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Authors: Jack Gantos

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BOOK: Jack's New Power
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He jogged a few steps down the driveway before shouting, “I'll get your cars, your house, your business … You'll leave here like rats fleeing a sinking ship.”
“Damn him,” Gunnie muttered. She grabbed the spatula and pushed past me and down the steps. He took off for his car. She chased him. He got there first and slammed the door. She swatted the window.
“If I ever catch you, I'll flatten your face,” she hollered, and continued to swat the car like it was a giant fly.
He rolled down the window just enough so he could push the manila envelope out. “Debtors!” he spat, then sped away.
I hopped down the steps to retrieve the ice. It was all crunchy and just right for mixing drinks. I balanced it on my shoulder and returned to the kitchen. Mom passed by and tried to catch my eye. I kept turning my head away. I set my jaw a bit crooked and made the drinks.
 
After I had served everyone and made certain Mom didn't need me, I grabbed Pete and knocked on Betsy's door. Something was definitely going on and we needed to know details. Betsy always had the answers.
“It's simple,” she said. “They spend more than they make and then Dad has been taking loans from the bank while business is dropping. Now the banks want their money and he doesn't have it. That's why he declared bankruptcy.”
“Bankruptcy,” I repeated. I only knew the word from playing Monopoly. It usually meant the end of the game,
like when you rolled the dice and landed on Boardwalk and there was a hotel and you couldn't scrape up the rent. You turned in your mortgaged property and worthless single and five-dollar bills and went to bed a total loser.
“Does this mean we have to go back to Florida?”
“
You
will be going. I'm staying,” she said firmly. “I'm tired of bouncing around. I feel badly for you boys, but if I don't get settled down now, I'll never get ready for college. And since I want to study in England the system here will help me. I'll miss you,” she said, “but I have a scholarship to board and study at the school and I'm going to take it.”
“You can't just leave,” I said.
“Just watch me,” she replied.
“But we depend on you.”
“For what?” she asked sarcastically.
“To kick our butts day in and day out,” I replied.
Before she could take that the wrong way, Pete began to giggle. She gave him her scorched-earth scowl. He took a step back and covered his face. “Watch out,” he hollered. “She's a killer.”
She jumped on him and wrestled him to the floor. Then she tickled him, kissed him, and tousled his hair. He made a sick face, but he loved it. One thing about Betsy, if she said she would take care of you, she would. She was like a pit bull. You might not want to hug her but you would want her around and you'd miss her if she left. She'd fight anyone and do anything to get things her way. Now she wouldn't have to fight us or Mom and Dad. She could just set her sights on what she wanted, then go get it. She was going to be living the life I wanted. And I was going to be
living the life she was rejecting. I was so envious I had to walk away before I started to cry.
I returned to my room and took out my diary. Okay, I thought, you better start loading this up with Barbados stuff. It's now or never. It's over.
 
That night Mom and Dad argued. They were silent over dinner except to order us to our rooms once we had finished. As we walked off I steered Pete into my room.
“We'll ride it out in here,” I whispered, even though the door was closed.
He nodded.
“It will be okay,” I said.
The first words out of Mom's mouth were loud. “I was humiliated,” she said bitterly. “You didn't tell me we were in so much trouble.”
“How was I to know they'd send out a bill collector?” he replied. “I'll take care of it.”
“How?” she questioned him. “And with what?”
“Don't start on that,” he said.
I turned to Pete. “Stay here,” I said and patted the edge of the bed as I reached under the mattress for my diary. “I'm going out there. I did this once before and it worked.”
I slipped out into the hall and tiptoed down to where it opened onto the dining room. I stayed in the shadow, just by the edge of the door, and peeked out at them.
“This isn't just about me,” Dad said. “You helped run up the bills.”
“Oh no,” she shot back. “Don't try to blame this on me. You were the one who set the pace. Spend. Spend. Spend,”
she hammered. “And then you tried to make it all work out by doing business on a handshake with a bunch of drunks who didn't have a cent to begin with.”
Maybe it wasn't such a good idea to step between them, I thought. They might both turn on me. I still had time to retreat to my room. They hadn't seen me.
Dad paced back and forth. Mom continued. “And now you're becoming a rummy like the rest of them!”
“Damnit!” he shouted. I peeked around the corner just as he turned and rammed his fist through the glass door. It exploded into a thousand pieces and scattered like a bucket of marbles thrown across the porch and down the stairs.
Mom stood frozen, with her hands pressed over her ears. Dad stepped through the empty frame of the door and stomped down the stairs, kicking shards of tinkling glass out of his way as he went.
After the last bit of glass settled, I heard Hal Hunt's voice carried on the wind. “Did you hear something break?”
I scurried back to my room. Pete was still sitting on the edge of the bed. He was more frightened than I had ever seen him. I was more frightened than he had ever seen me. “Come on,” I said. I grabbed his arm and jerked him forward. I opened the French doors and we ran out across the grass, through the back yard, to the garage. “Hurry. Hurry. Hurry,” I cried out. “Get in.”
I opened the side door and pushed him forward into the dark. “Get down,” I shouted. “Stay down.” I closed the door and shoved the bolt into place. Then I dropped on
my knees and crawled next to him. We were breathing as if we had just run a mile.
“What happened?” Pete asked between breaths.
“Dad went berserk,” I replied. “He punched out the front door.”
In a moment I sat up and searched around. The garage was filled with empty cardboard boxes. I had seen this in the past and knew what boxes meant. We were definitely moving. Our stay in paradise was over. This was a bad ending to one of Dad's stories. What's the lesson, I asked myself. I just wasn't sure. Was it because Dad was bad at business? Was he a rummy like the rest of the men Mom disliked? I didn't know, and I couldn't ask him. He might go berserk again. I lay back against some boxes and thought, I'll never know why he failed. When I failed at something, it was because I hadn't paid attention or didn't prepare hard enough. But adults were different. They had problems I couldn't figure out. And I guessed that by the time I could figure them out I, too, would be an adult with the same problems.
Pete put his head on my shoulder.
“We'll be okay,” I said. “We'll stick together.”
“You bet,” he replied.
After an hour or so, he fell asleep. I picked him up and lugged him like a sack of potatoes back to the bedroom.
 
