by Tim Green
Thursday, the day before they would board the bus for Princeton, Bella showed up early. Brock had the garage doors open. He had cleaned the floor thoroughly and was on his hands and knees, finishing up the first coat of gray paint on the concrete when Bella’s shadow fell across his work.
“You’re early.” He didn’t look up.
Bella made two alligator shadow puppets with her hands, facing them toward each other on the flat gray floor.
“He’s not happy to see us.” She spoke in a low, gravelly voice as she moved the mouth of the gator on the left.
“Oh, he’s grumpy again,” the other alligator said. “So I guess we shouldn’t tell him our surprise.”
“I think,” said the first, “that we should bite his neck.”
In a flash, the shadow puppets were on his neck. Bella pinched him and laughed and screamed when he jumped up and grabbed her, spun her around, and tickled her relentlessly.
“Stop! Stop!” She could barely yelp between her tears. “Please.”
“Okay.” He stopped and let her go and returned her grin. “What surprise?”
She held up her hands like alligators again, watching them speak.
“There’s a rope,” said the first.
“A secret,” added the second.
“For swinging.” “And swimming.”
“But no grouching.”
Bella laughed and put down her hands. “Did you hear them? No grouching. Get your suit and come on.”
Brock tried to think of a reason why he couldn’t, but instead, he shrugged and put his paint things away and went upstairs to put on his bathing suit. With a towel around his shoulders and sneakers on his feet, he asked where they were going.
“No one ever told you about the river?” She tilted her head at him.
“No.”
“Well, it used to be polluted, but the state made the big chemical company clean up the lake and now you can swim in the river. Can I leave my bike in your garage?” Bella walked her bike up from the grass.
“Sure. I thought rivers flowed into lakes, not out of them,” Brock said.
“The Seneca flows from Onondaga into Ontario. From there, it empties out into the St. Lawrence River and then the Atlantic Ocean.”
“I’m not swimming in a river with sharks,” Brock said.
“Sharks can’t . . .” She looked at him and laughed. “Come on. It’s only about a mile if we cut through the apartments, then behind the shopping center.”
“You know how to get over the fences?” Brock followed her and together they walked down the driveway.
She glanced at him again. “My uncle’s got a gate, right? I helped pick up the branches when he trimmed his trees in the spring. I know the combination.”
“I forgot.”
“Do you know how to get over the fences?”
Brock shrugged. “Nagel showed me. He uses a big chemical bucket.”
Bella sighed and shook her head.
“He’s not that bad,” he said, “and I told him to leave you alone. He just likes to test people.”
“If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck and quacks like a duck,” Bella said, “it’s usually a duck. Same thing with jerks.”
Brock didn’t reply, but followed Bella down the street and around Coach’s house, through the backyard and the trees, where she fiddled with the lock and popped open the gate.
“Should we say ‘hi’ or something?” Brock looked back at the house.
“On the way back.” She led him through and closed it behind them.
Brock started to tell her that he’d been on the same path with Nagel as she led him down the twisty dirt track through the scrub, but she obviously didn’t want to hear about Nagel.
They were deep in the weeds where the hum of insects hung like a low cloud with the heat and the smell of summer growth. It was a peaceful kind of quiet, but also, somehow unsettling. Creepy.
“Hey!”
When Brock heard the shout, he spun around.
Coming at them from up a side path was Nagel’s brother, Jamie, with two of his friends. In their hands they brandished thick walking sticks, and Nagel’s warning flooded Brock’s mind.
Adrenaline rushed through Brock’s veins.
His legs took off on their own.
In the same motion, he grabbed Bella by the arm and hollered.
“Run!”
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Dragging Bella along behind him, Brock followed the twisting path, down a hill, then broke away from the shopping center and into some trees where they jumped a small creek. Still, the older boys gained on them. Bella took the lead and Brock followed her, thankful she knew the way to safety.
When his foot hit a tree root, Brock stumbled and fell. He rolled as he hit the ground and popped up running, but he could almost feel the older boys behind him now. Bella disappeared over the lip of a small ridge just as something struck the back of Brock’s knees.
This time, he hit the ground hard.
The impact jarred his brain into a fog. Still, his body knew what to do, and he felt his legs scrambling for a hold beneath him. He had almost regained his feet before Jamie Nagel tackled him and knocked the breath from his chest. Jamie wrapped an arm around Brock’s neck and pushed his face into the dirt.
“We got some unfinished business!”
Brock gagged, and Jamie let him go and got up before he poked Brock in the ribs with his stick, so Brock flipped around and crawled backward against a big tree.
One of Nagel’s friends asked, “What’re we gonna do with him?”
“Let’s take his pants.” The other friend laughed, his face turning red with glee. “Let him go home without his pants.”
Jamie gave the big one a nasty look. “What are you, a spaz, Mike?”
Mike rumpled his brow. “Then what?”
Jamie dropped his stick. He took a knife out of his pocket and snapped it open. The long thick blade gleamed in the dappled sunlight that filtered down through the trees. Its edges were jagged on one side and razor sharp on the other.
