Darnay Road

by Diane Munier

  “The trestle,” he says and he’s got a half smile. Just one side. It’s very interesting and I’m afraid I do the same thing just to see what it feels like cause I generally lift both sides at the same time if I smile at all. But I do not show my pearly whites. I hate to look like a beaver.

  Wait a minute. We’re solving a mystery here. This is number one in our notebook even. Well that makes everything so much better.

  “Is that where you boys go every night?”

  He puts his hands behind his head like he’s in a hammock or something instead of this street in the pitch black of nightness.

  He has hair under his arms. Ain’t he eleven? Lord a mercy what am I doing with a man?

  Then we hear, “Caghan.” It’s Ricky on his bike. He’s mad which is pretty much like usual.

  “Get on,” Easy says, and I do, and Ricky is saying not to, yelling that, but Easy says get on, and I just do.

  And I am telling you it is the ride of my life after that, that’s for sure.

  Darnay Road 10

  Ricky does catch up eventually, but I know that’s because we hit rough ground again and Easy just doesn’t seemed worried about a thing. You can’t get to the trestle without going over hill and dale. So I tell Easy, “Let’s walk it,” and that’s when Ricky catches up, his scowling self that is, cause he takes this world very, very seriously Abigail always says.

  “You and Abigail May are going to get in so much trouble,” he tells me moving off his bike while it’s still going. He don’t even care, he lets it go off by itself and just fall over and it’s an almost brand new ten-speed he got for Christmas with money his mom sent from Tampa.

  No sooner am I looking at that then a fight starts right behind me. Ricky went for Easy and Easy’s bike has fallen over but it don’t even matter for that bike and he is holding Ricky’s arms which is making Ricky madder and madder.

  “You don’t ever take off like that,” Ricky’s yelling at me while he struggles.

  Easy ain’t saying a thing, and his arms are a little longer than Ricky’s cause he’s holding him tightly enough that Ricky can’t get away, but Ricky’s trying to kick so Easy just gets Ricky turned around and he holds him up close with his arms under Ricky’s and hands clasped at the back of Ricky’s neck and I feel real sorry for him and very scared cause me or my granma have not seen anything like this except for Wrestling at the Chase on Sunday mornings on channel eleven and it’s just terrible to behold in real.

  Next I know Easy is taking Ricky down to the ground and he’s got himself on Ricky’s back, he’s kneeling on him and telling him to settle down.

  Ricky has his face turned to the side and he’s yelling at me and yelling at Easy and I am trying not to cry, but I say, “They didn’t do anything, Ricky. He’s taking me to find Abigail, that’s all and I saw her and she’s real happy.”

  I tell Easy not to hurt him, not to hurt Ricky. I don’t know who to help, or what to do.

  “Just stop Ricky,” I say cause maybe that will fix this.

  Ricky says, “Get off me damn it. Let me up.”

  Ricky curses when he’s mad. Abigail told me. He says the thing that holds back water, and the place where the devil lives and he says poop only that bad way. Aunt May says he’s going to have to suck on a bar of soap, but she can’t make him cause he’s too big.

  “Let him go,” I tell Easy cause he’s looking at me like I’ve got to decide.

  Easy kind of leaps back off of Ricky the way Clint Eastwood leaps off a cow he just roped. I swear even in this terrible fight I can’t help but notice that Easy could be Rowdy he’s so tall and strong.

  Ricky gets up and takes a sissy swing at Easy, but Easy just slaps at Ricky’s fist and barely pushes at it.

  “Did he take Abigail to the trestle?” he asks Easy.

  “Yeah,” Easy says. “She wanted to.”

  “That is my sister,” Ricky says. “You and your ape brother have no right.” He’s telling me to come on, Ricky is.

  He grabs me too tight and I say, “Ow,” and Easy is picking up his bike and he says, “Leave her alone. I’ll take her back.”

  “You will keep your filthy hands off her and my sister. When I find Abigail May I am going to kill Cap.” He looks at Easy and he’s squeezing my good arm and he says, “I’m going to kill him.”

  “Don’t do her like that,” Easy says. He’s laying his bike on the ground again.

  I’m picking at Ricky’s grip but it ain’t doing me much good. But Easy is taking a couple of steps. “Let her go,” he says.