In the morning Pete and I woke up acting like members of a retreating army. I opened one of my hollowed-out diaries and removed two packages of firecrackers. For once I agreed with Mom's favorite line,
If you don't use it, throw it
away.
Only I added a twist to her thinking,
If you don't use it, blow it up.
“Gather the stuff you don't want anymore,” I ordered. “We don't want to leave anything behind.”
Pete went into his room and returned with his plastic sailboat with ripped sails. “Blow it up,” he said. “I don't want it anymore.”
We took it out to the back yard. I taped a firecracker to the mainmast. Pete lit it and we stepped away.
Boom!
The mast split in half.
“Excellent!” he cried gleefully.
We blew off the rest of the masts, then the rudder and keel. After that, we tossed it into the trash. No one would ever play with that again.
I brought out a lamp made of a carved coconut. A few minutes later it was destroyed. Pete brought his old shoes and we blew the soles off. I blew up a math book. Pete blew up a mobile of painted fish which had been made out of mango seeds. With each blast, we jumped up and down and cheered.
When we were down to our last six firecrackers I said, “I know what I want to blow up.”
Dad had painted our name “Henry” on a wooden plaque and wired it onto the front gate. I wrapped the remaining firecrackers into one big bomb and taped it to the plaque.
“Fire in the hole!” I hollered and lit the fuses I had twisted together. It went off like a truck backfire and echoed between the houses. The plaque blew in half. One piece stayed on the gate, the other landed in the street.
Pete put two fingers in his mouth and let out a long
whistle. “That is so cool,” he said. “I wish we had some dynamite.”
Just then a black panel van pulled up. The driver leaned out the window. “You guys know where the Henrys live?”
“Right here,” I replied. “Why? You here to move us out?”
“Just the animals,” he said, looking at a clipboard. “I'm from the Humane Society. Your mother called and said to come get the dog and cat. We'll find them new homes.”
The Henry family retreat was under way. The enemy advance scouts were already on our doorstep. I reconnoitered the driveway. BoBo II was asleep in front of the garage. Celeste was sitting on the kitchen stairs licking her paws. I raised my head and looked up into the smoky sky. Oh God, I thought, I don't want to see this. But here it was.
The driver had also seen BoBo II and Celeste. He quickly got a butterfly net and two wire cages out of the van.
“Call the dog over,” he said as nicely as he could, and put on a pair of heavy leather gloves.
“Can't do it,” I replied.
He turned toward Pete.
“Me either,” Pete said. “Not even if you torture me.”
The man shrugged, then walked up the driveway. He went directly to BoBo II, grabbed his collar, then trotted him back to the cage. BoBo II went right in, and after circling around a few times sat down and stared out at us. Tomorrow he'd be sleeping twenty-three hours a day at someone else's house and never know the difference. There is an advantage to having such a tiny brain, I thought. There is no room to remember your past.
He picked up the cage and slid it into the back of the van.
“So long, fella,” I said.
Pete began to cry.
“Hey,” I said. “Better him than you!”
He turned and punched me in the chest.
Before I could punch him back, Celeste let out a screech. The guy had her half into the butterfly net. He was reaching for her with his leather glove when she broke away. She hooked him good across the nose, then leapt into the driveway and across into the Granthams' bushes.
“Go! Go! Go!” I shouted, and waved my fist over my head. I could see her working through the thick leaves and stems and then she was gone. Celeste was smart. She knew not to hang around us. I hoped she would run up into the hills and eat mice and live free. I wanted to run away and live with her. But the island was too small. Someone would find me, and just like BoBo II, I'd be sent home in a cage to face the music.
“It would be better if I had caught her,” the man said when he returned to the truck. “Between the wild dogs and mongoose, she'll be killed.”
“She's tougher than that,” I said defiantly.
“Well, tell your mother I tried,” he said and wiped a spot of blood off his nose. He put away the empty cage, then climbed into the truck and drove off.
 
That afternoon Mom came home with a set of new suitcases.
“Pack your good clothes and play clothes,” she said,
meaning business. “We're leaving today. Your father will ship the rest up to us.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Miami,” she replied. “We're leaving in four hours, now get a move on.”
We each took a suitcase and dragged it to our room. I slipped my story diaries into my backpack. I could carry them onto the plane with me. They were the most important thing I owned. Once we were in Miami I could open them and read about where I had been. Then I would get new diaries and write about where I was going.
I only packed the clothes I still liked. When I finished, I dragged the suitcase out to the front porch and went to find Pete. He was with Betsy. She was packed up for boarding school. The baby was asleep in his crib. I half expected him to be packing up his little outfits. Betsy gave Pete a hug, then me. “Write me long letters,” she said. “I'll write back.”
BOOK: Jack's New Power
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