“You’re gonna stab him?” The other friend snorted in disbelief.
“Not stab him, Joe. Just a little shave.” Jamie started toward Brock. “He looks like he needs a haircut.”
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Jamie Nagel reached for Brock.
Brock sat frozen, his mind flipping back and forth between the decision to try and run or fight, leaving him helpless.
A shrill scream made Jamie jump. “You stop!”
Brock looked over his shoulder. Up on the lip of the ridge was Bella. She jumped down over the edge where tree roots held a wall of dirt in place and started walking toward them.
“Hey.” Jamie grinned to see it was just a girl. “Come on over here with your boyfriend and I’ll give you a haircut too.”
Bella scowled at the three older boys and held her phone up like a torch. “Sure. Use that knife. Then when the police get here, maybe one of them will stick it up your nose.”
“Cops?” Joe looked around behind him like the police were already there. “Did you hear that, Jamie?”
“She’s bluffing.” Jamie’s voice faltered, and he tried to hide it with a snarl. “There’s no cops. It’ll take those donut munchers half an hour.”
Bella shrugged and kept marching right toward them. “That’s right. You fatheads just stay right here.”
“No way,” Mike said, and he took off, running back the way they all came.
“C’mon, Jamie.” Joe made only one plea before taking off himself.
“You ought to mind your own business.” Jamie reached down for his stick and waved it at Bella, like he was going to strike her.
Bella didn’t even flinch. “Go for it, you big loser.”
The distant sound of a siren crept into the stillness.
Jamie laughed and snarled at the same time, and he began to slowly back up, closing the knife against his leg and stuffing it into his pocket. “You got lucky, Nickerson, but you tell
Coach Huggy there isn’t enough luck on the planet to save him.”
Jamie turned and pulled his T-shirt up so that his back was exposed. The angry bruise had a center the size of Coach’s baseball black as tar and fading to a sickly yellow around the edges. “You tell him I didn’t call the cops on him because I’m gonna settle this man to man. Tell him that fence ain’t gonna keep me out either.”
Jamie let the shirt drop and took off at full speed with his stick in hand until he disappeared around a bend into the trees.
“Geez, Bella. Are you crazy?” Brock got to his feet and dusted himself off. His knees were scraped and dirty.
“You think I was going to just run and leave you?” She shook her head. “No way. Did Coach really do that to him?”
“Yeah. Jamie had me by the collar. They were throwing rocks into the yard when me and Coach were practicing and Coach went kind of nuts. He didn’t mean to hit him—just scare him.”
“Ouch,” Bella said.
“They could have cut your hair.” Brock nodded at her braid. Bella lifted up the braid and looked it over before flipping it back over her shoulder. “There’s more where that came from. Besides, I think they were just trying to scare you.”
“I guess he’s supposed to go into the army. He can’t leave too soon for me.”
“That’ll fix him up,” Bella said. “Come on, let’s go swim.”
“Did you really call the police?” Brock followed Bella down the path.
Bella looked back at him and raised an eyebrow. “Nah. They couldn’t get here in time. He was right about that.”
“But the sirens?” Brock stopped and listened to the wailing from out on Route 57.
Bella grinned. “Probably an ambulance.”
“Good thing I didn’t need that.” He dusted himself off some more as they went.
Only a few more minutes of walking brought them to Route 57, which they crossed, then continued on through another shopping center parking lot, around the buildings, and through some more woods before they found themselves on a small bluff overlooking the dark-green river.
“See?” Bella pointed to a thick old tree leaning its twisted limbs out over the water.
Brock had barely taken in the sight of the wide river and the reflection of the trees and blue sky before Bella had stripped down to her bathing suit and shed her shoes. She left her glasses on top of the little pile of clothes. From the nook in one of the thickest branches hung a horsehair rope, knotted at the very bottom. Bella went to a hook someone had screwed into the trunk of the tree and detached a string Brock hadn’t seen in the light. Bella used the string to haul in the rope, and then turned to Brock with a crooked grin.
“Watch me.” Clutching the rope, she dashed for the lip of the bluff and cast herself into space.
She swung out past the crook in the branch and up toward the sky, then let go at the highest point. The rope flew back at him, but it was her he watched. Almost in slow motion, she let her feet fly up and her head drop down. She began to fall and only then did she tuck her chin to her knees, rotate in a full flip, then pull out of it to plunge straight into the water with hardly a splash.
When she came up for air in a wash of bubbles, Brock hooted and clapped, cheering for her until her face reddened and she swam for shore.
“You try!” she shouted up to him as she used a second rope, tied to another tree, to help her climb the steep slope.
It wasn’t until she got to him that he realized she had the string in her mouth. She handed it to him.
“Did you keep that in your mouth the whole time?” he asked.
She laughed. “No. I got it when I swam in. It hangs all the way down into the water. Go ahead.”
Brock reeled in the thick rope, then dropped the string. His heart thumped the underside of his ribs. He gripped the rope tight enough to whiten his knuckles, then ran for the edge. The rope carried him out and he marveled at how high he really was. He reached the farthest point and actually started back when Bella screamed for him to let go. He did, and dropped, flailing his arms and legs and crashing into the water below.
