Sons of Liberty (9 page)

“Yeah, okay. I’ll think about it. I’ll see how I feel tomorrow.”

“Do it for Liza,” Cliff said.

When his watch alarm beeped at 4:30 the next morning, Rock clicked it off and stared at the ceiling for a long time. He felt numb, like the last time he went to the dentist and got an extra shot of Novocain, except now the thick, deadening sensation rolled through his entire body, not just his inside his lips and jaw. Nothing had seemed real until this moment, but time had turned him numb, unnatural in his daring.

Today Liza would escape. Even as the thought passed through his mind, he had a hard time believing it. He had made up his mind that he had to help, even if Liza did give Cliff all the credit. It was just like in this book Ms. Manzuli lent him about Samuel Adams. That guy was a true original, a real behind-the-scenes force that got the Revolution off the ground. Samuel Adams was always lurking around, writing angry letters about the British to the newspapers and signing them with different phony names like “Populus” or “A Bostonian,” so that the people thought that there were hundreds of angry citizens begging for war, when actually it was just this one sneaky guy.

Cliff could go ahead and be like Thomas Jefferson, hogging the glory if he needed it so bad. After all, it was Adams whom the British called “the most dangerous man in Massachusetts.” And Rock knew he’d rather be dangerous than glorified.

Quietly he heaved himself out of bed and pulled on his winter clothes, then stood and looked out the window, chewing the granola bar Cliff had bought him for the trip. Waiting.

“All set?” Cliff whispered from the door.

Rock turned. “Ready.”

They tiptoed downstairs, carrying their work boots in their hands, and waited until they’d softly shut the front door behind them before lacing the boots on their feet. A nip of early-morning cold sank a deep chill through Rock’s entire body and refused to budge.

“Here.” Cliff thrust something into Rock’s hands. His glasses, Rock realized with a frown.

“I don’t need those. My eyes are fine.”

“Save it for Dad. We all need to be eagle-eyed this morning, and that means you, too. Come on. For Liza.”

Rock hesitated and then pushed the glasses up over his nose. He always forgot how much cleaner the world looked when it was focused. Besides, he figured, it was too dark and too early in the morning for anyone to see him.

“Let’s go,” Cliff commanded, and then shot off over the front lawn.

It felt like an Interrupted night, Rock realized, even down to the raw churning in his stomach and the separateness he felt from the dreaming neighborhood. This must also be what soldiers feel like right before battle, Rock decided, all their senses at razor’s edge, every hair of their skin pricked with energy.

Liza was waiting for them at the end of Linwood, as planned. Her bike rested on its side and she was sitting by the road in a shadowy lump next to the smaller lump of her duffel bag.

“You ready?” Cliff hauled the duffel on his shoulder. “Pretty light, that’s good.”

“Careful,” she warned. “I got all my worldliest possessions in there.”

Cliff nodded, and adjusted the duffel to distribute its weight more evenly across his back.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Sure.” She grinned and stuck her tongue out at him. They both laughed, although it wasn’t really very funny, Rock thought. He flipped up his kick-stand with the blunt toe of his boot and pushed his bike between them.

“Can we go?” he asked.

They coasted through the silky cold darkness. Along the way they passed off soft warnings to each other.

“Pothole ahead.”

“It’s just this next turn.”

“Car coming.” An approaching car meant that they pulled their bikes off the road and crouched to hide behind the trees that banked Carpenter Avenue.

“ ’Cause you never know if it’s someone who’d recognize us and call our parents,” Cliff said. Cliff had thought up a lot of spy stuff; like when they got to the Sheffield train station, it was Cliff who went to the window to get all the tickets, so that the ticket person wouldn’t be an eyewitness to spot Liza.

“You leave a note?” Rock asked as the two of them waited.

“A note?” Liza squeezed her handlebar grips and for the first time Rock noticed that she wore Timmy’s brittle leather work gloves instead of her customary unmatched mittens.

“Like a good-bye note.”

“Oh, yeah, just for my ma. I told her a whole heap of stuff … What’s Cliff making that face for?”

Rock craned his neck. “Train!” he yelped, leaping off his seat, fumbling for the lock, and pushing the bike into the crawl space all at once. “Hurry, give me your bike, go, go—get the train, I’ll lock your bike and mine together. Go!” His last word finally jumped Liza off her bike. Carefully she squeaked it toward him.

“Hurry!” he shouted.

