Interference & Other Stories (16 page)

“Lay off, Zack,” Dougie said from the edge of the cliff where he'd managed to get hold of the rope. He backed up several steps to get a good running start.

Gregory saw it coming, but there was no way to avoid it: as soon as Dougie was in the air over the river, Zack and the others were on him. “Red-belly! Grab him!” Gregory was on the ground, his T-shirt pulled over his head, a woody root cutting into his shoulder blade, the twins pinning his arms. He tried to kick, but Sam was soon sitting on his shins and holding his knees together and Zack was smacking his stomach, leading the chant: “Red-belly, red-belly, red-belly.”

By the time Dougie had climbed out of the water the assault was over and Zack had pushed Neil aside, grabbed the rope, and was set to swing out over the water again. “Hey, Dougie, tell your little homo brother that's the way we deal with chickenshitters. Ride the rope, you little homo, or go home to your mommy!”

Holding his hot and tingling belly, Gregory could feel the rising welts left by Zack's hands. Dougie grabbed him by the arm and said in a clenched whisper, “Why do you just let them do this? Why don't you fight? What's the matter with you?”

“Like I had a chance.”

“Oh, come on, don't be such a baby. Nobody made you come here.”

“Mom did.”

“Yeah, well, Mom's not gonna fight your battles for you, is she?”

Gregory pulled away to walk up through the field to his bike. Zack hit the water with a great thumping splash that echoed as a string of dying bass percussions, joined by the other boys' cheers.

When Gregory returned to the fence, he saw the laundry truck in the lumberyard, but his wondering at it was trumped by the realization that his bike was not where he had left it. He ran along the fence this way and that, looking to see if someone had maybe hidden it as a joke, but it was gone. Gone! There was no sense in telling his brother and the others. How would he tell his mother? He'd begged her for that bike instead of Dougie's old one. He let the tears come and kicked at the fence, tearing handful after handful of honeysuckle from the chain-link until a cloying sweetness filled the air.

“What's wrong, son?”

Gregory spun around. It was Margaret's father, standing right behind him in his white uniform; he was holding a camera with the biggest, longest lens Gregory had ever seen fastened around his neck by a strap. Gregory turned back to face the fence; he felt humiliated. Margaret's father! And here he was sniffling like a baby.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I'm sorry. I mean nothing, Mr. Fisher.” And now he was showing his bad manners, too!

“No, no. That's not what I meant, son. I mean is there anything I can do for you is all.”

Gregory turned to face the man. “Somebody stole my bike.”

“Are you sure? 'Cause I've been here awhile now.” He raised the camera. “Taking pictures of the birds. You like birds?”

Gregory toed the dirt, still trying to pull himself together. Fisher handed him a folded handkerchief, and Gregory blew his nose in it and then didn't know what to do with it.

“You just keep that.”

“I have allergies,” Gregory said. “They make my eyes water and I have to blow my nose.”

“Yeah, bad time of year for that.” He was looking through the camera at the bridge, adjusting the telephoto lens. “What color was this bike of yours? Blue?”

“Yes, sir.”

“With a basket on the front?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And colored streamers on the handgrips?”

“Yes, sir!”

“Come on! Get in the truck, let's get you your bike back.”

“Did you see him? Did you take his picture?”

“Come on, come on! We don't want to lose him. No. Go around the other side.” Fisher started the truck and it whined when he put it in reverse. Gregory sat on a high, torn leather seat with the stuffing coming out of it. There was a handle to grab hold of in the doorway. Fisher kept his left hand on the knob of the long gearshift that rose from the middle of the corrugated metal floor and bent at an angle. They lurched forward.

“Now, listen,” Fisher shouted over the engine. He shifted. “If we catch this guy, you leave it up to me, you understand?”

Gregory was noticing everything about the truck: the big, flat twin-paned windshield with wiper blades up top that had swept two boxy smiles in the dust; the small yellowing plastic Virgin on the dashboard; a clipboard holding a fat wad of pink and white papers; more papers tucked up under the visor in front of him. He had an exciting sense that he was in Margaret's world now, riding in this truck he watched for on Tuesdays, hearing its predictable whine and the sound of its braking as it made its way down his street toward and then away from his house. It was a strange sensation being inside all that familiar noise.

