An Angel On Her Shoulder

by Dan Alatorre

  “I know you’re the doctor’s boy.” He wiped the sweat from his brow with his thick forearm, wagging a stubby finger at me. “I know it.” Then he turned back to Jimmy. “Who are you?”

  My heart was slamming around so hard I could feel it in my throat. I held my breath. None of this made any sense.

  We didn’t speak. I was too terrified. There didn’t seem to be any answer that was going to calm him down, and he looked ready to explode. Anything we said or did might set him off.

  My mind raced, wondering what he would do to us. We were completely outmatched.

  “Doctor’s kid.” His red eyes narrowed again, making the terrible feeling in my stomach surge. “Rich kid!” He spat, pointing at the car. “I don’t have money like your daddy! This is all I’ve got!”

  He slurred his words a little. That scared me more. I knew people had less control when they were drinking. I needed a plan, but I couldn’t think. Every time I thought about running, the man glared at me like he knew what I was thinking. So I stood there, paralyzed.

  And he stood there, forehead covered in sweat, staring at me. Rage seemed to be boiling up inside him.

  I had no idea what to do. I stood there with my mouth open, my mind a complete blank. Jimmy inched his way back from the car, never taking his eyes off the stranger.

  “You son of a bitches, don’t you move.” The man’s face turned to a frown as he stared at the smashed vehicle.

  Then it dawned on me. This was his car. Somebody had stolen it and dumped it here in the park.

  Lightning shot through my stomach and down to my toes, making me want to vomit. He thought we stole his car.

  Jimmy must have already figured that out.

  Somebody had stolen this man’s car, and now he thought he had found it—and the kids who had stolen it. And he meant to get some justice. Far from the road, in the back of the park, nobody would see.

  Sweat dripped from his chin. “God damn it!” He kicked the car. His car. It was an act of anger and futility.

  I didn’t even breathe. I couldn’t. The only thing louder than the raging lunatic in front of me was my pulse throbbing in my ears. I absently wiped my sweating palms on my shorts.

  Jimmy never said a word. He silently made his way to me. Together we waited to see if we could—or should—make a run for it. Kids didn’t disobey adults. We couldn’t leave our bikes anyway, and trying to run over and grab them would give the man enough time to catch us. The fact that he hadn’t laid a hand on us yet was good; maybe he wouldn’t. But I didn’t believe that, and the expression on Jimmy’s face said he didn’t, either. We would stand there like the man said to, like the good boys we were.

  For now, the man kept us in Hell, yelling at the car and then at us, while he seemed to be working out what punishment to administer.

  Then his eyes got big—too big. The whites showed and a sickening smile tugged at the corners of his mouth, sending a shot of fear straight through me. My ears were ringing and the nausea building in my stomach swelled. A hazy red dot formed in the corner of my eye.

  I tried to ignore it, but I couldn’t. I squeezed my eyes shut, putting my hands on my stomach and hoping the strange feeling consuming me would go away. The man’s tirade roared through my head as a red cloud crept across my vision. I forced myself to take a deep breath to make it go away, but it wouldn’t go. It controlled my eyes from inside. I wanted to shake my head back and forth but I was so dizzy and sick I knew I’d lose my balance and fall down.

  The ringing grew louder, the red patch overtaking my eyesight and squeezing the breath out of me.

  I had to look at it, look through it, to what it wanted me to see. I was afraid, but it wouldn’t let go.

  In the red haze, the color of the lunatic’s bulging face changed. An eerie blue glow flashed across it, fast as lightning. As soon as I realized I was seeing it, it was already gone.

  Then I was seeing his sedan. The inside. Under the driver’s seat.

  A long, thin wooden bat, like the kind police carried in old movies, lay tucked up under the cushion. It was shiny and black, with a thick leather string running through the handle.

  Then the redness was gone and I could see the park again.

  Covered in sweat, I stood there shaking.

  The stranger nodded, a string of drool hanging from his mouth. “I’ll show you little bastards!” He stormed off toward the sedan.

