Take Me There (5 page)

Ajax didn’t live by any kind of code, which made him more dangerous than any of the rest of them. “You got a tight little place here,” he said, looking around the garage. “Real clean. Make for a nice chop shop.”

“No!” I said, a little too forcefully. Gomez would die before
he’d let the BSB invade what he had built.

“No?” said Eight Ball.

I felt perspiration trickling down my back and wondered if he was planning to kill me. “We’re on probation. So are a couple of the other guys. We never know when the cops are gonna roll by.” Cops had never come by to check on us, but it was possible.

“I don’t think you ’preciate the situation,” Eight Ball said, running a finger across the side of the Range Rover. “’Splain it to him, Ajax.”

Ajax walked around Wade and me, circling us just like the DA had done. “You two done proved yourself to be stand-up—this time—and we appreciate that.” He stopped in front of us. His arms were massive, and I considered how easy it would be for him to kill me with his bare hands. “But what about next time?” he asked me.

“We got a major operation to protect,” Eight Ball explained.

“You kept your mouths shut,” Ajax continued, “but all you were looking at was some weak-ass time in juvie.”

Weak time! We almost got killed in juvie. All because of him. I bit my lip to keep the rage from pouring out.

“What happens next time?” asked Spider. “When you’re lookin’ at two to ten in County and the DA says ‘plea bargain.’ You suddenly remember you got the four-one-one on a hit-and-run in your back pocket.”

“There won’t be a next time,” I said, thinking that if I played it cool maybe they wouldn’t kill us, just beat the crap out of us to scare us into keeping quiet.

“There’s always a next time,” said Ajax. “Besides, we can offer you protection if you tatt up.” He pointed to the BSB tattoo, and it
suddenly dawned on me why they were here. They hadn’t come to kill us. They wanted us to join their gang—which was worse.

“Protection?” Wade said, suddenly smiling. He’d talked about protection constantly when we were in juvie, especially after what happened to him. Kept wanting us to run with the white supremacists because he thought they’d watch our backs, even though he knew they were the ones who’d almost killed him. He rationalized that they were just trying to warn us what could happen if we didn’t join the Brand. That’s what they called themselves.

I saw what happened to their “soldiers.” The grunts forced to do the dirty work. The ones most likely to get caught and have additional charges added to their sentence. One guy got sent up at sixteen to serve a year for breaking and entering, but he didn’t get out till he was twenty-one because he kept getting re-offended for stuff the Aryans made him do.

Ajax was circling us again. “You get protection, and we know you gon keep your mouths shut. It’s a mutually beneficial arrangement.”

“No.”

Spider got in my face. “What did you say?”

“Dylan, are you crazy?” whispered Wade. “I can’t go back to jail. Come on. They can watch our backs.”

I’d seen how they took care of people. I knew I was walking a dangerous line, but I also knew that if I didn’t stand my ground right now they would own me forever.

“We’re goin’ legit. There won’t be a next time,” I said to Spider. “We did right by you, now you do right by us.”

Spider’s hand was instantly around my throat, closing off my airway so I couldn’t breathe. I tried to cough, but nothing
happened. Just as my head started to spin, Eight Ball put a hand on Spider’s shoulder. “Kid’s right. Let him go.”

“What?” Spider said.

“Dylan knows he’s dead if he talks. Let him go. They got our backs.”

Spider loosed his grip on my throat and stormed out of the garage. “Go chill outside with Spider,” Eight Ball told Ajax and Two Tone. They glared at him but did what he said. Ajax turned and gave me a look of warning before heading out.

“Go find somethin’ to tear apart,” Eight Ball ordered Wade. My friend looked at me and shook his head, as if to say,
I warned you
. Then he disappeared out the back door that Kip and Nathan had exited.

Eight Ball looked around at the shop. “This ain’t just about rattin’ or not rattin’. You got skills,” he said. “I ’preciate you wantin’ to go legit. Was a time I thought about doin’ the same.” He glanced out the window at his little brother. Then he locked his eyes on mine. “But the world ain’t arranged that way. They say they want you to be different. But nobody gets out of the hood alive. Guys like us got two choices. Kill or be killed. You kick around my offer. It be the best one you ever gonna get. Think about it real hard.”

