The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr. AKA Houdini

by Peter Johnson

  Meanwhile, my mother just kept baking, working at the cleaners, and studying her legal secretary books. One night she came into my room when I was writing, wanting me to show her the find/replace function of our word-processing program. She looked at the screen.

  “Can I read what you’re writing?” she asked.

  “It’s all junk,” I said.

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “If you read it, you’ll change your mind.”

  “What kind of book is it?”

  “A novel.”

  “Is it about us?”

  “Kind of,” I said, promising I’d let her read it when it was finished.

  “What are you going to do with it when it’s done?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, starting to feel embarrassed.

  “Well, all that matters is that you’re having fun.”

  “But I’m not.”

  “If that were true, you wouldn’t keep writing.”

  “You sure about that?”

  She smiled. “Yes, just trust in yourself.”

  I stood and she sat down at my desk. “Before we start,” she said, “can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure.”

  “Angel’s mother said kids call you Houdini Weenie. Is that true?”

  “Just jerks like Angel.”

  “Does it upset you?”

  “No, it’s kind of a joke now.”

  “Good. You know, I try to be fair to Angel, but sometimes it’s not easy. He’s got a lot of anger for someone so young.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  IN THIS CORNER

  Although we promised Jackson not to tell the cops, we weren’t going to let Angel off the hook. Still, we had to do something without telling Jorge because Lucky was right. Jorge would’ve flipped out, not because he loved Da Nang, but because he hated Angel. Fortunately, Jorge got detention the next day for swearing at some kid, so Lucky and I cornered Angel and his friends at a playground a couple hundred yards behind school. We said if he didn’t stop messing with everyone, we’d spill the beans.

  He just laughed. “You can’t prove anything. Everyone hates that dog, anyway. I didn’t poison him. I wouldn’t kill an animal.”

  “That’s not what Jackson believes,” Lucky said.

  “I don’t care what Jackson thinks. It was just a rotten piece of steak I found in a garbage can behind my house. It’s not my fault if it had something else in it.”

  “You still knew it’d make him sick,” Lucky said.

  Then one of Angel’s friends interrupted him, this tall, bony guy with long, brown hair and sunken cheeks. He said his father was a lawyer and that Angel didn’t do anything illegal.

  “Shut up, goofball,” Lucky said, and the kid backed down.

  But Angel wouldn’t let up. “And remember, Weenie Boy, who your pathetic mother works for.”

  And there was that threat again, which normally silenced me, but the word “pathetic” triggered something in my brain. I felt an electric twitch in my left cheek right before I punched Angel in the mouth. Unfortunately, he didn’t go down, which freaked me out a bit.

  Lucky was between us in a second, but I told him to back off. I was prepared to hit Angel a thousand times if I had to. I’d be fine as long he didn’t pin me and snap my neck like a chicken bone.

  Lucky shook his head. “You sure, Houdini?”

  “Yeah,” I said, though I really wasn’t.

  Then something surprising happened, something miraculous: Angel didn’t want to fight, though it was clear he wasn’t afraid, which spooked me even more. Instead, he pointed his finger at me and said, “Later, Weenie Boy, later.” Then he walked away, followed by his pals.

  “What was that about?” I said, standing there, shaking all over.

  “I guess you really are Houdini,” Lucky said, “because you just escaped a very serious beating.”

  “So why didn’t he fight?”

  “Good question,” Lucky said.

  THE IMPORTANCE OF BRAINS

  The next day after class I stopped by the cleaners to say hi to my mother. She was standing behind the counter, dwarfed by a pile of dirty shirts she was separating. Overhead, I could hear Greek music coming from two small speakers set up in opposite corners of the room. At first the music was bearable but if I had to listen to it all day (and Angel’s mother always had it blaring) I would have gone nuts. It ticked me off that my mother had to work here and I wondered what would happen if my father lost his job. Would he end up handling people’s laundry or cleaning toilets?

  When my mother saw me, she smiled.