Water blasted up through his nose and he sputtered and groped at the river to get back to the air. When he reached the surface, he coughed and choked and splashed like a harpooned whale. He fought the water until he could feel the muddy bottom beneath his feet, then swept his hands back to keep himself upright as he waded onto shore.
Bella’s cackling laughter echoed off down the empty river. “Get the string!”
Brock cleared his lungs and found the string and climbed back up to the top. She was still laughing when he got there.
“Very funny.”
“You looked like a . . . I don’t know. What’s the most awkward animal on the planet?”
“An ostrich?”
“A wounded ostrich.”
“Great.”
She took the rope and went again. Back and forth they swung and flew and swam. After a while, she showed him how to do a double where they clung to the rope and swung together out over the void, dropping together and grinning like maniacs, staring into each other’s faces as they fell, howling like banshees. Finally, they took a break and lay on the edge of the bluff atop their towels, basking in the sun with their eyes closed.
“Don’t you feel . . . ,” Bella said, then paused. “Like you could do this forever?”
“Yeah.” Brock felt like he was drifting off and the word barely floated free from his lips.
With his eyes shut and the sun baking him, he felt Bella’s hand on his arm.
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Brock had a flurry of words backing up in his brain. “I feel kind of stupid, being saved by you back there.”
“Whatever, Brock.” Her voice was soft and lazy, like the sunshine. “The guy doesn’t always have to be the hero.”
“And I know I get quiet sometimes.” Brock felt her tighten, then relax her grip, and he knew she meant it to say that she didn’t care. “There’s a reason I don’t talk too much.”
“From what I see, you talk when you need to,” she said.
He took a deep breath and let it out in one gust. “Before I moved here, I had a friend. Her name was Allie.”
Bella moved her hand off his arm and he felt like someone had unplugged his motor.
“Your girlfriend?” Bella asked, still soft.
“No.” Brock had to force himself to lie flat and not jump right up off his towel. “She wasn’t my girlfriend. I don’t have a . . . not that I wouldn’t.”
“Good.” Bella put her hand back and suddenly Brock could feel the warm breeze and hear the swish of the trees above them.
“I think I got this pitching thing worked out,” he said, changing the subject.
“That would be something.”
“Your uncle . . . he’s awesome.”
“He’s so different since you came,” she said. “I mean, I always loved him, but he’s . . . I don’t know, alive.”
The warmth of the moment and the sunshine and the kind words turned suddenly hot for Brock and he felt such a burning to play baseball that he couldn’t wait for Princeton. He wanted Coach to be alive and he wanted Bella to glow with pride and maybe he could be something more than the new kid who came and left before anyone ever really knew who he was.
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They walked back the way they came, side by side, sometimes brushing shoulders or hands and talking all the while about baseball and arguing who was the greatest of all time. Brock couldn’t convince her that Albert Pujols was better than Babe Ruth, but they both agreed that Reggie Jackson was number three.
The sun was orange and dipping into the trees when they reached the back of Coach’s fence. Brock was gazing over at the apartment buildings, wary of Jamie Nagel and his friends when Bella gasped and gripped his arm.
“What?” He jumped and turned his attention to the fence where Bella was pointing.
Written in red spray paint, all along the back of the fence with one giant letter per
section, were the words DEAD MAN WALKING.
“What’s that mean?” Brock asked, knowing the words sounded familiar.
“Death row.” Bella glanced over her shoulder and searched the apartments. “When someone is condemned to die and the other inmates see him coming, they call out ‘dead man walking.’”
“Meaning . . .” Brock raised his eyebrows.
“That my uncle is a dead man.”
“Now we need to call the police.” Brock put a hand on Bella’s shoulder and moved her toward the fence. “Let’s get out of here.”
Bella opened the gate then closed and locked it once they were through. “The police won’t do anything.”
“We can prove it was Jamie Nagel.”
“We didn’t see them,” she said.
“After what they did to us?” Brock pointed to his scraped-up knee.
“You fell.”
“The knife?”
“They’ll lie and it’ll be our word against theirs, Brock. I know how these things work. If anything, my uncle could be the one in trouble. You saw that bruise.”
“We can’t just do nothing,” Brock said.
Bella shook her head. “We leave for Princeton tomorrow. Let things settle down. We can tell Coach when we get back home. That way he won’t worry all weekend.”
“But I’ll worry.” Brock took out his phone and dialed.
Bella tilted her head. “Who are you calling?”
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“Nagel.” Brock held up a finger when he heard Nagel on the other end. “Nagel, get over to Coach’s fence, right now. You’ve got to see something.”
Brock hung up.
Bella wore a look of disbelief. “He’s a jerk. He’s part of the problem.”
“No.” Brock shook his head. “He’s not. Sometimes good people are in a bad place and it rubs off on them.”
“It rubbed off plenty on him.” Bella frowned and folded her arms.
“Just trust me,” Brock said.
They watched through the gap in the gate and when Brock saw Nagel coming, he had Bella open the lock. They met just outside the fence.
