“Yes, you most certainly do. Too much for your own good, I think.”
A faint threat in his eyes, combined with the implication veiled in his choice of words, seems to make the ball bearing in my pocket vibrate like a weather vane signaling the approach of a storm. I am thrown off balance for a moment.
“Well, ahem, the thing is, Luke and I, well, sir—sometimes we like to hang out near the Highland Park police station.”
“So?”
A lighthearted, aw-shucks, what-the-heck, I-think-I’ll-change-the-subject kind of aloofness comes over me. I give him a great big false smile and head for the gold. “Maybe one of us will turn out to be a police officer when we grow up, like you, sir.”
“Yeah? Well that’s just peachy. So what does that have to do with Cherry marrying somebody other than me?”
“Miss Cherry works with you at the O.C., uh, whatever you call it, doesn’t she?”
“O.C.I.U., Organized Crime Investigation Unit. What about it?”
I have definitely found his weak spot, his athlete’s heel, or whatever you call it. He is starting to fume, and I delight in the fact that he’s being played by a ten-year-old kid.
“Well, sir, I guess a lot of the officers at the Highland Park station know you O.C.I.U. people, including Miss Cherry.”
Queenie turns the corner at Ruby Place.
The Sergeant is blistering now, his imagination flinging his temper wildly from its normal realm of cool and calm. I allow a lengthy pause just to needle him.
“Get to the point, Wade.”
Queenie glides to a graceful stop at the curb.
Mac is napping on the front porch. He raises his head, verifies that the car and its passengers are authorized objects, and then returns to his slumber. Luke’s head pops up in the bedroom window. He waves and I smile at him while I discreetly unlock the car door and casually reach for the door handle.
“Well, sir, I overheard some of the officers talking a couple of weeks ago.”
I am beginning to impress myself with my acting. The seriousness in my voice might even fool Lucinda.
“Talking about what?”
“Not what, sir. About whom would be more to the point.”
He looks ready to choke me. But then, with great effort, he relaxes himself and forces his mouth into the shape of a tolerant smile. “Okay, Wade, about whom did you and Luke overhear my fellow officers at the Highland Park station talk about?”
I want very much to say, “Pardon me, but would you kindly rephrase that to avoid any possible misinterpretation on my part?” but I am sure he will smack me if I do. Instead, I say with the solemnity of a reluctant bearer of bad news, “Miss Cherry said…”
He tenses noticeably. “What about Miss Cherry?”
He forces his face into another artificial smile, and I glance toward the house. Luke, still standing at the window, is now motioning for me to come in the house. I nod to him and return my attention to the Sergeant. I give him my most sympathetic look. “I’m really sorry to be the one to tell you this, but I think you should know so you don’t end up making a terrible fool of yourself.”
He looks about ready to burst into tears. “Go ahead…tell me.”
“We heard the officers talking about Miss Cherry being in love with someone other than you.”
I reach over with my left hand and give his arm a comforting squeeze.
I feel wonderful, giddy, soused on an exhilarating rush of sweet revenge. I am paying him back for all of the roller coaster rides he has taken me on. For the unnerving scene that night on Billy Goat Hill when Scar and his gang challenged the cops and scared me and Luke half to death; for that moment of horror when he peeled away his face like a half-human lizard shedding its skin; and for the time up on Eagle Rock when he told us the heart-tugging tale of Jakey Blume, mockingbirds, crimson red hair, and all, as if he were a gypsy fortune teller revealing the hypnotic visions of my dreams from the dark center of his mystical crystal ball.
But most of all, I feel like I am handing back to him the atrocious ball bearing that he so cruelly dropped into my hand. Yes, I’m giving him back all of the evil in me and keeping only the good. But instead of all that, I am only playing a joke. No, not just a joke—a great joke. The kind of joke that close friends use as building blocks in the mutual construction of trust and respect.
“Did they say who the other guy was?”
“Yes, sir—I’m afraid they did, sir.”
I touch his arm again and he flinches. “Who is he?” He closes his eyes to lessen the sting.
“Are you really sure you want to know?”
