I HAVEN’T FORGOTTEN—and neither has my dad—the ten Saturdays of labor I owe him to get my bike out of jail. So, on the first Saturday after Clear Creek at exactly nine a.m., he delivers me to the back of his store.
“Will you be working today too?” I ask.
“I’ve got a game up at the Club, Charlie. I’ll be back at three to pick you up. Until then, Nate’s your boss.”
He hands me my bagged lunch and drives away.
Saturdays are quiet days at Ross Rents. The store is open only from nine to three, and the phone lines don’t light up like crazy the way they do all week long. Gwynne, a skinny woman with long red nails that click the keys of her typewriter, works up front, answering calls when they come and catching up on paperwork for the week ahead. Nathaniel works in back, repairing equipment and getting orders ready for the trucks to deliver on Monday.
I polish the wheelchairs, spray WD-40 into squeaky spots, and think a lot about why I’m here. The kid who followed Keith down Laurel Canyon feels like a stranger to me now.
Nate puts on the radio. “Shining Star,” an Earth, Wind & Fire song, plays. He drags a couple of wheelchairs out from their slots, checks an order form on his clipboard, and then brings out a rollaway.
“Ever sleep on one of those?” I say.
“No, Charlie, I never have.”
“Consider yourself lucky. I slept on one last Friday. Would’ve been better off on the floor.”
“What was wrong with your regular bed?”
“Occupied,” I say, “by Armstrong. He killed me at rugby hoops, so I had to sleep on the rollaway.”
Nate smiles, writes a serial number on the order form, then tapes the form to the bed.
“Armstrong slept over?”
I tell him about the field trip to Clear Creek and how the kids from Armstrong’s neighborhood needed places to stay the night before.
“Must’ve been nice to have another boy around.”
A fourth person at the table. Laughter in the house. Someone to talk to about Andy.
“Yeah,” I say. “It really was.”
Nate pulls the next invoice from the stack. He grabs a dolly and wheels it over to a row of green oxygen tanks. They look like oversize bowling pins.
“I hope someday you go over to his house too, Charlie. Then the circle will come all the way around.”
He slides the dolly under a tank and wheels it over to the loading bay.
Armstrong
After Clear Creek we bring home report cards. Daddy looks mine over, says it’s better than he ever did, and hands it to Mama, who’s especially proud of my A+ in reading. But Lenai spots something they didn’t see. In the “Attitudes and Behavior” section under “Shows self-control,” they’ve checked me as “Needs to improve.”
“Why don’t you take this over and show Mr. Khalil?” Lenai says. Parent Number Three.
On the way there, I fold up my report card like it’s a paper football or an airplane. That way Mr. Khalil will see only the parts I want to show.
It’s early on Saturday so I use my key. I go inside, say hello to Patches, and call out to the house.
“Mr. Khalil, it’s Armstrong. I brought you my report card.”
No answer.
I go into the kitchen and see he left the stove on. I shut it off for him.
“Mr. Khalil, you up?”
Long silence. Finally his voice calls back from down the hall. “I’m in the bathroom, Armstrong. Be out in … fifteen minutes.”
Fifteen is a lot of minutes. I guess at his age things take their time.
It’s quiet for one of the fifteen. Then Mr. Khalil says, “Did you say you brought your report card?”
“I did.”
“Slide it under the door. I’m low on reading material.”
Only trouble with that is, what if he unfolds it, like a newspaper? I walk down that hall praying that he won’t.
“Here you go.”
I slide the report card under, then lean against the wall to pray some more.
I live with seven people and one bathroom. I know the sounds people make when they’re in there. You got your happy sounds, surprised sounds, sounds of struggle, and sounds of relief.
But honestly, right now with Mr. Khalil looking at my report card, I can’t tell which is which.
“Ahhhhh,” he says, and I hope that’s for my grade in reading.
“Hmmmm.” That might be the “Needs to improve” in self-control.
Here comes an “OH!” which could be part of the digestive process, or he just found my social studies grade.
