The Trouble in Me

by Jack Gantos

  “Who else?” she sort of groaned. “And so I was in big trouble last year and my parents don’t have any money and I needed to be sent away to this depressing place for unwed mothers to have the baby. Gary vanished into some juvie joint, so he was no help. We didn’t know what to do. Hide me indoors for nine months? Then Suzy shows up at my front door one night, really late, and hands me the wallet. ‘This should belong to you,’ she said. ‘And I’m really sorry because he’s a creep.’

  “‘He is,’ I said to her. ‘He sure is.’

  “‘I didn’t spend a cent of it,’ Suzy says. ‘It makes me sick just to have had it.’

  “She was an angel to me. So I got the wallet and took out the cash and I told my parents ‘the boy’ gave it to me and they were so desperate they didn’t want to know the truth—but they knew deep down it wasn’t right. So I got sent off for months and had the baby and it went to a nice family and now here I am—right back where I started.” She lit another cigarette.

  “So that’s a true story?” I asked.

  “Of course it is,” she said, raising her voice. “I wouldn’t lie about all that just for a cigarette.”

  At that moment her mother leaned out the sliding door. “Tomi,” she called. “It’s time to come in for a while and help with supper.”

  “Okay,” Tomi called back over her shoulder. Then quickly she turned to me with the wallet in her outstretched hand. “So I gave you that story. It’s like a special gift, and now I want you to give me a gift in return—I want you to give this back to Gary,” she said intently. “Put it in his hands and ask him what it means, and see if he has the you-know-whats to tell you the truth as I have. And if he lies, then I don’t think you’ll want to be his friend much longer.”

  Then she stood up and smiled at me and slowly patted my hand like I was a special pet. “Well, thanks for getting me the smokes,” she said, then headed for her door but not before she paused and looked back at me over her shoulder. “See you around,” she said, and I knew I wanted to be seen.

  I stood up and headed for our door, realizing that she’d just told me that if I got rid of Gary I could be her friend. That was something to think about because she was so nice and honest and all the warmer feelings I shared with my mother were stirring inside me like a soft pet circling before lying down for a nap. And there were other feelings too, but those I kept to myself.

  When I entered the house my sister was just inside the door and glaring at me with her hands on her hips.

  “You should leave that girl alone,” she said firmly. “She’s a nice girl.”

  “I’m a nice guy,” I replied smoothly. “I was just talking to her.”

  “Well, I’ve been told she’s had a rough time lately, so no funny business,” she warned.

  “What do you mean by that?” I asked.

  “Keep your hands to yourself,” she replied. “Growing up is hard enough without creeps pulling you down.” Then she turned and retreated to her room, and when she closed her door it was like putting the period on the end of a sentence.

  RING OF FIRE

  My dad walked by while I was doing what I had been doing a lot of lately—staring out our dining room window. Mom and I had just gotten back from grocery shopping and I was restless. I had been looking at the Pagoda house to see if Gary had returned so I could ask him about the wallet, which was in my pocket. I kept touching it and soon I was looking at Tomi’s house to see if she was smoking out by the fence and just waiting for me to ask Gary about the wallet.

  Maybe she figured Gary would be so pissed off at me that he’d dump me as a friend and I’d be all hers. Maybe not. Maybe he’d only slap me around for talking to her in the first place and she’d never talk to me again.

  Then I looked at Gary’s house some more, and then hers. I may have been craning my neck back and forth for an hour or more wondering what was going to happen now that I was in the middle. I had to make a choice, but I just kept wringing my hands.

  That’s when my dad walked by and said, “Hey, Popeye, why don’t you do something useful besides waiting like a loser for that Pagoda kid to show up in his jockey shorts?” Then he reached out and flicked me on the top of my head with his big navy ring. “That kid seems like trouble anyway.”

  “Ow!” I said, and rubbed the sore spot on my skull. “He’s not that much trouble. He actually wants to join the Sea Cadets, and I was thinking we should invite him to the weekend retreat at Birch State Park.”

