Crooked (9 page)

14

CHINESE CHECKERS

It was the longest weekend Amos could remember. After Amos had sent him off, Bruce hadn't stopped by or even called, and although Amos knew he had no right to hope that Clara Wilson might call him over the weekend, he'd hoped it anyway and been disappointed.

Amos lay on the sofa and did his makeup homework, but only halfheartedly. He watched sports events on ESPN that he could not have cared less about, and then fought with his sister when she wanted to turn the channel to some Saturday afternoon dance show. He just felt lazier and lazier and crankier and crankier. He wasn't hungry, so he hardly ate. Even Saturday night, when his mother made pork chops and applesauce especially for him, he just picked at it. His father tried to perk him up by advising him that the Blue Jays were leading the Grapefruit League, and Amos said, “That's only spring training, Dad. Everybody knows spring training standings don't mean anything.” Worse, even though he knew he might've hurt his father's feelings, Amos couldn't break out of his mood enough to care.

On Sunday nights, the whole family usually watched a Perry Mason rerun and ate cheeseburgers with milk shakes, but the doctor was going to do some kind of procedure on Amos's father the following day, and this meant that all day Sunday, his father had to drink some kind of mineral oil that cleaned out his whole body. So Liz and Amos had cheeseburgers while their mother went upstairs with their father, who'd gone to lie down. Amos turned the TV to Perry Mason at seven o'clock, but no one came into the living room until almost eight, when his mother sat down to read one of her new religious books and his father carefully laid out a board game on the coffee table in front of Amos's sofa. Amos let him. Amos waited until he was completely done laying it out with like-colored marbles in all their colored holes. Then he said, “Dad, don't you think I'm a little too old for a game like Chinese checkers?”

Amos knew at once that he shouldn't have said it. It was rude, and he expected his father to say something sharp about his rudeness. But what happened was far worse. His father's face turned suddenly pink, as if he'd just been slapped, and then just as suddenly it lost all its color. His father looked almost tearful, but surely that couldn't be. He looked completely defeated, as though he had just realized something final and irreversible. Just as soon as this look came over him, his father straightened himself and walked from the room with as much dignity as he could.

All at once his mother was putting down her book, hurrying from the room, and saying, “Shame on you. Shame on you, Amos Thomas MacKenzie.”

15

SWALLOWED BY A WHALE

Clara's weekend had been no better. On Friday night, she waited up after play practice for her father. She took a quilt with her to the couch and curled up where she could see the hall light shining. On the hope that her mother might be with her father when he returned, Clara made Ham stay on the floor, and she made sure that all the dishes were done before she lay down with her homework.

It was hard to do homework so late at night, and Clara kept popping up to do one more thing that would make the house look inviting to her mother: hanging her coat in the closet, scrubbing the kitchen sink with cleanser, dusting the mantel. Then she would do a math problem and hear a car that seemed to be slowing down outside the driveway. But the car always turned at the next street instead.

She couldn't believe all this huge stuff was happening and she couldn't even tell Gerri. During the course of the evening, Clara called Gerri's number three or four times, but on all but one occasion, she hung up when the machine came on. The other time she waited for the beep and in a small voice said, “Hi, it's me, Clara.” She waited for a few seconds, but nobody picked up. Which meant Gerri either had gone for the weekend or was out doing something with other friends or was at home not wanting to talk to Clara.

When it was almost ten and she'd finished the last five math problems, Clara pulled out the reading she was supposed to do for English. They were reading
Great Expectations,
and the words were so difficult that she had to have a dictionary nearby. Tonight she was too tired to get the dictionary, and it was a chapter where Pip went to an old woman's house and was asked to lead her around and around a rotten wedding cake. On and on they circled the old cake, and when Clara woke up, her father was trying to lift her off the couch.

“Did Mom come with you?” Clara asked.

“Not this time,” he said. He sounded tired. “She's having a good time visiting with her sister, and now they won't have to call each other every day.”

