Freaky Fast Frankie Joe

by Lutricia Clifton

  Freaky Fast Frankie Joe

  LUTRICIA CLIFTON

  This book is a work of fiction. Names characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Lutricia Clifton

  All Rights Reserved

  HOLIDAY HOUSE is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2904-2 (ebook)w

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2905-9 (ebook)r

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Clifton, Lutricia.

  Freaky Fast Frankie Joe / by Lutricia Clifton. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Twelve-year-old Frankie Joe Huckaby, forced to live with the father he never knew, a stepmother, and four stepbrothers in Illinois, starts a delivery service to finance his escape back to his mother in Texas, not realizing he is making a better life for himself than he ever had with her.

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2367-5 (hardcover)

  [1. Stepfamilies—Fiction. 2. Family life—Illinois-Fiction. 3. Delivery of goods—Fiction. 4. Mothers and sons—Fiction. 5. Community life—Illinois—Fiction. 6. Illinois—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.C622412Fr 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011019976

  ISBN 978-0-8234-2867-0 (paperback)

  for Jeffrey and Christopher

  Acknowledgements

  Special thanks to my agent, William Reiss, for his encouragement and support. Special thanks also to my editor, Julie Amper, at Holiday House for her guidance and patience.

  Saturday, September 19

  The Lone Star Trailer Park, Laredo, Texas

  10:00 A.M.

  I don’t like the way some of our neighbors look at me when I walk past. Mom calls them meddling busybodies because they sit on their front porches and whisper all the time—just like they’re doing now. “Oooh, there’s that boy,” they’re probably saying. “You know, the one whose mother was in the newspaper.”

  I sit down at the picnic table outside Mrs. Jones’s trailer. Mr. O’Hare and Mr. Lopez are already there. They know about Mom, too, but they’re my friends so they don’t say anything. They want my last day to be fun.

  “Look what I made, Frankie Joe.” Mrs. Jones brings out a cake. Chocolate with rainbow frosting that spells out HURRY BACK HOME.

  I think Mr. Lopez must have had a hand in decorating it. He’s a house painter—only he calls himself a “house artist.” He’s a nut for wild colors. If he can’t find a color he likes, he mixes his own. Sometimes he lets me help do the mixing. He says I have a good eye for color. He lets me help name them, too.

  “And something to wash it down.” Mr. O’Hare hands me a glass of punch. He smiles at me, and his face folds up in wrinkles. His skin is brown as leather because he spends every day in the Chihuahua Desert. When he was a mechanic in the air force, Mr. O’Hare traveled all over the world. That’s why he doesn’t have a family of his own—because he was always moving around. He told me once that I was the grandson he never had. I’ve learned all about the places he’s been to.

  I take a big gulp of punch. Guava and strawberry, I think.

  “Have another piece,” Mrs. Jones insists. “You have a long trip ahead of you.” Strings of white hair stick to her forehead. Though it’s September, it’s ninety degrees in the shade. While I eat, they talk.

  “We’ll watch out for your trailer,” Mr. Lopez says. He’s not wearing his painter’s cap, so his forehead is half-white and half-brown.

  Mr. O’Hare nods. “Like a hawk.”

  “Maybe I’ll paint the front steps while you’re gone,” Mr. Lopez says. “They’re in bad shape—could get a splinter if you’re not careful.”

  Mom worked split shifts at the café. Mornings some days, evenings others. She didn’t make a lot of money, so there wasn’t a lot left over to fix up our place. She didn’t worry about it because she said we weren’t going to be here much longer. “This dump is just a stepping stone to something better,” she said.

  “I’ll take care of the splinters,” Mr. O’Hare says, looking at Mr. Lopez. “I have just the tool for that. You take care of the painting.”

  “That’d be great,” I say, glad to have such good friends.

  “I know how you feel about writing, but let us hear from you now and then.” Mrs. Jones puts another piece of cake on my plate. “Maybe a Christmas card?”

  I nod. Between chocolate cake and rainbow frosting and punch, I’m on a sugar high. I eat like it’s my last meal.

