The Amazing Adventures of John Smith, Jr. AKA Houdini

by Peter Johnson

  All I seemed to be doing was taking notes on how people dressed or what they said, not knowing how to make a story out of it. I noticed how my father combed his hair, how Lucky had a habit of rubbing his chin when he was angry, how Jorge got especially wired at certain times of the day (like he had an alarm clock planted inside his head), and how Fiona Rodriguez would pretend to ignore Lucky when she passed him in the hallway, then turn quickly to see if he was checking her out.

  It was pretty confusing being bombarded by all these details, as if each one of them was important. I even found myself focusing on people I didn’t like—Angel, for instance. I noticed he often looked depressed sitting at his desk, staring out the window at cars traveling down Hope Street. It almost made me think he was human.

  The more closely I looked at people, the more I felt I could see into their heads. Although all this thinking wasn’t getting my novel written, it did remind me of what Mr. Peterson said about how writing changes the way you look at the world.

  “Very freaking weird,” Jorge would have said.

  A MOUNTAIN OF LEAVES

  I’ve probably made you believe that raking leaves was always fun. It certainly was cool to find a lot of strange things, meet a lot of strange people, and be paid to hang around with each other, not to mention being photographed for the newspaper. But there was a downside, like raking leaves in the rain, or wearing plastic gloves and white cotton masks on warm, windy days. The masks protected us from dust and other disgusting airborne garbage, but also made us inhale our own stale breath, so that we felt like we were kissing ourselves.

  Because of this nonsense, we decided to treat ourselves. Next to the basketball courts across the street from Old Man Jackson’s house was a small field teeming with leaves. Every Saturday afternoon, after we finished for the day, we’d go there and rake for an hour. The idea was to create a mountain of leaves we could leap into. We made the mountain next to an old shed, which would be our diving board. On our last day, we agreed to order a few pizzas, organize a jumping contest, then bag the remaining leaves and return to our abnormal lives.

  Other kids heard about the contest and planned to show up. Even Angel thought it would be cool, though, periodically, he came by with his friends to hassle us. “Why don’t you grab a rake and do something?” Lucky said.

  “Why don’t you kiss your mother?” Angel said, which I guess was an insult.

  Lucky didn’t respond, but Jorge freaked out and called Angel “Sleepy,” referring to Angel’s constant nodding off and also to one of the Seven Dwarfs. It wasn’t like Jorge to poke fun of people with strange diseases, but when you went up against Angel, you had to play dirty. That day was weird because Angel was walking around with a large plastic Baggie containing a big piece of uncooked meat soaking in its own juices.

  “What’s that for, you goofball?” Jorge asked.

  Angel didn’t answer. He said he would talk only to Lucky.

  Lucky shook his head. “Okay, Angel, I’ll play. What’s the piece of meat for?”

  “It’s a surprise for your mother,” he said, and his two friends laughed.

  Jorge made a move toward Angel, but I held him back.

  “Whatever, Angel,” Lucky said. “Just remember what I said about walking the streets at night.”

  Angel laughed. “Don’t worry, Lucky, or you too, Mr. Weenie, because I got a little surprise for all of you.” Then he crossed the street toward Old Man Jackson’s house, stopping by the fence. His friends blocked our view while Angel did something behind them. After that, they ran off, laughing and shooting us the finger.

  “What was that about?” Jorge asked.

  “He’s just crazy,” Lucky said.

  “TAKE A HIKE”

  We didn’t have to wait longer than twenty-four hours to discover what Angel had done. Sunday afternoon I heard sirens, which isn’t strange in my neighborhood because we’re close to a hospital and because it’s not unheard of for someone to start a fight.

  After Mass, I got a call from Lucky, who told me to meet him at Jackson’s but not to call Jorge. When I arrived, a white van was pulling away, and an ambulance and a cop car were parked in front. Jackson was on his porch, screaming to get into the van, while two ambulance guys stood around, laughing. A cop tried to restrain Jackson, but he bolted, hopping his old, rusty fence and chasing down the van, his stumpy arm waving in the air like a broken chicken wing. The van finally stopped and let him in. That’s when we asked the attendants what had happened.

