Sticks (3 page)

Arlen said to them, “I’ll warn you now, this pig is a killer.”

“Oh yeah?” the head boy said. “You think I’m scared of some
piggy
?”

“He’s a total destruction machine,” Arlen said, and gave Mangler’s leash a little pull, which is Mangler’s signal to become Super Mutant Avenger Pig—snorting and squealing and showing his pig teeth. This doesn’t sound like much, but an irritated pig isn’t pretty.

The boys jumped back.

“You let us pass,” Arlen said, “or I’ll let him go!”

Mangler was squealing like a killer beast from the crypt. The boys tore off and we were saved. Arlen is the second-shortest boy in the whole fifth grade, but with a maniac pig and attitude he does okay.

I asked Poppy once if Mangler could hang around Vernon’s to spook Buck. She said she had enough animals in the hall already. “If you’re expecting a pig to save you, Mickey Vernon, you’d better think again. Making you miserable is just what Buck Pender is aiming to do.”

“It’s not fair!”

“It’s sure not.” Poppy whacked the cash register drawer, which gets stuck when it rains. “You’re expecting
life to be fair, you’re in for one raw disappointment.”

Arlen’s looking up at his hardly built tree house and shakes his head. Half the base is laid around the tree’s fat branches, the ladder’s up, but that’s it. Mostly, Arlen’s tree house is pieces of wood on the ground, covered by a tarp. In the beginning, we figured his parents couldn’t keep up the torture, but Mr. and Mrs. Pepper are strong people. Now it seems that there’s nothing left for Arlen to do but change.

Arlen throws a stick. “Life’s not fair.”

“No kidding.”

“Parents just concentrate on the thing that drives them nuts and all the other good stuff you do goes out the window.”

*   *   *

“Please, God. Please, God.”

It’s an hour later. Arlen’s racing down Delby Street. I’m right behind him. Arlen remembered that he left his bookbag outside Vinnie’s Variety when he retied his shoelace on the way home from school and we need to get it back before his father comes home. We rip past the old, gray Woolworth’s. Gray is a big color in Cruckston, New Jersey. Poppy says the old paper mill shot up so much pollution when it was operating that it covered the town with a gray mist. People get around that by painting their front doors bright colors. Arlen’s door is yellow; Vernon’s door is pool table green. We tear across Mariah Boulevard, past a guy who’s scratching his red beard, scratching his torn sweater, hanging
on to a lamppost—drunk. He crashes into the street, right in front of a bus, which screeches to a stop, missing him. I watch to make sure he gets across the street okay.

“Oh, look!” says bad news stepping from the alley. “It’s
Vernon
!”

My heart sinks. Buck Pender shoves me with his shoulder and pushes me toward the alley.

“Stop it!” I say.

Buck’s blocking our way with Freddie Castle and Pike Lorey. They’re so big it’s like a wall went up in front of us. Pike takes a long drag on his cigarette and throws it on the ground. Freddie spits out a wad from his fat mouth. Buck smiles ugly. “Who’s going to make me,
Vernon
?”

He always says my name like I don’t deserve to have it. I want to hurt him so bad for all the times he’s pushed me around and humiliated me at pool and—

“Leave him alone!” Arlen shouts.

“You talking to me?” Buck rubs his flat nose and struts toward Arlen. “How’d you like to have your face rearranged, squirt?”

Arlen gulps big.

Freddie and Pike step forward in their leather jackets and clench their dirty fists.

We sure could use Mangler now. I’m wondering if it’s better to get beat up with your eyes opened or closed.

Suddenly a rumble shakes the street. The big green Peterbilt truck roars up and pulls to a stop. The guy with the beard shouts, “Those punks bothering you?”

“Yes!” Arlen shrieks. “
Yes!
They’ve been bothering us all our lives!”

The man jumps out of the truck. “
Back off!
” he yells at Buck and his ghouls, who race off around the corner.

“You boys okay?”

We nod, catching our breath.

He watches us to make sure. “I don’t tolerate bullies.” He scrapes his cowboy boot on the curb.

“That’s good,” says Arlen.

