Crooked

by Laura McNeal

  It was, as always, cold—the kind of cold that clothes just couldn’t keep out. And right now, Amos thought, baseball players were running around in shirtsleeves under a bright sun in Florida and California and Arizona. Amos turned the corner onto Ellis and was passing the Goddards’ house before he knew it. He stopped. The snow-covered yard was vacant. Where the snow people had held their tennis rackets, there were now just chunky mounds of snow.

  “Sad sight, wouldn’t you say?”

  Amos looked up. It was Mr. Goddard standing behind the screen door in a yellow parka.

  “Did you take them down?” Amos asked.

  “What was left of them.”

  Amos stepped into the yard, hoping Mr. Goddard would come out onto the porch, but he didn’t. “I’m Amos MacKenzie. I live just over on Adams Street.”

  “You the boy that tried to run those hoodlums off?”

  This sudden recognition surprised Amos. “Not really. I just made a grunting sound, and then one of them conked me with a bat.” Amos took off his dark glasses to reveal his black eyes.

  “So you’re the boy,” Mr. Goddard said, and stepped out on the porch. Mr. Goddard was older than Amos’s father. His skin hung looser, his hair was a woolly white, and there was a milky brown look to his eyes.

  “I was just wondering what those guys had been doing to the snowmen when I came up on them,” Amos said. “I couldn’t see what they were doing exactly.”

  The question made Mr. Goddard’s eyes turn dead. “They’re gone,” he said. “The wife and I decided it that very night. Those were the last of our snow people.”

  Amos wasn’t certain what Mr. Goddard was saying. “Well, I hope not,” he said, but Mr. Goddard didn’t reply. Mr. Goddard just stood there looking a little lost on his own porch.

  Amos waited a second, then said he guessed he’d better go now.

  “I’m sorry Mrs. Goddard wasn’t here to see you,” Mr. Goddard said, and his voice and eyes drifted again. “She’s at the library. She’s just a volunteer now.”

  There was another awkward silence, which Amos broke by saying, “Miss Martin’ll kill me if I’m any later to my first-period class.”

  Mr. Goddard seemed not to hear.

  “Well, thanks,” Amos said, backing down the steps.

  “No,” Mr. Goddard said. “Thank you. And I’ll tell Mrs. Goddard you stopped in. She’ll scold me for not providing refreshments.”

  Out on the street again, Amos began noticing the mailboxes the Tripps had been beating that night. Most of the boxes had been reconnected in their dented state, a few had been replaced with new boxes, and one or two still stood loosely attached to their leaning posts.

  “Hey, Hero!”

  A Jeep full of high school jocks had pulled alongside Amos, and peering from the lowered passenger-side window was Big Dave Pearse, grinning hugely. “Heroes don’t walk, kiddo. Heroes ride first class.”

  Amos had the vague idea he was being made fun of, and kept walking. The Jeep pulled ahead, and Big Dave jumped out. He held the door open for Amos. “Step in, my man. We’ll get you to your institution of lower learning in style.” Then, sensing Amos’s uncertainty, he said, “I mean it. We’re giving you a lift.”

  Amos squeezed in between Big Dave and the driver, whom he didn’t know. He didn’t know the guys in the back, either, although they both wore letterman jackets and one of them was from the high school basketball team. Big Dave wrapped an arm around Amos and said, “Guys, this is my main man. A freshman phenom.” He stretched his grin wider. “And let me remind you gents that I knew him when he was just one of the little people. Before he was what he is today.”

  Amos felt at once incredibly embarrassed and incredibly happy.

  From the backseat, one of the varsity guys said, “You the kid Charles Tripp took a bat to?”

  Amos didn’t say anything. It had been Charles Tripp, but he wasn’t telling anyone that. Still, everybody somehow seemed to know.

  “Affirmative,” Big Dave said.

  In a lower voice, one of the guys in the backseat said, “Well, the kid’s got more balls than I do. Charles Tripp is one twisted individual.”

  Amos cleared his throat. “So what did those guys actually do to the snowmen?”

  The driver of the Jeep sniggered and said, “Go ahead, Pearse. Explain to your main man what the Tripps did.”