At the sound of the train whistle, Liza looked up at the tracks. “But you need help,” she said. Her face puckered with worry. “Cliff’ll wait. It’s either all of us or none.”

“Liza, just shut up and go!” he commanded. “It doesn’t matter if I don’t get on the stupid train. You got Cliff, just go.” Still she’d wavered, hopping from one foot to the next and chewing a piece of her hair.

“Okay, but hurry,” she pleaded, and then she shot off, her corduroy pants making a slithering sound as she dashed up the platform.

Alone inside the crawl space, Rock worked quickly, lining up all three bikes and tilting them neatly against each other, making sure the chains looped through each frame and not just through the handlebars.

The train hissed into the station and stopped. Liza and Cliff probably wanted to hang out with just each other anyway, Rock thought. He was a third wheel, no matter what either of them said. Maybe he should miss the train on purpose.

Rock could already picture himself, sitting on the wooden bench in the empty station, using the change that lumped his jeans pocket to buy a packaged coffee cake and an orange soda from the vending machine that stood inside the ticket office. He might even manage to feel ticked off that Cliff and Liza hadn’t jumped off the train and waited until they all could take the five thirty-nine together.

But the train didn’t budge. Rock ducked out of the crawl space and mounted the platform steps.

“Come on, dumb butt.” Cliff stuck his head out the window and rapped the glass. “We’d have left you behind if this train wasn’t three million years old.”

“Keep your shirt on,” Rock mumbled.

He slipped inside the train car and sprawled in the seat facing Liza and Cliff. He glared at them.

“If you don’t want to come with, then go.” Liza reached over and batted a gloved finger against his nose. “But don’t do me any favors.”

“I’m here because I wanna be, not because anyone’s making me be.” Rock slid closer to the window and looked out as the train began to wheeze out of the station. He felt Liza and Cliff exchange a glance. “Whatcha got in there, anyway?” he asked, to change the subject. He gave a gentle kick to the duffel bag Liza had wedged into the space beneath where she sat.

“Mostly clothes.” She pulled out the bag and tugged its zipper, then began poking at the contents of the bag. “I been packing and repacking all week. I don’t think I forgot nothing important. Underwear and jeans, toothbrush, washcloth, maps. And a six pack of Certs, in case I can’t take a shower for a while. Ever notice how clean Certs can make you feel, even if the rest of you feels kind of grungy? Oh, and my autograph book, so in case I go to Los Angeles, I’m prepared for the stars.”

“Lemme see that.” Cliff dove a hand into Liza’s bag and pulled up a square green plastic book, then tossed it across the seat into Rock’s eager hands.

“ ‘My Autographs,’ ” Rock read the gold embossed script in a squeaky girl voice.

“Hey, don’t open that—it’s private.” Liza half stood, making a grab for the book.

Rock began flipping through the gilt-edged pages. “Whoa, Liza, this is amazing.” He whistled after a moment. “You got everyone—Tom Cruise, Michael Jordan, Cindy Crawford. And look, Cliff, even though they all signed it in different pens, they all kind of have the same-style handwriting. It’s wicked weird.”

“Give that back,” Liza squealed. Her face was the color of a summer crab apple. Rock held the book high over his head, its pages spread open for Cliff to see. “I got most of ’em when I lived in Skowhegan, anyhow,” she protested weakly.

“Gee.” Cliff began laughing. “Liza sure does hang out with a lot of interesting people, don’tcha Liza? Who’d think that good ol’ Michael Jordan would of been passing through Skowhegan, Maine? I guess that is a pretty big basketball town, though. What’s Maine’s team again?”

“The Skowhegan Skunks?” Rock laughed.

“Shut up!”

“The Skowhegan Saps?” Cliff added. He nudged Liza in the elbow and she squirmed away from him. “We’re just busting on you, Lizy. Once, and I mean this was a long time ago, but once I fake-autographed all my baseball cards and tried to sell them down at the Sheffield flea market.”

“Or, look, Hillary Clinton.” Rock flipped a page. “You remember, Cliff, that time the Clintons rented the house next to the milk store for the summer? When they let Liza come over and borrow their sloop?”

“C’mon, Rock.” And suddenly, quick as shutting off a faucet, Cliff wasn’t laughing but frowning at him.

“I’ll take that.” Liza dived out of her seat, grabbed Rock’s arm with both hands, and bit him.

