Bystander

by James Preller

  “Oh, he cares, Eric, don’t ever stop believing that,” she answered. “He loves you and Rudy very much.”

  “But why?” Eric asked, feeling it unnecessary to fill in the rest.

  “When things got hard, he just wasn’t equipped,” she told her son. “He had difficulties—mental issues—that we kept under control with medication. But when he went off his meds . . .”

  None of this was news to Eric. His mother had already told him everything, answered every question, countless times. Eric never understood why a sick person would stop taking medicine. It made no sense. But his mother said it was quite common, because most pills came with very unpleasant side effects. “I think your father started thinking he could handle it, you know, without the medicine. He kept hoping, you know. All he wanted was a normal life. So he stopped. I suspected, but he hid it from me. And after a while . . . he changed.”

  “I remember,” Eric lamented.

  “He did the best he could,” his mother said. “He still does.”

  “Will he ever get better?”

  Her lips tightened. She looked to the gray Atlantic. Seagulls wheeled near the surf, diving at the whitecaps. “I wish I could make it easier for you.”

  “But if he took his medicine—”

  “It’s not that simple,” she replied. “The drugs dulled him. They controlled the bad parts. But they also carved away something from his spirit, the things that made him . . . him. You know?”

  Eric didn’t answer for a while. “I don’t know if I’ll ever understand.”

  “I know, honey,” she said, and wrapped an arm around his shoulder. “But he’s your father, Eric. You only get one in this life. All you can do is love him, even if it breaks your heart sometimes.”

  “I guess,” he murmured.

  She slipped off her shoes and stepped off the boardwalk onto the cool sand. “Come,” she said.

  “It’s been a crap year,” Eric confessed.

  His mother held her hand flat above her eyes, shielding them from the sun. “Are you gonna be all right?”

  Eric nodded. “I think so, yeah.”

  She slipped her hand around his arm. “You are growing up, you know that?”

  “Every day,” Eric said.

  “Just don’t be in such a hurry. Hey, I’ve got an idea. See that building with the big glass windows? That’s the Jones Beach restaurant. I haven’t eaten there in years. Let’s go eat some lobster. It’ll be a treat. What do you say?”

  “Lobster?” Eric repeated. “I’m always up for lobster.”

  LATER THAT AFTERNOON, WHEN THEY PULLED INTO THE driveway, Eric saw three boys knocking on the front door: Pat, Hakeem, and Cody. They had Eric’s bicycle with them, lying on the front walkway. It was a crippled wreck, with bent forks and mangled tires.

  His mother looked searchingly from the boys to the bicycle. “Eric?”

  “I know these guys, Mom. It’s okay. I got it.”

  His mother went inside, with just a sharp nod to the group. Eric stood eyeing the three boys.

  “We were thinking, that is, me and Hakeem and Cody, that, um—” Pat floundered.

  “We found out about what happened to your bike,” Hakeem explained.

  “It’s not right,” Cody stated, glancing down at Eric’s feet. He looked up. “We told Griffin that he went too far.”

  “You did? How’d that go over?”

  Hakeem smiled, tilted his chin to Cody.

  “We kind of talked Griff into letting us take it back,” Cody answered, rubbing the knuckles of his right hand. “It was their idea. I just came as backup.”

  “Did you have a fight?”

  Cody shook his head. “No, no, we’re still good. Griff and I have been friends for a long time. We just needed to air things out a little.”

  “Still,” Eric said, “Griff must have been angry.”

  Hakeem glanced at Pat. “You know, in some ways, he didn’t even seem surprised.”

  “We told him it wasn’t funny anymore,” Pat said.

  “Wow, that’s, like, really—thanks,” a tongue-tied Eric replied. “I never expected this.”

  “We want to help you fix it,” Pat piped up. “Do you have any tools in your garage? Otherwise, I’ve got some at my house. We could bring them back there.”

  “It’s going to need a couple of new rims, probably new brake cables,” Cody said, stepping toward the bicycle. “I think I can bend these forks back into shape, but it looks like the seat got slashed. I think I’ve got an extra one at my house. The derailer looks okay. . . .”