“You understand?” shouted Fisher.

Gregory looked at him. He had a ruddy face, high forehead, bony nose, and a protruding vein that curled like a purple worm from his brow to his crew cut.

“I mean it. I know you must be angry, but I saw this kid and believe me, he's no match for a guy like you.” He spoke loudly, eyes on the road. “A guy as strong as you would tear him limb from limb.”

Gregory knew he wasn't strong; at least he didn't feel strong. Still, Margaret's father seemed to think he was. Maybe he would go home and tell Margaret how he met a big strong friend of hers today, how together they had caught a thief and made him give his bike back.

As if he were reading Gregory's thoughts, Fisher said, “We're a team now. So listen to me, son. This is going to be clean. We catch up to him and tell him we know the bike is yours. We put the bike in the back of the truck and turn around. And that's all.” They rumbled over the bridge; he could see downstream to where one of the twins, Kenny or Neil, had just swung out over the water and let go.

A little way past the bridge, they turned onto a narrow road that ran beside a cemetery. Fisher slowed. “There she is.” He pointed with a movement of his chin. The bike stood there, propped on its kickstand, conveniently in a turnout big enough for the truck. “Don't seem like anyone's around,” said Fisher as they pulled onto the dirt and gravel. Gregory wondered where the kid who stole it would have gone; there was nothing to do around here. “Stay here.” Fisher hopped down, opened the back doors, put the bike in, and slammed the doors shut.

As they pulled back onto the road, Fisher reached across the open cab and tousled Gregory's hair. “What a team we make,” he said. “A regular Batman and Robin. What do you say, Boy Wonder? You've been through a lot. You want to stop off for some ice cream? My treat.”

Gregory thought that sounded good. He shrugged.

Fisher lightly slapped Gregory's thigh. “I would say you really proved yourself today. A lot of young men, even older than you, would have panicked when they saw their bike was gone, but you kept your head on your shoulders. I like that in a guy.” He gave Gregory's shoulder a pat before he shifted into fourth gear.

Gregory wondered what he'd done besides ride in the truck, but he was also thinking how great it was that Margaret's father thought so well of him. One day, when they were older, when the time came for him to ask Margaret to marry him, her father would think it was a neat thing. Who cared about Zack and his brother's friends and the stupid rope and all that babyish stuff? The wind blew warm on his face as he let a song play in his head:

 

When I want you in my arms

When I want you and all your charms

Whenever I want you

All I have to do is dream, dream, dream.

 

That evening Gregory sang every song he knew into the fan, some of them more than once. Unsettled and nervous, he sang to calm himself, all the while turning over and over the idea of himself as a kid—a guy—with special qualities, a thought that he liked. Margaret's father liked and respected him. Maybe Margaret would be his girlfriend. His brother and his friends could have their stupid rope and stand around punching one another like a bunch of knuckleheads. He was soon to be in love and all you had to do was turn on the radio to know that everything was better and that life was hardly worth living if you weren't in love. He imagined his voice like colored confetti carrying farther than ever, beyond the neighborhood, over the river, out of town.

The following Tuesday Gregory waited on the front steps until the laundry truck came down the street. He was disappointed to discover that Margaret was not in it. Fisher dropped off some laundry next door and waved to Gregory. “Want to ride along and give me a hand there, partner? I don't guess we'll rescue any bicycles today, but I could use some help with my route.”

Gregory grabbed up his various piles of baseball cards, collecting them in one block, and put a rubber band around it. “I have to ask my mom.”

She was getting ready for work, pinning her hair up. When he asked her she gave herself a stern look in the mirror, sighed, and came to the front door. Gregory hadn't told her anything about the bike; he could not have said why he hadn't, but he knew, somehow, that he shouldn't. She would probably have scolded him for leaving the bike someplace where he couldn't keep an eye on it.