  “Hi, John,” she said. Her hair was tied back, which made her face and blue eyes seem even rounder and larger than they were, and she wore one of Franklin’s green Marine T-shirts. It wasn’t a very attractive outfit, but I guess it made her think of him, and why bother getting dressed up if you work at a cleaners?

  “It’s hot in here,” I said.

  “It’s always hot in here,” she responded, laughing.

  That’s when I heard a door closing from somewhere in the back, and Angel’s mother appeared. She seemed to have been born with a scowl on her face, and she had a habit of placing her hands on her hips and sighing when she got angry, which she was now.

  “I’m gonna fire that tailor if he’s late one more time,” she said.

  “But he’s a good tailor, Olivia,” my mother said. “He’s just a little old.”

  He actually wasn’t old. He was ancient. I guess he was a legendary tailor at one point, but now he chain-smoked and his hands shook so badly I was surprised he didn’t stitch his fingers to whatever he was working on.

  Angel’s mother shook her head from side to side with such force I thought she was going to lose the pound of makeup she had plastered on. She was a short, fat woman who didn’t know she was short and fat because she always wore tight miniskirts and brightly colored blouses that clung to her, exaggerating her potbelly. “If you owned this business, Sarah,” she said, “you wouldn’t be so forgiving.”

  My mother smiled and winked at me, and Angel’s mother said, “Have you seen Angel?”

  No, Mrs. Goofball, I wanted to say. “No, Mrs. Dimitri” is what I actually said.

  “The lazy bum was supposed to stop by after school to do a few chores.”

  He’s also an idiot, I wanted to say. “I wouldn’t know about that” is what I actually said.

  “No, I guess you wouldn’t. Angel tells me you don’t like each other.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, but I didn’t have time to respond, anyway, because I heard a buzzer go off, signaling someone had entered the store. It was Angel.

  “Damn,” he said, looking at me.

  “Where were you?” his mother said, then added, “And don’t embarrass me with your dirty mouth.”

  “With friends,” Angel shot back, obviously upset his mother was giving him a hard time in front of me.

  “With friends,” she repeated. “Just like your father, always with friends, and while you guys are ‘with friends,’ I’m paying the bills.”

  Now I was starting to feel uncomfortable, even a little embarrassed for Angel. His mother was breaking an unspoken rule: you don’t put down your kid in front of another kid.

  “I have to go,” I said to my mother.

  Angel looked relieved.

  “Yes, you go,” Angel’s mother said, beginning to tremble a bit, her huge breasts threatening to burst the top button of her blouse. “You probably have leaves to rake while my Angel bum can’t show up to do one lousy chore.”

  “I’ll see you at home,” I said to my mother, walking toward the door.

  “Okay, John,” she said.

  Right before the door closed behind me, I could hear Angel’s mother say to him, “Why can’t you be like that boy?”

  “All boys are the same, Olivia,” my mother interrupted, trying to calm things down.

  “What do you know?” Angel’s mo
ther said nastily, and I found it hard not to go back and tell her off.

  On the long walk home, I felt agitated, angry at the way people treat each other. I couldn’t stop thinking about something I had read the night before in a new biography of Houdini. Someone quoted him as saying, “My brain is the key that sets my mind free.”

  I think he meant that we should use our brains to make ourselves happy, or we’ll end up miserable, like Angel’s mother, who was so trapped by her nastiness, she’d forgotten how to talk or act decently. It was as if the same goofballs who had fiddled with Angel’s brain had taken the Ginsu knife to hers, too.

  TEN OTHER QUOTATIONS FROM HOUDINI

  1. “What the eye sees and ear hears, the mind believes.”

  2. “Fire has always been and, seemingly, will always remain, the most terrible of the elements.”

  3. “My chief task has been to conquer fear.”

  4. “I always have on my mind the thought that next year I must do something greater, something more wonderful.”

  5. “No performer should attempt to bite off red-hot iron unless he has a good set of teeth.”

