Trouble

by Gary D. Schmidt

  Still in reverse.

  On the street, Henry stomped on the brake again, shifted into drive, stomped on the accelerator. He drove into the first left he could find, down a long and narrow wharf.

  "No, no!" screamed Chay. "Wrong way!"

  Henry, in a second, thought this was obvious, too. He knew what was at the end of wharves. He stomped on the brake again, shifted into reverse, stomped on the accelerator, and shot out from the narrow wharf just as the two fishermen appeared. Startled yells.

  Chay yelled, too—something sounding like a Cambodian battle cry, Henry figured.

  He stomped on the brake again, shifted to drive, and stomped on the accelerator. He turned a quick right this time, then drove up into the narrow streets. He was breathing two or three times every second. He had now driven the combined distance of all the other driving he had ever done in his life—which meant once down his driveway. And he had lost the bag of fried clams.

  Black Dog looked at him with her ears down.

  "Sorry," he said to Black Dog, then turned to Chay. "I'll find a place to stop and you can—"

  "Don't stop!" yelled Chay.

  "Those guys were running for their pickup," said Sanborn.

  "That left!" said Chay.

  Henry wheeled quickly to the left. Black Dog shot into the windshield again.

  "You can slow down a little when you take a turn," said Sanborn.

  "You can shut up," said Henry.

  "Right!" said Chay.

  "Do you know where we're going?" yelled Henry. He took the right too fast and Black Dog gave a sudden and irritated yelp—but Chay was holding her.

  "No," said Chay—which was not comforting. "Right!" he yelled again.

  "A little slower this time," said Sanborn, "unless you want us barfing up."

  Henry, who definitely did not want them barfing up, took the next right a little slower—into a street where all the cars parked on both sides were heading toward him.

  "You turned down a one-way street," said Chay.

  "You keep saying things I already know," said Henry.

  The street was so narrow that their side mirrors almost touched the parked cars beside them. Henry prayed that another car wouldn't turn in ahead and drive toward him. And he prayed that if the two fishermen were looking for them, they wouldn't look down this street, since a truck going the wrong way down a one-way street would be a pretty clear giveaway.

  "Take your next turn," said Chay.

  "Which way?"

  "Any way."Henry took the next left and slowed down. He looked in the back mirror—no one behind him. "I think I can stop now," he said.

  "Please," said Sanborn.

  He stopped, and then all at once, they began to laugh. Even Chay. And if Black Dog could have laughed, she would have laughed, too, sitting on Chay's lap and grinning and looking all giggly, all of them laughing as if they had been laughing together all their lives.

  "Great driving, Henry," said Sanborn.

  "I've never taken turns on two wheels," said Chay.

  "Neither has he," said Sanborn.

  "You're both very welcome for me saving you from getting beat up," said Henry. "I'm going to get out now—as soon as I can get my hands to let go of the wheel."

  More laughter, and Chay reached up past Black Dog to pry Henry's hands from the wheel. And as soon as Chay touched him, Henry felt again the electric volts of his grief. He recoiled against the door, and all laughter stopped.

  Silence, suddenly.

  Henry and Chay got out of the pickup. They passed each other silently. Chay got in behind the wheel, and Henry climbed in the other side and gathered Black Dog into his lap to see if he could calm her down. Then they closed the doors, and they all sat, breathing a little hard.

  Henry wondered how it was that he could ever have found himself in the same pickup, laughing to die, with his brother's killer. He thought that he might be the one barfing up.

  He looked out the window, holding Black Dog. He leaned back and brought Black Dog's head against his chest.

  "Do you know how to get to the highway from here?" asked Sanborn.

  Chay shrugged.

  "All you have to do is start driving," said Henry. "You're going to hit the highway, or you're going to hit the water, and if you hit the water, then you turn around the other way and you'll hit the highway."

  Black Dog suddenly raised her head.

  A patrol car—maybe the same one they had seen before—cruised up beside them and stopped. It looked as if something in Chay stopped, too—maybe his heart. He started to sweat. Beads appeared on the side of his face.

