“A swing set,” he whispered, and let out his breath in a low whistle.
“And I don’t think it’s for little Buddy Boy,” Pat said.
No, Chris thought. And not for Clover, either. For a split second he wondered if it had been left by the previous owners. But he chose not to think so. Bud and Clover would’ve told them they didn’t want it, or hauled it away by now.
For the next hour they slapped at mosquitoes and took turns looking through the fence. They watched the lights go out one by one, until the house was dark except for a faint glow seeping from one back window.
“A night light?” Pat asked.
“Molly doesn’t like the dark,” Chris said, remembering a little lamp shaped like a tugboat that had to be turned on when she went to bed.
Several minutes passed, slowly and uneventfully. Chris wasn’t sure what to do next.
“I’ve been thinking,” Pat said.
“Uh, oh,” Chris said.
Pat ignored the sarcasm. “I think we need to come back tomorrow morning,” he said, “and wait for Bud to leave. I think we can handle Clover.”
Chris thought about the idea. He hated to leave, now that they were so close. But he didn’t see how they’d be able to break into the house in the dark, find Molly, and get out without waking Bud and Clover. And they weren’t doing any good out here behind the fence.
Something moved in the bushes behind them—some kind of animal.
“Okay,” Chris said, “but we need to get back here early. Before daylight.”
They decided to take the alley instead of cutting through the neighbor’s yard again. It led them to Fourth Street, where they took a left, and then a right on the next block. In five minutes they were back on Palm, heading toward the motel.
There was little traffic on the street, and most of the businesses had closed down for the night. Chris and Pat walked along quietly, their thoughts somewhere else. Chris found himself barely able to think. He felt like a little kid on the night before Christmas. The anticipation was charging him up, causing his mind to spin. But he was trying to come up with some ideas, some kind of plan for tomorrow morning. So he didn’t notice the car slide up to the curb.
“Hey, guys!” The voice was young, friendly. The words came out “Hey, gazz!” Chris and Pat turned toward the car at the same time, stopping in the middle of the sidewalk. Less than a block away, the lights from their motel shone out onto the street.
A kid with short blond hair was leaning out the front passenger window of a shiny black car. It sat low to the ground, distant thunder coming from the exhaust. Chris studied his face: smiling mouth, cold eyes. He had an urge to grab Pat and run, but curiosity held him in check. And something else—something hypnotic.
The driver and another passenger in the back seat made it a trio leering out at them from the inside of the car. The one in the back seat rolled down his window—another grinning face with short dark hair, chewing gum furiously.
“You guys got ten dollars you can loan us for gas?” the blond said, still smiling.
Chris reached for his wallet and stopped. Pat had a dead man’s grip on his elbow.
“We don’t have any money,” Pat said. His voice had an edge on it that Chris had heard only a few other times.
“Yeah?” the gum chewer said. “Your little friend thinks he does.”
“He doesn’t,” Pat said.
Chris looked at Pat’s face. His eyes had narrowed and his jaw jutted out, silhouetted against the soft, yellow glow of a nearby street lamp.
“Let’s go, Pat,” Chris said softly.
Pat ignored him.
“I don’t believe you, boy,” the blond said, his smile faded to a smirk. “We’re gonna have to come and see for ourselves.”
The engine’s rumble was deep, loud, but Chris’s heartbeat was louder. He wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere else, but Pat was standing his ground.
“You best not get out, boy,” Pat said, and took a step toward the car.
Chris couldn’t believe it. Pat actually took a step toward the car. What was he doing? These guys had to be at least sixteen. They were riding around in a car, and they looked big. Boys in men’s bodies—and there were three of them.
But for some reason they didn’t get out. The blond had opened his door a couple of inches, but he just sat there, his expression a contorted combination of surprise and anger. And something else—disbelief? Fear? Chris tugged on Pat’s shirtsleeve.
“Let’s go, Pat,” he repeated.
Pat stood his ground.