  I swallowed hard, frozen in place, barely able to breathe. With all my might, I managed to squeeze a few words out of my mouth. “He’s got a night stick.”

  Jimmy’s jaw dropped. His eyes went to the raging lunatic.

  In my mind, that bulging face glowed as he raised his big arm, bringing the club down on us again and again as we lay cowering on the dry creek bed, bones breaking and blood spewing in the assault.

  He never got the chance. The tough kids had appeared on the ridge for their afternoon beer party. They were here to meet their pals, but they had stumbled onto quite a scene.

  Their presence seemed to jolt the stranger back into reality. It didn’t occur to me, but it must have occurred to him that now he was outnumbered. He might have thought the tough kids were with us, or he might have realized there would now be witnesses to tell the police what he did to the two ten-year-old boys.

  Stopping on the rocky ground, he stared up the hill at them. “Hey.” His voice now seemed weak. He said it again, louder, with the menacing growl. “Hey!”

  That was all they needed. The punks on the hill didn’t want adult eyes of any sort observing their activities. They turned around to leave.

  “Hey,” the stranger shouted again. “Get back here!” He started after them. The stranger’s big belly bounced, slowing him more than enough for the other kids get some distance. He stumbled on the large rocks of the dry creek bed, grabbing at his car to avoid falling.

  That was our chance.

  “Dougie! Now!” Jimmy dashed toward his bike. I was right on his heels. With my heart pounding, I grabbed the Schwinn and stormed up the sled riding hill. We pushed our bikes in front of us as hard as we could, not wanting to slow down for even the few seconds it would take to get on. The stranger couldn’t easily chase us up the hill on foot, and it was too steep for his car. We could escape back to our houses through the woods.

  As the leaves crackled under our racing feet, we heard the man rage at being outfoxed. “Get back here, God damn it!” His tortured voice bounced through the woods. “Get back here!”

  No chance. Once we were up the hill, we jumped on our bikes and pedaled as fast as we could.

  The stranger’s howls echoed through the trees behind us as we sped away.

  Chapter 4

  We stopped to hear if the man from the park was coming after us. Staring at each other, we held our breath and focused on what terrifying noises might come to us through the trees.

  Nothing.

  Jimmy took a deep breath and pulled his t-shirt up to wipe the sweat off his brow. “We got away.”

  I don’t know how he managed to get anything other than a grimace onto his face. My stomach still hurt, my chest was thumping, and my t-shirt was soaking wet. I couldn’t stop sweating.

  Jimmy hopped up on his pedals and rode away, taking the hiking trail towards home.

  Once we were sure we had ridden far enough from the stranger, we worked our way down the hill and across to our side of the creek, the side with mowed lawns and paved streets.

  And our houses, right next door to each other, just a mile or so away.

  When we finally got onto Reigert Drive, Jimmy rode his bike home like nothing had happened. He leaned back and lifted his palms off his handle bars, riding hands-free. He was better at it than I was, of course.

  He took a quick glance at me. “How’d you know?”

  Easing my hands away from the handlebar grips, I sat upright but still let my fingertips touch the cross bar. I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about. “How’d I know what?”


  Jimmy dropped his hands to his sides, riding effortlessly. “About that guy having a night stick.”

  “I don’t know.” I slid my hands back to the rubber grips, squeezing them. “I just did.”

  It was a lie. I didn’t want to explain how I knew about the night stick. I didn’t want my best friend to think I was a freak.

  Some secrets don’t get shared.

  It wasn’t a complete lie, though. I didn’t really know how I saw the night stick, or what the red haze was. I overheard Mom on the phone with aunt Amy, whispering about panic attacks. Maybe it was one of those.

  It happened to me at St. Matthew’s once, too, in the middle of mass. An old guy in a baggy, dark suit sat down a few rows behind us, and a strange feeling crept right onto me the way heat does when the oven door opens. I tried to ignore the sensation, but the little blotch appeared in the corner of my eye and seemed to force my attention to it then, too. I had to look because not looking was like trying to hold your breath after running wind sprints in gym class.