  The policeman lowered his side window and leaned over toward them.

  Henry watched Chay force his arm to move. He rolled his window down.

  "You boys all right?" called the policeman.

  Chay nodded.

  "Answer him," whispered Henry.

  Chay nodded again.

  "You're not lost, are you?"

  Chay shook his head.

  "Just a minute," said the policeman. He rolled up his window, put his car in park, and got out. Henry saw terror grip Chay; sweat now rolled down the side of his face.

  The policeman stopped at the back of the pickup and wrote down the license plate number. Henry thought Chay was about to pass out.

  Henry opened his door and got out. "Actually," he said, "we are lost. We were down at a chowder house on Commercial, and we took a left to try to get back to the highway."

  "That was your first mistake," said the policeman. "You go left and you end up in the drink. You needed to take a right. Then all you have to do is take your next left at the light and follow the signs to 95. If you turn around here, there's a one-way street that will take you right back down." He pointed the way.

  "Okay," Henry said. "A one-way street."

  The policeman walked over to Chay and leaned down to the window.

  "Are you all right, son?" the policeman said.

  Chay nodded.

  "You talk about as much as the Statue of Liberty, don't you?"

  Chay shook his head.

  The policeman considered something. And he might have considered something like "Can I see your license?" if Black Dog hadn't decided that she wanted to find out what the policeman smelled like. She stuck her head past Chay and out the window and sniffed.

  The policeman scratched her behind the ears, which she loved, and which she showed she loved by making every cuddling sound that a dog can possibly make, all at once.

  And that was enough. "You sure you know how to get to 95?" the policeman asked.

  Henry got back into the pickup. "We're sure. Thanks," he said.

  "You sure?" the policeman said to Chay.

  Chay nodded.

  The policeman walked back to his car, and Chay turned the pickup truck around and headed toward the one-way street. Ten minutes later, they were on Route 95 again, heading north, the stars growing more and more visible as they left the lights of the city.

  "I never did get my shake," said Sanborn.

  14

  THEY DROVE ON into the darkness. Every star in the universe watched them.

  "You handled that policeman really well," said Sanborn.

  Chay looked in the mirror and changed lanes.

  "Nodding, shaking your head, keeping quiet—that's not going to make him suspicious."

  "Policemen mean trouble," said Chay.

  "That's why you answer them very politely," said Sanborn. "Sometimes they mean trouble in America, too."

  A low laugh from Chay, who glanced over at him. "What kind of trouble does a policeman mean to someone from Blythbury-by-the-Sea?"

  "I don't know. He could have given you a ticket."

  Chay laughed out loud—and it was not a sweet laugh. "A ticket. Could they strap your father to a plow and make him work the fields like an ox? And when he falls down, could they kick him until he stops moving?"

  "This isn't Cambodia," said Sanborn.

 
; Chay shook his head. "You've never been arrested by someone who doesn't look like you."

  Henry looked out the dark window. He imagined his own father, strapped to a plow, dragging furrows while soldiers sat in the shade nearby. He cut the image out immediately.

  They turned off onto Route 1; a sign said, "Coastal Route," which seemed likely to take them north. They passed through Brunswick and wound along the Androscoggin and then up to Bath and over the Kennebec River, and after some blank rocks and dark touristy gift shops, they meandered through pretty Wiscasset and over a long, low bridge that left the town twinkling behind them. They did not speak. The quiet humming of the tires spoke for them. And they might have gone on like that forever, except that Henry noticed Chay's head nodding, and he wasn't too happy when the pickup drifted over toward the guardrail—beyond which there was nothing but darkness. And water.

  Henry looked at Sanborn, who was asleep—again.

  Black Dog squirmed. She was sitting up on Henry's lap with her ears held out to the sides, and the look on her face told Henry that she was trying to be polite, but if Henry didn't do something quickly, then Black Dog couldn't be held responsible for the humiliating consequences coming very soon.

