by Grant Farley
Finally, we figure out that Nino-’n-Smitty are gone and we head back to the fire. Their voices are whispering through the wind and we can hear them talking about the good old days as we reach the dune and slide down to the fire. But the way they’re talking, it for sure don’t sound like no good old days. Manny and me sit without interrupting.
“You know we don’t drop acid or none of that no more?” Smitty asks us.
Manny shrugs.
“We catch you with even one joint,” Nino says, “and we’ll kick your ass.”
“I hear you,” Manny says.
I just nod, the words drying up in my throat as I think about Windowpane. I stare at kelp smoldering in the flames and the smoke stings my eyes and I knuckle away the tears. It takes me a while to build up to what I say next.
“That bridge. The Bixby,” I say. “It’s near here.”
“You told him?” Nino asks Manny.
Manny shrugs.
“Yeah,” Nino says. “It’s a couple miles north up One.”
“We can take you in the morning, if you want,” Smitty says. “You’re old enough.”
The fire snaps.
“Nah. I’m good.”
“You tell us. Anytime. We go.” Nino says.
“Thanks. It happened a long time ago. I’m over it.”
Waves pound on the other side of the dunes.
“Hey!” Manny says. “Listen. I think I hear a grunion.”
Nino-’n-Smitty go quiet, listening.
Manny cuts a huge fart.
They break up laughing and switch from beer to Wild Turkey and they’re not in a bad mood no more. We kick back in our sleeping bags against the dune, hunkering down against the wind. The fire smells like salt and kelp.
“Manny,” I whisper. “What if Abuelita found out all that Nino-’n-Smitty were doing out here with you and me along?”
Manny shrugs. “She knows everything, so she’ll find out about this, too. They’ll have to pay for it somehow, but they’ll think it’s worth it. She also knows we’re near the Bixby. This might have even been her idea.”
“She hasn’t told us a tale in a long time, since way before this summer,” I say.
“She’s sort of done with us, RJ.” He squirms like there’s sand in some weird places. “Not in a bad way. Like we’ve outgrown that stuff.”
“You never outgrow stories,” I whisper.
“It’s not—”
“Did you ever hear about Cesar Aguilar?” Nino interrupts our whispering in his lowest, scariest voice.
Of course we have.
“No,” we say.
“Cesar Aguilar was the last kid to ever make the Banzai Run down Third Street on his bicycle.”
I glance at Manny to see how he reacts to the Banzai. No one but me knows about Manny’s close call. His face has no expression.
So Nino-’n-Smitty take turns doing the gory details about the tale of Cesar Aguilar and the final Banzai Run. All about how he made it all the way to the bottom of the Run and was almost through the last intersection and home free when this tractor pulled in front of him. It was hauling a trailer with a big backhoe with the blade sticking up in the back like some giant stinger. Cesar twisted his bike sideways and missed the tractor. And he missed the trailer. And he just about missed the blade, except he didn’t duck low enough.
They never found his head.
Nino-’n-Smitty each has a different story about what happened after that. Nino tells how Cesar wandered around looking for that head and got revenge on anyone he thought might have stole it. Smitty says how that head popped up in weird places like some poor kid’s refrigerator, or on some girl’s pillow and when she pulls back the covers there’s no body.
So, if a tale is different according to whatever guy tells it, then who does it belong to? All of us? None of us? Most like, this is Cesar’s tale.
After his tale is all told, we just lie inside our bags and stare up at all the stars, listening to the pounding of the waves, and once in a while staring at that dark bus. We huddle up against the dune for shelter against the wind. I’m naked inside my bag ’cause I can’t stand that sandy, salty itching no more.
“Hey,” Manny whispers.
“What?”
“Which would be worse, finding Cesar’s head in your sleeping bag or hearing his footsteps creeping at you in the sand?”
That’s when I can tell he’s finally okay about the Banzai.
“No contest,” I say. “I’d rather find the head.”
“What if it’s all decayed with rotted teeth grinning at you?”
“I’d still pick the head.”
“Why?”
“’Cause it ain’t got legs to chase me.”
Nino-’n-Smitty bust up laughing. But I’m mostly glad to hear Manny laughing, too.
I should have known better than to get them going. They both jump up, grab my bag, zip me inside, drag me over the sand dune, and carry me, my butt bouncing on the sand, for what seems like forever. Even through the bag I feel the cold wind.
By the time I get my head out of the bag they’re long gone back to camp. I’m all the way at the rocks at the far end of the cove. I can just picture them back at the fire, having their stupid laugh, just waiting for me to come hopping back. So I curl up inside the bag like it’s some kind of shell and try to get some z’s. My flashlight is in the bag, and I turn that on and burrow to the bottom. The wind makes all kinds of creepy sounds that could be a headless body creeping along the sand. It’s hard breathing in the closed-in space of the bag.
I guess I fall asleep, ’cause I’m waking up. I poke my head out, and the night is lit by a full moon hanging over the water. Something woke me, but I can’t figure what. Everything is quiet. The wind has died down, and it’s almost warm. But it’s not quiet after all. There’s the soft sound of toes slapping in the water.
