Sons of Liberty (8 page)

“What are you there, Cliffy, her boyfriend?”

“Don’t hurt.” Liza was still laughing, staggering to her feet. “No, suh.” Rock twisted a rag in his hands, trying to soak up the iced tea that streaked the edge of the table.

“Glad it don’t, seeing as I’m not through,” said Timmy.

“You boys get along home,” Arlene whispered.

“I’m not leaving,” Cliff shouted cheerfully.

“Yeah, you are. Get going.” Timmy clapped his hand around the back of Cliff’s neck. “And put my tools away, boyfriend, ’fore you leave.” With his free hand he opened the door, the one that had stopped Liza. Rock leaped out of his chair and dashed through it.

“Come on, Cliff,” he called from the lawn. “It’s late.” Cliff stumbled out a few moments later, as if he’d been pushed. He looked at Rock and then back over his shoulder.

“Come on,” Rock hissed.

“We can’t.” Cliff shook his head.

“We gotta.” And Rock said something he’d meant to be a comfort but had only seemed to tear Cliff up worse inside. “It isn’t our business anyway,” Rock said. “I mean, it’s not like those people are in our family.” Cliff turned on him.

“Liza,” he said. His eyes were wild with anger. “Liza’s not
those people.
” Then he’d pushed Rock hard, two-fisted, square in the small of his back, so that Rock didn’t have a choice except to sidestep him, taking a heated joy in watching Cliff stumble and fall on the damp grass.

“I know who Liza is,” Rock muttered, dropping to his knees beside his brother.

“Help me clean up the tools,” Cliff said.

They had gathered up the tools, carefully drying and replacing them in Timmy’s toolbox. Then Cliff had whispered that the toolbox was looking pretty junky, so they’d dumped everything out and replaced the screws and washers and bolts all in their correct compartments. Rock remembered how they’d lingered, casting sidelong glances at the windows, straining for a hint of sound or movement. But the house kept its secrets from them.

Except that the next day, Liza hadn’t been in school.

“How’re you feeling?” Rock now asked her abruptly. Nothing looked wrong with Liza now as she sat opposite him in the JennAir, her cheeks peppermint pink from the cold. But at his question, Liza’s smile emptied and she crossed her arms over her chest.

“Rock, I came out here for a reason, ’cause I wanna show you something, I wanna show you this, what I got here,” Liza said, patting the side of her parka. “So pay attention since this is important.” She groped at her jacket’s inside pocket and pulled out a greasy piece of paper, which she shook at Rock. “Look with your eyes, not with your hands.”

“Shut up.” Rock leaned over and squinted at the smudged pencil script.

Seamas Barnes

Manahasick road

Third house left side facing the dead end

Knock three times fast, two times slow

Ask for Seamus

“Seamus Barnes? Who’s that?” Rock pronounced the name “Seem-us.”

“No, it’s Shame-us. That’s how you say his name.”

“Well, I don’t know him. Who is he? He’s from Sheffield?”

“Uh-uh.” Liza smiled gravely. “He’s from …” She stretched her hands in front of Rock’s face and snapped her fingers,
pop-pop-pop.
“He’s from—remember the time a few months ago when I pretended like I got lost from our field trip? The time we went to the New Haven Cane and Hickory Museum?”

Rock nodded. He remembered.

“Well, that was the same day when I met Seamus. He was just hanging out in the train station. He’s a pretty cool guy, should be in high school, but he don’t go to school, he just hangs out and takes trains all around.”

“A bum,” Rock said. Liza frowned.

“Not a bum. Not like some geezer who sleeps on a grate and stinks. Seamus is cool, he has a cool tattoo of a chain-link fence around his ankle, and another one of a shamrock on his back, close to here, about.” Liza twisted to one side and tapped the small of her back. “We hung out a long time, he’s wicked mellow—he even bought me some French fries at the Burger King. And at the end of the day, he gave me this.” She waved the paper.

“He gave me it, and he told me if things ever got tough all around—that’s how he put it, tough all around—then I should come hang out with him and his friends at this house. Just kids live there. Cool ones. I had to promise, may I be hit by a truck if I reneged, that I’d never tell no one about the place, except for a kid who needed to go there. So technically, I already broke my promise. Except I know you won’t tell.”

Liza tipped her head to one side and slumped down so that her jacket walled up around her chin. She looked very small. Small and watchful, like a turtle.

“You never told us about that kid Seamus. You said you just hung out in the mall all day.” Rock felt resentful. He hated secrets being kept from him.

