Badd (31 page)

Bobby’s staring me in the face now. Tears well up in his eyes too, but I’m not sure what they mean. Is his mind changing, or does he just regret having a big bawl-baby for a sister?

Before he can say anything, the sound of a car pulling up outside distracts him. My first hope is that Padgett has come back, but that hope dies as the red police-car lights carousel against the window curtains, and the siren lets out a single shrill burp. Bobby’s hand goes for the pistol.

“Listen, Bobby,” I tell him, trying to make my voice as hard as I can. “If you go out there and start waving that pistol around, I’m coming too.” I know I’m taking a gamble. He might charge out there anyway, but that’s a chance I’ll have to take.

“I’ll follow right behind you,” I tell him. “And whatever happens to you is going to happen to me. So you can make up your mind right now. Are you going to give up on yourself and me and everyone else, or are you going to keep on going?”

Bobby stares hard into my eyes, but before he can say
anything, the front door swings open. It’s the captain. He has that Nogo Gatu shadow in his eyes. “They’re coming,” he says. “We can’t stop them now. Nothing floats. The air is filled with the wrong kind of metal.”

Outside, car doors slam. Bobby stands up and slips the pistol from his waistband. For a long moment, he stands there holding it by his side like something nearly too heavy to carry. He looks at me, and I have nothing left to tell him beyond what I can say with my eyes. He nods, then sets the pistol on the end table.

“You know what, Ceejay?” he says. “You’re one hell of a sister.”

“And you’re one hell of a brother,” I tell him.

He walks to the captain. “It’s going to be all right,” he says. “Screw the metal in the air.” He gazes into the captain’s face, then hugs him to his chest. “I’m going to look after you now, Captain. We’re going to fight the goddamn Nogo Gatu together. Okay? I don’t know if we’ll whip them, but we’ll put up the biggest fight you ever saw.”

Not long after Officer Dave and Officer Larry herd me, Bobby, and the captain into the front yard, Richard shows up too, flies out of the car, and charges over as fast as a stiff-legged man his age can charge. At first he’s furious, wants us arrested, but he backs off when I describe the rotten condition we found the captain in at the nursing home.

“Nobody on the staff was paying any attention to him,” I tell Richard. “He’d crapped himself and nobody cared. He was just lying there, doped up, stinking up the room. You know who cleaned him up?” I squeeze Bobby’s arm. “My brother. He cleaned the crap off him, got him dressed, and made him feel like a person again.”

Richard looks at the captain, the captain nods, and the
anger starts to ease away from Richard’s face. “You did that?” he asks Bobby.

“Somebody had to.”

“Well, you should’ve called me. It’s not up to you to take him out of there.”

“I don’t like that place,” the captain cuts in. “It smells like death in there.”

“Listen,” says Officer Dave, “you want to press charges, we’ll take them down to the station.”

Richard stares at his hands as he rubs them together, then looks up. “I don’t guess I’ll press charges. At least, not this time.”

“How about your brother?” Officer Dave asks. “Should we haul him back to the home?”

Me and Bobby stare at Richard. He has to know what we think of that idea.

“No,” he says. “Not right now. I’ll take him home with me for the night.”

“What about after that?” Bobby asks.

“We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Now is not the time to argue about how the captain should stay home and let Bobby look after him. No doubt getting Richard to warm up to the idea is going to take some crafty maneuvering on our part. Even as wrought up as he is, Bobby understands that.

As he and I sit on the porch watching the cops, the captain, and Richard drive away, I slap his knee and say, “You know what we have to do, don’t you?”

“No, what?”

“We have to go talk to Dad. We have to get him to go over to Richard’s and help us lay out our plan about you moving in here.”

Bobby watches the taillights disappear around the curve in the road. “I don’t know about that. Dad’s not likely to take to the idea any better than Richard.”

“You might be surprised,” I tell him. I’m not sure whether I’m right, but I’m ready to give Dad the benefit of the doubt.

The next evening Bobby shows up at home for dinner. The parents are beside themselves over this. Mom’s been flitting around the kitchen like a housefly ever since I told her he was coming. Dad hit the yard work with a vengeance, even though all he said when he first heard the news was, “It’s about time.”