  6. “Magic is the sole science not accepted by scientists, because they can’t understand it.”

  7. “I am a great admirer of mystery and magic. Look at this life—all mystery and magic.”

  8. “Nothing is more offensive to an audience than a performer to appear surly and bad tempered. He is there to please the public.”

  9. “My will has been stronger than my flesh… I have done things which rightly I could not do, because I said to myself, ‘You must.’”

  10. “The easiest way to attract a crowd is to let it be known that at a given time and a given place someone is going to attempt something that in the event of failure will mean sudden death.”

  I know a little something about the last quotation.

  THE FIRST ANNUAL LEAF-DIVING CONTEST

  Sunday, as planned, Lucky, Jorge, I, and about eight other kids, including Angel and his two cronies, gathered at noon in the field near the basketball courts. It was the first day of November, cool, cloudy and damp, like a hard rain was coming. But it was also invigorating, a good day to hurl yourself into a pile of leaves. The three of us brought our rakes and worked along the outer edges of the pile, tossing leaves onto its top, trying to create a huge pyramid. We also fluffed up the remaining leaves to provide more of a cushion so we’d disappear when we landed.

  While we were working, Fiona Rodriguez and three of her friends came by, staring at us from the sidewalk with their arms crossed. Fiona was tall and thin with caramel-colored skin and big, dark brown eyes. Her blue jeans clung tightly to her behind, and I thought if she and Lucky ever got married their kids would look like movie stars or be Olympic athletes. We all stopped shoveling leaves, waiting for her to say something, but she frowned and headed down the street, her friends following her like little puppies.

  “That’s one good-looking girl,” Lucky said, and then we went back to work.

  When we finished, Lucky decided to go first, then me, then Jorge, then whoever wanted to. One goofy kid had brought nine cardboard signs, three numbered 1, three numbered 2, and three numbered 3. The idea was to take turns having three different guys judge the jumps, deciding whether they deserved a 1, 2, or 3, so that the perfect jump would get a 9, the next perfect an 8, and so on. At first the idea seemed stupid, but it ended up being fun because everyone would yell out the number when the judges raised their cards.

  We set up a garbage can next to the shed, and Lucky used it to climb onto the shed’s roof. He scanned the crowd and said, “My friends, let the games begin.” Then he swan dived, disappearing into the pile. Even Angel laughed as the leaves floated in the air above Lucky. Three kids lifted signs, adding up to 7. Not bad.

  After Lucky crawled from the pile, we rebuilt it and I mounted the shed. I decided to cannonball, surprised when I hit the leaves because I expected a cushion that never came. For a moment I thought I might shatter my kneecaps, but eventually the shock of my fall was blunted by the middle of the pile. My dive received an 8.

  The contest went on like this for about a half an hour. Jorge was the only one who received a perfect score for an insane running somersault. We froze when his skinny frame hit the leaves, but he came up swearing, like he had just jumped I-95 on a motorcycle.

  Angel bowed out of the first round. Instead, he stood around insulting everyone, and I noticed him looking strangely at me when it was my turn. He hadn’t forgotten I punched him, so I wondered what he was thinking. Finally, someone called Domino’s, and twenty minutes later a guy dropped off five cheese and pepperoni pizzas. We walked down to the basketball courts to chow down, but Angel said he’d stay behind and rebuild the pile. He also said he’d jump when we got back. We couldn’t figure out why he was being nice, but his absence meant more pizza, so no one complained.

  When we returned, the pile seemed higher than before and it appeared to have been moved four or five feet to the left. Angel was standing on the shed, waiting for us. “How about a contest between me and you, Weenie Boy?” he said. “One jump apiece, to be judged by those guys.” He pointed to three scraggly neighborhood kids.

  I accepted his challenge, thinking that, because of his bulk, he’d fall lamely off the shed. But he surprised me, recreating Jorge’s somersault. He missed the middle of the pile and landed hard off to the right but he was up fast, limping a bit, while his two friends gave him a standing ovation. I wasn’t surprised when the judges awarded him a 9.