  “Cody is an ace mechanic,” Hakeem said. “He’s going to build his own car someday.”

  Cody pulled a dirty bandanna from his back pocket to wipe the grease from his hands. “That’s right. A Ford Mustang. You laugh now, but we’ll see who’s laughing when I’m—eerrrrrrpp!—chirping out, tires smoking, doing neutral drops in front of your house.”

  Hakeem and Pat laughed.

  Cody looked at Eric, shrugged, palms up. “What can I say? I’m a motorhead. I’ve got three older brothers. We have a shed filled with old bicycles and spare parts. I think we can patch something together without too much trouble.”

  Eric listened to him with something close to amazement. When Cody talked about forks and brake cables and Ford Mustang carburetors, he was like a different person. A happier, more confident one.

  Eric couldn’t refrain from asking, “Why are you helping me?”

  Cody took off his cap, scratched his head. “I like working on bikes,” he said. “Besides, maybe after we get this piece of junk working again, you and me . . . we’ll be even. Look, I don’t know about you and Griffin, or you and Hallenback, or anything else like that. I’m not going there. I just want you and me to be square. Straight lines, you know. Leave the past in the past.”

  “Sounds good to me,” Eric agreed.

  Cody nodded, the business concluded. He said to Pat and Hakeem, “I’m going with Griff to see the car show tomorrow. My brother said he’d take us. You interested?”

  The boys demurred, made excuses why not. Eric sensed that it was Griffin’s presence that put them off. Maybe that was just wishful thinking. Or maybe the tide was turning. Maybe things were going to change. The boys made arrangements to work on the bike sometime after school next week, Monday or Tuesday. It was up to Cody, really, since he was the one, as he said, “with the skills and the drills.”

  After they left, a semidazed Eric wandered around to the back of his house. A soft, cleansing rain began to fall. He hit speed dial on his cell phone.

  “Hey!” Mary sounded happy to hear from him.

  “You wouldn’t believe who I was just hanging out with,” Eric opened. Then he said, “Listen, are you going to be around tomorrow? I need your help with something. . . .”

  Mary was dead set against it. But Eric was insistent. He was like his mother that way; his mind was made up.

  Then the clouds broke, and buckets of rain poured from the sky.

  31

  [even]

  ERIC FOUND THE NUMBER IN THE PHONE BOOK AND dialed.

  “Yeah?”

  “Um, hi, this is Eric. Is—”

  “Griff! Phone!”

  It was a male voice, the father.

  “What?” It was Griffin now, but with the same unfriendly tone as his father.

  “It’s Eric.”

  There was a pause on the other end, a moment of silent appraisal. “So?”

  “I need to talk to you. Can I come by tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Unh-unh, mañana doesn’t work,” Griffin answered. “I’ll be out most of the day.”

  It was the confirmation Eric needed.

  “After dinner, maybe,” Griffin suggested.

  “Nah, never mind. It can wait.”

  “Oh no, you can’t do that,” Griff protested. “You called me, remember? Now you’ve got to say what it’s about.”

  So Eric flat out let the words fly: “I’m not going to steal for
you. It’s a stupid idea.”

  “If that’s the way you want it,” Griffin said. “It’s your life.”

  “I know about the break-ins,” Eric said. He was bluffing now, playing a hunch. He didn’t know anything, but he wanted to hear Griffin’s response.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You have to stop, Griffin,” Eric warned him. “You’ll get caught.”

  “Nope, I don’t think so.”

  So there it was. Just as Eric suspected. Griffin Connelly had graduated from stealing birthday money to petty burglary. It was more sad than surprising.

  “Why do you care, anyway?” Griffin asked.

  It was a fair question.

  “Because I do,” Eric answered.

  “Sure, like I believe that.”

  Eric sighed. He suddenly felt tired, so tired. The seconds yawned past.

  “Well,” Griffin asked, “is that all you wanted to say to me?”

  “That’s pretty much it.”

  Griffin snorted. “And that’s just lame, if you ask me.”

  “I guess I’m lame, then,” Eric said with a shrug in his voice. “See you around, Griff.”

