You Will Call Me Drog (17 page)

I can only leave here if someone lets me out,
I thought.

The sentry pointed to a building right behind the statue. I kept my eyes on my shoes, willing myself not to look up, and managed to get past it.

“So you think you might like to be a Bradley cadet, eh, Parker?” the captain said. “Prospective students normally visit with a parent.”

I thought fast. “Um, my father has already contacted you, I think. Sir.”

“Oh? Well, let me see.” He wheeled his chair over to a filing cabinet and started flipping through the folders. He looked like he must spend his days wheeling around in that chair, because his uniform was pretty tight around the middle. “Lockhart, Lockman ... ah, here we are. Brian Lockwood, right?”

Until that minute I was still hoping it wasn’t true. I nodded.

“Sure enough, your dad requested brochures and an application. Well, I suppose we could show you around, since you’re here.” He closed the file drawer. “Tell me Parker, do you know any of our cadets?”

“Just Wade Hunt.”

One eyebrow rose. “
Just
Wade Hunt,” he repeated, mostly to himself. Then he picked up the phone. “Tell Cadet Hunt he’s excused from parade and is to report to my office to give a tour of campus.”

Captain Hawkins hung up and nodded toward the Ace bandage. “What did you do to your hand? You play sports?”

I couldn’t think what to answer, but Wade showed up just in time so I didn’t have to.

Wade in uniform, saluting, was an amazing sight—clean and sharp and huge. And he did a huge double take when he saw who he was going to be showing around, but he managed to hold that in until we got outside.

“You! At Bradley? You serious?”

“I might be.”

We passed a group of cadets marching, and it seemed like the main reason some of them faced straight ahead was to avoid looking at Wade.

But most of the guys we saw were in sweats, heading for the football field.

“Rec time,” Wade explained.

He jutted his chin toward my bandaged hand. “Is that what I think it is? That could be big trouble here.”

“It’s big trouble everywhere,” I said.

“For sure you would have to fight over it. You know how, right?”

I swallowed. “Is there a lot of fighting here?”

“No fighting whatsoever. Strictly against the rules,” he said, mock-serious. “So nobody tells.”

He stopped in front of an old bluish stone building with small windows. “Well, this is Whitman Hall. Used to be the one classroom building for the whole school. In the basement—”

“Wade, what’s it like here?”

“You want the tour or you want to talk?”

“Talk.”

He led me to the fourth-year students’ barracks. His room had cement-block walls, a cot, a big wooden cupboard, and a dark red curtain over the one window at the end. The desk was a plank fastened to the wall, and couple of board shelves above that held a clock, a radio, a few schoolbooks and a family picture. That was it. A cell.

He noticed me looking around. “We’re not supposed to keep much in our rooms, but you wouldn’t want to anyway because you’ve got to clean them spotless for inspection first thing every morning. First-years have inspection twice a day.”

“What do you do the rest of the time?” I said.

He motioned me to a folding metal chair and he sat on the cot.

“We march, like you saw. It’s called parade. Funny, huh? We go to classes, play sports—everybody has to play at least two sports—eat, study, count our merits and demerits, go to bed. Then get up and do it again. Oh, and third-and fourth-years can get town leave a couple of afternoons a week, on good behavior. In uniform for everything but sports and bed and town leave.”

“What classes to they teach?”

“Oh the usual stuff, plus military history. That’s required.” He leaned forward. “Hey, you’re not one of those guys who takes piano lessons or ceramics, are you?”

“I don’t take anything except aikido. I like to draw, though.”

He lay back on his cot with his feet hanging down off the end. “Well you probably want to keep quiet about that. Sure, they have art and music classes here. The brass just loves guys who go for that stuff, at least on open-house day. So they can show off and say ‘See? We got a well-rounded program here, not like you think.’”

“But?”

“But it won’t make you points with the guys who really run this place. We have our own demerit system.”

“Wade, do the older cadets really torture the first-years at night?”

“If I answer that, will it change your plans one way or the other?”

“Not really.”

“Then let’s just say if you come here, you’re going to need friends.”

A bugle call blared from a loudspeaker just outside the barracks. Wade sat up. “Gotta go,” he said. “Unless you want to stay for third mess. But the food is something else you don’t want to know about until you have to.”

He walked with me out to the entrance, saluted the sentry, and before I knew it the gate clicked shut behind me. Then I realized I had just walked by Homage to Valor again with Wade without even thinking about it. I could feel that eagle stare between my shoulder blades, though. I resisted turning back to look, didn’t want to push my luck. I saw the bus coming and ran to catch it.

So that was Bradley. Lucky I knew Wade and he was at least friendly enough to tell me what going there would be like. Not as bad as I thought. It was so much worse. I’d be locked in, busy, and bored all day, scared all night. A prisoner. How could Dad want that for me?

