The Underdog Parade

by Michael Mihaley

  “Peter, are you awake?” CJ whispered from outside the door.

  Peter exhaled. He crawled back into bed with his heart still racing, leaving the bat in the closet. The door creaked open and CJ appeared at the foot of his bed above the crumpled mountain of sheets.

  “Go back to bed, CJ.” Peter turned on his side. The smoldering large numbers of his digital clock read 11:53 p.m.

  “Wake up, please, Peter. There is someone in front of the house, a man. I heard him. He’s right outside.”

  CJ’s eyes were egg shaped, and she bit at her bottom lip. She moved around to the head of bed. “I’m serious,” she said, and Peter could smell her breath, an extraordinarily strong, sweet scent.

  “Were you eating marshmallows?” Peter relaxed.

  She looked away sheepishly.

  Then it made complete sense to Peter: why the hallway light wasn’t on, how she could hear someone in front of the house when her room faced the golf course in back. She was making a late-night visit to the kitchen’s snack stash. Marshmallows were CJ’s weakness. Peter was wondering how long she had been doing this when he too heard a low mumbling from outside.

  CJ whipped her pointer finger to the window, and leaned her face into Peter’s. “He’s coming this way.”

  Peter rolled to the floor and crawled over to the air conditioner. He carefully lifted the shade enough to dip his head under, and CJ did the same, their noses inches from the mesh screen. The one streetlight lit the block in a rusty tint. No signs of movement except for Mr. Terry’s miniature windmill on his side lawn, the sails turning over lazily in the still night.

  “I don’t see anything,” Peter said.

  “There was someone there, I swear.” CJ’s eyes darted from side to side in disbelief.

  Peter sighed, “I’m going back to bed,” but as he started to back away he heard the low, incoherent mumbling again, like a witch reciting a spell in front of a cauldron.

  CJ pointed to the window and mouthed, “I told you.”

  Their pajamas hugged the contours of the air conditioner. They allowed only the features above their noses to rise up the windowsill.

  “Where is it coming from?” CJ said, softly.

  A garbage can rattled down the street—obviously the voice did nothing to stop the raccoons’ pillage.

  “I’m getting Mom,” CJ said, and she turned, but Peter grabbed her and nodded with his head. A shadowy figure appeared from beyond the hemlock tree. The man walked with the muscled tautness of a stalking tiger, the hair bouncing gently off his shoulders.

  “It’s Josh.”

  “Josh?” CJ asked.

  Peter brought his finger up to his mouth. In this light, Josh reminded him of an animal in the wild. Peter felt like a photographer for National Geographic. Ever since the race, Peter held a fascination with his neighbor—the way Josh decided to do something and did it without caring what anyone else would think or how much he stood out. Peter would never have done that in a million years. This presented a perfect opportunity to study him. Even the way he walked was unusual, and Peter wished he could walk the same way. Josh’s gait possessed a menacing grace; one that would make you feel protected if you walked by his side through a crowd of strangers, but more than uncomfortable if you crossed his path on an empty street.

  CJ said, “Who’s he talking to? He’s by himself.”

  Josh was pacing slowly in the middle of the street, his head bent to the sky. He was dressed only in jeans.

  “He needs shoes for his birthday,” CJ whispered.

  Getting a little bolder, they pressed their faces against the screen to hear his words. He spoke in streams.

  “He makes me to lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside the still waters. He restores my soul; he leads me in the path of righteousness for His name’s sake.”

  “Who does that to Josh?” CJ asked, her words muffled and constricted by the screen.

  “Shhhh.”

  “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for you are with me; Your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

  Peter was pretty sure Josh was quoting the Bible, but he made a mental note to ask Uncle Herb in the morning. Uncle Herb would definitely know.

  Just as Peter started to relax, Josh stopped chanting and turned his head quickly in the direction of their window. Noticing this, Peter and CJ collapsed to the ground, their heads colliding on the way down. They rolled around the carpeted floor, both cupping their impacted skulls, their mouths drawn in hushed cries.

