All For One

by Ryne Douglas Pearson

  “Where’s your four-by-four?”

  “At your school. I parked it and walked back to meet you.”

  “I’m honored.”

  Dooley looked up, through the tangle of barren tree limbs at the graying sky. “So, you’re the president of the class.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Win by a lot of votes?”

  Joey kept his eyes mostly ahead and answered, “Twenty.”

  “Out of twenty six?”

  “There’s twenty five in my class,” Joey sneered.

  “Twenty five?” Dooley repeated uncertainly. “Now, maybe. Weren’t there twenty six back in September when school started?”

  Joey glanced at the detective’s casual boots, then returned his attention to the sidewalk ahead.

  “You forgot Guy,” Dooley said. “Did he vote for you?”

  “I doubt it,” Joey replied.

  “Guy was a pain in class I guess.” A few steps in silence, then Dooley said, “You didn’t like Guy, did you?”

  “Oh, sure, he was a great bud,” Joey remarked. His head shook slightly at his feet.

  “Now, that sounds less than sincere,” Dooley observed, and noticed the boy’s pace pick up again.

  They reached the T intersection with Peyton, Joey heeling left and wishing as hard as he could without closing his eyes that the detective would be gone. Somehow gone. Where was a conveniently man-size sinkhole when you needed one?

  “Was it because of things like the smoke bomb?”

  Joey’s eyes angled sideways at the detective.

  “Yeah, I know about the smoke bomb,” Dooley said. “What was it—four weeks ago? Someone threw a smoke bomb into the school bus when it was leaving the school. The driver had to stop it in a hurry, I heard.” Read, actually, but what did that matter? Dooley figured. “Ran over the curb and blew a tire. All the kids had to get off fast. Someone could have gotten hurt.”

  “No...” shit? A filthy mouth is one sure sign of weak character, Miss Austin had drilled into him hard and fast last year. And character was everything. Even more important than smarts. It hadn’t taken him long to see that what she’d said was right as rain. “...joke.”

  “But no one saw Guy do it.”

  Joey sniffed a knowing little laugh. “He did it. Everyone knew he did it.”

  “Because he got caught with a smoke bomb three days earlier, right?”

  This guy had done his homework, Joey thought. That both impressed and worried him. “He didn’t get in trouble for that either. He blamed it on someone else. Guy was good at that.”

  “That doesn’t sound very fair.”

  “So?” Joey asked defensively. “Guy got away with lots of stuff.” He swallowed a big gulp of cold air. “Lots of stuff.”

  That pause was interesting, Dooley thought. Something was behind it. Dooley shifted gears, put a soft cloak to his approach, and decided to explore this surprise tributary. “What kind of stuff?”

  Joey sought distraction in a car passing, watching a frothy cloud pour from its tailpipe as it drove off toward...

  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  “Joey?”

  Galloway’s Orchard was beyond the car, far down Peyton, but it was in memory that it flashed in Joey’s mind. Flashed close. Closer. Then...

  No.

  ...inside, engulfed, by it. By...

  NO.

  ...him.

  “What is it, Joey?”

  It was...

  ...the pear trees baring their branches, stubborn peaches rotting on the dirt, and Guy Edmond taking his...

  What are theeeese? Chocolates? For your little girlfriend? Little Miss Poor Girl? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  “What things did Guy do?”

  The box tumbling through the air, a whole month’s allowance scattering piecemeal to the ground, little dusty puffs rising from each impact.

  No!

  A shove, and the trunk of a pear tree slamming into his back. Guy laughing. Guy laughing. Guy laughing that laugh of a crazed hyenaboy.

  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  My candy!

  Guy laughing, his hand reaching among the still supple leaves shed for the season. His hand coming up. Something in it. Something in it!

  “What did he do?”

  Guy brings his hand to his face, ogling the thing in it like a chimp puzzling over a natural oddity, sniffing it, then smiling as the idea comes.

  You want some candy, eh? You like chocolate?

  Dogs wander through Galloway’s Orchard all the time, leaving behind what they will leave.

