A Plague Year (12 page)

“Can you make it?”

“I guess.”

“Good. Can you drive Tom?”

Arthur looked at me. “Sure.”

“Good.” Wendy turned to include me. “You will both need to wear costumes.”

Arthur replied, “I don’t have a costume.”

I said, “I don’t have one, either.”

Wendy thought for a moment. “You two could go as a team, you know? The brain guy and the muscle guy. The brain guy rides on the muscle guy’s shoulders—like Master Blaster in
The Road Warrior.
”

Arthur’s lip curled up. “What’s that?”

“It’s a cult movie,” she said. “Or like
Freak the Mighty.
”

I explained, in case Arthur didn’t know, “That’s a book. A little kid rides on a big kid’s shoulders.” Then I added, “Or like Banjo Kazooie.”

It was Wendy’s turn to look puzzled. “What’s that?”

“Video game. It’s the same idea. Smart bird rides on dumb bear’s shoulders.”

“Yeah.”

Arthur looked offended. “I ain’t doin’ that. I’m smart
and
strong. I don’t need Thomas here for my brain. And I sure ain’t lettin’ him ride on my shoulders.”

Wendy smiled. “Fine. Those were just suggestions. A lot of the college guys are coming as zombies. All you have to do is wear something that makes you look like you just crawled out of the grave. Most guys around here dress like that anyway.”

I told Mom a version of the truth: that some of the kids from the counseling group had been invited to Mrs. Lyle’s for a Halloween party. I didn’t mention that it was at Blackwater University. Lilly, after some serious pleading, backed me up. Or at least she didn’t rat me out.

So, at 7:00 p.m., I was standing outside on Sunbury Street in the dark, wearing my grossest climb-out-of-the-grave zombie clothes.

I expected Arthur to pick me up in Jimmy’s truck, but he
pulled up in a three-door midnight-blue hatchback. I opened the passenger-side door. “What’s this?”

“This,” he explained with pride, “is a 1997 Geo Metro.”

“You just got it?”

“Just picked it up. I ain’t even been home yet.”

“Cool.”

“It’s a genuine Chevrolet, cuz, even if it is made by Suzuki.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked, but I did. “How did you ever pay for this?”

He answered as if it should be obvious, “With my money.”

“Your money? But you don’t have a job.”

“I have something better than a job. I have an income.”

A dark thought crossed my mind:
Does he mean an illegal income, like selling drugs?
But I was totally off base there.

“From the Social Security Administration,” he explained. “I get a check every month. It started on the day my father died, and it will end on the day I turn eighteen.”

I was relieved. I asked him, “When do you turn eighteen?”

“February second. That’s two/two. And check it out: Next year, it will be two/two/two. Deuces wild, man! That’s what I’m gonna have tattooed on my arm.”

We rode in silence for a few moments through the chilly October night. As we rose up into the foothills, I asked him, “Would you mind turning the heat on?”

“Heat? Why do you need the heat on?”

“Let’s see.… To survive?”

“But you’re indoors.”

“I’m inside a tin can. A freezing tin can.”

“Well, this just ain’t your night, cuz. The heat don’t work. So I guess you’re not gonna survive.”

I resigned myself to a long, cold ride.

Our first stop was Arthur’s house. This was my first trip to the condemned trailer where he lives with his mother and stepfather and stepbrother, Cody.

We turned off the highway and continued up a dirt road for about fifty yards. Arthur made a right turn, and we inched up a gravel hill. I saw a pair of trailers in the headlights. I stared at them closely, taking in all I could.

Aunt Robin’s trailer was in front. It was made of white metal held together with some rusty screws. I’d say it was forty feet across and twenty feet deep—not a bad size. It had a painted brown door in the center, flanked by two windows covered with thick plastic sheeting.

The steps beneath the front door were improvised. They were made from two wooden pallets—like the kind Food Giant orders come in, but sawed off to fit.

A bright porch light illuminated a strange collection of items spread across the ground, Cody’s baby toys and some other things. As we pulled closer, I could see orange plastic ducks and matching plastic rings, probably from a bath set. There were body parts from two or three Transformers, as well as Nerf balls, Wiffle balls, and a plastic bat.

