by Jack Gantos
“I don’t think so,” I replied.
“You’re chicken,” he said. He hooked his thumbs under his armpits and flapped his elbows up and down. “Bluck, bluck … bluck bluck,” he squawked. “Chicken.”
I hated that. I looked at Betsy.
“Chicken,” she said.
“I am not,” I shot back and put a pepper on my plate. “Anything you can do, I can do, too.”
He grinned. “We’ll see about that,” he said and bit his in half. “Chew it up good,” he instructed and chewed with his mouth open to show me.
I took a bite. My tongue turned into a lava flow of pain.
“Grind the seeds between your teeth,” he said.
I did. The pain increased, but I didn’t twitch.
He finished the remainder of his pepper.
I finished mine. So this is what it’s all about, I thought. Me and Dad. One-on-one. Pepper-to-pepper. This is what Mom meant when she said her leaving would give me and Dad some time to work out the friction between us. But we weren’t going to be equals. One of us was going to end up on top and the other on the bottom.
“Another,” he said.
I took two and chewed them up. The heat spread to my lips and curled violently up into my nose. It was like sniffing battery acid. My eyes watered but my face was so hot the tears probably evaporated.
Dad took two and chewed them. He cracked his knuckles, then settled down and took a bite of chicken. Finally, it was time to eat dinner.
I took a bite of chicken and snorted loudly through my nose. Eating food was like throwing coal into a furnace. Flames shot out my mouth, nose, eyes, and ears.
Betsy laughed. “Your hair is curling,” she cracked.
“Can’t take it, can ya?” Dad asked. “Can’t keep up with your old man? You think you can. But you can’t.”
I closed my eyes and concentrated. Don’t give in, I thought. Don’t.
“I’ll give you a hint,” Dad said. “H … 2 … O.”
I only had milk. “Excuse me,” I whispered. I stood up and went to the kitchen. Once I was out of sight I rolled my head from side to side and let out a silent scream. My breath almost set the curtains on fire. I dove for the sink and stuck my mouth under the spigot and turned the handle. Oh my God! It was like throwing gasoline on a fire. I yanked my mouth away and almost knocked out my teeth.
I could hear Dad howling with laughter. “Water makes it hotter,” he sang. “Try a piece of bread.”
When I returned to the table he was still snickering. I just kept my eyes glued to the lump on his head.
“You’ve got to get up a lot earlier in the morning to beat me, kiddo,” he said.
I took a bite of rice. It tasted like ashes.
The next morning I was standing on the street corner. Since I no longer was driven to school by the maniac, I had to take the bus. I squinted up at the sun to try and tell what time it was. I couldn’t. It seemed like I had been waiting for a long time, and I didn’t want to be late. Mr. Cucumber was a force to be reckoned with and I wasn’t feeling very chipper. After dinner it had taken a long time for my stomach to cool down. I had spent half the night tossing and turning in bed.
“I need a watch,” I said. No sooner had I said it than I spotted one lying on the side of the road. It was tilted at just the right angle, so that the sun bounced off the crystal and hit me in the eye. “Seek and ye shall find,” I said. I was definitely becoming more powerful. Nothing could stand in my way. The pepper contest with Dad was just a little setback.
I picked the watch up and put it on. It was even set at the right time. I snapped my fingers. “Bus, arrive!” I shouted. In a second, the bus turned the corner and stopped in front of me. Not a bad beginning to a new day, I thought. I needed a boost.
After about an hour of Mr. Cucumber telling us how useless we were, my attention wandered to my new watch. Since I was sitting near the window, I moved my wrist so that the sun hit the crystal. I followed the angle and spotted a little patch of bright light on the far wall. Mr. Cucumber drifted in my direction, so I gazed up at him as though I were really listening. When he turned away, I adjusted the crystal so that I shot a sharp laser beam of light into the corner of his eye. With each blast I gave him, I concentrated on two words, migraine headache.
