him back toward the wall. He held the laptop up to me. “How do you open this thing?”
I located the button and popped it open. Arthur tossed the laptop down onto the floor and kicked it toward the corner. He said, “Block the door.” Then he turned away from us.
I placed my left shoulder against the door and leveled a mad-dog stare at Joel. He tried to stare back, but he could not.
He caved.
He smiled goofily and said, “Okay. Okay, I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that. Let’s forget this.”
Then we both heard an unmistakable sound. Joel looked over toward Arthur in the corner. So did I.
Arthur had his back to us. The laptop was on the floor in front of him, and he was urinating on it.
Joel sputtered, “Are you… are you insane? You can’t do that!”
Arthur, still urinating, asked innocently, “What?”
Joel looked like he might cry. Or faint. He pointed to his laptop and squeaked, “That!”
Arthur zipped up and replied. “Well, why not? It’s the Wild West. I can do whatever I want.”
“You ruined my computer!”
Arthur pretended to slap himself on the head. “Computer? Is that what it is? I thought it was a portable urinal. You know? For busy college guys who can’t take the time to walk down to the bathroom?” He reached out and dried his hands on Joel’s shirt, admitting, “I guess you were right. I didn’t know the first thing about it.”
Joel stammered, “You… you’re going to pay for this!”
“No. I don’t think so.” Arthur walked to the door, opened it, and left.
Joel was just staring at the puddle on his floor.
I hurried out after Arthur. I whispered to him, “Come on! We gotta get out of here before he calls the cops.”
Arthur shook his head calmly. “Nah. That guy won’t call the cops.”
“Why?”
“Didn’t you smell the weed in there? It reeked of it. He’s got too much to hide.”
Arthur walked coolly across the landing, with me directly behind. As he descended the stairs, though, he picked up speed, and so did I. We were both practically running when we hit the front door—bursting outside and vaulting off the porch onto the ground. We ran to the car and dove in. Arthur gunned the engine, threw it into reverse, and peeled out.
As we raced past the Lyles’ house, I couldn’t contain myself any longer. I let out a loud whoop! Arthur laughed and held up his hand for me to slap. I did, and I started laughing hysterically.
Arthur took a hard left at the end of the street. He had circled the quadrangle and was back on the main road before I could finally speak. Babble is more like it: “Hey, well, you know, Arthur… you might have overreacted in there. Just a little bit!”
Arthur snorted. “Overreacted?”
“Yes, maybe. Maybe just a tad.”
“You mean by pissing on his computer?”
“Yes. Yes, that is exactly what I mean.”
“No. No, cuz. Overreacting would be, like, if I had pissed on his head.”
“Oh, well. Okay. Yeah. Since you put it that way.”
I sat back and let the incredible feeling flow over me.
I had done it. Or Arthur had done it, but I had been there, too.
We had now joined Warren and Jimmy, and Ralph, and the Cowley brothers, and every other townie who had ever been disrespected by frat boys and had come up here and had taken care of business.
And I absolutely loved that feeling.
Wendy did not act like she had heard about a townie raid on the frat house across the street, resulting in a score being settled, and her honor being defended, and some personal property being destroyed. I was a little disappointed in that, but only a little. The Wendy thing was over.
There was a change in Wendy’s routine, however. She did not show up for the counseling group after school. Her seat remained empty across the table. Our small group now consisted of Arthur, Lilly, and me—all family, all Blackwater, all townie.
Catherine Lyle ran the group as usual, though. Today’s topic was role models. She began by telling us, “If you have good role models, you’ll do well in life.” Her manicured hand pointed out the window. “So let’s talk about people here in the community, people you know, who serve as good role models.”
We just stared at her, so she said, “Okay. What jobs in the community automatically get your respect?”
We started to get the idea. Kids called out suggestions.
“Police officers.”
“Firefighters.”
“Doctors and nurses.”
“Teachers.”
Chris Collier added, “Student Council presidents.” (I think he was kidding, but maybe not.)
Catherine Lyle nodded. “Good. Good. These are the jobs, and the people, we respect. These are our good role models.”
A high school stoner asked, apparently out of nowhere, “Are all teachers role models?”
Catherine looked at us for an answer. When no one spoke up, she replied, “Well, they should be. They sign up to be role models. That’s part of the job description.”
The stoner nodded. He asked, “If a teacher smokes weed, then, what should happen to him?”
Catherine Lyle opened her notebook and picked up her pen. She replied, “I would say he should be fired. If a teacher says one thing and does another—”
Arthur muttered, “Talks the talk but don’t walk the walk.”
“That teacher should certainly not be around children. It’s one thing if you are teaching adults, but not children.”
Ben said, “Anybody who takes one of those jobs, one of those role-model jobs, should have to live up to it. If they don’t, they should get kicked out.”
“Kicked out ain’t enough,” Arthur snarled. “They should get punished. They’re putting themselves up as better than other people, but they’re not.”
Other kids agreed. They started talking about people in their lives, people they looked up to, who had let them down. The conversation went on like that, very seriously, for ten more minutes.
Then, as usual, Catherine Lyle changed topics.
She delivered some news in a perky voice, like Wendy on the morning announcements. “Next Monday, Dr. Richard Lyle will come speak to our group about new trends in substance-abuse treatment. Dr. Lyle—forgive me for bragging—is kind of a big deal. He gets paid thousands of dollars, plus travel expenses, to speak to groups all over the country. He is coming here for free, so let’s really make the most of it.”
Catherine then smiled her perfect smile, clicked her silver pen, and closed her leather notebook. She turned, out of habit, toward Wendy’s seat, and she seemed disappointed to see that it was empty.
I had both Dad and Mom with me at breakfast, so I tried to work in the Christmas-tree idea. I started off conversationally, like I was talking about something else. I told them, “Arthur’s last football game was Friday afternoon.”
Mom replied, “Oh? That’s nice.”
“Yeah, I saw Aunt Robin at the school. She came to watch the game.” I added, “She seems like a nice lady.”
Mom didn’t say anything, but Dad replied, “Sure. She is.”
I heard Lilly coming down the back stairs. I waited until she had entered, selected an apple from a bowl, and started washing it before I continued. “I don’t really remember Uncle Robby. What was he like?”
Dad said, “He was a nice guy.”
Mom added, “He was. But he should never have gotten married so young. And never to Robin.”
Dad turned away, concentrating on his shredded wheat, but he did murmur, “Well, he didn’t have much choice.”
Lilly picked up on that before I did. “What? Aunt Robin was pregnant? With Arthur?”
Mom nodded tightly. “Yes, that’s right. And that was the beginning of the end for Robby. There he was, married to this child bride, who had the same bad habits that he had.”
Mom started to get angry. “Robin didn’t finish high school. She never got her GED. So after Robby died, what did she have? She had no job, no money, and a child to raise.”
Lilly asked, “So how did she do? Was she a good mother?”
Mom backed off. “She tried, I guess. She would take Arthur to football; she would take him to church to hear those Holy Roller preachers.”
“Really? What church was that?”
Mom looked at Dad, so he explained. “Some church in Caldera, in a double-wide. It got condemned along with everything else, so they had to move it. They put the whole thing on a flatbed truck and hauled it away.”
Mom grumbled, “Who would go to church in a place like that? It was unhealthy.”
Lilly winked at me. “Maybe Hungarians,” she suggested. “Or Puerto Ricans. I’ll have to ask John.” She looked at me for a laugh, or at least a smile, but I was way too stressed to react.
Dad said, “It was an evangelical church. It attracted all kinds of people. I think that’s where Robin met Jimmy.”
I responded as evenly as I could, “Jimmy Giles?”
“Right.”
“Do you know him?”
“A little. He’s not a bad guy. He had a drug problem, I guess. And some legal problems.”
“Do you know his brother?”
“Warren? Yeah. Real smart guy. He was a pharmacy tech at Kroger.”
“No!”
“Yeah. During college.”
“He went to college?”
“He did, up at Bloomsburg, but I don’t think he finished. He had some problem at Kroger—stealing pills, or underreporting pills, or misreporting. I’m not sure what.”
Dad finally gave me my opening when he asked, “What are those guys doing now?”
“Oh, different stuff. They move college kids in and out of the Blackwater dorms.”
“Yeah?”
“And they do some government work, hauling pine trees.”
“For turpentine?”
“I guess so, yeah. And they sell Christmas trees down in Florida.”
“Really?”
