by Tim Green
“What?” Brock asked.
Nagel wormed his way back out from under the bench, tugging with him a six-pack of beer cans. “Ha ha. I know what we can do with this.”
Brock took the six-pack from him, wiped the smooth surface of the cans clean, and set it neatly in the back of the bottom shelf. “Yeah, we can put it back.”
Nagel’s mouth fell open. “Your dad won’t even know.”
Brock shook his head and picked up a rusty pair of pliers, trying them out before placing them into an open drawer with some other old tools. “With my dad, you have to assume he knows everything.”
Nagel chuckled. “What? He’s like some secret police?”
Brock shrugged and stopped talking. He kept on walking and after a few minutes of sulking, Nagel joined in again.
Brock didn’t know if he’d actually eat off the floor, but as he surveyed their work, he knew his father would be satisfied. He slapped his hands together a few times and leaned the broom up against the now uncluttered workbench. He turned around and his eyes nearly popped out of his head when Nagel flicked a match against its book. Then he saw a cigarette in Nagel’s mouth.
Without thinking, Brock took three quick steps and slapped the match out of Nagel’s hands. Nagel yelped when the flame nicked his hand.
“Are you crazy?” Nagel glared at him and drew back a fist.
“Are you?” Brock clenched his own hands tight.
Nagel’s shoulders sagged into a sulk and he pocketed the cigarette. “I just helped you, man.”
“My dad is like a bloodhound.” Brock relaxed too. “You can’t smoke in here. Besides, that’s a gas can right behind you.”
Nagel glanced at the red plastic container with disgust. “That’s bull. My dad smokes when he fills up the car.”
Brock wanted to ask about Nagel’s dad, but he never would because that would open the door for Nagel to ask about his dad and Brock knew better.
Nagel narrowed his eyes. “What are you? Like, some goody-two-shoes?”
“No.” Brock scowled.
“Good, let’s go bust a couple windows.” Nagel turned and let himself out the side door of the garage.
“Come on, Nagel.” Brock’s legs seemed to move on their own, and he followed him down the driveway to the edge of the street where he stopped like a dog at an electric fence. “Look, I appreciate your help, but you already got me in enough trouble.”
“Trouble?” Nagel said. “Who cares? Is this so bad? Where would you be now? Social studies with Miss Gimball? Boring.”
Leaves hung limp from their branches and the neighborhood lay sleeping beneath the swishing sound of traffic on Route 57. Nagel twisted his neck this way and that.
“No one’s around. It’s the perfect time, because we’re the only ones suspended from school. He’ll kind of know it was us.”
“Are you nuts? You want him to know?”
“Kind of the point. My shirt, you know? No one can prove it.”
“Besides, I can’t leave the yard.”
“Put the beer away. No smoking. I can’t leave the yard.” Nagel whined like a sniveling four-year-old. “Maybe you are a wimp.”
Brock let his face go blank, just like his father, just the way he’d been taught, but instead of the words flowing around him like a stone in a stream, the words stuck. His skin crawled. He’d never felt like this before, the need to explain. Of course, he couldn’t explain, partly because it wasn’t allowed and partly because he really didn’t know.
He didn’t know why they had to run and hide. He didn’t know where his father went when he disappeared, sometimes for nearly two weeks at a time, sometimes checking in on the phone in a hushed whisper that ended with a sudden emptiness.
“I’m not a wimp.” Brock believed that.
Nagel studied him for a minute, then nodded. “Yeah, I guess not. You’re just a guppy. That’s no way to live, either.”
“Guppy?”
“You ever see them? All clumped together. Afraid. Then the mom or dad comes along and . . . gulp. Your old man tells you to jump, you pee down your leg and ask how high. He’s a person. There’s nothing magic about them. They’re people. They were kids, just like us. Get over it, man. Start to live.” Nagel headed off down the street. “Come on.”
Brock hesitated, then took a step.
He stood in the street and looked back at their driveway and the thick green grass in the yard, breaking the rules.
Nothing happened.
He took another step, and another. Nagel was halfway down the block.
Brock started to jog. “Hey! Wait up!”