  There they remained in silence until the pain subsided. After minutes of silence and hearing nothing but the crickets, Peter desperately wanted to know if Josh was still standing in the middle of the street or if he was closer now, maybe at the window screen looking in. Peter couldn’t get himself to look up from the rug. He nodded to CJ and pointed to the window. She stared at him as if he was crazy and shook her head no. She then pointed at Peter and thumbed the window. Peter shook his head diagonally, neither a confirming yes or no. It occurred to him that remaining on the carpet until morning sounded like the best alternative.

  Day 61

  Peter woke to CJ’s big toe greeting him and the heel of her left foot resting on his cheek. They had slept the entire night on Peter’s carpet. The early light of day peeked through the shades. Peter pushed CJ’s foot away, and CJ groaned in protest before turning on her side.

  Peter sat at his desk as he did at the start of every morning and removed the colored pencils from the top drawer. On his desk calendar, he drew an orange circle and blue circle on yesterday’s date: another day without a drop of rain or his father being home. He counted back twenty days with his finger; his father had been away on business for thirteen of them.

  The mean-spirited buzz of his mother’s alarm clock intruded on the quiet morning. Peter heard his mother’s slaps at the clock followed by the shuffling of her slippers against the floor. Seconds later, Abby appeared in front of Peter’s door.

  “Morning. What happened here? Was she having nightmares?” Abby said, nodding in the direction of CJ on the floor.

  Peter shrugged. He didn’t know how to label last night. He had fought the urge to look behind his shades even after he woke; if Josh was still there, that would really spook him.

  Abby yawned and rubbed her eyes. “I need some coffee, and then I need you to help me toilet Uncle Herb.”

  “Is Dad coming home today?”

  “Tomorrow, I think,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway.

  Peter followed and joined his mother at the kitchen table, armed with a box of Cheerios and a half-gallon of milk. He ate in silence as she sipped from a mug of coffee and stared into space.

  “I never thought I’d say this, but I’m getting pretty sick of sunshine,” she said.

  “Are you staying home with us today?”

  “Peter, I just started working. I don’t think it would be wise to take a day off so soon.”

  Peter didn’t answer. This sounded like more than a part-time job.

  She added, “You guys are doing okay with Uncle Herb, right?”

  Peter smiled and nodded. He stood and walked to the counter, dumping his half-eaten bowl of cereal in the sink. He was reaching for his medication on the shelf when CJ appeared, dressed in full Wonder Woman attire with the lasso uncurled and dragging behind her. Even the indestructible bracelets were on her wrist this morning.

  Abby watched her, smiling. “Are we going to save the world today, Wonder Woman?”

  Peter knew the reason for full armor. Wonder Woman was in self-preservation mode against neighbors who go boom in the night.

  Abby didn’t sense the anxiety in her children, the quiet looks shared between the two, the glances out the windows. She was thinking about her day ahead, hoping for a call from a contact she’d made during the first day of her job, a young family looking for a home. Despite being a novice in real estate, Abby was confident she could sell to a young fam
ily. She knew the talking points: good school district, low crime, a neighborhood with a lot of parks and fun things to do in the surrounding area. She was experienced with young families herself—a pro, actually—and she felt certain she could thaw that realtor-client relationship into something personal. She’d make them feel like she was one of them and they could trust her. That’s what a good salesperson does, right? She looked at the clock.

  “Let’s go wake Uncle Herb, Peter. I need to leave in twenty minutes.”

  Walking down the hallway, Peter felt an unexpected and sharp longing for a house with stairs. In his old house, a flight of stairs ran up the center of the house. He remembered when his mother was pregnant with CJ. She’d have horrible back pains and often sat on the lower steps, because the stiff, upright position softened the throbbing. Peter recalled sitting next to his mother often, and she’d caress his head for what seemed like hours as they talked about the new baby or sat in a content silence. This was before Willow Creek Landing, before his father started his own business, before it stopped raining. Peter missed those stairs. The new house had a hospital wing feel, each bedroom branching off from a main corridor.