“Uh-huh. They’ve been doing it for a few years now. They make good money. And, uh, they asked me to work for them this year.”
Dad froze in mid-spoonful.
Lilly bulged her eyes out at me and whistled softly.
I added quickly, “Just for five days, and they’ll pay me three hundred dollars. That’s sixty dollars a day. And really, two days are travel days, so that’s a hundred dollars per working day.”
Mom spoke up immediately. “No. You can’t miss school.”
“But that’s the beauty of it. I won’t! It’s just Thanksgiving and the weekend. I’ll be back in time for school.”
I smiled and looked pathetically from Mom to Dad.
But Dad just shook his head. “I can’t spare you at work, Tom. Not at Thanksgiving. It’s one of the busiest times of the year; you know that.”
Mom piled it on. “And you’d be on the road with those”—she struggled to find the right term—“drug guys.”
I thought about Warren and that box of Ziploc bags. Were they to store food, or weed? Both, probably. Still, I tried to sound offended, like that was an outrageous lie. “Drug guys?”
“Yes! You heard what your father just said. They’ve both had drug problems.”
“That was years ago! Didn’t Dad have a problem back then, too?”
“That’s not the point. You have school, you have work, and you have parents who won’t let you get in a car with just anybody and take off for just anyplace. The answer is no.”
I can’t say I was surprised. The answer is always no.
I said as evenly as I could, “Okay. Forget it. It was just an idea.” Then I took the stairs two at a time up to my room and, very calmly, got ready for school. But I was fuming inside.
Mr. Proctor began class by describing his reactions to our journal entries. “These are great! Heartfelt and well-observed. I especially liked the ones about your town, and about coal mining, and about a place called Caldera.
“They got me to thinking. We have talked about Pennsylvania as a Garden of Eden, as a paradise. It has some of the world’s most abundant farmland above, and it has some of the world’s most abundant coal veins below.
“So picture this: It is glorious, sunny, and heaven-like up top, and it’s sulfurous, burning, and hell-like down below. It’s all here in one place. It’s yin and yang. It’s Paradise Lost.
“And, while we are speaking of great literature …” He picked up his script for The Roses of Eyam. “All the roles in my play have now been assigned. I want to thank everybody who auditioned.”
He looked at Wendy. “Some of you showed great talent.”
Arthur muttered behind me, “Grape talent.”
Mr. Proctor heard him, and he called him on it. “What’s that, Arthur?”
“Uh, I was wondering, sir, if I got that village idiot job. Did I?”
“Yes. I told you that before.”
“And—I just want to double-check—if I play this part, I get an A in English?”
Mr. Proctor summarized, somewhat impatiently, “Yes. You have been assigned the part of the Bedlam, the village idiot. And if you learn that role and you play it on December thirtieth in the school auditorium, you get an A. Why? Are you having second thoughts?”
“No! No way. Oh, but I have to tell you: I’ll be gone from November twenty-first to the twenty-fifth. Out of town on business. I won’t be able to rehearse then.”
“Okay. That won’t be a problem.”
“Cool. Then you got yourself an idiot.”
Mr. Proctor held the script high. “The original production had over fifty actors. I have managed to pare it down to a dozen speaking parts, and I’ve cut the three acts down to one. But I have preserved the essence of the play, which, in my view, is this:
“One day, in the peaceful English village of Eyam, the plague arrives in a shipment of cloth. People start to die. At first no one knows what is happening. The plague starts to spread very rapidly, geometrically—two, four, eight, sixteen bodies a day. The people realize, to their horror, what is happening to them. But they also realize that if they let the plague move beyond their village, it will continue to increase, geometrically, until half of England is dead. To prevent that ultimate catastrophe, the villagers embark on something truly heroic: They stay in their own town. They do not run away. They stay and fight.”
He stopped and looked at me, but I looked away. I had heard enough. Mr. Proctor could stay in Blackwater if he wanted, in his plague village, but I would not.
I had made up my mind. I was getting the hell out, with my parents’ permission or not.
I was going to Florida.
The counseling group started right on time, at least for us. But I could tell by Catherine Lyle’s nervous glances at the door, and at her watch, that something was wrong. Our guest speaker, her husband, was not there.
Wendy, however, was. She was sitting in her old spot, smiling, waiting to hear her famous father speak.
Catherine Lyle improvised by saying, “I often start the meeting by introducing a topic. I know that some of you have things you want to talk about that I have not covered. So let’s start today with a free topic, anything you’d like to share that you have not been able to.”
Ben’s hand shot up, of course. But some other hands did, too.
Catherine Lyle pointed to Jenny, who said, quite unexpectedly, “I would like to share that I have a problem at home. My father is a recovering alcoholic. I tried to hide that fact all my life. I get all A’s on my report cards, and I’m on the Student Council, and I try really hard to act perfect, but that doesn’t change the truth. I have a problem at home, a big problem. I always have.”
Jenny stopped there.
Other kids nodded and said they understood her predicament.
I was shocked. The Weavers did seem to be the perfect family, but I guess that was Jenny’s point.
Angela spoke up next. Her topic was very different. “My cousin drank bleach to pass a urine test with her probation officer. But she drank too much, or it was too strong, and it burned out the lining of her esophagus. So now she has to eat through a tube.”
Another girl advised her, “She shoulda drank vinegar instead. Vinegar’s supposed to work.”
Lilly objected to that very strongly. “No! You shouldn’t learn how to lie better. Or cheat better. You should stop using drugs. That’s the only thing that works.”
One of the high school guys was eager to share next. He didn’t even wait to be called on. “My brother mugged an old man outside a bank, but they caught him because of his army coat.”
Arthur sounded puzzled. “What do you mean, dude?”
“They caught him because the old man remembered the name on the army coat.”
Arthur held up his hand. “Wait a minute. You’re telling us that your brother mugged somebody while wearing a coat that had his own name stitched on it?”
“Yeah.”
“Is he a moron?”
The guy looked offended. “No. He’s an addict.”
“That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
Ben agreed. “That guy’s, like, too stupid to live.”
But Angela came to his defense. “Come on! Addicts don’t think.”
The high school guy explained, “My brother was never good at anything. He even got kicked out of the army. So naturally, he’s not a good mugger, either.”
For the next ten minutes, people shared other anecdotes about the stupid, and deadly, and just plain sad things that had happened to users they knew.
All that talk stopped, though, when our guests walked in.
Catherine Lyle looked up at her husband, so we did, too. He was not alone. (Was he ever? How weird was that?) He had two students trailing him, two frat boys who were smiling very wide. They looked familiar, but I couldn’t place them. Our three visitors walked to the head of the table and stared at us like we were some kind of lab specimens.
I hadn’t seen Dr. Lyle since the Halloween party. He wasn’t wearing blue velvet now, just jeans and an old sweater. He had long gray hair tied up in a ponytail. You don’t see a lot of that around here.
Dr. Lyle tried an opening joke. “We just saw your mascot outside, the Battlin’ Coal Miner. We were thinking they might replace him with a statue that better reflects the local economy. We came up with the Battlin’ Walmart Greeter.”
He paused to let us all laugh, but we did not. We just glared at him. His boys did manage a low snigger, though.
Catherine Lyle reacted to this awkward moment by launching quickly into an introduction. “Now we come to the main part of our meeting. We are all grateful to have Dr. Richard Lyle with us today, along with, I see, some of his graduate students.”
The frat boys exchanged a smirk. I hated those guys. We all did; I could sense it.
“Dr. Lyle has been a leader in his field for twenty years, holding professorships at the University of Southern California, the Florida Institute of Technology, and now Blackwater University. I have asked him to talk today about some exciting new treatments that are available to substance abusers. Please welcome Dr. Richard Lyle.”
Dr. Lyle nodded at his wife and smiled at Wendy. “Thank you, Catherine, for inviting me here.” He looked around at us. “Obviously, there is never a good time to be a substance abuser, but if you had to choose a time in history, this would be it. Psychologists and physicians and counselors have been working together throughout the last decade to develop some of the most effective and revolutionary treatments in medical history, treatments that have proven to be highly effective in their success-versus-relapse ratios.
“Substance-abuse centers in California and in Florida now offer total-immersion programs to patients over a twenty-eight-day period. These programs include individual, group, and family therapy; relapse-prevention education; and trust building via team sports, horseback riding, rope courses, and other activities.”