  “Really?” he asked, and bugged his eyes out. “That’s a surprise. Does he know we aren’t a bunch of Barbary pirates?”

  “I told him all about the cadets,” I replied. “He said he loves nature and boating and joining clubs, and it would be good to recruit a new member.”

  “Why not?” Dad reasoned. “He can’t be any more useless than his old man, who I see down at the VFW clubhouse. He was with the marines in the South Pacific during the war—he told me that’s where he got that goofy Pagoda last name. His family name is Komodo, like the giant lizard. During a battle he was on the USS Dale in the Komodo Straits to attack the Japanese when they hit a reef and ripped a hole in their ship. He got tagged with being bad luck because of his name and so somehow they started calling him Pagoda instead and after the war he made the change official.”

  “Is that true?” I asked. “That sounds made-up.”

  “Who knows?” Dad said. “There was a battle there, but the guy is a complete nut. After a few drinks that Shriners fez drops down over his eyes like it’s a red fire bucket on his head.”

  “Maybe it’s his battle helmet,” I quipped.

  “Yeah, for falling off his bar stool,” Dad added.

  After that exchange I went outside and raked the yard so the grass was all slanting in one direction. I had seen a photograph of a meteor that hit Siberia with such explosive force that all the trees for miles around were slanted in the same direction. I think that was one of the pictures I had burned. I wished I hadn’t burned it, because now that I thought about it I liked that picture. I always imagined myself as a flea on a dog and the trees were the dog’s fur going in one direction.

  Really what I wished for most of all was that I could do something on my own instead of always looking for someone else to hang around with. Before my dad caught me staring out the window my sister had walked by and called me a “little lost puppy-boy.” Maybe I needed a real puppy to take care of so everyone would stop calling me a puppy. But I knew that wouldn’t happen because of the baby and because we had already given away three dogs because of all our moving.

  I went over to the Pagodas’ garage, where I thought Alice might be working at her dog salon. Maybe she’d let me help her wash and groom the dogs. And then maybe if I was really helpful she’d find someone who wanted to give one away and I could secretly get it and keep it at her house. That was wishful thinking, but if I had a pet to love me I could love it back and nothing could come between us. Maybe that was the best relationship in the world and I wouldn’t be staring out the window all day like a puppy looking for an owner.

  When I turned the corner behind the garage, Frankie and Alice were sitting on the rubber seats of an old metal swing set. A bored-looking Yorkie was sleeping in the dirt next to Alice. The seats were hanging by rusty chains that made a high-pitched grinding sound as they swung back and forth. It made my head hurt.

  The two of them looked pretty gloomy, but when they saw me they perked right up, which perked me up.

  “You’re just the guy we are looking for,” Alice said with her little round mouth grinding her sawblade teeth back and forth.

  I couldn’t stop looking at her mouth. The other day it had reminded me of a sea urchin. Now it looked like a meat grinder for making sausages.

  “He’ll do,” Frankie said, and hopped off his seat, which made the chains screech so loudly I grimaced.

  I tried to ignore him.

  “I just came over to look at the dogs,” I said to Alice. “I was wonde
ring if I could play with them. I really want a puppy, but we can’t have one right now.” I kept the reason to myself.

  “We just got some new pups,” she said. “A lady dropped her spaniel off to be boarded for a few weeks, and first thing the dang girl went around the corner and had five little pups. And nothing is cuter than a baby spaniel.”

  “Can I see them?” I said.

  “Only if you do something first,” she insisted. “We’re working on a deadly new Olympic game called Ring of Fire and we need another person to make it work. Gary thought it up, but he’s still in Alabama getting married. But now that you are here we can try it.”

  “Can I have a spaniel?” I asked. “I don’t want to die for nothing.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’ll give you one of them. The lady won’t know if one is missing—I’ll tell her there were only four.”

  “Can I keep it here?” I asked. “My parents don’t want one at the house.”

  “Okay,” she said impatiently. “You can keep it over here for a boarding price. We have a dozen dogs as it is.”