I had zapped him a couple good ones when he suddenly whipped around and aimed his pointer at my nose. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” he shouted, and bore down on me. He drove the pointer into my chest like a short, fat, bald, cucumber Musketeer.
I was struck dumb.
“Take the stick,” he commanded. His face was as tough and scuffed up as the toe of an old shoe. “Take it!”
I pulled it away from my chest.
“Give me your wrist!”
I held it out to him.
He unlatched the watch and set it down on my desk. “Stand up!”
I stood.
“Lash it!” he shouted.
“What?” I asked meekly.
“The watch. Lash it!”
Well, easy come, easy go, I thought. I brought the stick down and hit it squarely. Nothing broke.
“Again! Harder!”
I hit it again. And again. And again. I used both hands and brought the stick down with all my might. Crack! The crystal shattered. The hands and face flew off. Then all the little gears exploded apart.
“Enough!” he said, and snatched the pointer in midair. “Now pick all that up, sit down, and never pull a stunt like that a second time.”
I sat there. The other kids stared at me as I felt my power go down the drain. One kid unlatched his watch and quietly slid it into his pocket.
I took the bus home and got off early at an open field where there was a giant tamarind tree. I loved the tangy flavor of tamarinds and thought they would be strong enough to replace the burnt taste in my mouth still left over from dinner the night before.
I searched the ground. None had fallen from the tree. I picked up some rocks, looked around for houses, then threw them at the pods. A few dropped down. They were still a bit green, but I craved that sour taste. I sat with my back against the tree and ate a bunch of them until it felt like my face had curled inside out.
Down the street I stopped and drank from a public tap. The water was so cold and sweet. My mouth didn’t burn and it felt good to drink water again. I drank until my belly swelled out.
There was nothing else to do but go home. It was a long uphill walk and I took my time. The sun was out and I was sweating and suddenly my stomach began to roll around. I thought maybe I would have to burp, but it wasn’t that. I could feel bits of leftover peppers and green tamarinds and water mixing together like something fizzy and powerful. But it didn’t fizz up. I could feel it moving lower in my stomach, spinning around and around like something being flushed down a toilet. I began to walk faster. My legs felt tired. My knees were wobbly. And then I got the first hint of a loose feeling in my butt.
Oh no, I thought. The house was still two streets away. There wasn’t a bathroom until I could get home. I walked faster. When I passed Shiva’s house, he yelled out at me. “Hey. Do you want to go running?”
I didn’t even slow down. I was concentrating on keeping my butt as tight as possible. I couldn’t even shout back. I thought that if I yelled out, I’d lose control of my rear end.
“No,” I squeaked. “Gotta go.”
“You look a little sluggish,” he yelled. “Want some prunes?”
I shook my head no.
“Well, I don’t want to practice with you anymore.”
I couldn’t even apologize. I kept moving.
“What goes around, comes around,” he said. “Think about it.”
I was trying not to.
My book bag felt like it weighed a ton. I hiked up the street. My stomach rumbled. Concentrate, I told myself. You can do it.
I had one more street to go. I heard a car coming up behind me. It honked but I wasn’t going to get out of its way. I just waved m
y arm for it to pass around me. As the driver swung by, he shot me a dirty look.
Don’t mess with me, I thought to myself. I’ll pour pee on you. But just the thought of pee made my bottom feel weaker.
I picked up speed. I balled my hands into fists of steel. I squinted. I bit my pepper-blistered lip. But the feeling in my gut grew worse, and lower. My butt began to quiver. I can make it. I can make it. I can make it, I thought over and over. My face was all pulled together and my rear end was so tight I walked like one of those speed walkers with my butt drawn in and my arms and legs swinging wildly for maximum forward momentum.
And then it happened. My legs got spastic, and when I tried to step around a broken bottle, I stubbed my toe and lost concentration. Whoosh! The dam broke and I felt it running through my underwear and down my shorts and down the backs of my legs. I moaned and started to run.
Hal Hunt was standing by his mailbox as I sloshed by.