Long silence. Followed by a flush.
I hear the sink running. Then just dripping. Then Mr. Khalil opens the door.
“It says you don’t always respect authority.”
I guess he unfolded it.
“Do I have to respect authority if authority doesn’t respect me?”
Mr. Khalil thinks about that. His bushy white eyebrows come together, then apart.
“No,” he says. “No, you don’t.”
He flips over my report card. “But a C in social studies?”
“You’re the one who told me about the conscientious objectors to Vietnam. Well, I’ve been conscientious-objecting to social studies. I don’t like how the Indians got killed by the white people. It’s not pretty.”
“Who says the history of this country is supposed to be pretty?”
“Fine. Maybe it’s got some ugliness to it. But Mr. Mitchell’s idea of teaching is to make us memorize names. Father this. Junípero that. It doesn’t matter to me.”
“Everything matters, Armstrong. The way groups of people treat one another. That’s history. The way a ball bounces on the ground and rolls a certain way. That’s physics. The way friendships are built and sometimes broken. That’s humanity. And the way time moves forward and back inside a person’s head. That’s memory.”
“Okay, I’ll work harder in social studies. But otherwise … ?”
“Otherwise … it’s a report card to make a boy proud.”
Charlie
After work one Saturday, I’m alone on the driveway when I hear Kathy’s skateboard sliding down Greenvalley Road. This time she stops, kicks up her board, and comes to say hi.
It’s a little awkward because we haven’t talked in almost a year. I ask her how she likes junior high. She’s at Bancroft, where I’ll start in September.
“It’s crowded and there are gym clothes and you have to take showers at PE because kids in junior high sweat a lot. I miss the trees at Wonderland. Math with Miss Sasaki is terrifying. Sewing class is a waste of time. Jazz band is fun, though. I’m learning the saxophone. But I get nervous in front of a crowd.”
Her skateboard has an STP decal that’s curling up. She tries a couple times to flatten it down, but it won’t stick. I get the feeling she’s nervous right now.
“There’s this friend of mine from the band,” she says. “An eighth grade boy. He plays piano. Asked me if I want to see a movie sometime.”
“That’s nice,” I say.
She looks up from her skateboard. “I didn’t want to say yes until I asked you.”
“Me? What for?”
“Andy and I never broke up.”
I hadn’t thought of that. When someone dies, if you were going steady, you kind of still are.
“You want me to break up with you? For Andy?”
“Is that weird?”
Not really, I think. How can you go steady with someone who’s gone?
“The eighth-grader who plays piano. What’s his name?”
“Tyler.”
“Go see a movie with Tyler, Kathy. It’s what Andy would want. And if he’s ever over at your house, bring him by, okay? I’d like to meet him.”
“Thank you, Charlie.”
She leans forward and gives me a kiss on the cheek. Her hair smells like eucalyptus trees. Like the fort she and Andy made.
I start to count time in twisties. Eve
ry Saturday morning my dad drops me at the back of the store. Every Saturday afternoon, when we hear the friendly toot of his horn, Nathaniel walks me out to the alley. He gives my dad a progress report, and as long as I’ve done a “man’s job,” I get paid with a twisty from the Alligator Baggies in our kitchen. When we pull into the garage, I tie the twisty onto the spokes of my hanging bike. As soon as I reach ten twisties, my bike will be free.
The closer I get to ten, the closer I get to Shelley, too. After school we meet behind the main school building and make out on the hill under the oak tree. Some days we kiss for thirty seconds at a time, others for two minutes or more. Once, we fell asleep kissing and didn’t wake up until it was almost dark and we were drooling.
We still haven’t Frenched, though.
One day, after I’ve earned seven twisties and Shelley and I have recorded our longest kiss yet—twelve minutes and fifty-two seconds, according to my Timex—she tells me I counted wrong.
“You counted forty-six freckles that night in the shed. There’s one more.”
“There is?”
