The Liberation of Gabriel King

by K L Going

  There was only one thing I utterly failed at, and it almost put an end to everything.

  It was the middle of June and we were at Frita’s house, reading through our lists. We were still keeping them secret because Frita said it would be more fun that way. I wasn’t sure how exactly that made things fun, but I took Frita’s word for it.

  “It’s your turn to pick,” Frita said that afternoon, putting her list away in the special box under her bed.

  “Nuh-uh,” I said. “I just did one.”

  Frita gave me that look.

  “You know you’ve got three times as many as I do,” she reminded me. “I bet you still got half your list left.”

  I looked down and sure enough, Frita was right. I had more than half left. Drat.

  “What’re you gonna pick?” she asked.

  I read through the things I hadn’t crossed off. Fifth grade, Duke Evans, alligators, the Evans trailer, Frita’s basement, centipedes…

  Centipedes sure were gross, but I’d already tackled earwigs and spiders, so according to Frita’s plan, I ought to be getting braver. I thought about Jimmy and how he really wasn’t such a bad pet once I’d gotten used to him.

  “Fine,” I said. “How about centipedes?”

  Frita grinned. “All right! I know just where to find one.”

  She grabbed my hand and pulled me down the hall.

  “Our basement is full of them,” Frita said. I stopped following, but Frita tightened her grip on my hand.

  “Don’t…be…a…scaredy-cat…,” Frita said, dragging me across the floor. “It’s just a plain old basement and a little bug.”

  But Frita was wrong. There was nothing little about centipedes, and there was nothing plain about Frita’s basement.

  “What if Terrance is down there?”

  Frita opened the basement door. The light was on and I could hear grunting noises and the smack, smack sound of someone pounding something.

  “See?” I said. “He is down there. Guess we’ll have to come back.”

  Frita pulled me down the first step. “Terrance won’t care as long as we tell him we’re coming,” she said. She hollered down the steps, “ME AND GABE ARE COMING DOWN TO LOOK FOR CENTIPEDES!”

  I waited for the rush of feet as Terrance ran up the steps to chase us away, but it didn’t come. He was toweling off the sweat when we got to the bottom of the steps.

  “Fine,” he said. “I was done anyway.” But he didn’t say it nice. He glared at me. Then he yelled at Frita. “Don’t touch anything!”

  He snapped his towel at her, and she stuck out her tongue. Terrance took the stairs two at a time, and I watched him go, wondering if I’d ever be that big. I wondered what it felt like to have such long legs. Never getting any taller was number twenty-nine on my list, but there sure wasn’t anything I could do about that.

  Frita stood in the middle of the basement and looked around. The light was on this time because Terrance had been down there. The punching bags and panther drawings didn’t look quite so big and scary when it wasn’t dark.

  “Look,” said Frita, “it’s not so bad.”

  She took a box off the shelf and put it on the floor. It was full of ornaments and a string of garland. “This is all our Christmas stuff. And here’s that plastic pumpkin I used to take trick-or-treating.”

  She pulled down another box. “This one has all my baby clothes in it, and look, here’s the doll Great-aunt Alma gave me.” Frita wrinkled her nose. She hated dolls almost as much as she hated Great-aunt Alma.

  I picked up the plastic pumpkin. This stuff was kind of neat. I had a pumpkin just like this one, only we didn’t have a basement in the trailer, so mine was stashed in Momma and Pop’s closet.

  “What’s in that one?” I asked, pointing to another box on the shelf along the wall. Frita got up on a stool and pulled down the boxes, one by one. It was almost like Christmas.

  Until we found the centipede.

  Frita might have forgotten all about centipedes if one hadn’t crawled out of a box right when she was reaching in to take out a camping lantern. I was sitting on the floor, playing with Frita’s old Matchbox cars, when out scampered a million legs and a slimy body. I jumped up and knocked over the box.

  “All right!” Frita said, getting up to follow the centipede over to the wall. I hoped he’d be too fast to catch, but he stopped right by the furnace almost as if he was waiting for her to scoop him up.