“Oh, Dad, you didn't fight about the phone bill again, did you? Is that why she wouldn't come?”

“No, Polkadot,” he said in a weary voice. “We didn't fight about anything.”

Clara wrapped the quilt around her arms and allowed herself to be steered toward the stairs. “She's already been gone for six days,” she said miserably, almost to herself. How could her mother stay gone like that when her father wasn't even out of town? She always complained about her father's long trips, and now she was doing the same thing. What if she didn't come back to see Clara in the school play?

She didn't even know about Amos's wonderful letter.

The worst part about going to bed every night since her mother had left was passing her parents' bedroom. Since her mother had cleaned up after the midnight picnic and swept everything into hiding, and since her father had come home and left his suitcases standing half-emptied by the bed, it looked more like a motel room.

“Sing that song, Dad,” Clara said as she entered her own bedroom and dropped onto the bed. “The one about the teacup and the whale.”

Sit up to the breakfast table
And cry about your troubles.
Let your tears fall in a teacup
That flows into the ocean,
Where they're swallowed by a whale.

He sang for a little while, and she pretended to fall asleep, thinking about the time she and her parents had gone to Washington, D.C., on vacation. They had driven until late into the night, and her mother had fallen asleep in the front seat while Clara slept in the back, waking only once to hear her father singing that song to himself, driving the three of them safely and snugly through the night.

In the morning, things didn't seem snug at all, even though her father turned up the heat. He built a fire, too, and then sat in front of it without a book or any music on. Even Ham sat at a distance from his chair. It was an overcast Saturday outside, the kind of day when the clouds seemed to reach all the way down to the ground, to be everywhere and nowhere.

“You want to read your book, Dad?” Clara asked. “It's right here.” She held up the book about the French Revolution that he'd been reading since Christmas.

“Sure,” he said, and took it from her. He opened to his bookmark, but when Clara came back to the living room dressed for play practice, he wasn't reading.

“I'm off to play practice,” she said. “I'll be back around noon.”

“Sure,” he said. “Noon. And what else are you doing today?”

“My papers and some errands for Mrs. Harper.” She had also thought about writing back to Amos, but she wasn't sure. She couldn't call him. Her mother said that if someone sent you a letter, you should write back immediately, not call, especially if they sent you a present as well. But did that rule apply to anyone besides grandparents? Did it apply to boys you didn't know very well?

Her father looked over his book to the fireplace. The fire he'd built was consuming itself as it collapsed and hissed. A horn sounded outside, and Clara could see the headlights of a car shining weakly into the fog.

Clara's father glanced at her and gave her a quick nod that meant, You'd better get going. Then he looked down at his book, adjusted his glasses, and lifted one page with his index finger.

“Bye, Dad,” Clara said, and the horn beeped again outside.

“So long,” her father said, and methodically turned the page.

When she came home later, Clara noted what page he was on, and though her father again seemed to be reading the book by the fire Saturday night and Sunday morning, when Clara checked his bookmark Sunday night, it hadn't moved a page.

Living among kids wasn't that great, Clara thought, but living among the adult human beings was worse.

16

SUFFER NO FOOLS

Monday morning, 7:15. Amos's mother, as if totally distracted, hadn't said a word to Amos or Liz over breakfast, which in itself seemed more than a little bit weird. No “How do you feel?” or “Are you sure you feel well enough to go to school?” In fact, she spoke only when Amos's father entered the kitchen carrying a small overnight bag. “Got everything?” Her voice sounded hollow and almost afraid.

“Got everything for what?” Amos said, and was embarrassed when his father said, “Oh, this little procedure they're doing today.” Which was something Amos should've remembered. “What exactly are they doing?” he said.

Amos's father smiled. “First they starve you, then they put you under, and then they poke and prod. Doctors have a strange idea of fun.”

Amos glanced at Liz, who was reading the paper and didn't look up.