  Mr. Lopez looks at his watch. “Better open your presents now, Frankie Joe. Your dad’s gonna be here soon.”

  “Presents … but …” I never expected a party and presents.

  “Well, not real presents,” Mrs. Jones says. “They’re more like mementos.”

  A retired librarian, Mrs. Jones is a real stickler for words. I started staying with her after school when I was younger, and she read to me a lot—adventure books were my favorite. She won’t allow a TV in her trailer because she thinks it’s a bad influence. Her bookshelves are running over because the new librarian gives her “retired” books. Her son and his family live in England, so she doesn’t get to see them much. She would invite me over to stay on nights when Mom worked late or went out with her friends.

  She hands me a rectangle-shaped package wrapped in red tissue paper. The paper’s probably recycled from Christmas, but it fits right in with the rainbow cake and guava-strawberry punch. I know it’s a book before I open it.

  “Kidnapped!” My favorite book! It’s about this guy who leaves home and gets kidnapped by thugs and has to escape. A lot of the words were hard for me, but Mrs. Jones helped me when I got stuck.

  “It’s great,” I tell her.

  “Just a reminder of all our good times,” she says. Her eyes begin to look wet, but I don’t say anything. I don’t want to make her sadder.

  “Open mine next.” Mr. O’Hare hands me a brown paper bag. Another book, I can tell from the shape. But it’s floppy, not stiff like the other one, so I know it’s not a retired library book.

  “Woo-hoo.” It’s one of Mr. O’Hare’s field guides to rock collecting. “This is great, too!”

  “When you get back, we’ll find it,” he tells me. “We won’t stop looking till we do.”

  “It” is a space rock, a meteor that broke up when it fell out of the sky over the Chihuahua Desert. Mr. O’Hare looks for pieces of it every day, and I go with him when I can.

  “Maybe you’ll find some new kinds of rocks up there in Illinois,” he says. “You bring them back, we’ll add them to our collection.” Rocks are lined up clear around his trailer—sandstone, granite, limestone—all kinds of rocks.

  “Yeah, I’ll look for some new ones.”

  Mr. Lopez looks at his watch again and hands me a stiff piece of paper. “I didn’t wrap mine ’cause it’s colorful enough.”

  I grin because he’s right. It’s a strip of paint samples showing some of his “creations.”

  “Maybe you’ll see some new colors on your trip,” he says. “You tell me about them when you get back—to inspire me.”

  “Thanks, Mr. Lopez. I’ll keep an eye out.”

  He taps his watch, and I know it’s time to leave.

  “Well, I guess I gotta go.” I thank them again for the party, my throat so tight I can hardly speak. “See you … soon.”

  “I know it seems like a long time, Frankie Joe,” Mr. O’Hare says. “But the time will fly by.”

  Mr. Lopez nods. “Yeah. July will be here before you know it.”

  “Look upon
it as an adventure.” Mrs. Jones’s eyes are running over now. “Just pretend you’re looking for treasure.” Her eyes go round. “Oh dear, maybe I should have given you Treasure Island.”

  Everyone laughs.

  “Yeah, adventure,” I say, laughing like I’m excited, too.

  But as I take my mementos back to our trailer to pack in my suitcase, I don’t feel excited. I feel sad and a little scared. I don’t want to leave my friends and go live with my dad. What if he doesn’t like me? What if I don’t like him?

  11:15 A.M.

  “Hello there, Frankie Joe,” the man says, getting out of a Chevy van with Illinois license plates. “I’m your dad.” He’s tall and has red hair, the same color as mine, and freckles on his nose like I do.

  “I figured,” I say. I’d never known I looked like my dad. I couldn’t remember anything about him.

  Well, not much. There were birthday and Christmas cards when I was little. Mom would read them to me and show me the money that was tucked inside, then we’d go out on the town. New jeans and shirts for me. A cheeseburger at McDonald’s for both of us. And sometimes, a Blizzard at the Dairy Queen.

  He looks at the country back of our trailer, which borders on the Chihuahua Desert. “Well, your mother always wanted to go to faraway places.” He shakes his head slightly. “Looks like she succeeded.”

  I don’t say anything.