11
Nagel cruised up the street, took a right, and marched through one of the neighbors’ side lawns, into the back where he scaled the wooden fence with the help of an overturned tall white bucket tied to a thick string. The top of this fence was a flat frame of wood, so it was easy to grab, pull yourself up, and slip over. Brock followed, dropping down on the other side between two of the poplar trees that ran all along the series of fences. Brock assumed they’d been planted by the home developer to block out the sight of the ugly bare brick apartments, which might just as easily have been a series of prison blocks.
Nagel yanked at the string until the bucket came flying over with a thud. A faded and torn label with half the word CHLORINE and a skull with crossbones decorated its side. Nagel upended the tall bucket against the fence for their return trip.
What they needed to find were rocks about the size of golf balls, preferably rounded. Rocks like that lay scattered all over the place in cartoons, but in real life, they had to scour the apartment complex. At one point, Nagel pointed to one of a dozen doors, stained and cracked with age, and identified it as home.
“Come on in.” Nagel skipped up the crumbling concrete stoop and barged in. Brock could hear the TV playing from within. He followed at a safe distance, and was glad he did when the end of a long hallway led to three older teenagers sandwiched between a lumpy green couch and a cloud of smoke that smelled like burning leaves.
A scraggly-looking young man with a weak beard and mustache and spiky gelled hair exhaled smoke and turned his weary eyes on Nagel. “What’s up, punk?”
Nagel seemed unaffected. “Where’s Mom?”
“Groceries.”
Brock took a step back toward the open door. A small brown-and-black dog whipped around the corner, barking at his ankles.
Nagel looked at Brock. “You want something to eat?”
“I’m good.”
Nagel dipped into a small kitchen and emerged with a pack of Twinkies that he tore open with his teeth. The dog continued to yap until Nagel gave it a swift push that sent it yipping up the stairs. Brock retreated to the front steps.
“He won’t bite.” Nagel offered Brock the other Twinkie, but Brock held up his hand and shook his head.
“Close the door!” The older brother’s howl made Brock jump.
Nagel closed the door and they retreated around the building to where a green Dumpster oozed a stinky yellow goo.
“Don’t listen to my brother,” Nagel said. “He’s a jerk. Mom’s making him join the army in July. That’ll fix him . . . that’s what my dad says. Come on, I know where we can get some good rocks.”
Nagel led him toward the four-lane highway on the far border of the apartments. They zigzagged down a steep weedy embankment, hopped a ditch, and found a slew of reasonably sized hunks of limestone at the mouth of a huge concrete culvert running beneath the road.
“Told you.” Nagel hefted a stone then stuffed three into his pockets.
Brock took two and followed Nagel back up, through the apartments until they hit the fence line. They went left, walking along the gutter until they got to the corner of the fence line. It continued away from them, separating the houses from several acres of fields and scrubby growth before giving way to some woods and the back of a shopping center with its Dumpsters, car-sized air conditioners, broken delivery pallets, and shattered
glass.
Nagel pointed to the rooftop of the house beyond the fence and through the backyard trees. “That’s it.”
Nagel seemed to be measuring him. Brock stood straight and nodded.
Suddenly, Nagel’s face went white. His eyes shifted past Brock and widened for an instant before he spun and took off into the scrub. “Run!”
Brock couldn’t help spinning around to see what danger was about to gobble him up.
When he saw the police car, he took off too.
12
A web of dirt paths crisscrossed the overgrown fields and Brock was able to follow Nagel, briefly losing sight of him after each bend. When Nagel finally lost him all together, Brock stood huffing in the dust. Insects twanged, launching themselves above the chest-high weeds and glinting in the sunshine; otherwise, only the hum of traffic disturbed Brock’s heavy breath.
“Nagel?” he whispered as loud as he dared, checking the path behind him.
“Sssst!”
The noise came from a clump of wild sumac, thick with leaves and skirted by prickers wild and thick as barbed wire. Suddenly, Nagel’s face appeared and Brock spotted the dark mouth of a cave in the vegetation. Nagel didn’t have to motion to him twice. Brock dove off the path and into the shadows.