Dinner goes fine, a little awkward, but I expected that. Everyone just has to get used to each other all over again. Mom keeps trying to dish more food onto our plates, Dad tells a string of jokes I’ve heard before, and Drew sits there staring at Bobby like some kind of action hero has landed at our table. No mention of Bobby getting kicked out of the army. Not yet anyway.

When dinner’s over and Drew has gone outside, me and Bobby lay out the plan. I’ve thought through my part over and over, and it makes total sense, but when we get it all out there,
Mom’s first reaction is, “Oh, honey, I don’t know. That sounds like a big responsibility.”

“I know it is,” Bobby says. “I’ve dealt with bigger.”

“You know you’re not going to cure this man, don’t you?” Dad says. “The most you can do is keep him out of trouble, and that won’t be easy, to say the least.”

“That’s okay,” Bobby says. “The captain’s a good man. I just want to try my best to do what’s right for him.”

Mom looks at Dad, waiting to see what he’s going to say, but he doesn’t have an answer right away. Maybe he’s thinking Bobby’s not up to the job, that anyone who gets himself kicked out of the army can’t handle responsibility like this. I don’t know, but I can’t let him make the wrong decision this time.

“You know, Dad,” I say. “When Grandma was sick, you told me how important it was to stand behind family. Well, that’s all Bobby’s asking you to do now. That’s it. Just stand behind what he needs to do.”

Dad stares into my eyes, his forehead furrowed. Then, after a long pause, he claps his hands together the way he does when his mind is made up. “All right, then. I’ll give Richard a call and see when we can go over for a talk.”

“Great,” I say. Me and Bobby exchange grins, and Mom smiles one of her worried smiles that looks like she’s about to swallow her teeth.

As we walk away from the table, Dad wraps his arm around Bobby’s shoulder and says, “I’m proud of you for wanting to take this on. You’re just the kind of man I always hoped you’d be.”

“I don’t know about that,” Bobby says.

“I do,” Dad tells him. “And don’t you worry about that general discharge from the army. They’re the ones who ought to be ashamed, not you. You gave everything you had.”

Bobby doesn’t say anything back. He just nods.

Dad wraps his other arm around me and goes, “Okay, General Ceejay McDermott, it’s time to get down to the next mission. We’re going to talk some sense into Richard Monroe and get this situation with the captain straightened out. And I guarantee you—no one’s going to stop us till we do. Isn’t that right?”

“No doubt about it,” I say.

Padgett’s wearing his white painter’s pants and cap and a white long-sleeved T-shirt. Only this time the T-shirt isn’t completely white. On the back is a silk-screened picture of a knight battling a dragon. I designed the dragon and he did the knight. We’re a pretty good team at this silk-screening business. And just above the picture, in flaming red, is the word
Valiance
.

“This is going to be a great day,” he says, slapping the steering wheel of his old VW for emphasis. “The misfit revolution is in full swing now. Who knows where it might lead.”

“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe we’ll even convert the jocks to the misfit side.”

He laughs. “That would be perfect.”

It’s one of those ideal late-September days—deep blue sky,
zero clouds, a light breeze blowing through the open windows, and a bright but not brash sun looking down on everything.

We’re cruising along a narrow gravel road that cuts through the countryside just off Highway 9. Following behind us is the family van, packed full of McDermotts. All but Bobby. He’s coming right behind them in the old lime-green truck with the captain and Richard. Angelica’s cinched down in the back.

Today’s the day—the first-ever flight of the aero-velocipede.

Everyone’s excited—well, Mom and I might be more nervous than excited—but everyone else is hyped up about how great it’s going to be. Even Richard. Yes, it’s true. I think he’s pretty much in love with Angelica, or at least infatuated. It took him a while to come around, though.

Of course, it wasn’t easy to talk him into letting Bobby move into Casa Crazy to look after the captain, but we did it. Or mainly Bobby did it, by digging down deep and laying out the whole Covell story all over again. At the end, he told Richard, “I know you understand what I’m talking about because you and the captain lost your own brother in Vietnam. You know what that means. I’d do anything to bring Covell back, and I’m sure you’d do anything to bring your little brother back. But we can’t, so we have to do what we can for the ones who are still here.”

