The Riverman (The Riverman Trilogy) (17 page)

Meanwhile, Mike was dispatching long thin ribbons of shaving cream, waving his arm in a haphazard figure eight. The cream flew at least fifteen feet, but the porch was more than twenty feet away. The grass and bushes took the brunt.

A water balloon exploded at my feet and unleashed an acidic stench. I couldn’t be sure what the liquid was, but I wasn’t taking any chances. “They’ve got pee balloons!” I screamed to Mike, and that’s all he needed to hear.

Seconds later we were both following in Trevor’s wake, packs over our shoulders and eggs and water balloons raining down around us like mortar shells.

“Keep goin’! Keep goin’!” Mike squealed to Trevor. There was a certain amount of glee in his voice. This was exactly the type of night he had been hoping for.

We made it across the street and kept going until we were out of range of the streetlights. Shielded behind a tree, we assessed the situation.

“Who was that?” Mike asked.

“I’m guessing Ken Wagner and Sanjay,” Trevor said.

“Sanjay is such a tool,” Mike added. Then he sniffed Trevor’s shoulder. “Oh god, it really was pee, wasn’t it?”

“Probably vinegar,” I said. It made more sense. It would take a lot of pee to fill up multiple balloons.

“It’s gross, whatever it is,” Trevor said, peeling off his top layer. “I knew I should have brought another sweatshirt.”

“Get that pee-smock outta here,” Mike commanded.

Trevor did the contrary. He thrust it at us. “Lap it up, doggies.”

Mike grabbed for a sleeve and yanked it away. “Buh-bye,” he said as he swung it like a lasso and tossed it into the bough of a tree.

“I’m gonna get frostbite!” Trevor protested, folding his arms. He was down to only a T-shirt. It was close to freezing out.

“Really?” Mike asked. “You’d rather stink?”

“I’d rather keep moving,” Trevor said. “Come on. Let’s take down one of our targets.” Trevor bolted again, and our only choice was to tag along.

The little kids had gone home by this point, and our classmates had completely taken over the neighborhood. Bands of three to six roamed up and down the streets and huddled in yards to plot. Many of the costumes were uninspired—girls in football jerseys and eye black, guys in rubber monster masks—but everyone had at least one can of shaving cream at the ready. Trees and cars and signs were all caked with the gunk. I could taste it in the air.

We snaked and dodged, wielding our cans with fingers on the nozzles so that any potential foes would know we had the drop on them. It was exciting, and for the first time in weeks I was smiling, genuinely. I hadn’t forgotten about Charlie, but I knew he was out there alone, while I had two guys with me who didn’t care how good I was at video games, who didn’t steal my ideas, who wanted me as a friend because they thought I was fun.

“Better run, ya pansies!” someone yelled, and Mike pointed his nozzle back over his shoulder and let loose with a stream of shaving cream as he ran. It looked like the exhaust from a jet.

A burst of red and blue lights tipped me off to a police car down the street, and I shouted to Trevor, “Cops! Hang a ricky!”

Trevor got the message, making a sharp right turn into the O’Haras’ yard. We hustled past their aboveground pool, over a chain-link fence on the other side, and kept going for a while, running from yard to yard, trying to stay buried in the shadows.

We were a couple of houses away when I realized we were heading straight for Fiona’s. Trevor was leading again, and I considered asking him to shoot back across the street, but any excuse to pass by Fiona’s—if only to see if the light was on in her window—was a good enough excuse for me.

As soon as we reached the border between the Andersons’ and the Loomises’ yards, Trevor stopped and said, “This is it, I think.”

“This is what?” I asked.

“Fiona Loomis’s house,” Mike said.

“Yeah, so?”

“It’s one of our targets,” Trevor told me.

“Target for what?” There was only one second-floor room with the light on. I was pretty sure Fiona’s room was on the second floor, but from our angle I couldn’t tell if the lit one was it.

“TP. Eggs. The whole shebang,” Mike said. “We’re messing this place up good tonight.”

“Uh … why?”

“Because,” Mike said.

“Because of what?”

“She’s a pig,” Trevor said.

A pig?
He called her a pig? I couldn’t believe it. He might as well have karate-chopped me in the Adam’s apple. I started to talk, but my windpipe sealed up and I could only whisper a short reply. “She’s…”

They weren’t listening anyway. By that point they were already digging into their backpacks and removing the ammo.