Nagel grabbed his arm, holding it tight and mashing a finger to his lips.
They heard a cough out on the path, and through the leafy cover, Brock could make out a uniformed cop, hat, badge, gun, and all. His insides turned to jelly and he thought he might puke. Nagel wore a wicked grin and he actually shook with delight, biting into his finger to keep from laughing out loud.
The cop moved on and Nagel let his laughter leak out.
“Shhh!” Brock jostled him and kept his words to a hiss. “Are you crazy?”
“Come on.” Nagel spoke softly, then turned and slithered deeper into the undergrowth until they came to a small opening in some trees where the remains of a campfire lay in the midst of crushed and scattered beer cans and endless cigarette butts. Nagel didn’t stop. Another path led them out and before long they were back at the fence line.
Keeping low, they wormed their way forward until they came to a seam in the fences where someone had nailed a pair of boards, one atop the other, spaced several feet off the ground. Nagel stood up and scanned the immediate area before gripping the boards and using them as a crude ladder to scale the wooden fence and drop down over the other side. Brock followed and rolled when he hit the grass among a clump of tall trees in some unknown neighbor’s backyard.
The two of them ran past the house, through the bushes, and out onto the street. They didn’t stop until they reached Brock’s garage, where they dropped down on the concrete floor with their backs against the wallboard, howling with laughter. Brock knew his was from nerves, but Nagel’s was from pure delight.
“You should have seen your face!” Nagel’s howl echoed through the empty garage.
“You should have seen yours.” Brock shoved his friend’s shoulder. “I thought you saw a, like . . . a wild tiger or a zombie or something.”
“A cop’s worse than either of those.”
“But, we really didn’t do anything wrong,” Brock said.
“You think cops care?” Nagel raised his eyebrows. “We’re not in school, pockets full of rocks. Are you kidding? I always run from cops. All they do is hassle you, and you don’t have to be doing anything wrong.”
“Well, my dad would kill me.”
“See? You gotta run. Anyway, you’re fast. I wasn’t sure you could keep up.”
Brock stood up and looked at his clothes. “Oh, man. I gotta wash these.”
“What, is your dad in the army or something? Eating off the floor and no dirty clothes?”
“He’s a salesman.” The words shot out of Brock’s mouth like a bullet.
“Yeah, what’s he sell?”
“Drugs.”
“Sweet.”
“Not your brother’s kind of drugs, you know, medicine. Pharmaceuticals.”
“Fancy. You know some of those painkillers go for like fifty bucks a pill if you can get them.”
Brock just stared at him, not knowing what to say.
“What?” Nagel said. “I’m just saying. My brother and his friends will pay.”
Brock shook his head. “Well, I gotta get going with the wash, and I got some other things inside the house too.” He stood up and started for the door.
“You want me to come in, or something?” Nagel stuffed his hands in his pockets and shrugged.
“I better not. My dad . . . he’s . . . I don’t know. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah.” Nagel forced a chuckle. “My dad drives a truck. When he’s around, we scatter too. He’s got this big ring. You don’t want to get hit with that thing, I can tell you.”
“Okay.”
“But we gotta use these rocks,” Nagel said, jamming his hands in his pockets. “You still with me on that, right?”
“Not now,” Brock said. “Not with that cop around. That’d be stupid.”
“Not now. Tonight, though. After dinner. When it’s dark, right?” Nagel snickered. “Old Huggy’ll be sitting there getting stewed when these rocks come shooting through his windows. You with me?”
“I don’t know. That’s kinda crazy.”
“I’ll stop back. You can just go with me, right? You don’t have to do anything.”
“My dad won’t let me go out. No way.”
“I’ll stop back. We’ll see. Here, give me your cell number and you put mine in your phone too so we can text.”
“Yeah, but don’t be texting me a lot. My dad sees my incoming messages and I’m not supposed to use it for socializing.”
“Don’t worry, I’m no Chatty Cathy,” Nagel said.
They exchanged numbers, then Nagel got up and headed for the side door.
“Nagel,” Brock said.
Nagel opened the door and turned his head. “Yeah?”
“You know you’re crazy, right?”
