Going Nowhere Faster

by Sean Beaudoin

  I locked my bike to the Dumpster and then walked in the front door. The lights were off and Keith was standing in the middle of the store talking to a policeman, who was taking Felder-ish notes in his pad. Video cases were all over the carpet. Ceiling tiles hung at odd angles, and wiring was pulled down and exposed. There was broken glass and broken video equipment and posters torn in long strips. The register was on its side, yanked open like an oyster. Hundreds of pennies were strewn across the floor. The word “nats” was spray-painted all over the walls in red. NATSNATSNATSNATS. It was everywhere, impossible to keep your eyes off of. Had the store been robbed? It’d definitely been trashed. It was unbelievable.

  “What’s going on?” I asked. NATS.

  Keith stared at me for a minute and then picked an Almond Joy from the rubble and stuck it in his mouth.

  ”Careful,” I said, unable to stop myself, “that could be evidence.”

  Keith didn’t laugh. I didn’t blame him. I knew it wasn’t funny, but I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Sorry.”

  ”Where you been, Stan?” Keith asked.

  The cop looked me over, squinting. “This is Stan?”

  Keith nodded, his enormous perm even more enormous than usual. “Yup, that’s him.”

  “Where you been, Stan?” the cop asked, writing in his pad. NATS. He looked familiar and it took me a minute to place him. Dave Munter. He was the older brother of a kid in my class and had been out of high school for a few years. He’d been picked on a lot (join the club). Even now, when his car drove by the school, everyone would yell and whistle and laugh. He was not a friendly guy.

  “What are you writing?”

  “I asked you a question,” Officer Dave said. He was thin, with a thin mustache and thin, angry eyes. He wore shorts and his knobby legs were sunburned. He had about eight thousand pounds of equipment on his belt and mirrored sunglasses pushed on top of his head. He chewed gum with an accusing snap.

  FIVE POSSIBLY MORE ACCURATE NICKNAMES FOR OFFICER DAVE:

  1. Officer Jane

  2. Mr. Burn and Peel

  3. Pee Jay Hooker

  4. Captain Kneesocks

  5. The Angry Inch

  “Um . . . ,” I said, stalling. What could I tell them? Where had I been? I couldn’t really say that I’d refused to get out of bed for a week. I couldn’t say I’d joined the Brotherhood of the Sheet. NATS.

  “I’ve . . . uh . . . been sick,” I said.

  “Sick,” Keith said.

  “Sick,” Officer Dave repeated, chomping his gum. He wrote something in his pad.

  “That’s not what your mom said.” Keith peeled open another candy bar and offered it to Officer Dave, who shook his head without taking his eyes off me. Keith swallowed it in one bite.

  “My mom?”

  “Yeah, your mom. When I talked to her on Monday. And Tuesday. And Wednesday. Days you were supposed to work. Days she said you were just in bed. Lying there. Like you were feeling too guilty to get up.”

  I was sweating. NATS. There was a knot in my stomach. NATS. There was no sign of my friend Keith inside this large angry man. There was no smile there at all.

  “Sorry,” I said again.

  Keith threw an empty The Way We Were box on the ground. “Why would someone do this? To my store? Sure, steal the cash, whatever. You know what they got away with?” He was staring at me. “About fifty bucks.”

  Officer Dave nodded sympathetically.

  “But then why trash it? Why?”

  “Drugs,” said Officer Dave. He pointed his thumb in my direction, like I wasn’t even there. “These kids?” He shrugged and flipped his pad closed, as if it completed his thought. “And what’s with this NATS business?”

  “Yeah, Stan,” Keith asked. NATS. “Do you know what that’s all about?”

  “I bet it’s some new drug,” Officer Dave said.

  I swallowed hard. It was like the old eye-cue test all over again. “Um . . . I guess it’s STAN backward?”

  Keith looked at Officer Dave. Officer Dave nodded and then looked at me slyly. “Very smart. Use your own name to throw us off the scent? Wow. That’s what we police call advanced criminal thinking.”

  “What scent?” I said. “Keith?”

  “No one’s accusing anyone of anything,” Officer Dave said. “Yet.”

  I wiped my neck and then my forehead. I couldn’t believe it.

