It's Up to Charlie Hardin – eARC (11 page)

CHAPTER 12:

THE FUN OF IT

“Eugene! You remember Charles,” Mrs. Carpenter called from her sweeping driveway as Charlie and his mother exited the Hardin Plymouth. Both mothers shed fond gazes on their sons. “Willa, come in for coffee, won’t you?”

The introduction was totally unnecessary for the boys. Gene had already tossed a tennis ball across the manicured lawn in Charlie’s direction, and followed this by making a comical, ferocious face. Within seconds a game of tennis-ball tag exploded toward all corners of the Carpenters’ half-acre, an expanse that advertised family wealth as clearly as if they had installed man-sized dollar signs on the lawn.

Mothers seemed not to notice how many ways a game like tennis-ball tag helped boys to size each other up. Gene had been politely familiar with Charlie for years, but as a suitable companion beyond the strict limits of Sunday-school society, Charlie was still untested. In a game like this, speed, accuracy, and strength counted on the throw; deception and courage were important for the thrown-at. New tennis balls had rubber’s flexibility and would sting only a little. Gene Carpenter preferred last year’s balls, which might as well have been flint, because he placed high value on courage and had a comic book hero’s contempt for pain. Though Gene was a year older and three inches taller than Charlie, they finally negotiated a King’s X on even terms. “Boy, you’re tricky,” the older boy panted with honest admiration, as he sprawled on the back lawn.

“You too,” Charlie replied, and sat down. “Sorry about your cheek.” Though he rubbed an abrasion on his upper arm, Charlie was content. He had seen his best throw catch Gene above the jaw hard enough to snap his head sideways.

“Aaah,” said Gene, dismissing the wound with a grin. He spat on his fingers and rubbed a tiny blood spot from his face. Wink. “I’ll tell Mother I fell in the Algerita.”

If Charlie had wondered how well Gene absorbed punishment, he wondered no longer because he knew the scratches on that cheek must sting like the very dickens. It might be interesting, he thought, to watch Gene Carpenter compete against Jackie Rhett for about ten minutes.

Studying the line of shrubs behind the Carpenter home Charlie said, “They planted Algeritas like those outside the walls of my school. Almost as bad as rosebushes.” In his experience with roses Charlie was an expert by now. The Algerita shrub’s vice was also its main virtue: self-protection. Well known in the region, Algerita was a year-round evergreen, its leaflets stiff as metal and more spiky than holly. In spring it decorated itself with small bright yellow blossoms. Now in early summer the blossoms had become tart pink berries that were popular with songbirds.

“Let’s eat some Algerita berries,” Gene said suddenly.

“You go ahead, they’re too sour for me.”
And I’m not gonna prove how much I love sticking my hand in barbwire. Enough’s enough
, Charlie added, but only to himself.

Gene had gathered only a handful of berries when they heard Willa Hardin’s special three-note whistle that Charlie had been taught to respect. Charlie shouted a reply and raced around to the Plymouth with Gene at his heels.

In moments he had responded to his mother’s parting kiss with a hug and as she drove away the two boys ran alongside the car as if they intended to bark at it. Gene, who knew the value of social niceties, copied Charlie in waving until the car was out of sight. Next, he waved to his own mother. Then, “Got something to show you,” he muttered, and wolfed down his berries.

Here on the edge of town only a suburban street separated homes from an expanse of meadow. The grass continued for a great distance and overlooked a shallow ravine that was much too well maintained to be natural. A creek meandered the length of the ravine, glistening here and there through greenery in the late sun, artificial as a postcard. The other side of the ravine was just as attractive, with small groupings of pecan and oak carefully positioned.

Gene sat on the grass in such a way that he could enjoy both the view and his home without turning his head. “Golf course out there,” he explained to his visitor. He waved toward home and Charlie realized they were still in view of Mrs. Carpenter, who waved back. She seemed about to approach them, then went back inside as if uncertain. “Let’s wait a couple of minutes,” Gene urged, and fell to observing the parklike view. Then he said, the way a teacher might say, “Timing is important, Charlie.”

Presently Gene stretched his arm out toward the south, stood up, and ambled downhill toward the creek in the direction he had pointed. Charlie trotted along too, until he noticed Gene had stopped. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, but we’re going that way,” Gene replied, jerking a thumb in the opposite direction.

“No we weren’t,” Charlie said, confused.