“You a tough guy?” the blond asked, coating his words with sarcasm.
Pat answered them with a glare, his fists clenched into white-knuckled balls.
“Your little friend a tough guy, too?” the gum chewer smacked from the back seat.
Chris watched the driver lean forward to get a better view. His face was in the dark, but Chris could see a grin. He could hear him giggling softly, nervously.
“You don’t want to find out how tough either of us is,” Pat said defiantly. His voice sounded confident, old. And lower. Like a bullfrog’s call in the night—a big bullfrog.
For a long moment it was a standoff. Chris and Pat stood motionless on the sidewalk. The three nightriders stared out at them from the car without moving, their faces disfigured by shadows and murky light. Chris could feel his fight-or-flight juices flowing. Fly, they were telling him. But he knew what Pat’s were saying, and Chris wasn’t going to leave him there. Chris was aware of lights—a car—coming up the street from his left, but his eyes were on the car in front of him—and the guys inside it.
The door opened on the other side, then the passenger’s door opened. The driver and the blond eased out of the car and stood there, waiting for the gum chewer to follow.
Suddenly they were bathed in blue and red lights, flashing, bouncing off the car’s shiny chrome and paint and lighting up the faces of the two bullies as they glanced quickly behind them, snaked back into the car, and closed the doors.
A police car coasted silently to a stop three feet behind the rear bumper of the black car. Its radio barked into the still night as the driver’s door opened and Hudson unfolded his long frame from the seat. His smile was back, the bulldog smile. But Chris was glad to see it. This time it was directed at someone else.
Hudson ignored the driver and walked to the passenger side, stopping and glaring at the blond kid in the front seat. “What are you squirrels up to, C.J.?” he asked, his voice soft but demanding.
“Nothing,” the kid said. “Just driving around, Officer Hudson.”
“Is that right, boys?” he asked, glancing in Pat and Chris’s direction before refocusing his icy stare on C.J.’s face.
Chris was about to say yes, that was right. After all, these guys weren’t going to bother them now. Just send them on their way, Officer Hudson, he thought.
“They wanted us to loan them ten dollars,” Pat said.
The gum chewer gave Pat a look that made Chris’s heart skip, but Pat glared right back at him.
“Just for gas,” C.J. said. “We just needed some gas money.”
“Turn your instrument lights on, Wayne,” Hudson said, bending over to look at the driver. The dashboard lit up, and the upper half of the policeman’s body disappeared into the passenger compartment as he leaned through the open window. The handle of his pistol stuck out at an angle from his belt. He straightened up to his full height and let his gaze flit back and forth between C.J. and the kid in the back. Chris watched them shrink down in their seats.
“Appears to me you boys got pretty near a full tank of gas,” Hudson said.
No answer.
“You shakin’ these young guys down?”
No answer.
“You know, I can think of a couple of reasons to lock you boys up right now,” Hudson said.
“Lock us up?” C.J. said. “What for?”
“How about attempted robbery and assault, to start with?”
“We weren’t really gonna do nothin’,” C.J. said, his voice becoming a whine.
“Is that why you were getting out of the car?” Chris asked. He was beginning to enjoy this.
C.J. didn’t answer. Instead, he began drumming his fingers on the dashboard.
“I’ll tell you what,” Hudson said, bending down again. The smile was gone from his face. “I’ll follow you on home, Wayne, and you be sure to drive real careful because I’m gonna be looking for any kind of infraction. Then we’re gonna ask your folks to call up C.J.’s and Marty’s folks and invite ‘em over. And I’m gonna call up old Raymond and ask him to come over, too. I think your football coach should be there, don’t you? Then we’ll all sit down and have ourselves a little court session.”
He stood back up, raising his voice above the throb of the engine. “When I honk, you can start for home, Wayne. If you think you can make three miles on a tank of gas, that is.”
The smile was back when he turned and started for his car. As he opened his door he paused and looked over at Chris and Pat. “You boys better hurry to wherever you’re going,” he said. “There’s much worse than these three punks out on the road at night, and I can’t be everywhere at once.”