  You want some chocolate, Jo Jo?

  One of Guy’s hands grabs his hair, the other shoves the...thing toward him.

  I’ve got some chocolate for you. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  Guy laughing. Guy shoving it at him.

  Open your mouth! Open it!

  There is no one near. No one to help. No one to scream to. Galloway’s Orchard is vast and shallow, like an inland sea just deep enough to drown the unlucky.

  Open it!

  The hand squeezes the hair it holds into a bunch. His scalp burns. The first tears trickle down his cheeks. He is afraid. And he is...ashamed.

  He opens his mouth and Guy forces the lump of dried dog shit in it.

  “Joey? Tell me.”

  Now eat it. Chew it like a good little boy.

  Humiliation churns in his gut, swirls in his head like a cyclone bearing down on him as he huddles alone in some endless field. Nowhere to run, no place to hide, feeling the ghastly thing come at him and praying that it will end. Be quick and gone.

  Eat it. And swallow it. Yes. That’s it. Swallow your chocolate. SWALLOW IT!

  He does, and doesn’t even gag. Then Guy laughing.

  Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ah, ha ha ha ha ha ha!

  “What other stuff, Joey? What other stuff did he do?”

  Guy letting loose the hair and walking away, laughing.

  Laughing the way he laughed. Nothing funny, just revelry in misery. In degradation.

  Walking away, leaving Joey small and alone. Worse than beaten.

  Bruises would eventually fade.

  “Tell me, Joey.”

  The imagery fizzled and Joey stopped in his tracks as if suddenly unplugged from some energy source. Something gone from him. Stolen.

  Dooley stopped a few steps further on and looked back, the eleven year old’s eyes smoldering at him. “What is it?”

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” Joey said very evenly, asserting himself. Here he was in control. Here there was no bully to make him do anything. “My father’s a lawyer and I know my—”

  “I know,” Dooley interjected. “Your mother told me.”

  Joey’s eyes narrowed. “My mom?”

  “Yes. I stopped her this morning after she left your house and told her I’d be talking to you.”

  “How...how do you know about my dad?”

  “Your mother mentioned it. She also said that you had nothing to do with Guy Edmond’s murder. That you had nothing to hide.” Dooley took a step toward him. “Is that true, Joey? Or are you hiding something? Are you?”

  As quickly as it had left, the vigor returned to Joey’s every muscle. He began to walk, passing the Kiddie Catcher and sensing that he was not following anymore, feet driving him away. Away from the detective. The questions. The memory.

  “Joey,” Dooley shouted mildly. “Why won’t you...”

  Joey half glanced over his shoulder before catching himself and forcing his gaze forward, hurrying off toward school.

  Far back, for a very long time, Dooley stood and watched Joey Travers, the little boy who seemed very afraid. Afraid of something, but not of him.

  Afraid of something dead and gone.

  Eleven

  Bryce salivated, more at his opponent’s stupid move than the mustard and bologna sandwich his mom had packed in his lunch. Sure, it had been two weeks since the chess club had come together for its regular Thursday eat-
and-play, but Derrick Brayton could not have gone stupid in those fourteen days. However, seeing him move his queen to king’s rook seven, taking a measly out-of-the-way white pawn, Bryce had to assume that he had and moved his bishop to king’s bishop four.

  “Oh, crap,” Derrick swore mildly, holding his head, the stub of a carrot poking from his mouth like a cigar.

  “That’s mate in three,” Bryce informed his opponent. He held his hand out over the board and, after a second’s contemplation, Derrick shook it and his head simultaneously. “Good game.”

  Derrick stared at the situation a few seconds longer before getting up from his seat in Windhaven’s library and sulking away.

  Bryce returned the pieces to their places on the board and looked around the library for an opponent. He could at least get a match going before the end of lunch. Who would it be? Nestor Flynn? No, he was locked in a duel with Grant Beckham. Ben Guest was close to finishing off Zack McCormack. No surprise there. Zack thought about as strategically as a trapdoor spider, whose battle plan never changed—kill whatever came close. Maybe that worked in the insect world. It sure as heck didn’t in chess.

