Unstoppable (3 page)

Chapter Six

IT WAS THREE DAYS
before a woman from the county found him, locked inside the abandoned silo, hungry enough for his stomach to hurt bad and so thirsty he wished he hadn't wasted his own pee. Still, when he saw the woman's face and those kind, sad eyes, he had enough moisture in his body to cry, so he knew he must not have been too bad off. She put a blanket around him and tucked him into the backseat of her car, where he bounced comfortably down the drive, staring at Cyrus's tilted trailer for what he somehow knew was the last time.

“They said you ran away.” The woman looked at him in the rearview mirror. “The police looked for you everywhere. It was your foster sister Dora who told a teacher at school. She'd be locked up herself if I had anything to do with it—not Dora, your foster mother.”

The woman's eyes burned like little campfires. “Not that I have anything to do with it, though.”

Harrison nodded.

She took him to a doctor who looked at his eye and gently cleaned the dried blood from the gash Mr. Constable's belt buckle had left him with.

“He'll live.” The doctor held Harrison's head in his hands and looked down into his eyes, first one, then the other, with a penlight. “And I don't think we'll lose the eye. It should be fine when the swelling goes down.”

Harrison never thought about losing an eye.

After two fish sandwiches and three bottles of Gator-ade, he was taken to the police station, where he talked for a long time to an officer who was as nice as the woman. After that, she drove him to a place behind a high fence and metal gates. He took a shower and was shown to a small bedroom, where he expected to find an orange jumpsuit like the rest of the prisoners wore. The stiff, dark blue jeans and soft cotton shirt surprised him, and he looked at that same woman—she called herself Mrs. Godfrey—in confusion. There was even underwear and a pair of sneakers that looked big enough to fit him.

“I'll close the door so you can change,” she said. “Then you can give me the towel.”

Harrison looked down at the towel around his waist and by the time he looked up, she was gone. Dressed in his new clothes, he sat down to wait. After a soft knock, Mrs. Godfrey stuck her head inside the room.

“You all right, Harrison?”

He nodded.

She took the towel from him.

“Am I in jail for a long time?”

Mrs. Godfrey looked around at the room with no pictures or lamps or rugs. “No, Harrison. You're not in jail . . . well, you're not going to be here for long; it's just temporary, and it's not really a jail. It's a juvenile center.”

Harrison tried to believe her.

 

It was hard, but after several weeks of walks and talking and good food and safe nights, he trusted Mrs. Godfrey. She believed him when he told her the stories of how he'd gotten to the point he was at, four different homes over the years, fighting, and the truth about how his eye had been broken open and Mr. Constable was kicked by the cow.

When she announced to him one day that the judge had undone his adoption to the Constables, he believed her, even though it was hard to understand the part about Cyrus being a hero of sorts by swearing on Harrison's behalf and saying he acted in self-defense against Mr. Constable.

“I guess he hated the Constables more than me,” Harrison said, as much to himself as to Mrs. Godfrey.

 

Several more weeks went by before Mrs. Godfrey appeared one morning with a very serious and very different look on her face. The two of them sat at a picnic table outside the center in a shady spot on the grass.

“Harrison, I am very sad to tell you this, but I have to tell you because you need to know.”

A spark flared in the back of Harrison's brain. “My mother.”

“Yes.” She covered his hand with hers. “She's gone, Harrison. I'm very sorry.”

“She moved away?”

Tears glistened in Mrs. Godfrey's eyes. Slowly, she shook her head. “No, gone. She passed.”

“My mother?”

“I'm very sorry.”

Harrison didn't cry. He just blinked at her and watched a tear roll down her nose and drop off the end of it, spattering onto the table where they sat.

“Was she sick?” he whispered, his eyes on the spattered drop.

“I think she was very sick, and very tired, and I think she's in a place now where she's at peace and watching you and loving you just like she always did.”

Harrison stared at the broken tear for a long time before he spoke. “Mr. Constable said she didn't.”

“Harrison, most people in this world are good, but some are bad. Mr. Constable was a very bad man, and he was a liar. That's all I can say about it.”

They sat for a while before Mrs. Godfrey brought a hand to her mouth and cleared her throat. “Now I have some more news for you.”

Harrison studied her eyes, afraid.

She patted his hand. “Good news, this time.”

Chapter Seven

“TOMORROW YOU'LL BE GOING
with a new family.”

Harrison looked at his hands and sighed.

“I think you'll like them.”

He looked up at her, unable to stop the anger from burning in his eyes. “That's what they always say.”

She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “This will be different, Harrison. I promise. Did anyone ever promise you before?”

He scowled down into his lap. “Only my mother.”

Mrs. Godfrey stayed quiet for a minute, and he thought she might be about to leave until she cleared her throat again. “Well, I'm different from your mother. I've been a lot luckier than she has, and because I've been so lucky, I've been able to keep my promises.”

Harrison looked up into her eyes and saw they were glassy, and her fuzzy top lip trembled ever so slightly. “
Every
time?”

“Yes, and even though you've been very unlucky, you have to believe me that there are many foster parents out there who are wonderful people who care very deeply for their children. This time, I promise that you're going to be with two
very
special people.”

“How do you know?”

“She's my daughter.”

“Who?”

“The place you're going. My daughter's. She's very nice.”

“Like you?”

“Yes.” She sniffed and let out a breath, then smiled and nodded. “And her husband is a very good man. They don't have any children of their own. I told them all about you, Harrison, and they'd like to help.”

“Is it a farm?”

Mrs. Godfrey kept smiling. She sniffed again and looked off into the sky. “No, it's not a farm. He's a teacher and she's a lawyer.”

“What does he teach?”

“English, and he's a football coach.”

“Football?” Harrison felt a flame of excitement burst to life in his chest. “Do you think they'd let me play?”

