Big Mouth (11 page)

Feeling the pressure of the ticking timer, I abandoned the Solomon Method and started shoving the bars into my mouth Traditional Style. One after the other after the other, I stuffed the minis in with both hands, fitting up to four in my mouth at one time. All the while, I chewed fast, swallowing what was around my molars to make room for the new candy bars at the front of my mouth. I was practically unhinging my jaw to open and chew at the same time. Soon enough, though, my movements become smooth and rhythmical:
Rip, shake, grab, swallow, stuff, chew, chew, swallow, chew, chew.
Over and over. Turns out it wasn’t easy to chew what was in back while still opening up for more at the front. And solid food was a lot harder to deal with than ice cream—minis had to be chewed small enough for a safe swallow. The last thing I wanted to do was to choke to death with four candy bars jammed in my mouth. Imagine the headlines.

Thanks to my Thuff Enuff “Quick Chew/Small Swallow” version of the Traditional technique, my pile of empty wrappers was growing fast again. With forty-eight seconds left, I was clearly ahead. Gardo saw this and stuffed in even more candy. His cheeks were as big as tennis balls. He couldn’t get his teeth or lips all the way down with that giant brown glob in his mouth. His eyes squeezed closed from the effort of trying to chew the hunk. He hadn’t swallowed in ten seconds, at least.

Thirty-three seconds to go.

A bar flew free of my wrapper and skittered across the counter. I lunged and grabbed it, then shoved it into my mouth.
Boy, did that thing fly!
I turned to see if Gardo had seen it. His eyes were wide open again. Only he wasn’t chewing. He was grabbing at his throat with one hand and swatting frantically at the wad in his mouth with his other. He wasn’t making a sound.

Choking!
I jumped to my feet and spit my wad of chocolate onto the floor. “Choking! You’re choking!”

Balling my right hand into a fist, I hammered him on the back as hard as I could, knocking him forward against the counter. The wad in his mouth popped out. But he was still grabbing at his neck and swatting the air without a sound. More must have been stuck in his throat.

Idiot! You’re not supposed to HIT a choker! The Heimlich thing, do the Heimlich thing!
I yanked Gardo back up into a standing position with his back to me, wrapped my arms around his waist, and lined my fist up against his stomach.
Where does it go? Where does it go?

“Where does it go!”

There!
My fist fell into the soft cavity just under his ribs.
One—Two—THREE!
I squeezed my arms violently toward my belly and slightly up, my fist sinking deep into his gut. My medals dug into my chest as his feet popped off the ground. But he was still grabbing at his neck, now with both hands.

I squeezed and lifted again.

Nothing.

Again.

Nothing.

Please, please
…

Again—

Phewp!
A brown glob smacked into the kitchen window on the other side of the counter. It stuck to the glass a moment, then slid down slowly, a trail of goo snailing behind it.

Gardo sagged in my arms, coughing and sputtering. I lowered him to the floor, onto his hands and knees, then dropped down next to him, panting. My heart was racing.

OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod…

Still on his hands and knees, Gardo arched his back suddenly.

“
Aaaagggh!”
He puked a huge gush of Pepsi and chewed candy onto the floor.

I lurched sideways to avoid the splatter.

“Aaaa…aaaagggh!
” More Pepsi hit the floor, but not so much candy this time. The withering smell of butyric acid hit me full force.

“Aaaa…Aaaa…”

Nothing.

He hovered over his disgusting puddle, trembling.

I rested my hand on his back. “Wait, Gardo, wait….”

Still nothing.

“Good. Your first dry heave. It’s all easy going from here.” I patted his back. “You’re good, man. You’ll be fine. The worst is over.”

Beep! Beep! Beep!
I whipped my head up. The oven timer. Time was up.

Hauling myself to my feet, I trudged to the oven and turned off the timer. I stood there a moment, stretched over the stove, breathing deeply.

I can’t believe what almost just happened. Gardo just…almost…

I shook my head. He didn’t, and that was what mattered now. He didn’t.

With shaky steps, I crossed the kitchen and got a new roll of paper towels from the cupboard. I rolled it over near Gardo. Then I got my mom’s dishwashing gloves, the sponge, and a bucket from beneath the sink.

