by Greg Lyons
‘Avery McShane,’ she said, ‘when are you going to grow up?’
I got up and swatted away the big clod of grassy dirt from my knee.
‘I figure when I reach five feet,’ I replied. ‘At least that’s the plan.’
‘Well, I’m already five feet and I’m too grown-up for this nonsense.’
She looked mad, but I knew she wasn’t. Denise was my girlfriend. I knew it, and everybody else in Campo Mata knew it. She seemed to be the only one who didn’t know it. At least she didn’t act much like she knew it.
‘Yeah, well, you might be taller, but I’m still older than you,’ I replied. ‘By almost three months. So who’s more grown-up?’
‘You are so immature,’ she hissed back. ‘You’ll still be a kid when you’re forty, if you live that long.’
She stuck her tongue out at me, then ran away in the direction of her sister’s screams. I hoped that Billy would give up the chase before Denise got there. Two mad Charles twins against one skinny Billy didn’t seem like good odds. Still, all in all, I was happy to have had a nice chat with my girlfriend.
The party had been going on for hours. It was nearly midnight, and that’s when all the fireworks were set off. The adults were laughing and talking at each other in really loud voices like my mom would talk to my grandma who was hard of hearing. The fireworks show was set up on top of the Campo Mata Circle. Our house was one of ten that lined the outside of a road that was a perfect circle. There was a big grass field in the middle on the other side of the road from the houses. It was mowed once a week by one of those tractor mowers. A long cement sidewalk led straight up the middle of the field and ended up at the steps in front of a raised concrete structure that the pilots could see when they flew over the camp. It was about twenty metres across and looked like a huge cement coin lying flat on the ground, except instead of the head of some famous president there was a big red star painted on it. The star was the symbol of the oil company that my dad worked for. The Circle is where all the biggest celebrations took place, and it was perfect for the fireworks show. By now everybody was standing in the field around the Circle.
Since many of the people who worked for the oil company were engineers, they spent a lot of time and money to make sure that the fireworks show was fantastic and that it’d go off without a hitch. The engineers had it all planned out. They would only have to light one fuse and the fireworks would start shooting up, one at a time, for almost ten minutes. Since my dad was the Chief Engineer – and since we were the hosts of the party – he got to light the fuse. Someone had already turned off the music, so when my dad flicked on his lighter, the crowd hushed and everything got real quiet. My dad bent down and lit the fuse and the sparkly flame started working its way across the floor of the Circle to the piles of waiting fireworks. It got closer and closer and then it all began.
The fireworks were great. Some would go way, way up in the sky before exploding in a round shower of red, or white, or blue. Our eyes always saw the explosions before our ears heard them. It went on and on, and I hoped it would never end. In between each burst it would get dark and you couldn’t see anyone, even the person next to you. The fireworks were so bright that they made it hard to adjust your eyes when they weren’t going off. When they exploded you could see the bright, smiling faces of all of the people looking up, most of them with their mouths wide open. In one flash I saw Billy standing on the other side of the Circle next to his parents, in another I saw the Charles twins hugging each other and looking up. And then in another flash I saw him. He was just standing there, right behind Todd. He was looking straight at me. It was Pablo Malo.
When the next set of fireworks lit up everything, he was gone. I wondered if I had just imagined it. I had taken a few sips of a Cuba Libre that my dad forgot about earlier, so it could be that I had gotten a little drunk. I tried to convince myself that it was just my imagination, but I wasn’t fooling myself. It was him all right and he wanted me to see him. If he was trying to scare me, it was working.
The party was over and everybody was gone. Folks would be coming by tomorrow to help clean up, but most of them had some sleeping-in to do first. I was in the bathroom getting into my PJs. When I’d thrown my clothes in the laundry hamper, I moved over to the sink to brush my teeth. I looked at myself in the mirror. Normally, after a party like that, I’d have a smile on my face and be all ready to get a good night’s sleep. But I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to sleep too well that night. I brushed my teeth and turned off the bathroom light. I walked down the hall and into my parents’ room. They hadn’t gotten ready for bed yet. They each gave me a hug and told me to ‘sleep tight’ and to ‘not let the bedbugs bite’.
I walked into my bedroom and pulled back the sheets before going over to the switch on the wall to turn off the lights. And there, taped over the light switch, was a piece of white paper with a note scrawled on it. My eyes opened wide in shock when I read it.
Next time no salt.
Chapter 7
War
I slept with my parents the night of the Fourth of July party. Pablo Malo had been in my house and even in my room. He knew where I lived and he probably knew who the rest of the Machacas were. So there was no way on God’s green earth I was sleeping alone.
I woke up way after my parents did, which was not the way it normally happened. I was a morning person, so I was usually up before them. But it had taken me a long time to fall asleep, thinking about Pablo Malo waiting to kill me, so I slept in. The sun was already pretty high up in the sky. I could tell because the sunrays were coming almost straight down through the window, instead of shooting across the room like they do when the sun’s just coming up. The smell of scrambled eggs and bacon wafted into the bedroom, and I could hear my parents talking in the breakfast room next to the kitchen.