  "We have to stop," Henry said to Chay.

  Chay gestured out into the black night. "Where?" he said.

  "Right now, anywhere."

  But before anywhere came, they heard a siren shrilling behind them, still far away. They both looked back. Against all that blackness, Henry could see red and white lights revolving and coming toward them quickly. He remembered the color of the lights.

  Chay began to speed up.

  "You have to pull over," said Henry.

  It was as if Chay hadn't heard him.

  "This won't help," said Henry. "If they're going to stop us, they're going to stop us. So slow down. Maybe it's not even us they want."

  Chay took his foot off the accelerator. The humming of the pickup changed, and soon it was drowned out in the oncoming wail—which grew louder, and closer, and louder, and sharper, until suddenly the wail and the red and white lights were right upon them, whipping around their barely moving pickup and at their side. For a moment, Henry could see one of the policemen in front, looking over at them. And then the policemen were past, and the siren took on a new and lower tone.

  Chay did not speed up until the red and white lights had disappeared around some bend ahead of them.

  Black Dog whined.

  "We still have to stop," said Henry.

  "Doesn't your friend ever wake up?" said Chay.

  Henry didn't answer. He scratched Black Dog behind the ears. She figured that this was enough of an invitation to whine even louder, which she did, because she wanted to let Chay and Henry know a little more clearly how urgent was her need.

  The road had grown smaller now—there was only one lane heading north, and other than the policemen speeding ahead, there was no one else on it. They drove past small gatherings of buildings, and farms, and the antique-used-junk-whatnot shops, all closed and dark. Occasionally, headlights came toward them on the southbound lane, but even those began to come less and less frequently, and then they were gone altogether. It was as though they were driving alone on the planet.

  "There," said Henry. "Turn in there."

  "A graveyard?" said Chay.

  "Very good," said Henry.

  "You're going to let her out in a graveyard?"

  "No, you're going to park by the graveyard, and I'll let her out across the road."

  Chay turned in and stopped. The headlights shone along a low stone wall that divided the road from the graves to keep their sleepers peaceful. This did not interest Black Dog, since she had other urgencies to consider. Henry held her by the collar until he got her leash on, and together they got out and Black Dog pulled Henry across the road and into some dark pines. They were old; Henry could tell by the depth of the needles under his feet. Their sappy scent came up to him as Black Dog circled and pulled until she found the right spot—which didn't take long.

  Black Dog did not want to hurry back, and Henry figured that since she'd been stuck in the pickup for such a long time, she had a right to run around now. And so he let her pull him through the trees, even though his face kept snapping off small, sharp twigs, and twice he had a branch whip back against his knees. But Black Dog found a whole lot to explore, and it wasn't until Henry thought he was starting to smell something distressingly like a skunk that he dragged on the leash and headed back through the pines toward the shining headlights. Three more sharp and brittle branches smacked him in the face before he got out of the woods.

  He took off Black Dog's leash and let her into the cab seat, where she climbed onto Sanborn, who did not move. Then Henry got in as well. "All set," he said to Chay.

  But Chay didn't answer. His head was back and his mouth open. He was as deeply asleep as Sanborn.

  Henry looked at Black Dog on top of Sanborn, circling into comfort. Then he yawned, and reached over to turn off the lights and the ignition. All sound died. Chay did not move. Henry put his hands between his knees to keep them warm, and closed his eyes.

  He slept lightly.

  He woke every time Black Dog got up and curled around Sanborn and into sleep again.

  He woke up when Sanborn snored—which wasn't just a few times.

  He woke up twice when Chay moaned.

  He woke up sharply whenever he dreamed—but he didn't remember any of the dreams.

  At first light, he woke up for good.

  Chay was gone.

  Black Dog, too.

  Henry rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes. He was surprised that Chay had been able to open and shut the pickup's door without waking him. He sat up and wiped the condensation from the windshield. A wispy fog drifted over everything, as white as a hospital room. He stretched and felt the kind of weird tiredness that comes with sleeping while sitting up in clothes he'd been wearing too long; he supposed there was no chance he'd be brushing his teeth anytime soon.