  “Amos, my man,” Big Dave said, “the Tripp boys were, shall we say, indelicate in their approach to the snowy tableau.”

  “Try it in English, Pearse,” the driver said.

  “Okay. Here’s what they did. They made Mr. Snowman anatomically correct with a tree branch, and they sullied Miss Snowman’s reputation.”

  Amos was trying to make sense of this when a voice from the back said, “In other words, they marked their territory with Tripp brother urine.”

  After a few seconds, Big Dave said without his usual bluster, “You can’t see it in them physically, but Charles and Eddie are cripples.”

  “Charles and Eddie are assholes,” the driver said.

  Someone in the backseat said, “Too bad they didn’t nail both of them, instead of just Charles. Charles is always covering for his slimy little sibling.”

  A minute or two later, an old Beatles song came on the radio, and one of the guys in the back said to turn it up. The driver did.

  “Louder.”

  When it was loud enough, a couple of them, Big Dave included, were singing along, and in the backseat the basketball player had pulled out a couple of drumsticks and begun tapping out rhythm on the window pane. A happy energy filled the Jeep, loud enough to get lost in.

  The Jeep moved smoothly through the slush and traffic. Amos had never been in a car that girls repeatedly stared into. Big Dave and the others seemed to take these looks as a matter of course, but Amos didn’t. He felt funny about it. He wasn’t one of these high school jocks. He was just a junior high bozo who happened to be along for the ride. Still, when clusters of his class-mates turned to stare as the Jeep pulled up in front of Herman Melville Junior High, Amos was aglow with foolish pride. As Amos walked away from the Jeep, Big Dave leaned out the window. “Amos, my man, keep the powder dry and suffer no fools!”

  Amos had no idea what this meant but nodded as if he did. Then, as he strode up the wide stairs to the main entrance of Melville, Amos felt the eyes of the parting students fixed on him in a way he didn’t understand. When he’d reached the top step, a familiar face stepped up from the rear of the crowd. It was Eddie Tripp. He stood and waited for Amos to draw close. He was wearing a composed, contemptuous smile. In a low voice—almost a whisper—he said, “Hello, Milkboy.”

  And then Amos was past him, sliding along in the current of the crowded hallway.

  The shape of school society was, in Amos’s mind, a kind of pyramid. If you were good-looking or cool or athletic or wild or rich or experienced in sexual matters, the mob pushed you toward the top of the pyramid. If you had bad teeth, bad acne, or weird clothes, if you had a potbelly like Crook or a voice that cracked when you had to read out loud in class, the mob stepped aside and watched while you slid down to the base of the pyramid, where hardly anybody would talk to you and where it was best to act like you wouldn’t want to be up toward the top even if you could.

  Amos knew this from experience. His first year at Melville, he had noticed people sneaking glances at him and snickering. When he sat down in homeroom, somebody said, “It’s Amos the famous!” which provoked mean laughter, and somebody else said, “Hey, Amos, where’s your truck?” Amos had felt sweat pop from what seemed like every pore of his body. It was after homeroom that he understood the source of the joking. Taped to his locker was an enlarged color Xerox of the card his father had left for his customers that Christmas. That year, his father had made Amos wear a stupid Santa’s cap and sit on the fender of the truck looking like a moron. On the copy, somebody had written: AMOS THE FAMOUS MILKBOY!!!

  What Amos wasn’t prepared for was t
he pleasure of being pushed up the pyramid. And this was exactly what now occurred. During his absence, rumors about Amos had spread through Melville. Amos MacKenzie had taken on the Tripp brothers. Amos MacKenzie had two black eyes and a cracked skull. Amos MacKenzie had brain damage. Amos MacKenzie might not live. And today, there was more news. Amos MacKenzie was escorted to school by bodyguards, high school football players, linebackers mostly, mean mothers.

  All this was unknown to Amos, so in the halls between first and second periods, it was a surprise to have people he hardly knew greeting him, to have acquaintances punching him in the arm like friends, to have friends catching up to him in the halls, squeezing between others to be the first to pass on the gossip to Amos.

  “Anne Barrineau’s parents got her transferred to Eliot,” said the first boy.

  “They got Crook with the pictures,” said the second.