  “Listen,” I said. “Okay, the other night I come home and there’s this doll, right? A red doll that —”

  “A red doll?” Officer Dave said, smirking at Keith. Keith shook his head and wiped nougat off his mustache. Officer Dave didn’t write “red” or “doll” in his little pad.

  “Okay, forget that,” I said. “Someone tried to run me over. In their car? Like, I was riding my bike and —”

  “Run you over?” Officer Dave said, rolling his eyes. “You look okay to me.”

  It was hopeless. Why was I even bothering? They stared, like Laurel and Hardy. Except Hardy was big and mean and wanted to eat my leg for lunch. Laurel was skinny and weird and wore his socks way too high.

  “Chad Chilton,” I said, but they didn’t even hear. I dabbed my underarm with a copy of The Accused. Jodie Foster’s nose soaked in my sweat. “Umm . . . I know this is a dumb question, but, do you need me to work my shift?”

  Keith laughed. Officer Dave laughed.

  “Work your shift, Stan?” Keith said. “Maybe you should try looking around.”

  “Happy Video is now a crime scene,” Officer Dave said.

  “Happy Video is now officially closed,” Keith said. “Even if you weren’t fired. Which you are.” He kicked some boxes out of his way and turned and walked back into what was left of his office.

  “Don’t leave town,” Officer Dave warned, then left himself.

  Outside, my bike had two new flats. Both tires had long horizontal slashes across them, ugly jagged rips that looked like they were made with someone’s teeth. I looked around. The parking lot was empty. No traffic, no kids, no birds, nothing. What was going on? I unlocked the bike and walked it alongside me. Fired? Fired. From Happy Video. It was like being fired from breathing. How could Keith look at me that way? Blank, like a fish. Did he really think I had anything to do with robbing the store? Could things possibly get any worse?

  It took me an hour to walk home. My mother was downstairs, laughing. I could hear Prarash’s voice. Olivia was taking a nap and my father was somewhere in the bowels of the house banging metal together. I made a peanut butter (organic and hard as a rock) sandwich and carried it up to my room, where it sat on the bookshelf until I fell asleep.

  In the morning, my mother popped her head in the door. It was early, not even six. I sat up, mentally preparing to wash yams.

  “Let me guess. Prarash is late?”

  Her face was ashy and scared. For a second I was positive there was something wrong with Olivia.

  “No, Stan,” my mother said. “I just got a call from Sheriff Conner. Roberto was arrested last night.”

  “Arrested? Which one?”

  “Dos.”

  “But why?”

  “I don’t know yet,” she said, and left the door open, as if there were nothing else to ask. I sat up and quickly got dressed. I was going to have to walk into town. Or wheel my bike, which was the same thing as walking, except with a bike next to you. I couldn’t call Miles. I couldn’t talk to Ellen. Keith hated my guts. Olivia was too small to understand. I considered talking to myself in the mirror, but it was just too much like Risky Business. Chopper nosed his way in and watched me tie my shoes. He wagged his little nub tail and drooled on my carpet.

  “What should I do, buddy?”

  “Woof,” he answered, which was really no answer at all.

  Treatment for the feature-length film entitled

  GOING NOWHERE FASTER©

  Written by Stan “Kid Savage” Smith

  This is a movie about a superhero named Roy. In real
life he’s a mild-mannered race starter. Yup, Roy’s the guy who shoots the cap gun and then all the guys bounce out of their crouches and start zooming toward the hurdles, or whatever. Nobody notices Roy unless he screws up, like shoots his cap gun too soon, and then everyone boos. Anyway, one night Roy is walking home from the racetrack and falls into a pile of radioactive waste. Or no, he sees a lost puppy out on the test range, and runs out to rescue him just before the Evil General okays a strontium bomb experiment. Either way, it gives Roy special powers. He wakes up that night feeling strong. He climbs the walls and walks on the ceiling and does an uneven-bar routine on his shower rod. Then he sews himself a really tight lycra suit and becomes Marginally Effective Deterrent Man. See, the blast at the test range gave him powers, just not enough powers. He keeps trying to stop crime, but never stops it quite enough. He shows up at the bank robbery and manages to turn off the alarm that’s hurting everyone’s ears, but the robbers still get away with the cash. He stops a couple from being mugged on their way home from the theatre, but only manages to recover one diamond earring, and not the wallet or tie pin or pocketbook the mugger ran off with. He manages to give the city’s crime boss a whole lot to worry about, like spamming his computer and breaking the windshield wipers off his Hummer and sticking a potato in his drainpipe so his basement floods, but really doesn’t do much about the crime boss’s citywide reign of terror. Also, the red-headed intrepid female reporter that Roy is in love with thinks he’s kind of a jerk. And ignores him. And then the credits roll. And the whole thing about the huge meteor that’s about to crash into Earth is never really addressed. Or maybe Roy is like “Run! Run!” and some people do, but, on the other hand, others don’t. And it’s ironic he’s telling people to run, being a racetrack starter guy and all.