  I tried not to see it. I squinted, focusing on the priest as he rambled through his sermon. I forced myself to take deep breaths, swallowing hard and hoping to push the crimson fog out of my eyes. A ringing grew in my ears and my stomach felt queasy. The whole church rocked like a boat and became hot and stuffy.

  The priest blathered on, calmly gesturing in his flowing robes, but his words were crowded out by the insane ringing that pounded through my head. As the redness swept over my vision, I gripped the back of the pew in front of us, convinced I was going to throw up or pass out.

  With my eyes squeezed shut as tight as they would go, the pressure lifted. I could see the wrinkled old man in the baggy suit. I was now next to him, but we were in his house, next to his bed. He held up a pillow and lowered it over his sleeping wife’s face.

  Sweat covered my brow. I shook my head back and forth as hard as I could, nearly falling onto the old red carpet at St. Matthew’s as I tried not to see the kicking elderly woman clawing at the pillow.

  When I opened my eyes, the wrinkled old man was gone and the ringing was, too. The priest was still in the middle of his sermon. I sat there, drenched in sweat and staring at nothing, gasping for breath as my mother’s voice urged me to calm down.

  You’re okay, Dougie. Take a deep breath. You’re okay.

  It was the strained tone adults used when everything’s not okay.

  Jimmy didn’t need to know about that episode, either.

  It was still pretty early when we got home from the park, so we dropped off our bikes and headed down to our creek. A day or so before, we had strategically stashed a plastic model aircraft carrier we had built and a few G. I. Joes. That is to say, we had left them near the creek when our moms called us for dinner, and we forgot to bring them up to the house later. We had to make sure that kid in New Orleans didn’t have them now.

  Living next door met the requirement for Jimmy and I to be friends. To be best friends, secrets had to be shared and trusts had to be constructed, done through years of playing together. The confrontation in the park had been one of many things that had cemented into a solid friendship.

  But like most things with ten-year-olds, all that would soon change. After Jimmy moved away, it would be a long time before I made another friend that close—if I ever did.

  The kid I knew was always outside learning about nature while I was always inside teaching myself how to draw. While he practiced bow hunting with razor tipped arrows, I went to swim meets and read books between my events. He learned how to use his dad’s sharpening wheel to hone the blade of a pocket knife (allegedly he could shave with it—if we needed to shave) and could skin a rabbit and store the meat. His older brother showed us how to do it once. It was fast and almost bloodless, not at all what I expected. Once started, the skin seemed to slide off the rabbit like you’d pull off a t-shirt over your head.

  I never had a pocket knife. Eventually, my dad bought me an Xacto knife at Pfirman’s Hobby Shop that I was allowed to use when I built model cars.

  Our hikes were a different story. We were almost always a kindred spirit in the woods, walking and talking about the important things that ten-year-olds talk about: comic books, movies, and sometimes girls. We also had a question and answer game that we invented, and we played the game while we hiked the narrow trails through the woods.

  Jimmy poked at the capsized aircraft carrier with a stick. “Hey,” he said without looking up. “Would you kill Hitler?”

  It was the way we always began our question and answer game. I was tired and didn’t want to play. A massive amount of mud had somehow gathered under my fingernails and needed attention.

  “C’mon.” He turned around to face me. “Let’s play.”

  He stepped onto a rock in the middle of the creek, attempting to find enough to cross without having to walk down to the shallow part. “Would you kill Hitler?”

  I leaned forward, accepting the challenge. “Of course. No hesitation.”

  Arms held out to balance himself, he glanced up and smiled. The game was on.

  He hopped back to the other side of the water. Somewhere in the next ten minutes or so, he would try to have me saying that I would do something crazy. That was the game.

  We didn't know who Hitler was at that age. Not really. It was a bad name for our game, but that’s what we called it. It was our way of being a little bad, I guess, naming a dumb game after someone like that.

  The hill by the creek was grassy and soft. Sunlight filtered through the maple trees to illuminate varying patches of the green turf. Small clusters of orange and red leaves glided to earth with each gentle breeze. Jimmy was thinking up the next question—if he hadn’t prepared one already. Usually, he was working toward a point.