  “Frita,” I said, “I changed my mind. I don’t need to cross centipedes off my list because I already crossed off spiders and earwigs and I shoulda just written down bugs because that’s what I meant. So, really, I’m done with—”

  “Hush up,” Frita said. She was crouching down, positioning her hands around the centipede. I looked away. Next time I peeked, she had her hands cupped real tight.

  “Don’t be scared,” she told me. “Centipedes are soft and friendly. Let’s name him so you’ll feel like he’s a pet. Or wait! Maybe I’ll keep him. That way you’ll have Jimmy and I’ll have…” Frita thought it over. “Gilligan.” Frita watched Gilligan’s Island reruns on TV every week. “That’s the perfect name!”

  She was getting some excited, but I stared hard at her cupped hands. My eyes were huge as saucers.

  “Daddy says fear is mind over matter,” Frita told me. “If you don’t mind it won’t matter. Now, put out your hands.”

  I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to picture Jimmy in his tank. If he wasn’t so bad, the centipede couldn’t be much worse. I reached out my hands…

  Frita plopped that centipede right into my palm and I tried to cup him in there nice and tight, like Frita had, but I was too slow and he was too quick. He was up my arm in a flash.

  “GET HIM OFF!” I hollered. I flicked my arm and the centipede fell onto the floor. Then before I even thought about it, I stomped him real good. I was dancing around in a circle, stomping that bug into one big centipede mash.

  Only then I caught a glimpse of Frita. Her eyes were huge and both her hands were over her mouth.

  “You’re killing Gilligan,” she choked at last. I couldn’t tell if she was going to cry or pound me.

  That’s when I stopped stomping.

  I looked down at the splotch on the basement floor and all sorts of guilt flooded in. Frita knelt down to look and her bottom lip quivered. She gave me the worst look I’d ever seen.

  “You killed my pet,” she said. “He wasn’t even hurting you. He was just crawling around, that’s all.” Then she sniffed hard. “Gabriel King,” she said, “you’re not getting any braver at all!”

  Frita turned and marched up the stairs. I heard the front door slam and I knew she’d gone out back to sit in the pecan tree. That’s when my stomach started to churn. I thought about the way Frita’s eyes had gotten big and round like mine did when I was the most scared. Maybe dead things were on Frita’s list.

  Then my eyes got big and round because I’d killed Frita’s pet just because I was chicken. Maybe she’d never forgive me.

  Frita being mad at me was number twenty-three.

  There was only one thing to do. I took a little plastic cup out of one of the boxes and even though it was gross, I scooped that squished-up bug into the cup. We’d have a real decent burial for Gilligan. Then I’d promise never to kill another bug again. If that’s what it took to get Frita to forgive me, I’d be Gabriel King, a bug’s best friend.

  Chapter 14

  CORPSES AND DOBERMANS

  FRITA WAS REAL SORE AT ME AFTER THAT—DESPITE THE REAL NICE funeral we held in her backyard. She didn’t call me on the phone or ask me to come over for two whole days, and when we finally did get together, it was another day and a half before things were back to normal. Only they weren’t exactly back to normal. Frita didn’t mention our lists again once. Not even when I told her I’d crossed off number twenty-three since she’d forgiven me.

  Life was strained. Summer was at its peak—you couldn’t move an inch without breaking
a sweat—and there’s nothing worse than suffering in the heat while your best friend is sore at you. The only saving grace was the Bicentennial. It was on its way and we were real excited.

  The last week of June, me and Frita met up in Hollowell to get ice cream cones. I’d saved up my allowance every day since I’d squished the centipede, so it was my treat. Frita got a strawberry cone and I got a vanilla one and we sat on the lawn in front of the town hall to eat them. That was a good spot because you could listen in on everyone’s conversations.

  “You got those fireworks set for the Fourth, Joe?”

  “How about those sparklers for the kids?”

  “Who’s in charge of the parade floats this year?”