  Ricky is telling him to get the hell away from him, keep your filthy hands off or something. He swings at Easy with his fist but he don’t let go of my arm and Easy grabs the wrist where Ricky grips me, grabs Ricky’s wrist and squeezes and Ricky lets go and there they go again. I back away, and Easy has him on the ground real quick again, but this time he sits on Ricky’s stomach and has his hands spread out and he’s close to Ricky’s face. “You’re going home,” he says.

  Ricky says stuff.

  “You’re going home,” Easy says again. He just keeps saying that.

  “What about Abigail?” Ricky finally says.

  “I’ll have him bring her home,” Easy says in this deep voice, real sure.

  “Let me up,” Ricky says.

  Easy takes a big breath and he gets off him again. Ricky gets up and goes angry and mean to his bike. He gets on it then. “I’m going for her,” he says. “Her dad is a cop. I’ll be telling him about you and your brother.”

  Easy looks at me like I just grew horns.

  “He don’t ever come see me,” I say really quick. I don’t know why I tell such a personal thing. Granma says I get diarrhea of the mouth sometimes.

  He’s staring at me, and Ricky calls back, “Come on.” He’s not going home like Easy said. Looks like he’s going for the trestle.

  I don’t know what to do. Maybe Easy doesn’t want me anymore.

  He’s standing there waiting, staring at me and waiting. I walk slowly forward and turn to get on and he surprises the bejesus right out of me and takes hold of me around the ribs and lifts me up like I’m a feather or something and I sit there in the middle.

  “You want to go home?” he says pretty close to my ear.

  “No,” I say very quickly like there is another girl speaking inside me.

  I don’t know why but I feel like I picked him somehow, picked him over Ricky and maybe my dad. And I don’t even know him. But I want to. It’s just true inside me.

  Darnay Road 11

  Pretty soon we get close to the bridge. I know Easy is fighting my hair but I can’t hold it right now cause I have to hold on. I see the big bonfire first and the others running around, their shadows sprawled on the nearest gigantic stone leg of the trestle. It looks like a pow-wow is taking place there, so strange and terrifying. Easy stops close enough and I get off his handlebars and my bottom is sore-ore.

  Abigail May yoo-hoos and waves to me from up high on the bridge. Cap Caghan is standing near her. She is so small and he is so tall and the full moon is up high behind them. She knows only a fool would go up there. We’re usually in bed right now, or at our windows flashing signals. But we’re never near a bonfire in the dead of night with boys so wild they might turn into wolves any second. And Abigail May is never walking on the trestle bridge, not even in the sunshine, not anytime is she up high on the same path as all the trains that run between Darnay and Scutter deepening that line that separates two roads and two worlds—ours and the twilight zone’s.

  Ricky is calling for Abigail May to come down and for Cap Caghan to bring her down, but she is ignoring him and waving like it’s Sunday in the park. She gets like this, mad and determined to get her way. She can be stubborn. Aunt May says it’s her Irish. Granma says Abigail May needs a spanking sometimes and she just don’t get one because Aunt May feels too sorry for her. I think what’s there to feel sorry for? Abigail May is strong and kind mostly. She is cute as she
can be, cute as Hayley Mills for sure and the best reader in our class. Everybody loves Abigail May. I don’t know what Aunt May would feel sorry about.

  Here’s the worst thing of all--Disbro Peak is there and Bobby and Mike. I guess this mystery is solved then. Well I had no idea.

  A shrill whistle sounds out from right beside me. Easy is looking up there whistling like that, and Cap answers with a whistle real close to his brother’s for loud and strong. Me and Abigail just have a call. Whoo-oh. Whoo-oh. We don’t whistle much, and then not like they do.

  Then I think, is he the one whistled at me that day I broke my arm? I always thought it was Disbro Peak.

  I am staring at Easy for a minute and he looks back and when he does I just feel something.

  So I swallow a big ball of nothing. “Will he bring her down?” I ask cause Abigail is more important than all of it and a train could come anytime.

  They are so high up but Abigail May never was afraid of it. I know this cause she has waved to me from Aunt May’s roof when she climbed out the attic window once with Ricky. And she loves the Ferris-wheel. She never closes her eyes up top like I do.