I took a deep breath and tried again. “She’s … What did you call her?”

Trevor put his thumb to his nose and started snorting and oinking.

“Naw,” Mike said as he hurled a roll of toilet paper at the nearest tree. “Her nose is all twisted. It’s more like one of those monkeys with the nasty old honkers.”

“Shut up,” I said. “What are you…? Just shut up.”

Trevor looked at me sideways. “Don’t you know Fiona Loomis? She’s weirdness squared.”

“Of course I know her,” I said. “She’s my…”

I stopped short, but not because of embarrassment. It was Trevor’s cheeks. I could see them rising beneath his ski mask. He was smiling.

That was all it took.

I reared back and jumped forward, drove my shoulder into Trevor’s stomach, and wrapped my arms around his body. It didn’t knock him over, but it knocked the breath out of him. He wheezed and coughed, and I could feel his hands pawing, trying to grab at my belt loops. His fingernails found the exposed skin of my lower back. He scraped and I clenched my teeth.

“What in the…?” Mike said.

Pushing Trevor forward, I tried to get a good foothold, but the grass was wet and my shoes didn’t have enough traction. I slipped backward, and as I fell, he fell, and soon we were on the ground wrestling.

“Knock it off!” Mike yelled.

While we squirmed, my hat twisted over my face, blinding me. I kicked and clawed but couldn’t tell if I was winning or not. I tried to grab Trevor’s arms, but now that he was in short sleeves there was nothing to get a grip on. My rib cage felt the pressure of his knee and I struggled to breathe, but it only made me fight harder. Blood rushed everywhere. My face was piping hot.

“What’s … wrong … with you?” Trevor grunted.

I yanked my hat off so I could finally see my opponent. I swung my arms, trying to land a punch, but ended up elbowing the ground and his thighs. I twisted my body to get a better angle, and that’s when I came nose-to-nozzle with it: Mike’s can of shaving cream.

He sprayed it right in my face.

I howled and I spat the cream off my lips. Letting go of Trevor, I rolled away.

“You’re crazy!” Trevor yelled.

I ran an arm across my face to wipe it clean and looked up to that window with the light on, hoping to see Fiona. Instead, looking down on me was Dorian Loomis. He raised a hand and gave a single sharp wave. If our fight was anything more than a curiosity to him, he didn’t let on.

I closed my eyes and screamed, “You don’t ever say anything about her! You don’t ever do anything to her! You don’t even think about her! Or I’ll kill you! I swear, I will kill you!”

When I opened my eyes, Dorian was no longer in the window. Trevor and Mike, grass-stained and dumbfounded, were standing a few feet away, staring at me.

I scrambled to my feet and ran into the street. Mrs. Carmine, holding a bowl of Smarties, watched me from her front steps and shook her head.

H
ALLOWEEN

P
ART
III

I washed my face with frigid water from our garden hose, ditched my hat in the bushes that lined our yard, and fetched my bike from the garage. It was barely past eight o’clock. Riding my normal speed, I could get to Gina Rizetti’s by eight forty-five. As far as my parents were concerned, I was still out trick-or-treating with Mike and Trevor. I had until ten. It was possible.

On the streets the battles were still raging, so I pedaled as far from large groups as I could and rode on grass when necessary until I reached the bike path on the south end of the neighborhood. This was a risk. The bike path went for miles—under train trestles and near the banks of the Oriskanny, past nature trails and county parks—but there were no lights along it and I had never ridden it at night.

The stars cast only ten feet of visibility in front of me, and to my sides the brambles and shrubs were impenetrable. If someone was hidden in them, I would never have known. So I didn’t even bother looking around. Eyes ahead, I hummed to myself and rode as fast as I could.

My legs were aching, but I couldn’t stop them moving. I couldn’t think about anything other than my anger. The humming was supposed to calm me, yet it only provided a sound track to the feelings. The song I was humming was one that Fiona used to play from the tape recorder on her handlebars. It was the same one she had taped over when she recorded her message for me. I didn’t realize that right away, but when I did, I hummed louder and I pedaled faster.

I arrived at Gina’s a few minutes earlier than predicted. At night, her neighborhood earned its seedy reputation. Men sat in upholstered chairs on their porches, smoking and watching the street. Their drags were long and menacing and made the cigarette tips glow a sickly orange. Cars moved slowly, as if they weren’t really going anywhere. They were nothing but steel wolves, out roaming.