  Click.

  ERIC MET MARY AT ONE O’CLOCK THE NEXT AFTERNOON, down the block from the Connellys’. They slowly walked past the house. “Driveway is empty,” Eric noted. “I don’t see any lights on. Nobody’s home.”

  “Eric,” Mary said. “This is such a bad idea. I mean, in the history of bad ideas, this is right up near the top, next to, like, I don’t know, veggieburgers and spandex unitards.”

  Eric smiled, not dissuaded. “I have to do this. He stole something from my brother, and something from me. I want it back.”

  “It’s just money, Eric. And a stupid CD—you can burn another one.”

  “It’s more than that, Mary,” Eric answered. “I need to do this.”

  “And if you get caught?”

  “I won’t,” Eric promised. “Griffin will be gone all day. I called the house five minutes ago. No one’s home. I’ll be in and out. Besides, I’ve got you on lookout.”

  “I’m going to ring the bell, just to be sure,” Mary said. And she did, marched right up there, and rang more than once. No one answered. Mary seemed disappointed.

  “Griff once told me they always leave the back door open,” Eric said.

  Mary nodded in agreement. She knew the same thing. “Before you go in, check the garage. Make sure the car isn’t parked in there.”

  The house had a detatched garage behind the house, at the end of the driveway. Eric glanced toward it, distracted, and nodded.

  “Wait! Give me your cell phone,” Mary said.

  “Why?”

  “Just do it,” Mary demanded, holding out her hand. She punched her phone number into Eric’s cell, answered her phone, then hit the mute button. “Here.” She handed his cell back to him. “Now we’re connected. It’s a one-way intercom. If you have any problems in there, just give a shout. I’ll hear you.”

  “Okay, cool.”

  “I saw it in a movie once,” Mary explained. “But everybody in it died anyway.”

  “Nice,” Eric murmured. He jerked his head down the road. “And what about—”

  “If anybody shows up, I’ll be doing push-ups on the doorbell,” she promised.

  Eric turned to leave.

  “Eric, please. This doesn’t prove anything,” Mary pleaded.

  “Sorry.”

  The back door opened soundlessly. Eric stepped into the house and waited, every muscle taut, like he was five years old again and caught in a game of Freeze Tag. The door had opened into the kitchen. Dishes were piled in the sink, the morning paper was on the table, open to the funny pages.

  The coast was clear. Eric silently made it to the main hallway, then up the stairs. His body quivered, fingers trembled. He wanted this to be over as quickly as possible.

  When he reached the top step, Eric heard it: one loud, thunderous snore. Then silence.

  Eric pinned himself to the wall, like an exotic bug with a needle stuck through it. He didn’t move, he didn’t breathe. The snore came from a bedroom down the hallway. Eric peeked around the corner; the door was ajar. It must have been the master bedroom. Mr. Connelly was in there, sleeping off a night shift.

  Another great, gasping snore shook Eric’s insides. His stomach did cartwheels. Idiot, he cursed himself. In his haste, Eric had neglected to check the garage and now he was paying the price. But instead of leaving immediately, just easing down the stairs and slipping out the front door, Eric waited, paralyzed.

  The snoring was unvarying, on and off in regular intervals.

  Eric hesitated at the top of the stairs, trying to make a decision. Directly opposite him, there was a bathroom. The snoring came from a room to the left. The other door was probably a linen closet, Eric figured. Griffin’s door was five feet to Eric’s right. Screw it, Eric decided, mustering his courage. This would only take a minute.

  Once he stepped inside Griffin’s room, Eric untied his sneakers and set them down on a dresser. He moved purposefully to the wooden box that Griffin had shown him on Eric’s first visit to the house. “My souvenirs,” Griffin had called them. Eric realized what they were, little keepsakes, mementos of past triumphs. A pin lifted from the jacket of another student, a tooth knocked out in a fight, a small American flag taken from a dog’s grave, various hood ornaments snapped off cars, small items from the cars he burglarized, a bunch of old coins, and more.

  The guy was as sentimental as a punch in the face.

