Best Boy (15 page)

I froze. One of the people in the store was filling a coffee cup with a loud hollow trickling sound. Another was sighing as he picked up a newspaper with a photo of a plane on the front page. I took a step forward just as a terrible smashing noise came through the air and I thought the plane on the front of the paper had slid from the page and crashed onto the floor but it was only bells from the front door. I stood whimpering for a second before I remembered I could leave and I turned around and walked quickly out the door.

After this the bad phase began. It was a phase of wanting very much to eat and drink and also suffering from the mistake of having gone into the store and going out again which made me unhappy. I was hungry and nervous and I just kept moving my legs on the road. As I did I sometimes saw a mile marker or a cross street. Each time I felt a tiny bit better because at least I was making progress. This progress wasn't on the road, which looked mostly the same as it had before but on the map, where I could make a small mark to show my movement. I took the map out often. I was again walking in an area of fields and few houses. The wires were there, carrying the voices. Planes went by in the sky in lines as straight as wires. Occasionally cars passed.

I kept walking on the road that ran ahead of me towards all the roads of the world. As I walked the air got warmer and I took my jacket off and left my shirt on. After some time I saw a van coming. I saw it from far off. The thought that it was maybe
the van from Payton made the anxiety get much worse again and suddenly through the shirt I could smell the special smell coming from my armpits that my brother Nate always talked about when we were kids.

“You're a chemical weirdo,” he used to say. Then he'd point to his friends and say, “Derwent and John, get a load of Todd. He doesn't smell like you and I do. He smells like a
laboratory
.”

The van came up and went by me without stopping and I now began to walk even quicker because I wanted to get to a place where there weren't dark cars and possible Payton vans and where I could drop food and water onto the beating feeling in my stomach. I was frightened and I thought of Nancy Sinatra and her boots again but this time the song was speeded up in my head because I remembered what happened at the end of the song which was that my father hit me, hard. We were in Spencer's Gifts together and he was buying something for my mother and the salesgirl said something and he slapped me on the side of the head in a way that made me only see white and sent the lipstick flying out of my hand.

“I'm sorry,” he said, “but this one would put the floor in his mouth if he could.”

I kept walking and was happy that no cars passed for a long time. But then at a certain point I noticed a car coming towards me again. At first it was the size of a pill on the road. Then as I watched it grew steadily from a pill to a baseball to a suitcase to a blackboard. By the time it came up to me I could see it was a dark pickup truck, that stopped with a screech of brakes. I stopped too. The driver's door swung open hard with a very loud sound that scared me. Sometimes when I'm scared I stare at just one point as hard as I can. I stared at the point. The point was a piece of red metal on the side of the truck. The red metal had lit
tle freckles of rust on it. I was staring at the freckles when a boot appeared on the stair of the truck. The boot was followed by a torn pair of jeans that carried a body wearing a white T-shirt. Above the T-shirt was a necklace of pieces of metal and bone.

“Well, lookie here,” said the voice of Mike the Apron, “what the cat dragged in.”

“Unh,” I said and raised my eyes while breath poured out of my mouth.

He was shaking his head back and forth and grinning. “I mean, how about that, eh? Half the local cops are out doing the chicken dance looking for you, but this old dog”—he tapped the side of his head—“knew just where to hunt! I figgered my man ain't set up for the main roads. Then I shut my eyes and I saw that line you drew on that damn map.” He slapped his hands together with a crack and gave the laugh. “Am I good or what?” Then he stopped laughing. He studied me with his eyes. “And by the way, you look plumb worn out, boy.”

“I'm okay.”

“I got my doubts about that.”

“You broke my stick!” I said.

“Damn straight I did, just like you broke your promise.”

He lit a cigarette and held it pinched in his front teeth and blew the smoke out around it.

“What?” I said. I didn't know what he was talking about.