  One short, redheaded guy with skin the color of paste explained that Da Nang almost stopped breathing, so Jackson had called an ambulance.

  “What’s so funny about that?” Lucky asked.

  “It’s a stupid dog,” the attendant said. “So we just phoned the animal control people.”

  “What happened to the dog?” I asked.

  “How am I supposed to know?” the guy said. “It looked like he was poisoned, but I’m not trained to give mouth-to-mouth to pit bulls.” He and his partner broke into laughter.

  Lucky shook his head. “First,” he said, “the dog you don’t care about has a name. It’s Da Nang. Secondly, you’re giving guys with red hair a bad name.”

  The attendant didn’t know how to respond, so he said what guys usually say when they don’t know what to say, which is “Take a hike.” Then he and his buddy drove away.

  As you’ve no doubt guessed, Angel’s piece of meat caused Da Nang’s trip in the white van. Angel wouldn’t have thought of anything fancy. He probably soaked a cheap slab of steak in antifreeze and figured the dog would gobble it up on his next trip to take a dump.

  “What a goofball,” Lucky said.

  “No kidding,” I said.

  It’s not like we were crazy about Da Nang, but we’d never seen him actually hurt anyone. He just followed Jackson’s orders. For all we knew, Da Nang might’ve been as peaceful and playful as a puppy when he was in the house. Whatever. We agreed that Angel had gone too far, and that we had to tell someone, though we had no real evidence.

  “We have to let Jorge in on this,” I said.

  “What are you, nuts?” Lucky said. “He’ll just get out of control.”

  “Then what should we do?”

  “I think we have to see if the dog dies, then ask Jackson what happened.”

  “You mean go into the yard again?”

  “You have a better idea, Houdini? Got any magic tricks up your sleeve?”

  TWO HOUDINIS

  Lucky was right about my obsession with magic and illusion, but he didn’t know the other things I had in common with Harry Houdini. We both have motion sickness, and we’ve both escaped injury a number of times, as you’ll see later. Also, we’re both superstitious about Friday the 13th. Whenever that day arrives, I pretend to be sick, so I don’t have to go to school. I don’t know where that comes from because I’ve never seen those Friday the 13th movies. The title alone scares me.

  What we have most in common, though, is a desire to do the right thing, though I probably got part of that from Franklin. A lot of people think Houdini spent his life trying to trick people. Some famous circus guy named P. T. Barnum said that American people want to be humbugged, which means that they want to be fooled. But Houdini said, “In my own particular work I find there is so much that is marvelous and wonderful that can be accomplished by perfectly natural means that I have no need to humbug the public.” He even spent time trying to debunk phony mystics who would trick sad and lonely people into believing they could speak to their dead relatives. He would disguise himself and come to séances, then, at the last minute, expose their cheap tricks.

  What I also liked about Houdini was that, like me, he was loyal to friends. When he first started in show business, he worked in freak shows and even pretended to be a freak called the Wild Man. He would growl and tear at raw meat, and the audience would applaud and throw him cigars. But after Houdini left that gig, he never forgot the people he worked with. He knew he had
only pretended to be a freak while the real freaks, like the Dog-Faced Boy or the Missing Link, were trapped in their weird-looking bodies, so he tried to help them whenever he could.

  Houdini’s freaks made me think of Old Man Jackson, and I told Jorge and Lucky that Jackson might be more normal if we made friends with him.

  “Now that’s a wack idea,” Jorge said, looking at me like I just told him I’d been a girl in a past life.

  But I think Jorge might have changed his mind if he had gone back to Jackson’s with Lucky and me.

  INSIDE JACKSON’S HOUSE: PART ONE

  After school on Monday, I met Lucky in front of Jackson’s house. We stood around, hoping he’d come out. We even would’ve been happy if Da Nang bolted through the front door, making one of his famous charges. But nothing happened. I thought I saw a silhouette in the upstairs window but couldn’t be sure.