“And when they're done,” his father said, grinning, “I'm going to have me a big ol' steak and a big ol' baked potato.”

He said this so much like he'd say any everyday thing that it satisfied Amos that it
was
just an everyday thing, and before he could have second thoughts, his mother was telling him to bring his plate to the sink, get his coat on, and get moving, or he was going to be late.

His father pushed a worn leather glasses case across the table toward Amos. “Found these in a snowbank a few weeks ago while I was on my route. Thought you could use them.”

Inside the case were a pair of Carrera black aviator sunglasses.

Amos wasn't at all sure about them, but Liz, after dipping her newspaper to glance at them, said, “Hey, cool,” so Amos decided to try them on.

“A scarf and some stubble and we'll start calling you Ace,” his sister said good-naturedly and went back to her reading.

“I just thought it might save some questions about the shiners,” his father said. “I know how kids can be at that age.”

Amos doubted that very much, but he sort of liked the glasses.

“We called the principal. He said you could wear the glasses and your hat during class for the first few days.” The hat, which his father now presented, was a new Blue Jays hat meant to hide Amos's stitches and shaved scalp. Amos turned the cap in his hands. It looked stiff and brand-new. He wasn't that crazy about it.

He suddenly became aware that his father was staring at him. “Thanks, Dad,” Amos said, and his father broke his gaze and stood up.

“Okay, we better scoot,” he said to Amos's mother, but then, before leaving, he did something else weird. He put two fingers under Liz's chin, tilting her head slightly so that he could give her a gentle kiss on the forehead. “Be good, Liz,” he said in an odd, tight voice, and then hurried out.

After their parents had gone, Liz gave Amos a look. “And they say we're strange,” she said.

Amos pulled on his cap and coat, then, outside on the front walk, stood for a moment wrapping his scarf tight to his neck. It was funny to think he'd been away from school for a week and yet had heard nothing at all about it. No gossip, no test scores, no jokes. No half-court basketball in the gym, no girls to sneak looks at. It was almost as if school had for a time ceased to exist. The nervousness reminded Amos of how the first day of school felt when you were about to enter a new grade.

The sun was out, but you couldn't feel it. Just snowy glare and wind. Amos, on his way to school, turned onto Teal Street just in time to see the Number Five school bus lumber away from the curb a half block ahead. Reflexively, Amos sprinted a few yards, but the aviator glasses bounced loosely on his nose and Amos saw that running was futile anyhow. He pulled up and began the long walk.

It was, as always, cold—the kind of cold that clothes just couldn't keep out. And right now, Amos thought, baseball players were running around in shirtsleeves under a bright sun in Florida and California and Arizona. Amos turned the corner onto Ellis and was passing the Goddards' house before he knew it. He stopped. The snow-covered yard was vacant. Where the snow people had held their tennis rackets, there were now just chunky mounds of snow.

“Sad sight, wouldn't you say?”

Amos looked up. It was Mr. Goddard standing behind the screen door in a yellow parka.

“Did you take them down?” Amos asked.

“What was left of them.”

Amos stepped into the yard, hoping Mr. Goddard would come out onto the porch, but he didn't. “I'm Amos MacKenzie. I live just over on Adams Street.”

“You the boy that tried to run those hoodlums off?”

This sudden recognition surprised Amos. “Not really. I just made a grunting sound, and then one of them conked me with a bat.” Amos took off his dark glasses to reveal his black eyes.

“So you're the boy,” Mr. Goddard said, and stepped out on the porch. Mr. Goddard was older than Amos's father. His skin hung looser, his hair was a woolly white, and there was a milky brown look to his eyes.

“I was just wondering what those guys had been doing to the snowmen when I came up on them,” Amos said. “I couldn't see what they were doing exactly.”

The question made Mr. Goddard's eyes turn dead. “They're gone,” he said. “The wife and I decided it that very night. Those were the last of our snow people.”

