The Obstacle Course

by JF Freedman

  “How much money you got on you?” Burt asked me after I’d dried off and put my clothes back on.

  I checked my pockets—a quarter, two dimes, two pennies. He had three dimes.

  “We’re fucking millionaires,” he said, real sarcastic.

  I thought on that for a second. “Maybe we could find us some washing machines in some little apartment house,” I came up with.

  “No fucking way!” he protested, backing away from me. “That’s all we need, get arrested in some cracker town, we’d be in jail the rest of our natural lives. You’re crazy, Roy.”

  “Don’t get your bowels in an uproar,” I told him. “Anyway, we don’t have a screwdriver.”

  “I wouldn’t give a shit if we had a stick of dynamite, I ain’t breaking the law, not after everything else we’ve been through.” He picked his sticky shirt away from his body. “I sure as hell wish I had me some clean clothes, I feel like I’ve fallen into a barrel of piss.”

  We were standing outside the filling station. Even though the sun was almost down it was still hot and humid, as bad as Washington in August.

  “Say no more,” I told him, coming up with one of my brainstorms.

  “Say no more what?”

  “See that nice big tree over there?” I asked, pointing across the street to a little park, that had a big white oak in the center and some old wrought-iron benches set out under its shade, “you park your weary ass under that tree and think sweet thoughts until I come back.”

  “Hey, wait a minute, where’re you going?” he asked, his voice all high and scared.

  “I ain’t gonna leave you, don’t worry,” I assured him. “Just sit down and rest. What you don’t know ain’t gonna hurt you.” I wasn’t going to do anything bad, not really, but I didn’t want somebody panicky around me for what I was contemplating—he’d go crazy on me and then we would be up shit’s creek without a paddle. “Cool your heels and I’ll be back lickety-split,” I promised.

  He didn’t feature letting me out of his sight, but he knew I was going to try something hairy, something he didn’t want to be a part of, so he walked across the street and slumped down on one of the benches.

  I strolled down the street, turning the corner, looking back one time at Burt, who was staring at me. Even from a distance I could see sorrow written all over his face. That boy was learning a lesson he’d thought he’d wanted but didn’t, and he was paying a heavy price for it.

  I, on the other hand, was feeling all right. I was on my own, really on my own for the first time in my life, and even though it was tough, scary, and could turn to shit any moment, I was surviving. I was making it in the world.

  The block I was walking down was houses, two-story wood, with nice green lawns and well-tended flower beds. A few people were sitting out on their porches, drinking lemonade and watching the world pass by. I waved to them, and they waved back to me. Another neighborhood boy on his way home.

  After about two blocks, I saw what I’d been looking for. I glanced around to make sure nobody was watching me suspiciously; but like I said, I was just another kid, invisible. I circled around the side of one of the houses and peeked over the fence, into the back yard.

  There wasn’t anybody there. More importantly, there wasn’t a dog. Nothing but a freshly mowed back yard, some lawn furniture, and a full clothesline, shirts and pants and socks and dresses hanging from it, flapping in the breeze.

  I didn’t waste any time counting back from a number. I hopped the fence and crabbed over to the clothesline, keeping low to the ground like an Indian scout so if anybody was looking out a window they wouldn’t see me. I checked out the man’s clothing; it all belonged to a grownup, a few sizes too big for Burt and me, but passable, much better than the grubby rags we were wearing, and anyway beggars can’t be choosers.

  One more look at the windows. No shadows moving in them, no face looking down. I’m good at telling if someone’s spying on me, it’s something I’ve learned over the years from pocketing shit from the dime store. Faster than a speeding bullet I snagged two shirts, two pairs of pants, four socks, and two pair of drawers, boxers, the big billowy kind, which I normally hate like the plague, but this was no time to be choosy. I wrapped everything in a bundle and was back over the fence and down the block like a bat out of hell.

  “What’cha got?” Burt asked, sitting up as he saw me strutting towards him, my booty tucked under my arm.