  He looks at me. “I can’t believe those people at the courthouse left you on your own.”

  “I stay by myself all the time. It’s no big deal.”

  His face wrinkles up in a frown. “Well, it’s a big deal to me. There are rules about leaving a child on his own like that.”

  Rules. My head starts to throb like I’m coming down with the flu.

  When I don’t respond, he shakes his head. “Did you say good-bye to your friends?” He looks around the trailer park. “I didn’t see many kids when I drove in. Looked like mostly retired people.”

  I look around, too. “Yeah, I guess … but I’ve got friends. They ride a different bus home so I see them at school mostly.”

  He sighs. “Okay then, let’s get your stuff.” He looks surprised when I load my suitcase and bike into the back of his van. “This all you’ve got?”

  “Yes sir.”

  “What about the money I sent for your birthday? You know, for a new bicycle. That thing’s sure not new.”

  “You sent money for my birthday … this year?” He doesn’t answer. Instead, his mouth goes straight as a plank, and he jerks his thumb in the direction of the passenger-side door.

  “I need to be back on the job by Monday,” he says as he climbs into the van, “so we’ll just be making pit-stops. You know, to fill up with gas and hit a McDonald’s for takeout.”

  “I like McDonald’s.”

  “Plan on using the toilet there, too. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover.” He starts the engine. “I’ll probably pull over at a Walmart™ down the road, catch some shut-eye.”

  “Um, maybe we can get a Blizzard at the DQ, too. You know, for dessert?”

  Like Mom and I did when I used to get birthday cards from him.

  “A Blizzard? Yeah, guess we can do that.” He turns the air conditioner to high. “A lot hotter down here than I thought it would be. Something cold would be good.”

  Great. Maybe this will be an adventure after all.

  “You had lunch?” he asks.

  “Yes sir.”

  Cake and punch—a lot of cake and punch.

  “Good, that’ll save us some time. Buckle up.”

  We leave the Lone Star Trailer Park and wind our way through Laredo’s streets, littered with trash and lined with low adobe buildings the color of dirt. The van’s wheels churn up clouds of dust that have blown in from Mexico, which is only a stone’s throw to the south.

  Before long we’ve left Laredo in its brown-paper-bag colored dust. It becomes clear pretty quick that my dad isn’t much of a talker. I’m not, either, so it’s okay with me. I’d rather look out the window. Maybe I’ll see some of the places that Mr. O’Hare has talked about.

  2:45 P.M.

  A few miles down the road, I see a sign that says AUSTIN—it’s the capital of Texas. I’m excited because I want to tell Mr. O’Hare that I saw the capitol building … but we keep driving, bypassing the city.

  Sagebrush green … cactus green. As the country goes by, I remember my promise to Mr. Lopez to look for new colors. I decide he would know these already. Besides, he likes bright colors, and these are anything but.

  The van begins to feel quiet—too quiet. “Wanna listen to the radio?”

  “Tried that coming down. Poor reception.” He glances at my suitcase in the back of the van. “Didn’t you bring any books to read … maybe some puzzles?”

  I shake my head no. I have the book Mrs. Jones gave me, but it’s a memento. So is Mr. O’Hare’s. Besides, I don’t like to read and I never do puzzles.

  “You can be navigator then.” He nods at a stack of road maps on the console.

  “You used all these maps?”

  “I get them free from Triple A.”

  The map for Texas is lying open. He’s marked the route with a yellow highlighter, so there isn’t any real navigating to do. I look at the other maps. Oklahoma. Missouri. Illinois. More yellow highlighter. I go back to looking at the country rolling by.

  6:30 P.M.

  We pick up cheeseburgers and drinks at a McDonald’s near the Dallas/Fort Worth junction—a chocolate shake for me and a large iced tea for my dad. I can see tall buildings sticking up to the east, but we keep driving north.

  “Crops look pretty good here,” he says, between chewing.

  “Huh?”

  “The alfalfa and sugar beets, winter wheat.” He points to crops in the fields we’re passing. “They look pretty good.”

  “I guess,” I say, looking out the window.