He then launched into a long list of places like the Betty Ford clinic where, basically, drug users could go and listen to people like him all day, and do activities, and get cured of their addictions. After about fifteen minutes, he wrapped it up by saying, “These programs are expensive, though. So my best advice to you is this: Get a job with good health benefits, benefits that cover drug treatment should you ever need it.”
As soon as he stopped, Lilly raised her hand. She asked him, “Wouldn’t the best advice be ‘Don’t do drugs at all’?”
Dr. Lyle looked confused. Then he smiled. “Sure. It would be. But that’s not what my talk was about.”
“But aren’t all drugs bad?”
Dr. Lyle tried to explain. “Well, I would differentiate between hard drugs, which are very destructive, and milder drugs, which are purely recreational.”
Lilly sounded puzzled. “But aren’t they all illegal? Unless, like, you have a prescription from a doctor?”
Dr. Lyle was no longer smiling at Lilly when he replied, “Yes, true. And they are all potentially bad, even legal drugs such as alcohol, or, for that matter, aspirin.”
Then he didn’t say anything else.
After a long silence, Catherine Lyle spoke up. “All right! Thanks, Lilly, for that question. Are there any others?”
Ben raised his hand. “Dr. Lyle? What if you don’t have the money to go to one of those substance-abuse facilities? Where can you go?”
Dr. Lyle suggested, “You could go to your church. They generally have programs.”
“You mean like to an AA meeting?”
“Yes. Those meetings have helped people in the past. But they are amateur operations, where substance abusers try to help each other.”
Ben followed up, “So… what if you don’t have money and you don’t belong to a church?”
Dr. Lyle answered, “Well, there are free social programs out there, but not everywhere. They are mostly in big cities.”
“Yeah! I got diagnosed in Pittsburgh, by a social worker. I was eating stuff.”
Catherine Lyle moved to cut Ben off. “Okay! Those were some good questions, and that was some great information about new options in substance-abuse treatment. I hope you have all benefited from this exchange. Now let’s thank Dr. Lyle and let him get back to the university.”
Most of us just stared at him. But Jenny, ever polite, muttered, “Thank you, Dr. Lyle,” and a couple of other kids joined in.
He replied, “You are all very welcome. And good luck to you.” Then he and his boys started toward the door.
Catherine and Wendy got up to walk them out.
That was when I overheard Wendy ask one of the boys a question. A very strange question. “Couldn’t Joel make it?”
The boy shook his head no.
Arthur heard the question, too. He said to me, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Does she mean Joe? ‘I don’t have a website anymore’ Joe? ‘My mommy needs to buy me a new laptop’ Joe?”
Wendy stopped and turned. She asked Arthur, “What are you talking about? How do you know Joel?”
Arthur assumed an innocent face. “I don’t. I don’t know anybody named Joel. I was thinking of a guy named Joe.” He turned to me. “What was Joe’s aura, Tom? Was it, like, ultraviolet? No, no, that’s right—it was yellow. Total yellow.”
Wendy snapped, “Shut up!”
Arthur snapped right back, “You shut up!”
Dr. Lyle stepped toward Arthur and warned him, “Don’t you dare speak to my daughter like that.”
Arthur met his gaze. “Okay. I’ll speak to you, then. How much weed did you and the boys smoke on the way here?”
Dr. Lyle’s eyes widened (and they were really bloodshot). He growled, “I beg your pardon.”
“You beg my pardon? Why? Did you burp?”
“What?”
“Hey, come on, Doc. You didn’t fart, did you?”
“What?”
“Are you having trouble hearing me? Is all that weed frying your brain?”
Dr. Lyle turned to his wife. “What is going on here, Catherine?”
Catherine Lyle had no idea, and her face showed it. She stammered, “I-I-I’m very sorry. Maybe you should just leave. Quickly. All of you.”
Dr. Lyle spun around angrily. He stomped out through the office, with the boys on his heels. They weren’t smirking anymore.
Catherine rounded on Arthur. “What was that about? Is that how you show respect to a guest? I am very disappointed in you, Arthur.”
“Respect? We’re an antidrug group, and they showed up stoned.”
Catherine Lyle sputtered, “Arthur! That is not true!”
But Arthur knew what he was talking about, and he let her know. “That is true. I’ve seen those guys around Caldera.”
Catherine clearly didn’t believe him. “What? What on earth for? What would they be doing at—”
“They were trying to cop.”
“What?”
“Trying to buy drugs.”
“Drugs? What drugs?”
“Weed, I believe. That’s what the frat boys prefer.”
She sputtered, “I’m sure that is not so, but I will mention it to my husband.”
“Yeah. You do that. Mention it to him. Mention that they were driving a white Saab convertible. That might help him remember. I can get the tag number for you next time, if you need it.”
Mrs. Lyle backed away and started to gather her belongings. She looked like she might cry.
Wendy looked like she might punch Arthur. Instead, she grabbed her stuff and ran out of the room.
It had been a long day already, and I still had to go to the Food Giant. I was in no mood for sweeping floors or bagging groceries or rounding up shopping carts.
And I certainly was in no mood for Reg the Veg.
I opened the door of the anteroom, though, and found myself looking at the trio of Reg, Bobby, and John. And they were at it again.
Or at least Reg was at it again, trying to prank Bobby. I had long since given up on the Veg, but when was John going to grow up and stop this?
Reg recapped tonight’s story, I suppose for my amusement. “So it’s a Thanksgiving promotion, Bobby. Walnuts for three-ninety-nine a pound. Now, that’s one heckuva price. All you gotta do is carry two walnuts like these”—he held out a pair of walnuts—“and put them in a Baggie like this.” He dropped them into a sandwich-size Baggie. “Then you take it out and you ask customers, ‘Aren’t these beautiful nuts?’ ”
John started to laugh, but then he stole a glance at me and turned it into a wince. Still, he didn’t speak up, not even when Bobby reached out to take the bag.
So I did. “No, Bobby! Don’t do that. My father would not want you to do that.”
Then John acted like he agreed with me, and like he was about to do the same thing. “That’s right, Bobby. In fact, you should check with me before you do anything like this.”
Bobby looked from John to me to Reg. His neck and ears turned bright red, like lava rising in a volcano. He slapped at Reg’s hand, knocking the Baggie to the floor and causing the nuts to roll out by Reg’s feet. Then he pushed past me, angrily, and exited the room.
John shook his head. He told Reg, “You need to stop bustin’ his balls. I’m the one who catches hell about it, not you.”
Reg bent and picked up the bag and the walnuts as John pulled on a slicker. Reg muttered, “Don’t be so pusillanimous, Uno, my man.”
John looked at him, puzzled—clearly not up on his PSAT vocabulary. He frowned and followed Bobby out.
Reg straightened up. He tossed the Baggie and the walnuts into the trash. Then he told me seriously, “There ain’t much to do around here, Tom. Tom Terrific. Tom-Tom-the-piper’s-son. I think you’ll find that out someday. In the meantime, you have to get your laughs where you can.”
Dad and I stayed after closing time to get some extra jobs done. We mostly stocked shelves—straightening, replenishing, removing misplaced items. After about an hour of working separately, we both ended up at the beer aisle, across from the frozen foods.
I could tell that Dad was upset about something. He had been all night. He finally came out and told me, “I had to fire Walter today.”
I was dumbfounded. Walter had been one of Dad’s favorites. I asked, “Why? What did he do?”
Dad shook his head back and forth. “I caught him with a carton of Sudafed in his trunk.”
“No! Not Walter!”
“Yes. Inventory hasn’t matched sales for weeks now. I suspected it was Walter, and I caught him today.”
“God. Did he say anything?”
Dad shrugged. “He said he was sorry.”
“Did you call the police?”
Dad looked toward the office. “No. I’m leaving that up to corporate. But from here on out, I’m locking all pseudoephedrine products up in the office. Every night.”
Dad returned to straightening beer bottles, so I did, too.
I felt really bad for him. He hated firing people. After a few minutes, he told me something else. “I caught Bob Murphy shoplifting today.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Poor guy. He looked like hell—like a skeleton. I barely recognized him.” Dad nodded thoughtfully. “Does his kid still go to Haven?”
“Mikemurphy? I think so. I haven’t seen him in a while. He was getting suspended a lot, so they might have sent him to the county school.”
“That’s too bad. He was a nice kid.”
“What was Mr. Murphy stealing?”
“Beer. He had this big coat on, and he filled the pockets with cans of Yuengling Black and Tan. He couldn’t even walk without clunking. I followed him outside with a cart and got it all back.”
“What did he say?”
