We drag our wooden crate out onto the road. Jeffrey rests his bat over his shoulder and squints in the sun.
“See, Chuck, while you’re mincing about saying clever things to girls, some of us are training themselves to a point of immaculate perfection for your protection. It must be nice for you to have a horse like me in your stable. You’re a citizen. You can afford to rest on your laurels. Because you know that Jeffrey Lu is standing in the path of tyranny.”
“Sir, your sacrifice means everything to me.”
“It’s hardly a sacrifice. I’d rather hone my superior skills to infallible sharpness than swan about smooching girls.”
“Because you’re queer?”
“You’re queer,” Jeffrey sighs. Sensing his impatience, I ask him to reveal the secrets of the One-Inch Punch. Jeffrey sighs again and lays his bat down.
“For the ignorant and uninitiated, the One-Inch Punch, essentially, is the fierce concentration of energy to a single place in the body that can be released in a moment of explosive power. Like this.” Jeffrey steadies. He crouches, his fist out in front; then he spasms suddenly and pads me deftly on the shoulder.
“Jeffrey, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever encountered.”
“You’re the stupidest thing I’ve ever encountered!”
“But how is that at all useful? Unless you’re fighting someone in a phone booth, there’s no benefit to doing that. Just wind up and swing like a normal person.”
Jeffrey groans.
“Charles, you know nothing of the world. There’s no use in me trying to illuminate the ways of the elite martial artist. Your inner pansy just scrambles a perfectly sensible message. It’s like I’m talking a different language. Obviously, I didn’t want to hit you that hard. My hand would have gone straight through you if I’d unleashed all my reserves. And I don’t need a murder on my hands.”
“Murder? Jeffrey, all due respect, but a strike like that wouldn’t even cause noticeable discomfort to a newborn rabbit with some kind of brittle-bone disease.”
Jeffrey shakes his head.
“See? This is what I’m talking about. You’re incapable of understanding the fundamental principles of physical combat. Your giant blouse drowns out the information. You’re an idiot. Stick to skipping stones and making daisy wreaths and chasing rainbows and writing stupid sonnets or whatever.” Jeffrey picks up his bat and shakes his head.
“Sure,” I laugh. “And you stick to tapping your enemies politely with your fist.”
“It’s explosive power, you dickhead!”
“You want explosive power? Face up, little man.”
I walk to my mark. Jeffrey surveys his imaginary field. I push off.
Of course, he belts me everywhere. His eye is too good. He invents shots, doing what he wants with the ball. And it’s frustrating, given that my line and length aren’t too bad today. I get the feeling he’s exacting some revenge for my disrespect.
For the first time, I’m not afraid of retrieving the ball from their front yard. An Lu’s garden is dun and dusty now. Just a lumpy, barren bed of soil. The insects are in exile.
There is a cluster of color under the veranda, though. After they heard what happened, a few folks from town delivered cuttings and grafts and flowers from their own gardens for An Lu to use. Of course, they’re nowhere near as pretty or exotic as An’s own collection, but it’s nice they did that. It seems like it’s their way of saying they’re sorry for what happened. But I wonder if they would have brought anything if his garden hadn’t been razed. Nobody brought anything for Mrs. Lu after she was scalded and scolded by Sue Findlay. Maybe because his garden was a beautiful thing everyone could share in, they felt like they lost something too.
My stomach churns and gurgles. I skipped breakfast today. I haven’t really been eating much at all. My gut is a cavern of nesting butterflies. Jeffrey says I’m afflicted with Lovetummy, a known side effect stemming from excessive sassytime. I’m living off occasional buttered bread slices and sweetened Pablo. Even my mother has given up trying to force-feed me. Now she just shrugs and reminds me not to blame her when I expire.
For that I’d have to hold Eliza Wishart responsible. Every time I think of her, which is often, my body tenses and my stomach squeezes and my blood is filled with a strange alloy of exhilaration and fear. At night, I think of seeing her. I think of what it might be to creep across her back garden and tap on her window like Jasper Jones. To look past the sunflowers sitting on her sill, to see her reading on her bed. To whisper a sweet greeting when she approaches, taking care we don’t get caught. To ask if she’s okay. To put my finger on her jaw, to kiss her again. And this time I might lean in of my own volition. I might hold her hand. Her inside, me outside.
