by Jack Gantos
“I’ve known Gary long enough,” I said, “for him to join the Sea Cadets. My dad’s the commodore.”
“Is that like the Boy Scouts of the sea?” Mr. Mercier asked in a wise-guy voice.
“Yes,” I said proudly. And then I turned to Gary. “By the way, your uniform just came in. Dad said he’ll fit you up at the boathouse. He’s got to sew your accomplishment patches on, and your name.”
Mr. Mercier jerked my arm to get my full attention and looked at me with such contempt in his shiny eyes that I could stare back into them and see a faint image of myself being crushed by his scorn.
Suddenly he changed the conversation. “You have blood running out the side of your mouth.”
He let go of my hand and pointed at my face as if I didn’t know where my mouth was located.
I reached up and touched my lip where Gary had punched me. “I just had my braces removed,” I explained, and wiped the blood on the back of my hand. “My gums are still sensitive.”
“I have you pegged as a total fake,” Mr. Mercier concluded in a voice practiced at being cold. “A serial liar like Gary doesn’t hang around with little farts like you—little mama’s boys.”
Suddenly Gary was up on his toes. He stood like a boxer shifting his weight from side to side with his hands low and close to his hips, but his face was stretched all the way forward in anger.
“He’s not a fake, Mr. M,” he declared, spitting his words. “He’s my friend, and he’s helping me become a better person.”
“Better for what?” Mr. Mercier asked. “Lying?”
Gary stepped toward him, and right then I stood and put my hand on Gary’s shoulder, hoping to settle him down.
Mr. Mercier shrugged off Gary’s performance. “Let me give you some advice,” he said toward me, “just in case you are blind or retarded in some tragic way. Gary is a criminal sociopath who makes things disappear—starting with the truth. He’s been in and out of foster care, juvie joints, and psych wards all his life. His brother, Frankie, has an IQ that doesn’t add up to the coffee change in my pocket. The parents’ nicknames are ‘Don’t Work’ and ‘Won’t Work,’ and only the sister, who is a dog groomer, keeps this family going on dented cans of baked beans and Alpo—and one of these days she’ll wake up and ride off on a bullmastiff.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “They seem to me to be a whole family that sticks together.”
“Yeah, like a box of rats are a whole family,” he said sarcastically, and frowned. “Look, you seem like a nice kid,” he said evenly. “Take my advice and walk out of this house and keep going.” Once again he reached out and gripped my hand. “Any kid that enters this house will never leave as nice as when he arrived. You might think Gary’ll end up being more like you, a mama’s-boy-chess-king, but you will be more like him—a career criminal in his early years.”
Then he didn’t so much release my hand as throw it back at me—but this time it arrived with his business card folded into my fist. “You’re playing with fire, kid. Do yourself a favor and leave. Now.”
I looked at Gary.
Gary pointed toward the front door. “You heard the man. Go,” he said insistently. “Save yourself from me. You ever knock on my door again I’ll knock you unconscious.” He lunged at me with a mock punch.
I ducked anyway. “What about the Sea Cadets?” I asked. “My dad paid in advance for that uniform.”
“Tell him to call the admiral for a refund. Now beat it.”
I walked quickly out of his house, leaving the chess set behind, and crossed the crackling grass shards toward my front door.
I was embarrassed and angry. All I could do was think of vengeful little things like holding Gary’s head down in the canal and letting one of those Korean fish chew his face off. That would be satisfying. Or I could call the cops and have them dig up Gary’s side yard looking for bodies.
I grabbed my front doorknob and held it for a moment. Then I froze.
Was Gary pulling a fast one on me? I couldn’t tell. He had changed so quickly from almost punching Mr. Mercier to then threatening me.
I went into our house and from behind our curtain I watched out my living room window and as soon as Mr. Mercier drove off in his Ford Falcon I went running back over to Gary’s house.
This time I knocked on the door. He pulled it open and gave me a quick punch to the face like a fist popping out of a cuckoo clock. I shot straight back onto my ass.