I bury my head back inside.
A weird sea kind of smell seeps into the bag. It’s not like any sea smell I’ve ever whiffed in all the times I been down there. I poke my head out of the bag.
I sit up.
I feel dizzy like my whole life has gone crazy, but maybe the old hippies slipped me some acid or something. The sand all along the edge of the water is alive. It’s a squirming, day-glo silver snake. I stand up, the still air clinging to me. The full moon cuts a silver line across the water.
I walk along that squirming, glowing edge.
It’s grunion.
I creep through so I don’t squish none, the waves lapping at me. Grunion are flopping against my legs, dancing around my feet, nuzzling in the sand. I smell their dance, their eggs.
I feel someone behind me.
I turn.
It’s the girl from the bus, standing at the edge of the wet sand. She walks down and stands beside me. We hold hands. She stands almost a head taller, but it’s no big deal. We walk along in that squirming mess. The sand oozes between our toes.
She leads me back to my bag without saying nothing.
We lie like spoons, but it’s nothing to do with the sounds that come from my mom’s end of the trailer when she’s got a prospect. That’s not what it’s about at all. The feel of her body, of the thin bones. And her smell like the grunion, only sweeter. Her soft breath sounding like if the ocean could whisper.
In the morning, I wake up alone.
The sky is just turning pink. The bus is gone. So are the grunion.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Excalibur
Charley and me are digging through the junk in Mrs. Elliot’s backyard. The collectibles. There’s not much out here worth passing off as Leguin’s, but I can’t afford to go inside. I’m just sort of kicking around some old farm tools when my shoe snags on a piece of metal.
“Over here, Charley.” This is no farm tool.
He hobbles over. He’s getting longer. When was the last time I carried him? It was the night Leguin caught him. We’ve sort of gone our own ways this summer.
I flip over a broke rake and there’s a beat-up, rusty bike frame with some sweet curves. I toss junk right and left until I get it uncovered. It’s an ancient Schwinn. My hands wrap around it, and I feel this power hum right through me kind of like grabbing an ungrounded cord. I reach down and pull, but it’s snagged on something.
Charley stands beside me, just staring.
I grab that sucker tight, the rust flaking and biting my hands. I yank hard and the frame jumps out, pieces of a rake falling off. I lift it over my head, feeling just like Arthur when he pulled out that sword, and I carry it to Mrs. Elliot’s back door, my heart pounding the whole time.
“Mrs. Elliot,” I call through the screen.
“So you’ve found something.” She opens the screen and grins down at me. “What is it this time?” She wipes her hands on the apron that covers the square-dancing skirts. She sees the bike frame, and that grin fades to a tight line. “So, you found something special.”
We just stand staring at each other until I feel Charley tugging on my shirt.
“Nothing special,” I finally say. “Just an old rusty bike frame I thought I could fix. Needs a lot of work, though. I might go ten bucks.”
She just stands there with that grim look.
“Okay, thirteen,” I say.
“Not for sale,” she says.
It don’t make sense, her doing a hard sell on an old bike frame. It makes even less sense that I need it with all my money troubles from Buying Time. “Fifteen. That’s as high as I can go . . .”
“You didn’t hear me,” she says. “It’s not for sale.”
I study her face. She means it.
“Look, if this has to do with my tab, I’ll pay cash.” I dig in my pockets.
“This has nothing to do with money,” she says.
“Everything has to do with money.”
“You don’t believe that any more than I do, RJ.”
What can I say?
She sighs.
“You don’t know about that bike,” she says.
So here comes the family story. Maybe there’s some hope for her selling it, after all. She only does the family number to jack up a price.
“This is a sad story about a wonderful boy. It happened twelve years ago. Little Cesar, we call him.”
Cesar . . . the Banzai Run . . .
“Cesar Aguilar.” I drop the bike frame. “I already know that story.”
“No,” she says. “No one really knows the story. Little Cesar is my nephew. You remind me of him, RJ.”
“I know all about the Banzai Run.”
“You know he was forced into it?”
I don’t answer. That isn’t part of the legend.
“There’s a . . . a gang of hoodlums have a hideout up in the hills.”
“The Blackjacks,” I say.
“You know them?”
“Yeah, I know them.”
“Yes, of course you do. Everyone knows the Blackjacks. They wouldn’t leave little Cesar alone.”
“You’re saying they . . . like, made Cesar do the Run? Then it’s like they killed him.”
“Killed? Little Cesar wasn’t killed.”
“Then how . . .”
“Badly, badly hurt. But not killed. He lives in Salinas with his mother. Leaving this valley was the only way she could free him.”
“Mrs. Elliot.” I hold the frame up to her. “I need it.”
“It’s not for sale.” She uses her apron to wipe her cheeks. “I will not have that on my conscience. But if you need it that badly, take it.”
There’s nothing more to say. I turn and walk away. It’s not easy hauling that frame with Charley hanging on my back. I stop and he drops off.
“This ain’t working no more. You got to walk.”
“I know,” he says.
“When I rebuild this bike, you can have the Stingray.”
He nods.