  “Your wardrobe, sire,” I grinned, unwrapping my package and spreading the clothing out on the grass.

  “Where the fuck’d you get this shit?”

  “Ask me no questions, I’ll tell you no lies.”

  We ducked under some nearby bushes and changed into our new clothes. They fit us pretty well; the guy who owned them must not have been too tall. Nice stuff, nothing fancy, just right.

  “Shit I reckon.”

  “You trust me now?” I challenged.

  “I never said I didn’t trust you,” he said, trying not to sound defensive.

  “But you acted it.”

  “Do you blame me?”

  “Naw, I didn’t hardly trust myself,” I confessed.

  We threw our old, dirty clothes into somebody’s trash barrel and headed towards the center of town. I was on a mission, but Burt didn’t know it, and it wasn’t something I could share with him.

  Admiral Farrington Academy was exactly the way it looked in the pictures. Like the Naval Academy, which it had been modeled on over fifty years ago, only smaller. I knew there was a river nearby, because sailing was a big part of what they did—there were sailing photos all over their catalogue. We weren’t near that area. We were standing outside the main gate, looking past the stone walls to the dormitories and buildings inside.

  “What the fuck is this?” Burt said in this real derisive voice, “one of those stupid military schools my old man’s always threatening to send me to if I fuck up too much?”

  Parents are always telling their kids that if they fuck up they’ll ship their ass to military school. It’s like a running joke because nobody I know has the money to go to one, even if their parents wanted them to.

  “You’ve got to be pretty smart to go here,” I told Burt. I was checking the place out, peering inside. The sun was almost down: I had this strong feeling in my guts that I had to go inside the gates. I had to see it for real, one time.

  “Shit. Pretty smart.” He hocked a major lugy onto the grass. “Anybody’d want to go to some shithole like this would have to be pretty dumb, in my opinion.”

  “Well, you’re entitled to your opinion,” I said.

  “What, you’d want to go here?” he laughed. “I can just see you in some pissass place like this, you’d walk your ass out in about two seconds flat if they didn’t kick you out first. This is a school for losers, man, not guys like us.”

  I didn’t answer that. I kept looking in.

  “Come on, let’s get the fuck out of here. We need to figure how to get home.” He turned away, expecting me to follow.

  Instead, I walked through the gates and into the school.

  “Where the fuck are you going?” he called when he realized I wasn’t right behind his ass.

  I wasn’t paying him any attention. I kept walking in.

  “Oh man. What the fuck!” He hurried in after me, like a puppy dog following his master. Right about now I wished I’d ditched him back there when I’d had the chance. Not forever, just while I was here. I needed something from this place, what it was I didn’t know, but I did know I didn’t need Burt Kellogg tagging after me like some lost puppy dog, while at the same time putting Farrington down with every single sentence.

  “Why don’t you wait outside?” I told him.

  “What, are you crazy?” He was practically stepping on my heels he was so close behind me.

  “Maybe.”

  “We’ve got to find something to eat, and we’ve got to call home,” he wailed. “We’re in deep shit, Roy, we can’t be fucking
around some stupid military school.”

  I turned to him. “Go ahead.”

  “What?”

  “Go find something to eat. I’ll catch up to you later.”

  “Sure, yeah, where?” He was talking fast and high again—just the thought of us separating was giving him a huge case of hemorrhoids.

  I was looking from building to building. I knew every one of them, every dorm and classroom, all their names. I knew them like the back of my hand, I’d memorized them while I was looking over the catalogue, studying up for the stuff I had to send them. I hadn’t even realized I was doing it until right this second.

  I had been accepted to come here in the fall. To be part of it. To have a chance in life, for a change.

  Two students came walking towards us. Older guys, seniors or juniors. They were in uniform, their hair cut extra short, their brass so shined-up you could see your face in it. They weren’t that much older than Burt and me, just a couple years, if they hadn’t been in uniform you couldn’t have told the difference between us. Being in uniform made them look older somehow, more grownup, like they had something going in life, a purpose.