“Did I not tell you to keep your mouth shut?” he said.
“But I didn’t do anything wrong,” I whined, and rubbed my lips.
“Which is why I only gave you a love tap on your kisser … for being so sensational. I gotta pay you back for that performance. I owe you one. He didn’t believe a word you said. Every word gave him indigestion. But he couldn’t catch you in a lie. Now let’s go have some fun,” he said, taking two steps forward and one to the side. “I thought of a new game for the Pagoda Olympics of the Future.”
FIRE AWAY
He hollered for his brother and sister and they appeared from somewhere and followed us out of the house.
He strolled across his yard and across the street, where he began to tug on the brass corner grommets of a giant canvas tarp that covered some kind of vehicle.
In a minute we could see a shiny new Broward County Police tow truck. There wasn’t a spot on it.
“Where’d you get that?” I whispered. “Out of the factory paint shop?”
“What did I tell you about asking questions?” he replied. “Remember the juvie code: To stay safe is to stay stupid.”
He opened the passenger front door and pulled out a chain saw and a can of gasoline.
“Just watch,” he said, “and learn from the master of the new Olympic Games.”
In their front yard they had a tall, whippy-looking Australian pine tree—the kind that wasn’t like a Christmas tree, but more like a thin southern pine with pinkish bark and a flexible trunk. The branches stuck out from either side of the trunk like long furry dog tails that wagged this way and that in the breeze. The needles hung down limply like rows of knotted green ribbon.
It was an odd tree and very delicate and beautiful—more of an exotic musical instrument from another century, a strange kind of magical harp. Its beauty seemed out of place at the Pagoda house and now it appeared to be a very nervous tree, shaking all the time like one of those shivering Italian greyhounds that, even in Florida, were dressed in sweaters. As it turned out, it should have been nervous.
“It’s the destiny of trees to give their lives for our pain and pleasure,” Gary announced, and made the sign of the cross in its direction.
He gassed up the chain saw and pulled the starter cord. Instantly the nasal, angry growl of the saw lashed out in circles at the air. Gary held it over his head as if gutting the sky and walked up to the tree and quickly began to cut through the lower branches. He left about six inches of each branch attached to the trunk. As he pruned a branch above himself he could next step up to that stub. He used the stubs like rungs on a ladder, with the screaming saw spitting out wood chips over his head and into his hair.
The smell of the pine was refreshing. I had become used to the constant rotting stench of the canal.
Gary ascended that tree one step after the other, as easily as a telephone man climbs a pole. It was impressive. When he reached the top of the tree, which was about twice as tall as the peaked roof of their single-story house, he sliced off the elaborate headdress of unfurling new branches and leaves. Then he choked the saw off and began to descend one notch at a time.
The saw swung in his hand like it was a weapon and he was the big-game hunter who had just felled a giraffe.
“Frankie,” he ordered on the way down, “collect all those branches and stack them up so we can use them to camouflage the tow truck.”
“Alice,” he called out, “get me that big spool of nylon rope we use for tripping up water-skiers.”
She ran back i
nto the garage and in a moment came out with a plywood spool with about fifty yards of heavy yellow boat rope. She rolled it down the driveway, and Frankie and I helped her push it across the grass.
Once Gary was on the ground he hung the saw by its handle on the lowest peg. He peered up at the naked tree, which looked like a stubby toothpick.
We peered up at it, too.
“So, Olympic athletes, here is what we are going to do,” he announced. “I will tie the rope onto the top of the tree, supertight, and then one of you will climb to the top and hang on to the tree like a koala bear. I will take the loose end of the rope and tighten it around the winch on the tow truck, and when the tree is bent backward—having been aimed toward a certain valuable target—I will let the rope go and the tree will snap forward. You must time your release from the treetop in order to hit your target destination.
“Here are some tips. If you release too soon, you will shoot straight up into the air and come straight down. If you hang on too long and the tree snaps way forward, it will fling you facedown on the ground. So consider the geometry and timing that may shape, or misshape, your future.”
