Two squares of pizza lay untouched on my lunch tray. It’s hard to find an appetite when you’re so tightly wound up, but I force myself to pick a piece up and take a bite.
Just in case this is my last meal of the day.
* * *
I haven’t given up on the Thanksgiving tournament, but Noah hasn’t said anything about practicing today, which is fine because it’s driving me crazy that I still haven’t spoken to Dad. After school I catch the Homeless Kid Express back to the End of the World Motel. The dimly lit room smells of incense, and Mom’s sitting on her bed, a book beside her. But I get the feeling she hasn’t been reading.
“Been here all day?” I ask.
She shrugs, nods.
“Where’s Dad?”
“He had some business to attend to.”
I can just imagine. . . . Wait, actually, I can’t. That’s what’s so frustrating.
“Come on.” I hold the door open, allowing the sunlight and air in.
“Where?” Mom asks.
“I don’t know. Anyplace but here.”
She pulls on a sweater and shoes and we step around the potholes in the parking lot. The air is foul with car and truck exhaust and the clamor of engines. Across the highway are some gas stations, a pawn shop, and a junkyard surrounded by a tall metal fence.
Not a patch of green in sight.
This corner of the world hardly feels fit for human habitation. Given where we’ve wound up, I wonder if Mom would prefer to be back in the negative energy of Uncle Ron’s, but I don’t ask. If she wanted to go back there, she’d say so.
We stand on the curb and look around forlornly. I’d hoped we’d take a walk, but to where? No direction looks promising. There’s nothing in the distance to fix one’s hopes to. The phrase “no direction home” comes to mind, although I don’t know how I know it or where I heard it.
I feel Mom’s eyes, as if she’s waiting for me to decide which way to go.
Far down the street a U-Haul van turns a corner and starts toward us. There’s no reason to pay attention to it. No reason why it should mean more than any other van. Maybe I watch it because it reminds me of the day we lost our house, the day the Great Pitch Count of Life started to go against us.
The van grows bigger as the distance decreases. I keep waiting for it to turn a corner and disappear.
Strangely, it comes closer and closer until it stops at the light on the other side of Route 7. I can’t see who’s driving through the tinted windshield.
The light turns green, and the van crosses the highway and pulls into the motel parking lot.
The driver is Dad.
41
We’re moving, but Dad won’t tell us where—says he wants it to be a surprise. But he’s quiet and moody and hardly seems happy about it himself. Neither Mom nor I press him, maybe because we both know that wherever we’re headed can’t be worse than where we’ve been. With the three of us squeezed into the front seat, it again feels like we’re the Joads, just another Okie family being swept along by forces beyond our control.
A short while later we pull into a fragment of a neighborhood where only a few houses have been completed and a handful more appear to have been started and then abandoned—wooden frameworks and muddy front yards littered with construction debris. The rest of the landscape is unfinished driveways leading to empty lots choked with tall weeds.
Dad parks the van in the driveway of one of the finished houses—two stories high, painted gray-blue, with a red door. In the front yard a few patches of long grass struggle to survive—the remnants of what was once a lawn.
“What’s going on?” Mom asks.
“Our new home,” Dad says in a flat voice, and starts to get out. “Come on, we’ve got work to do.”
He goes around behind the van. Mom and I stay in the front seat.
“Did you know about this?” I ask.
She shakes her head.
“Hey,” Dad calls from the back. “I can’t do it alone.”
In the back are boxes and the few pieces of unsold furniture we’d put in storage months ago—stuff Dad wouldn’t have taken out unless we were moving somewhere for a long time.
“How is this possible?” Mom asks.
“I’ll tell you later,” Dad answers in his “not in front of Dan” voice.
Mom frowns, but accepts this. Avoiding my eyes, Dad hands me a folding table. But when Mom steps up to take something, he manages a weak smile. “Hey, why don’t you go check out the backyard?”
She gives him a quizzical look, but goes. Before I can say anything, Dad grabs a box and turns toward the house, almost as if he’s trying to avoid me. I follow, carrying the table up the front walk. Inside, the living room is empty, floors bare, no shades on the windows, wires dangling from the ceiling where light fixtures should go. It looks like no one’s ever lived here.
We lug our things into the kitchen. The faucet’s missing and the tags are still on the refrigerator. Through the window we see Mom outside, surveying the backyard.
“Dad?”
“Don’t ask.”
“I have to.”
His shoulders sag as our eyes meet. He doesn’t look away, the way someone who’s ashamed of what he’s done might. He nods at Mom outside, then looks straight at me as if trying to say, Whatever I did, I did for you and Mom.
“That time I saw you get out of Mr. Purcellen’s pickup . . . ,” I begin.
