Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (11 page)

“Shut up, Mike,” Gordon says. He’s never talked back to an adult that way before. He feels a vivid, electric thrill in the tips of his ears as he wonders if Mike is going to hit him. But with Johnny there, he’s pretty sure he can get away with it.

In fact, Johnny is chuckling and rubbing his greasy fingers on the back of his oily, crewcut scalp. “I been wantin’ to say that all day. Good for you, Gordon.”

“Y’know, if you weren’t the boss’ son, I’d beat the livin’ crap out of you,” Mike says.

“But I am and you’re not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing….” Gordon’s courage is ebbing.

“He thinks he’s better than us,” Mike says to Johnny, “because he’s gonna inherit this place someday and then he’ll get to lord it all over us.”

“I hope I’m around to see it,” says Johnny, “’cause that’ll be the day I get me a big ol’ fat raise. Ain’t that right, Gordon?”

“Right,” says Gordon. “Only I don’t want it. The business, I mean.”

“Why not?” Johnny asks him. “You get to sit around on your butt all day in a nice air-conditioned office. Put your feet up on the desk and let somebody else do all the damn work. That ain’t so bad, is it?”

“I guess not. But I want to do something else.”

“Like what?” Mike asks, outraged. “What’re you gonna do? Sell cotton candy? Jack-off roosters, like Johnny?”

“I don’t know. I’m only seven…” Gordon shrugs.

“There’s a lotta money in them roosters, if you got the thumbs for it,” Johnny muses, looking straight at Mike. “You might wanna try it after Gordon takes this place over and fires your sorry ass.”

“You little dickhead,” Mike says to Gordon in disgust, “you have no idea how good you’ve got it.” He gets up and leaves as Johnny leans back laughing at him.

After Mike is gone, Johnny points to the sack from
Gunnarsson’s
that Gordon is still holding. “What’s in the bag?” he asks. “You bring your lunch?”

“It’s just a Troll Doll.”

“Well, you gonna let me see it?”

Gordon takes the Troll Doll out of the sack and shows it to Johnny.

“Ugly little sucker, ain’t it?”

Gordon just nods his head.

“I seen worse, though. Some of them dead gooks in Vietnam had little bellies on ‘em like that. They’d get that way after layin’ out in the sun for a few days. Then they’d bust wide open full of maggots and the vultures would eat ‘em.” Johnny clacks his teeth.

“Gross…” says Gordon. Then he’s sees his opportunity to unload the secret he’s been carrying. Johnny will listen to him. “I saw a dog get killed last night,” he says.

“Killed? Like how? Hit by a car?” Johnny peers into Gordon’s face, looking for answers.

“No… a lot weirder than that. My grandma’s neighbors killed it on purpose–with their minds.” Gordon goes on to tell Johnny about everything he saw in the Smiley’s backyard last night.

Johnny seems to believe him. “You really think that mighta been your mama standin’ back there with all them other dog killers?” he asks Gordon.

“I’m not sure. All I saw was her shoes. But she wasn’t home when I got home.”

“That don’t mean nothin’.”

“But when I saw her she was wearing the same sandals.”

“You got anything else?”

“I guess not,” Gordon says, still feeling a desperate urge to talk. “But there’s this story my mom always tells about how poor she was when she was growing up. She was adopted. Her mom and dad were missionaries. They just lived off donations from the church, which hardly paid anything. So, anyway… my mom had these rabbits for pets, Blackie and Humphrey. And one night, after there hadn’t been much food in the house for a while, they had a big chicken dinner. Or at least my mom thought it was chicken. Only it tasted weird. And when she asked what it was, they told her it was rabbit. They’d just eaten Blackie.”

Johnny bursts out laughing. “Oh man, your momma musta been pissed!”

“She was. But maybe now she’s getting revenge.”

“How? By killin’ other people’s pets?”

“I don’t know–something like that.”

“What’d you have for dinner last night?”

“Spare ribs.” Gordon can already see where this is going.

“Maybe they was
Doberman
ribs….” Johnny raises his eyebrows in feigned horror, then grabs Gordon in a headlock and tickles him until he’s out of breath.

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

There was more to the story about his mother’s rabbits, an epilogue that Gordon neglected to tell Johnny because he didn’t really understand it himself. His grandparents on his mother’s side were millionaires many times over. His grandmother had inherited a fortune in stocks and bonds from her bachelor uncle, a famous New York patent attorney, shortly after she married Gordon’s grandfather. They became Methodist missionaries and lived out the remainder of their lives in poverty by deliberate choice. Gordon’s mother only found out about this after both of her parents had died and she saw their will, which distributed the millions among various Christian charities and right-wing think tanks. Gordon’s mother “got zilch” as she put it–just a twenty-two-year-old mobile home in a Vacaville trailer park and a fake diamond brooch. It infuriated her to think that she’d been forced to eat her pet rabbits for dinner while her parents were “rolling in dough.” There were some nights when it was all she could talk about.

Gordon’s father was blasé about the whole story. “Look, it’s no big deal…” he’d say. “We inherited a bundle, too–and you don’t see me telling you to go to church, or to cut out all your damn shopping sprees. So just be grateful.”

“That’s not the point!” Gordon’s mother shouted. But the point she was trying to make always remained obscure. Her parents were God-fearing maniacs. They hadn’t been very good at distinguishing between pets and food. It was tragic, in its way, but there was nothing she could do about it now. Still, she kept obsessing over it. As her monologues wore on, Gordon got the impression that some of his mother’s worst traits must have been seeded in those long ago days: her addiction to painkillers and Harlequin romance novels, her off-the-cuff blows to her son’s self-esteem, her rage when denied the finer things in life, her unspoken envy of elegance. On one point Cynthia Swannson was perfectly clear:

She hadn’t found poverty ennobling.