“We will, Officer Hudson,” Chris said. Suddenly all he wanted was to be back in the motel room. He glanced at the three kids, but the tinted car windows were rolled up, obscuring their faces.
The blue-and-red flashers stopped, the horn honked, and both cars pulled slowly away from the curb, heading out of town. Chris looked over at Pat, who was smiling broadly.
“Fun, huh?” Pat said.
Chris just shook his head. “Let’s go,” he said, and started for the motel.
Pat caught up with him. “Well, you have to admit that it took your mind off things, didn’t it?”
“I could fall asleep to take my mind off things,” Chris said, “and not be in danger of getting killed.”
“They wouldn’t have killed us. Just beaten us up and taken our money. And we might’ve gotten some punches in ourselves. I think I could’ve taken that blond guy.”
“That would’ve only left two for me. You’re such a comfort, Pat.”
“They made me mad.”
“Well, try not to let it affect your judgment next time. We’ve got some serious business coming up.”
“Yeah,” Pat said. “Okay.” His head was down, his eyes on the sidewalk.
“But thanks for being a tough guy,” Chris said. He didn’t want Pat to think he wasn’t appreciated. “You had them thinking. They almost didn’t get out of the car.”
“Almost,” Pat said, and then he laughed, low and quiet at first, and then high-pitched and loud. And suddenly Chris was laughing with him, nervous energy pouring out into the sticky night air.
Fifteen minutes later they were in their beds. Chris lay in the dark motel room wondering if he’d be able to sleep. His body was exhausted, running on empty, but his mind was racing. So much had happened in one day that it seemed as if he’d been up for a week. Had it really been just that morning that they’d left home? What were his mom and dad going through now? And what would happen tomorrow?
He listened to Pat’s long, deep breaths and soft snoring, and wondered how he could fall asleep so easily. But five minutes later he closed his eyes himself, drifting effortlessly into sleep’s whirlpool.
18
The cry of a siren floated through Chris’s dream. On the TV screen were crowds of civilians and soldiers and police. Fighting, battling in the streets of some far-off city, on a continent where the most terrifying beasts in the jungle now carried clubs and wore uniforms and masks of hatred.
He was sitting in the big stuffed chair with his grandmother, and the scene played before them on the old console television in her living room. But he knew it wasn’t just a movie. He was only a little kid, but he knew it was real. He could tell by the look on his grandmother’s face and the way she shook her head. And then she had said it—a quote from the Bible that he would hear her utter often over the years to come. “For they have sown the wind, and they shall reap the whirlwind.”
The wail of the siren became the screech of the alarm clock, and he woke up. He sat upright and swung his feet to the floor, fumbling in the dark for the clock radio. He switched off the alarm. His grandmother’s words hung in the air like a rain cloud, weighing on his senses, dampening his hopes.
What had he sown? And what was he now going to reap?
Pat was sitting up in bed. Chris could make out his shape in the dim light filtering in from the street lamps. And he was saying something.
“What?” Chris said.
“You didn’t hear me?” Pat said. “Where were you, dreamland?”
“Something like that.”
“I said, are you ready to go get your little sister?”
Chris was surprised to find that he was ready. Despite the dream and what it had done to his spirits just a moment earlier, he was ready. Maybe Bud and Clover would reap the whirlwind. “I’m way past ready,” he said.
Twenty minutes later they were squatting behind Bud and Clover’s back fence. They’d made their way down the streets and back alley without seeing anyone. Most of the houses, including Bud and Clover’s, were still dark inside. Off to their right, dawn was creeping into the eastern sky. Chris peered at his watch—5:30.
He looked through the knothole, checking for something—anything—they might have missed last night, but the yard looked the same. He sat down on the ground next to Pat and waited.
At six o’clock, a light came on in a back room. The other bedroom, Chris figured. At least they were up. Now, how much longer until Bud left?