But I can’t. Of course. I know it. And it makes me horribly lonesome. It makes me ache.
I haven’t seen Jasper either, since he was at my window last. And I’m worried; he was so full of intensity and intent. I’m afraid he might have done something. That he might have been caught. By the police. By his father. By Mad Jack Lionel.
I need to see him soon. Strangely enough, spending time with Jasper always seems to quell the swell. He somehow sets things right, despite him pulling the storm clouds over my head in the first place. He has a sort of infectious strength, and I need a dose of it. I really do.
Jeffrey crouches in readiness. I roll in again. This time, the ball kicks up on a shard of loose gravel, forcing a leading edge. I stumble forward and take the catch like a bear snatching at a salmon. However unconvincing, the wicket remains. I toss the ball into the air. It’s the first time I’ve legitimately dismissed him this summer.
“Your reign is over! Pure talent has prevailed.”
“Pffft! That’s barely your wicket. That one goes down to the Law of Averages. Or the Infinite Monkey Theory. Or both. If enough chimps hurl balls at a master for long enough, eventually he’s going to tire of belting them all over the place and make an uncharacteristic mistake.”
“It must be exhausting.”
“The belting?”
“No, the constant kissing of your own arse.”
Jeffrey laughs as we swap weapons and change ends. He tosses the ball hand to hand as I face up.
“You ready?”
I give a single nod.
He bowls me. First ball. Around my legs, the ball spinning sharply in. I swipe at it, but to no avail. The crate clatters. Of course, Jeffrey dies laughing. I throw the bat down in a mock tantrum and walk away, which has Jeffery cackling louder. He drags the crate off the road. It’s game over. I’ve had enough.
We sit on Jeffrey’s back steps eating angles of watermelon. Being hot and thirsty, I can manage to get this down.
We compete, seeing who can spit the seeds the furthest. I’m currently leading by an intimidating margin of around two feet.
“Your ninja skills are no match for my superior spitting.”
“Bollocks. I just haven’t had the right pips. My pips are rubbish.”
“A poor pip-spitter always blames his melon.”
Jeffrey isolates a black seed on the tip of his tongue. He stands and rears back like a javelin thrower. He breathes in sharply, which serves only to dislodge the seed and suck it to the back of his throat. He sputters and coughs and pulls forward onto his haunches. Then he spits, dribbling the seed in a pink pupa of mucus over the rail of the steps. I laugh as he sits back down.
“This contest is stupid,” he rasps.
“It appears you’ve been pipped.”
“Charles, what have I told you about puns?” Jeffrey clears his throat and throws his melon rind under the house. I swivel and do the same, just as Mrs. Lu appears with an empty basket to collect the linen from the clothesline. She frowns at me. Jeffrey, knowing I’ve infringed, makes it worse.
“Chuck, Cheeses! I’ve told you before not to throw things under the house. It’s disrespectful. And in front of my mother. What are you, a communist? Go pick it up!”
&nb
sp; I mutter and shake my head at him. He raises his eyebrows and opens his mouth, daring me to say something. I crawl beneath the veranda to collect the dirt-crusted pieces of melon. When I emerge, Jeffrey is smiling a little, but not enough to give himself away. We sit in silence as Mrs. Lu folds sheets and hums to herself. I try to make a point of holding both rinds for her to see in an attempt to incriminate Jeffrey, but I fear she just assumes I’m a gluttonous dual offender.
Finally she leaves, giving me a single satisfied nod, like I’ve learned an important lesson. When she’s out of earshot, Jeffrey dies laughing.
“One day I will end your life with my hands,” I say.
Jeffrey shrugs. We stretch and lean back on the steps, sitting silent in the shade.
“Know what I don’t understand?” I ask eventually.
“I don’t know: pretty much fundamentally everything in the history of the world?”
“Mermaids.”