He points a long finger at us. “Those punks bother you again, you tell ’em you’ve got friends.”

“Yeah,” we say, grinning.

“All right then.”

He stands there for a minute like he’s got more to say, then he climbs back in the Peterbilt. It’s got chrome around the doors and giant killer wheels. On the door is a painted horse—dark brown and white with a thrown-back head and energy coming out of it like it’s alive. I step on the runner to shake the guy’s hand, firm, like Poppy taught me.

“Thanks, mister!”

He reaches down and shakes back firm like me.

He rams the Peterbilt in gear. “Move ’em out, boys!”

I jump off the runner and step back as the great truck blasts off, shaking the potholes on Mariah Boulevard.

Arlen gets his bookbag back, but forgets about the I’M TOO YOUNG TO DIE note on his father’s chair. His dad says leaving the bookbag at Vinnie’s
counts
. It doesn’t matter that we almost got beaten to a pulp getting it back and would have died if we hadn’t gotten saved by that awesome cowboy driving the biggest truck in America.

I’m waiting to tell my mom about it. Mom’s sitting at her rolltop desk in her bedroom talking on the phone, trying to convince Mrs. Looper to join the citizens’ crime patrol that she helped set up two years ago when all those burglaries started happening in Cruckston.

“Lyla,” Mom says into the phone, “we’ve got formal rules from the police. We never get out of the car, we never chase anyone, we never apprehend or question. If anything looks suspicious, we call 911.”

Mom takes off her reading glasses, which are held
together by a safety pin, and smiles tired. She’s an assistant nursery-school teacher during the day, goes to college three nights a week to get her teaching degree, and helps run the crime patrol when she’s not sleeping. Mom picks up a yellow sheet from the stack on her bed that reads
A TOWN IS WATCHING
, and tells Mrs. Looper about the training session next month for new volunteers. Mom hangs up the phone and shakes her head.

“If people just understood that it only takes a few hours once or twice a month to make a difference.” Mom checks off Mrs. Looper’s name on her weekly call sheet.

I nod and yank her thick brown ponytail to make her smile. When Mom smiles, her freckles light up. I say she should send the citizens’ patrol to Buck Pender’s apartment and drag him out in handcuffs.

“What happened?”

I tell her about Buck and the cowboy. It takes a few minutes to convince her I’m okay. She scrunches up the
A TOWN IS WATCHING
sheet and throws it on the blue rug. Then she puts her arm around my shoulder and we go into the kitchen. “A cowboy in Cruckston, New Jersey,” she says. “Now that’s something I’d like to see.”

I sit at the counter on the wobbly white stool and start peeling potatoes for dinner. I help with dinner three nights a week; Mom says she’s got a responsibility to the world to raise a male who can cook. I’m concentrating on getting the potatoes perfect, digging the peeler into the brown spots. Mom’s skinning chicken pieces.

“What do you think Dad would be like if he was still alive?” I ask her.

She puts her knife down and looks out the kitchen window. “He’d still be very handsome.”

I groan.

She’s looking at a chicken leg now, smiling sad. “He would have won a lot more championship titles by now, I think.”

“We’d be rich, I bet!”

“I imagine he’d be working on old cars, still, honey, trying to get them going. We’d probably have six of them in the alley in various stages of disrepair.”

“I bet he could teach me how to beat Buck.”

“He would have given it one huge try.” She squeezes my hand. “He’d be so proud of you and your sister . . . .”

I swallow hard. “He’d be proud of all of us.”

“Yes he would. We’re doing all right around here.”

Mom was widowed at twenty-seven. Poppy says that’ll make you tough like nothing else. We moved in with Poppy above the hall after Dad died instead of going to Florida to live with Mom’s mother. Mom said Grandma Carol would have loved to have us, but it was better staying here. My big sister, Camille, says that’s because Grandma Carol never understood about Mom’s going to college. She’s heard them fight about it, too. Mom says going to college is something she needs to do to make herself better and Grandma Carol says plenty of people do real well without it, like
her
. We drive down to Florida
every summer to visit and swim in the ocean, though. I’m glad Mom and Poppy never fight about school. They fight about how hard Poppy works and how hard Mom works and the right way to grow tomatoes on the roof.

