by Tim Tingle
“Johnny,” I whispered.
When Johnny saw me, his eyes grew big and he waved his hands in front of his face. “No,” he said with his lips. Over and over he shook his head. “No!”
I hurried to the rosebushes and knelt close to the ground. Through the window I saw my dad and Mr. Mackey talking.
Hoke, they were not really talking. When my dad was mad, nobody talked. Dad yelled. The veins on his neck swelled and everybody else listened.
I have maybe seen my dad this mad once or twice in my life. And now he was standing in the house of a Cherokee man. And if that wasn’t bad enough, this Cherokee man made more money than Dad. He drove a nicer car. He lived in a big two-story house, with two new cars in the garage.
Even with the door closed and me hiding in the backyard, I could hear him holler. “You people move in and you think you own the town!”
I tried hard, but I couldn’t stop myself from crying. “Dad, what is wrong with you?” I whispered.
All of a sudden Dad pulled back his fist, ready to throw a punch. Mr. Mackey didn’t move. For a long moment the two men stared at each other. I was too scared to breathe. Then my dad flung the back door open and walked to the patio. He still held his clenched fists in front of him, ready to fight.
“You might own the town,” he yelled, “but you don’t own my house. Your kid came onto my property and ate my son’s lunch. Somebody’s gonna get a whipping. You or your son, who’s it gonna be?”
Johnny’s father walked slowly out the back door. He wasn’t hollering. He didn’t even seem mad. He acted like he and my dad were having a normal conversation.
“Mr. Byington,” he said. “You are mad, I understand. I’d be mad, too. My son will pay for what he did.”
“I want to see you give him the whipping he deserves,” Dad said in a mean whisper. “With my belt!”
He leaned close to Mr. Mackey’s face. His cheeks were blood red and he looked like a crazy man. Dad unbuckled his thick leather belt and whipped it into a loop.
“I don’t need your belt,” said Mr. Mackey. “I have my own.”
“I’m not leaving till I see him whipped.”
“Johnny!” his dad shouted.
“Yes, sir,” Johnny said, stepping to the patio.
“Is this man telling the truth? Did you go into his backyard without his permission and eat his son’s lunch?”
“Yes, Dad,” said Johnny.
“Bring me the whipping cane,” Mr. Mackey said. Johnny entered the house. In less than a minute he appeared, carrying a dark wooden cane. “After your whipping, you will go to your room. Do you understand me?”
“Yes, sir,” Johnny said.
“Mr. Byington, I need privacy, please. I promise you, his punishment will match the crime.”
“Give him one for me,” Dad said.
Mr. Mackey nodded, but kept his eyes on Johnny. Soon Dad’s mufflers screamed loud enough for everyone in the neighborhood to hear.
I didn’t want to see Johnny get whipped with a cane. But I couldn’t leave, not now.
“Lean over the table, son,” his dad said. “Now, think of what you did. You are about to get the whipping you deserve, do you understand?”
“I think I do, Dad,” Johnny said over his shoulder. “You’re not gonna change your mind, are you?”
Johnny’s dad laughed. “No, son. Here,” he said, “take your whipping.”
He tapped Johnny a few times on the backside with the cane. “Here’s one for being dumb enough to leave your cap on that man’s patio,” Mr. Mackey said. “I hope you’ve learned your lesson.”
“Are you finished?” Johnny asked.
“Yes, son. How did I do?”
“You did fine, Dad,” Johnny said. “But do I have to go to my room?”
“That was the promise. I’ll go get us some burgers. That be okay?”
“Sure, Dad. Thanks.”
“Oh, just a minute,” Mr. Mackey said, turning to face the rosebushes. “Bobby, you like French fries or onion rings with your burger?”
I stood up, feeling pretty foolish. “French fries will be fine,” I said. “Thank you.”
“Great. And you’re welcome to visit Johnny if you like.”
I felt like a five-year-old kid. I hung my head and walked by Mr. Mackey without looking at him. I wasn’t sure what I had just seen, but I knew one thing.