“Mermaids? How d’you mean?”
“I mean, why are they considered so seductive?”
“Easy. Because they yarrrrr!”
“That’s not a reason.”
“What are you talking about? You’re so ignorant. It’s their boobies. Obviously.”
“Obviously. But they’re half a fish! They’re freaks! They have a scaly fish tail, with fins and things. Surely that alone is going to negate the thrill of boobies.”
“What? Of course not. Chuck, it’s harrrrd being a pirate. It’s lonely. You take what you can get on the open seas.”
“Noted. Sure. But I feel we’re missing my central point here, and that is: they’re half a fish. You could potentially deep-fry the lower part of their body with chips and it would be delicious. If you actually saw one, boobies aside, you would be disturbed, if not repulsed. You would harpoon them for science or something.”
Jeffrey shakes his head.
“Incorrect, Chuck. It’s not the fish part that’s the attraction. Pirates see fish every day. Their trick is just to focus on the boobies and squint away the fishy bits, which is easy with enough rum. As a pirate, you take your boobies, you enjoy them, and you don’t complain. Pirates aren’t fussy. It’s really one of those ‘glass half full’–type things.”
I hold my hands out. “Again, all due respect to your insight into the mind of a pirate, but I firmly believe that no matter how optimistic you are, or how desperate or carefree, the issue remains, sir, that should you choose to become romantically entangled with a mermaid there’s going to come a point where the fact of their weird fish body is going to present a problem. Do you understand?”
“But, Chuck, the boobies.”
“Forget it.”
“You can’t arrrgue with a pirate.”
“Or an idiot.”
“Yarrrr!”
I shake my head. Jeffrey leans back and yawns. He scratches his chest.
“I feel like an icy cold beer,” he says.
“What? Why?”
“I don’t know. It always looks so refreshing. I wishhhh to be refreshhhhed by an icy cold beer.”
“But you’ve never had beer.”
“So?”
“So how can you feel like something you’ve never tasted?”
“You never kissed Eliza Wishart before, but you still wanted to do that.”
I roll my eyes at him.
“That’s a lot different to a beer.”
“Telling me. A beer is farrrr superior. You don’t have to sit around holding its hand and saying nice things about its hair.”
“Jeffrey, you’re a volcanic eruption of stupidity.”
“I’m a volcanic eruption of the truth; you know it.”
I grin and get up, wiping my sticky hands on my shorts.
“Are you going to the Miners’ Hall tonight for the fireworks?”
Jeffrey shrugs heavily and looks down.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I think we’re just going to stay here. I heard that they moved it forward a couple of hours anyway, so it’s not even for the New Year.”
“I heard that too. I think parents don’t want their kids out so late. But I’m not going either. Mum’s going in to help with the kitchen, but I’m probably going to stay home with my dad.”
“Really? But won’t Ee-laye-za be there?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I shrug.
“Don’t you want to go see her so you can link arms and finish each other’s sentences and share pieces of food and smooch under the fireworks and serenade her with panpipes?”
“Panpipes?”
“Panpipes, Chuck. It’s been verified by scienticians. In Paris. Which is a city full of blouses like you. Girls can’t resist being seduced when you blow bamboo flutes. It’s fact. It’s in their fizzyology.”
“You’re a very strange little man.”
“Incorrect. I’m practically a visionary. I’ve got so many feathers in my cap, I’m practically an Indian chief. Why don’t you go home and rub a photograph of Eliza all over your body like a bar of soap?”
“Honestly, you’re starting to genuinely unsettle me. Have you thought about electrotherapy?”
“Charles, I’m shocked.”
“Did you just break your own pun rule?”
“No. The rule is that you’re banned from pun-making. My puns are witty and superb.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“If you’re not going tonight, you should come over and have a delicious refreshing beer with me.”
“But you don’t have beer,” I insist.
“Don’t I?” Jeffrey says, arching an eyebrow.
“No. No you don’t.”