He opens his eyes. “Yes, I’m positive.” He closes them again.
The moment of truth has arrived. “We heard them say Miss Cherry is in love with—ME-e-e-e-e-e!”
I bound out of Queenie, slam her door, and sprint to the house. I want to stop on the porch and look at him so I can squeeze out all the pleasure I can, but I don’t have the nerve. I don’t dare even glance over my shoulder as the back of my neck prickles from the deadly glare of a rancorous male Gorgon, painfully hankering to turn me into a pre-acne towheaded pillar of stone. I hide in the bedroom until I hear the soft thrum of Queenie fade down the hill.
Oh well, I guess I’ll hear how Rodney pulled him out of the storm drain another time.
Then, like a Drysdale fastball high and inside—it hits me. If it’s the last thing he ever does…he will get even with me.
Regret closes in faster than Mac on a scent leading to Molly’s house.
hristmas 1960 comes and goes like a train passing through an abandoned station. Despite Lucinda’s best effort, Luke and I are less than grateful for our meager bounty. Luke complains the loudest and the longest. Eventually, I decide to step in and get a little tough with him after he makes Lucinda cry. Later, I realize my aggressiveness has more to do with the stress I’m under than anything Luke might deserve. What’s done is done. He’ll get over it.
I am also disappointed the Sergeant doesn’t come by to say hello during the holiday. A Christmas card shows up in the mail a week late. It’s a religious one, which surprised me. Some spiritual residue from Rodney might explain it, I don’t know. I do know there was no return address on the envelope. He must be mad at me for the Miss-Cherry-being-in-love-with-me stunt. Some of us can dish it out and some of us can take it, I guess. I wonder if he’d told Miss Cherry what I said.
There are times when I sense that the Sergeant is near. I get a spooky tingle on the back of my neck and find myself looking around to see if he’s watching me from the shadows. I can be most anywhere when the feeling comes over me—standing in the schoolyard, walking on the sidewalk, or hanging out on Billy Goat Hill—but I never spot him. I wish it would stop. Having your hopes dashed so regularly is not a good way to live.
Here it is the middle of February already, and I haven’t seen or heard from him since the day I slammed the car door and ran into the house scared to death to turn around and look at him. I plan to say I am sorry for the stunt if and when I ever get the chance. I miss him a lot, him and Rodney.
The ball bearing still bangs around in my pocket. As the weeks limp along, it gradually takes on a different significance, transforming itself into an object of remembrance, a cherished keepsake that symbolizes my withering relationship with the Sergeant. I can’t go anywhere without it, and I constantly check my pocket for fear that I might lose it and have my only connection to the Sergeant fizzle away completely.
The haunting little silver ball has become my silver dollar, and I vow that I will never let it fall into a storm drain. I think I would slide down a hole to Hades if necessary to keep it. Ever so slowly, I am learning there may indeed be a hole to Hades, and its sides may be greased with deceit.
Time drags on in a sun-up to sun-down drudgery of existence punctuated by frequent bouts of anxiety about the mysterious dead man of Three Ponds. The worst days end in a losing battle to stay awake for fear the dead man awaits me just b
eyond the edge of slumber. As soon as I drift into his realm, he starts railing at me, always accusing, accusing, accusing.
But a countervailing voice also inhabits my dreams, and it speaks to me when I listen very carefully. Rodney’s voice, always steady, never shouting, gently reminds me how much Jesus loves me. When I concentrate on my memory of Rodney’s voice, I can also hear Matthew chattering nearby. I picture him wiggling with excitement as he looks up bright-eyed and smiling at the colorful mobile that dips and dangles above his crib. The way that Rodney and Matthew give me comforting thoughts, they must be together in heaven.
My waking hours are also full of extraordinary influences. Last week Luke and I were sitting on the porch with Mac when our next door neighbor, Carl the baker, had one too many beers and walked out into the middle of Ruby Place with his tarnished but venerable antique rifle.
“Yuri Gagarin, you lousy red commie!” he yelled between long pulls on his long-neck bottle. “Come down from there!”
