Dirt Road Home (15 page)

The truck stopped and a guard got out.

“Thanks for comin’!” I yelled.

The guard said something to Rhonda and gestured angrily for them to leave. I waved helplessly as Rhonda tugged at Carla’s arm. Then I felt someone grab my shoulder and spin me around. Mr. Pratt shoved me away from the fence so hard I almost lost my balance.

“What in hell you think you’re doin’!” he yelled.

I tried to get one last look across the field, but he shoved me toward the building again. “Get inside! You pull that again and you’ll be in solitary for a week!”

I started across the play yard just as the buzzer sounded. I smiled. I’d trade a week in solitary any day to see her again.

A week passed with no sign of a new boy. I kept watch over the field, hoping that somehow Carla would come back, but I knew it wouldn’t happen.

That evening I lay on my bunk after supper. I heard someone enter and looked over to see Caboose. He lumbered down the aisle and settled into his bed.

“What are you doin’ in here?” I asked.

“Paco’s actin’ strange,” he said.

I glanced across the aisle at him. He stared at the underside of the mattress above him. “What’s wrong with him?” I asked.

“I don’t know. I thought maybe he would’ve told you.”

“No. He hardly talks to me anymore.”

“Me neither,” Caboose said.

“I don’t get when the two of you would talk anyway. I never see you together.”

“The boiler room.”

“That makes sense,” I said.

“I get out in eight days.”

I took a deep breath and let it out. “That your eighteenth birthday?”

“Yeah.”

“You still serious about what you wanna do?”

“Yeah.”

“I wish you hadn’t told me all that. Maybe you should talk to your daddy or somebody first.”

Caboose made a grunting sound that was about as close as he came to a laugh. “Dad? There’s nobody left. They all moved away.”

“Where you gonna go?”

“Grandaddy left me and my brother his old salvage yard full of cars before he died. There’s a little house on it. We were always gonna fix it up.”

“Where is it?”

“Outside a town called Clinton.”

“I know where that place is! I used to go by there and get parts for our truck. That’s crazy!”

Caboose didn’t seem surprised.

“There’s still tons of cars,” I said. “Cars and trucks and just about everything.”

“I stole cars,” he said. “You could hide ’em easy in that place. My little brother just wanted to be like me.”

I heard someone enter the room and glanced over to see the floorwalker. He studied us for a moment and then stepped out again.

“I have this weird thought sometimes,” I said. “It’s kind of good and bad. Maybe after people die they can really know what you think. Like it’s really hard for me to tell my daddy that I love him, but I think one day after he’s gone, he’ll be able to know my thoughts. But he’s also gonna know about all the bad stuff I did too . . . But that’s fine. I just want him to hear me think about him.”

“I want my brother to know I got revenge for him.”

“I don’t think he’d want it. What good’s it gonna do him?”

Caboose didn’t answer me.

“And what good’s it gonna do you? It ain’t gonna make you feel any better. And I still don’t see how Paco fits into any of that. He ain’t gonna hang out with a killer.”

“I can’t believe I’m layin’ here talkin’ to you,” he said.

“I’m glad you did. I’m lonely as hell, Caboose. I gotta get out of here. You saw that girl, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I saw her.”

“Curled your toes up, didn’t she?”

“I don’t know about that.”

“She’s fine, is what she is. You think I can keep from jumpin’ that fence with somebody like that out there? Hell.”

“How’s the plan comin’?”

“I just need an initiation. I need somebody to go to the infirmary. Then I’m gonna see about those records.”

Caboose sighed. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Daddy always told me that bad luck came in threes. But at Hellenweiler it never stopped.

On Thursday, Leroy stepped up behind me in the lunch line. I was eating late and he was coming for seconds. “Jack’s back,” he said over my shoulder. The words hit me like a fist to my gut. I nodded slowly without turning around.

“I saw him walk into Mr. Fraley’s office a few minutes ago.”

“All right,” I said.

“Watch out, Hal.”

“Thanks.”

I got my food and took it to no-man’s-land. I sat next to Caboose.

“Looks like I’ll be the next person in the infirmary,” I said.

Caboose didn’t look at me. “What are you talkin’ about?” he said.

“Jack’s back.”

He stopped chewing and turned to look at the Ministers’ table.