“One hand washes the other, my man. I'm here 'cause I got your back in life, but I need the same from you, straight up. We've been through a shitload of stuff recently, haven't we?”

“I guess.”

“Well, that's a bond forever.”

“It is?”

“And it's what keeps people looking out for each other.”

“You broke my stick!” I repeated.

“Stop beating a dead horse, will ya? Ain't nothing that a broomstick and a penny nail won't fix. I'll make you another goddamned stick. In the meantime, listen up.” Mike took another inhale from his cigarette. “Folks may be coming to you soon wanting to talk more about me and Greta Deane. They might be from Payton, they might be from the state, they might be the cops, for all I know. But whoever they are, you gotta zip your lip because
friends don't rat on friends
. That's a rule of life. It's also treason. And you know about treason, right?”

“No.”

“People who commit it get shot.”

“What?”

I remembered that Mr. Rawson had said I should “immediately” tell him if Mike tried to contact me. But I was on the road in the middle of fields and I was also dizzy and hungry. I looked down at my sneakers. Mike was saying:

“I have a feeling it's all gonna head south because Greta prolly ain't gonna make it.”

“Make what?” I asked.

“Die, bro. Poor girl ate her whole chemistry set. A hundred pills, they told me. She'd been storing them up.”

“Oooh,” I said.

“Sad, yah, but should I lose everything in life just 'cause some head case decided it was lights-out? That's where you come in. I'm counting on you to be a friendly here and lay down some covering fire. If they come to you, say nothing about you and me and Peace, got it?”

I looked around again but just as before there was nothing on the horizon at all. Not a house, not a sign. Not even a bird.

“Right,” I said.

“Okay.” Mike the Apron smiled. “Now let's talk about you. What you got for rations?”

“What?”

“Food.”

“I had a can of chicken and one of tuna but I ate them.”

“What else?”

“A protein bar but I ate that too.”

He laughed into a hand and then tried to make his face serious. “I can see you
really
thought this trip through, big guy. What was your plan, exactly?”

“To walk for a while and then maybe call my brother.”

He made the laugh face again and covered it up. “A helluva plan, yes sir. All I can say is, you're lucky I found you.”

He dug in a pocket and took out his car keys and shook them.

“That,” he said, “is the sound of a sandwich and a root beer. I'll evac you to the nearest town in the direction you're going and you can grab something to eat and be on your way with a full stomach. Friends, see?”

I said nothing. Mike the Apron pulled down his mirrored glasses and showed me his dirty eyes and then he pushed them back up again.

“Ite?” he said.

I didn't want to go but I was getting hungrier and hungrier and my stomach decided to speak for me.

“All right,” I said.

I got into his truck that smelled like him. We were very high up and soon we were going along the road fast. I looked through windshield for a while but when I lowered my eyes I noticed that there was a hammer on the floor of the truck. A hammer wasn't a lance but it was still a weapon. It was even silver like a weapon.
Mike was saying, “Fucked-up part is that she was actually a sweetheart.”

“I know,” I said. The hammer had the words “True Value” written on the side of it.

“Especially compared to yours.”

“Mine?”

“I wouldn't trust Martine Calhoun any more I would the president of these United States.”

I'd never hit anyone in my life but I liked throwing the lance into trees. And the hammer was like a lance.

“The president,” I said.

Mike the Apron kept talking but I'd stopped listening. The buzzing, hissing sound of anxiety filled my head as I watched myself reaching over and taking the hammer in my hands and then smashing it into Mike's face with the same thunking noise my lance made when I threw it into a tree.

“I seen you looking,” he said, and I thought he meant the hammer and that everything was now going to turn very bad and maybe horrible but he only pointed quietly out to a sign ahead of us on high stilts that read “Speed Burger Fast Food,” and said, “There you are. That all right?”

Relaxation made my shoulders wide.

“Yes, please.”