That hooked Richard right there. He tried to act like it didn’t at first, but I could tell it did. When he finally laid down the rules about how it was going to be if Bobby moved in, the main one was that Bobby and the captain could never try to fix up Angelica to fly again. Bobby agreed, but the captain didn’t take it well.

Bobby did a good job of keeping him on his meds, but the captain just seemed bummed all the time. Not Nogo Gatu bummed, but like he didn’t have anything to look forward to.
So Bobby and Padgett and I went over to Richard’s and persuaded him to at least let the captain work on the thing. We swore we wouldn’t let him try to fly it—we’d even keep it chained up in the barn—but Richard wouldn’t budge. At least until I told him we wouldn’t even think about working on it unless he was there.

I don’t know if it was the wine that we kept him supplied with, or if it was just that weird bonding thing guys do when they work on something mechanical, but the next thing you know, Richard’s one of the guys. He’s hammering at the frame and flashing screwdrivers around like an ancient Samurai. Not long after that, it’s pretty much settled—someone’s going to have to fly it. And, of course—against my wishes—that someone is Bobby.

So now here we are—Aviation Day. Angelica’s ready for the sky. Painted silver and red, she’s so pretty you’d swear she could recite poetry. As we turn down the road that runs along the side of the field, cars are already parked on both shoulders. Just about everybody we want to see has shown up, along with quite a few kids from high school we don’t have much use for. They just want to see something—anything—different happen around Knowles for a change. I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them are hoping to witness a huge, flaming crash.

“Here’s our big chance to get popular,” Padgett jokes as we park next to the barbwire fence. “You could probably sign autographs just for being Bobby’s sister.”

“Yeah,” I say. “And who knows? Maybe you and me will end up getting voted Weirdest Couple this year.”

He laughs. “That’s my girl. Always aiming for the stars.”

As the lime-green truck pulls through the gate and onto the field with Angelica in the back, the crowd swarms around. Dad helps Bobby, Richard, and the captain unload the
aero-velocipede while the rest of the family looks on, glowing with excitement. Lacy’s so confident, she probably believes Bobby could fly to the moon and back. Mom has one of her worried smiles going. Some people may think she’s phony for always being so perky, but I’ve come to see beyond that. Her smiles are like Padgett’s white outfits. She puts them on to inspire other people. It doesn’t matter if her heart is breaking—if her own mother is dying—she’ll lift one of those smiles up as high as she can. I guarantee it takes more strength to do that than any muscleman with a giant set of barbells ever had.

Of course, Uncle Jimmy and all the other relatives on my dad’s side are there. Uncle Jimmy even has a date with him. I don’t know if she’s a keeper or someone he just woke up next to this morning, but he holds her hand and grins at her like a junior high boy with his first crush.

And then there’s Chuck. He’s beardless now but as merry as ever. He has his little three-year-old girl Amanda with him. She’s riding on his shoulders. He actually took my advice about trying to be a dad to her. Amanda’s mother, Layla Evans, walks just behind them. She doesn’t look so thrilled about the situation at first, but when her little girl beams a smile down and says, “Look at me, Mommy, I’m the highest one here,” Layla busts out a grin twice as big as her daughter’s. I can’t help but feel proud of the part I played in the change in Chuck. Maybe this is a part of what the misfit revolution is really about.

There are a few people missing. Of course, Dani and Tillman aren’t there. Too bad about Tillman. I don’t know if we’ll ever be friends again. And Mona’s nowhere to be seen either. I guess it would be too much to expect her to dump the Escalade and Coach purse and big house in Summer Gate for a guy who goes to the city for therapy once a week and whose biggest ambition is to fly a crazy sculpture around.

Gillis pops out of the crowd and comes our way, all smiles. “Well, if it isn’t the Dirty Duo,” he says. “You mean you two still haven’t broken up?” That’s Gillis for you. It’d kill him to say something nice about Padgett and me. Guess I can’t blame him. He’s different when Brianna shows up, though.

It’s the new-and-improved Brianna. I don’t know if it has anything to do with Bobby giving her a hard time about her look, but she’s ditched the all-black Goth girl outfits for senior year. No more nose ring or scary makeup. I like the change. It fits her better.

“Wow,” Gillis says. “Brianna. Looking hot, girl.”

She looks down at him. “Forget it, leprechaun. You and me? It’s never going to happen.”