“Afternoon, Ma'am,” Fisher said. “I wondered if my young friend here might ride along in the truck and give me a hand with some of these bundles.”

Gregory gave his mother a pleading look. She appeared uncertain and agitated.

“And you are?” she asked, squinting a bit.

Fisher instantly thrust out his hand. “Karl Fisher, Ma'am. I live close by, right there around the corner, in fact. You have a fine young man here. Fine young man.” He almost put his hand on Gregory's shoulder, but changed his mind.

“He's eleven. He's an eleven-year-old boy, Mr. Fisher.”

Why did she say that? Gregory thought. Why does she have to make me out to be such a baby?

“And a fine one,” said Fisher.

“You two know each other?”

Gregory caught Fisher's eye and said, “I go to school with Margaret. She's Mr. Fisher's daughter.” He could see surprise on Fisher's face that he hadn't told his mother about the bike. Then Fisher's face became approving, even, Gregory thought, admiring.

“Of course, of course. It's coming back to me now. You sometimes usher at the ten o'clock Mass, if I'm not mistaken.”

“First and third Sundays of the month. Knights of Columbus. So many want to pass the basket, we have to rotate. But as I said, I sure could use a hand. My Margaret is at some Girl Scout thing this afternoon, and I've got extra bundles to deliver.”

While Fisher was speaking, Gregory watched his mother's face change as she recalled that he was a widower raising his daughter alone. Gregory had once heard her talking with Mrs. Hunsicker after Mass. “Lord knows—and so do I—it isn't easy,” she'd said, “you've got to hand it to him.”

Fisher looked at his watch. “I'm already running late.”

“Please please, Mom. Please?”

His mother smiled. “He's such a dreamy boy, I guess it would be good for him.”

Why, why did his mother have to say things like that? How could she not be aware of how embarrassing her comments were? Were his feelings so unimportant to her? She was doing that thing that adults always did—talking about him as if he wasn't there, and as if he were a prize houseplant who needed just the right amounts of sun and water.

That's what I like about Margaret's father, thought Gregory. He's different. He sees who I am. Even right now, for example, he's looking right at me. He can see my mother is embarrassing me. At the same time, a tiny wave of fear went through him and he could not hold the man's gaze. It didn't make sense but he worried that somehow, in his shame at his mother's remark, he had been rendered as transparent as he felt—after all, it was this man's daughter he was often so dreamy about.

“I'm sure he'll be a big help, Mrs. Kessler.”

“Well, you let me know if he gives you any trouble.”

Fisher put his hand on Gregory's shoulder and with a gentle twist turned him toward the truck. “I'll have him back in time for supper, then. We'd better get moving; we're losing time. Thanks, Mrs. Kessler.”

For the whole first hour or so they hardly spoke. Fisher hopped in and out of the truck three or four times each block, popping in for a bundle, throwing a sack of clothes to be laundered in a wire bin in the back of the truck. Gregory started to get bored and wished he'd brought his transistor radio; then he started to worry that maybe he'd done something wrong. Finally, Fisher leaned across and punched his upper arm. “Know what I like about you?”

Gregory shrugged.

“You're your own man. I've been thinking. You never mentioned any of that bike business to your mother, did you? I could see that right away. Know what? That's what I like. A boy's adventures are a boy's adventures and nobody's business but his own, I say. You? I see you understand that.”

Gregory liked his way of looking at it. It wasn't that he was afraid to tell, it was that he didn't want his mother “minding his beeswax,” as she herself would have put it. Here was a grown-up who seemed to understand him better than he understood himself.

“I'll tell you something else I think you know already.” They were coming down a steep hill and Fisher ground the gears a bit downshifting. The truck stuttered and Gregory rocked forward and braced himself on the dash. “Your mother doesn't mean to embarrass you. She just can't help herself. One thing about mothers, son—they were never boys. Mothers love you and want what's best for you, but they've never been boys. So listen to your mother, son, but listen carefully because—and this is what I really like about you, that even at your age you know this—when she tries to talk to you about guy stuff, she don't know a thing about it. Am I right? You know that, don't you?”