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“Yeah?” Bobby says, his face about six inches from Tillman’s. “We’ll see about that.”

He walks back, grabs his bag, and goes, “Come on, Ceejay, let’s get out of this dump.”

“Yeah, get on out of here,” says Tillman, “so I can fumigate the place before my sister gets home.”

We’re just about to walk out the front door, but Tillman can’t resist shooting another poison dart at us as we go. “One more thing,” he says. “I’d keep checking over your shoulder if I was you, Bobby. Dani made another phone call this morning—to Rick Nichols. Told him all about you and Mona. I don’t think he liked the idea of you messing around with his wife too
much. He wants to have a little talk with you. And you know what? Rick’s the kind of guy who’s likely to bring along more artillery than just a baseball bat.”

Bobby stops and sets his duffel bag down by the door. “Well, Tillman,” he says. “You know what I think about that?” He grabs the little gold lamp from the end table next to the couch. “Here’s what I think about that.” He steps toward Tillman and cocks back the lamp at the same time. Stumbling backward, Tillman jerks up his arm to guard his face. But Bobby doesn’t hit him. Instead, he swings the lamp hard in the other direction, shattering it against the wall, then lets what’s left drop to the floor.

He hoists up his duffel bag and slings the strap around his shoulder. “Have a nice day.” He smiles and walks out the door.

Tillman wasn’t lying. I hoped he was making up that business about Captain Crazy getting stuck in some kind of home, just saying it to get to me and Bobby, but when I call Padgett, he knows the whole scoop. The captain’s brother, Richard, isn’t vouching for him anymore. He says the captain’s not just a danger to others but to himself, and he’s sticking the captain in Oak Grove, the old folks’ home on the edge of town. The old folks’ home! Jesus, the captain’s only sixty-four.

On top of that, you’d think Richard would at least choose Autumn Crest. I mean, as far as old folks’ homes go, Oak Grove is the worst. I’ve been there. Brianna’s big sister Karina works there. She’s not a nurse or anything. She’s like the night-shift queen of bedpan swappers, spoon feeders, and colostomy-bag changers. It’s disgusting, but other than that it’s a pretty easy
job. Me and Brianna go over every once in a while at night and play Hearts with her in the cafeteria between rounds. Sometimes Brianna even sneaks weed in to her.

The building is a long rectangle made of ugly yellow brick. It looks like a stick of rancid butter with window air-conditioning units plugged into it. As soon as you walk in, the pee smell hits you right in the nose. Old folks in wheelchairs are parked all over the foyer like plants that someone set out in the sun. One time I walked in and this old lady with sores all over her legs hollers, “See anything you like?” And then she starts cackling like it’s the funniest thing since
I Love Lucy
.

And there’s the old man who tried to escape. Karina says they caught him rattling the emergency exit door several times and ran him back to his room. Then one day he made it. No one knew he was gone till his daughter showed up to visit. Karina had to come in on her time off and help look for him. They called the cops in too. Finally around eight o’clock in the evening, they found him in the woods sitting in the middle of a creek with his pants down. He told them he just wanted to get clean.

So you can see why me and Bobby and Padgett are pretty outraged about the captain ending up in there. He should be at his home in the country with the anti–Nogo Gatu sculptures protecting him. The aero-velocipede’s busted—what harm can the captain do now? It’s nothing but another railroad job, just like they railroaded Bobby off to the war.

That evening we try to visit, but Richard’s there and doesn’t want us around. He calls us
enablers
, like that’s a bad thing. Says we should have known better than to help the captain build something like the aero-velocipede.

“At least we’re there with him,” Bobby says. “What do you do? You drop off some food, give him a hard time about
shaping up his life, then leave. You never listen to him. You never even give him a chance to let you know who he is. You’re way too busy telling him who he ought to be.”

Richard looks down the hall. I can’t tell for sure, but it seems like Bobby might have hit a sore spot. “How long have you known my brother?” he asks wearily. “A couple of months? I’ve tried to help him my whole life.”

So I’m like, “Yeah, but you never had us before. We’re ready to step up and take some of the load off you.”

He nods, but he doesn’t seem convinced. I guess I don’t exactly appear like your standard health-care provider. And to tell the truth, I’m only ready to take on the chore because of Bobby.