  It wasn’t until the second-period late bell rang that Amos, seated in Mr. Farmer’s class, realized with a start that the desk two rows over, where his buddy Crook normally sat, was empty.

  Suspended. Crook had been suspended. Jay Foley himself told Amos about it during Nutrition. The rumors of the photographs had finally gotten back to Laurie Lee Caton, who broke the news to Anne Barrineau, who called her mother to take her home. “The next day, her parents went to the principal,” Jay Foley said, “and the principal set loose the dogs. Guys were grilled left and right.” Eventually people who weren’t willing to squeal on Foley (who had high pyramid status) were willing to squeal on Bruce (who didn’t). The boys’ dean himself had searched Bruce’s locker, then his person. In a zippered interior coat pocket, the boys’ dean had found a plastic bag containing just one picture of Anne Barrineau, with her clothes still on. Bruce was escorted to the office. He said he hadn’t snapped the photographs. He said he’d found them. He’d destroyed the ones of her naked, out of respect, he said. That was his story. The boys’ dean kept increasing the days of his suspension, but Bruce didn’t change his tune. He’d found the photographs near the gym in a bag. He didn’t know where they came from. He hadn’t shown them to anybody. He’d destroyed all but one of them and he wished he had destroyed that one, too, but he hadn’t, so he would take his punishment.

  Jay Foley, smiling, shook his head. “I underestimated Bruce. I surely did.”

  “One picture is all he had, though?” Amos said.

  Foley shrugged. “Yeah, I don’t get that, either. There were fourteen total. Believe me, I counted them.” Foley started to veer toward the west wing but turned back. “Hey, you tell Crookshank I’m a big fan.”

  “Hey, Amos!”

  Amos turned and nodded at someone he’d never before spoken to. A few seconds later, someone passing by grabbed his hand and pressed a note into it. He whirled around to see a retreating girl he didn’t know. He unfolded the note in Civics.

  Hi, I’m glad you’re alive and back in school. I always liked you, but now because you almost died I’m just going ahead and saying so.

  Deanna Adkins

  Deanna Adkins? Had he even had a class with Deanna Adkins? Amos was thinking how much he might’ve liked a note just like this one if it had been written by Clara Wilson, when Mr. Duckworth, his Civics teacher, appeared suddenly in the aisle beside Amos and plucked the note from his hands.

  The classroom fell quiet. Mr. Duckworth had a deep, resonant voice, and his custom was to read captured notes aloud.

  A look of amusement formed on Mr. Duckworth’s face as he read the note to himself. Then, after a moment of theatrical deliberation, he smiled down on the class. “Allow me to share,” he said, his rich voice caressing the room. He let his gaze settle on the note. “My dearest dearest Amos dear,” he proclaimed, as if reading from it. “I have always liked you, but now, to be quaintly inarticulate, I like you even more. Yours very hormonally et cetera et cetera et cetera.”

  This drew laughter from the class, and embarrassment from Amos, but not entirely. Part of him was pleased, too, that he’d received a note like this and that the rest of the class should know it.

  When Amos sat down at an empty lunch table, the chairs around him slowly filled with boys who wanted to see his black eyes (Amos would briefly lower his Carreras) and his stitched scalp (he would for a moment doff his Blue Jays cap). They also wanted to hear what happened, and Amos told them, more or less. “I was too stupid to be afraid,” he said, hoping this would sound modest. He never said the Tripp name, but the other boys did, which made Amos nervous. “Taking on the Tripp brothers solo,” one of the louder boys said. “That’s more than slightly awesome.”

  When Amos looked at this boy, he happened to glance beyond him. Off at the edges of the lunch area, leaning against a post, Eddie Tripp stood staring at him.

  At the beginning of fifth period, Amos asked for permission to go to the bathroom. He didn’t like using the west-wing bathroom, but sometimes it was unavoidable, and this was one of those times. To his relief, the bathroom was smoky but unoccupied. Amos was at the urinal when the door swung open and someone walked over to the sink and began running water. When Amos turned around while buttoning up, he saw that it was Eddie Tripp. He was wetting his hair and reworking a curl over his forehead until it was just so. Amos, feeling real fear, headed for the door, but Eddie wheeled neatly and blocked his path.