  Darn, Bryce thought. He really wanted one more game. It felt good to be doing this again. Something normal. Even when Guy was around the chess club had petered along just fine. To Guy a queen was a fag (as in, Hool, you’re a stupid little queen. Now hand over the money.), and if someone had tried to tell him that the queen was the toughest piece in the game, well, he probably would have laughed, called them a queen, and dropped them with his favorite move—a right uppercut into the gut. It left no mark, but it drove the wind out of you and made you think you’d never breathe again, like maybe your lungs had been knocked into your throat. Bryce remembered the feeling from the one time Guy had given him what he liked to call an ‘uppergut’. Not a pleasant sensation to be dropped to your knees with your mouth gaping wide like a landed fish, the air your lungs wanted so desperately there, right there in front of your eyes, and staying there. Not going in because the old uppergut had put the respiratory system temporarily out of order.

  Yep, one time that had happened to him. Just one. Bryce never resisted again when Guy said ‘Hand it over’. He just handed it over. Breathing seemed the right choice over a carton of OJ every now and then.

  But now the uppergut was no more. Bryce’s biggest worry of the moment was not that breath robbing strike, or its practitioner, but rather finding another opponent, something that he was deciding was not going to happen today.

  He was about to sweep the chess pieces into their box when the chair opposite him slid out. His eyes came up, peeking over the black rims of his glasses.

  “Hello, Bryce,” Dooley said, picking up the black queen and flipping it over and over between the fingers of one hand.

  Him. It’s him. The Kiddie Catcher.

  “Hi,” Bryce replied after a brief hesitation. He wasn’t actually surprised, having wondered if they would all get a visit after Joey told them during first recess what had happened to him on the way to school. And so it was. Good, he told himself. Better to have it over with. Like anything hard that was put to you, volunteer or hope you were picked first. Doing math on the board, throwing the football for distance when it wasn’t your strong suit. Anything. Jump in. Feet first.

  “Your victim doesn’t look happy.”

  “Victim?” Bryce repeated.

  “Pardon,” Dooley said. “Opponent.”

  “He made a bad move,” Bryce explained. He took a bite of his mustard and bologna and concentrated on chewing.

  “That happens. You were a good sport.”

  “What? Shaking his hand?” Bryce shrugged. “It’s not cool to rub someone’s nose in it when they lose.”

  Dooley nodded, and thought how odd the word ‘cool’ sounded coming from this one. He was trying too hard. Trying to be hard. “I guess not. You expected to see me, didn’t you?”

  Bryce focused on the grainy landscape of his sandwich. “I wasn’t surprised. So?”

  “You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to.”

  Bryce glanced at the clock above the door, its second hand creeping. Sure, he could get up and leave. Get up and run, if that one part of his brain that had given in to the fear of the uppergut was running the show now. But it wasn’t, and what would leaving, or running, make the Kiddie Catcher think of him? He’d look guilty, probably. Guilty as heck. “I’ve got nothing to do until the bell. Everybody’s in a game.”

  “Thanks,” Dooley said, shaking his head a bit. Just enough. “I get tired of just sitting around and asking a lot of questions that people don’t want to answer. You know what I mean?”

  Another piece of the mustard and bologna disappeared.

  “It’s funny, you know, in my job you expect a person to be one way, and then you see that maybe they’re not.”

  Bryce puzzled overtly over the statement, his eyes peeking up again.

  “Like you,” Dooley proposed. “I didn’t figure you for a chess player.”

  “Why not?” Bryce asked just before a swallow.

  “Are you a pretty good player?”

  Bryce nodded.

  “Chess players are thinkers. Good ones have to see moves way before they ever make them.” Dooley put the black queen in the middle of the board, then skated it to the left. “If you move it here, what’s the effect?” And to the right. “Or here?” Finally, toward the line of white pawns. “And what will happen down the line after an attack?” He slammed the base of the queen down on the wooden board. “What are the consequences?”