“Boy, you don’t know much,” Gene said, but playfully. “She can’t see us from the house now,” he went on. Sure enough, their heads were now below the street level, and Gene began to stride toward the north.

Charlie followed. “We’re not supposed to go this way?”

“Doesn’t matter whichever way,” Gene confided, “so long as folks don’t know, Charlie. Never let them know which way you go.”

This advice was delivered with the kind of earnestness that suggested it must be important, and Charlie replied with a serious “Uh-huh.” On a parallel track, Charlie’s mind began to toy with the suspicion that if a boy wanted people never to know his intentions, maybe those intentions tended to be unpopular. On the main line of Charlie’s thoughts, however, lay a growing curiosity about Gene Carpenter and his rumored habits.

Gene set a brisk pace toward a gravel street some distance away, all the while talking to Charlie in a pleasant way. It was all about golf balls, and how infernally expensive they had become, and how golfers loved to buy them at half-price, and how a boy with any gumption at all could collect a dozen perfectly good golf balls in an afternoon, if he hid in bushes near the creek. And how Gene had only recently thought up a new wrinkle in the Wandering Golf Ball business, a wrinkle so new he had waited for Charlie’s visit before trying it. And . . .

But Charlie’s mind was working on ways to make sense of his friend’s ways. The Carpenters lived more comfortably than the Hardins, yet Gene had radical ideas about the ownership of golf balls. Though he showed all the politeness a mother could ask, he had a genius for seeming to do one thing while intending a different thing. And however much he might behave all goodygood in front of his parents, Eugene Carpenter apparently made up for it when out of their sight. As the boys drew near the cross street, Charlie judged that, for Gene, out of sight meant out of control. And Gene could get out of sight quicker than a ground squirrel.

Someday it might occur to Charlie that he and Aaron—many boys, in fact—practiced the same strategy to some degree. But now, as Gene led the way stepping carefully down to the edge of the creek, Charlie noticed that the water issued as a small waterfall from a metal conduit not quite big enough to crawl through, and that the one-lane street ten feet above it was, in fact, the top surface of a primitive dam. The structure might have been in place a half-century or more, and it stretched completely across the ravine, which, here at the edge of the golf course, was no more than twenty yards wide.

Gene squatted and peered up the metal conduit, pointing. “See, there’s this thing across the other end.”

Charlie looked, jumped to a conclusion and shook his head. “No. Uh-unh. Over and out, lieutenant. I am
not
goin’ up that thing,” he said firmly.

“Course not, I wanted you to see the floodgate,” Gene replied, laughing. “I figured out how it works. It lowers a big iron plate when you turn a wheel, I think.”

Charlie squinted up the conduit some more. “Why do they do that?”

“They don’t. If they did, it oughta shut the creek off.”

“So what if they did?”

“No more water. No more creek. No more shallow pools where a jillion golf balls have been waiting for somebody to collect ’em.”

An inner vision
of countless golf balls infected Charlie’s imagination. After a moment he said, “Yeah, but as soon as the creek stopped somebody would just turn it on again.”

“If they noticed, they might. But nobody plays golf in the dark. They mostly quit about now, around sundown, and start again next day.” Gene was in high spirits as he outlined his “new wrinkle,” and in a moment he had clambered up the stones and cement of the old dam, drawing Charlie after him by animal magnetism. For the first time, Charlie noticed the poles of high cyclone fencing set in cement between the street and the creek. The creek extended out of sight through the middle of a grassy valley.

Gene walked quickly to a clump of wild grass just off the street and sat down. Charlie stood and faced the parklike valley, leaning on the fence.

“Get away from there, guy, you really
don’t
know much! You can see it all from here,” Gene said, urgency diluting his good humor. Then, “Anybody watching could prob’ly see you there on the fence,” he added without heat as Charlie took a seat beside him.

“Who could?”

“The Terrys. Old man Terry used to own everything around here,” said Gene. “That’s his mansion over yonder.”

Only now did Charlie begin to appreciate the full extent of the place on the other side of the cyclone fence. It seemed to stretch forever, and it impressed him as the owner had intended it to impress adults. He studied the huge home off in the distance half-hidden by trees, saw a scatter of lawn furniture and a barbecue grill with its own stone chimney in the valley, and whistled to himself. “I guess rich guys have their own parks,” he marveled.

“You bet they do,” said Gene. “And they don’t much wanta share it, neither. Maybe they’re afraid somebody will turn that big wheel there, and shut off the creek.”