Amos wasn't certain what Mr. Goddard was saying. “Well, I hope not,” he said, but Mr. Goddard didn't reply. Mr. Goddard just stood there looking a little lost on his own porch.

Amos waited a second, then said he guessed he'd better go now.

“I'm sorry Mrs. Goddard wasn't here to see you,” Mr. Goddard said, and his voice and eyes drifted again. “She's at the library. She's just a volunteer now.”

There was another awkward silence, which Amos broke by saying, “Miss Martin'll kill me if I'm any later to my first-period class.”

Mr. Goddard seemed not to hear.

“Well, thanks,” Amos said, backing down the steps.

“No,” Mr. Goddard said. “Thank
you
. And I'll tell Mrs. Goddard you stopped in. She'll scold me for not providing refreshments.”

Out on the street again, Amos began noticing the mailboxes the Tripps had been beating that night. Most of the boxes had been reconnected in their dented state, a few had been replaced with new boxes, and one or two still stood loosely attached to their leaning posts.

“Hey, Hero!”

A Jeep full of high school jocks had pulled alongside Amos, and peering from the lowered passenger-side window was Big Dave Pearse, grinning hugely. “Heroes don't walk, kiddo. Heroes ride first class.”

Amos had the vague idea he was being made fun of, and kept walking. The Jeep pulled ahead, and Big Dave jumped out. He held the door open for Amos. “Step in, my man. We'll get you to your institution of lower learning in style.” Then, sensing Amos's uncertainty, he said, “I mean it. We're giving you a lift.”

Amos squeezed in between Big Dave and the driver, whom he didn't know. He didn't know the guys in the back, either, although they both wore letterman jackets and one of them was from the high school basketball team. Big Dave wrapped an arm around Amos and said, “Guys, this is my main man. A freshman phenom.” He stretched his grin wider. “And let me remind you gents that I knew him when he was just one of the little people. Before he was what he is today.”

Amos felt at once incredibly embarrassed and incredibly happy.

From the backseat, one of the varsity guys said, “You the kid Charles Tripp took a bat to?”

Amos didn't say anything. It
had
been Charles Tripp, but he wasn't telling anyone that. Still, everybody somehow seemed to know.

“Affirmative,” Big Dave said.

In a lower voice, one of the guys in the backseat said, “Well, the kid's got more balls than I do. Charles Tripp is one twisted individual.”

Amos cleared his throat. “So what did those guys actually do to the snowmen?”

The driver of the Jeep sniggered and said, “Go ahead, Pearse. Explain to your main man what the Tripps did.”

“Amos, my man,” Big Dave said, “the Tripp boys were, shall we say,
indelicate
in their approach to the snowy tableau.”

“Try it in English, Pearse,” the driver said.

“Okay. Here's what they did. They made Mr. Snowman anatomically correct with a tree branch, and they sullied Miss Snowman's reputation.”

Amos was trying to make sense of this when a voice from the back said, “In other words, they marked their territory with Tripp brother urine.”

After a few seconds, Big Dave said without his usual bluster, “You can't see it in them
physically,
but Charles and Eddie are cripples.”

“Charles and Eddie are assholes,” the driver said.

Someone in the backseat said, “Too bad they didn't nail both of them, instead of just Charles. Charles is always covering for his slimy little sibling.”

A minute or two later, an old Beatles song came on the radio, and one of the guys in the back said to turn it up. The driver did.

“Louder.”

When it was loud enough, a couple of them, Big Dave included, were singing along, and in the backseat the basketball player had pulled out a couple of drumsticks and begun tapping out rhythm on the window pane. A happy energy filled the Jeep, loud enough to get lost in.

The Jeep moved smoothly through the slush and traffic. Amos had never been in a car that girls repeatedly stared into. Big Dave and the others seemed to take these looks as a matter of course, but Amos didn't. He felt funny about it. He wasn't one of these high school jocks. He was just a junior high bozo who happened to be along for the ride. Still, when clusters of his class-mates turned to stare as the Jeep pulled up in front of Herman Melville Junior High, Amos was aglow with foolish pride. As Amos walked away from the Jeep, Big Dave leaned out the window. “Amos, my man, keep the powder dry and suffer no fools!”

