“Sorry I can’t take you all the way into school again, baby.”
“I’ll survive, Daddy,” she said as she turned and opened an umbrella. It seems the blind girl was the only one smart enough to bring one. Harvey pursed his lips as he thought about how far ahead in life this girl was than they. Lonetree watched as Harvey admired the girl, as most did without her knowing it.
“You still meeting that little—”
“Daddy, stop it. He was assigned to me, and that’s that. After he missed the last five days, he’d better make it today.”
Frank looked upset but nodded anyway. “The little creep was probably out drinking with his friends, and that was why he stood you up. If he tries anything with you, you tell me.”
Gloria took her schoolbooks and cane from the front seat and then pushed her dark glasses back onto her nose. “I am capable of handling Dean Hadley. Stop worrying.” She pursed her lips and then closed the door as she moved away. Her father lingered for the briefest of moments and then gunned the Dodge forward, sending another wave of water hurtling toward the teens lined up like a firing squad against the wall. Harvey was amazed as Gloria, the one who didn’t have the use of her eyes, blithely jumped up as the wave reached her. The others who saw it coming fell short, and more curses sprang from their mouths. The girl took a spot near Harvey at the end of the long line as she too waited for the bus.
“I love Dee Clark’s voice,” Gloria said as she held her books in one hand and the umbrella in the other. “Is that you, Harvey Leach?” she asked, tilting her head.
“How do you know who’s standing next to you without seeing them?” Harvey asked with a dumbfounded look on his acne-covered face.
“It’s no big mystery, Harvey; you always smell like french fries.”
Leach got a hurt look on his face but raised his arm nonetheless and smelled his armpit. “Really?”
Gloria smiled politely. “Really.” She leaned over and Harvey got the brief benefit of her umbrella and the soap that she used. Gloria always treated him nice, unlike the others. “A secret, Harvey,” she said with conspiracy lacing her voice. “There are far worse smells coming from others right now. More of a wet doggy smell.” She smiled at him.
Harvey laughed.
“Why listen to that Black Sambo music all the time?” came a sour voice from the front of the line. “Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, all them jiggaboos are ruining music.”
Harvey sighed, but Gloria’s left brow rose so high that it eclipsed her dark glasses.
“Uh-oh,” Harvey said as he tried to blend into the brick wall they were leaning against.
“That is something I would expect a dumbass like you to say, Jimmy Weller,” Gloria said loudly enough to be heard over the cascading rainfall. “If it weren’t for the Negro sound of Chicago and Detroit, the rock and roll you listen to today wouldn’t be anything special, but a backward asshole like you would never understand that.”
Harvey Leach found that the brick wall wasn’t as pliable as he had hoped. He saw all three boys—Jimmy Weller, Sam Manachi, and the skinny Steve Cole—lean forward from their space under the eave. Leach knew it was trouble, because the guys were averse to water in any shape or form, and now they were getting soaked in their interest of Gloria’s insult.
“Yeah, Sambos are about as worthless as that coward in the White House,” Jimmy said with a smirk.
Harvey rolled his eyes, knowing that the forbidden door had been opened.
“Yeah, chickenshit if you ask me. Letting the Reds push us around like that in Cuba. My dad says Kennedy needs to be shot for treason,” Sam Manachi added as he braved the rain to make his point.
As the radio played Bobby Darin’s “Beyond the Sea,” Gloria handed Harvey her books with a look that told him that hell was about to be set loose right there at the medical plaza in the middle of a rainstorm.
“Oh, don’t,” Harvey said as he fumbled with Gloria’s books.
“Something I have to do, Harvey.”
Gloria turned and strolled over with the use of her white cane to the front of the line and faced the tallest of the three boys, Jimmy Weller. He was smiling as she did so.
“Ooooh,” both Steve Cole and Sam Manachi mocked terror as she faced the much larger boy.