Staggering badly, he pointed the rifle up at the smog and lined up the sights like he was actually aiming at something. Then he let the old bolt action single shot rip…Boom! Mac howled every time Carl fired off a round. Man oh man, I didn’t know what to do, but given the odds against one of the slugs falling back to earth and hitting us, which were worse than the odds of old Carl actually hitting the first man in space, we were never in any danger.
He put on quite a show until the police came and hauled him away. A reporter from the Los Angeles Herald showed up in time to snap a picture of four very nervous cops engaging and disarming Carl. Of all the people standing around watching the once-in-a-life-time show, the reporter picked me out of the crowd to ask questions about the incident.
I am sure I was misquoted: “Wade Parker, age ten, said his neighbor, Carl the baker, was (envious, ed.) of the Russian’s high quality Rye bread.”
Luke claims the paper got it exactly right.
Another development is taking shape. Luke and I have formulated a plan to install a network of candles along the walls of our newest Shangri-la, the storm drains under northeast Highland Park. Cavendish Caverns becomes the code name, a phrase Luke coined after seeing pictures of Carlsbad Caverns in a back issue of National Geographic. I liked it the moment he said it, and right then and there we decided it was most fitting that we dedicate our newest playground in honor of the man who gave us the idea. After I told Luke Sergeant Cavendish’s silver dollar story, we found a different moral in the storm drain rescue tale. Adults should be mindful of the stories they tell to children.
Our first hurdle is to find another way into the storm drain system. Going in through a curb drain proves a physical impossibility for me, and I am not about to send Luke down there to reconnoiter. I suspect the curb drain route poses some unknown hazard, the exact nature of which isn’t clear because the Sergeant hasn’t been around to tell me the rest of the story. I don’t yet fully understand how the storm drain system actually works; all I know is water drains from the streets into the openings in the curb and disappears. I guess it all ends up in the rice paddies in China.
The challenge of trying to figure another way into the storm drains helps keep my mind occupied. The loss of Rodney and my apparent disaffection from the Sergeant and Miss Cherry together with the dead guy add up to a burden too much for my young heart to bear. I need a remedy, and instinct tells me I have to step outside of myself and find something with restorative power in order to survive.
In my imagination, I romantically reason that magic medications can be found in the dark, fortress-like dispensary of Cavendish Caverns. Necessity has led to the invention of a new frontier, one that exists entirely underground and well below the radar of reality, which meets rather well with my notion about being part mole or groundhog.
We discover a storm drain discharge tunnel opening in the concrete side slope of the Arroyo Seco quite by accident—literally. The revelation comes about when two cars collide on the York Boulevard Bridge, which traverses the Arroyo Seco and the Pasadena Freeway. Luke and I have just gotten the boot from Kory’s comic book section for the umpteenth time. We are standing outside the store, both of us highly incensed that we have been invited to leave so quickly. We are not yet finished making rude faces at the manager through the storefront window when the red flashing lights of two police cruisers stopped in the middle of the bridge catch Luke’s attention.
“Look at that,” he coos.
I can take them or leave them, but Luke is always mesmerized by flashing emergency lights. The cyclical flicker of the strobes has a Pied Piper effect on his brain. Like a moth to a flame, there is no stopping him. The fireworks of Independence Day are a veritable feast for his eyes, but for some arcane reason, flickering flames do not have the same effect. Thank God for that, or I’d be spending the rest of my childhood as a permanent member of a bucket brigade.
I am still peeved at the store manager and don’t give Luke my immediate attention. He tugs my shirtsleeve, and the next thing I know we are standing on the bridge staring with morbid fascination at two mangled cars. The drivers, dead or alive we don’t know, have already been whisked away in ambulances, and traffic has been detoured away from both ends of the bridge.
As we stand gaping at the carnage, two rattletrap tow trucks appear like half-starved mongrels scenting the waftures of road kill. The drivers crawl out of the rusted wreckers and amble over to inspect the auto carcasses, which appear to be fused together by the head-on impact. The tow truck drivers are a rueful sight. Like inbred cousins from some distant hollow, they both stand there scratching their heads, as if the friction might warm their wits enough to figure out how to separate the cars.