Nagel laughed. “See you later, buddy boy.”
13
Brock didn’t know why he let Nagel even hope that there was a chance he’d go with him, because he wouldn’t. His father would take one look at his new friend and ground Brock for a month. Trouble, that’s what his father would say about Nagel. Brock didn’t care, though. He liked Nagel. He liked his free and easy way. He liked that he ran from the police and knew exactly how to outsmart them with his twisting dirt paths and secret hideouts. It was fun.
That’s why he hadn’t said absolutely no. That would have been something a wimp would do. He’d just let things unfold, and, as it turned out, he was glad he did.
He wasn’t glad that his father didn’t come home. That always annoyed him, especially when he didn’t get a text from him until seven thirty, long after Brock had opened a can of SpaghettiOs for dinner. His phone buzzed and Brock looked up from his book, a John Feinstein mystery called Change-Up.
biz trip. back in 4. no more nonsense! b good!
Brock thumped his book closed and sighed. “Really? You’re grounded, good-bye?”
The “4” in the text didn’t mean four hours, it meant four days. Brock jumped up from the couch and threw his book. Pages fluttered as it sailed, and the book banged the wall, then the floor.
“REALLY!” Brock’s scream echoed through the empty house. He spun around gripping his hair with both hands as he yelled. “I’m sick of it! Do you hear me! Do you!!!”
Outside, a dog barked. All was quiet.
Brock stamped across the living room and flung open the door leading into the garage. “GOOD-BYE TO YOU TOO . . . DAD!”
He slammed the door and took off, banging the side door to the garage shut as well. He marched down the street. Shadows had grown thick and purple. The sky still burned over the rooftops with the dull red glow of a dying fire where the sun had set.
“Hey!”
Brock stopped and stared at the shape of a figure
heading his way from between the houses, short but sure, straight up with shoulders thrown back and an upturned chin. It didn’t surprise him that Nagel’s face materialized out of the gloom.
“Awesome. I told you you’d get away. That’s what I do, even if I gotta leave through my window. My old lady can’t keep focused enough to pin me down, and in the morning she just wants to get me on the bus. That’s if she even knows I was gone. Haha.”
Brock didn’t say anything. That habit wouldn’t die. He wasn’t allowed to tell people when his father went away on his mysterious trips, so he just accepted the rock Nagel held out for him and followed him into the shadows toward the tall white bucket waiting against the neighbor’s fence while darkness hugged the earth.
14
With a corner lot, Coach Hudgens’s house had a huge pie-shaped lawn. The house sat in the front triangle of the wedge, near the street. In the back, his fence was longer than anyone else’s, and it made up the corner where the apartments met the overgrown fields they’d hidden in from the police. Between the fence and the grass surrounding the small, red two-story house was a semicircle of thick old trees, a buffer for sight and sound between the two worlds of houses and apartments, haves and have-nots.
Nagel carried a mini flashlight, the kind used as a key chain, and he shined it on a spot in the stockade fence where Brock could clearly see a hole had been cut, only to be patched over from the inside by a formidable piece of wood, lag bolted into the fence so that only dynamite would be likely to unseat it.
“See? That’s just insulting.” Nagel pointed at the patch. “That’s like, ‘You stay in your world, because this is mine.’ And then he rips my shirt? You should’ve heard my mom cuss him out.”
“To his face?” Brock peered at Nagel in the gloom.
“Nah, but to me and my dad, and she called the school. You know what the principal said? She said you tore my shirt, and that I tore yours in the fight. That’s a lie. He tore both our shirts. Well, we’ll fix him.”
Nagel had brought the white bucket with them, and also an old army blanket he’d picked up in some bushes where he’d hidden it earlier. He flicked off the light. Brock stood with his hands in his pockets while Nagel set the bucket against the Hudgenses’ fence, climbed up on it, fished the bucket string over, and flopped the folded blanket up on top of the fence. The thick blanket padded the pointed wooden teeth of the stockade style fence, so Nagel could grab on and, using just the little button of metal from the lag bolt, get a foothold that let him mount the fence. He sat atop the fence comfortably straddling his blanket saddle.