  As they walked by us they took a look-see at who we were, since we could be two other students who happened to be out of uniform, as it was Easter vacation; a couple of younger Farrington boys, brothers all. One look, though, and they knew we weren’t. They bent towards each other and talked, too low for us to hear.

  Then they laughed.

  My face was burning; I could feel it. They had laughed because they had seen us and knew we weren’t from there, we weren’t one of them. Definitely not Burt, and not me, either. We were two hicks from the sticks, permanent outcasts.

  “God, what a couple of assholes,” Burt said, looking at the two Farrington men as they walked away into the twilight gloom. “Can you imagine having to dress up like that every day and live in a place like this?”

  “No,” I told him. “I can’t imagine that.”

  It was dark. We had to do something, at least get some food in our bellies before we fainted from starvation, so we headed towards the center of town, which was laid out around a town square, the grass cut as short and precise as a putting green on a golf course, some weather-beaten wood benches clustered around, and the obligatory statue of a Confederate soldier in the center, covered from head to toe with years of bird shit. Every southern town I’ve ever been in seems to have this same Confederate statue, somebody must’ve made a thousand of them and gone around the south selling one to a town, so they’d always remember how badly they’d been beaten.

  Around the square, on all four sides, were stores, offices, a few restaurants. The commercial section of town spread two blocks in each direction before it petered out into houses. It was the kind of sleepy old town that except for the famous Admiral Farrington Academy, home of future Naval Academy midshipmen—big fucking deal—you could drive through in two minutes flat and hardly know it was there at all.

  The first thing I noticed was there was no Little Tavern, no White Palace, no place to eat cheap. The second thing I noticed was that the only grocery store in town was already closed for the day, so we couldn’t buy a loaf of bread and some cheap lunchmeat.

  Burt wasn’t looking at any of that stuff. He hasn’t been out on the road like me, he doesn’t think about important things like that. As soon as he saw a phone booth he ducked into it and pulled one of our precious dimes out of his pocket.

  “What’re you doing?” I demanded.

  “Calling home.”

  He dropped the dime. I reached over and jerked down on the cradle.

  “You can call home later. Let’s get something to eat first.” My heart was beating faster than it should have been.

  “Listen, my mother’ll be worried sick by now,” he pleaded. “She can’t eat when she’s worried.”

  “She’s gone this long without eating,” I said firmly. “Another hour ain’t gonna make any difference.”

  I took off down the street, walking fast. Burt followed after me, like I knew he would. He didn’t want to, but I wasn’t cutting him any slack. I had places to go and things to do before I could even think of going back to my real life.

  We stood outside the larger of the two restaurants, the one that was doing all the business. People came in and out; some families, a lot of old people. It was that kind of town, an old-people kind. Kids hate towns like this, it was even worse than Ravensburg, judging from the little I’d seen of it in the few hours we’d been there. Any kid worth a shit would leave this town in a cloud of dust and a hearty you-know-what about five minutes after graduating high school.

  “How about them?” Burt asked, the two of us loitering on the sidewalk, checking out the action, which in this case was a family coming out the restaurant door: mother, father, two little snotnoses, a boy and a girl. The man was connected with Farrington, he had Marine Corps written all over him. A hard-ass to the core, probably sang a chorus of “The Marine’s Hymn” after his mandatory once-a-month fuck with the old lady.

  I shook my head: “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”

  A moment later: “Them?”

  “I promise, you’ll be the first to know.”

  We hung around. I bummed a couple weeds from a kid our age who looked like Elmer Fudd; I had to give him a pretty tough look before he’d give them up, but I needed a cig-fix bad, and anyway what’s two lousy cigarettes? I’d have done it if he’d asked me and it was in my own town. A kid like that would last about one hour at Ravensburg Junior High, he was lamer even than Sarkind, and he was smoking Old Golds to boot, my least favorite brand, but beggars can’t be choosers, definitely not at this point.