I was shocked, though, by a few of the nontoy items.

These items had obviously been made from a stolen shopping cart—probably from the Food Giant. There was a low, square movers’ dolly made out of four metal wheels and the slats from a wooden pallet. There was a half-full firewood basket, which had once been the main section of a shopping cart. It was missing its hinged, movable side. That’s because that piece of metal was now the grill for a hibachi, sitting there on top of a ring of concrete blocks.

Bobby Smalls would have been horrified. But I had to admit it was all pretty clever.

I couldn’t see Warren’s trailer very well. It sat another thirty yards behind Aunt Robin’s and on a higher elevation. It looked narrower by perhaps ten feet across. As far as I could tell, it had no debris around it.

We parked near the right corner of the first trailer and got out. Just as Arthur reached the front door, someone pulled it open from the inside. Arthur backed up to let Warren step out, followed by Jimmy.

They both smiled at me and said, “Hey, Tom,” almost in unison.

Warren was holding an item I recognized from the Food Giant—a fifty-count box of Ziploc freezer bags. He pointed to the driveway and smiled hugely. “Whoa! Check out the new ride!”

Arthur grinned. “Yeah.”

Warren asked Jimmy, “Is that the one you told me about, bubba? From Primrose?”

Jimmy nodded.

“Sweet.” Warren winked at me, but he spoke to Arthur. “Now I don’t have to drive you to football games? And sit there and watch you lose?”

“Nope. I guess not.”

Warren then looked from Arthur to me. “So what are you two gentlemen up to tonight? You goin’ joyriding?”

Arthur replied, “We’re heading up to the college.”

“The college? What for?”

Arthur smiled. “Tom’s got a girlfriend there.”

Warren poked my ribs with the box. “Is that right, Tom? You’re dating a college girl?”

I protested, “She’s not my girlfriend. And she doesn’t go to the college. She just lives there with her family.”

Arthur corrected himself. “I should say we are going to a party at the college, a Halloween party, invited by a friend of Tom’s, who just happens to be a girl.”

I nodded my approval. “There you go.”

Warren asked Jimmy, “Remember the time we went up there, bubba? With Ralph? And the Cowley brothers?”

“I do indeed.”

“That was some night.”

“Amen to that.”

I asked them, “Did you go there for a party?”

Warren replied, “Not hardly, young Tom. We went there for a fight.”

Arthur, who rarely looked surprised at anything, looked shocked. “A fight? Why don’t I know about this?”

Warren pointed at Jimmy. “Because bubba here never told you? So I’ll tell you now. Here’s what happened: Jim’s buddy Ralph got beat up by two college boys. Beat up for no reason except that he was a townie.

“He was working at the Strike Zone, and these two frat boys showed up drunk. They were acting stupid, acting like they were better than everybody. Laughing at everybody. You know the drill.”

Arthur nodded. “I do.”

“So Ralph told them to leave. A few minutes later, he went out to make sure they were gone, and they jumped him. Beat him up real bad. So the next night, him, Jimmy, me, and some other guys went up there to take care of business.”

“To the college?”

“Yeah.”

Arthur asked, “How did you find them? There’s gotta be a thousand people up there.”

“It wasn’t that hard,” Warren explained. “They got those college bars on the main road, heading up to that big gold dome. We figured two drunken frat boys would be there drinking, and so they were! Ralph spotted their car after about five minutes. Then we all waited until they came out.”

Warren smiled, remembering. “I believe it was a Ford Mustang. A bright red one. Jimmy took a tire iron to the front and back windows. We gave them college boys as good as Ralph got and then some. Then the bar owner came out, yelling that he had just called the cops.

“So we left them on the sidewalk, bleeding and crying for their mommies. We jumped into the back of Jimmy’s truck and peeled out of there.”

Jimmy added somberly, “Somebody coulda got my tag number. I kept waitin’ for the cops all the next day. Waitin’ to get arrested.”