  “Yeah, just look at the yard,” Frankie pointed out. “It’s nothing but dog poop.”

  There was a lot of poop—and green-eyed flies buzzing around low to the ground.

  “Is the game dangerous?” I asked stupidly, knowing it would have to be since Frankie hadn’t called it a “totally safe and harmless Pagoda Olympic game.”

  “You may be maimed for life, but I figure you won’t die,” Alice said irritably. “But if you do I promise we won’t bury you under the poop.” She pointed to a fenced-in area with a lot of little wooden grave markers.

  “That’s my pet cemetery,” Frankie piped in. “I carve all the little crosses and dog faces by hand.”

  “Gary said you were talented,” I remarked.

  He grinned. “It’s a special skill,” he said proudly. “I’ve always been good with a carving knife.”

  “Okay,” I said to Alice, wanting to get on with it so I could pick out which puppy would be mine. But there was something about playing with these two little idiots that made me feel like an idiot. “What do I have to do to get this over with?”

  In a few minutes I was sitting on the top of the tall sheet-metal slide attached to the swing set. It was rusty, too, and sort of leaning perilously to the left where the legs had sunk down to their knees into the sandy soil.

  Frankie had that side propped up a bit with a few two-by-fours to keep it somewhat stable, but it was still tilted.

  Once I was in position, I had to put on a pair of metal roller skates—the adjustable kind you stepped into and fastened over your sneakers with clamps that tightened down with a skate key.

  Down below, the end of the slide was propped up on bricks. I took a few practice runs and after each one Frankie kept stacking more bricks under the lip of the slide. “You need more elevation,” he said. “To look like a real daredevil.”

  When he was happy with the height of my jumps, Frankie ran to the garage and returned with some other equipment. He had an oversized pink-and-white swirly plastic hula hoop and he started wrapping it with a roll of cotton gauze the way you might wrap a wounded soldier’s bleeding limb to keep him from dying.

  Alice was playing with a Polaroid camera. She took a shot of the Yorkie she should have been grooming. After a minute she held up the photograph. “The film is no good,” she called over to Frankie. “Look, it’s blurry.”

  He looked at it. “Better get the movie camera,” he said. “I think this is going to be a great stunt either way—dead or alive.”

  Alice went into the garage and returned with her Kodak movie camera. She got herself into position and looked through the viewfinder. “Let’s roll it!” she said.

  Frankie took a paint brush and dipped it into a bowl of gasoline and quickly painted the gauze until it was saturated.

  “Showtime!” he called out.

  The rules were quickly explained. I was to stand up on the roller skates at the flat top deck of the slide while steadying myself with the bars from the built-in ladder. When Frankie said, “Ready,” I was to squat down like a roach and make myself as compact as possible. “Like they do on Florida Roller Derby,” he said, referencing the popular TV show where skaters raced around a circular track while brutally slugging and kicking each other for points. During the show about half the skaters were taken out on stretchers. It was the cruelest game on TV and I loved watching it, but I wasn’t sure about imitating that part of it.

  Finally, when Frankie yelled “Set,” I made certain that my skates were lined up properly and that I was in my tight, tucked-down position.

  Then he held the hula hoop with a pair of grill tongs and pulled out a lighter and flicked it against the hoop. Instantly the flame came to life and chased itself around the gauze. I only had about a second before the hula hoop would melt. As with all of the Pagoda games, there was no room for error but there was a lot of room for disaster and pain and possible lifelong maiming. If I hit the hula hoop the molten plastic would stick to me and burn deeply into my soft flesh and I was sure to be horribly disfigured—something like that melted teddy bear.

  As soon as the flame completed its circle Frankie hollered, “Go!” I pushed off the bars and zoomed down the slide.

  I think Frankie hollered, “We have liftoff!” as I kept myself tucked down and shot through the middle of the still circular hula hoop while Alice captured it all on film.