  An old couple came out of the restaurant. No kids, grandkids, nothing. Just the two of them, almost leaning on each other. Nice clean people, like everyone’s favorite grandfolks. I smiled at Burt, flicked my butt into the gutter, and walked over to them.

  “Excuse me, ma’am,” I said. You talk to them both but you always address the woman.

  They turned to me, kind of squinting up their eyes to see if I was someone they knew. They both wore glasses, the kind with the big thick lenses, like after a cataract operation. They probably couldn’t see their hands in front of them very good even with those glasses.

  “Me and my brother here are on our way to Texas on account of our grandma’s dying of cancer and we were robbed of all our money on the train and we haven’t had anything to eat for two days now and I was wondering if maybe you could loan us a quarter so’s we could buy a loaf of bread to take with us on the train.” It came out in one rush, without my even pausing to take a breath.

  Burt stared at me, glassy-eyed. He was watching the master at work, he’d never known this kind of stuff about me until now.

  “That’s terrible,” the old lady said, in one of those slow southern-molasses voices. There was a lot of quiver to her voice; they were really old, both of them. “Have y’all informed the police?”

  “No, ma’am,” I explained, “because it happened yesterday and they’d make us hang around while they looked for the men that robbed us and we’ve got to get on down to Texas to see our grandmother one last time before she dies which could be any minute now.” I was out of breath, they probably took my deep inhale for worry about my poor dying grandmother. They were somebody’s grandparents themselves, someday they might be dying and their own grandson could be in this very same predicament.

  I heard a noise like somebody choking. It was Burt, who was fighting like a son of a bitch to keep a straight face.

  “What about your parents?” the old woman asked. “Aren’t they along with you?” She was the talker in the family, that was obvious, the old man could’ve been deaf and dumb for all I knew.

  “No, ma’am, you see our mother’s got to stay home and watch our younger brothers and sisters, besides she’s got a job which they won’t let her out of and they won’t giv
e her any time off either, and our father’s dead, he died in Korea four years ago, he was a fighter pilot in the Navy, he was shot down on a mission.” Butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth, I said all this with such a straight face.

  The old lady started quivering like a violin. I thought she was going to break down and cry right there on the spot.

  “That’s terrible,” she told us, patting us both on our heads like we were cocker spaniels. “You poor, poor boys.”

  We ate everything except the tail and the hoofs, I mean we chowed down royally. The old couple sat at the table watching us, beaming like a pair of cats that ate the canary. I finished my apple pie a la mode and burped into my napkin so’s not to offend the old folks. Burt was still finishing up, fighting like crazy to keep up with me, even though he was stuffed to the gills. Nobody can keep up with me when it comes to eating, I’ve got the original hollow leg.

  “Oh, man,” I sighed, “that’s about the best meal I’ve ever eaten in my whole life.” As I reached over for the last of my milk, my third glass, the waitress turned up with another piece of pie and plunked it down in front of me.

  “Now don’t you be telling me you can’t eat one more piece,” the old lady scolded in advance, seeing the bloated expression on my face, “this restaurant bakes their pastries fresh every morning, even Sunday.”

  What was I going to tell her? I picked up my fork and dove in.

  We stood outside the restaurant. I felt like I had three bowling balls in my stomach—if I’d even looked at one more of anything I’d have barfed my whole dinner up on the sidewalk. Burt was actually green, leaning up against a lamp pole.

  It was kind of awkward, standing there, us and the old folks. They had to go, it was way past their bedtime, but here we were, two kids out in the world on our own, taking the long train ride to our dying grandma’s house all the way down in Texas. They were feeling guilty about leaving us alone; if we weren’t careful they’d be bringing us home and putting us in a nice warm bath and a soft feather bed and the first thing out of the box they’d be wanting to adopt us.

  Finally the old lady cut the cord.