Turning the water on full blast, I filled the bucket with soapy water.

By this time, Gardo was sitting back on his heels. He’d taken off his T-shirt and was wiping his face with it. “I’m sorry, Shermie….”

“Shut up. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

“I shouldn’t have—”

“I said shut up.”

I carried the bucket and cleaning supplies over next to him and set to work. First I threw a bunch of paper towels over the whole disgusting sight. Then I used more paper towels to push and sop at the edges of the mess, trying to get it all into one nasty pile that I could scoop up with the dustpan. Sometimes at Scoops-a-Million I had to clean up big ice cream messes, so I knew that the dustpan was the tool to get the job done.

Gardo tried to get some paper towels to help, but I pushed his hands away. “I got this. Go get a clean T-shirt from my closet.”

“Man, this is so embarrassing….”

“It’s not embarrassing. It’s just bad luck, that’s all.”
Scary luck is what it is.
“It could happen to anyone.” Another scary thought. I’d been jamming food into my mouth for over a week now with no one around to Heimlich me if I had choked.

I unwound a fresh wad of paper towels from the roll.

Gardo used the counter to pull himself up, then just stood there, watching me sop and push his puke into a pile. “Good thing you know the Heimlich maneuver.”

“Good thing.” I looked up at him, but his bloodshot eyes wouldn’t meet mine. The knuckles on his right hand were white from squeezing the counter, and the hand that held his pukey wrestling shirt was shaking.

I sat up on my heels and said with more conviction than I felt, “Hey, man, don’t sweat it. Even the Grand Master of All Things Great and Edible has been known to choke on the occasional Cheeto. You should see those things fly.” I whistled and sliced my yellow-gloved hand through the air like a rocket. The gold band around my uniformed forearm sparkled in the light.

Gardo laughed weakly. “I guess. You know, I
could
kind of breathe, so it wasn’t like I was
choking
choking….”

“That’s right.”

“I mean, when you’re an athlete, stuff happens, right?” He gestured to the bandage on his neck. “It’s all part of the game.”

“Totally. Now quit holding up the counter and get me a trash bag from under the sink.” I needed something to put those nasty paper towels in. Man, was this gross. And it reeked. I almost felt like puking, too. “No, wait, get me two. I swear, you must be ten pounds lighter than you were two minutes ago.” I didn’t know which was worse, smelling someone else’s puke, or seeing it.

He fetched some trash bags, and when I went to take them from him, he held his end tight for a second. “Hey, Shermie…”

“What?”

He hesitated. “Don’t tell anyone, okay?”

I sat back on my heels again and locked my eyes on his. “My big mouth stays shut.” I pulled an invisible zipper across my lips.

He smiled, a real smile this time. “I knew I could count on you. Thanks, man.” He slugged me in the shoulder and headed down the hallway to my room.

As I watched him go, I thought about how I’d been just a Heimlich away from never seeing him walk anywhere again. Ever.

Now my hands shook.

I turned back to the disgusting mess on the floor. Vapors of chocolate and butyric acid swirled around me. I hated the smell of butyric acid now more than ever.

Now it smelled like death.

“Hey, Gardo, give me another bag, will you?”

I’d just closed the front door on a tiny Winnie the Pooh and an even tinier Tigger. They’d been so cute, I’d given them four candy bars each. My bowl was getting low. “I can see bottom here. Unacceptable.”

My buddy came over wearing my Galactic Warriors National Convention T-shirt, which looked like a giant black poncho on him. I’d bought the shirt last month at the same booth that took my order for a signature edition Captain Quixote telescope. It was nice to see someone getting some use out of the stupid shirt. It shrank the first time I washed it, so I couldn’t wear it. I’d been thinking of tacking it to my wall like a poster.

“Here,” he said, tossing me a silver package of minis. I had to lunge for it, which hurt thanks to my stomach being so full of Pepsi and Three Musketeers. “That’s the last bag.”