“He was mad! He said, ‘I know you, Gene Coleman! You’re a damn alcoholic. Who the hell are you to judge me?’ I said, ‘Whoa. I’m not judging anybody, Bob. But you can’t come in here and steal stuff.’ ”
Dad got quiet for a moment. I asked him, “So… is it ever hard for you? Being around all this beer?”
He shrugged. “It used to be, but not anymore. That was a long time ago.” Then, to my surprise, he went on: “I’m genetically disposed to be an alcoholic, Tom. My body converts alcohol into food and I just keep going, keep drinking, until I collapse. I’m not like other people.” He directed a worried look at me. “And maybe, genetically, you are not, either.”
“Genetically, from your side?”
“From both sides, I’m afraid. Your uncle Robby was worse than me.” Dad stopped straightening. He turned and told me, “We used to drink together at the American Legion bar. He’d stop in after work at the Sears Auto. I’d stop in after the Food Giant.”
“When was this?”
“Twelve years ago. Twelve years, two months, and seventeen days.”
“Wow! You know it to the day?”
“Yep. I had your mother and you and Lilly at home; he had Robin and Arthur at home. But we’d drink every night, regular as clockwork, ten or twelve Rolling Rocks. We’d sit next to each other so it wouldn’t look like we were drinking alone, but I guess we really were.”
I shook my head. “I don’t remember any of that. I don’t remember you ever taking a drink.”
“Well, I drank at bars,” he explained. “I’d only drink at home on weekends—out back, usually, where you and Lilly couldn’t see me. I got pretty good at it. I’d finish off my two six-packs a night sure as the sun would set.”
“You didn’t work on weekends?”
“No. Not back then. I was like Reg Malloy. I unloaded all the trucks, and they came Monday to Friday.”
Dad looked down for a moment; then he went on quietly. “The beer was always enough for me, but not for Robby. He started taking Quaaludes. Did you ever hear of them?”
“No.”
“That was the big drug back then, like crack was later, like meth is now. People called them ‘ludes.’ They were strong sedatives, like sleeping pills. Robby would wash them down with beer. They were a powerful combination, all right. A deadly combination.”
I asked cautiously, “So, did he… OD?”
Dad nodded his head yes. “Robby left the bar a little early that night, twelve years, two months, and seventeen days ago—the last night of his life. It was raining, and he crashed into a telephone pole. I’m the one who found him, dead, with a broken neck.”
Dad stopped talking for about thirty seconds, reliving the moment. He continued in a haunted voice: “All I could think of as I stared at Robby was the word worthless. A dead human being is worthless, no matter who you were just half an hour before. You can’t ever do anything for anybody, ever again.
“I stood there in the rain and stared at him for so long that somebody else stopped, some other guy. He’s the one who got the police.
“I was still standing there when they arrived. When they pried Robby out of the car, his eyes were wide open, like he was staring back, saying, Do you want to end up like me?
“The cops were going to take me away, too, for being drunk, but I made a deal with them: If they would drive me home, I would report to my first AA meeting the next night. Lucky for me, they gave me that chance.
“The next night, I was sitting at a folding table at a church in Minersville, listening to six guys and two women tell their stories about being drunks and fools and criminals. Then I stood up, and I told them my story.”
Dad looked at me and smiled. “I guess you know how many years and months and days ago that was.”
“Yeah.” I asked, “And you never drank again?”
“I never drank again. But it’s been hard. It has been, literally, one day at a time.”
Dad clapped me on my shoulder and then went into the office. I stayed in the beer aisle, looking at all the colored bottles, trying to imagine my dad as being young and stupid.
It wasn’t easy. And I knew it wasn’t easy for him to talk to me about this. It was more than he had ever said to me about anything.
And I appreciated it.
I appreciated it. I really did. But not enough to stop my plan.
Today, I was going to betray Dad. And Mom. I was going to do the worst thing I have ever done, and nothing would stop me.
I got up before dawn, as focused (and as frightened) as I had been for the honor-vengeance trip up to Blackwater U.
I unzipped my backpack. I dumped out the contents and replaced them with underwear, socks, T-shirts, and a backup pair of pants. I zipped the bag up until it was nearly closed. Then I slipped down the hall to the bathroom. I wrapped my toothbrush in a tissue and stuck it through the hole at the top of the backpack. I did the same for my stick of Right Guard deodorant.
Then, just to be safe, I rooted under the sink, found a tube of Crest, and added it to my supplies. I couldn’t trust Jimmy, Warren, or Arthur to have toothpaste. Beer, maybe, but not toothpaste.
I zipped the backpack completely closed, slid it over my shoulder, and walked down the stairs like it was a normal school day.
The plan was for Dad and me to arrive at the Food Giant at 6:00 a.m. to help Mitchell defrost and display fifty turkeys in his glass case. I told my parents that Arthur had to drive me to school because we were doing a project for Mr. Proctor’s class. We had to act out a scene from A Journal of the Plague Year, but we hadn’t rehearsed it. So Arthur was going to pick me up, and we were going to do that on the way.
I told them that big fat lie, and they believed me.
It was shocking for me, as someone who did not lie, to see how easy it was to get away with one. I must admit I was a little disappointed in them. I thought, I could be lying to you all the time, and you would never know it.
When we pulled into the Food Giant lot, two cars were already parked in the outer spaces—John’s old Impala and Mitchell’s Saturn SL. John and Mitchell were standing by the ATM, stamping their feet in the cold and waiting for us.
Dad and I walked briskly to the entrance, nodding hello to them. Dad unlocked the door and held it for us all to step inside.
That was when we got a nasty surprise.
There was a big mess over by the bakery aisle. Someone had been in here overnight and had tried to break down the office door. The doorjamb, the hinges, and the door itself all showed signs of violence.
While Dad dealt with that situation, the rest of us spread out and looked around. I’m the one who discovered how the thief had gotten in. He had sawed right through the storeroom’s ceiling and climbed down the shelves. The Food Giant now had a gaping hole in its roof.
Dad called the police while John, Mitchell, and I cleaned up the office area and the storeroom.
By 7:00 a.m., things were almost back to normal. The police had come and gone, and the store-opening crew was hard at work. (I was hard at work alongside them, but I was not getting paid for it.)
Because of the break-in, and the mess, I felt even guiltier about my escape plan, but not guilty enough to change my mind. At 7:30, I was standing out front with my backpack. Only Bobby was out there with me, and he was preoccupied with the padlock on the propane cage.
Arthur pulled up right on schedule. I hopped in on the passenger side, the Geo Metro peeled out, and I never looked back.
I confirmed with Arthur, “Everybody at your house knows that I’m coming, right?”
“Right.”
“And they’re okay with it?”
“Yeah. I talked to Mom and Jimmy Giles this morning.”
“What did they say?”
“Not much. I reminded Jimmy about you, and the three hundred bucks, and he said cool.”
Now came the hard part.
I asked Arthur to pull over at Sheetz gas. I got out, put a quarter in a pay phone, and dialed the store number. Dad answered on one ring. “Good morning, Food Giant.”
“Dad? It’s Tom.”
“Tom? Is everything okay?”
“Yes, sir. I just wanted to tell you that I’m on my way to Florida with Arthur, Jimmy, and Warren. I’m going to help them sell their Christmas trees.”
After a long pause, Dad replied, “Tom? What are you talking about? Aren’t you at school?”
“No, sir. It’s the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. Nothing really happens at school.” I restated, “I’m on the road, heading south to Florida. I’ll be back on Sunday.”
“Sunday! You can’t do that. This is the busiest weekend of the year.”
“Well, sorry, but I need a weekend off.”
“You? You need a weekend off? What about me? What about the rest of us?”
“That’s up to you.”
He was silent for a moment. Then he tried, “Why does it have to be this weekend?”
“Because this is when they’re driving to Orlando to sell their trees.”
“Come on, Tom. You’re needed here. What about the carts in the parking lot? Bobby can’t handle them all.”
“So put somebody else out there.”
“Who?”
“Mitchell. Or Reg. Or Gert, for that matter. None of them work as hard as I do, but all of them get paid and I don’t. I deserve some time off.”
Dad exhaled slowly. He asked with resignation, “Does your mother know about this?”
“No. Of course not.”
“She’s not going to like it.”
“She doesn’t like anything.”
“Tom!”
“Sorry, but it’s true. I have to go. I’ll be back home on Sunday. Goodbye, Dad.”