  Henry got out, climbed up into the bed of the pickup, and opened his pack. "Black Dog!" he called. He pulled a new shirt out and changed into it as quickly as he could, slapping away a handful of mosquitoes. He could see his breath in the chilled morning air. "Black Dog!"

  "She's here," he heard Chay call. Henry looked toward the voice. He could just make out Chay on the other side of the stone wall, walking slowly through the graveyard, looking carefully at each of the gravestones. Black Dog walked beside him, stopping when he stopped, waiting for him to finish reading and to walk on. In the fog, Chay looked like a drifting ghost, searching for the spot where his body had been laid.

  Henry tightened.

  "Is it morning?" Sanborn called out from the pickup's cab. He asked this very slowly.

  "If you open your eyes, you'll be able to tell," Henry said.

  "It's too early to open my eyes."

  "What do you do when your mother tells you to get up for school?"

  "My mother has never once in her life told me to get up for school," said Sanborn.

  Henry figured that Sanborn could take care of himself. He climbed down from the pickup's bed and went around to the front to watch Chay, still drifting slowly among the graves of the dead. Sometimes the fog that blew across him grew so thick that he disappeared entirely, as though he had suddenly descended into the earth to join the rest of them there. But then, another breeze, and there he would be, his arms held around himself, resurrected until the next descent.

  Black Dog stayed beside him.

  Henry leaned back against the front of the pickup, and felt immediately the deep dent in the grill and the hood. Even down to the bumper. He stood and looked at it, his eyes wide, suddenly nauseous. He put his hand where the hood had been pushed in, and then let it down slowly to the wide crease in the bumper. Then, hardly believing he was doing it, he turned around and filled the dent with his own body, pushing in against the metal.

  They
had built their house so far from Trouble. But Chay Chouan had found them anyway.

  He looked across the stone wall at Chay again. With Black Dog. With his dog. And he hated him as Franklin would have wanted.

  He heard Sanborn get out of the car and head over to the pines. Black Dog lifted her head, saw Henry, and barked happily. Her thwacking tail disturbed the patterns of the streaming fog.

  Henry left the pickup and climbed over the stone wall. Slowly he walked through the fog and the gravestones, passing generations of the dead sleeping deep beneath mossy swellings of the ground. All the stones were tall and thin and white—everything in the fog seemed white. Here and there he could make out a name: Holcomb, Barnard, Kittredge, Sawyer, Hollis, Griffith, Hurd. How many times had families come to this graveyard and lowered someone they loved into a dark hole forever? For him, once had been enough.

  Henry looked up and saw Chay, not far.

  He walked toward him.

  The last few yards he took at a sprint.

  Black Dog barked once, not understanding.

  Then Chay turned around. At exactly the right moment.

  He didn't even raise his hands.

  Henry smashed his fist into the side of Chay's face.

  Chay toppled to the ground and rolled over, his back coming up against one of the gravestones. Black Dog began barking desperately. Henry stood above Chay, breathing heavily. "Get up," he said.

  Chay felt his jaw, and winced when he tried to see if it still closed the way it should. "You waited a long time," he said.

  Henry leaped over Black Dog and threw himself on Chay, pushing him against the gravestone. Chay held him off while Henry pounded at him wherever he could, connecting time and time again, and each time, he felt something satisfying deep within him, but it maddened him all the more, and so he pounded all the more. He could hear Chay's breath when he knocked it out of his lungs and guts.

  He did not know how many times he had hit Chay before he felt his arms weaken and grow weighty. It was harder and harder to lift them up, so that when Chay pushed him off, it was harder than anything he had ever done to go back into him again. But he did. And he pounded until he felt Sanborn pulling at his shoulders, and he swung once more at Chay's face and opened the skin above his cheek before Sanborn pulled him away and threw him onto the wet ground beside another gravestone.