I jerked my thumb toward the kitchen. “There’s more in the cupboard. Can you grab one?” I wanted to keep him busy. It’d been a couple of hours since the Heimlich thing, but we hadn’t talked about it since he came back with my shirt on. If that was the way he wanted to handle it, fine with me. It was his deal, almost choking to death, so I’d follow his lead. “The cupboard to the left of the fridge.”

“That is from that cupboard. We’re out.”

“How can we be out? I bought ten bags.” Dang, maybe I was too generous with the candy doling. “We’ll just have to give out Mom’s candy, then. She bought some Mounds, if you can believe it. Jeez, I hope no one eggs us. I think they’re in the fridge, next to her tofu.”

“Tofu? Gag city.”

“Tell me about it.”

The doorbell rang. I opened the door to a pink fairy, a lime-green Hulk, and a blond girl with big glasses and a lightning bolt on her forehead. I put several Three Musketeers in each one’s plastic pumpkin.

Gardo hollered from the kitchen. “No more Mounds, either. There’s nothing left.”

“How can the Mounds be gone? I haven’t given any out.”

I went to the kitchen and looked over Gardo’s shoulder into the fridge, trying not to jostle my full stomach. There was a hint of butyric acid on his breath, but mostly he smelled like coconut.

“Aw, man,” I said, “you stink like coconut. You ate the Mounds, didn’t you? Gross!”

“What? I was hungry. My stomach was empty, remember?”

“But
Mounds
?”

“What’s wrong with Mounds?”

“They’re
coconut.
” I motioned toward the couch. “Yuck. Go back over there.”

“You’re the one who bought them.”

“I didn’t buy them, my mom did. Mounds don’t tempt her. She hates coconut.” I had to agree with her on that one. The stuff was vile.

“I’m not gonna stay in a separate room from you all night,” he said. “Stick some cotton up your nose or rub Vicks under it or something.”

“You’re the one who ate them.”

“You’re the one who had them in your house.”

The doorbell rang, so I went to drop a Three Musketeers bar into the pumpkin of a waist-high pirate with a curly red beard. The kid peered down into his pumpkin. “Just one?
Argh!
”

“Hey, you’re lucky I have any left at all.”
Ungrateful swabby.
“It’s almost nine-thirty. The early bird gets the Three Musketeers, Redbeard.”

He stuck out his tongue at me as I shut the door.

Back in the kitchen, Gardo leaned against the open refrigerator door. “Where’d all the Three Musketeers come from if your mom bought Mounds?”

“I bought them. I’m the one who has to scrub the dried eggs off the door tomorrow morning if we give out gross stuff. Move over.” There had to be something I could give out. Leaning in painfully, I found a bag of yogurt-covered peanuts behind the mayonnaise jar. Only, there was more green fuzz on them than yogurt.
Nasty.
“No kid wants coconut anything on Halloween.”

“I like coconut.”

“You’d like dirt if I served it to you on a plate. Every other kid on the planet hates coconut. Seriously, how many trick-or-treaters do you know who dump out their pumpkins at the end of the night and go, ‘Ooh, yippee, a Mounds bar’?”

Gardo shrugged and went back to the couch to watch his wrestling marathon.

Getting more desperate by the second, I shoved aside condiments and yanked open crisper doors.
Carrots, celery, a box of croutons…
It was one pathetic refrigerator. I never really noticed how empty our fridge was before. Dad and Grampy and I usually ate takeout, if we were even home at the same time to eat together, and my mom only ate salads.

“What’s this?” A lumpy plastic bag caught my eye, way in the back, on the bottom shelf. It almost blended in with the white wall of the fridge. I pulled off the twist tie and slowly opened the bag, ready to squeeze it shut if the smell was too awful. “Aw, shoot.”

“What?” Gardo asked from the couch. “Did you find some candy?”

“Raisins. Tiny boxes of shriveled, disgusting raisins. I can’t even guess how old they are.”

“Man, your house is as good as egged.”

“Shoot.” I slammed the fridge closed as the doorbell rang yet again. This time it was some boy in a Chargers uniform with a fake cast on his leg and a little girl in a blue Star Trek medical officer uniform. Where was the good doc when we needed her a couple of hours ago?