Harvey Leach had no choice. His dad would kill him if he got wind that he stood by and had the daughter of one of his partners accosted right there on Main Street without him lifting a finger to stop it. It was better to have punches to his face by these assholes than that of a full-blown assault by his dad. He and John Lonetree in his dream state followed Gloria. Harvey fumbled his books, her books, and the radio as he attempted to assuage the bully of the town.
Steve Cole saw Harvey and grabbed him by his coat collar. Leach’s eyes went wide, realizing it had taken all of three seconds to get killed. He was thinking that he should have taken his chances with his father.
Gloria opened her mouth to speak but was drowned out by a car’s engine as it raced down the street. The red Corvette pulled into the vacant lot and stopped, spewing gravel and mud in all directions. The driver everyone knew. He leaned over and rolled down the passenger window.
“Hey, you dumbasses, school’s been canceled!” Dean shouted out the good news. “They’re afraid half the old lady teachers will melt away with water hitting them.”
The kids all laughed at his reference to The Wizard of Oz. Even Harvey gave a nervous twitter, and Steve Cole laughed, still holding him by his collar. Now he was just waiting for Gloria to get them both killed.
“Yeah!” Jimmy said, pushing by a fuming Gloria. He ran to the car and started to pull the door open, but Dean held it closed.
“What are you doing?” he asked Jimmy, who stood aghast.
“Going with you. No school, Halloween … let’s do something.”
“Have plans. Sorry, dude.” Dean looked up past Jimmy and saw Gloria and the situation that little Harvey Leach was in. “What’s going on here?” he asked.
Jimmy swiped water from his crew cut and then turned. He laughed. “I’m about to teach that blind bitch a lesson on how to talk to her betters, and that little creepy burger flipper, Leach, is about to meet the end he so richly deserves.”
Dean took a deep breath and then shut of the car’s powerful engine. He stepped out of the car with his letterman’s jacket on and open to reveal a white T-shirt as he went around the Corvette and then to the wall with Jimmy laughing and following, thinking that Hadley was taking up the cause.
Gloria heard Dean’s approach and then turned on him. Her attack had changed direction faster than Harvey could ever have imagined.
“You didn’t show up Saturday or Sunday, and you missed school Monday and Tuesday. I thought we had a deal, Mr. Ass Wipe.”
“Oh!” Sam and Steve voiced at one time with smiles.
Dean ignored Gloria for the moment as he stood in the rain. His attention went to Steve, who was holding a completely frozen Harvey Leach.
“Let him go,” he said calmly.
Steve lost his smile as he looked away from the much larger Hadley to Jimmy, whose eyes went narrow as he saw his friend turn on them. Finally, Steve released Harvey, who dropped most of the books just as the song “I Can’t Stop Loving You” by Ray Charles started playing on K-Rave.
“We can do that thing today if you still want,” Dean said to Gloria, but his eyes never left Sam’s or Steve’s. Jimmy took up station behind Dean.
Gloria, instead of answering Hadley, turned until she could smell Jimmy’s aftershave, a sickly blend of Old Spice and the purloined morning cigarettes he and his two cronies had smoked earlier.
“If you ever say anything about Negro entertainers or President Kennedy again, I’ll gouge your eyes out, you little prick,” she said so calmly that everyone listening had no doubt that little blind Gloria would do just that.
“Gloria, go wait in the car. Harvey, give her a hand, will ya?”
Gloria huffed but started moving away with Ha
rvey assisting her in the right direction.
“Thank you, Harvey, for backing me up,” Gloria said through clenched teeth as she moved away with her cane swishing through the air ahead of her steps.
“You’re—” The word came out as a squeak, so he tried again. “You’re welcome.”
As Jimmy Weller watched Gloria leave, he turned and stepped in front of Dean. John Lonetree, instead of following Gloria and Harvey, was waiting to see what happened next. Dean looked at the three boys who stood defiantly, even ignoring the rain that was pummeling them.