  Ricky is so mad, so mad, threatening to go up there and whip her all the way down.

  Easy pulls my hair a little when he goes on by and heads for the fire. I get a little closer to that trestle and Disbro is already yapping away asking Easy why he and Cap brought us along.

  Easy goes to the big part of a tree someone cut down and piled there. He pulls that big branch along and hefts it up and gets it on the fire and sparks fly and faces glow. Disbro never stops talking, telling me there’s a nest full of kittens near the other trestle leg. He says he’s gonna put them in a sack up on the tracks.

  I hold my stomach such a notion is so dreadful. “You better not,” I say so mad.

  Easy makes some kind of sound at him and Disbro don’t like it. “I got me…got me a sack,” he’s saying, and he goes on about those kittens. “You want to see ‘em?” he asks me, only he says it three times.

  “He’s lying,” Bobby says to Easy. “He ain’t got nothing.”

  “Get down here Abigail May,” Ricky says. “I come up I’m bringing a switch.”

  “You ain’t the boss,” Abigail calls down, even though she’s following Cap across the tracks toward the trestle we’re under. They must have walked clear across that narrow bridge that looks to be not much wider than the tracks would be, and now they’re on their way back.

  Everyone laughs at Ricky getting ignored, well not me, and not Easy so much, but he does that half-smile.

  But I’m not smiling. That Disbro Peak is such a meanie to say that about those kittens.

  “Aw she’s gonna cry,” Disbro says.

  I put my hair behind my ears and fold my arms. I got Irish in me too.

  “You want to see them?” he says.

  Easy is watching, but he picks up some sticks and throws them in the fire. Then Disbro comes closer and tries to read my pocket but I won’t let him, I put two hands over it. Easy is breaking a branch into sticks and throwing them in the flames but he’s watching us.

  I look up for Abigail. In my mind I’m moving Ricky’s way maybe. Well I am. I get by him and I watch for Abigail to come on down. When they get off the bridge they can work their ways down the hill.

  That’s when we hear it, the whistle in the distance announcing that a train is on its way. I back up so I can get the best view. “Abigail May,” I cry.

  Next I know she’s on Cap piggy-back style and Cap is running. They have one third of the way to go, and Cap just runs and runs, and Ricky goes around to the hill and starts climbing to meet them.

  They are halfway down the hill when the train goes whizzing past overhead. I have followed Ricky to the bottom of the hill at least and Abigail May runs right past him all the way to me and I turn so she doesn’t plow into my arm.

  “Did you see?” she’s saying. “It was so much fun.”

  Ricky is yelling at Cap and Cap tries to go around and Ricky is after him and there they go, wrestling at the Chase again.

  I mean to pull Abigail May aside and all the way home if she will allow, but those boys roll down the hill and we barely get out of the way in time.

  Easy runs past me and gets in the middle of those arms and legs and fists flying. He gets them apart and even then he’s quiet about it. Well it seems so with the train rushing so close by. When it’s done and moving past us into town a quiet is there and Easy tells Ricky, “Go on home.”

  But I don’t think Ricky wants to go home. I don’t think he’s listening. He’s saying Cap could have gotten Abigail May killed.

  “You’re not the boss of me,” Abigail calls out, and then nobody knows what to say.

  Then Disbro Peak is calling from up there, on that bridge, holding his shirt made into a sack, his skinny white half glowing in the moon while he slings that sack around and yelps how he’s gonna put those kitties right there for the ten fifteen.

  They know when the trains are coming, sure they do. They’re here most every night. Cap Caghan got Abigail up there just so they could run like that. He had her right there to show her a thrill. This is what they do. No wonder Ricky is losing his mind. He does it too. Well this mystery just keeps on showing itself.

  And now Disbro has the kitties and he’s gonna kill them so heartlessly there is no sunshine in this world if he makes such a thing happen.

  “Make him stop,” I say out. “He’s going to kill those kittens.”

  Abigail May is already going up, but Ricky won’t allow it and he grabs her. But Easy is ahead of her. Easy is going up the hill, long strides like it’s as easy as his name.