  Uncle Herb’s room was the first branch down the hallway, closest to the living room. He’d been awake for a while now, and he thanked God when he heard voices growing stronger and heading toward him. Help couldn’t arrive soon enough. His bladder was about to burst, and that meant a bath his sister probably didn’t have the time or energy to give, plus an extra load of laundry. He was doing his part now by thinking about anything that didn’t involve water. “P-e-e-e,” he said, as loud as he could while maintaining bodily control, when he felt like he couldn’t go a second longer.

  Abby and Peter broke into a jog. “Oh, shoot, sorry, Herb. Hurry up, Peter. Help me get him in his chair.”

  Herb was thankful that Peter was experienced with lifting and moving him. Within seconds, they were in the bathroom propping Herb on the toilet.

  “Boy, you really had to go bad, Uncle Herb. It sounds like a waterfall,” CJ said. She was tying her lasso to the bathroom’s doorknob. Herb smiled at her from above Peter’s forearm. CJ waved, and the door slammed shut with a tug of the lasso.

  Happy that he hadn’t created more work for his sister before she left for work, Herb smiled as Peter dressed him.

  “What’s so funny, Uncle Herb?”

  “Ew.” You.

  Peter led Uncle Herb’s crooked arm through the shirt hole.

  “Uncle Herb, something really strange happened last night.”

  Herb was all ears.

  “CJ woke me up in the middle of the night. She heard someone outside. It was Josh. I think he was praying.”

  “Ut wong it hat?” Uncle Herb said, smiling. He tried to poke Peter in the ribs with his free hand but missed. Peter laughed and pulled Herb’s other arm through his shirt and over his back.

  “There’s nothing wrong with praying. You know what I mean. It’s just that he was doing it outside in the middle of the night, and it was also the way he was praying, like he was scared or in trouble and needed help.”

  “Hats hi e-ray.” That’s why we pray.

  Peter stepped back and appraised the ensemble he’d picked out for his uncle. Satisfied, he nodded and glimpsed himself in the mirror before heading toward the kitchen with his uncle in tow.

  “I know. It was just, just strange, I guess.”

  * * *

  After breakfast, Peter, CJ, and Uncle Herb sat on the brick patio in the backyard. Uncle Herb read from the Bible in his lap as CJ colored in the chair next to him, stopping every so often to turn the page when Uncle Herb asked. Peter was in a lawn chair a short distance away, working his way through The Three Musketeers. Last year Peter’s teacher told him that he was reading above grade level and gave him a recommended reading list for summer. He thought an adventure book with sword duels sounded interesting even though it was a really old story. He was near the beginning of the book: d’Artagnan had just left home with hopes of becoming a Musketeer of the Guard and stopped at an inn, where a well-dressed man ridiculed him for the odd color of his horse.

  Peter dropped the book to his side. He looked beyond the white, vinyl fence that separated the backyard from the golf course. The three grass hills of hole four had turned a shade of yellow from the lack of water, giving the golf course a desert-like quality. The heat didn’t stop the constant parade of golfers from playing through.

  Peter looked further down the golf course and could see the furthest home on Colonial Drive. There were two types of homes, which the residents labeled the ranches and the manches (short for mansions, the Colonials and Victorian styles), but they all shared similar landscaping down to the brick patios in back. Only three shades of paint were available for the exterior of the home, and they were all muted colors, ones you could find if you picked up a handful of sand at the beach. This had something to do with providing no distraction for the golfers. It was all about the golf. These fine details made the neighborhood look fake, like a town surrounding a toy train set. Everything was too symmetrical for a real town. There were four roads in the community, but actually only two long perpendicular lines. At the center where the lines met stood the pavilion.

