A Plague Year (24 page)

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.

 
 
December
 

Mom and Dad grounded me for two weeks. That made very little difference in my life, since I hardly do anything but go to school and work, and I was still allowed to do those things. I was not, however, allowed to call Arthur or to contact him in any way. Questions about the Florida trip were eating me up, but I couldn’t get any answers. Arthur had not shown up for school on Monday. He had not shown up on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday, either. So all I could do was wait.

Mom and Dad were barely speaking to me, but it seemed like Lilly was going out of her way to. She never came right out and said it, but I think she actually respected what I’d done. (Or did she just appreciate someone else getting in trouble for a change?)

Before school, while I was messing with the N64, she came into the parlor and stood behind me. She asked, “Can you help me find something on the computer?”

“Sure,” I replied, figuring it was another weird sex website she’d heard about, but I was wrong. As I slid over to the Gateway, she said, “Is there a job you can do that helps drug addicts?”

I nodded. “Yeah. I think that’s what social workers do. Ben’s always saying he got diagnosed by a social worker.”

I searched the Internet for “social work careers.” That pulled up several sites, and I clicked on three of them. Lilly read the information over my shoulder. Each time she asked, somewhat disappointed, “Is there another one?”

By the end of the third site, she sounded totally discouraged. “They all say ‘bachelor’s degree.’ What does that mean?”

“Four years of college.”

Lilly shook her head. “No. No way. I’m not doing that.”

She started to leave, but I said, “Wait a minute. Let me type in ‘drug counselor.’ A site titled “Substance-Abuse Counselor” popped up, so I clicked on it. Lilly leaned over my shoulder and read along with me. The very first line, under “Education,” said “high school degree.”

I slid out of the chair. “Here. I’ll let you read this.”

Lilly took my place in front of the Gateway. When Mom called her for the ride to school, she was still reading.

I waited outside Mr. Proctor’s class, like I had for five days, watching for Arthur’s approach. When I finally saw him, I waved happily, but he walked right past me without a word. I turned and followed him inside, slipping into the next desk. I hadn’t gotten one syllable out before he growled at me, “I’m not ready to talk about it yet!”

Mrs. Cantwell hurried into the room, causing everyone to quiet down and face forward. She announced, “Mr. Proctor has called in sick today. I am in the process of getting a sub to cover this class. Until then, is there some work you could do?”

She swiveled and looked at the whiteboard. It had the word
Vocabulary
written at the upper right. She said, “Jenny Weaver, is there a vocabulary assignment you could all be doing?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“What page would that start on?”

Jenny thumbed through her vocab book. She replied, “Forty-two.”

Mrs. Cantwell picked up a marker from the desk and printed Page 42 under
Vocabulary
. She told us, “All right. You all have your assignment; now get to work.” And she hurried back out.

Most kids put their heads down.

Arthur slapped my arm with the back of his hand. He pointed to two desks near the window and commanded, “Over there.”

I followed him to the more secluded area. I guess he was ready to talk about it, because he plunged right in. “This is for your ears only. Understand?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. Here’s what happened after you pulled away.” He took a deep breath and exhaled. Then he started talking, as if reading from a play script: “You pulled away. The police dog started going nuts around the truck, barking and scratching at the door like he’d found something. The sheriff lady told Warren, ‘You can open up the truck right now, or I can send for a search warrant. It’ll be here inside of an hour.’

“Warren told her, ‘Go ahead. Send for a search warrant, because I’m not letting you look in my truck.’

“So all three cops and the cop dog stayed right where they were, glaring at us. The sheriff lady walked over and asked me about you. She said, ‘Where’s that other boy?’

“I didn’t know what to say, so I played dumb. I said, ‘Who?’

“Warren jumped in. He told her, ‘That other boy wasn’t with us. I think he was a Boy Scout.’ ”

I laughed in spite of myself, though none of this was funny.

Arthur frowned and continued. “So for the next hour, we had three cop cars on our lot with their lights flashing, and three cops, and a freaked-out German shepherd. How many people do you figure bought Christmas trees from us?”

“None?”