  “Ain’t you gonna wash up?” he said, and made his sneering grin.

  Eddie was actually smaller than Amos, but Eddie’s menace made it seem the other way around. Amos went over, turned on the water, and wet his hands. He pumped the soap dispenser, which he knew was foolish—there was never soap in the soap dispenser, just as there were never paper towels in the towel dispenser. Amos washed without soap and was wiping his hands on his pants when Eddie Tripp smiled scornfully and said, “So everybody’s calling the Milkboy a hero.”

  After a moment, Amos said, “I wouldn’t know about that.”

  Eddie was shaking his head slowly, as if thinking of something sorrowful. “Everybody’s so happy to have Charles and Eddie Tripp get caught at something, they’ll turn something as pathetic as you into a hero over it.” He smiled unhappily at Amos. “That’s how much people despise the Tripp brothers.”

  Amos was still wearing his Carrera glasses, but Eddie asked him now to remove them. “It’s not polite,” Eddie said, “talking indoors with dark glasses on.”

  Amos removed the glasses and held them in his hand.

  “Yikes!” Eddie Tripp said in mock surprise when he saw Amos’s eyes. “Couple of real serious shiners you got there.”

  Amos nodded.

  “How’d you get ’em?” Eddie said.

  In a low, sullen voice, Amos said, “How do you think I got them?”

  “Well, I’m asking in order to find out what you’ll answer.” Eddie grinned and fixed his eyes evenly on Amos. Without looking away from Amos, he reached into a pocket of his fatigue jacket and withdrew a metal object that Amos recognized as the kind of utility knife painters use to scrape windows. When Eddie depressed a latch with his thumb and pushed it forward, a razor blade slid out from its metal sheath.

  “I didn’t tell anybody anything,” Amos said.

  Eddie finally broke his gaze from Amos. He looked down at the razor blade. Inscribed in the metal were the words Use Extreme Caution . “Well, somebody told somebody something,” Eddie said with a restraint that made his face seem brittle, as if it might break at any moment and turn into something monstrous.

  A student—nobody Amos knew—opened the door to the bathroom, took one look at Eddie Tripp’s expression, and turned right around and went out.

  Amos said, “Look, Eddie, I’m telling the truth. I didn’t tell anyone anything.”

  Eddie smiled. He pushed up his jacket sleeve and began slowly combing the edge of the razor blade back and forth along the length of his bare arm, pushing the nap of his black arm hair first one direction, then the other, shhhh shhhh shhhh. “The po-lice were smug when they got hold of us,” Eddie
said. “Smugger even than normal. They said they had a positive eyewitness ID on Charles and a close approximation on me. That’s what the po-lice called it, a close approximation. They had my mom all weeping. So Charles tells them I wasn’t there and if everybody’ll accept that, he’d have something to say. They went for it, of course, and now he’s in juvie spending his time thinking about Amos MacKenzie.”

  “But I didn’t—”

  Eddie cut him off. “Oh, I know. You didn’t say a word, you didn’t name a name.” Eddie’s scornful smile widened to a scornful grin. “So what you’re trying to tell me is that the po-lice had no positive eyewitness ID, had nada, nothing, and we folded to their bluff.” His eyes flew up so quickly it startled Amos.

  “I didn’t say—”

  “You know what?” Eddie said, staring hard at Amos. “What I’m learning here is how little I like the sound of your voice. You know how that is? How sometimes somebody’s voice just begins to get on your nerves, and pretty soon you think you’re just going to have to do something about it?”

  Amos understood this was not a question he was meant to answer.

  Then Eddie did a strange thing. He turned the edge of the razor blade and drew it quickly and cleanly across his forearm. It made a thin line on his skin, a line that widened as blood rose. He watched it for a second and then looked up smiling at Amos.

  “I’ll take those fancy sunglasses now,” he said.

  First Amos tightened his grip on the sunglasses, then loosened it again. The sunglasses dropped to the floor.

  Something tightened in Eddie’s face. “Now you need to pick them up.”

  Amos did.

  “And wash them off.”

  Amos was holding them under the faucet when the bathroom door swung open again. It was two teachers, who immediately broke off their conversation. “What’s going on here?” one of them asked.