“Lucky you came when you did. I was about to fuck that b—”
The punch in the face stilled Jimmy’s mouth. Dean’s strike was so hard that it slammed Jimmy against the wall before he could stop from falling. Sam was the first to react as he reached out and took Dean by the jacket and raised his fist to strike, but Dean brought his forehead forward first, connecting directly with Manachi’s wide nose. The boy screamed as blood shot from his nose and he went backward into Steve, who was in shock at how fast the day had deteriorated. Jimmy recovered faster than anyone would have thought possible. He had always respected Dean, but the straight-D-minus student had never feared him. He was up and had Dean around the neck, and then they fell into the mud and the gravel of the vacant lot.
“What are they doing?” Gloria asked a wide-eyed Harvey as he stood next to the passenger door.
“Dean’s, uh, saying good-bye, I think.”
* * *
Freekin’ Rowdy Rhoads stood at the bay window of K-Rave with the receptionist, Roberta, watching the teenage brawl across and slightly down the street as it escalated. The whole thing was being staged with “I Can’t Stop Loving You” as accompaniment. Freekin’ Rowdy turned to Roberta.
“If this is any indication how this day and night are going to go, I expect great things,” he said as he sipped his coffee with the whiskey chaser and watched.
* * *
Dean thought the gravel was going to rub his face off, but he managed to throw his head back as Jimmy was on his knees, hitting him from behind. The back of Dean’s head caught the boy square in the nose, and he flew from Hadley’s back. A bleeding Sam and a shocked Steve took over in a tag team.
The next thing anyone knew, Gloria had joined the fray. She quickly lashed out after she smelled Jimmy start to rise from where he hit the wall. Her saddle shoe caught him right on the side of the face—a glancing blow, to be sure, but well enough struck that Jimmy went back down. Gloria was thrown off balance, and she fell backward and into a mud puddle.
Two on one was never a good place to be. Dean thought his anger at the three boys would carry him through, but the sight of Gloria getting knocked down sent him into a rage where his motor functions were all but failing him. He thought he had had it until some of the weight was off him. Harvey had slammed his transistor radio into the side of Steve Cole’s head, sending him to the muck and quickly silencing Ray Charles in the process as the remains of his transistor radio fell to pieces in his clenched fist. That gave Dean an opening. He lashed out, catching Sam in the jaw and sending him sprawling next to Jimmy and Steve. He got up, dazed but alive. He grabbed Gloria, who surprisingly didn’t fight him, and they both ran for the car.
Harvey started to pick up the remains of his radio but instead kicked Jimmy in the jaw with his black Converse tennis shoe, which sent him for the last time back against the wall. He slid down into the mud and gravel for the second time, and this elicited a loud moan and oohs and aahs from the other eight witnesses at the bus stop. The legend of the great Halloween fight was born that day.
Harvey looked around in near panic and quickly decided that it was a good day to help his dad at Newberry’s. With one last look back and seeing Gloria and Dean spinning out as they left the vacant lot, Harvey ran all the way home.
* * *
Gabriel saw Harvey Leach’s relaxed face as the memory of that morning fifty-five years before started to fade back into his personal closet. He examined George, and George nodded that he was all right. They didn’t catch much of his interpretation of the events, but he was also a witness, like John, to what had happened to start that last day in Moreno.
“Amazing,” Damian said as he took a seat again after the exciting exchange. He was amazed that a prick like Dean had come to Gloria’s defense. He had to at least reevaluate his opinion of the earlier version of the president.
With the small dose of Adrenalin administered to Harvey, the old man started to come out of it. He opened his eyes and then stared straight at Kennedy.
“Didn’t work, did it? I told you hypnotism was for the weak-minded.”
Gabe slapped Harvey on the leg, a new appreciation for him after his semi-heroic acts on that morning. “You were right, Harvey; your brain is too active to be hypnotized.”
“See!” Harvey said, looking around at those in the darkened room.
“Gabe,” Jennifer said softly, “John’s still dreaming.” She looked at Kennedy with worried eyes. “He’s still there.”
“How can that be?” Julie said as she joined Leonard at the medical station to check Lonetree’s vital signs. She shook her head when she saw he was still deep in REM sleep. “Gabriel, this thing isn’t over. John’s going deeper on his own. He’s made a connection here—with what or whom, I’m not sure—but he’s still walking inside someone.”