Now he looks away.
I gesture around the kitchen. “Is this why you put him in touch with that gang?”
He jerks his head back and stares up at me with eyes as wide as catcher’s mitts. “How do you . . . ?” he starts, then trails off, clearly stunned.
I tell him what I learned that night in the Range Rover. “Why would Talia’s father come to you?”
He lets out a long sigh. “He knew I had connections to the kind of people he needed.”
“You knew what they were going to do to Aubrey?”
“God, no.” He shakes his head vehemently. “They weren’t supposed to hurt him, just get him to stop trying to make Dignityville permanent.”
“So why didn’t you go to the police?”
There in the empty kitchen, Dad tells me the whole story of how he stupidly agreed to help Mr. Purcellen in exchange for a place to live, and how, after Aubrey was beaten, Talia’s father strong-armed him into staying quiet by threatening to tell me what had happened. He blinks hard. “I couldn’t let you find out. I already felt like enough of a failure.”
“What about ransacking Dignityville?” I ask. “How’d he get you to organize the demonstration?”
Dad runs a finger across the counter, leaving a stripe in the dust. “He said he knew people . . . wealthy donors to Rice . . . who could stop you from getting a scholarship if I didn’t cooperate. I don’t know if it was true, but I couldn’t take a chance. And I was afraid people would be hurt if I didn’t get them out of there.” His eyes glisten with tears of shame and regret. “After what happened to Aubrey . . .” He wipes his eyes with the back of his hand.
Whatever he did, he did for Mom and me.
A man got to do what he got to do.
But what if what he does is wrong?
The back door opens and Mom comes in, throws her arms around Dad and hugs him, burying her face against his chest, not noticing that he’s got tears in his eyes. “It’s . . . wonderful! Oh, thank you, darling, I have a garden again!”
For a moment they hug, but then, still holding him close, she whispers, “But how, Paul? You have to tell me.”
It’s Dad’s turn to give me the “Don’t say anything in front of Mom” look.
“If they want to sell these houses, they need to make it look like people are already living here,” he says. “We’re the decoy that encourages the other ducks to land.”
“How long will they let us stay?” she asks.
“Long enough.”
For now Mom has no more questions. Dad gazes over her s
houlder at me with red-rimmed eyes. He knows what he did was wrong, but it was done out of love and desperation. It was the act of a man who believed he was a failure, and had nothing left to lose.
42
No one’s parents are perfect.
Some fathers have bad judgment.
Some lose their tempers.
Some can’t seem to hold a job or be successful at work.
Some mothers think they’re supposed to be successful at work. And then change their minds.
But most parents try to do the right things for their families and communities.
Most, but not all.
In an office in the Median Police Department with Detective French and an assistant district attorney, Dad finishes telling his story.
“So when you put Purcellen in touch with that gang, you had no idea what he was planning?” the assistant district attorney asks.
Dad shakes his head.
“You didn’t wonder?”
“I did. I asked, but he told me it was none of my business.” Dad hangs his head. “It was a mistake. I never should have done it.”
“Bad judgment isn’t a crime, Mr. Halprin,” the assistant district attorney says. “If it was, we’d all have criminal records.” He stands up, says he’ll be in touch, then leaves.
“Now what?” I ask Detective French.
“We’ll investigate.” She rises from her desk and offers her hand. Dad and I shake it and he heads for the door. I let him go ahead—“I’ll catch up in a second, Dad”—then turn back to Detective French. Our eyes meet and I give her a questioning look. She remembers that day we spoke in Starbucks because I mentioned it when I first told her that Dad wanted to speak to her about Aubrey’s beating.
“We’ll contact the Burlington police,” she says. “It’s their jurisdiction. But, Dan, keep in mind that gangbangers have a way of vanishing when word hits the street that the police are looking for them.”
In other words, I shouldn’t hold my breath.
“What about the house Mr. Purcellen gave us?” I ask. “Isn’t that evidence?”
“I imagine Mr. Purcellen’s lawyers will claim you were squatters who had no right to move in,” she replies. “It’s your father’s word against his, Dan. Unless we can find witnesses or develop corroborating evidence, there’s very little . . .”
She continues talking, but I’ve tuned out. It’s not her fault. I know that if she had the time and resources to build a case, she would. Not just because it’s her job, but because she believes in justice. But now that we live in the United States of Part-Time Law Enforcement, there’s only so much justice to go around.
43
In The Grapes of Wrath homelessness meant being on the move. When the Joads got to California, they lived in Hooverville, then Weedpatch, then a boxcar, until the rains brought flooding. At the end of the book they were moving again, this time in search of higher, drier ground.