I must be nuts making a big deal out of this old frame, but there’s all this stuff bouncing around in my head . . . Buying Time, the Old Tumbler, the Banzai Run, the Blackjacks, Leguin, Theresa, the root cellar, little Cesar . . . and it feels like it’s all coming together, somehow, in this bike frame.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Freckles
I’m gliding in these ever-increasing squares on the streets around the trailer park, the Old Tumbler in the cage on my Stingray handlebars. I’m not really sure just how you train these pigeons to home. Maybe it’s just an instinct, but I figure it won’t hurt to give him a sort of tour.
Three girls are walking along the sidewalk away from me, toward one of the houses in the little tract by the elementary. Two are blondes wobbling on wedges. Even from behind. Especially from behind. I recognize the middle girl, and my heart slips out of whack. I take deep breaths. It’s never a good idea. Never. To sneak up on a gaggle of girls by yourself. But here I am gliding up next to them.
“Hey.”
They stop and turn. I don’t remember the names of the two fake blondes who are trying to look sixteen. They got that puffy hair, lots of makeup, and shoulder pads in their blouses. They look like they got some other pads, too. I mean, real titties never look like that. Theresa still has the razor-cut bangs and straight brown hair, but now there’s reddish streaks from the sun. Her skin is a light olive, with summer freckles along the cheeks, not covered by makeup. And there’s definitely no padding under that peasant blouse.
People outside the valley might think it weird, that those two wannabe discos would be hanging out with Theresa. But she has this friendly yet don’t mess with me attitude that makes other girls want to be her friend, even if she is different. What I do wonder is why she would hang with them. But here, if you’re going to a party, which is what they look like, you’re pretty much stuck with what you got for friends.
“Look, Teetee, it’s RJ,” the one on the right says, elbowing Theresa. “And he’s blushing.”
“Oh my God . . .” the left side girl says. “He has something in that cage on his handlebars.”
“It’s a pigeon,” I say. I don’t even know why I bother to answer.
“You really are weird,” the right one says.
“Yeah, is this some freaky thing like your brother’s toe shows?”
“Leave his brother out of this,” Theresa says.
“The other boys shoot those things,” the right side girl says. “Rats on wings, my brother calls them. And you got one in a cage.”
“I suppose it’s got a broken wing or something and you want to fix it,” the other one says in a fake voice.
“No. It’s kind of old, but it’s okay,” I say. “Flies real good. It tumbles, but . . .”
This makes them laugh. Man, I sound stupid.
“You guys go on ahead, and I’ll catch up,” Theresa says.
“Ooohhh,” they say as they wobble away.
“They call you Teetee?” I tease.
But she don’t smile back. She glares at me.
“Sometimes, when I dream . . .” Her voice is quiet and flat. “I’m soaring through the clouds. I can feel the breeze, but it’s completely silent. I am gliding above . . .” She waves across the fields and buildings and the hills. “All this.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I . . .”
That glare shuts me up.
“And you have a creature that can soar like that. And you put it in a cage.”
“No, it’s not like that . . .”
“If I could fly, and you put me in a cage, I would die.” She turns. “The other boys are kinder when they shoot them.”
She walks away.
“Theresa!” I push o
ff from the curb, but the cage has shifted, and the bike falls over, the cage door flying open. If the Old Tumbler escapes out here, this soon, I don’t know if he could survive, much less find his way home.
Theresa looks back.
The Old Tumbler checks out the opening. I could lift him out, toss him flying, point up at him. Show him off . . . But if I do, he might fly away and be gone forever and ever. I shove him back in and latch the door.
Nothing I can do but watch her turn and walk away.
I wrestle the cage back between the handlebars and ride home. Charley is waiting for me as I glide around back.
“Today is it,” I say.
“What?” Charley asks.
“Tumbling.”
I lean the Stingray up against a post of the coop. What does Theresa know about flying? This coop is all quality redwood I bought from the lumberyard. I know I should have saved the bucks for Buying Time, but I can make money selling the baby birds, and that coop will help me close the deal. It’s open in front with chicken wire. It has a big door in front so I can reach in to clean it out or when I just want to grab the birds. But the best part is this little pigeon door in the middle of the big door.
But does Theresa care about any of this?
Sure, it’s been closed so far because I can’t risk them flying away forever. But after the birds have made it their home, I can pull it down and it’ll make like a perch. Then they can come and go whenever they want, using the little door as a launching pad.
Charley just watches as I get the stepladder. I built that coop on stilts so no cats could snag the birds. How long do you keep them locked in? It’s been almost two weeks. Anyway, the Old Tumbler isn’t going anywhere with his Amazing Grace sitting back in the nesting box with an egg.
What does Theresa know about real flying?
All the sibs watch me from the screened porch of the trailer. They’ve been waiting for this ever since I first started pounding away on the wood.
So I’m leading a regular pilgrimage out to the fields. I’m first, the Old Tumbler tucked in my right hand. Then there’s Charley hobbling along without help. Amy lugs her boneless cat, Peabody, over her shoulder. The twins are right behind her. Mom leads Peanut by the hand.