Johnny’s dad was nothing like mine. Johnny and his dad—they liked each other. This was different from anything I’d ever seen. A dad liking his son? A son liking his dad? What was this about?
Chapter 16
Mystery Lady Faye
When my granddad—my mother’s father—was still alive, he used to like those old black-and-white movies. In the films, it was always foggy at night and nobody could be trusted. Everybody had a secret. My next-door neighbor Faye watched everything from her upstairs window. She would have fit perfectly in an old movie. She knew everybody’s secret.
At least she knew mine. When the phone rang, I knew it was her.
“Your dad knows,” she said.
“My dad knows what?”
“He knows enough,” she said. “Just be careful. He left you another sandwich on the patio. But he’s watching to see if you come for it.”
“How do you know?”
“Never mind about that,” she said. “You have been warned.”
Before I could say another word, Faye hung up. She didn’t say good-bye, she just hung up, like a mystery lady in one of Granddad’s old movies. But she was right. I had been warned. By Mystery Lady Faye.
I snuck around to the back and climbed over the fence—behind the tree, so he couldn’t see me. I slid the door aside and climbed into my room. When I looked through the pipe, I saw she was right. Another sack sat on the picnic table.
This was too much for one day. First my stinking-mean old dad made me lunch. And when he thought somebody else ate it, he was ready to kick some rear end. Not just because it was Cherokee Johnny, but because he thought Johnny had taken my lunch. My dad was protecting me.
And now?
He made another lunch for me.
Hoke, I thought. Let’s see how much he’s really changed. I couldn’t believe what I was doing. I climbed out of my room. I hopped the fence, walked around to the driveway, and entered the backyard through the gate. Like a normal person.
I spotted the sandwich, the sandwich that was supposed to be a surprise. So I tilted my head, like I was wondering “what’s that?” Next thing I knew, I was sitting down and eating my peanut butter sandwich. The phone rang. I knew it was Faye, so I didn’t answer. I knew what she would say.
The next thing that happened scared the pants off me. A voice came from behind me—a deep, dark voice like Darth Vader’s.
“You like the sandwich?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, nodding and chewing while I said it. I didn’t dare look up.
“I been missing you, son.”
Now I didn’t know what to say. I took a giant bite of sandwich and chewed like my life depended on it. I was shaking inside.
“Oh, I forgot your soda,” he said. In less than a minute he plopped a glass filled with ice-cold root beer in front of me.
“Thank you,” I said, still chewing.
“Maybe this time the glass won’t end up in my shoulder,” Dad said, laughing. But this laugh was a soft one, more like Mr. Robison’s. Not mean like my dad’s.
But this was my dad, and when I looked up at him, he nodded at me. “Mr. Robison says you gonna be on the basketball team this year,” he said.
“If you let me,” I said. I was so scared. Can you understand why? My dad might get mad at anything. He might bang my head against the table and start cussing. I never knew, and neither did my mother.
But something was different this time. My dad and I were talking, almost like Johnny’s dad talked to him.
“Of course, son. I already told Mr. Robison it was hoke.”
“That means I have
to mow his yard for free next Saturday,” I said. Even I had to laugh at this. And what did my stinking-mean old dad do? He put his hand on my shoulder.
“I’m proud of you, Bobby.”
I almost dropped my root beer glass. Mr. Robison’s story washed over me like a flood. The word “proud,” that was what did it. I waited for Dad to get angry and start hollering, “I could never be proud of a son with no name!”
But he didn’t holler. Instead, he asked me, “Where you been staying?”
I could have said anything. I could have told him any lie and he’d never know the difference. But I knew it was now or never. If I wanted to play basketball on the high school team, I had to go to school, and I had to make the grades. And I could not do either from my hole-in-the-ground room.
If Dad hit me or beat me or cracked my ribs or slugged me in the face, then I would just have to leave home—run away or something, I didn’t know. But then I couldn’t play basketball, and I wanted that more than anything.