“That’s exactly right. So this fourth car finally pulled up, an unmarked car, and this Detective Sergeant something got out waving a piece of paper. By now the cops were pissed off at
Warren because he’d made ’em do all that. They surrounded the truck. The detective sergeant showed him the paper. Warren read it. Then he said, ‘I’m still not giving permission, but I guess you’re gonna look in my truck now. It’s not locked.’

“The lady sheriff and the K-9 team pulled open the doors and climbed in. About ten seconds later, the lady reached under the driver’s seat and pulled up a metal pipe and a Baggie with some rocks in it.”

I had to interrupt because I didn’t understand. “Rocks?”

“Yeah. Crystal meth. Or crack. I don’t know. Could have been either one. Doesn’t matter, really—they’re both illegal. So the lady sheriff called out to Warren, ‘Do these belong to you, Mr. Giles?’

“Warren said, ‘Nope.’

“Then she looked at Jimmy and me, but she was still talking to Warren. ‘I must assume they could belong to anyone who had access to this truck. In which case, you will all need to come down to the county courthouse for processing.’ ”

Arthur stopped talking. He swallowed hard. Then he continued: “Warren knew it was over then. He told her, ‘No. Those two don’t know anything about it. The stuff is mine.’

“And that was that. They cuffed Warren’s hands behind his back. They leaned him against the truck and searched him. Then they stuck him into the back of the lady’s police cruiser. She handed us a card showing where they were taking Warren, and they drove away.

“I looked over at the Boy Scouts. They were all staring at us. I swear, if one of them had said anything, or blasted a boat horn, I’d have ripped his freakin’ head off.”

An angry flush crossed Arthur’s neck and face. “Me and Jimmy didn’t know what to do. People started pulling into our
lot again. Me and Jimmy started selling off the Christmas trees for forty, twenty-five, even ten bucks each. Whatever the customer said, we said, ‘Yeah, whatever. Take it.’

“About four o’clock, a lady from the hotel came walking over. She handed Jimmy a paper with a phone message on it. Warren had gotten himself out on bail already. He wanted to get picked up outside the courthouse.”

Arthur shook his head in admiration. “He had appeared before a judge, who had set his bail at five thousand dollars. Warren told the judge, ‘I’ll get you the five thousand dollars if you let me go back and sell my Christmas trees. That’s what I’m down here for.’

“The judge said no. He asked Warren what else he had as collateral. To make a long story short, Warren met with a bail bondsman and signed over the truck. The bail bondsman paid five thousand dollars to the court, and the judge let Warren go.

“Anyway, I took off in my car as soon as we got the note. I drove straight down Colonial Drive until I got to the courthouse. I was expecting Warren to be mad as hell at me, but he wasn’t. He was just standing outside there like it wasn’t any big deal. I rolled down the window and started to apologize, but he waved it off. He told me to slide over because he wanted to drive.”

Arthur stopped and swallowed hard again. “He said that he forgave me. He understood why I did it. He knew I meant well. All that kind of stuff. He made me promise to save him from hellfire, like he always does. Then we drove back out to the lot. Warren rolled down the window and said, ‘Get in the damn car, Jimmy Giles.’

“We pulled around to the hotel. That took no time, you know? We had never really unpacked. So we were right back on the road, Warren behind the wheel, heading for home.

“After a minute, Jimmy asked Warren, ‘What about the trees?’

“Warren said, ‘Eff the trees, man. We’re out of the tree business.’

“Jimmy asked, ‘What about the truck?’

“ ‘The bail bondsman can keep the truck. He can keep the trees, too. I ain’t never coming back to Florida. What do I care?’ ”

Arthur paused.

I commented, “It must have been a long drive back.”

“Yeah. It was kind of quiet. After Warren told us what went down in the courthouse, he didn’t have much else to say. And he had left all his Christmas cassettes in the truck.

“He drove until South Carolina. Then him and Jimmy bought a whole case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and proceeded to drink it. So I drove the rest of the way up.”

What could I say except “Arthur, I am so sorry”?

“Yeah. I know. So am I.” He added, almost imperceptibly, “Damn Boy Scouts.”