“He’s not in here yet,” I said. “Leroy saw him go into Mr. Fraley’s office.”

Caboose turned back to his food. “Don’t go into the confessional,” he said. “If he comes toward you in the yard, come stand next to me.”

“How about I stand with you all the time?”

“We’re not a gang.”

“Man, you’re gonna be out of here in a week.”

“And let’s hope you get an initiation before I leave.”

“I guess I’m just gonna have to fight him on the play yard. That’s all there is to it. I’m gonna have to get it over with and move on. He can’t hurt me too bad out there. I might even get in a few good punches before he cleans my clock.”

“You’d be better off joinin’ up with Paco before that happens.”

I took a bite of food and considered it. After a few seconds of working all the angles, I realized he was right. Strategically, joining Paco’s gang would be my best move. But there were so many pieces to the twisted game that my mind was getting tangled.

“You got me covered for a week, right?”

“I’ll do what I can,” he said.

“Good. I’ll see you on the yard after class.”

“You don’t seem very worried.”

“I’ve already fought Jack in my head so much I figure I’m ready.”

I waited on the yard, watching the admin door. I was surprised when Paco casually stepped away from the Hounds and started toward me. The basketballs went silent on both ends of the court and all eyes were upon him. He stopped next to me and slid down the fence to sit like the time when we were generals.

“Things didn’t quite work out like you thought, did they?”

I sat down next to him. “What are you doin’, man? The whole yard’s lookin’ at you.”

“Yes, well.”

“Well, what?”

“First of all, I want to tell you about the story of the keys. It is really a very simple story.”

“The keys?”

“Yes. You see—”

“I don’t care about the damn keys. Jack’s about to stroll out here to kick my ass and I gotta get next to Caboose.”

Paco held a finger up for silence. “You see, Jack blackmailed a guard for two sets about six months ago. He can get those kinds of things. It was his idea that both gangs would have a private place to settle disputes one-on-one.”

“Great. Now I know about the keys. Are we done with your story of the day?”

“No. There is one more. My father is a rocket scientist for NASA. I had—”

“A rocket scientist!”

“Yes, I had—”

“That’s crazy!”

He looked over the play yard again. “I had a nice brick house in an upscale neighborhood. I had a mother who loved me and a young sister who is very pretty. I went to the best school in Huntsville. I was captain of the chess team and held the number two spot on the scholars’ bowl team. But you know what?”

I shook my head.

“I could not walk into a classroom without someone calling me a name or throwing something at me. They called me the stump. They called me the grease face. And I sat in the back row and said nothing while they whispered and looked at me and laughed. In the halls they thumped the back of my head and taped notes to my shirt. I said nothing. I did nothing. They stole my clothes during PE and I said nothing and did nothing. I never understood why these things were done to me. I was ashamed to talk to my parents about it. I had no friends to talk to.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“For a while, I was able to block the comments out so that they existed like static around me. I could sit at my desk and listen to the teacher through the static. My body became nothing more than a wrapper for one who lives totally in his mind. The thumps and prods fell on this soft wrapper without my feeling anything. I was still alive deep inside my head. And it was like that for a while. And I
thought that was how it was going to be. It was just my brain and what it absorbed through the static. But one day I began to hear a tiny, distant ringing noise. Like a mosquito. And this mosquito got louder and louder. Then it separated into strands of noise and became the jeers and mumbling and ridicule of the students, only an amplified, torturous version of it. I felt their pokes and prods magnified, like my skin had grown supersensitive.”

Paco paused and looked across the field and drew a deep breath through his nose. Then he let out the breath and left his eyes on the far trees.

“I snapped,” he finally said. “I began picking up desks and throwing them at students from the back of the room. They screamed and ran for the door. They tried to get out, but they couldn’t all fit through. All I had to do was throw the desks at the cluster of them.”

“Christ, Paco.”

“I hurt a lot of kids that day.”

I heard the admin door slam. I glanced up and saw Jack looking over the play yard. Mr. Pratt was gone.

“I’m about to have to stand up, Paco.”

“Give me a moment, my friend.”

Jack rested his eyes on me and studied the strange scene of me and Paco against the fence. Then he turned and walked over to the Ministers. Preston backed away while the others went to meet him.

“I don’t know if I have a moment,” I said.