“What do you think he does all day?” Pat whispered. “Bud, I mean.”
“I don’t know. Maybe works on getting the shop remodeled. Maybe he’s selling ice cream and stuff from the truck already.”
“What if he doesn’t leave?”
“He’ll leave,” Chris said. “He has to.”
They waited. Daylight came and the sun rose through the trees, painting shadows on the fence. Chris and Pat no longer had the darkness to hide them, but at least there was no one else around. The big vacant lot behind them was thick with pines and saplings and undergrowth. And only one car had come down the alley; an old lady, looking straight ahead over her steering wheel, was driving it. They pretended to be looking for something in the bushes when she passed, but she didn’t even glance at them. They went back to the fence and sat down, and took turns looking through the knothole. And waited.
Finally they heard a door slam shut—a car door, or maybe a truck. Chris jammed his eye up against the knothole. Across the yard, he could see the upper part of the van over the front section of the backyard fence.
Then a starter cranked and an engine sparked to life. The van engine. It had its own sound and Chris knew it by heart. He glanced at Pat, who’d recognized it, too. Quick smiles lit their faces.
Chris turned back to the hole with Pat hovering next to him, shoulder to shoulder. Then the engine sound changed, and Chris watched the top of the van back away and disappear. “It’s moving,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “He’s leaving.” They listened to it stop, shift gears, and accelerate up the street toward Palm. Then the sound was gone.
“How do we know it was Bud driving?” Pat said.
Pat was right, Chris thought. They didn’t know. He shrugged his shoulders. “It probably was,” he said. But what do they do next? He was sure the doors were locked. And what if Bud were in the house?
“What do you think?” Pat said.
“I don’t know,” Chris said. “I guess we need to wait. We need to find out who’s in the house—look through the windows, maybe. They have to raise those shades sometime, or maybe they’ll unlock the door.” It sounded good, but how long would they have to wait, and how long would Bud be gone? If it was Bud who had left.
“Maybe it’s already unlocked,” Pat said. “I could go ch
eck.”
Chris was thinking about this idea when he heard a click, a bolt being turned in a door. He was sure of it. But locking or unlocking? He didn’t know. He looked through the knothole: nothing.
And then suddenly the door swung open. Clover backed out, pushing the screen door open with her wide bottom. She was carrying a plastic laundry basket full of wash. She turned and looked right toward the fence, and for a moment Chris was afraid she’d seen his telltale eye. He jerked back, holding his breath.
“What’s going on?” Pat whispered.
“It’s Clover,” Chris said. “Clover’s in the backyard.”
“Doing what?”
Chris put his eye back to the hole, and watched her walk over to the clothesline and set the basket on the ground. She reached down, grabbed a blue work shirt, and clothespinned it to the line, obscuring her face and upper body from Chris’s view. “She’s hanging clothes to dry.” He moved out of the way to let Pat take a look.
For Chris’s benefit, Pat described in a low whisper what she was hanging up. “Another shirt…a sheet…another sheet…some pants…” Suddenly his whisper rose a notch. “A dress! A little girl’s dress!” He grabbed Chris by the back of the neck and pulled his face over to the hole. “Look!”
And there it was, little and pink with a white border around the sleeves and collar, hanging from the line. Chris’s heart was drumming in his chest and his eyes were watering, blurring his vision. He blinked, and Clover was hanging a shirt. A little red T-shirt with some kind of design on the front.
And then her voice carried across the yard. “Almost done with your cereal, honey?” she called.
Chris couldn’t see the back door—the sheets were in the way—but he guessed it was still open. He strained to hear a response from the house. He felt Pat’s hand grip his shoulder and tighten, and he thought he heard a voice. Or had he imagined it?
No. “I’ll be right there, honey,” Clover called. She put a second clothespin on the shirt and headed for the back door, disappearing behind the sheets.
“Should we go for it?” Pat asked. He’d maneuvered Chris out of the way so he could look again.
Someone Was Watching Page 12