I hung up. I felt bad for a few more seconds, but then I started to feel a great weight lifting off my shoulders. I was free, for the first time in my life. I walked back to the car feeling light as air.
We drove straight up to Aunt Robin’s trailer. When we pulled in, I could see Jimmy’s legs sticking out from under a flatbed truck. The truck looked comfortable enough for a long ride. It had a large crew cab with two rows of seats.
Behind the crew cab was the flatbed, maybe twenty feet deep, with two wooden railings running along the side. The back area was open, except for an orange net hooked across it.
I commented, “No Christmas trees yet?”
Arthur explained, “No. Not yet. We pick them up on the way.”
Aunt Robin came out with Cody in tow. She was lugging a cooler, so I took it from her and set it on the ground.
Jimmy rolled out from under the truck. He called out to her, “Any beer in that cooler?”
“No! Just ice and sodas. You can live without beer on the drive, especially since you got Tom along. You boys need to take care of him.”
“Oh, we’ll take care of him.” Jimmy winked at me. “We’ll take care to get him some beer.”
Aunt Robin fussed, “Don’t you say that, Jimmy Giles! Don’t you even think that.”
Jimmy laughed. “I’m just kiddin’.”
Jimmy stowed the cooler in the truck cab. Then he climbed up onto the flatbed and told Arthur, “You guys start handing me wall stakes, about fifty of them.”
I didn’t know what that meant, but Arthur did. He hurried around the side of Aunt Robin’s trailer, with me right behind him. We scooped up long wooden stakes from a pile that had probably been there since the previous year. The stakes were wet and dirty but still pretty straight. God knows what was living at the bottom of that pile. Fortunately, after three trips, we had our quota of fifty and didn’t have to find out.
After that, all we could do was wait for Warren. I made the mistake of suggesting, “Should we go knock on his door?” and Arthur jumped all over me.
“No! We should not! We don’t go in there. Ever. He’ll come out when he comes out.”
I stammered, “Okay. Okay.” I even added, “Sorry.”
Jimmy smiled kindly. “Warren’s somebody who values his privacy.”
So we just stood and stared at Warren’s front door for five minutes.
I took the opportunity to ask Arthur, as casually as I could, “What’s going on with the play? The Roses of Eyam?”
“What do you mean?”
“How are the actors doing with their parts?”
“I don’t know. Okay, I guess. Chris Collier’s pretty useless, and he’s the main guy. He’s married to the Grape.”
“Uh-huh. Do Chris and Wendy have any romantic scenes? Kissing scenes?”
Arthur snorted. “No way, dude. If you kiss somebody in Eyam, they die. Slowly and painfully. You may as well blow their head off with a shotgun.”
Okay. We left it at that.
Warren’s door finally opened. He stepped out wearing his Haven High Football jacket and carrying a backpack. He locked up carefully and sauntered down to join us. “Cousin Tom! You made it.”
“Yeah.”
“You ready to sell some Christmas trees?”
“I am. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Me, too. It beats the hell out of moving college boys in and out of Blackwater U.” He asked Jimmy, “You ready, bubba?”
“Yup.”
Warren thought for a moment. “Now, Tom, are you sure you’re allowed to do this?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Because we don’t have any insurance if… if anything happens to you.”
“That’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“Are you old enough to drive?”
“No, sir.”
“Too bad.” He turned back to Jimmy. “You got all the stuff loaded?”
“Yeah. We got the stakes in the back; the chicken wire’s underneath.”
“Okay. Let’s hitch up Arthur’s car.”
Arthur climbed into the Geo Metro. He pulled it up by the back of the truck and got out. Jimmy reached under the truck and slid out a cable. He knelt in front of the car and attached it to a pair of hooks. Then he reached under the truck again and started cranking a handle. The front of the Geo Metro rose up off the ground until the hood was even with the back bumper. Arthur then wedged a steel frame between the car and the truck, ensuring that the two couldn’t collide.
Jimmy checked it and pronounced it “good enough for government work.” Then we were ready to roll.
Warren pulled himself up into the driver’s seat; Jimmy took shotgun. Arthur and I climbed in and sat on either side of the crew cab’s bench.
Warren summarized, “I can drive, obviously. So can Arthur. If I am in no condition to drive, though, and if Arthur is tired, I guess brother Jimmy can fill in, suspended license and all.” He looked into the rearview mirror. “And if all else fails, cousin Tom, it’s up to you.”
I smiled.
He winked and added, “And with us, cousin Tom, all else fails a lot.”
We drove down from Caldera to Route 16 and started our long trek south, rumbling past a series of tree and shrubbery farms with names like Pioneer Evergreens, Rohrbachs Farm, and Kilingers Nurseries. We soon pulled into the parking lot of a large barnlike building that had GROVIANA written across the top in weathered red paint.
We all followed Warren into a big square space filled with chicken wire, wooden stakes, and boxes. There was a desk over in the far corner, and a man in a blue work shirt was sitting behind it.
Warren called to him heartily, “Hey, my man! How’s it going?”
The man eyed us suspiciously, like we might be there to rob the place.
Warren pointed to Jimmy. “My brother and me bought some trees here last year, right around this time. Sold them down in Florida. Remember?”
The man did remember. He said, “Yeah. Right. Did we ever settle that account?”
Warren looked to Jimmy and then back. “Yeah. We settled it up. We’re good.”
The man shook his head. “That’s not the way I remember it.”
“Well, if there’s still any balance from last year, just add it to this year’s tab. We’re good for it. We got a sure thing going this year. We got a prime lot in Orlando on a main thoroughfare, right on Colonial Drive. That’s the main drag. We’ll be the only tree sellers in a five-mile radius. It’s gonna be all gravy, bro!”
But the man was not buying it. He told Warren, “I talked to Mr. Levans about you guys, too. He said he never got paid from two years ago.”
“No, that’s a mistake.”
The man picked up the phone. “Let’s call him, then.”
Warren backed down quickly. “No. No. Look, all we need is twenty-five Frasiers and twenty-five Douglases to start. Then we’ll take fifty of whatever you got for the rest.”
The man set the phone down hard, like a gavel. He thought for a moment, then told us, “No way. I’m not fronting you any Frasier or Douglas firs. I should just say a flat-out no, but I’m trying to do the Christian thing here. I’ll tell you what I will do: For no money down, I got fifty Scotch pine you can have. They’re already cut and ready to load, but the buyer never picked ’em up.”
Warren sounded offended. “Scotch pine?”
“Sorry, but that’s what I got. You can take them or leave them.”
Warren raised up both hands as if to say, Whoa. He told the man, “We’ll take them.”
The man stood. “All right. Who’s loading them up?”
Warren turned to us. “We all are.”
So we trooped back outside. Jimmy and Arthur quickly unhooked the Geo Metro from the truck. We climbed back into our cab while the tree man got into a small white pickup.
He drove over a low ridge and out into the fields, so we followed. We passed many acres of small trees. Soon we were bumping past taller trees, though—very attractive, well-shaped trees that I figured were the Frasier firs and Douglas firs.
The white truck veered left and crawled carefully down a hill to a grove of pine trees. They were not as beautiful as the Frasier firs, but they weren’t bad-looking, either. And they would certainly work as Christmas trees.
Nobody was saying anything. I guess Warren, Jimmy, and Arthur were disappointed at this turn of events, but I didn’t know any better. I was excited.
A row of trees had already been felled—sliced off at the bottom with a chain saw—and were now lying on the ground. The tree man leaned out of his truck window and pointed at them. “There you go, cut and ready. You can take all fifty.”
The four of us clambered out.
Warren shook his head. He muttered to Jimmy, “They’re kinda puny.” To prove his point, he picked one tree up off the ground and hoisted it high over his head. He carried it like that to our truck and tossed it casually over the railing. He came back and told us, “All right. Toss them in there any way you can. We’ll straighten ’em up later.”
So that’s what we did. Jimmy and Arthur were able to do that tree-over-the-head, heaving-over-the-rail thing. I carried my trees waist-high to the back of the truck and slid them under the netting. Still, I was able to carry my share, and we soon had fifty trees on the truck. Warren and Jimmy climbed into the back and arranged them in neat rows. Then we took our places in the cab and followed the white truck back toward the highway.
Jimmy and Arthur hooked up the Geo Metro again while Warren and I sat in the cab. Warren told me, “We still have room, so we’ll pick up some Frasier firs down in Pine Grove. I know where we can go.” He looked in the rearview mirror. “I’m wearing my magic jacket today, Tom. All will be well.”