I tried to keep my expression blank so as not to show any fear.
“Finally, I must tell you. There are only three targets and you have to pick one. There is an easy one, a harder one, and an insanely deadly one. You got that?”
I sort of did. “What are the targets?” I asked.
“Asking a question,” Gary said, “is against game rules—thus you will have to go first. So, big mouth, here are your choices: A, I will catapult you over the roof of our crappy little house and you will hope to land alive in the swimming pool. B, the kiddie pool near the tree in the side yard is full of water and those Korean death fish, and you will have to land dead-center in that to avoid breaking your face. And C, looking toward the other side of the yard is a very friendly southern oak tree with lots of soft Spanish moss covering the branches. This is the easy one. I shoot you in there, and all you have to do is grab a branch and hang on.”
I raised my hand. “Can I ask another question?”
He groaned. “If I lived with you I’d smother you in your sleep.”
“Since each target is so different,” I continued, “are the rewards or prizes better for the harder ones?”
“Indeed,” he said, and smiled appreciatively. “I’ve built that into the game. Each target has a prize that is calibrated to please one exact person. So if you are shot blindly over the house and land in the pool, then at a very future date you can join me and my friends at a special private juvie-reunion party where all sorts of fun may just be lurking about. Or, if you land in the Korean killer-fish pool, you can have my brass knuckles. Or, if you land in the oak tree, you can have my plush, three-foot-high pink teddy bear and I promise I will remove my ex’s name from the bear’s rear end because I will never have anything to do with Tomi and her lying ways in the future.”
He took the end of the rope and quickly climbed the tree and tied it to the top, then returned with the other end of the rope and yanked it to the tow truck and got it hooked to the winch cable.
Since I had first choice, I couldn’t resist trying to win an invite to the juvie-reunion party. Even though I was a little jealous of his outlawed friends I was thrilled he would give me a chance to meet them.
“I go for the swimming pool,” I announced.
Frankie snorted through his nose. “I better call an ambulance now,” he said gleefully. “Or a hearse.”
I trotted toward the tree as Gary backed the tow truck into position so that it was in a straight line with the roof and pool. It was easy to climb the tree, and as I made my way up I could feel that the trunk was very strong and yet very springy. It was also pretty tall, and I figured my best approach would be to let go a little early and lob myself in a soft arc over the house and into the pool’s deep end. When I reached the top of the tree I could see just enough of the back patio to imagine the pool’s location, and that helped me figure out my flight path.
Once I got myself turned around into a position where I thought I would be able to let go at the right time, I gave Gary a hand signal. He started the tow truck and began to winch the rope in. I could hear the cracking stress compression in the wood as the top of the tree was pulled back.
Before long the tree was bent over and I was staring upward at the blue sky and my heart was pounding. It suddenly occurred to me my chances of making the pool were slim, but I did not regret any of what was about to happen even if I hit the diving board or the tiled edge of the pool. If taking a chance like this would bring me closer to Gary and his juvie pals, then I had to do it. I had to be more to him than just the face of his choirboy friend every time Mr. Mercier visited. That was not good enough.
When Gary had me bent back to about fifteen feet off the ground he yelled out, “Ready to meet your maker?”
Frankie was saying “Holy shit!” and slapping himself all over like he was invisibly on fire. He looked psychotic, but then again I was preparing to be catapulted from a tree, over a house, and into a pool I couldn’t see. I silently waved my arm and a moment later Gary severed the yellow line with bolt cutters.
The tree had a lot of instant power and it felt as if I were sitting on a giant flyswatter that some monster had pulled back and let loose. I quickly elevated and cleared the house, which I never thought would be a problem. It was landing in the deep end of the pool that was going to take a miracle.
For a moment it appeared I had too much speed and was going to shoot well beyond the pool and maybe cannonball badly onto the stinking bank of trash thrown by the canal, or into the nasty canal sludge water, where I’d just get stuck and be slowly eaten by the Korean death fish.