He left, and I looked down at my tightened fist to realize I was still clutching the wrench. I thought about Eight Ball’s words and wondered if they were true. Once you stepped a foot on the wrong path, was there no going back? Had the story of my life already been written? And if it had, then how would it end?

THE ROAD TO HUNTSVILLE
by D.J. Dawson

No story of my life would be complete without an explanation of small-town Texas football. In Quincy the whole town revolved around high school football. We knew other things were happening in the world, but come Friday night, they just weren’t important.

On Friday nights in Quincy the stores closed their doors and hung up signs that said the owners had gone to the game. Afterward you could get anything you wanted—sex, drugs, booze. A boy could become a god, even if his father was a simple pig farmer.

Or so he was led to believe. And this belief was a dangerous thing, because there was a larger world out there. A world that had never heard of Quincy, Texas.

But there was one teacher who wouldn’t make allowances. Her name was Betsy Jones, and she was a brand-new English literature graduate from the big city of Dallas who didn’t understand the Quincy Code.

She and I and Coach Rogers, who also doubled as the school principal and the superintendent, sat down for a powwow after my first failed vocabulary test. Miss Jones suggested I stay after school for tutoring. Rogers reminded her of my all-consuming workout schedule and
suggested it might be more effective if she modified her tests.

Miss Jones reminded him that her job was to educate me, and that she wouldn’t be doing me any favors by letting me slip by. She said that my ability to read and write would long outlive my ability to play football.

She said she knew I could do the work if I only applied myself.

But she was wrong.

I was a high school senior, and I could pick up almost any book in the library and read it out loud, but if you asked me the simplest question about what I had read, I couldn’t answer it.

There was nothing afternoon tutoring was going to solve.

I made it through most of that semester by cheating, lying, and keeping enough of my afternoon appointments with Miss Jones to get her off my back.

Until the week of the state championship.

On Monday she gave a pop quiz. On Tuesday she told me I had failed and that according to league rules I couldn’t play in the big game. She said she understood how upset I was, but now I had to take her seriously and one day I would thank her.

I went to Coach Rogers in desperation and asked him what could be done.

By Wednesday morning we had a new instructor
for senior English. Miss Jones and her stack of pop quizzes just went away.

That Saturday the Quincy Eagles won the state championship against the Doonville Bobcats. A scout from the University of Texas offered me a scholarship to play ball for the Longhorns.

I’d like to say that if I had known how soon my glory days of football would end, I would have made different choices, I would have traded the state championship for the chance at a real education. On the other hand, knowing how people grapple for what little happiness they can find, remembering what it felt like to bask in those stadium lights, I’m pretty sure I would have done things just the same.

W
HEN WE GET TO THE MOUNTAIN TOWN OF
F
LAGSTAFF
, there are pine trees lining both sides of the highway. A big change from the desert we crossed just last night.

“Grand Canyon, next three exits,” Wade says, referring to the map. “It’s only ninety miles to the north. We could be there in an hour and a half or less, depending on the roads.”

“It’s out of the way,” I say.

“We don’t have to stay long. I just wanna look at it.”

“That’s an extra three hours drive time, plus looking time.”

“Five minutes. I just wanna be able to say I saw it.”

“Wade, please.”

He folds the map so hard it rips at one of the creases. “It’s one of them seven natural wonders of the world. When are we ever gonna get another chance to see somethin’ like that?”

“Wade, we’re not on vacation.”

“You think they’re gonna come lookin’ for us at the Grand Canyon?”

“Wade!” I say. “We killed somebody last night.”

“No,” he says quietly. “You killed somebody last night.” He shoves the map into the glove box and stares out the window in silence.

THE ROAD

Life isn’t a destination.

It’s a journey.

But you gotta be

heading somewhere

or you’re just a mouse

going round.

Even if

the place you wind up

isn’t the place

you were bound.