  “Maybe the vet put both of them down,” Lucky joked.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t have come,” I said.

  “What are you afraid of?”

  “What if he thinks we did it? If Da Nang’s dead, he’ll kill us.”

  “You have a point there, Houdini.”

  We were about to leave when I heard a low growl from inside the house. Then I saw Jackson peering at us from a downstairs window. Lucky waved for him to come out.

  “What are you doing?” I said, grabbing his arm.

  “Isn’t that why we’re here?”

  Jackson hobbled outside in his usual outfit—a clean white T-shirt and dirty overalls. He was followed by Da Nang, who moved very slowly, like he was still sick. His one good eye looked glazed, while Jackson’s were lit up like Christmas bulbs.

  “What do you want?” he asked.

  “We came to check on Da Nang,” Lucky said.

  “You mean, you want to know if Fatso killed him?”

  “We didn’t know anything about that,” I said, explaining we saw Angel with the piece of meat but didn’t figure it out until Sunday.

  Jackson cut me off. “I don’t blame you boys. You don’t got a mean streak like Angel.” He rubbed his head with his good hand, then looked suspiciously at us. “You sure there ain’t anything else you want?”

  Lucky spoke up. “We’re going to tell the cops.”

  Jackson laughed. “The cops? They don’t care. They’re just like the government. No, no, no, I don’t want you to tell no one. I’ll take care of Angel. Maybe not this week or the next, but I’ll get my chance.” He knelt down and petted Da Nang. “They say he’ll be okay. His brain got a little fried, but he’ll get better. He’s a good, old friend.” He told us to pet Da Nang, and it was a big leap, but I leaned over the short fence and rubbed him under his collar while Lucky cautiously stroked his head. I wished someone had been there to take a picture because we would’ve become legends.

  “You boys want a Coke or something?” Jackson asked.

  Lucky and I didn’t know what to say.

  “Da Nang won’t bite you,” Jackson said, though we weren’t worried about Da Nang.

  I was about to make up an excuse when Lucky said, “Yeah, sure,” and jumped the fence.

  I reluctantly followed, half believing this would be my last day on earth. Lucky and I would disappear into Jackson’s house where Da Nang would attack us while Jackson took a machete off the wall and chopped us into little pieces, which he’d cover with chocolate syrup and hand out next Halloween.

  TEN URBAN LEGENDS ABOUT JACKSON AND DA NANG

  1. Jackson is really Da Nang and vice versa. Jackson wanted to be meaner, so he made a deal with the devil. Now he can bite people.

  2. Jackson was spotted at three a.m. walking past the liquor store with his head tucked under his arm.

  3. Sometimes Jackson removes Da Nang’s glass eye and looks at people through it. The next day those people get sick or die.

  4. Jackson was once married to a witch who, every Sunday morning, would turn drug dealers still working the streets into rats.

  5. Jackson got tired of being married to that witch and sealed her up in his fireplace.

  6. Jackson cultivated worms in the basement that could eat your brain. At night Da Nang would spit a jaw full of them into the open bedroom windows of kids who teased Jackson.

  7. Jackson keeps his severed arm in an empty saxophone case. At midnight he opens the case and lets Da Nang play with the arm.

  8. A local punk once peeked into Jackson’s house and took a picture of him. The next day he was going to show it to his friends but woke up blind, and the camera was missing.

  9. Jackson’s house has no toilet. All the goop just stays inside him.

  10. If Da Nang bit you, he stole your soul, and every night you’d have to bring him the fingers of babies to eat. No wonder we were afraid of them.

  “A LOT CAN HAPPEN TO A PERSON”

  As we walked into Jackson’s house, the smell of incense almost knocked me on my butt, but I was happy to see there were no body parts scattered around. In fact, the house was neatly kept. Jackson didn’t have much furniture, but his worn hardwood floors were clean, though the ceilings and walls were cracked and water stained.

  “What’s your name?” he said to me.

  “They call me Houdini.”

  “That’s a crazy name.”

  “He was a magician.”