  Everyone had something to say, and it was fun listening to them with ice cream dripping down your chin. At least, it was fun until Duke and his pop pulled up in their old monster truck. I’d been trying not to think about Duke all summer, but now I remembered him right quick.

  “Let’s go,” I said to Frita, but she stayed put.

  “They’re not gonna chase me away,” she said. She was pretending to be brave, but I noticed how she watched real careful while Mr. Evans climbed out of the truck. Duke climbed out after him and said something to his pop. Then he glared at me and Frita, but she glared straight back. Mr. Evans glanced over at us but he didn’t say anything. He just kept walking to the general store.

  “See?” said Frita. “That wasn’t so bad.” But I wondered who she was trying to convince—me or herself. I was glad Mr. Evans hadn’t called Frita any names again, but I didn’t want to stick around until they came back.

  “C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go back to my house and make another obstacle course.”

  I tried to pull Frita up with me, but she didn’t budge. Her eyes narrowed into slits like she was getting an idea. Then they started to sparkle again. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Only thing I knew for certain was it meant trouble.

  “I got a better idea,” Frita said.

  “What?” I asked, real suspicious. I sure hoped it didn’t involve bugs.

  Frita’s chin jutted out like it did when she got something in her head she was going to be stubborn about. “Gabe,” she said, “it’s time to do some liberatin’.”

  * * *

  The thing about trouble is, if you think you’re going to land in it, you can be pretty certain you’re right. One minute I was sitting outside the town hall with an ice cream cone, and the next minute I was crouched in a pricker bush outside Duke Evans’s trailer.

  Looked like our fear-busting was back in business.

  “You sure we should do this?” I asked, peering between the branches.

  “Yup,” said Frita. “Duke’s trailer is on your list, right? Well, it’s on mine too, so now’s our chance.”

  We were just a few feet away from the edge of Duke’s yard.

  “What if someone’s home?”

  “We know they’re not,” Frita said, “that’s why we’ve got to do it now.”

  I sniffed the air, remembering what Duane Patterson said about Mrs. Evans’s corpse. I didn’t smell anything, but there wasn’t any wind today.

  “Duane said they’ve got Dobermans in there,” I whispered.

  Frita wiped her brow.

  “I don’t hear any barking,” she said, but we both stayed real silent just in case. I hadn’t put Dobermans on my list, but that was only ’cause I hadn’t thought of them at the time. Truth was, I’d rank them right close to spiders.

  “Didn’t your momma and daddy say not to come around here?” I said.

  I could hear Mrs. Wilson’s voice in my head. “Don’t you go near that place. You hear me, Frita Wilson?” She’d said it a hundred times. Then I thought about what Pop had said about me and Frita needing to watch ourselves. Maybe this was what he’d meant.

  “Pop said we ought to be careful—” I started, but Frita interrupted me.

  “Hush up,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you that liberatin’ is serious business?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, there’s no kind of serious business that isn’t risky. Besides, we’re watching out, aren’t we? Why else do you think we’re in the bushes?”

  I had to admit Frita had a point.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s check things out. I bet you two dollars it’s not so scary once we get up close.”

  Frita darted out of the bushes, but I grabbed her back again and held on tight.

  “Don’t be a scaredy-cat,” Frita told me, real stern. “It’s broad daylight.”

  Frita pulled loose of my grip. She dodged an old tire and a car fender, then she hesitated. We’d never been this close before. I closed my eyes and held my breath. Then I opened one eye and watched as Frita darted the rest of the way to the door. She touched it with her palm, then looked back over her shoulder and grinned.

  “See?” she said. “Not so scary. I told you.”

  Far as I was concerned, Frita could have all the glory. I stayed planted in my spot, but Frita didn’t put up with that.

  “Get over here, Gabriel King,” she hollered. “You can’t cross this off your list unless you get out of that pricker bush.”

  I crawled out and scooted around to the back of the trailer where Frita was trying to see in the back window. There were a thousand voices screaming inside my head and every one of them was telling me to run, but Frita couldn’t hear them.

  “Let’s see if Mrs. Evans’s corpse is really in there,” she said. “I’ll give you a boost.”