  Once I lost my momentum my skates dug into the sandy soil and I flew forward and somersaulted over some dog poop. The poop was old and hard so it didn’t stick to me.

  “I’ll get this developed soon,” Alice said, sounding very pleased. “Now that we have the movie camera I think we should redo all the Olympic stunts and capture them in movies instead of still pictures.”

  I couldn’t imagine that I would survive another catapult shot over their house and into their pool. This was the right time to change the subject.

  “Now can I see the puppies?” I asked. “To pick one out.”

  “Sure,” she said. “But you can only have the sick little runty one.”

  “What if I don’t want the runt?” I said right back.

  “So what?” she replied. “Don’t be ungrateful when someone gives you something for free.”

  “I nearly killed myself going through the hula hoop,” I argued. “I should pick the one I want.”

  “With that attitude,” she said snottily as her rotating mouth crunched her words into bits, “you won’t even get the runt.”

  “We’ll see about that,” I snapped. “When Gary gets back he’ll straighten this out.”

  “You are such a gigantic idiot,” she continued to crow. “Don’t you know that you are his runt? He’ll put this dud dog out of its misery just like he’ll do to you.”

  At that, Frankie began to laugh uncontrollably as he repeated, “Runt, runt, runt,” like he was a grunting pig.

  I would have punched him if I didn’t deep-down inside think he was insane and would go mental and try to kill me.

  I took a few steps toward my house, then turned around and shouted at Alice, “Gary will make you give me one of the good pups. He’s my friend!” Of course, my voice shot up an octave, and as I slunk away I tortured myself by hearing my dad mocking me with his “what a panty voice” crack.

  FLAMING WALLET

  The morning sun was a rising gong of pulsing heat, but I was standing beneath it in the backyard because I knew Gary had come home during the night. It was after midnight when I had heard his whiny complaining to his mother that he needed new underwear before he got married. “Go to Sears in the morning,” she had replied.

  “You go,” he begged her. “You know shopping only gives me itchy fingers.”

  “Honey,” she said sweetly, as if talking softly to a pet, “I’m not going anywhere, but it’s traditional to have clean underwear when you get married.”

  “Then I’ll get Frankie to buy them,” he said.


  So I was up early and standing in my backyard, hosing the dirt and leaves off the back patio and hoping to spot Gary. Since he hadn’t gotten married yet I knew he had more time for me.

  Finally he did wake up and step outside in some dingy boxers I hadn’t seen before. When he saw me he swaggered over to the fence.

  “So how’d it go with Leigh?” I asked after turning off the hose and coming over.

  “That was one long bad mood,” he said, and spit to one side. “So I drive all the way up. I hide the hot tow truck in some woods and walk to Leigh’s house trailer. I see her mom and dad, and we solve some old problems. So now I feel real good. Like I found a place in life where I belong, with them and Leigh. Then a little later I borrow Leigh’s truck to buy some groceries for dinner, and on the way her older brothers run me off the road and accuse me of stealing Leigh’s truck.

  “One brother says, ‘You don’t do something like take her truck without our permission.’

  “‘We’re gonna be married,’ I said. ‘What’s it matter?’

  “Then they flip out and start shoving me and telling me there is no way in hell they’ll let Leigh marry me. Honestly, I wanted to kill them, but I just smacked them around a bit.

  “So they take her truck and leave me by the side of the road and when I walk back to Leigh’s place I tell her what happened. She says her brothers are flipping out about the marriage. ‘What’s to flip out about?’ I said to her. ‘I’m going to be family to them, so they should treat me good right from the beginning.’”

  “So you didn’t get hitched,” I concluded, just to keep the conversation alive.

  “Not yet,” he spat. “So then I had to get the tow truck and chance not getting caught coming back. I ditched it in a parking garage in Pompano Beach and hitched home. We’ll just run off as soon as I snatch another car and do it without her family knowing. But right now I need your help.”

  I perked right up. “Buying underwear?” I replied.

  “I don’t know who is more nosy—you or my probation officer, who is making another house call this morning,” he said.