  “Well, maybe you can make that scaredy-cat look on your face go away. You think I’m going to eat you?”

  So Jackson was a mind reader.

  “Your brother was never afraid of me,” he said.

  “How well did you know him?”

  “I used to pay him to help me around the house,” Jackson said. “He’d always bug me about Vietnam, and I’d tell him stories. Those stories should’ve scared him, but instead he goes off and joins the Marines.” Jackson shook his head. “The problem with boys like Franklin is that they want to save the world but the world don’t give a damn.”

  “Yeah, I know” was all I could say.

  “You guys want that Coke now?” Jackson asked.

  “Is it in a can?” Lucky said.

  “You think I’m going to poison you?” Da Nang growled but Jackson calmed him down.

  “No, sir,” Lucky said, then Jackson hobbled into the kitchen and came back with two cans of Coke.

  “You don’t need no glasses,” he said, and we nodded.

  I looked at an expanse of wall over a fireplace that had been bricked up. On top of the fireplace were a few trophies, and the wall was decorated with a number of glass-framed photos and a medal I assumed was his Purple Heart. There was also a large bookshelf built into the wall packed with paperbacks and hardcovers, and that surprised me. Some of the books looked new but the spines of others were cracked and faded.

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” he said, pointing to the pictures and medals, “but don’t go off and join the Marines like Franklin.”

  Lucky and I followed him to the fireplace. The trophies were Most Valuable Player Awards for playing football, though looking at Jackson, I found that hard to believe.

  “Makes you want to laugh, don’t it, Houdini, but a lot can happen to a person. These are pictures of the boys I served with,” he said, pointing to photos of young guys around Franklin’s age, hamming it up for the camera. “Most of them are dead or crazy.” He didn’t say it with sadness or anger, almost like he had looked at the pictures a thousand times and had become used to the tragedy. He unhooked the medal from the wall and tossed it to me. It was his Purple Heart, and it seemed to glow in my palm. It was heart-shaped with a gold border, etched with the profile of George Washington.

  I handed back the medal, then looked at the books.

  “They’re mostly novels,” Jackson said. “Don’t look so surprised, Houdini. Did you think I couldn’t read because I talk so bad?”

  “Houdini’s writing a novel,” Lucky said.

  “Is that true?” Jackson said.

  I nodded.

  “Good for you, boy. Real people
don’t get killed in novels.”

  We talked a little longer about his books, drinking our Cokes, and keeping an eye on Da Nang. Then we promised Jackson not to call the cops, and stood to leave.

  “Do you mind if I say something?” Lucky said.

  “Let ’er rip,” Jackson said.

  “If I was you I’d cool it with the incense. Gregory might have you raided if he thinks you’re smoking pot.”

  Jackson smiled. “No pot here, boys, and don’t worry about Gregory. I ain’t afraid of some moron with the same first and last name. What kind of parent would do that to a kid?”

  Outside, as we walked away, I noticed our mountain of leaves across the street. It had grown to about eight feet high and twelve feet wide at its base. We only had a few houses left to rake this Saturday, and on Sunday we planned our diving contest, hoping to close down the business until next fall.

  WAR

  Unlike Jackson, Houdini thought it was an honor to go to war. In 1917, when America entered World War I, he wrote to a friend: “I register tomorrow for enlisting. Hurrah, now I am one of the boys.” But the Army rejected him because he was too old—forty-three. He still did his bit, though, giving free performances for soldiers in training.

  Listening to Jackson that day made me think Houdini hadn’t missed much. It also made me wonder if Franklin was blown away by what he was witnessing in Iraq, or if the Marines got recruits used to seeing people killed by showing them films. Maybe that’s why Franklin never answered my questions about war. My father and I would watch tanks and buildings getting blown up on TV, and we’d see pictures of wounded civilians or people whose amputated limbs had healed, but never a word from Franklin about any of it. We’d sit there pretending Franklin wasn’t part of this misery, as if he was at summer camp. Of course we knew better, but it was easier for my father to focus on trying to keep his job and for me to do battle with Angel than to think of Franklin dodging bullets.