Gordon resolved that if he ever came into a fortune of his own he would spend it. It seemed the wisest course, not only for his sake, but for the sake of future generations as well. Which is why, after he stole a hatchet from his father’s hardware store (following his conversation about barbecued dog ribs with Johnny), he felt very little guilt. It almost didn’t feel like stealing at all. More like a smallish advance against his inheritance, was how he thought of it.

Now Gordon only needs one more thing to become a member of Jimmy’s Tree House Order: the hangman’s noose from a dead man’s garage. Gordon has no idea where to begin looking for such a rare and dreadful talisman, but Jimmy, as promised, knows just the place–Old Man Jensen’s garage. Supposedly, the mean old bastard hung himself in there only a few weeks ago.

Lucky for Gordon!

Every small town has an Old Man Jensen, a neighborhood crank who hates kids and foreigners and is always threatening to call the cops. A smelly, half-crazy old coot most often found pointing his big-knuckled finger at young mothers in the post office and saying, “Those noisy brats of yours will be the ruin of this world!” Tan polyester slacks belted just below the armpits, a ferocious stare from under wildly askew, overgrown eyebrows, a nose like the pimpled hide of a strawberry–and often just as red–
that
was what Gordon remembered about Old Man Jensen. And yelling–lots of yelling with old-fashioned cuss words. The alley behind Old Man Jensen’s house was not a good place to ride a bike or play Kick the Can with your friends.

That alley is where Old Man Jensen’s garage sits. It’s a broken-roofed converted shed covered with spidery dead vines and peeling paint recently pelted with dirt clods. Three small rectangular windows run horizontally across the garage door near the top. Gordon has to stand on tiptoe to peer through them. They’re hazy with filth and it’s hard to see anything at first, but as Gordon’s eyes adjust to the dimness, he begins to make out a tool box, fishing rods, sacks of fertilizer, paint cans, pruning shears, string-bound stacks of old
National Geographics;
and right in the center of it all, a partially-assembled Model T. Far above the Model T’s rear fender, Gordon sees a hangman’s noose dangling from the rafters, just where Jimmy had said it would be. There must be an open window somewhere letting in a breeze, because the noose is swaying in a spooky way.

Gordon goes around to the side of the garage and finds the open window, pushes it open wider, and climbs on through. He steps down onto what he thinks is an antique car seat, but in actuality it’s a gunnysack spread across a stack of glass milk bottles. The bottles go clattering across the cement floor, making Gordon clench his teeth in fright. But if the old man is really dead, he tells himself, there’s no one around to hear him. Scared but determined, Gordon climbs on top of the Model T’s fender. The noose is just out of reach. He’s about to go grab a rake to fish it down when suddenly the garage’s back door jerks open with a burst of dazzling light.

“What in the Sam-hell are
you
doin’ in here?” Old Man Jensen shouts, alive as ever. He storms in like some angry, Old Testament prophet. Without even thinking, Gordon launches himself off the fender, snatching the noose from the rafters in mid-flight. He darts along the side of the Model T with Old Man Jensen lurching after him, his bony old hands crabbed and swatting, but catching only air. Gordon pivots past the headlights, clambers over a wooden box full of gear parts, pivots again, and then he’s running along the opposite side of the car and out the open garage door. When he hits the alley, still accelerating, he holds up the hangman’s noose like a trophy above his shining blonde head. He hears Old Man Jensen yelling after him: “Come back here, you sticky-fingered little whelp! You bastard son of a whore!” But Gordon is long gone by then.

Not much later, panting like a dog, Gordon climbs the rope ladder to Jimmy’s tree house. The hangman’s noose is draped across his shoulders, the Troll Doll secured in his front pocket, and the hatchet swings from a loop in his belt. At last, Gordon has all the bounty that will guarantee him admittance to the fabulous Tree House Order of Jacques de Molay. He’s in awe of his own cunning and bravery. He imagines Jimmy will be, too. He envisions Jimmy asking him to become his blood brother, in addition to making him Vice President of the Tree House Order–or Secretary-Treasurer, at the very least.

Clutching like a monkey at the top of the rope ladder, Gordon knocks on the trapdoor so Jimmy will know he’s there. The trapdoor opens only a crack and Jimmy’s hand appears, grasping. Gordon says, “Let me in.” Jimmy says, “Give me the stuff first.” Gordon is getting a feeling of vertigo. He’s way up high, and he can’t go for much longer supporting the full weight of his body with just one hand and his clenched knees. He hands up the noose, the doll, and the hatchet as quickly as he can.

“Now can I come in?” he asks.

Jimmy answers by dropping the noose over Gordon’s head and hacking through the rope ladder with the hatchet, sending Gordon tumbling back to earth. The noose slips from Jimmy’s hands, so Gordon’s neck is spared from being broken, as intended, but it’s still a long way down.

What he’ll remember most is the rush of the wind in his ears. And then a sudden silence and the smell of risen dirt.

Picture seven-year-old Gordon Swannson sprawled on a square of grass framed in the trapdoor of a tree house: a mangled pink bug in a Hang Ten T-shirt, a tiny study in pain. The sum of his existence now includes a broken arm, a splintered leg, three cracked ribs, and a gash along the back of his skull that will require sixty-two stitches. It will be a while before the ambulance gets there, so Gordon has plenty of time to think. He decides he won’t be friends with Jimmy again until at least the seventh grade.