The flashing lights go off, and with the euphoria not yet cleared from his eyes, Luke walks straight over to Festus and Jethro. I follow, staying three steps behind. I don’t want to get too close—they look downright diseased. Luke moves right in and performs one of his priceless Lukeisms, as I have come to call them, an outlandish absurdity of the type I previously strove to discourage but recently have developed an appreciation for. Kind of like an acquired taste, a term I learned from drinking Rodney’s coffee.
“You gentlemen give me a quarter each, and I’ll tell you exactly how to solve this problem,” Luke announces.
The little mercenary sounds like he has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. I start to reach for his arm to pull him back, afraid they might smack him one for being a smart aleck. But then I see them digging down deep in their greasy coveralls and smiling kind of goofy like, both of them oozing makeshift cleverness like they are getting a VIP discount. They each deposit two bits in Luke’s little pink hand.
The taller one of the two, a Tennessee Valley baritone, speaks first. “Okay, young feller…” He snorkels a cubic foot of air in through hair clogged nostrils, which sounds like the snore of a congested whale, and then expels something from his throat so vile I can’t possibly describe it. “Tell us how ta untangle these mules.”
The man breaks into a slovenly grin, revealing a greenish tangle of broken teeth. I take a couple of steps to the west to get out of the stream of his breath. Luke stands his ground.
The other tow truck driver chimes in. “Yeah. I hopes we don’t haffs ta put the a-cet-a-lean turch to ’em.”
Luke peers up at them with his angelic baby blues and speaks with the sincerity of Billy Graham. “Put a hose on them. It works with Mac every time.”
He deposits the quarters in his pocket, turns smartly, and walks away. I bust a gut while Festus and Jethro resume scratching their heads and pondering at a snail’s pace whether or not they’ve received fair value for payment tendered.
Luke hasn’t an inkling how funny he is. He’s the perfect straight man. He isn’t serious and moody like I often am. His mind travels a zone I can never enter, and I wish I could gain access to his easygoing state of inner peace.
As time rolls on like the steady flow of the Arroyo Seco, I begin to look up to Luke, at
times envying him for his steely nerve and philosophical armor. That he could fearlessly approach two scary looking men and advise them on the art of auto uncoupling, two men who look like they eat little kids as in-between meal snacks, that he can get away with something like that just dazzles me.
And I envy his apparent immunity from nightmares. Certainly he has cause to entertain ghosts same as me, what with his plight with the mockingbirds, not to mention our shared encounter with the dead man. Yet, such appears not to be the case. I admire and love him for his crazy daring. I shake my head as we walk over to the bridge railing. Behind us, Festus and Jethro begin to tinker with the mangled autos.
Luke stands at the railing casually looking down at the Arroyo Seco. Seeing him there, I am reminded of that morning on the “other bridge” when I stared down into the inviting mist. Man, I wish I could find a way to be less affected by things. I have remained the oldest chronologically while somehow Luke has grown beyond me.
“Look.” Luke points downstream toward a county flood control truck parked on the concrete bed of the Arroyo Seco.
“Well, well, well. I think we may have found the entrance to King Tut’s tomb.”
“Nope—it’s Cavendish Caverns.” He grins, stretching his freckles to the limit. “Just like those pictures I saw in National Geographic.”
If the pictures included a warning about the dangers of caverns and other dark places, Luke sure didn’t mention it.
Luke walks upright with plenty of freeboard while I have to stoop slightly, crook my neck, and tuck my chin to my chest or I’ll end up with a bald spot. A continuous trickle of contaminated water moistens the bottom of the tube. Some kind of slimy life-form marks the concave walls, its varying stages of hydroponic metabolism staining the concrete with striations that remind me of the horizontally scarred shoreline of a fickle lake. We observe the strange phenomena with passive curiosity, ignorant of its foreboding message—just indecipherable hieroglyphics decorating the walls of an ancient cave. Such obvious signs of a changing water level fail to trigger a warning.
Billy Goat Hill Page 13