“Look,” Richard says. “My brother’s resting right now. Call me tomorrow and we’ll see how he’s doing. If he’s up to it, we’ll see if maybe he can have some visitors.”

We agree to that, but when Padgett calls the next day, Richard tells him the captain’s still not ready to see anyone. The same thing the day after that. Bobby’s getting tired of it, says it’s bullshit. “We need to
make
that asshole let us see the captain. I don’t care if we have to pound it into him.”

Pound it into him? Now he’s talking about beating up an old man? That’s not the Bobby I used to know. He was the one who kicked the butts of guys who talked about pounding old men. I have to steer him in a different direction fast.

“Do we really need Richard’s permission?” I say, a perfect idea suddenly striking me. “We don’t have to go during visiting hours at all. We can wait till after midnight and get Brianna’s big sister to sneak us in.”

I halfway expect Bobby to keep going on about pounding Richard, but instead his eyes do what they rarely do anymore—light
up. “A sneak attack?” he says. “Hmmm. That could actually work. Yeah, I like it. That’s my Ceejay, brilliant as always.”

This is more like it, I tell myself. Now I have something I can actually do instead of sitting around waiting for life to change. When I lay out the plan to Padgett, he’s up for it right away—it’s the start of the misfit revolution, he says—but Brianna takes some convincing. She doesn’t want her sister to get fired—and I can’t blame her for that—but this is an emergency. Besides, if Karina can get away with smoking weed on her shift, then I’m sure she can handle a little thing like sneaking us in. Finally, Brianna agrees and calls me back later to say Karina’s in, but she wants a little something in return—a little weed ought to do it.

That evening, I tell the parents I’m spending the night with Brianna, and she, Bobby, and I load up with Padgett in his VW. As planned, it’s exactly 12:08 when we pull up to Oak Grove, and Karina’s waiting at the front door to let us in. Even though she’s older, she’s not as tall as Brianna. She might weigh just as much, though.

“Okay,” she whispers as we walk inside, “Brianna, you come with me and act like you’re just here to play cards. The rest of you, be real quiet. The captain’s room is number twenty-three, down that hall. Make sure you don’t disturb Mr. Kuykendall in the room next door. He’s a light sleeper and gets real cranky if somebody wakes him in the middle of the night.”

It’s eerie creeping down the half-lit hall. Our shoes squeak on the freshly mopped floor, but there’s nobody around to catch us. The night nurse is in the office, and Bridget, the other aide, is making her rounds down another hall. The plan is for us to stay with the captain for one hour and then sneak back out during the next round of bed checks.

At room twenty-three, I slowly twist the doorknob, but still it makes a click that sounds so loud it might as well be a gunshot. We look down the hall. No one’s around to hear anything. Except, of course, Mr. Kuykendall in the next room. I pause for a moment before opening the door, letting the silence take everything over again.

Inside, the captain’s bed sits in the middle of the room. It has a high metal railing along the side to make sure he doesn’t roll onto the floor. From his point of view, it probably seems like he’s in jail. There are a couple of chairs and a chest of drawers, but nothing to make this look like anyone’s home. You might think Richard would’ve put some plants or flowers in there, at least, but no such luck for the captain. He lies there stiff as a mummy, wrapped tight in his sheets, a white strap with a silver buckle across his stomach.

“Damn,” Bobby whispers bitterly. “They’ve strapped him in like he’s Hannibal Lecter or somebody.”

As we gather round his bed, his eyes open. He stares at us, but his face is blank. No sparkle of the Yimmies or dark fear of the Nogo Gatu in his eyes. Nothing.

“Captain,” whispers Bobby. “It’s me. It’s Bobby. We came to visit you.”

Still nothing registers in the captain’s eyes.

Padgett leans over him. “Are they treating you all right in here?”

The captain’s mouth opens, but no words come out.

“We hauled Angelica back to your house,” I tell him. “She’s a little cracked up but nothing we can’t handle.”

“We’ll get her fixed up in no time,” Bobby says.

The captain still looks at us as if we’re strangers.

“They’ve got him all doped up,” Bobby says. “He’s practically a zombie.”

“What’s that smell?” asks Padgett. “Something stinks.” And Bobby’s like, “Jesus, it’s shit. He shit himself, and they just let him lie here in it. What kind of place is this?”

I’m like, “Maybe I should go down and get Karina,” but Bobby says no way—that’ll just get us kicked out.