We found the Speed Burger restaurant which was on the outskirts of a town. He parked there and he said:

“Now, listen, you're having yourself a little adventure and busting out of Dodge and who can blame you. I'm with you all the way, Todd. What you wanna do is stay on the little roads and keep walking east. Eventually the trip'll end but you'll have a hell of a time getting there. You got your maps?”

“Yes.”

“Lemme see.”

I showed him the map.

“You got it inked already, and all the way home. Shame on me for forgetting what a smart fella you are.”

I didn't say anything.

“Todd?”

“Yes.”

“Here.” He held out a ten-dollar bill and winked. “Call this a down payment on our new understanding.”

I didn't want to take it but I didn't know how much a hamburger cost. Also, I only had five dollars. I opened my hand and he put the bill in it.

“Thank you,” I said.

“For what? Now give me a hug and get out of here. If you don't see me around next little bit don't worry 'cause I'll be in touch down the road and you can count on
that
.”

I didn't want to hug Mike. A second went by and I still didn't want to. But he was continuing to sit in the truck with his arms held wide while he made a face.

I leaned forward and let him hug me and I got out of the truck. It was a long step to the ground and I almost fell.

“On your toes!” I heard Mike yell behind me.

Then I was walking across the parking lot while the truck made a roaring noise as it pulled away. An even louder, brighter wave than the convenience store fell on me as I opened the door of the restaurant, but the smell of burgers was a sidewalk I could walk slowly down through the wave towards the counter. I did and leaned my weight on it.

“I'll have one hamburger and one french fries and a root beer,” I said to the woman there. Her name tag said “Daisy.”

“And Daisy?” I said. And she said, “Yes?” And I said, “Do you use nut oils in your cooking?”

She looked at me a second and her eyes got small. “What?” she asked.

“Nut oils,” I said.

“You from around here?”

“I'm a villager from Payton LivingCenter.”

“Kath?” said Daisy to another lady in the back.

“Ma'am,” I said to her again, while the person named Kath began walking towards her.

“Yes sir,” Daisy said.

“Can I go to your bathroom?”

She gave me the key on a big piece of wood. I found the bathroom and entered it. I was shaking from what had almost happened with Mike in the truck but I like to spend as much time as possible in bathrooms anyway because everything in them is clear and always the same wherever you go and this makes me calm. I used the toilet and then I washed my hands very slowly and carefully and then dried them also carefully using the blow dryer. I was still dizzy from the not-Risperdal and shaking a little but I felt better.

When I got back out to the counter of the restaurant my food was waiting in a white paper bag. Daisy and Kath and two other people were all standing there. They looked at me for a second.

“Why don't you eat that here, hon?” one of them said.

“Why?”

“You'll be nice and comfortable. We set up a table for you, with condiments and all.”

“Condiments,” I said.

“You know, ketchup.”

“Okay,” I said.

One of them accompanied me to a table and pointed out to me where to sit.

“Thank you,” I said.

“You're welcome,” they said and left.

The bag was on the table in front of me and the big hamburger was in the bag inside a little cardboard box. But I couldn't open this box. I tugged on its flaps. I squeezed its sides. But it held on to the hamburger and wouldn't let it go. Then while I was still trying to open the box I felt a hand on my shoulder. It wasn't a gentle hand like Raykene or Dave the vocational manager.

“Todd Aaron?” said a voice. I looked up. An upside-down stern face was looking back at me. The face was attached to a blue uniform.

“Yes,” I said.

“I'm Trooper Harold Cullen of the State Police. Would you mind coming with me? ”

“Can I bring my hamburger with me?” I said and asked him if he could open it for me also.

He frowned but he didn't say no. After we finished walking out of the restaurant with everybody looking at us, we got into his car and he pointed at the white bag in my hand and in his steady low voice he said, “I don't see the harm in that.”

Trooper Cullen opened the hamburger and let me eat it in the car. I sat in the back seat while he drove and I didn't say a single word until we got back to Payton.

Finally I spoke.