  I just run after. I need to see Easy when he gets on the bridge. I stay on the top of the hill and that’s bad enough. I don’t go onto the tracks and walk on that narrow ribbon of track that seems to float across the sky with nothing below but death for sure.

  Disbro is standing up there swinging those kittens back and forth, back and forth looking down the tracks for a train to come so he can leave that sack on the rail. I’m screaming at him, and soon enough Abigail is beside me telling him how hateful he is.

  Easy is already walking that track toward Disbro. Abigail is jumping up and down yelling, “Get him Easy.”

  Disbro says he’ll throw that sack over if Easy keeps coming toward him.

  We get quiet then, so quiet.

  “I’ll throw them over ‘fore you ever touch me fucker,” Disbro says, and me and Abigail May gasp cause we have never heard that foul word used, not ever.

  “I’ll throw you over,” Easy says. It’s just one sure sentence.

  “You can’t,” Disbro says. “For a bunch of kittens?”

  Easy takes another step toward Disbro. Then another.

  “Give me that sack,” Easy says.

  “You trying to be the big man? See the big man?” Disbro calls to us.

  Easy keeps coming, his hand out now. Disbro Peak straightens his arm and he’s holding that sack over the side. All he has to do is let go. That’s all.

  Below I see Cap move. I think he’s going to try and catch that sack if Disbro lets go.

  Easy takes those last few steps quick and he takes Disbro’s arm and wrenches that sack from his hand. He slaps Disbro in the face and his glasses fall off and go flying. Disbro screams and he’s mad, and Easy turns his back and walks off carrying that bundle. Disbro is going crazy cause his glasses flew over the side and no one worries about it, least of all me and Abigail. I am waiting with my arms out for Easy to give me Disbro’s nasty shirt with those poor kittens.

  Easy has a big grin as he walks toward me. Both sides of his mouth this time. Abigail is clapping her hands and jumping still. And here’s one thing I know, I’ll always know, Cap and Easy are good inside.

  But Easy, well he’s my hero.

  Darnay Road 12

  We find where the kittens had their nest, but Disbro has driven off the mother or maybe killed her. I’m to
o tired to figure it out but Bobby and Mike are helping him find his glasses and Easy and I are searching for the mother while Abigail and Cap hold the kittens.

  She is nowhere to be found so Disbro insists on getting his shirt back and Easy has the kittens and he doesn’t want to hold Disbro’s shirt anyway so Abigail and I each take two kittens and Easy throws Disbro his shirt. Then Easy pulls his shirt off over his head before I know it.

  He’s big like Moondoggie, he really is but he is bruised down his side, on his ribs.

  “Did Ricky do that?” I say.

  He laughs at that. “He can’t hurt me.” That’s what he says.

  “Did you fall off your bike?” I say.

  He bends his arm so I can see the long white scar along his forearm. “That time,” he says. Then he turns so I can see his back and there is a jagged scar there too, and some bruises.

  “Does all that hurt?” I say cause it scares me. I don’t know what he’s done to be like this. Did he get hit by a car?

  Ricky is making a fuss for Abigail May to come along.

  “I can’t take any kittens, Georgia, but….” She doesn’t finish but we both know. The bomb shelter.

  “What did you say about going to Florida?” I ask.

  “We’re going home,” Ricky says.

  “I’ll tell you in the morning,” Abigail calls as Ricky pulls her away. “Good-bye Cap,” she says, but Cap is just looking after her his hands clasped on top of his head.

  “I bundle Easy’s shirt in my nightgown and he puts the kittens in there one by one, a yellow, two grays and a black. They’ve got plenty to say about it. I gather that whole thing closed at the top but he has to help me get it gathered in my one good hand.

  The fire is burned low and Cap leaves off looking after Abigail May to kick dust around the edges. Disbro and Mike and Bobby are still searching for his glasses but even with the moon they ain’t going to find them.

  I am walking with the kittens then and so tired I stumble. But my hand is weary already so pretty soon Easy separates his shirt and the little kitty selves from my nightgown and takes them and I offer to push his bike so I do but it’s pretty troublesome with one tired arm so he gets the bundle in one arm and pushes his bike with the other and at first we do it together but he says, “I got it sleepyhead.” Well he gets that off my pocket, but it’s the cutest thing in the world the way he says that.