We took Route 81 south for about fifteen minutes. Then we pulled off the highway into a similar-looking wooden barn. This one had a cement-block gas station and convenience store next to it.
Warren went into the barn and, not five minutes later, came out all angry and upset. And empty-handed.
He shouted, “Mr. Christian Thing To Do back there must have called ahead. He bad-mouthed us all over the county. Nobody will do business with us.” Warren decided, “You take the wheel for a while, Arthur. Pull up to the pump there. We gotta gas up.”
Warren fished something out from beneath the driver’s seat. Then he disappeared behind the block building. Jimmy and Arthur paid no notice, so neither did I.
He came back a few minutes later with a new attitude, smiling and flopping into the backseat next to me. As Arthur pulled out and we headed south, Warren started talking loudly. “These trees are total crap, man! Scotch pines? Well, hell, we’ll just tell everybody they’re Frasier firs and Douglas firs, and—I don’t know—Pennsylvania firs. Those dumbasses down in Florida don’t know the difference. They’re just pretending it’s Christmas down there anyway. It may as well be the damn Fourth of July!”
Warren poked Jimmy. “Put in the classic Christmas cassette, bubba. I need to hear that while we’re still in cold country.”
Jimmy snorted, “Those cassettes must be twenty years old. I’m surprised they’re not eight-tracks.”
“Every one of them is a classic,” Warren insisted. “There is no need for anyone, ever, to put out another Christmas album. All the classic Christmas songs have been recorded. Mission accomplished.
“Check it out: The Christmas season runs from Christmas Eve until January sixth, technically, although most people have gotten sick of it by January first. But the stores start playing Christmas songs the day after friggin’ Halloween. Why is that?”
Arthur interjected, “It’s all supply and demand.”
“There you go! There you go, Coach Malloy. I remember that lesson. Christmas demand is for two weeks. But the Christmas supply lasts for over two months. Go figure that one out.”
He leaned forward. “Put on that Burl Ives cassette, Jimmy. Gimme some ‘Frosty the Snowman.’ Gimme some ‘Holly Jolly Christmas’ before we hit that Florida heat.”
The music started, and Warren whooped his approval. “Yeah! Frosty. There’s my man. Frosty!” But he soon turned philosophical. “Man, listen to that. Tell me: What did old Frosty get out of the deal? You know what I’m saying?”
He turned to me. “The kids let him dance and sing and tell jokes and… amuse them all day, and then he dies. He freaking melts, man! He’s effing dead. And what did he get out of it?”
Jimmy drawled, “Why, the pure joy of amusing children.”
“Screw that! What good is that? You can’t take that to the bank. You can’t make your car payment with that. Believe me, I have tried.” Warren pointed forward again. “And Rudolph? Him, too. They were plain ugly to him his whole life. They treated him like a townie, bubba. A townie with a big red nose.”
“I hear that.”
“So what does he think is gonna happen after he… pulls their nuts out of the fire on Christmas Eve? After he friggin’ saves Christmas? Does he think they won’t make fun of his nose anymore? Does he think they’re going to let him play their reindeer games?”
Jimmy and Arthur shouted out, as if they were at church, “Hell no!”
Warren continued: “For that matter, what does Santa Claus get out of the deal? He spends three hundred and sixty-four days making toys. He makes millions of toys, at his own expense. Then he travels by friggin’ open-air sled! Does he have a heater in this sled? Does he?”
This time, I joined them. “Hell no!”
“He drives ten million miles. And then, does he sell these toys? Does he get a good price for his labors?”
“Hell no!”
“That’s right. Hell no again. He friggin’ gives them away! Then he starts all over again the next day. What kind of life is that? He may as well be a coal miner,” Warren concluded. “He works like a devil, and he gets no money. He may as well be a damn coal miner.”
Arthur contributed, “Santa gives bad kids lumps of coal.”
Warren laughed. “What?”
“Kids who have not been good? Like me when I was six? They get coal instead of presents.”
“Really? Are you serious? That happened to you?”
“It did. I kept my lump of coal to prove it. I got it under my bed.”
“Man, that’s hard. That’s cold!” He hit his brother on the shoulder. “Jimmy Giles, how could you marry a woman who would do that?”
“That was before I met her,” Jimmy explained. “She wouldn’t do it now.”
“Well, that’s small consolation for little Arthur here.”
Warren reached up and poked Arthur. “It’s bad enough that he has to live over the fires of hell. Right, Arthur?”
“Amen.”
“The flames that burn eternal.”
“Amen.”
“You’re not gonna let them flames burn me, right, Arthur?”
“No, sir, Uncle Warren. No, sir.”
“You’re not gonna let me burn.”
“No, sir. I am not.”
Warren kept talking through Pennsylvania and most of Maryland. Then his voice started to drop, and so did his eyelids. After a long silent stretch, I reached into my backpack, pulled out my journal, and started to write about what had happened so far.
I was surprised when Warren’s eyes popped back open and he asked me, “What are you writing there, Tom? Homework?”
“Sort of. It’s a journal, for extra credit.”
“What do you have to write about?”
“Anything I want. Now I’m writing about our trip.”
“Yeah? This trip? Can I read it?”
“Uh, yeah. I guess.”
“I’ll wait till you’re finished, if that’s cool.”
“All right.”
Warren leaned over and looked down at a page. His eyes widened. “Hey! You wrote about Frosty!”
“Yeah.”
He laughed with delight. “That is so cool.”
Soon after, somewhere in Virginia, Warren fell asleep for good. By then, Arthur had been driving for ten hours. Jimmy said, “Pull off at the next exit, Arthur. We need a pit stop—gas, food, bathroom break. Then I’ll take her for a while.”
Arthur put on the right blinker and slowed our truck-car combination down. “A pit stop sounds good. I don’t know about you driving, though, Jimmy. What about Warren taking over?”
“Warren? He’s out. He’s down for the count.”
“I can keep driving for a while.”
“No. Don’t you worry about me. I’m a professional driver. You need some sleep. You can take her into Orlando in the morning.”
So we left the interstate and rolled into a gigantic truck stop with a gas station, a picnic area, and a food court. Jimmy used a credit card to fill up the truck’s large tank. Then Arthur drove us down to the extra-long spaces reserved for big rigs.
Jimmy said, “We’ll leave Warren in the truck, for security.”
Arthur snorted, “Fat lotta good he’s gonna do.”
“Ah, don’t worry. None of these old boys’re interested in Christmas trees. Or Geo Metros.”
Jimmy, Arthur, and I walked together across the wide expanse of parking lot. It felt great to stretch my legs and breathe in the cold night air. Inside the food court, we all ordered hamburgers and fries. Jimmy ordered some for Warren, too.
When we got back to the truck, Arthur tried one more time to talk Jimmy out of driving, telling him, “I’m really fine, you know. Let me take it for a few hours more.”
Jimmy was firm. “No. You need to sleep.”
“But what if something happens?”
Jimmy thought about that. “Okay. You sit up front with me. If I see any flashing lights in the rearview mirror, I’ll pull over, and we’ll switch places real fast.”
So we continued our ride south with Jimmy, suspended license and all, at the wheel. Arthur and I wolfed down our burgers and fries. This had an immediate and powerful effect on Arthur, as he was asleep within minutes.
I was tired, too, but I felt I could not go to sleep. Somebody had to stay awake with Jimmy to make sure that he was awake.
Jimmy was totally focused, though. Totally professional. He remained alert, driving the speed limit, getting the job done for as long as I was looking at him, which was not for long. I, too, conked out some time before midnight.
When I felt us slowing down and turning, I checked my watch; it showed 4:00 a.m. I asked Jimmy, “Where are we?”
“Georgia,” he drawled. “The Peach State. Good place for a pit stop.” He hopped out and filled the truck with gas again. By the time he drove us back to a space, Warren and Arthur were awake, too, and hungry.
Warren held up his bag from the night before like it was a dead rat. “What’s this thing?”
Jimmy told him, “Dinner. You might want to toss that now.”
“I just might. It’s breakfast time, bubba.”
The four of us walked stiffly across the lot. Arthur turned back once to check on his car, but it was obviously safe. There was no one else in sight.
We all purchased the same thing—egg and bagel sandwiches. Warren and Jimmy got huge cups of coffee.
Arthur and I pulled out cans of soda from Aunt Robin’s cooler. They were still cold, but the ice was all melted, so Arthur dumped the water out into the parking lot.