Charlie’s gaze followed a pointing finger and settled on a big weathered iron wheel held by an axle that extended from the back face of the dam. To seize that wheel a boy must be on the other side of the fence. All his uncertainty about this mission disappeared in a flash. “Yeah, and I’ve tried to climb a cyclone fence. Those sharp tops tear you up pretty good,” he said, hoping Gene could interpret a “no” without hearing it aloud.

“I know,” his companion grinned, and displayed old scars on one arm. “Lucky for us, there’s a gate.”

“I don’t see it,” said Charlie.

“Sure you do. For them it’s a tree. For us it’s a gate.” With that, Gene pointed along the street to a medium-sized hackberry tree just across the fence. It stood twenty yards away, its trunk within arm’s length of the fence. The lowest branches began perhaps ten feet up, some overhanging the street.

This was familiar stuff to Charlie, and it was his turn to grin. “I’ve done that. You gonna go into the tree?”

“Can’t reach the branches. If you were bigger than me you could grab the fence and boost me.” Gene accompanied this with a sorrowful headshake.

For an endless moment, neither boy spoke. Then Charlie said, “But I bet you could grab that ol’ fence and boost me in a jiffy, right?”

Something in Charlie’s tone caused the older boy to look away, and a pink flush crept across his face. “You think I’m afraid, don’tcha?”

“Nope. Prob’ly not,” Charlie shrugged. “The only durn thing I expect scares you is gettin’ caught. But I think you wanted me here because you figgered you couldn’t do this by yourself.”

Gene sighed the sigh of a lost boy. As the normal color returned to his face he said, “I’m sorry. I kinda had the idea you and me might be alike, and this is a little scary, so it’d be fun. I don’t blame you if you don’t want to, Chuck.” And as the last rays of direct sunlight floodlit the scene, Gene stuck out his hand to be shaken.

Charlie stood up and dusted off the seat of his pants. “Who said I won’t? And it’s not ‘Chuck,’ it’s Charlie. This is up to Charlie Hardin. Come on,” and he used the handshake to pull Gene Carpenter to his feet.

It was unsettling to Charlie, hearing a steady fit of giggles and feeling excited trembles from his partner, who took a double-handed grip on the fence and let Charlie use him as a climbing pole. The mission was in doubt only when Charlie stood with both feet on the taller boy’s shoulders and leaned his thighs against the top of the fence. By the time Gene began to sag, Charlie was clinging to hackberry branches and making slow progress.

His weight was enough to bend the foliage down, and after two failed attempts, Gene had snagged a lowered branch himself. “Go on, didn’t you think I’d be behind you?”

“Guy, I swear I don’t know what to think.” Charlie reached the tree trunk and shinnied down without obstruction, Gene following until they picked their way across to the big rusted wheel pocked by flecks of red paint from many years ago.

Gene knelt to inspect the device. “Oh, D-Word it,” he muttered, “it’s wired up.” The wire delayed them only until Gene unwound it. Then he gripped the wheel and turned it; no, tried to turn it. The wheel budged but would not yield, and no amount of his grunting and straining made any difference.

Charlie kept up his glances toward the distant home until Gene begged for help. When Charlie added his efforts the wheel’s hub suddenly squealed like a live thing, then gave way gradually, and every little screech made both boys grimace. Some distance below them, scrapes and crunches said that something was being accomplished, and now Gene could turn the wheel alone. Charlie climbed down the face of the dam near the water to inspect their progress. “There’s a big old iron tray that slides between grooves. It cuts down through some twigs into the water,” he said.

The wheel would turn no further. “Listen, Charlie. Hush and listen.”

Without all the screeching and grunting and commentary, the place fell silent as a mausoleum. “The waterfall down there?”

“Can’t hear it,” said Charlie.

The reply was a whisper powerful as a steam leak. “Right, it’s quit! We’re done. Climb back here and I’ll boost you up the tree.”

Hackberry bark was so sturdy, Charlie could have climbed without help but with both of Gene’s hands supporting his rump Charlie quickly climbed the tree. Gene’s only way up was by gripping the trunk between his arms and legs to inch his way aloft. Meanwhile Charlie fought his way across the foliage, a practice he had mastered before, then hung by his hands and dropped onto the edge of the street. Soon, accompanied by those fitful giggles of his, Gene landed beside him.