  There was a fat wad of cash, rolled up in a rubber band. Eric unrolled the money, counted out twenty-seven dollars, replaced the wad—now a touch lighter—and returned the box to its exact spot on the shelf.

  He glanced around the room. Where’s the CD? Eric found a disordered stack by the bed stand, a random clutch of music. Eric wondered if they had all been stolen—a tough way to put together a good collection. He found the slim, homemade case to his father’s CD. It was empty. Next to the iHome, there was a small CD player. Eric stealthily moved to it, pressed the open button. And there it was, the CD his father had made for Eric. Griffin must have been listening to it, even after he had made fun of Eric for it. What was it he said? “I have to tell you, buddy, very weak.”

  Why is he like that? Eric could never understand.

  He was almost out the door, almost home free, when he had one last thought. Eric found a scrap of paper and a pen by the desk. He glanced out the window. There was no one around; Mary had wisely moved a few yards down the block, out of sight. He scribbled a few words on a piece of paper—“NOW WE’RE EVEN”—and tucked it into the wooden box on the shelf.

  Eric moved to the door, his hand squeezing the knob. Eric tilted his head, listening. Something had changed. It wasn’t that he heard a sound, it was what he didn’t hear: snoring.

  He put his ear to the door, straining for any sound.

  He should have snored by now, Eric thought.

  Then—whooosh!—the toilet flushed.

  Mr. Connelly, two hundred seventy-five pounds of fat, mean ex-linebacker, had been sitting on his throne about fifteen feet away.

  Eric made himself small behind the door.

  Maybe he breathed, he couldn’t be sure. Every muscle in his being, every nerve fiber, every cell, was focused on listening. He heard muffled sounds, water running, the clank of something against the wall, feet (slippers?) shuffling on the tile, the bathroom door opening. Thump, thump, thump.

  The giant was not only awake. He was—fee fi foe fum—headed downstairs.

  32

  [door]

  ERIC’S FIRST THOUGHT WAS GRIFFIN’S WINDOW. HE COULD climb onto the narrow portion of roof, figure out a spot to jump down without breaking his ankles, then hobble away. Eric wasn’t crazy about that option. There had to be a better way.

  The front door was at the bottom of the stairs. Eric’s mind seized on that door, the gateway to his freedom. He could
probably run down the stairs, noisy as anything, fling that door open, and go, man, go. Mr. Connelly wouldn’t have time to react.

  Eric crept out of the room. He listened from the top of the stairs. Silence. Wait, no. The sound of a television—some sitcom show with phony patter and canned laughter. In his stocking feet, Eric took one step, then another. Fortunately, the top half of the stairs was obscured by a wall. But the wall gave way to an open banister about midway; heading down, Eric would be totally exposed.

  He heard the shuffle of footsteps, the sound of a refrigerator opening, a glass set down on a table. Eric could picture huge Mr. Connelly, sitting at the kitchen table, elbows splayed, still in his tattered bathrobe.

  A mental map of the house formed inside Eric’s head. From the midpoint of the stairs, there was a clear view into the kitchen. That was the danger area. But it only lasted for about four steps. He took a deep breath. He decided that the best plan was to swiftly and silently walk down the stairs, don’t hesitate, don’t look around, don’t so much as glance into the kitchen. Chances were, Mr. Connelly wouldn’t even see him. The guy’s face was probably buried in a bowl of Raisin Bran.

  His heart thumped loudly, like a John Bonham drum solo thundering inside his chest. He began his descent. Eric made it to the bottom of the stairs when the father called, “Griff? When did you—?”

  A jolt of adrenaline shot through Eric’s body. He hit the door running, pulled open the inside door, pushed the outside screen door—bang, clang—but it didn’t open. Panic set it. He heard the chair scrape across the linoleum floor, the brute heft of a man laboring to stand.

  Locked, locked! There must be a switch, a thingy, a something to push or slide or . . .

  There! The door swung open. Eric jumped the front porch steps and flew—absolutely flew—down the street. He turned left down one street, cut through a couple of yards, then turned down another street, then another, never looking back, just running hard, not caring who saw what, just putting as much distance between himself and the Connellys’ as possible.