Then we set off again, with Arthur back behind the wheel.
Soon a bright red sun rose up on Thanksgiving Day. The holiday season had begun, like no holiday season I had ever known. Warren pushed in a Christmas cassette, and we completed the last leg of our journey in a happy mood. We exited the Florida Turnpike at Ocoee, turned right, and pulled into the parking lot of the Colony Plaza Hotel. That was to be my home, and Arthur’s, for the next three nights. It was to be Warren’s and Jimmy’s home for the next ten nights, or until all the trees were sold.
Warren got out and walked into the hotel lobby to get us a room. While we waited, Jimmy lowered the front wheels of the Geo Metro to the ground and disengaged it from the truck. Arthur started the car up and pulled it into a parking space.
I stood there, wearing just a T-shirt, thinking, I’m in Florida! I’m really in Florida. I took a minute to duck into the truck and grab my notebook and pen. I’d be keeping them with me at all times. I didn’t want to forget anything about this trip.
Warren came back out and announced, “Room two seventeen, boys, just like last year. Maybe that’s an omen.” He opened the driver’s-side door of the truck. “Now let’s go sell some Christmas trees.”
We pulled around the back of the hotel and headed west. A divided highway named Maguire Road intersected the main road. Just as we turned onto Maguire, though, Warren slammed on the brakes. He pounded the steering wheel and yelled, “No! No! This can’t be!”
I leaned forward to see what was wrong.
Our lot was directly before us on the right. It was a rectangle of dirt about fifty feet long. Directly beyond it was a second lot, a lot that was supposed to be a Jiffy Lube. Instead, as its signs announced, it was once again a BOY SCOUT CHRISTMAS TREES lot.
Warren pounded and screamed some more. This time he went way beyond “No! No!”
I stared at the Boy Scout lot in the distance. It was lined on three sides by chicken wire. It had large, professionally printed signs. The lot also had a pair of green porta-potties sitting at the back.
Warren shouted, “That Peterson guy told me it was a Jiffy Lube. What the hell!”
Warren continued to curse and to pound the steering wheel, blocking traffic on Maguire Road, until Jimmy broke the spell. “Hey! Let me tell you what they don’t have, bubba.”
Warren stopped ranting long enough to ask, “What?”
“Christmas trees!”
That was true. There was not a Christmas tree to be seen down there. The Boy Scout lot was empty except for a lonely SUV parked at the south end. I looked closer and saw that there was a man sitting in it, watching us.
Warren was suddenly reenergized. “Yeah!” He stomped down on the gas pedal and our truck lurched forward. He executed a smooth right turn onto the sandy dirt of our lot.
That’s when I noticed that someone, probably the much-cursed Mr. Peterson, had rigged out the lot with equipment. There was a red gas generator sitting on a sturdy piece of plywood near the back. The generator had wires running to the four corners of the lot. There were eight tall light poles, evenly spaced along the perimeter, for night selling. There was a canopy on the north edge for shelter.
Warren, Jimmy, and Arthur practically dove out of the truck. Arthur grabbed my arm and dragged me with him under the flatbed. He pointed to a fat roll of chicken wire held in place by leather straps. “First thing to do is set up the tree pen.”
I could hear Warren and Jimmy above us, hopping up onto the bed and wading through the trees until they reached the back. They started tossing the fifty wooden stakes to the ground on both sides of the truck.
Then the four of us worked like maniacs, planting the stakes and unrolling the chicken wire. Within fifteen minutes we had set up a three-sided pen to hold the trees. Then we started a bucket brigade to hand the trees down. Warren, up on the truck bed, handed one down to Jimmy, who passed it off to Arthur, who dragged it into the pen, where I set it up straight.
After the last tree was in place, Jimmy backed the truck to the north parking area. He emerged with a big plastic bag and handed it to Warren. The two of them set to work fashioning three signs, stapled onto pieces of plywood. The signs read CHRISTMAS TREES FROM PENNSYLVANIA; FRESH-CUT CHRISTMAS TREES; and FRASIER FIRS, DOUGLAS FIRS.
I whispered to Arthur, “But we don’t have Frasier firs or Douglas firs.”
“Hey, if anybody calls you on it, say we just sold the last one. And ask them if they’d be interested in a Pennsylvania fir.”
“Is there such a thing?”
“Not really.”
“Got it.”
Just as we finished our work, the man in the SUV got out and stretched his arms high. He dumped out the remains of a cup of coffee. Then he walked along the side of Maguire Road toward us. He was a heavyset man, dressed in brown shorts. Although it was a hot day and we were all in T-shirts, he had on a long-sleeve shirt decorated with pins and badges, and a sewn-on patch that identified him as a Scout master.
He turned onto our lot and approached Warren, who smiled and called out, “Happy Memorial Day! Or is it the Fourth of July?”
The man did not acknowledge the greeting except to say, in a flat, lawyerly voice, “If you plan on conducting business in Orange County, Florida, you have to provide rest room facilities.”
Warren smiled even wider. “What’s that? You need to use the rest room?”
“No. You need to provide rest room facilities.”
“Ah. Now, what are those exactly?”
The man pointed to the back of his lot. “Porta-potties.”
Warren’s smile slowly receded. He replied coolly, “Porta-potties? Just to sell Christmas trees? Is that really necessary?”
“I’m not here to argue about it. I’m here to tell you that you are currently in violation of the law.”
Warren didn’t reply, so the man turned and retraced his steps all the way to his SUV.
Two minutes later, a Sheriff’s Department car pulled into our parking lot and a woman deputy got out. She was heavyset, too, but in a very muscular way. She and Warren had a conversation out near the road while the rest of us hung back. Warren was smiling and charming the whole time he spoke to her, and she was smiling, too, when she drove away.
Warren walked back to us and reported, “Okay. We’ll probably get fined for not having porta-potties, but it’s only two hundred and fifty dollars. We can absorb that. Let’s start selling.”
The Christmas tree sale started off well. Several cars pulled in. Couples and families got out, looked at our selection, and then either bought a tree or moved on. Warren handled all of the cash, making change from a wad of bills he kept in his pocket. Jimmy, Arthur, and I talked up the merchandise and tied the sold trees to the tops of cars and SUVs, or we slid them carefully into the beds of pickup trucks.
It was the first hot Thanksgiving Day I had ever known. I was liking it very much, and I was liking Florida. I was more determined than ever to move there for college.
Things continued this way for most of the afternoon, and we had probably grossed over a thousand dollars, but then our luck started to change.
First, a Ryder rental truck pulled up next to the Boy Scout lot. It made that reverse beeping noise and then backed in. We could see what its cargo was very clearly: Christmas trees—Frasier firs and Douglas firs included. Right after that, a stream of cars pulled into the south parking area, disgorging Boy Scouts and their parents.
Arthur muttered, “Enemy spotted, cuz.” He spit on the ground. “Look at that. It’s a damn jamboree down there.”
The Scouts, all dressed in brown shirts, scrambled to unload their trees and set them up. A small group of Scout mothers took up positions along the chicken wire next to our lot. They started calling loudly to our customers, “Don’t buy from them! They’re outsiders! Support your local Scouts! Help your Scouts raise money,” and so on.
The tactic worked. Some of our customers crossed over to the other lot to buy their trees. (It didn’t help that the Scouts had a better selection.)
The sales battle continued, with us barely hanging in there, until about 9:00 p.m. That’s when the street traffic stopped abruptly. The Boy Scout lot extinguished its lights first; then we shut ours down.
As we were cleaning up, Arthur got into an argument with a Scout mother. They were both standing where the fences met. I heard the mother say, “Why don’t you go back where you came from and sell your trees?”
Arthur told her, with fake politeness, “We paid for this lot, ma’am, and we have the right to sell here.”
“You come from Pennsylvania,” she pointed out. “It says right there on your sign. You should go back there.”
“Pennsylvania. That’s right. Caldera, Pennsylvania. You ever heard of that?”
“No.”
“It’s kinda like hell. All fire and sulfur. Are you telling me to go to hell? Because that would not be a Christian thing to do, ma’am. That might, ironically, bring the wrath of God down on you.”
I laughed at that, but Warren did not. He interrupted Arthur. “That’s enough! Let’s close up.” He called over to his brother, “Jimmy, take the boys back to the hotel. You all get some sleep. I’ll stay in the truck and watch the merchandise.”
So the three of us trekked across the long asphalt parking lot, exhausted but mostly happy.