So I took the risk. I decided to give my dad a chance.
“You promise you won’t get mad if I tell you?” I asked him.
“Is it that bad?” he said.
“No, Dad, just kinda crazy. See, I never really left home.”
“What are you talking about?” he said. “You’ve been gone for a week.”
“You wanna see where I’ve been staying?”
“You’ve been hiding out in the garage?” he asked.
“No, Dad, you’re too smart for that. You would have caught me easy.”
“Then where?”
“Follow me,” I said. I stood up and walked across the backyard. Dad followed. When he stepped around the tree, he still couldn’t see the door. The leaves and branches did their job.
“You’ve been hiding in a tree?” he asked, looking at the tree limbs above us. “How could you sleep up there without falling?”
“Come over here, Dad,” I said, leading him to the door. “Stomp the ground here.”
He had a funny look on his face, like I was playing a joke on him. But he stomped, and when he did, the wooden door shook.
“What’s happening?” he asked. “What did you do?”
I didn’t say anything. I pulled the door aside and held my palm out, pointing to my room. “Did you dig this?” Dad asked me.
“I did. All by myself. I didn’t want to leave and I didn’t want to stay. I didn’t know what else to do,” I told him.
“I know the feeling,” Dad said. “Mind if I join you?”
The next thing I knew, I was sitting in my underground room with my dad. I pulled the door over us.
“Want some popcorn?” I asked.
“You got popcorn?”
“I can have.” I pulled my blanket off the microwave.
“You know that won’t work without electricity,” Dad said.
I tossed a bag of unpopped popcorn in the microwave and shut the door.
“Push the button, Dad.” He looked at me, still thinking this had to be a joke. When he pushed the button and the microwave lit up and whirred, he jumped so high he bumped his head on the door.
“Wow!” he said, ignoring the head bump. “Hoke, son, you got some explaining to do. I’m not mad, I promise. But tell me what I’ve been missing for the last week.”
For the last week? I thought.
Chapter 17
Crying over Spilled Juice
So I told him. I told him how afraid I was after he cut his shoulder. I told him everything, even about Mr. Robison. My dad hung his head and listened the whole time. When I was finished, he reached across the room and shook my hand.
“Thank you, son. Yakoke,” he said. “Thank you for trusting me. Now, I want to trust you with some stuff even your momma doesn’t know about. But first, why don’t you get us some cold drinks from the house? Here, I’ll hold the door for you.”
For the next hour, my dad and I ate popcorn and sipped cold drinks, sodas for me and beer for Dad. I heard about his life growing up. I knew he had eight brothers and sisters. I’d met some of my aunts and uncles once or twice, but they all moved away and we never saw them anymore.
“You wanna know why my family never gets together?” Dad asked.
“Because you live so far apart,” I said.
“Yeah,” he nodded, “but there’s another reason. It’s my dad. I know I’m not easy to live with. He wasn’t either. He started drinking when he got home from work every day. He drank all weekend. Every Saturday he had his first beer right after breakfast. And he was a mean drunk. My dad beat us all—my mom, all eight of his kids.”
The whole time he was talking, I was remembering the times my dad had kicked me and hit me for no real reason. I wrapped my arms around my knees and hid my face. He stopped talking and I knew he was looking at me, reading my unhappy thoughts about him.
Without looking up, I finally asked him, “He’s gone now. Why don’t you all get together now?”
“Son, when you’ve lived that way for so long, the last thing you want to do is bring back the memories. If we saw each other, we’d be right back in that old miserable life, the life we ran away from.”
“You don’t have to talk about it, Dad, not if you don’t want to,” I said.
“Hey, Bobby,” Dad said. “I haven’t told you the good part!” He was smiling in that strange new way.
“Hoke, Dad,” I said. I took a long sip of root beer and got ready for the good news.