“You see,” Paco continued, “I began as an acne-faced egghead. Who would know a kid like me had the potential to be such a violent youth? But it was there. It is in all of us
when you strip away dignity and hope. I brought that rage with me to Hellenweiler. And I used it again on the boy I beat with a rock.”

I listened to Paco while Jack talked to Preston and the rest of the Ministers.

“Paco?”

“I could have been a forester.”

The Ministers were all turned, looking at me.

“Paco?”

“Instead, I am this. I will always be this.”

Jack began walking toward me, the rest of the Ministers following.

“I gotta go, Paco.”

Paco nodded slowly and I began to stand. Suddenly he grabbed my arm and held me. “No, you stay here today, my friend. I’ll see you tonight.”

“What?”

But he pulled me down and stood in my place. Jack was almost to us and Paco took a step toward him and stopped. They were faced off, Jack’s cheeks twitching and the fire dancing in his eyes.

“Get out of my way,” Jack said.

Caboose had moved toward us a few steps and watched intently. Jack stared at Paco and pointed to Caboose at the same time. “I want both of you to stay out of this,” Jack said.

Paco didn’t respond.

“Hal’s not even a Hound!” Jack said. “He’s nothin’! He’s in no-man’s-land!”

“So am I,” said Paco.

Caboose took another step but Paco stopped him. “You heard him, Caboose. Stay out of it.”

Jack’s hands fidgeted at his sides.

“Hit me,” Paco said.

“What? I don’t have anything against you.”

Now the Hounds were drifting over. Paco looked across Jack’s shoulder at the rest of the Ministers. He raised his voice just loud enough for them to hear. “I’m asking you to hit me, coward.”

Jack started to turn and look back at his gang, but stopped and faced Paco again. The fire in his eyes was dimmer and something had gone slack about his face.

“Hey, Paco!” Tattoo yelled. “What’s goin’ on? This isn’t a Hound fight.”

Preston had moved to the front of the Ministers. “Hit him, Paco,” Preston said.

I studied Preston in disbelief. He looked at me, his eyes dancing with excitement and an idiot grin spreading across his face. I shook my head at his stupidity.

“Fight me or your friends behind you, Jack,” Paco said. “Looks like Preston’s already in line for your spot.”

Jack was cornered. The tension jerked into his face again and I could almost hear the angry hornets. He charged and rammed Paco against the fence. I rolled out of the way and got to my knees and watched. Jack began driving his fists into Paco’s kidneys over and over while Paco did nothing to defend himself. Slowly, Paco began to double over until he was on his knees. Jack backed off, surprised at himself. Caboose took another step forward, but somehow Paco saw this and signaled for him to stand back. Jack came at
Paco again and began hammering his face with the fury of an insane person. Paco’s big head went right and left with the blows, his eyes open the whole time, watching, waiting, while he did nothing. The Ministers cheered and the Hounds were a silent huddle behind them. I saw Caboose’s giant legs beside me, but I couldn’t take my eyes off the fight. I couldn’t believe the beating Paco was taking. Then he finally rolled over onto his side. Jack began cursing him and kicking him in the ribs. Paco doubled up and coughed blood onto the dirt. Suddenly Mr. Pratt was grabbing Jack and pulling him away.

“That’s enough, Jack!”

“You see who’s the man!” Jack yelled. “You feel that! Call me a coward!”

Jack struggled against Mr. Pratt and managed to turn and face the Ministers. “You all see that! Don’t ever get in my face!”

Mr. Pratt squeezed Jack to his chest and drug him backward. “I’m gonna have to take you to solitary for this, Jack.”

“The hell you are!”

“We’ll talk to Mr. Fraley about it.”

“Yeah, we will! Let’s go see him!” Jack let out a crazy laugh. “Then I’ll see every one of you at dinner tonight!”

I crawled over to Paco. Caboose stepped past me and bent down and picked him up and put him over his shoulder like he weighed nothing. Blood drooled out of his mouth and down Caboose’s back. I stood, wanting to help, but there was nothing I could do.

The Ministers and Hounds parted and let Mr. Pratt and Jack through. Caboose followed behind with Paco.
Before they made it halfway across the yard, another guard met them and motioned for Caboose to put Paco down. Caboose ignored him and kept walking. The guard started to say something but didn’t. Soon they disappeared through the administration door.