  The game was as simple as Tic Tac Toe. Jimmy was good at it, but I was better, like a good offense against a good defense. That made it all the more important for him to beat me. Him beating me at Killing Hitler would be like me being a better shot than him with our brothers’ BB guns. Ten-year-olds have to try to stake out their own “bests,” especially if they have older brothers.

  Jimmy strolled along the creek bank like a lawyer preparing a cross-examination, wagging his finger in the air. “Would you . . . kill Hitler if you knew they would catch you?”

  “Oh, sure.” I picked up a stick and pushed it through a yellow leaf, spinning it like a pinwheel. “Hell, I’d expect to get caught.” It was easy to be brave in theory, when life and love were hypothetical. Or to use cusswords like “hell” when you knew no parents could hear you.

  Nodding, Jimmy turned and paced back the other way. “What if the Germans had spies that took your mom and dad hostage?”

  “I’d still do it.” I shrugged. “Besides, if I could sneak in close enough to kill Hitler, I could probably sneak out and nobody would know.”

  “Oh, they’d know all right.” Jimmy chuckled. “He’s in charge of the whole country. They’d know.”

  I thought my answer was pretty solid. “I’d have to do it. He was a bad guy. He killed a lot of people. I would be a hero for killing him.”

  “Oh, a hee-ro!” Jimmy laughed. “You’re a tough guy, huh?”

  “No...” I tossed my stick in the water and watched it drift towards New Orleans. “Not tough. Smart.”

  “Right. Smart.” He sauntered over the rocks for a moment before perching himself on a small boulder jutting out of the hill. “You might be smart but you aren’t sneaky.”

  I didn’t know where he was going with that, but we were off track. “C’mon, you aren’t playing the game.”

  “Okay, okay.” He had probably already thought of his good question, and now he needed time to remember it. His attention appeared consumed by a few passing minnows as they darted around in the stream, then his eyes narrowed. “Okay, so if you were sure to get caught, you’d still kill Hitler, right?”

  “Right. No question.”

  “What if the Germans were g
oing to murder your parents if you killed Hitler?”

  I was ready for that. “I’d still have to do it. Two people for the price of a million people is a good trade.”

  “So you’d sacrifice your mom and dad, just like that?”

  “Well . . . I think you’d have to. Heck, for a million lives? You do have to.”

  His head bobbed, seeming to agree with that math.

  “Besides.” I grinned. “Then I could run the damned air conditioning in my room.”

  We laughed. His bedroom was as hot and stuffy as mine. For some reason, our parents wouldn’t run the air conditioning in summertime until after dinner, not even the window units upstairs where the kids’ bedrooms were—the hottest part of the house. They said electricity was expensive, but maybe it was a ruse to keep us playing outside.

  “Hey, no.” Jimmy waved his hand. “You wouldn’t get any air conditioning. You’d be dead already, remember?”

  “No, I think I could still sneak out if I was able to sneak in.”

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head. “You can’t sneak out. They have too many guards. You definitely get killed.”

  I nodded. “Okay...”

  “Okay. So . . .” He squatted, resting his arms on his knees. “What if they . . . if they also kidnapped your aunts and uncles, and all your cousins, and they were all gonna get killed, too?”

  “Hah. Take ‘em.”

  “Boy, it’s a good thing you don’t have a dog.” He stood and threw a rock into the creek. A tall column of water splashed up with a bloop. The water was deep where the stone hit. A smile crept across his face. “Suppose they also grabbed Sheila McCormack.” He glanced my way. “And they were going to kill her, too.”

  I opened my mouth but didn’t speak. I didn’t know he knew about Sheila.

  Jimmy hopped back onto the rock in the middle of the creek and made kissing noises. “Ooh, Shee-lah. Oooh!”

  Leaning back on one shoulder, I tried to play it cool. “Whatever. Take her.”

  He raised his eyebrows. “Really? You’d let them kill Sheila McCormack!?”