At practice, Sensei talked to us about circles.

“When someone attacks you, turn the attack into a circle. Move toward your opponent rather than away, because often that’s where the safe place is for you and for him, the place from which you can turn him. Be aware tonight of the way aikido moves in circles.”

“Finally, he admits it,” Drog said. “He wants you going around in circles.”

Sensei demonstrated the new attack and response, then he paired us. Himself with Wren, Big Boy with me.

I hadn’t practiced with Big Boy for a while because Sen-sei had been putting him with more advanced students, and now I could see why. I tried to think about circles like Sensei said, but really, all I had to do was follow Big Boy and I could just feel them. As big as he was, Big Boy wasn’t clumsy at all doing aikido. He was getting good. Whether he attacked or turned or rolled, he was smooth and relaxed. It was like the air around him was water and he was a dolphin or a seal playing and turning in it. And when I practiced with him I felt the same way. I wanted to practice forever.

The two of us walked out of the dojo together.

“Thanks, Big Boy,” I said. “That was great.” Without thinking, I bowed to him.

He grinned and bowed back. “Hey, man. You got me into this.”

We gave each other high fives, then Big Boy got on his bike. He offered me a ride, but I said I wanted to walk.

“‘Thanks, Big Boy. Thank you, Sensei,’” Drog said, mocking me. “If you love aikido so much, you ought to say, ‘Thank you, Drog.’ After all, it’s only because of me that you got into it at all.”

I was about to say “What?! I do aikido in
spite
of you,” when I realized something. How did I happen to be at the Y the day I met Sensei? I went there to pretend to sign up for boxing. Because Dad was upset that I had Drog on my hand. In a way it
was
because of Drog! I had to laugh.

“Okay, Drog, you win,” I said. “Thanks for getting me into aikido.”

“Ha! Don’t you just hate it when I’m right?”

I still felt warm from practice, even though it was December. I unzipped my jacket and stopped to check out a store-window display as I walked through downtown. Three weeks until Christmas, and I hadn’t even thought about a present for Mom. Or even what I wanted myself. Pretty soon I’d have to take the bus out to the mall to have a look.

I heard a car pull up behind me and brake. I turned.

The white Toyota. Notebook Man? But Dad promised...

I took off, cutting through the block and then doubling back, dodging into doorways until I was sure the white Toyota was nowhere in sight. Then I ran a couple more blocks until I realized where I was going. Ferrisburg Salvage and Iron.

“No!” Drog said as we got to the chained-off driveway.
“What are
you thinking?”

“It’s a good place to hide.”

But even as I said it I wasn’t sure. Except for the boxcar’s silhouette a little way in, the junkyard in the dark looked liked a strange, broken-up puzzle, a bad-dream scene. Things I couldn’t name poked up at crazy angles, and the popped-up hoods of cars seemed to yawn and chomp at me.

Just then a car came around the corner, and I caught a glimpse of light color, maybe white. I jumped over the driveway chain, half-tripping on it, and scrunched down. Remembering something I heard about hiding in the dark, I looked down so no light could catch the whites of my eyes.

The car crawled by. I waited. Waited some more. Then I unbent and peered out into the street. It was empty.

The boxcar. I started picking my way over there through the shadows, but suddenly,
ka-blong! ba-jing!
—a pile of pipes shifted and tumbled to the ground a few feet away. And screamed.

Whooosh!
One yowling flash of fur and then another one shot over my feet and landed in the dirt. Two cats rolling over each other, clawing, screeching, biting, trying to turn each other into bloody trash.

I could have sworn I heard Drog mutter “spot-one, spot-one.”

I picked up the nearest loose thing, a can, and threw it at the cats, who split apart and scattered, growling low warnings to each other.

“Jeez, Drog. This place is a spook house at night.”

“Tell me about it!” he said. “It was the cats I hated most of all.”

Right, I forgot. Drog spent a lot of nights in here. Alone.

The light from the streetlamp barely reached us now, and I had to feel my way, risking grabbing or stubbing my toe on something sharp or rusted out. Or worse.

What if the boxcar was... occupied?

I came up to it and was about to peek in when I heard shuffling noises. I flattened myself against the side of the car and held my breath, which wasn’t easy because I had just finished breathing out.

Slowly a big-eyed face peeked out and around the corner at me.

“Eeeeeyow!” I yelled, and a small body dived spread-eagle out the door, landed on the bed of a nearby truck, then scrambled off and away. My mind formed the word
raccoon
.

“What did I tell you?” Drog said. “A bloody demon-zoo!”

I called into the box car, “Hel ... Hello?”

No answer. No noise either, so I climbed up and sat in the doorway looking out, breathing out little fog-puffs into the cold.

“No!” Drog said. “Now that you’ve proven how brave you are, we need to leave. I insist!”