“Well, Harrison, I know for a fact that he'd love it if you did.”

Chapter Eight

RON KELLY PICKED HARRISON
up at the bus station. He had a farmer's hands, rough and strong, but from working with weights and wood, not cows and tractors. His grip could crush stones, but his smile warmed Harrison's heart because it had just as much warmth as the smile he'd grown used to seeing on Mrs. Godfrey's face. He also didn't mind when Mr. Kelly asked Harrison to call him “Coach” because that's what he said all the students called him, whether they played football or not.

Mrs. Godfrey's daughter was waiting for them at home, a big gray house with white shutters and a bright-red front door. Coach's wife had long red hair. She wore thin glasses, but they couldn't hide her pretty green eyes, and her resemblance to Mrs. Godfrey was obvious when she smiled. Mrs. Kelly was a lawyer and Harrison could see why. Words flowed from her mouth like a song. Coach spoke more like a barking dog, and Harrison wondered how it was the two of them could get along so well, but they seemed to.

They showed Harrison his room and it was nice. While he studied it, Harrison caught Mrs. Kelly looking at his eye. He wanted to cover it because a thing so ugly didn't seem to fit in such a room. There were curtains on the windows. The bed sheets were crisp and white and the clothes in the closet were clean and ironed, without tears or stains. Beside the dresser stood a case of shelves bursting with books.

Harrison forgot about his eye at the sight of the books. Mrs. Kelly used a long finger to break one loose and she held it up for him so that he could see a serious young man's face on the cover, a sword in his belt, and his hand gripping a ship's rope as he looked out over the waves. On the distant shore, a rainbow rose from the land, arcing across the sky and promising good things to come.

“Have you ever read Louis L'Amour?” Mrs. Kelly asked.

Harrison shook his head, not wanting to tell her he'd never read a book, period.

“I think you'll like this.” She handed him the book. “My brothers loved
The Sacketts.
It's a family that comes to America when it was a new land.”

“I was a Hardy Boys guy,” said Coach with a grunt from the doorway.

Harrison shifted his feet. He hadn't heard of them, either.

“Are you hungry?” Mrs. Kelly asked.

Harrison nodded.

He followed them downstairs. They all sat at the table, where Mrs. Kelly had lunch already laid out—sandwich meat, cheese, bread, and salad. Harrison watched, mystified as they bowed their heads and Coach uttered a prayer. Harrison's first two families said lots of prayers, but it had been many years since he'd heard them and the prayers hadn't done anything to make them nicer people. His face felt hot when Coach looked up and saw him gawking. Coach just smiled and passed the bread.

Harrison put together a turkey sandwich and doused it with ketchup.

“We hope you'll feel welcome, Harrison,” Mrs. Kelly said, “and that you like your room.”

“I do.”

“You're a big kid,” Coach said. “My mother-in-law said you might want to play some football?”

Mrs. Kelly rattled her butter knife against the plate. “Really, Ron? Football? Harrison hasn't been sitting for more than five minutes and you're already going there?”

Coach shrugged and scowled at his wife, but not in a mean way. “He's a big boy and you know I need all the help I can get. Have you ever played before, Harrison?”

“No, but I like to watch it, and I think I could.”

Jennifer flashed Coach a look, sharp as a knife. “Would you like some salad, Harrison?”

“Is it okay if I don't?” he asked, the green food looking like something he'd give to the cows.

“Of course.”

“And I would like to play football, Mr.—I mean, Coach.”

Coach grinned and slapped a hand on the table, jarring the silverware. “Then it's settled. Tomorrow after school I'll get you geared up and you can get started. No sense wasting time. You'll need ten practices before you can play in a game, but that means you can play in next week's game. This is great. You'll like the team.”

Mrs. Kelly gave her husband an impatient look. “Coach has a lot riding on this season, Harrison, so you'll have to forgive his overexcitement.”

“There's no such thing as overexcitement when you're talking about football,” said Coach.

Mrs. Kelly continued as if her husband wasn't there. “The varsity coach is retiring after this season, and there are some people who'd like Coach to take over.”

“But not everyone.” Coach clenched and unclenched his jaw so that the muscles in his face did a dance.

“Not the head of the booster club,” Mrs. Kelly said in a voice as light as the butter she spread across her bread. “He thinks we should find someone outside the program.”

“I need to win the league,” Coach said. “Then he can't say no.”

“But we lost the first two games,” Mrs. Kelly said.

“We should win this week,” Coach said. “I haven't lost to East Manfield in ten years.”

“You've never started out oh-and-two and made the playoffs.” Mrs. Kelly bit into her slice of bread and sipped at a cup of tea. A dab of butter clung to her upper lip until she wiped it away with a napkin. “But winners never quit, and quitters never win.”

“How fast are you?” Coach asked.

Harrison blushed and shrugged. He didn't know how to answer. As a little kid, he won all the races on the playground, and he was always good in gym class, but he'd never been allowed to play any sports. “Pretty fast, I think.”

“Pretty fast, and big for sure.” Coach seemed to speak to himself.

“He'll need a physical,” Mrs. Kelly said.

Coach scratched the stubble on his head. “Maybe I could get Doc Smart to see him and give us a clean bill of health.”

Mrs. Kelly pointed quickly to her own eye and said, “What about . . .”

“Your mom said his eye is fine. It just looks bad,” Coach said.

Harrison knew from the mirror that what should be white in his eye was still bloodred, and that even though the swelling had been gone for several weeks now, the skin around his eyes was still marbled with purple and a sickly yellow.

“It's Sunday, Ron.”

Coach waved a hand. “Doc won't mind. He's a friend. If Harrison wants to play, there's no sense in making him wait.”

Mrs. Kelly sighed. “I guess you can ask.”