Jimmy bought a six-pack of beer and a two-liter bottle of Coke in the hotel store while Arthur called for a pizza delivery. We ate the pizza and watched holiday specials—including the cartoon version of Frosty the Snowman. (At the end, Frosty does not melt to death. He escapes to the North Pole and lives forever. I wondered what Warren would say about that.)
Jimmy fell asleep right after Frosty. As it turned out, that was exactly what Arthur had been waiting for. He gestured for me to follow him out of the room, so I did. He whispered, “Vengeance time, cuz. The Lord’s vengeance. You down with it?”
“Uh, sure.”
“Do what I do, then. And don’t make a sound.”
“Okay.”
We slipped back through the parking lot like phantoms. Arthur led the way in a straight diagonal line, southeastward, toward Maguire Road. I saw our flatbed truck to the left, but I did not see any sign of Warren inside.
Soon, we were right behind the Boy Scout lot. When we reached the chicken wire, Arthur stretched it back so that there was enough room to squeeze through.
He did, and I followed.
He army-crawled on his elbows, with me copying him, to the back of the men’s porta-potty. My nose twitched at the acrid smell of chemicals from inside it. (I hoped that was all I was smelling.)
Arthur turned and whispered, “Start digging.”
He showed me what he meant. He dug into the sand with a cupped hand and pulled out as much of the sandy dirt as he could. I did the same thing on my side. We worked steadily for about five minutes, carving out a sizable hole beneath the back of the big green coffin-like box.
When Arthur was satisfied that we had dug enough, he slapped at my shoulder. He started back, army-crawling along the same path, so I did, too. We squeezed through the chicken wire and moved, quickly and stealthily, back to our hotel room door. Neither of us made a sound.
The next morning at eight, I stuffed my notebook in my pocket and followed Jimmy and Arthur to the lot. Jimmy rapped on the window of the truck to wake Warren. He handed Warren a huge cup of coffee.
Arthur and I drifted over to the tree pen. I did a quick count and established that thirty-four trees remained, meaning we had sold sixteen. (It had seemed like more.)
The first sign of life at the Scouts’ lot was the arrival of the Scout master’s SUV. He got out and entered their tree pen. He was holding a huge cup of coffee, too. Arthur and I watched him on and off for about ten minutes. Suddenly Arthur emitted a short, sharp psst. He snapped his head in the direction of the Scouts’ lot. I looked and saw that the Scout master was walking rapidly toward the men’s porta-potty.
My eyes focused in on him like binoculars. My heart started to pound. I whispered to myself, “Please. Please do it. Do it.”
And he did.
The big man opened the door of the green box and stepped inside. Just a few seconds later, just long enough for him to pull down his shorts and sit, the green box started to move. It was a slight tipping move at first. We heard a muffled cry, and then the whole thing tilted back crazily.
The cry turned into a yell as the big green box crashed backward down the hill, making a cracking and then a sloshing sound.
Arthur and I both doubled over, laughing hysterically, until we couldn’t breathe. It took a full minute for us to recover enough to look up again. By then the Scout master, his shorts pulled most of the way back up, had pushed up the coffin lid of the porta-potty. He struggled to climb over one side, turning enough to show us a very wet, very suspicious-looking stain on the back of his decorated shirt.
He half crawled up the sandy hill to our side. His face was bright red. He looked right past us and screamed at Warren, “You’ll pay for this!”
Then he turned and stomped away. That stain on his back was suspicious, all right.
Warren watched him go, looking very confused. He motioned for Arthur to come over to the truck, so I followed. “What’s going on? Why’s he yelling?”
Arthur smiled at me. He told Warren, “Uh, I think he had a problem using the rest room facilities.”
“What?”
“I’m thinking it was all those medals on his shirt. You know? Weighing him down?”
“Arthur? What the hell are you talking about?”
Arthur’s smile faded. He tried to explain. “We did the porta-potty.”
Warren’s voice was all business. “What does that mean?”
“We rigged it so the next guy in it would fall over.”
Warren and Jimmy looked over at the toppled green box. Arthur added, “It was payback for last year. For the air horn. We got them back good!”
Arthur tried smiling again, but they were definitely not smiling back.
Warren snapped at him, “Damn it, Arthur! Why did you do that?”
“Like I said—payback, that’s all.”
“That’s all?” Warren looked around like he was frightened. He turned toward the hotel room and then toward the truck.
Arthur’s face fell. He whispered in an agonized voice, “Oh no, Warren. You’re holdin’?”
“Shut up.”
Warren turned away. He was soon huddled with Jimmy, whispering.
I asked Arthur, “What? What’s going on?”
“Damn. We should not have done that, cuz. Things are different this year. Warren’s holdin’.”
“What does that mean?”
“He’s got drugs on him.”
“What? Where?”
“In the truck. In the room. Both? I don’t know.”
A sheriff’s car arrived before Warren and Jimmy could even formulate a plan. A skinny young guy got out and approached quickly, freezing us all in our places. He stopped when a squawking noise came out of the speaker on his shoulder. He responded to the voice and then just stood still, surveying the scene. The woman deputy from the day before pulled in a minute later.
She walked right up to Warren and informed him, “If what I just heard is right, Mr. Giles, you are looking at a charge of criminal mischief.”
Warren said, “I don’t know what you heard.”
“I thought we had an understanding yesterday. I guess I was wrong.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The woman deputy scrutinized Warren carefully, especially his eyes. She nodded briefly. Then she pointed back toward the parking area. “Do you mind if I look in your truck?”
“Yes, I do.”
“Why?”
Warren replied politely but firmly, “There’s no why about it. It’s my truck, and I say you can’t look in it. That’s my right as an American.”
“I got a police dog. He won’t have to go into that truck. He’ll know from out here what’s in it. Do I call for him or not?”
Warren shrugged. “Go ahead and call. I like dogs.”
I could see that the deputy didn’t really want to. She tried again. “I’m just doing my job here, sir. How about some cooperation.”
“I’m doing my job, too, Officer, which is selling Christmas trees, on this lot that I paid good money for. I’ve done nothing wrong, so let me get to work.”
“That’s your final word?”
Warren answered, “That’s my final word.” He walked back and stood with us.
Arthur hung his head and turned away. I think he was crying. The deputy got on her shoulder speaker, and soon a third patrol car pulled in. An officer got out, along with a big German shepherd.
By now about a dozen Scouts and their parents had arrived and were hanging out along the wire fence.
Then something so bizarre, so totally impossible, happened, that I just stood there with my mouth open, failing to comprehend it.
A car pulled into our lot and sat there next to the three police cars.
It was Mom’s Ford Taurus. And Mom got out of it.
She walked, somewhat stiffly, right toward me, her eyes locked onto mine like a laser beam. She got within two feet and stopped. “Get in the car, Tom. Now,” she ordered.
I started to protest. “I… I can’t. I have my stuff in the—”
She cut me off angrily. “Now! I don’t care what you have here. Get in the car.”
I felt scared, like a little kid. I turned to look at the others. Warren was trying to talk to the policewoman, but she was no longer listening. Jimmy was standing there looking down, just shaking his head. Arthur had fallen to his knees in the dirt; he was definitely crying.
So I just walked to the car and got in without another word.
Mom peeled out of the lot much too fast. (Hadn’t she seen the three police cars?) She made an illegal U-turn on Maguire Road. Then she took a quick left and a right, and we were on the Florida Turnpike, heading north.
She did not speak for quite a while, but when she did, she really let loose. “They were all getting arrested, right? For drugs, right? This is who you want to spend Thanksgiving with? This is who you want to ride around the country with?”
“The cops just want to talk to Warren.”
“About drugs?”
“No,” I lied. “About criminal mischief.”
“What?”
“Warren, Jimmy, Arthur—they’re not bad people, Mom. You should give them a chance.”
That shut her up for a while. A short while. Soon she was back to haranguing me about the Food Giant, and personal responsibility, and the evil of lying, and the corrupting influence of Aunt Robin’s side of the family.
When I could finally speak again, which was near the Georgia border, I asked her a question that had been on my mind for many miles. “How can you drive like this without stopping?”
She blinked rapidly. Then she said, “What do you mean? I did stop. I stopped last night.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Never mind where. We’re talking about you now, not me.”
And we did talk about me, off and on, for twelve more hours, over three more states, until we finally pulled into the carport behind our house.
It was mind-numbing. And horrible. And I felt so bad for the guys I had left behind.
Things had been going so well. Then everything fell apart.
Damn Boy Scouts.