“Well, we can’t let him stay like this.”

“We’re not going to,” Bobby says. “Here, help me get this thing unstrapped. We’ll take him into the bathroom and get him cleaned up, and then we’re going to spring him out of this hellhole.”

Padgett and I look at each other. We’re just teenagers. We know we don’t have the authority to do anything like this. But I guess neither of us was ever the kind to let that stop us before.

“Whatever you say,” I tell him. “You’re the commander.”

“Come on,” says Bobby. “Let’s go.”

While we wrestle with the strap and the sheets, the captain looks on blankly. A car shows about as much emotion when mechanics are working it over. Once we get him up, helping him to the bathroom is a whole new challenge. His legs barely work. He stares down at them as if he’s not sure what their function is.

“You can do it,” says Bobby. “One foot in front of the other.”

Finally, we get him in the bathroom, and Bobby cleans him up while me and Padgett strip the sheets off the bed. None of this is a pretty chore. I can’t help thinking about my mom and little sister. They helped Grandma like this for a long time. Some people wouldn’t do it. It’d be beneath them. But our family has more guts than that.

The captain’s clothes are in the closet, and it takes all three of us to get him dressed. As we work on him, he finally perks up a little. The smallest trace of a smile tugs at his lips. “I used to have clothes just like this,” he says.

We’re about finished with him when the door opens behind us. We’re startled so bad, everyone but the captain practically jumps out of their shoes.

“What are you doing?” It’s Brianna.

“Where’s your sister?” Bobby asks her. “You’re supposed to be keeping her busy.”

“She’s still in the cafeteria playing Hearts with Bridget. Why does the captain have his clothes on?”

Me, Bobby, and Padgett trade glances. “Look, Brianna,” I say, “we have to get him out of here. He doesn’t belong in this place.”

But she’s like, “Wait a minute. That’s not part of the deal. You were just supposed to visit with him. You can’t take him off the grounds.”

“He was lying here in his own shit,” says Bobby.

“I don’t care,” Brianna says. “You take him out of here and my sister will get fired. Not to mention you’ll probably get arrested for kidnapping.”

Padgett tries to take the logical route with her. “No one’s going to get arrested,” he says. “All we want to do is haul him back to his own house and let him come down from whatever drugs they’ve pumped him up with. Once Richard sees that it’s better for him to stay at home, everything will work out.”

“Yeah? Well, what if it doesn’t? You don’t know what’s going to happen. He might do something twice as crazy. He might kill himself.”

“We won’t let that happen,” I say, but she’s like, “What are you going to do, live there?”

Bobby walks over and puts his hand on her shoulder. “Listen, Brianna, I want you to understand this—the captain’s dying right here. Maybe not physically, but his soul is. Look at him. Everything that makes him the captain is gone, hollowed
out, like a jack-o’-lantern. That’s the worst thing there is right there. Worse than killing himself. So think about that, because we’re taking him out of here no matter what. You can go tell your sister, you can tell the nurse. I don’t care if we have to fight them on the way out, but we’re getting the hell out of here with the captain right now.”

She studies the captain for a moment. Her face softens. “Okay,” she says. “But you better get him out pretty quick before the next bed check. I’ll go try to make sure no one comes down this way.”

Bobby hugs her. “Good girl.”

We give her enough time to get back to the cafeteria before we hoist the captain up from the bed. His legs still don’t work all that great, so while Bobby leads the way, me and Padgett help the captain shuffle across the room and out the door. The way his legs wobble, it’s like trying to teach a hundred-and-seventy-pound baby how to walk.

In the hall, I lose my grip on his arm and we both end up crashing into his neighbor’s door. From inside the room comes a loud shout—“Hey! Who’s out there?”

“Oh crap,” says Padgett. “We woke Mr. Kuykendall.”

Mr. Kuykendall isn’t finished either. “Nurse!” he yells. “There’s somebody trying to break in here! Nurse! I don’t pay my good money to have transients knocking on my door at all hours of the night!”

“Jesus,” says Bobby. “We better get the hell out of here. Let me get hold of the captain. Padgett, you go ahead and make sure nobody’s looking.”

Bobby loops the captain’s right arm around his shoulder, then hoists him up and carries him down the hall like a big bundle of laundry, Mr. Kuykendall still barking angry-old-man curses behind us.