  Sigh.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  THE really not all that BAD, okay, maybe that bad SEED

  Sheriff Conner had bright red bangs and a huge potbelly. He had bright red sideburns and a bright red mustache and bright red hair on his arms. He looked up from his desk when I walked in the door and smiled. He’d been really nice to me about the whole burning-locker thing.

  “Stan! Hey, buddy.”

  “Hi, Sheriff.”

  He was also a big chess fan. We’d played a game or two while waiting for my mother to pick me up. Or maybe we’d been waiting for Chad Chilton to decline to press charges. Either way, he kicked out a plastic chair, so I sat on the other side of his desk.

  “Game?”

  “Why not?”

  He pulled out a chessboard, the kind that folded in half and had Chinese checkers on the back. There were two pieces missing, a bottle-cap rook and a lighter-knight. Sheriff Conner held out his hands and I picked the left one. It opened to reveal a white pawn. He set it in front of me and started arranging his black pieces. I moved my queen’s pawn ahead two spaces.

  “Listen, Sheriff, you need to let Dos go.”

  “Who?” he asked, countering with his own queen’s pawn. I pushed ahead my bishop’s pawn two spaces, attacking it.

  “Roberto.”

  Sheriff Conner frowned. He concentrated by squeezing one of his ears, which had little red hairs coming out of it. He let out a long sigh before deciding to take my pawn, which was a mistake, then looked up and said, “Sorry, Stan, no can do. We caught him red-handed. Found traces of rutabaga seed all over the video store. Same seed your mom says you use in planting. Only farm in a hundred miles uses that seed. Found those seeds in Roberto’s shoes. Slam dunk.”

  “Why were you looking at his shoes? Isn’t that kind of random?”

  “Anonymous tipster.”

  I slid my knight in front of his pawn, blocking it, a simple ruse. Make him think he was ahead and waste time protecting a piece out of place to begin with. His hand hovered over the board, unsure. It was weird how obvious it was, and that, somehow, it wasn’t clear to him. I almost wanted to yell, Don’t! He took the bait and sat back, satisfied.

  “But that’s crazy. Dos would never do anything like that.”

  “No one ever thinks so, but people keep doing crazy things. Plus, it took me three tries to arrest the right one. Who knew there were three Robertos? Not big on names in that family, huh?”

  “True,” I said, “but I practically almost know who really did it.”

  Sheriff Conner raised an eyebrow. “You do?”

  “It was Chad Chilton. He’s been chasing me around, doing weird stuff. I know it was him.”

  “Chilton, huh?” Sheriff Conner snorted. “Young guy? Muscle car? I think I played football with his father.”

  “Anyway, since now you know who it was, can you let Roberto go?”

  “Isn’t this Chilton the one whose locker you lit up?”

  I gulped, doomed. “Um, yeah, but this has nothing to do with that. Or maybe everything. I dunno. But there was a red doll on my doorstep! And then my bike tires? And the spray-painting? And then, the last day of school he’s like ‘I’ll get you.’ Or whatever.”

  Sheriff Conner nodded, stroking his leg and staring at the board. “Is it my move?”

  “Yes. So are you going to arrest Chad Chilton?”

  “No, I’m not, Stan. Doesn’t sound like any real solid evidence to me. Sounds like a movie, actually. And not a very good one.”

  He was right. I sounded like an idiot.

  FIVE GREAT TITLES FOR A PRISON MOVIE:

  1. The Heartburn Motel

  2. Digging to Mexico One Spork at a Time

  3. Each Dawn Stan Cries

  4. Escape from Millville Correctional

  5. Why the Caged Dos Sings

  “Well, can I at least go see Roberto?”