  “I do all that,” Bryce said.

  Dooley doubted the youngster with a look.

  “What?” Bryce challenged.

  “Someone dies, Bryce, and there are consequences.”

  A sip of juice washed down the sandwich and gave Bryce the chance to avert his eyes. Criminy, he hated adults when they did that. You listen to them talk about one thing and when they were done you get the whammy and figure out they were talking about something totally different. Jeez!

  “Don’t you think someone who kills another person should be punished?”

  “Sure,” Bryce agreed matter-of-factly.

  “I guess if you were involved in something like that you would have seen that far ahead. Am I right?”

  Bryce wrapped the remainder of his sandwich up and pushed it inside his lunch sack. “I’ve got to get going.”

  “The bell’s not for another couple minutes,” Dooley said, gesturing to the clock. “I thought you had nothing to do?”

  Bryce ran his forearm across the board, pushing the pieces into their box.

  “You clean up, I’ll keep on talking,” Dooley said.

  “Fine.”

  “Tell me about Guy, Bryce.”

  He fit the lid over the box and set it atop the brown and tan board. “What about him?”

  “I was just wondering what you thought of him. Did he ever do anything to make you not like him?”

  “A lot of people didn’t like him.”

  “What about you?”

  A few seconds of thought preceded the reply. “Not very much. A lot of people didn’t.”

  “Why didn’t you?”

  “I just didn’t.”

  “You never had a fight with him?”

  “A fight?” Like actually fighting back? Ha! Bryce chuckled dryly. “Me? Guy would’ve pounded on me.” Would have given me more than an uppergut, that’s for sure.

  “Your friend Michael got into a fight with him.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “I read it in a report.”

  “Guy started that. Mike was just fighting him off.”

  “You saw it?”

  The second hand continued its painfully slow sweep. “I was there.”

  “Your friend got a shiner, I understand.”

  “So?”

  “Did Guy get hurt?”

  Bryce shook his head. “A measly cut lip.”

>   “He was pretty big, huh? Pretty tough?”

  “So?”

  Dooley played at mulling something seriously. “If Michael wanted to get back at Guy for that shiner, he would have needed something to even up the odds, wouldn’t he? Mike plays baseball, right?”

  “Mike didn’t do it,” Bryce blurted out. He swallowed hard, wishing he could suck the words back in, and said, “I mean he wouldn’t.”

  “Is he a good hitter?” Dooley pressed. “Gets power in his swing?”

  Bryce looked up to the clock and counted down the three final seconds to the bell. Its clanging rose to a sharp echo that rolled down the hall outside the library.

  “I’ve gotta go now.”

  Dooley stood as the bespectacled youngster did. “Thank you for talking with me, Bryce. It really helped.”

  Worry drained over Bryce’s face.

  “I won’t tell Michael what we talked about,” Dooley said, planting a seed that might, in time, sprout a wedge between friends.

  Bryce backed away, his eyes dipping as he turned toward the door, that quieted part of his brain that controlled the ‘run’ switch coming to life again. As soon as both feet were in the main hallway he started to sprint, forgetting rule number one, and cut a fast wake through the crush of students pouring into the building after lunch.

  Twelve

  By the time school let out, PJ was more angry than scared, and when she saw the detective waiting by the path worn through Galloway’s Orchard she stomped right up to him and scowled defiantly.

  Dooley felt the heat in her stare.

  “Why don’t you just leave us alone?” PJ asked angrily.

  “Have I done something wrong, PJ? To you?”

  “You’re bothering my friends,” she said, her school books clutched tight to her chest. Each hand flexed in and out of a fist. “I care about my friends.”

  “I only talked to them.”

  “That bothers them.”

  Dooley eyed her coat obviously, the frayed collar and cuffs, and then her shoes. The toe of one was separating from the sole. “You live through here, don’t you? On the other side of the orchard.”

  The mask she’d donned to intimidate the detective withered and her gaze fled toward the way between the trees. She moved past Dooley and into the orchard.