I’m amazed at how calm Mom is after Dad takes her for a walk and tells her the story. Maybe she’s just used to him messing up, and knows that he only did what he did for our sakes. Still, she says we can’t stay in that house, garden or no garden. We’ve barely unpacked, so our stuff goes back into storage. When I call Mason and explain we have nowhere to go that night, his parents say we can stay in the apartment above their garage.
* * *
Dealing with Talia turns out to be a nonissue. She’s aghast at the story her father told her of how my father tried to blackmail him into giving us a house by threatening to blame him for the ransacking of Dignityville. In fact, Mr. Purcellen would have gone to the police had Talia not begged him to reconsider. But now that Talia accepts “the truth,” she doesn’t know how we can continue to see each other.
For an instant I’m tempted to tell her the other side of the story, but then I remember what Detective French said: It’s her father’s word against mine. And besides, it’s over between Talia and me. I’m finished pretending.
* * *
More than half a million people march on Washington over Thanksgiving to protest financial inequality in this country, and millions more attend rallies in towns and cities all over. I pitch in the Fall Classic. Pro scouts are there and I hear later that a couple of players actually do get draft offers. I guess they’re the phenoms. But at least the scouts see me, and a few say I show promise and they’ll keep an eye on me.
So maybe . . . in a couple of years . . . if I keep working hard and improving . . .
* * *
I wish I could say that the police were able to connect Mr. Purcellen to Aubrey’s beating and what happened to Dignityville, but that hasn’t happened . . . yet. There have been rumors, though, and those alone must hurt. Sometimes in the hall Talia looks pale and glum. I feel bad for her.
* * *
It’s basketball season now. The trees are bare and every morning there’s frost on the ground around Mason’s house. Dad’s getting lots of little jobs reffing games after school and at night. They don’t pay a lot, but the games are short, and sometimes on a weekend he can work three or four of them a day. Mom has a job cooking in a vegan restaurant. I’m a little nervous that she’s going to insist on going vegan at home, but so far she hasn’t.
I signed the letter of intent with Rice, so that’s all set for next year. And I’m working a few evenings a week and weekends as a busboy at Ruby’s so I can save some money between now and then. Noah and I hang out when we can, but it’s awkward with Talia being Tory’s best friend. It’s just as well. They can make whatever plans they want now without having to be concerned with whether I can afford to join them.
Meg’s dad is in a hospice. She says he doesn’t have much time left. I’ve been hanging out with her a lot; we’re definitely beyond friends. Sometimes I toss a tennis ball with Aubrey to help him get his hand-eye coordination back. He’s already talking about starting another Dignityville on private land so no town money has to be involved.
In the meantime the Fines will be moving into a Habitat for Humanity house that was donated to the town after Dignityville was destroyed. The owners of the house said that before Dignityville they’d had no idea how many people in Median were homeless.
I’ve heard that some other houses were donated as well.
So I guess some good came out of Mayor George’s “worthy experiment” after all.
EPILOGUE
It’s too bad that the baseball tournament had to be on the same weekend as the march, but I still think I made the right choice. For me.
There are people like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, and maybe even Aubrey Fine, who somehow know they’re meant to change things in a big way. I don’t know how they know it, but they do.
On the bus coming back from the tournament, I found another quote in The Grapes of Wrath:
Wherever they’s a fight so hungry people can eat, I’ll be there. Wherever they’s a cop beatin’ up a guy, I’ll be there. . . . I’ll be in the way guys yell when they’re mad—an’ I’ll be in the way kids laugh when they’re hungry an’ they know supper’s ready. An’ when our folks eat the stuff they raise an’ live in the houses they build—why, I’ll be there.
Some things have changed since the Great Depression—the police are here to protect the homeless and the people who strike for better pay, not to beat them up.
But it’s weird how a lot of things haven’t changed. Nearly a third of our country is living at or near the poverty level, and on the news we keep hearing that homelessness and unemployment are close to the highest they’ve been since the Depression. Some people still go hungry, and many can’t afford medical care.
I just can’t help thinking about how The Grapes of Wrath is based on events that happened nearly a hundred years ago.
How is it possible that so many of the problems people faced back then are still the problems we face today?
TODD STRASSER has written many critically acclaimed novels, including Famous, If I Grow Up
, Boot Camp, Can’t Get There from Here, Give a Boy a Gun, and Girl Gives Birth to Own Prom Date, which was adapted for the Fox feature film Drive Me Crazy. He lives in a suburb of New York City. Visit him at toddstrasser.com.
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Also by Todd Strasser
Famous
If I Grow Up
Boot Camp
Can’t Get There from Here
Give a Boy a Gun
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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