“What happened to you?” he yelled. Then the smell hit him. “Ugh!” he hollered. “You smell worse than your dog.”
I ran past our front gate. I couldn’t go into the house. Betsy would crush me. I ran down the driveway toward the laundry room. There was a little bathroom back there. Whoosh! It hit me again. I was frantic. I opened the bathroom door. I kicked off my shoes and pulled down my pants. I slid down onto the seat and leaned forward with my head on my knees. Whoosh!
“What power?” I groaned to myself, and slapped at the flies that settled on my ears. “I don’t stand a chance.”
The Pistol
The house kept stinking of natural gas. Dad had checked the pilot lights on the stove and the pipe connections running from the stove to the big silver tank out back. But he could not locate a leak. It was especially strong in the afternoon. We sniffed around like bloodhounds but only found decaying bugs, mold in the corners, and bits of cruddy food under the refrigerator.
One day it was especially bad and Mom was worried that if Dad lit a cigarette the house would explode like a tanker truck, so she made him smoke out on the front porch, while she turned on all the ceiling fans. He grumbled about being booted outside, but he went, which to me meant that he thought there was something seriously wrong.
“I just want to warn you about one thing,” Dad said, sitting back in his porch chair and blowing smoke rings up toward the light fixture. “A house filled with gas can be set off in a lot of ways. You don’t need a match to blow up this place. The way it happens is simple. Suppose the house is filled with gas and you come home. What’s the first thing you do?”
I tried hard to come up with the right answer. “When I come home,” I answered shakily, “I open the door.”
Dad nodded. “What’s the next thing you do?”
“I turn on the lights,” I replied.
“And the next?”
“I walk down to the kitchen.”
“Next?”
“I turn on the ceiling fan.”
Dad leaned forward and dropped his cigarette into his empty beer can and shook it around. “You’d be dead at least three different times,” he said, holding up three fingers. “First, as soon as you turn on the lights, the spark from the switch would set the place off. Kaboom! But let’s say you didn’t turn on the lights. So, you walk down the hall. The little metal cleats or nails on the bottom of your shoe might give off a spark on the terrazzo floor and kaboom! you are dead again. But let’s say you were wearing sneakers. Then when you turned on the fan, kaboom! Switching on any electrical appliance gives off a spark, and you are burnt toast.”
“Can I use a flashlight?” I asked. I wanted to read at night without blowing myself up.
“Yeah, a flashlight is okay. Just don’t drop it and break the little bulb, because the red-hot filament would set off the gas.”
“What if the fillings in my teeth rubbed together in my sleep and made a spark?” I asked.
“Don’t get carried away,” he said, and lit another cigarette. He exhaled slowly as though he were leaking like a broken gas pipe.
Betsy was the one who solved the mystery. She walked into the kitchen a few days later and caught the new babysitter, Missy, sliding Eric into the unlit oven. She had him in a big turkey-roasting pan while the gas was turned up full-blast. It was time for his afternoon nap and she was gassing him to sleep. “Breathe deeply,” Missy whispered. “For a deep, deep, deep sleep.”
Betsy screamed. Missy jumped back. “I’m not doin’ anything wrong,” she squealed. “It’s just a little gas.”
Betsy snatched Eric off the oven rack. “Wait till my mother gets her hands on you,” she said with authority. “She’ll have you thrown in jail.”
Missy turned and ran out the kitchen door and up the driveway and down the road toward the bus stop.
When Mom came home Betsy blurted out the story. “I was so angry,” she said, “if I’d had a gun I’d have shot her.”
Mom was horrified. “Eric may have brain damage,” she cried, holding him close to her face and kissing his forehead. She pressed his little belly and smelled his mouth and nose for gas. Maybe she thought he was filled with gas and if she let him go he’d float up to the ceiling like a hot-air balloon.
“Oh, he’s okay,” Dad remarked, making light of her concern as he jingled the change in his pocket. “He’s one of our kids, so he’s brain-damaged already.”