Amos had no idea what this meant but nodded as if he did. Then, as he strode up the wide stairs to the main entrance of Melville, Amos felt the eyes of the parting students fixed on him in a way he didn't understand. When he'd reached the top step, a familiar face stepped up from the rear of the crowd. It was Eddie Tripp. He stood and waited for Amos to draw close. He was wearing a composed, contemptuous smile. In a low voice—almost a whisper—he said, “Hello, Milkboy.”

And then Amos was past him, sliding along in the current of the crowded hallway.

The shape of school society was, in Amos's mind, a kind of pyramid. If you were good-looking or cool or athletic or wild or rich or experienced in sexual matters, the mob pushed you toward the top of the pyramid. If you had bad teeth, bad acne, or weird clothes, if you had a potbelly like Crook or a voice that cracked when you had to read out loud in class, the mob stepped aside and watched while you slid down to the base of the pyramid, where hardly anybody would talk to you and where it was best to act like you wouldn't want to be up toward the top even if you could.

Amos knew this from experience. His first year at Melville, he had noticed people sneaking glances at him and snickering. When he sat down in homeroom, somebody said, “It's Amos the famous!” which provoked mean laughter, and somebody else said, “Hey, Amos, where's your truck?” Amos had felt sweat pop from what seemed like every pore of his body. It was after homeroom that he understood the source of the joking. Taped to his locker was an enlarged color Xerox of the card his father had left for his customers that Christmas. That year, his father had made Amos wear a stupid Santa's cap and sit on the fender of the truck looking like a moron. On the copy, somebody had written: AMOS THE FAMOUS MILKBOY!!!

What Amos wasn't prepared for was the pleasure of being pushed up the pyramid. And this was exactly what now occurred. During his absence, rumors about Amos had spread through Melville. Amos MacKenzie had taken on the Tripp brothers. Amos MacKenzie had two black eyes and a cracked skull. Amos MacKenzie had brain damage. Amos MacKenzie might not live. And today, there was more news. Amos MacKenzie was escorted to school by bodyguards, high school football players, linebackers mostly, mean mothers.

All this was unknown to Amos, so in the halls between first and second periods, it was a surprise to have people he hardly knew greeting him, to have acquaintances punching him in the arm like friends, to have friends catching up to him in the halls, squeezing between others to be the first to pass on the gossip to Amos.

“Anne Barrineau's parents got her transferred to Eliot,” said the first boy.

“They got Crook with the pictures,” said the second.

It wasn't until the second-period late bell rang that Amos, seated in Mr. Farmer's class, realized with a start that the desk two rows over, where his buddy Crook normally sat, was empty.

Suspended. Crook had been suspended. Jay Foley himself told Amos about it during Nutrition. The rumors of the photographs had finally gotten back to Laurie Lee Caton, who broke the news to Anne Barrineau, who called her mother to take her home. “The next day, her parents went to the principal,” Jay Foley said, “and the principal set loose the dogs. Guys were grilled left and right.” Eventually people who weren't willing to squeal on Foley (who had high pyramid status)
were
willing to squeal on Bruce (who didn't). The boys' dean himself had searched Bruce's locker, then his person. In a zippered interior coat pocket, the boys' dean had found a plastic bag containing just one picture of Anne Barrineau, with her clothes still on. Bruce was escorted to the office. He said he hadn't snapped the photographs. He said he'd found them. He'd destroyed the ones of her naked, out of respect, he said. That was his story. The boys' dean kept increasing the days of his suspension, but Bruce didn't change his tune. He'd found the photographs near the gym in a bag. He didn't know where they came from. He hadn't shown them to anybody. He'd destroyed all but one of them and he wished he had destroyed that one, too, but he hadn't, so he would take his punishment.