“I did—we did. But it felt like a hidden thing. Private. Which it still is,” Liza asserted quickly. “It’s a secret hideout, see. That’s what Seamus is talking about.”

“But now you want to go there. To New Haven?”

“Yep. Till I get my plan fixed. I’ll lay low awhile, try and get some money together. So that I’m in good shape financial-wise, when I pick a new spot to live.”

Rock began to mentally unfold this plan, trying to shake out its strangeness and daring.

“You’d leave without telling Arlene and Timmy, right?”

“I gotta.” Liza’s October eyes held his for long enough for him to know she meant what she said.

“And this house is a place for kids?”

“For kids like me. And I’m set on it. I’ll hang out there, for a while. So I need you and Cliff to help me out a little, to get me where I’m going. I asked Cliff already. He’s in, but now I thought I’d tell you, too. You’ll help me out, won’tcha, Rock? Huh?” Her words were light, but she sat motionless, waiting for his answer.

“Course.” Rock snapped his head up and down. “Course I’ll help.”

T
HEY WERE TOO OLD
to roll underneath Cliff’s bed for a secret meeting, but the late-night meeting would definitely happen, an event they scheduled without need for words.

“We have to go with her, of course,” Cliff whispered. They were in his room, wrapped in blankets and facing each other like two tribal chiefs. “In case this house is bogus. In case the place is full of gangs or junkies or something.”

“Out to New Haven? All of us?”

“It’s not like it’s California, meat-ax. It’s New Haven. I got money, if you need to borrow for the ticket.”

“Naw, I got my own money.” Which wasn’t true, but Rock would somehow manage to find some money for his own ticket. It would be lame for him to help Liza make her escape on a Cliff-funded ticket.

“I feel kinda sorry for Arlene,” Cliff commented. “Although I hope she feels cruddy after. Serves her right, being so chicken of Timmy.”

“Me, too.” Rock scowled. “I hope it’ll teach her a lesson.”

“Except you hear all that stuff, of what happens to kids who hit the road. How they turn into, you know, drug addicts and panhandlers and stuff. How it’s not, uh …” Cliff pressed his top teeth against his bottom lip, thinking. “How it’s not really the greatest life for a kid.”

“Liza’s tough,” Rock said. “She’ll be okay.”

“Shame she’s so puny.” Cliff spaced his thumb and finger about six inches apart. “She were like this much taller, she’d be more threatening against all those thugs and scumbags.”

“She’ll be okay,” Rock repeated.

“We’ll get train schedules and maps and figure out finances tomorrow,” Cliff said, twisting around to scribble on his typing paper. “Now beat it, I’m tired. I got an oral report in English tomorrow.”

Later that night, Brontie wet the bed again. Rock woke up to the usual noises: thumping footsteps, his father’s voice, his mother’s “Shhh, shhh, shhh,” the incriminating squeak of the washing-machine door, and the distant spray of the bathroom shower.

“To discipline … Absolutely … Teach more about … How much older to get before you decide? …
Is
a problem, yes it
is
a problem.”

Rock listened to the shreds of his father’s sentences, dark and rebuking. His mother’s whisper was too high and wavery for him to pick up. The front door opened and slammed shut, and Rock heard the station wagon’s engine turn over and then slowly back out of the driveway. He smushed his pillow around his head, just in case he might overhear his mom sniffling down in the living room.

“Rock?”

“Bront?” Rock pulled himself up in the bed. The shadowy outline of his sister bobbled in the doorway. “You need something?”

“Cliffy’s asleep.” Brontie hopped deeper into the room. Rock patted the bed and his sister leaped the rest of the way, hoisting herself up and curling into a ball at his feet. Rock sat all the way up now. Brontie’s hair was wet and she wore a pair of Rock’s old footed pajamas; their mother most likely had dug them up from the back of the towel closet, to replace Brontie’s soiled nightgown.

“Bront, are you okay to sleep with wet hair?” Rock asked. “You might get sick, catch a cold.”

“Like from giraffe teeth?”

“No, from wet hair.” Giraffe teeth? Rock mulled this over. How did it come so easily to Cliff, slotting their sister’s words into an exact significance? Giraffe teeth, giraffe teeth. “You sure you want to sleep here?” he asked.

“I already had an accident,” Brontie answered. “I won’t do it again. Dad told Mommy I should sleep in the mudroom until I don’t mess up the bed, since I’m wrecking it.”

“You can’t wreck a bed that way.”

“Dad said I could.”