Warren told him, “Don’t matter if you got arrested or not. We did what we had to do.”

Jimmy agreed, “Yeah.”

“They hit us, so we hit them back.”

“Amen.”

Arthur nodded angrily. “Yeah, I hear that.”

Warren raised up his Ziploc box in a friendly wave. “Well, enough townie history. You guys have a good time up there. Don’t drink and drive. Don’t play with matches. All that stuff.” He started up the incline to his trailer, calling, “Anybody needs me, I’ll be at the Drunken Monkey.”

I followed Arthur and Jimmy through the door. Arthur veered
left toward his bedroom. He pointed to the right and said, “Go sit in there. I need to find me some zombie rags.”

I said, “Okay,” and walked into the living room. It was surprisingly large—with a long cloth-covered couch along the right wall, a big TV straight ahead, and a pair of recliner chairs to the left.

Aunt Robin was sitting on the floor in front of the chairs. She is a small, feisty lady with long black hair and multiple ear piercings. She was playing with Cody—a cute, squirmy boy about two years old.

She looked up at me, “Why, Tom Coleman! As I live and breathe!”

I waved awkwardly. “Hi, Aunt Robin. Hi, Cody.”

“Did I just hear you’re going to a party?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“No drinking or drugs!”

“No, ma’am.”

I had seen Aunt Robin often over the years—at the Food Giant and at other public places—but I had never been in her living room before. Nobody ever said it out loud, but we all knew that Mom and Aunt Robin did not get along. Going way back. We had never spent a holiday together, or any other day, for that matter.

Jimmy walked in from the kitchen holding a jar of Gerber’s baby food and a spoon. He grinned at me, but he spoke to Aunt Robin. “Here I am, out bustin’ my butt at work all day, and I got to come home and work here, too?”

Aunt Robin got instantly riled, like this was an ongoing argument. “Don’t you start that, Jimmy Giles! Especially in front of company!”

She shot an offended look at me. “Don’t think I haven’t been working, Tom. I just finished a job driving a school bus.” She
pointed a red nail at me. “The trouble is, you need a second job if you drive a school bus, because the pay is so low. But you can’t get a second job because you always have to be on call for the school bus job.”

Jimmy interjected, “But having one job was better than having none, wasn’t it?”

She answered angrily, “No. Not that job. It was terrible. You never knew what they were gonna throw at you. Especially if you were new, like me. You might have to drive the gangbangers, or the teenage girls with the babies, or the just plain old troublemakers up to the county school. With no security on board. Just you.

“Or you might have to drive the retarded bus.” She assured me, “I got nothing against those kids, Tom. They’re just fine. But some of them need helpers with them, and they don’t have helpers.”

She stopped talking.

I felt like I should say something, so I commented, “Bobby Smalls has Down’s syndrome. He’s the bag boy at the Food Giant.”

“Yeah. I know who you mean. But he’s a smart one, right?”

“Yeah. He’s real smart.”

“Well, I’m not talking about him, Tom. I’m talking about these poor kids who still wear diapers. And they’re big kids! I just couldn’t handle driving them every day. Maybe that makes me a bad person, but it was just too sad for me.”

Arthur came out of his bedroom. He was dressed pretty much the same as before, in his camo pants and boots, but he had ripped up an old white shirt and pulled it on over his hoodie. And he had smeared black stuff under his eyes, like football players do for glare.

He said, “Let’s roll, cuz,” and exited quickly, without a word to Aunt Robin, Jimmy, or Cody.

I muttered, “I’ll see everybody later,” and followed him out.

But we could not roll.

A car had pulled in and parked behind Arthur’s Geo Metro. A white Saab convertible.

Arthur was really annoyed, but he didn’t say anything. We just stared at the car uncomfortably until we heard voices from above. Two tall college-age guys emerged from Warren’s trailer. Despite the dim light, I could see that one of them had a Baggie in his hand. Of marijuana? Probably. They were all laughing about something. Then they exchanged some goodbye stuff, like “Later, bro,” “Be cool,” and so on.