  The contest was over when the cardboard signs were raised because I wasn’t crazy enough to try that move. I’m not that flexible. Realizing this, Lucky asked to take my place.

  “No way,” Angel said. “It’s between me and him.”

  “What does it matter?” Lucky said

  “It matters because I said so.”

  “The heck with him,” Jorge said.

  So Lucky climbed the shed, while Angel kept telling him to forget the whole thing, which seemed very strange, but Lucky had a special jump in mind. He stood on the roof as far back as possible and sprang forward high into the air, accomplishing the impossible: a double somersault. He landed perfectly, so we were surprised when he didn’t move and when we heard a sickening groan.

  ONE GOOD REASON NOT TO INVITE ANGEL DIMITRI TO A LEAF-DIVING CONTEST

  Before we could reach Lucky, he crawled from underneath the leaves, grasping his left leg. His pants were torn and there was a huge gash in his calf. I’d never seen a wound so deep, so I ripped some fabric from his pant leg, tying the material tightly below his knee in order to slow the bleeding. Meanwhile, someone called an ambulance, and we sat for what seemed like hours before it arrived. The attendants were the two guys from Jackson’s house, but this time they were very professional, replacing my tourniquet with a piece of plastic tubing. They cleaned the wound, then helped Lucky into the ambulance. His face was white, so I knew the wound was serious. When the ambulance drove away, Jorge and I stood there, silent. During all the commotion, Angel and the rest of the kids had drifted off, probably afraid the cops might show up.

  We stared at the pile, then grabbed our rakes and waded through the leaves, throwing them to either side until we found what we were looking for. Midway down were three empty aluminum containers about a foot high and two feet in circumference. It seemed that Lucky’s landing had crushed one, making it split open. Its jagged edges were covered with blood.

  “Damn,” Jorge said. “Why didn’t we check this earlier? We’re lucky nobody else got hurt. I guess Lucky earned his name again.”

  Jorge was right that we should’ve checked the pile, but he was wrong that we were lucky. There was no way we could’ve missed those containers with all our jumps, and that’s when I told him about me and Angel, and how I knew Angel would get revenge.

  “That’s why he wanted you to jump,” Jorge said. “What a jackass. But now it’s his turn.”

  “But how can we prove
it? This is too nutty, even for him.”

  “We don’t have to prove nothin’,” Jorge said. “We can take care of it ourselves.”

  A WORM OF AN IDEA

  We thought Lucky would be patched up and gone by the time we arrived at the hospital, but he wasn’t. A nurse said they wanted a specialist to inspect his leg, thinking there might be permanent nerve damage if it wasn’t stitched properly inside, so Lucky had to wait around. But she also said we could spend a few minutes with him until the specialist arrived. She added that two people had already been there. Unfortunately, when we got to his room, one of those people hadn’t left—Lucky’s father. We could hear him yelling as we entered. His face was as red as his hair, his whole head about to explode. He smelled like a brewery, and sweat beaded on his forehead and fat cheeks.

  “Why did they call me?” he asked. “What a dumb stunt!” He pointed his finger a few inches from Lucky’s nose. “You’ll never play football again. That’s what they’re going to tell you, you big jerk.”

  I could feel Jorge about to explode, so I grabbed his arm.

  “I didn’t call you,” Lucky said. “They asked for my home phone number and you’re always hanging around the house. Why don’t you just leave me alone for once?”

  His father started screaming again until some nurses came in and asked him to calm down. Then they told us to sit in the waiting room.

  After Lucky’s father left, Jorge and I opened the curtain to Lucky’s cubicle and found him lying on his gurney. In spite of the argument, he looked groggy but glad we came. “What happened?” he asked.

  “What do you mean, ‘what happened?’” Jorge said in amazement. “Your old man just acted like a goofball. That’s what happened.”

  “I mean, how did I get hurt?”

  So I told him my theory about Angel.