Dogs were chained up next to rusted rebar and sheets of plywood and corrugated aluminum. They were mutts, but they all looked to be at least part German shepherd. The pathetic poster board Halloween decorations were here too, in even greater numbers than in my neighborhood. Some had been used to partially cover broken windows or missing shingles. I wondered if the homeowners would swap them out for Thanksgiving decorations as soon as the sun came up.

Cars were parked along the street and in the grass at Gina’s house. I didn’t have a lock, so I laid my bike down in the yard, flipped the plastic kiddie pool over it, and headed to the front door. Instead of a doorbell there were a few frayed wires sticking out of a ragged hole. The door was open a crack, so I pushed it all the way and stepped inside.

The party was nowhere near as wild as I’d expected. A group of five teenagers was lounging on a sectional, eating from bags of candy and watching a machete-wielding maniac on TV. Only a couple of them turned their glassy eyes to me. One cocked her chin, while the other shouted, “Someone’s li’l bro is here!”

Down a hall in the kitchen, another group was gathered around a card table. Stalks of smoke rose and flowered as music played from a small boombox on top of the fridge.

“You gotta be kiddin’ me!” Kyle stood up from the table and opened his arms. “Alistair Cleary, come for his vision quest.”

I took one step into the hall and stopped. I leaned against the wall and motioned for Kyle to meet me. After a day of running and riding and fighting, my body was ready to implode.

Kyle dropped his cigarette into a plastic cup and pushed past his friends. He strutted down the hall toward me, but when he saw my face, his fell. “What gives, buddy?”

“Hide me somewhere.”

“Come again?”

“I think I’m about to cry.”

*   *   *

There were no tears, but I sat hunched over on a race car bed fighting off the tremors in my chest. We were in Gina’s son’s room. From the toys on the floor—windups, simple puzzles, stuffed animals—I guessed the kid was three or four years old. He wasn’t there, though. It was only Kyle, and Kyle didn’t say a word. He sat on a wooden trunk and watched me.

The door opened and a young woman poked her head inside. “Everything cool?”

“Yeah,” Kyle said. “Give us a minute.”

The woman’s face was painted white like a skull, with dark rings around her eyes, black swaths across her nose, and crooked teeth drawn in over her lips. She had frizzy red hair with tall bangs and she was swirling a half-full beer bottle that she wore on the tip of her index finger. When she saw me sitting on the bed, she smiled widely. Her real teeth had a retainer bar over them.

“Are you Gina?” I asked.

“The one and only.”

“Thank you … for letting me … visit.” Each word came out more pathetic than the one before it, and I was sure that she would laugh at me.

But she didn’t. She stepped into the room and joined me on the bed. She wrapped an arm around me and replied, “Doors are always open here.”

“I think the kid needs some alone time,” Kyle explained. “Seems like he’s had a crap day.”

“She can stay,” I said. “Actually … I want her to stay.”

Gina rubbed my shoulder. Each of her fingers had a ring or two on it. “See that, Dwyer?” she said. “Little charmer likes me. Can I get you anything…?”

Kyle filled in the blank. “Alistair.”

“Alistair,” Gina echoed. “There’s a famous witch with that name. You spell it like he does?”

I had no idea who she was talking about. “The regular way,” I said.

She smiled again and sipped her beer and then set it on a plastic crate that did the duty of a nightstand. “We got juice, milk, soda, and
adult
beverages. Anything in the fridge is fair game. Whatever you want.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Her bone-white face lit up like she was at a surprise party. “Hear that, Dwyer? He called me ma’am! Stay forever if you want, big guy. Teach my son a thing or two about manners.”

“He’s good people,” Kyle said. “Always has been.”

It was the last thing I wanted to hear at that moment. “I’m not always good,” I shot back.

“Ooooo, polite and a bad boy,” Gina cooed. “Watch out, ladies.”

I pulled myself away from her grasp, puffed my shoulders up, and said, “I fought a kid today. Because he bad-mouthed my girlfriend.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Kyle said, and he leaned in to get a closer look at me. He must have seen a scratch or something else that met his approval, because he nodded and leaned back.

Gina grabbed her beer and raised it in a toast. “To gentlemen.”