She turns her head and shows me the back of her earlobe. There’s a tiny dot there, like she had her ear pierced only partway through.
I reach out and flick a tree bug from her shoulder. Then I draw a backwards C, pushing Shelley’s hair behind her ear. My finger touches her forty-seventh freckle.
We kiss again, and right away I feel her tongue against my lips.
“Don’t you want to, Charlie?”
“I want to.”
She tries again. I pull back.
“Just not yet.”
Shelley folds her arms across her chest and looks down.
“Is it my breath?”
“Your breath smells like candy.”
“Is it ’cause I’m not cute like Leslie?”
“You are cute. And smart. Ninth-grade-crossword-puzzle smart.”
She looks at me with her peppermint green eyes.
“I want to wait until I’m a little older,” I say.
Shelley scooches away from me. “You’re just saying that to be nice.” She slides down the hill on her butt.
“Shelley, wait! That’s not true!”
Great—now I made a girl cry.
Armstrong
Nobody ever said love is easy. If you ask me, this is all Otis’s fault. He should’ve never put those two together. Now Ross is dragging around a heavy heart, and I’m the one got to lift it up.
“There’s plenty of signs in the zodiac, Ross,” I say. “Why not try your luck with a Gemini or a Pisces? Otis knows all the girls’ signs. Ask him to set you up.”
“I don’t want to be set up. I want to stay with Shelley.”
“Even if it means having to break your promise about Andy?”
He sighs like air leaking from a ball.
“Want me to tell you about my first French kiss?”
“Not really.”
“It was fourth grade. Amber Williams. Her mama told us to keep an eye on the chocolate chip cookies in the oven. We damn near set the house on fire.”
“Fourth grade? You Frenched a girl in fourth grade?!”
“I was fourth grade. She was seventh. And, Ross, you should see her now! You will, too, when you come over to my house someday. I know what time in the evening she gets undressed.”
“That’s not right, spying on a girl.”
“This is from the boy who showed me a hole in the wall?”
Ross elbows me in the arm. I elbow him back.
“But seriously, you think you could stay at my place one night like I stayed at yours?”
“I don’t see why not. As soon as I’m done with all these Saturdays at Ross Rents, I’ll ask my mom and dad.”
It’d be nice to introduce Charlie Ross to my family. And to old Mr. Khalil.
Charlie
On my tenth Saturday at Ross Rents, my father’s wheelchairs shine as bright as his whitewalls. Nathaniel declares me a first-rate assistant and says he’ll report high marks to my dad. But my dad is late to pick me up, and Nathaniel’s son is the center fielder in an all-star game this afternoon. Gwynne left ten minutes ago; now Nate has to leave too.
“It’s okay, Nathaniel,” I say. “He’ll be here any minute. I can wait on my own.”
“You won’t ride around in the electric wheelchairs, will you?”
“Oh, no. Too risky.”
“All right, then. You tell your father you did a man’s job today.”
“I will.”
He gives me a wink and heads out back.
As soon as I hear Nathaniel’s El Dorado drive off down the alley, I hop on a lightweight Everest & Jennings electric wheelchair and start joy-riding around the store.
I’m doing full-throttle figure eights in the show room, having so much fun that I ignore what might be my father’s honk from the back alley. Or it might be somebody else’s. The hum of the battery-operated motor makes just enough noise for me to overlook a second honk too.
But then I hear the family signal. In the navy, besides being a celebrated baker, Marty Ross was a radioman, third class, and spent much of his time sending and receiving Morse code. After the war, he brought his dahs and dits back with him to civilian life. They gave us the “rally call of the family,” as he put it. In the station wagon on our first trip to Mammoth, he told Andy and me that we should always ski on the buddy system—nobody goes off alone. “But in case someone does get lost, we’ll have a signal, a whistle, that’ll help us find each other fast.”
He puckered up, and out came a sound like a bird in a forest: twah twooh twooh, twooh twah twah twooh, twooh twah twooh twooh, twah twah.