Mom’s father died when she was a teenager; he was a salesman—that’s all I know about him. He wasn’t around much. Grandma Carol showed me a picture of him once, but his face was fuzzy, like he wasn’t even there. Camille was six when our dad died. She says you can get real hung up about having a dead father and that you’ve got to get on with life.

I walk to the open window and hear the
click, click
of pool balls in the hall below. Poppy started teaching me to play when I was four years old on the same little table my dad learned on. She said that from the start, I always had the fire. I learn from everybody, too. The guys in the hall give me pointers. I appreciate the help, but sometimes having so many teachers gets confusing.

Snake Mensker says stand up tall.

Big Earl Reed says bend down easy.

Madman Turcell says grip your stick tight.

Hank the Crank says play it loose.

“
Ta da!
”

Camille jumps into the kitchen with shiny pink fabric hanging all over her. Camille is designing and sewing the costumes for her high-school play and it’s the only thing she ever talks about other than boys. Camille is sixteen.

“Mother,” she says, twirling around, “isn’t this fabric
divine
?”

Mom touches the cloth. “Very nice.”

“I’m going to make matching skirts for the girls and put sequins on them for the big dance number. It’s going to be heaven.” Camille touches the freckles on her nose, which are just like Mom’s. “
What
,” she says to me, “is the matter with you?”

“I don’t like pink much.”

Camille closes her eyes. “A typically limited male response. Honestly, Mickey, sometimes I wonder what you will grow up to become.”

I point a potato at her. “I’m going to be nine-ball champion of the world!” This doesn’t mean much to Camille. She hates pool. “And I don’t like pink because there’s no pink on a pool table.”

“You are so
totally
alien!”

I lift my arms and give a blood-sucking vampire scream.

“
Enough!
” Mom shoves chicken, potatoes, and carrots into the oven.

Poppy comes into the kitchen carrying a copy of
Billiard News
and asks Camille why she’s all wrapped up like a mummy. Camille says she’s connecting with the fabric if that’s all right, and Poppy says she’d better disconnect if she wants any dinner. Camille runs out of the room saying in case anyone hasn’t noticed, she’s under
massive pressure
trying to get the costumes ready for the play. Poppy takes a pan of apple crisp from the freezer and says don’t worry, we’ve
noticed
.

*   *   *

Camille doesn’t talk at dinner. She doesn’t talk much the next day at breakfast either. Mom says it’s
a real compliment to Camille that the school gave her this opportunity to show the world her talent. Camille sniffs and says she’s scared she’ll mess up on the costumes and Mom says that’s a real natural feeling. I say even if she does mess up bad, it won’t be the end of the world—there’s always another game.

Camille stands up. “This
isn’t
a stupid pool game, Mickey! This is my
life
!” She runs out of the kitchen.

“What did I say?”

Mom shakes her head and kicks my bookbag toward me. “Go to school, darling.”

I go.

Arlen gets worked up at school because Petie Pencastle tells him that Rory Magellan is planning the greatest science fair experiment in the history of Grover Cleveland Elementary. Petie doesn’t know if Rory is building a chemical purification plant or an electric car.

“How do you know this?” Arlen screams.

“Because T.R. told me.”

“How does he know?”

“Because Warren Eversley told him.”

“Warren Eversley,” yells Arlen, “is in third grade! This is not a reliable source!”

Petie shrugs. “He lives next to Rory.”

“I need facts!” Arlen shouts. “Aerial photographs!”

Mrs. Riggles gets worked up talking about the Revolutionary War and forgets to give us science and reading. The best teachers don’t stay on schedule. Mrs. Riggles says that some people who fight each other can become friends like America and England did. Petie Pencastle and I smile at each
other. Petie tried to beat me up when he first moved to town, but we found out we had things in common, like playing pool and spitting, and started liking each other after that. I think a lot of the world’s problems could be solved by a couple of guys shooting a few racks down at the local hall. Mrs. Riggles says war happens when people lose all common ground with each other.