  Chipper’s presence in the Creek further isolated Peter from the real world. Chipper’s dad was on the board of directors at Willow Creek Landing, and his name and picture were plastered throughout the neighborhood and the community newsletter, The Creek. He was some super-successful businessman who overtook small and weak companies, then tore them apart, somewhat similar to what his son did in school.

  A whistling hiss sliced through the air, then stopped with a solid thud as a golf ball bounced off the vinyl siding of the house and rolled to a stop not three feet from Peter.

  “I got it,” CJ said, jumping out of her chair.

  Number nine on the “Sucks Rocks” list: incoming golf balls. You were never completely safe in a golf course community, especially outside, but that was also true inside near windows that faced the golf course. CJ, on the other hand, loved when some hack sent a ball into the yard. Her father gave her a quarter for every ball she collected.

  Two men in a golf cart pulled up to their back fence. CJ dropped the ball discreetly in the cupholder of Uncle Herb’s wheelchair.

  A pot-bellied man wearing a collared sports shirt and sunglasses on top of his salt-and-pepper hair stepped out of the driver’s side of the cart. A much older and shriveled man in plaid pants remained seated, a thick cigar sticking out from the center of his mouth like a lever. The driver leaned on the fence, and his eyes searched the ground of their backyard. He didn’t acknowledge the man in the wheelchair or the two children sitting in the yard until he grew impatient with his search.

  “You guys see a golf ball come through here?”

  CJ looked at Uncle Herb and then turned toward the golfer. “No,” she said.

  “Let’s go, Dean. The other foursome is up at the tee already,” said the shriveled man with the plaid pants from the golf cart. The sweet-smelling cigar smoke drifted into the yard.

  The man named Dean dismissed his partner with an abrupt wave. “They can wait. That was my St. Andrew’s commemorative ball. I could swear it was this house here. You guys didn’t see anything?”

  Peter sensed an accusatory tone. He stared at the grass in front of him.

  “Nope,” CJ said.

  “They’re hitting up on us, Dean,” plaid pants said.

  The man named Dean stared at CJ the same way childless people looked upon a kid having a meltdown in a store, though CJ was completely calm.

  “Dean! C’mon, you can drop a ball where I am.”

  “All right, all right.” Dean jogged back to the cart. He shot a quick hard look at CJ one more time before speeding off.

  When the sound of the golf cart hushed, CJ pulled the ball from the cup holder and inspected the St. Andrew’s insignia. “Maybe Dad will give me a dollar for this one,” she said, toss
ing the ball in the air and cupping her two hands to catch it. She bolted inside to add the new treasure to her collection.

  “Her mouth is going to get her in real trouble someday,” Peter said.

  Uncle Herb looked at Peter but said nothing.

  “They knew she was lying, Uncle Herb. She shouldn’t have done it. What would happen if he jumped over the fence and started looking for the ball? He could have seen it in the cup holder.”

  Peter crossed his arms and waited for a reply, but Uncle Herb just smiled at him.

  A thunderous rumbling came from the front of the house as a flatbed truck plodded down the street carrying stacks of lumber. The truck’s hydraulic brakes screeched to a stop in front of Josh’s house.

  “Can I take a look, Uncle Herb?”

  Uncle Herb nodded, yes.

  Peter watched as the truck driver, a stubby guy in a baseball hat and T-shirt with wet stains under the arms, stepped down from the truck and pulled leather gloves from the back pocket of his dirty jeans. He squinted in the direction of the sun, then at Josh’s front door. A shirtless Josh appeared in jeans with similar grime as the driver’s. Josh pushed his hair back and tied a bandanna to his head.

  “Where do you want it?” Peter heard the trucker ask.

  “I’ll be working here on the driveway, makes sense to keep the wood close. Let’s drop it all on the front here, the neighbors will go ballistic. Have you ever seen such manicured lawns?”