“Oww—fine, I was giving it back anyway.” Rock tossed the book and examined the circle of Chiclet square teeth dents in his arm. “You don’t hafta be a cannibal about it.”

Liza was zipping her duffel bag, and when she finished, she turned and stared out the window, her legs crossed prissily and her chin raised so high that all her hair fell back behind her shoulders.

“Great, so now you’re gonna be mad the whole trip?” Rock asked, half remorseful, half defiant. He looked to Cliff for help. “What’s the big deal?”

Cliff made a “don’t ask me” face and closed his eyes so he could drop out of the argument. They rode in silence until the conductor stepped into their car.

“You three kids’re up early.” The conductor was youngish, with a smooth round face like an onion. Sprouts of pale hair curled up under his hat. Rock, who usually divided anyone over age eighteen into two categories, Safe Adult or Creepy Adult, couldn’t figure on this one’s age or creep level. “What brings you-all to be going to New Haven this early in the morning?”

“Ticket Factory Outlet,” Cliff answered promptly. “Hafta beat the crowd if you want good seats.”

“What group?”

“The Knockout Drops. They’re new.” Cliff rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “They’re awesome.” He must have thought out this lie before, Rock realized. Probably even checked the entertainment section of the paper, to get the group right.

“Good smarts,” Liza whispered admiringly, and tapped the side of her head once the conductor had punched their tickets and shuffled on.

“Idiot,” Rock retorted. “Now you’ve made us stick out in his mind, Cliffnerd. He’ll remember us, he’ll remember us along with show-off words like the Knockout Drops when he sees Liza’s picture up on every telephone pole in Connecticut.”

“Do you think so?” Cliff’s easy smile left him and he cast a worried look down the aisle.

“Well, yeah. Sure I think so.”

“You’re the idiot, Rock, because he didn’t once look at me,” Liza scoffed. “Cliff took away all the attention, so the guy wouldn’t even know he’d seen my face, if they do show it on telephone poles.”

“Yeah, that’s what I was trying to do in the first place,” Cliff asserted.

“Time’ll tell,” Rock said dourly. “That guy seemed kind of suspicious, asking where we were going and all. All’s I would’ve said would’ve been, just like … Well, I don’t know right off the top of my head. Just something less noticeable.” He checked his wristwatch. “We’re off this train in ten minutes.”

“Then we take a cab to Manahasick Road. From the map, it should run us another five minutes.”

“I never been in a cab before,” Liza said. “Say we can’t find one?”

“We’ll find one,” Cliff assured her. “And we can always call for one.”

The Thomas Jefferson routine was becoming a little too much, Rock decided. And it seemed like, as usual, Liza was just eating it up. Maybe once they pulled into New Haven, Rock would just hop the next train and go home.

“Y
OU BELIEVE IN THE
devil?” Liza had asked Rock, a long time ago. “ ’Cause I do.” She hadn’t seemed to care about his answer; she’d just launched into her own ideas. “The way I figure on it, the devil’s disguised in a ton of people, and I bet if the devil knew you’d found him out, he’d just acid off your face so you couldn’t tell anyone else. But there are clues, if you really want to know. Smell is a clue. Maybe you’d smell violets or oranges or something, but the main, devil smell would be underneath. And I bet it’s kind of like burnt sugar. A good smell gone bad, since the Bible says the devil used to be an angel till he fell from grace.”

“Or rotten eggs,” Rock had offered. “That’s a good smell turned garbage-ish.”

“Too obvious.” Liza had plugged her nose and waved away pretend bad air. “Plus, a good egg smells like nothing.”

But now, standing outside the train station, waiting for the cab to pick them up, Rock decided that the devil smelled like the New Haven train station. First you inhaled blank air but then curling against the outer limits of your nose wafted the putrid odor of spoiled food and b.o. and gasoline. A tricky smell that crept up on you.

“There’s the cab.” Cliff pointed. Rock could hear the relief in his voice. Cliff had been skittery ever since he’d made the phone call to the cab company that this break with the smooth line of his plan would end up fracturing the whole day.

The cab didn’t smell all that great, either. Rock cracked the window, undecided which smell was worse, inside or outside.

“How long do you think it’ll take—,” Liza began, but then Cliff pressed his fingers against his lips and indicated the cabby with the barest tilt of his head, reminding them not to speak about the plan. Liza clapped her hand over her mouth, even though she hadn’t said anything incriminating, and her eyes rounded in semi-mock horror.