‘Lolita’s going to sub for Nelly this week,’ I heard my mom say. ‘I told her to take all the time off she needs.’
‘Fine with me,’ replied my dad. ‘I still don’t think we should tell Avery about all this yet.’
I wondered what it was that they wouldn’t tell me, but I knew better than to try to wrangle it out of them. They’d tell me when they were good and ready. I got out of bed and walked down the hall picking the sleepy bugs from the corners of my eyes.
‘Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad,’ I said, just before yawning with my mouth open.
‘Morning, Avery,’ they said at the same time.
‘Cover your mouth when you yawn,’ added Mom.
‘Sorry,’ I said.
My mom went into the kitchen to get me some grub and I sat down in the chair next to my dad. He looked pretty tired from last night, but he seemed to be in a good mood anyway.
‘Helluva show last night, huh?’ he said with a satisfied grin. He hadn’t shaved and since it was Sunday, I didn’t expect he would until tomorrow morning before he went to work. He had on a pair of Bermuda shorts and a polo shirt, so I guessed he was leaving soon to play golf.
‘Yeah, real cool,’ I replied.
I guess I wasn’t too convincing.
‘What kind of answer was that?’ he said. ‘Sounds like you didn’t like it much.’
‘Oh, it was awesome all right. I guess I haven’t woken up yet.’
‘Hmm, OK,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m off to conquer the greens. See ya later.’
He put his knife and fork together on his plate and took the plate into the kitchen.
‘See you later, honey,’ he said to Mom just before I heard the smack of their goodbye kiss.
The screen door to the carport slammed shut and I heard the truck start up. The tyres crunched on the gravel in the driveway and then stopped when he reached the asphalt road. I listened to the growl of the car engine fade away in the distance. Mom came in with a plate full of eggs and bacon, which she put down in front of me before she went on down the hall to her bedroom.
‘I’ll be at the Smiths’ all afternoon playing bridge,’ she yelled out from the b
edroom. ‘If you go somewhere, be sure to leave a note to let us know where you are, and don’t forget to lock the front door.’
Of course I left the house, and I even left Mom a note. I told her I was going to the swimming pool at the club instead of where I was really headed. I was going to check on the hideout. Even though Capitán Gómez had made me promise not to go into El Monte, I couldn’t stand the thought that something might have happened to it. The situation had changed when Pablo Malo showed up at the party and invaded my house, so I figured Gómez would understand. If Pablo Malo knew where the Machacas lived, he might know where our hideout was. Besides, I had Mati with me and I was going to ride my bike in case I needed to make a run for it.
Stupid Monkey only managed a couple of quick squawks before we were out of his range. Mati didn’t even bark at him once. Seems he knew that we were on a dangerous mission and needed to move as silently as possible.
The first threat thread was still there, so we passed under it and I walked my bike in the direction of the next one. It was still there. I could see the top of the mango tree from where I was, but I couldn’t see the tree house. We Machacas always checked each one of the threat threads before we showed ourselves to anybody who might have invaded the hideout. We fancied ourselves as sneaky as Apaches when we checked on the threads, and with all that was going on, I was being careful not to make any noise. Mati wasn’t making any either.
The next two threads were still strung up, but the fifth one had been tripped. The black thread was hanging down from the branch on one side of the path. It was the same path that we’d taken when we went on our mission to steal the bananas, the path to Pablo Malo’s place. This was not good news. My heart started beating fast and I began to sweat like a stuck pig. I leaned my bike against one of those spiky trees and knelt down next to Mati.
‘Someone’s been here, Mati,’ I whispered in his ear. ‘They might still be around. You need to be super quiet, like a doggy ghost, OK?’
Mati smiled at me with his tongue hanging out and cocked his head to the side. He knew what I was talking about. I didn’t bother to check the last threat thread. I started to work my way in the direction of the hideout. Mostly I crawled on my stomach, sometimes on my hands and knees. I only stood up when I could hide from view behind the thick trunk of a tree.
It took me almost half an hour to get in sight of the tree house and by then I was dripping in sweat and itching like the dickens from rubbing up against different bushes and breaking through some cities of spiderwebs. Worse, I was still smarting from a machaca soldier ant that bit me on my ankle when I tried to shimmy my way over one of their highways on the ground. His head was now stuck on one of my fingernails, so he’d paid the price. There was no movement from the tree house and the only thing I heard was the cry of a bird or two every now and then, and of course the non-stop whine of the cicadas. If someone was in there, they probably wouldn’t have been able to hear me sneaking up over the high-pitched sound of those big bugs. Of course, I wouldn’t have been able to hear them either.
Mati hadn’t barked yet, so I was pretty sure no one was around. He would know and he would start barking, even though I’d made him promise not to. He was a dog after all. I waited for another couple of minutes and then stood up and took a step out of the jungle cover and into the open. I was standing on the outside of our ditch, trying to look tough and ready, but inside my soul I knew the only thing I was ready for was to start running the other way. Nothing happened, so I took another step forward. And still nothing.