  Sheriff Conner didn’t answer, coming to terms with the hopelessness of his position. Finally, he conceded the game. “I lasted longer than the last one though, huh?”

  I nodded. “Can I see Dos, Sheriff?”

  He rubbed his beard. “I’m not supposed to let you, Stan.”

  I looked at him but didn’t say anything, waiting. I already knew he would let me, just like I knew he would take my baited pawn. He finally nodded and said, “Okay, five minutes. And no telling your mother.”

  “Deal,” I said.

  The cell was like something from the Dukes of Hazzard. I kept expecting Cletus to pop out and ask me for a swig of rye. Dos was in a cell with one other man who appeared to be sleeping. Or passed out. Or dead.

  “Dios mio, Stan, I so glad to see you.”

  “Me, too, buddy,” I said, gripping Dos’s shoulders through the bars. “Are you okay?”

  “Sí, sí. No problem.” He stuck out his tongue. “But the food? She is terrible.”

  “I’m gonna get you out of here.”

  “Okay. Good.”

  “But listen, I have to ask you something, okay? Don’t get mad.”

  Dos nodded.

  “You didn’t do it, did you? The store?”

  “Qué?”

  “Tu no estás the robber? No?”

  Dos’s eyes widened. He looked at me with disbelief. “NO!”

  I studied him for a moment and then smiled. I couldn‘t believe I’d actually considered, even for a second, that he might have robbed Happy Video. Dos laughed, and I laughed with him. It was so completely stupid. “I’ll see if Mrs. Dos can bring some food in,” I said. “The sheriff’s a nice guy, but I still kinda doubt it.”

  Dos reached through the bars and shook my hand solemnly.

  “Another game?” Sheriff Conner asked, as I walked past his desk.

  “Sorry, Sheriff, I gotta go.”

  He looked disappointed and began putting the pieces away.

  “Listen, Sheriff, can Dos’s wife bring some food in? He says the food here’s terrible.”

  Sheriff Conner gave me a dour look. “You know my wife makes the food here, right?”

  “Oh,” I said, “sorry.”

  “You better be,” he said. “Betty’s a great cook.”

  I had to think of
something quick.

  “So how’s Officer Dave working out?”

  Sheriff Conner rolled his eyes and then cleared his throat.

  “I thought so,” I said, walking to the door.

  “Stan?”

  “Yeah?”

  “You didn’t have anything to do with it, did you?”

  I opened my mouth. It just stayed there. Open.

  “I hope not, Stan, ‘cause if you did, we’ll find out.”

  To be honest, I hadn’t really considered that before. Had I done it? Was I losing my mind? Did I spray-paint “NATS” all over the wall as a pathetic cry for help? I reached up and closed my mouth with two fingers, like Daffy after Bugs had given him a face full of shotgun.

  “No, Sheriff, I did not rob Happy Video.”

  “Good,” he said. “By the way, heard anything about college?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Smart kid like you?”

  “Smart kid like me.”

  “Well, don’t worry about it,” he said. “Anyone plays chess like you do? There’s always a career in criminal justice.”

  Next to the police station was a bakery. As I wheeled my bike through the lot (cut tires going flop flop flop), Prarash backed out the door with an enormous box of pastries in his arms, different kinds, all of them with some variant of frosting or cream or Boston whip. Not a single one vegan. Or organic.

  “Stanley, my friend,” he said, managing to smile through his beard and at the same time be completely unfriendly. It was actually a pretty impressive skill.

  “How you doing, Fred?” I asked. I’d decided I was never going to call him “Prarash” again. He was a Fred, completely and thoroughly.

  Fred showed me his gums. His robe billowed in the breeze. “A young bee without manners is like a thin leaf upon which no rain can collect.”

  “I’ve been called worse things than a thin leaf,” I said. “Or a young bee.”

  Prarash grabbed me by the wrist, hard, and squeezed. It hurt. Bad. He leaned close, eyes bloodshot and breath like tobacco, and hissed, “You still want to call me Fred? Are you sure? Or maybe are you suddenly very sorry?”

  I tried to pull away, but couldn’t. Prarash sneered. I looked around. The police station door was closed. Women talked and laughed inside the bakery, waiting in line, twenty feet away. All the cars in the lot were empty. I was scared. Prarash smelled like a wet dog.