Mom managed a strained smile. “I’ll call the doctor tomorrow,” she said.
“Don’t you think we should call the police?” Betsy asked. “What she did was like a Nazi war crime.”
“It would just be your word against hers,” Dad replied. “If anything should be done, I’ll do it myself. Do you know where she lives?”
We didn’t answer.
“Well,” Mom said, “let’s not get mixed up in it. Let’s just be happy that we’re all fine.”
But Dad did not feel fine after Stumpy Hill’s house was robbed. They lived four houses down the street. A police inspector came by to ask if we had seen or heard anything peculiar the night before. I stood behind Dad when he answered the door. The inspector’s uniform was gray with red piping and he wore an officer’s cap with a gold police badge fastened above the visor.
“We don’t know a thing,” Dad replied to his question. “Didn’t hear anything. Didn’t see anything.”
“May I have a glass of water?” the inspector asked.
“I’ll get it,” I said, and dashed back to the kitchen. When I returned, the inspector had taken a seat on the porch and was casually telling Dad the story.
The robber had removed the small jalousie windows over the stove and crawled in. He went to the bathroom and tied a hand towel across his face. He went into the kitchen searching for money and removed a dinner knife from a drawer. Mrs. Hill was having a sinus spell and got up to get a tissue from the bathroom. When she returned to the bedroom, the robber was going through the dresser drawers. She screamed. He turned on her and tried to hold a pillow over her face. They wrestled. He tried to slash her, but she held his wrist and pushed him back against the chif forobe. Stumpy finally woke up and joined in. Mrs. Hill was worried about him, as he had recently had a heart attack and he was panting real hard. The thief had Stumpy pinned on the floor, so Mrs. Hill yelled out, “What do you want?”
“Money,” the thief replied.
She got her purse, but before she could reach in and remove her wallet, he snatched the purse and ran out the front door, vaulted over the porch wall, and vanished. After he left, Stumpy discovered that his fingers had been sliced from struggling with the knife.
The police had already found a bloody hand towel up at the corner. That’s why they were asking everybody in the neighborhood if they had seen or heard anything suspicious.
“No,” Dad repeated. “We didn’t hear or see a thing.”
The inspector finished his water and stood up. He reached into his uniform pocket and removed a business card. “If anything comes to mind,” he said firmly, “give me a call. My
name is Inspector Grander.”
After he left, Dad went into his office and made several telephone calls.
The next evening he came home late from work and called us into the dining room. He unwrapped a large package and removed two pistols.
“This one is for you,” he said to Mom. “It’s a .25 caliber revolver. And this one is for me. It’s a .38.”
I stared at them and stepped back. They were blue-block and big as a pair of crows. It was as though he had unwrapped something horrifying, like a human heart or severed hands. It scared me to look at them. He picked up the .38 and pointed it at the wall over our heads. I ducked down. It was the same as watching a horror movie that was too frightening. When I hid behind the seat in front of me, I had a moment of relief, but then curiosity got the best of me and I always popped up just in time to catch something brutal and bloody explode in Technicolor across the screen.
When I lifted my head again, Dad was putting the gun into Pete’s hands. I ducked again.
“Cool,” Pete said. He waved it around.
Dad snatched it away from him. “It’s not a toy,” he said. “It’s something to be respected even when it’s not loaded.”
“I’d rather not take the law into our own hands,” Betsy said and shook her head in disapproval. “Remember, those who live by the sword die by the sword.”
“I, for one, will sleep a lot easier with these in the house,” Dad replied and thumped himself on the chest. “And I bet Stumpy Hill wishes he had one the other night.”
Mom looked doubtful. “These things lead to accidents,” she said. “I just don’t think they are safe.”
“The only reason to be afraid of a firearm is if you don’t know how to use it,” Dad insisted. “So I’ll give you lessons. I just want to protect the kids.”
“I’ve never fired a pistol before, just rifles,” she said, sounding like she’d give it a chance.