  I shook my head. “No way.”

  “You have to,” Frita told me. “I’m too big for you to boost up, and we can’t see in even on tiptoes. All you got to do is look.”

  “What if I see her?”

  Frita was making her hands into a cup shape so I could step into them.

  “Well, then you can cross corpses off your list too.”

  Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. I guessed the quickest way out of there was to take a peek, so I put one foot in Frita’s palms and rested the other one on the side of the trailer to balance. Then I put my hands on the window and pulled myself up. The old wood was scratchy beneath my palms.

  “What do you see?” Frita asked. “Do you see Mrs. Evans? Is she dead?”

  Frita was pouring out questions, but truth was I couldn’t be sure exactly what I saw. The old curtain hanging over the window made everything look ghostly white.

  “I see some furniture,” I said, “and there’s a pile of clothes in one corner. There’re some shoes in the pile and…” Wait! Were those shoes, or were they feet? Sure did look like feet. Maybe underneath that pile of rags was Duke’s dead momma. Maybe that’s why our parents didn’t want us near here. I turned to look at Frita, but all I saw was Mrs. Evans coming at me with a broom.

  “You kids get away from here!”

  Frita let loose such a high-pitched scream, a dog started yelping from across the street. She pulled her hands out from under my feet so fast, I didn’t know what had happened. One minute I was peeking in the window trying to trace the outline of a corpse, and the next minute I was lying on my back in a cloud of dust and Mrs. Evans was raising her broom high above my head.

  For a minute I was frozen stiff, but then that broom was coming down quick. I rolled onto my side and clambered to my feet. I felt like I’d been hit by an eighteen-wheeler, but I got up and ran like the dickens.

  “Don’t you kids be coming around here! I don’t want to catch you near this place ever again. If I do, I’ll…”

  I could hear her yelling after us halfway back to my place. On every other occasion Frita could run way faster than me, but I was so scared I clear out beat her to my trailer. I got there a full minute before she did.

  Frita could barely catch her breath.

  “What did you…Can you believe…Did you see…”

  She lay down on the ground, sprawled out like a limp rag doll, and I sat down beside her, my heart still th
umping.

  “Gabe,” she said at last, breathing hard, “I think we nearly got ourselves killed.”

  That was the God’s honest truth. We’d gone in worrying about one corpse and come out worrying about two.

  Chapter 15

  OFF A HIGH BRANCH

  ONE THING I LEARNED ABOUT LIBERATING: SOMETIMES IT’S NOT SO easy to decide when it’s done. Now we were twice as scared of the Evans trailer as we’d been before, but Frita said that had most definitely been our best try, so we crossed it off in black Magic Marker. Then we decided to take a breather.

  July first, Frita came over and brought an article from Life magazine. It was all about the Bicentennial, so we propped it up against Jimmy’s spider tank so we could both see it at the same time. We lay in the grass on our stomachs, reading it, and every now and then we’d turn the magazine around so Jimmy could see the pictures.

  We were looking at a two-page spread of fireworks when Frita asked her question.

  “Think we should go to the fireworks in Hollowell?” she asked, studying the page.

  “Where else would we go?”

  “We could go to the ones in Rockford.”

  “Why would we do that?” I asked.

  Frita shrugged.

  We were quiet for a minute, but then she said, “Terrance told me there wouldn’t be any black people at the ones in Hollowell. He said they’d all be going to Rockford.”

  I wondered why it made a difference. Never seemed to bother Frita before.

  “Terrance said white people aren’t celebrating our independence. He says they’re only celebrating the independence of white people.”

  Huh. I thought we were celebrating everyone’s independence.

  “Momma and Pop and me are celebrating your independence,” I said, “and we’re going to Hollowell.”

  Frita shrugged like it was no big deal.

  “I was just wondering,” she said. Then she flipped the page around so Jimmy could see. “You think Mr. Evans will be there?”

  She said it real casual, but I could tell she’d been gearing up to ask me that. I hadn’t thought about it none, but I supposed he would be. “Yup,” I said.