I
T WAS THREE O’CLOCK ON
M
ONDAY, TIME FOR ME TO LEAVE
and go see my tutor. Working on my GED was a condition of my probation.

It seemed obvious Jess wasn’t bringing in her car, but I still had a hard time leaving. Part of me was relieved she hadn’t come. I didn’t know how to talk to a girl like Jess, and I would only embarrass myself by trying.

Part of me would have done anything to see her again.

I finally packed up, dropped Wade and Baby Face at home, and drove to the community center in north Downey where I was supposed to meet Miss Lane, my reading teacher. It had taken all my nerve to admit to Mr. Grey, my probation officer, that I’d never pass my GED if I couldn’t read the test. He was the one who set me up with Miss Lane. Nobody else knew. I told Gomez I had to do community service work on Monday afternoons, and I told Wade I had a girl.

I sat at a little table across from Miss Lane with the copy of
Poetry Through the Ages
that Mom had given me on my
sixteenth birthday, which I had spent in juvie.

Miss Lane and I had started with the alphabet, but that wasn’t my problem. I understood letters and sounds and I could decipher most words. It was just that when too many of them got together, they started dancing across the page, and when they broke the rules they were supposed to follow, which it seemed they did most of the time, I got completely lost.

I liked poetry, though. More space between the words.

Miss Lane knew I’d memorized poems from my book, so we’d started using those. She made me a special bookmark with a window cut in the middle. That way I could only see a couple of words at a time and they would stay in their places. I was working on “The Stolen Child”
and doing a piss-poor job of it.

“‘Come away, O human child!/ To the’—”

“One word at a time,” she reminded me. I hadn’t really been looking, just rattling the verses off from memory. “Look at the first word. Just the first word. C-O-M-E, what does that spell?”

“Come away.”

“You’re not looking.”

I snapped the book shut and slid it across the table. Then I crossed my arms and slumped in my chair like I used to do in school when I wanted the teachers to leave me alone. “This is stupid. We both got better ways to spend our time.”

“Have you written any more poetry?”

“I don’t
write
.”

“Have you
created
any more poetry?”

I shrugged.

“Poetry started as an oral art, you know. Lots of poets never
wrote down their verses. Homer created entire epics all in his head.”

“I’m no Homer.”

“Give me your notebook and I’ll write down your new poem.” She studied me and smiled. God, she was pretty—and persistent. “I know you have something new. I can see it in your eyes.”

“It’s personal.”

“Excellent! That’s the best kind.” She reached across the table and grabbed the notebook from in front of me. It was a beautiful leather-bound journal with my name embossed in gold. The first nice thing I bought myself after I got my job with Mr. Gomez, to celebrate my new direction in life and the fact that Wade and I had survived eight months in juvie.

Miss Lane opened to an empty page. “Go on, tell me.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

She held a pen toward me. “Fine, then you write it.”

“I can’t!”

“You mean you won’t.”

I could feel my face burning in anger. I remembered a bright red F– I got on a language arts assignment in sixth grade, the red writing all over the paper, and the boy who snatched it off my desk and waved it around the class, laughing, for everyone to see.

He wasn’t laughing after I broke his nose.

Miss Lane thumbed through the twenty or so poems written in her hand. I’d come with at least one a week for the past three months. Mostly short, rhymey, and sappy, but I was proud of them.

“You haven’t written anything,” she said. “That was your homework assignment. One line. That was all I asked.”

The leather journal was beautiful and perfect. There wasn’t a single word in my handwriting. It wasn’t right putting my chicken scratch next to her well-formed letters.

“I got it at home,” I lied.

“Fine. Bring it next week. But this is the last thing I’m writing for you. From now on you do it yourself.” She sat with pen poised.

“Whatever,” I said, but she’d won again, so I figured the sooner I got it over with, the better. “I know a girl with sea green eyes. She melts the sun, swallows the sky, then breathes out stars to kiss the night so guys like me will have some light.”

I felt like an idiot sitting there reciting a poem about one girl to another one. Besides, what had sounded clever in my head sounded stupid coming out of my mouth.