“Well, he’s wrong. You can’t help your accidents, and besides, you’ll grow out of them soon enough.”

“Dad says I can stop anytime I want,” Brontie stated matter-of-factly. “He says I do it on purpose for attention. He says he’s going to take away Wynona because I’m mean to her, I make her get all smelled up.” She lifted the doll to her face, smacking Wynona’s head against her own. “The mud-room’s cold,” she said.

“He just says stuff when he’s angry. He’s not gonna take away Wynona.” Rock yawned. “You’ve heard him say all those same things before. Don’t worry about it and go to sleep.”

“I told Dad I have accidents because sometimes my dreams and nightmares hurt too much.”

“Well, I won’t let your dreams and nightmares hurt you, okay? Get some sleep. And if you wet the bed, all we have to do is wake up and change the sheets. Okay? That okay with you, Bront?”

At his feet, Rock heard a faint and sleepy “Yes.” He reached down and flipped the end of his comforter up over his sister’s balled body. He didn’t think he’d ever held such a long conversation with Brontie, and it made him feel kind of protective and older-brotherish. Then suddenly it hit him. Giraffe teeth—that was what Brontie called candy corn. Last Halloween she’d eaten a ton of candy corn and been violently ill, throwing up all night. Giraffe teeth—they made you sick, and so did wet hair? That must be the connection. Rock smiled to himself in the darkness. It felt good to figure out Brontie, especially without Cliff’s help.

With each new day, Cliff seemed to fuel up on ideas and details about the New Haven plan. It was like he’d been waiting for it all his life, Rock thought. He hashed through it endlessly, holding secret meetings in the JennAir or up in the ramshackle tree house the three of them had built a couple years ago but barely ever used in winter.

“We go next Saturday morning,” Cliff explained during one of the tree-house meetings. “We’ll ride bikes to the Sheffield train station and lock ’em in that crawl space underneath the platform. Then we’ll take the very first train, the, ah …” He scrutinized the train schedule. “The five thirteen, which puts us in New Haven at five forty-seven.”

“Saturday morning? I got to baby-sit Trev in the afternoon. Ma’s working at the botanical gardens. She’ll be wicked mad.”

“Liza.” Cliff made her name into a sound of exasperation. “Listen to how dumb you sound.”

“It’s just that …” Liza reached in her jacket pocket and pulled out a sandwich baggie full of cheese curls.

“What?”

But Liza didn’t have an answer ready. She snapped off half a cheese curl and shrugged. Cliff cut his eyes at her.

“Come on, Liza,” he said encouragingly, like you would to a dog, Rock thought. “You can do it. I’ll be with you, Rock’ll be there, too. We’ll all go together.”

“Yeah,” Rock agreed.

But as the week progressed, Rock gradually began to feel like the sound of his own voice and his own presence had to work hard to mix in with a plan that belonged to Cliff alone.

The only thing Rock liked envisioning was his role in the cover-up, after Liza was safely gone. In his mind’s eye he pictured a lineup of adults—Mrs. Zukoff, Mr. Faella, Timmy and Arlene, even his own parents—all pumping him with questions. Then he saw himself, secret as a stone, but inside he would be laughing, thinking of how easily he’d sneaked Liza across the battlefields of grown-up rules and regulations and straight into freedom.

Meanwhile, Cliff wanted to hog all the glory. He was being exactly like the British, Rock thought, having to put his own stupid stamp on every single suggestion. What was worse, Liza didn’t really seem to mind. “Good smarts,” she would say to him in response to each new idea. Maybe she’d gone all soft and had a crush on Cliff now. This thought, once it had planted itself into Rock’s brain, began to sour there.

Friday evening, when he set his alarm for 4:30
A.M.
, Rock wondered why he was even bothering to come on the trip at all.

“You guys should go ahead without me tomorrow,” he said stiffly when Cliff came in to say good night.

“Aw, no way, Rock. Come on, big guy. I need you.” Cliff scratched his head and stared at his brother with an earnestness that embarrassed Rock. “You might not see it, but you’re pretty much the whole entire reason that Liza’s keeping so calm these days. Because she knows how tough you are, how you’d totally maul anyone who tried to come up against her. How’ll she feel safe if it’s only me looking out for her?”

Was that true? Rock wondered. Cliff had a weird way of sometimes being able to get just what he wanted by saying exactly what someone wanted to hear. And Rock did like to believe himself the better fighter, the truer Kindle. Still, Liza must think of Rock as being pretty tough. She saw him beat Cliff in an arm wrestle a couple months ago.