“When I was your age, I wanted to play basketball. All my brothers were football stars, local heroes. I was skinny as a kid, but I was quick. The outdoor court was only a block away, and me and a friend used to practice any time I could get away. We dribbled, we practiced long set shots, lay-ups, and jump shots once we were strong enough. And we were good, ’cause nobody in our part of town cared about basketball. It was all football—all year long.
“So when I told my dad I wanted to play basketball, he put his hand right here.” Dad pointed to his chest and I heard his voice change, almost like he was about to cry.
“Right here,” Dad continued. “He shoved me so hard I hit my head against the coffee table. I still have the scar.” He moved his hair aside and showed me a two-inch scar over his forehead.
I didn’t know what to say or do. I just waited for a long time, and when he didn’t say anything, I did something so crazy I still can’t believe I did it.
I lifted my shirt and leaned to the side, so Dad could get a good look at the scar from my cracked ribs.
When Dad spoke, he was stuttering and doing his best to hold back the tears. “I have hurt you, Bobby, just like my dad did me. I have, haven’t I?”
I nodded.
Dad shook his head, and when he reached out for me with his powerful arms, I flinched. I covered my face with my hands and backed away.
“No, Bobby,” he said. “I don’t want to hurt you, ever again.” Dad gripped me by the shoulders and pulled me to him. He held me for the longest time.
“Hoke,” he finally said. “This was supposed to be the good news. Well, the good news is this. My dad never saw me play a game. He fussed and cussed and did everything he could to stop me from playing. But since he was drunk all the time, I never missed a practice.”
Good news? I thought. He can’t forget the bad times. So I did something I had never done before. I reached over and touched my dad on the knee.
“Good news?” I whispered.
He looked at me and smiled.
“You’re right, Bobby,” he said. “Here’s the good news. When Coach Robison told me you were gonna be on the team, my whole world cracked apart. I told him, ‘My son can’t play basketball!’ Then he said something I’ll never forget. ‘There’s a lot about your son you don’t know, Buck.’”
“That’s what he told me. Everything cracked and the memories came flooding out. How bad I wanted my dad to be proud of me, but he never was. Never. But I can make it different for you, son. I want to help you be the best basket
ball player you can be. I am already proud of you. Coach Robison says you’re the best three-point shooter he’s ever seen.”
The next thing that happened only happens in movies.
But this was no movie. This was more real than any moment of my sixteen years of living. We both started crying. No, we both started sobbing. We shook and sobbed, and then we hugged each other. That’s what I said. Me and my dad hugged each other.
“So you’ve been playing my favorite sport in the world and I had no idea,” he finally said.
I nodded and wiped my eyes dry.
“My Bobby,” Dad said. “A basketball player.” He shook his head and laughed.
We sat still for a long time after that. “I’m getting kinda stiff,” Dad finally said, rubbing his knees. “Getting to be an old man myself, I guess. I’m heading to the house. You’re welcome to come home if you like.”
“Is it hoke if I stay here again tonight, Dad?”
“Sure. Just be up around sunrise. I’ll have breakfast ready, served on the patio.” I couldn’t believe he said that. He lifted the door, climbed out, and turned around to say good-bye.
“See you in the morning, son. Sleep well.” And he was gone.
But my night wasn’t over yet.
Ten minutes after Dad was gone I heard a knocking on the door above me.
“Dad?” I asked.
“No, I am not your dad,” Faye replied. “How about pulling the door aside so I can join you?”
Hoke. This night was getting to be a little weird. Hoke, more than a little. It had to be after midnight, and I was not used to visitors at this hour. But it was Faye, Mystery Lady Faye.
I lifted the door and she squeezed between the crack.
“What’s up with you?” I asked.
Faye flipped on a flashlight so I could see her face. She wore lipstick and she had a blue towel slung over her shoulder.
“What’s up with me is also up with you,” she said. “What century is it?”
“The twenty-first.”
“That’s more modern than 1950, wouldn’t you agree?” she asked.
“Yes, Faye.”