‘I’m coming in, so if you’re in there, this is your chance to give up,’ I called out.
There was no answer, and Mati still hadn’t barked. I was pretty sure now that I was alone, so I walked bravely to the trunk of the mango tree without taking my eyes off the open window of the hideout. I put my hand on the first wooden plank leading up through the hole in the floor of the tree house. Everything looked all right from there. I started climbing up and when I got to just below the opening I held my breath, then poked my head up through it and looked around.
It looked like a tornado had landed inside. The stacks of comic books had been torn apart. Almost every page of each one of them was ripped in two. There were broken jars all over the place and the bugs and worms and fish that we had kept in them were scattered on the floor. The floor was still wet with alcohol in some places, so whoever had done this hadn’t been gone for long. It smelled like a hospital. The shoeboxes with our butterfly and moth collections were stomped flat. Someone had taken a knife to our holsters and cut the leather belts in half and left them on top of the pile. Even the barrels of our six guns had been bent almost in two.
At first I felt like crying, but instead of doing that I just got mad. I knew my face was red already and getting redder. I stood up inside and started pushing stuff around with my sneakers. The only things that I knew for sure were missing were the Mad magazines that Todd had stolen from his parents’ room. They were some of our most prized possessions, so I was getting fiercely angrier with each passing minute.
‘Goll dang it,’ I yelled. I started kicking torn comics and boxes all over the place like a Viking gone berserk. ‘This just chaps my red butt.’
I stopped when I heard Mati bark from somewhere below. I sneaked over to the window and saw Mati looking out in the direction of the path to Pablo Malo’s place. I went from madder than a one-legged ant to girly-scared in one second. Was that him? If it was, I knew I was toast. I wasn’t much for praying, but I was doing a lot of it right about then. Mati barked again and then he started to let loose with a long, mean growl. Now I was thinking how they’d be finding my dead body with pee and poop in my underwear.
‘Mati, it’s just me,’ I heard from behind the bushes. ‘Good boy.’
It was Billy and I had never in my life been so glad to see him. He came out from his hiding place and Mati ran up to him. Billy got on his knees and did the usual hugging and petting that everyone does to a smiling dog. He looked up and saw me in the window.
‘I saw that someone had tripped a threat thread, so I was sneakin’ up,’ he said. ‘When I saw Mati I figured everything was clear. You all right? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
‘Get your butt up here. You’re not gonna like what you see.’
It took us a long while to clean up the mess. We stacked the ripped-up comics as best we could. We’d be bringing a bunch of rolls of Scotch tape to put them back together. We pushed the shoeboxes back into shape and put the butterflies and moths that hadn’t been smushed to a pulp in them. I cut my finger on a piece of broken glass when we were picking them up, but it didn’t bleed for very long.
We said a cowboy eulogy for our six guns, like they did in the westerns, and then buried them in the dirt under the mango tree. We dug another hole for the bugs that had been in the jars and put them in there along with all of the broken glass. The last thing we did was let the big worm go free since his jar had been busted to pieces and we didn’t have another one to use.
‘Pablo Malo just bought into the game,’ said Billy in a soft West Texas gunslinger’s drawl.
‘He sure did,’ I replied as I stamped down the last clod of dirt over the bug grave. ‘This means war.’
Chapter 8
The Jungle at Night
Billy got permission from his parents to sleep over again at my house the night after the party and then to sleep over at Todd’s house the next night. Todd got the OK from his mom to sleep at my house too, but he told them that he’d be staying at the Hales’ the next. I told my dad that I’d be at Billy’s and then at Todd’s. We pretty much didn’t have to ask. We usually told our parents where we’d be staying and they’d just let us be. During the summer break we were always sleeping over at each other’s houses. What they didn’t know was that we wouldn’t be sleeping at any of our homes for the next two nights. We were going to be at the hideout the whole time. We were getting ready for the war with Pablo Malo. But I had some things I
needed to do before we all got together at the tree house later that evening.
Mati was running next to my bike as I whooshed down the main street of Campo Mata. I was headed to the police station to talk to Capitán Gómez and let him know what had happened at the party and at the hideout the day before. It was about two o’clock in the afternoon, and it was as hot as the dickens out. I figured that Gómez would be back from lunch and back from his visit to Pablo Malo’s farm. He had told me that he was going there first thing Monday morning. I couldn’t wait to hear about that and I couldn’t wait to throw some fuel on the fire with my news about Pablo invading my house and trashing our hideout. I rounded the curve by the school like a motorbike racer with my left knee almost touching the ground and the playing cards in the forks clacking really fast and loud. The police building was right ahead, but I could already see that Gómez’s car wasn’t in the parking lot in front of it, so I was hugely disappointed.
‘Dang it!’ I yelled over the noise my bike was making.
I skidded to a stop in front of the parking place reserved for Capitán Gómez. There was a sign in front of it that read, Policía Nacional – Reservado.