“You’re right. I don’t. Which is just as well. I have to keep my body in peak condition. I have to resist vice and temptation. You don’t see Bruce Lee with a refreshing beer in his hand. Probably why he’s so alert. My body is a temple, Chuck. A temple of explosive power. A cathedral of virtue. My fists are like … gavels. Gavels of stone. Stone-cold justice. I bleed integrity. It’s practically my destiny.” Jeffrey hops up and shadowboxes, huffing “I’m so pretty, I’m so pretty” under his breath. I bid him a Jew and leave him to defeat his gray ghost.
As I walk home, I wonder if I could just up and leave Jeffrey here when I turn my back on Corrigan. It’s always been so easy with Jeffrey. I’ve never felt the need to act stronger or smarter than I am. I’ve never had to try to be somebody else. I wonder if I can really do it. For some reason, I dread leaving him behind more than my parents.
One of the hardest things about this whole mess has been not sharing it with Jeffrey Lu. Not to discuss or dissect, just to have him know, to put a piece of it in his pocket. It feels so strange and alien to keep this all to myself.
It should be getting easier; the tide of anxiety should be creeping back. But even as the fever around Laura’s disappearance dissolves, that red stripe of mercury climbs higher inside me. My breath gets shorter; that knot in my chest gets tighter. Eliza Wishart has taken my appetite; Laura has stolen my slumber. I’ve traded my pansy sandals for heavy boots. Because I know they’ll come for me one day. The buzzards will always be circling.
What if Laura rose to the surface? What if the rope frayed; what if they found her floating? What if someone came forward, or discovered her by chance? Would they cuff me and beat me like they beat Jasper Jones?
And if they caught me, would I tell them everything?
If I see Eliza, I might. Though I long to see her, to make sure she’s okay, I’m afraid of what might spill out of me. It’s bubbling closer and closer to the surface. And I’m worried I’ll burst. The temptation to end the misery and mystery, to make amends, to try and explain it, to carve that word. But doing so will put Jasper Jones in jail. And maybe me too.
She’ll be there tonight, at the fireworks, and so I have to stay home. I can’t let myself see her, though I want to so badly. I can’t risk my promise to Jasper Jones.
And I know that if I tell her, she’ll hate me. She won’t understand
. No matter how much I try to explain that I tried to do the right thing.
And that’s why I have to leave with Jasper. Before they discover us, or I give us away. I’ve got to leave everything behind, with our secret in a bindle bag, tied tight. I know we won’t ever solve this. I guess I always knew. So I’ve got to crack open the snow dome. I’ve got to get out, get brave. And I know it will be okay if I’m with Jasper. With him, I feel as though we could really do it. We could move to the city, maybe. I could still go to school somewhere. Or work with Jasper. We could go up north. Travel to places where it’s always summer. We could be entrepreneurs, partners. Shoulder to shoulder. We’d outsmart them all. Dodger and Charlie. We could sneak back to Corrigan and make a killing with crayfish. We could work orchards when the seasons are right, pick peaches at dawn and hustle poker games at night. Oysters. Pearls. Gold. I could sneak into universities, learn for free. We’d grift and get by. I could write in my yellow pads. Everything and anything. Letters to Eliza. And I’d finally have the right words in me, all the things I’d meant to tell her. I’d be wittier than Wilde. I’d make her heart melt from a thousand miles away.
We’d be like Kerouac and Cassady. We could steal away in boxcars, ride all the way across the country. Melbourne, Sydney. Every town in between. I could document our adventures. Maybe one day I could get our story published under a nom de plume. I’d have to move to New York City. The famous writer who fled from his hometown and shunned the limelight. And every morning I’d wait awhile at the Plaza Hotel to see if Eliza Wishart might happen by. And one day she’d appear. She’d stop in her tracks, making sure it was me. She’d be wrapped in a thick coat, her hair tied up. She’d say my name and she’d drop her bags and run toward me. We’d kiss again, and hold each other in the cold. She’d wipe her lipstick off my lips with her thumb. And then we’d go inside and take high tea, and I’d tell her everything about Jasper and Laura—I’d unpick the lock and she’d understand because she’d be older and wiser and the hole in her heart would have healed some. Maybe.
Jasper Jones Page 24