“But what about the white Toyota?”

“What about it? Why should you run from that overgrown Denny punk, anyway? You could take him.”

“Drog, you heard what he said about a real uniform. You think Dad can really put me in B.M. if I don’t want to go?”

“Hmmmm ... not if he can’t find you. Why not fool everybody and kidnap yourself? That’s it! Go where
no
one will think to look. Now if this thing had wheels—”

“But I’m only eleven years old.”

“Humph! Where I come from, an eleven-year-old boy is more than old enough to live by his wits. Did I ever tell you about—”

“Where
do
you come from, Drog? I think I have a right to know!” Suddenly I felt like the answer to that must be the key to everything.

“You ask a tough question, Boy.”

“Have you really been to the courts of all those emirs and sultans and things?”

“Been to Canton, tra la!”

“China?”

“Ohio. Fooled you, didn’t I? Ha-ha!”

I wasn’t laughing. I held my Drog hand up to my face and stared right into his eyes.

“NO MORE STORIES, Drog! Don’t say another word to me until you answer me. Who ARE you, and how DO you talk? Are you from ... hell?”

“Ho! You flatter me. Purgatory, more likely.”

Whatever that meant, it wasn’t an answer. I glared at him.

He sighed. “The truth? Oh, all right, I’ll tell you, but you won’t like it. You’re not the only boy I belonged to, you know.”

“You mean the emir’s son?”

“No, the boy from Canton, Ohio. What an irresponsible lout. Borrowed me from a playmate and didn’t return me when he moved here. Can’t recall much about the playmate, but there was a girl before that who lived out in the country somewhere and had nobody to talk to but me. She even sang to me and read to me from her favorite books. Maybe that’s when I first learned to talk, at least to myself. I really couldn’t say. You see? Not much to go on.”

It sounded like another story. “Why should I believe you?”

“Suit yourself. If you ask me, whens and whences are beside the point anyway. All I know is, I seem to end up where I’m needed.”

“Where you’re NEEDed! Oh, right!” I took a deep breath, not to calm myself, but to fuel up.

“I suppose I NEEDed to lose my left hand and my best friend and have everybody I know think I’m weird or crazy. I NEEDed to get my mom all worried and arguing with Dad. I NEEDed to have Dad send a spy after me and sign me up for military school. And I suppose I NEEDed to give up everything I want to do just so I could be taken over by the world’s ugliest, freakiest whatever-you-are!”

“You suppose? Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the freakiest—”

“YOU’RE the one who’s crazy, Drog. I needed you like I needed ... a case of TOTAL BODY GANGRENE!”

“You might want to stop shouting, Boy. Aren’t we supposed to be hiding out?”

“I’ll yell if I WANT to,” I said, quieting down a little. “YOU were the one who needed
ME
. Without me, you’d still be rotting in that trash can!”

“Hmmm. I resemble that remark.”

Then I realized what I had just said, and it gave me a thought I didn’t want to think. Drog didn’t choose me. He couldn’t. I was the one who insisted on bringing him home. What was that all about? Of course I had no way of knowing what would happen, but still ...

“Anyway, here we are,” he said.

Right. In the junkyard. Freezing.

“... and for what it’s worth, I’m with you on the B.M. question. You must avoid landing in the Big B.M. at all costs.”

Those words sent such a jolt of energy and hope through me that even Drog jumped.

“Do you mean that?” I said, cracking a grin. “Then just go limp right now and let me take you off, and presto! This whole nightmare will be history!”

“Ah, not so fast, kiddo.
I’d
be history, you mean. You’d throw me in the trash quicker than—”

“No, I wouldn’t, Drog. I promise. Please!”

“You mean to tell me you’d keep me around even if you had a choice? You’d put me back on your hand sometimes to talk? You wouldn’t. Not ever.”

He had me there. I couldn’t even pretend I would.

“You see? Drog knows.”

He didn’t say that in his usual superior way. More just matter-of-fact and sad.

In spite of myself I felt awful for him then, because it hit me: what must it be like to have no idea who or what you are or where you came—

“Save your pity,” he said.

Oh great, was he reading my mind now?

“At least I have my voice,” he said. “Take it from Drog, you’re nothing without a voice.
Nada
. All that time I lived with Ohio Boy, I kept my thoughts to myself, like you do, and look where that landed me—staring out of a trash can day and night, rain or shine, in a place like a graveyard with no one coming. I swore if I ever got out of there I would have a lot to say about where I go and what I do. Which reminds me. You
know
Drog loathes junkyards, especially at night.”

“You’re right, Drog, we can’t stay here. But I can’t go home. Not yet. I have to think. And what if Notebook Man is watching the house?”

“Back to the domo?”

“The dojo. It’ll be locked up by now. But maybe ...”

Would Sensei be mad? I wondered. I had to take the chance.