“What’s it mean?” Andy had asked.
“It’s Morse code. Dah dit dit, dah dah dit dit, dah dah dit dit dah dah. A call for all ships to return to port. And it’ll serve us well as a family signal—if you’re lost in a crowd, just listen for my whistle. A whistle travels farther than a voice.”
So does the horn of a car. Hah honk honk, hah hah honk honk honk, hah hah honk honk hah hah.
I race the wheelchair back into its slot. Idiot! I left the bathroom light on. I walk across the warehouse to turn it off, then head back and push open the heavy steel door to the alley.
Where my father is standing outside the car. His hands are on the luggage rack, his back toward me.
Two men stand close behind him. I see my father slowly reach around to his back pocket. He pulls out his wallet. One of the men snatches it from his hand.
The other opens the door and shoves him toward the back seat.
My father doesn’t get in. The man pulls something small and dark from his jacket—is it a gun?—and presses it against my father’s head.
My whole body starts to shake. I want to speak but my mouth is dry. I want to shout, Don’t hurt my dad! Take his money but don’t take him. I want to say, He’s my dad and I love him, so please don’t. Please …
He’s kneeling now and crawling into the car.
I can hardly feel my legs. Somehow they carry me into the alley.
No! I think. Stop! I want to say. The words are dust in my mouth.
I hear a click. The man’s arm points inside the back seat of the car.
NO! I scream. But no sound comes.
I take another step. My shoe crunches a rock. Both men turn their heads to look at me.
“Please,” I say. “That’s my dad.”
The gun is still pointed into the back of the car. The eyes are pointed at me.
Then the gun disappears into the jacket. The men disappear down the alley.
I walk over to the car. The back door is still open. I lean in.
“Dad …”
He doesn’t answer. I move closer. On the floor of the back seat, my father looks as small as a child.
“Dad.”
I climb in and lie across the seat above him. I put my hand on his back.
“Dad, it’s okay. They’re gone now.”
He sits up, and I put my arms around him, and he leans against me, growing back to his full size in my arms. We’re there like that, in the back seat of our family car, in the alley behind his store, until I feel my dad take up his own weight again.
We get out and he looks down the alley, up the alley, down the alley and up, like he’s trying to piece together what happened. Where those men came from. Why he didn’t see them coming.
When he speaks, his voice sounds like it’s behind a mask.
“Your mother mustn’t know about this, Charlie,” he says. “She’s had enough to deal with this year. We can’t add one more thing. Do you understand?”
I nod.
“You won’t speak about it to her. To anyone. Do I have your word, Charlie, that you’ll never speak about this to anyone?”
“Yes, Dad,” I say. “You have my word.”
Armstrong
Early on Sunday I head over to Mr. Khalil’s with my work gloves on. I promised I’d help plant his tomatoes today, and he promised he’d teach me how to make a caramel cake for Mother’s Day.
Mr. Khalil is usually up at dawn. He says old people lose the habit of sleeping the closer they get to the grave. They develop what he calls vampire sleep—most of it during the day—so at night they’re wide awake, tossing and turning or taking pills to quiet their minds.
“Mr. Khalil,” I say, opening up his door with my key. On weekends I’ve been coming by to help him get the day started. Bring him his newspaper and set the water to boil on his stove. I offered to learn how to make his coffee, but he said I wouldn’t make it strong enough. I would if you teach me, I said. But he said no. There are things a man has to do for himself while he still can.
“Mr. Khalil,” I say again when the kettle’s on. “You want your newspaper in bed?”
There’s no answer from the bedroom. He’s probably in the bathroom doing his business.
Patches must be outside doing his, too. Mr. Khalil’s afternoon naps have been so long, and his afternoon walks so short, we had to put in a doggy door so Patches wouldn’t pee in the house. I look out the back window. Patches isn’t in the yard.
Then I hear some whining from the bedroom. Sounds like a dog but not like a dog at the same time.
“Mr. Khalil, you awake?”
No answer.
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