  Alfalfa green … sugar-beet green … winter-wheat green. I wonder if Mr. Lopez would like any of these colors.

  Nah, too dull.

  We stay on I-35 all the way through Texas. I’m bored—nothing but green. I’m not much of a talker, but I almost ache to have a conversation with someone—anyone.

  “So what am I gonna do while you’re at work?” I’m thinking about the rock-hound book that Mr. O’Hare gave me, wondering if meteors fell out of the sky over Illinois.

  “You’ll go to school, of course. I called your school counselor yesterday morning, asked her to send your records on. I expect they’ll be waiting when we get there.”

  “I gotta go to school in Illinois.” It’s more a statement than a question.

  “Well, sure.” He gives me a look. “Why wouldn’t you?”

  Well …” I suck the spit from the gap between my front teeth. “I was hoping I could just skip this year since I won’t be staying permanently. You know, pick up when I get back home.”

  I hate school, and Mom doesn’t seem to set much store by it, either.

  “Doesn’t matter how long you’ll be staying,” he says, eyeing me again. “Those are the rules.”

  “Um,” I mumble, my mind racing. “I thought Mom was the only one who could get my records.”

  “Took care of the legalities yesterday morning, too. Signed papers making me your temporary legal guardian.”

  I’m out of arguments.

  “School started a couple of weeks ago. Shouldn’t take you long to catch up, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  I go back to looking at country that’s fenced off in green rectangles and squares. I’d rather explore the brush country back of the trailer park, which goes on for miles and miles. It’s space too big to be fenced in.

  10:00 P.M.

  “Iced tea—heavy on the ice,” he says into the speaker.

  “And a chocolate milk shake and an order of fries.”

  We’ve stopped at a lot of McDonald’s since we left Laredo, and he always orders the same thing because he’s “parche
d.” Iced tea, heavy on the ice.

  “I’ll be pulling off at a Walmart outside Oklahoma City,” he says while we wait for our order. “It’s a safe place to catch a few hours’ sleep.” He nods toward the McDonald’s. “Better hit the restroom; last stop tonight.”

  “Yes sir.” When I get back to the van, I hear him talking on his cell phone. He’s telling someone when to expect him home.

  Home? I become curious.

  “Who’s that you called?”

  “My family … my wife and sons—my other sons. Haven’t been able to reach them until now.”

  “You have other sons?”

  “Four. Didn’t your mom tell you?”

  Four! I’m speechless.

  “Buckle up,” he says.

  10:30 P.M.

  Ten miles farther on, we pull off at a Walmart and park beneath one of their big halogen lights. There’s nothing but a pool of black beyond the light, so I can’t even see the skyline of Oklahoma City.

  “You take the backseat,” he says. “I’ll take the front.”

  I stretch out on the backseat, but I can’t stop the questions from squirming around in my head. Finally they worm their way out.

  “What am I supposed to call her? Your new wife, I mean.”

  He takes his time answering. “Her name is Lizzie. But she probably won’t mind if you call her Mom. That’s what the boys call her.”

  “I’ll call her Lizzie.” Mom is what I call my mother. “What are the boys’ names—my stepbrothers?”

  “Well, actually they are your half brothers. Matthew’s the oldest—next to you, that is. We call him Matt for short. Then there’s Mark, Luke, and John—mostly he’s called Little Johnny.”

  “You mean, like in the Bible?”

  “It’s a tradition in Lizzie’s family. They’re into names that withstand the test of time, not goofy names. No one’s gonna forget what the Huckaby boys’ names are, that’s for sure.”

  Goofy names. I wonder if he thinks Frankie Joe is goofy. Why he didn’t give me a name that would withstand the test of time? All at once, I realize I don’t even know his name.

  “So, what’s your name? I mean, all Mom ever called you was FJ—when she spoke of you at all, that is.”

  “It’s Franklin. Franklin Joseph Huckaby, same as yours.” He’s quiet for a couple of minutes. “It was your mom’s idea to name you that, and …” He pauses. “Even as a baby, you had my hair, my eyes, so …” He glances away, then back at me. “So you’ve got my name. If you want, you can call me Dad.”