“Heart rate is dropping,” Leonard confirmed, becoming concerned. “Blood pressure is also on the skids.”
Gabriel had expected John to come out of it on his own, but instead, he found himself reaching for the second syringe of Adrenalin. He had just uncapped the needle when Jennifer reached out and touched his hand, staying him. She shook her head.
“Are you sure?”
“I think he can come out if he wants, but he’s reacting to something. Whatever he is connected into wants him there.”
“The way things have been going, I don’t think that’s a good thing.”
Jenny still held John’s hand, and her eyes never wavered.
Gabe placed the syringe down and nodded. He was tapped on the shoulder. He turned and Damian was there with a radio in his hand. His face was grave. “It’s the mobile med unit. They report the president’s blood pressure has dropped severely. They say any lower and they’ll have to call in the helicopter and evacuate him.”
“Coincidence?” Julie asked, joining them. Even Harvey was awake and listening from his chair. He was rubbing his arm from the shots he had taken, but he was now worried about the big Indian.
“We learned the hard way there’s no such thing,” Gabe said. He came to the decision Jenny hoped for. “Let John go.”
“I think I’ll step over here with the little black guy,” Harvey said as he bobbed to his feet like a prizefighter getting off the mat. Julie helped him to a chair so he wouldn’t trip in the dark.
“George, are you picking up anything?” Gabriel asked as he and Jenny took their seats.
“I know that John’s out there. I feel he’s a little scared, but not in the way we’re used to. It’s like roller-coaster scared, if you know what I mean.”
* * *
John could swear he felt his stomach being left behind in the road somewhere as he was somehow squeezed in between Gloria and her driver, Dean. An impossibility, he knew, but here he was sandwiched center line between the two, and every time Hadley shifted gears, John braced for the inevitable pain of his nuts being crushed. But the proper gear was hit without any pain. He would have to force himself to stop flinching.
“If you don’t slow down, you’re going to kill us. You may not feel it, but my ass does. Every time you take a corner, you almost lose it. It’s wet!”
Even John, who wasn’t really there, breathed a sigh of relief when Dean finally down shifted and the powerful sports car slowed.
“I’m sorry you got into a fight with your friends, but I didn’t ask you to help!”
“They’re not my friends, and you’re welcome. Y
ou know, you may think you’re so smart, but you’re really not,” Dean said as he slowed to take a corner and then immediately sped up. “You think that every action can be explained with logic and reason, but it can’t.”
“What does that mean?” she asked, finally turning his way as the Corvette moved down the road.
“It means that old saying that he would never hit a girl that you were hoping would save you in the end. Well, it wouldn’t have. I know that creep Jimmy Weller; he would have hit you and not thought twice about what would happen to him,” Dean said as he brushed his wet hair back.
Lonetree raised his eyebrows. Gloria opened her mouth to say something and then suddenly closed it. She opened it again and then closed it just as fast.
“I guess the words thank you are stuck in there, huh? The way you keep opening that mouth and closing it.”
Again, she turned her head and faced him. “Thank you.”
“I hope poor Harvey got away.” Dean laughed. “I forgot all about him.”
Gloria turned away, wishing for the five millionth time she could see the rain. She smelled it. It was to her a wondrous thing to smell rain, and she could only imagine seeing it.
Lonetree smiled as he picked up on her thought. Not exactly the way she thought them, but close enough that John knew that she was happy for this brief moment.
“Did you bring that key?” Dean asked, drawing John’s close attention.
“Yeah, my dad’s in El Monte setting up some entertainment for the bar for the end of November. He left the keys on a hook. He would never suspect that his own little girl is a klepto.” Gloria got a concerned expression on her face and faced him angrily. “Why are we up here?” she asked. “I smell eucalyptus trees, and they only grow in one place. So, I’ll ask again, why are we here at your home? It’s the only eight-bedroom house surrounded by eucalyptus trees, so tell me why!”
In the Still of the Night--The Supernaturals II Page 30