I only spent milliseconds torturing myself with each particular fear, and yet each tragic story of my crash, death, and funeral seemed to take hours to unfold in my mind.
But my geometry was well planned, and as I approached the pool my acceleration slowed and I ran out of forward momentum and dropped.
I plunged straight down into the water and hit the concrete pool bottom hard but not so hard that I crushed my ankles, and then I pushed up. When I broke the surface I was smiling crazily because I had done it. I had been terrified but I’d lived! It was miraculous. And what’s more, even though I doubted myself, Gary must have known I could do it. He was just grooming me to be on his regular level—and be better than his juvie friends.
Alice was the spotter on the pool side and when I broke water on the surface she waved her rubbery limbs over her head and shouted out through her undersized sea urchin mouth to Frankie and Gary, as they came running around the side of the house, “I can’t believe he did it! You didn’t kill him, which is really what I wanted to happen.”
Then she turned to me. Her little teeth were like pencil points.
“You got lucky, kid, but you can’t live on luck forever.”
I didn’t know her at all. This was the first thing she had ever said to me, but after she revealed her blood wish I knew she was a purebred Pagoda—a special morbid breed of dog that trackers use to hunt down the tragic events caused by disturbed people.
I trotted over to Gary and he was grinning from ear to ear.
“Dang,” he said. “I thought for sure I would have executed you and that would be the end of all your nonstop questions.”
“Nope,” I said, grinning grandly. “I’m alive and all I need now are some juvie party clothes.”
“That would be called shoplifting,” Gary informed me. “Probably the first low-rung skill a juvie kid develops.”
“Is that an assignment?” I asked, knowing that I was going to start shoplifting one way or the other.
“One more question and I blast you into the electric wires,” he replied, and pointed toward the high power lines that ran overhead. I imagined that birds landing on them would burst into flames.
Frankie was next up for the contest. He chose the fish pool. Gary repositi
oned the truck, reattached the line, and winched him back. Frankie let go a little too late and he flew low across the yard like a lawn dart. He hit the ground early and ricocheted off the pool as he plowed up the ground with his chest and some of the skin on his lower chin. He finished his assault on the killer fish with a somersault and hopped up onto both feet.
“Voilà!” he hollered in a voice that did not sound victorious. Then his hand reached for his chin because it looked like he had a broken jaw.
But the jaw was just stunned and he wiggled it back into working order while snapping his teeth together like toy windup dentures.
“I’m not doing any more of these Pagoda Olympic Games,” he said, pouting. “It’s insane, but do I get the brass knuckles anyway?”
“Of course not,” Gary replied. “In the Olympics you get either a gold, silver, or bronze medal. There is no brass medal. You screwed up. If you want to try again I’ll give you a second chance. Two brass attempts will win a bronze.”
“Let me get some Band-Aids first,” Frankie whimpered, and headed toward the house. “And a helmet.”
“No helmets allowed,” Gary fired back. “You know the rules.”
“Then I quit,” said Frankie as he disappeared inside.
“My turn,” Alice said, perking up. “Just give me a soft shot into the oak tree. It looks easy—plus I want the pink teddy bear.”
It was easy. She climbed the tree and he gently lobbed her in. She crashed through a few outer branches, which were as spongy as old rope, and she ended up grabbing hold of a vertical branch that she could hug.
While she stayed in the tree, Gary went inside and got the teddy bear for her. He came out and tossed it up to her along with his cigarette lighter.
“Burn the name off the butt end,” he said. “It’s yours now.”
“You’d better think quick,” she said. “From up here I see a cop car a few blocks away.”
“Crap,” Gary replied. “Quick, Sailor Jack, grab the tarp and meet me behind the garage.”
He jumped in the truck and it roared to life. He raced it down the strip of dead grass and ivy between his house and the neighbors’ driveway since they weren’t home. I met him around back and helped him throw the tarp over the truck.