Ten Mile River

P
RAISE FOR
P
AUL
G
RIFFIN AND
Ten Mile River

Nominated for the 2009
YALSA Best Books for Young Adults

‘These two boys come to life on the pages…and
their conversations are often laugh-out-loud funny…'
School Library Journal

‘A striking debut.'
Publishers Weekly

‘Equal parts grit and heart. A spectacular first novel… it's got all the right stuff to make it a major favourite.'
Richie Partington, American Library Association

‘Stunningly acute debut novel…'
VOYA Library Journal

‘Gorgeous writing…His is clearly a talent to watch.'
Booklist

‘The reader's fervent desire to see these kids escape
their situation against all odds creates the tension…
Compelling, well-articulated reality.'
San Francisco Chronicle

While getting his stories published, Paul Griffin worked on the docks, in construction, as an emergency medical technician, and as a teacher, mostly with at-risk kids in high schools and juvenile detention centres throughout New York City, where Paul lives with his wife, a documentary filmmaker. He is finishing his second novel,
The Orange Houses
.

PAUL GRIFFIN

The paper used in this book is manufactured only from wood grown in sustainable regrowth forests.

The Text Publishng Company
Swann House
22 William Street
Melbourne Victoria 3000
Australia
www.textpublishing.com.au

Copyright Paul Griffin 2008

All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright above, no part of this publication shall be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the publisher of this book.

First published by Dial Books, Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
This edition published by The Text Publishing Company 2009
Design by Susan Miller
Typeset by J&M Typesetting
Printed and bound by Griffin Press

National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry

Griffin, Paul, 1966–
  Ten Mile River / Paul Griffin.

  ISBN: 9781921520136 (pbk.)

  Runaway teenagers—New York (N.Y.)—Juvenile fiction.
  For secondary school age.

813.6

for Kirby Kim and Nan Mercado

Contents

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

1

Ray was bigger but José was boss. They were fourteen and fifteen, on their own and on the run.

José pulled two lead pipes from the knapsack he made Ray wear, slapped one into Ray's hand. ‘Shut your eyes before you smash the glass.'

‘You said the same damn thing last time.'

‘And you forgot to do it last time.' José smacked the back of Ray's giant head.

They were hiding in the park. Ray studied the three-quarter moon spraying light they didn't need.

‘Let's git to work,' José said.

They made their way through the weed trees, downhill toward their target, a line of parked cars. José peeled off his shirt, wrapped it around his arm. He was skinny, ripped. ‘Strip off that shirt, Ray-Ray.'

‘I'm a'right.' Ray's pipe slipped out of his sweaty hand, rang on the sidewalk. ‘Quit lookin at me like I'm a moron.'

‘You
are
a moron.'

‘Think I dropped it on purpose?'

‘With you, you never know.' José hustled ahead.

Ray eyed the tenements, the air conditioners hanging lopsided from windows. He worried one would fall someday, kill some kid in a stroller.

José never seemed to worry about what rotten thing might happen next. He gripped the pipe good, closed his eyes, swung down on an Escalade. The windshield imploded.

Ray smashed the far side of the street. There were a few jacked-up SUVs but mostly rear-ended Accords, gypsy hack Tauruses, poor folk rides. ‘Goddammit,' Ray said. He knew he was breaking more than glass.

After they popped thirty-some windshields, lights and sirens spun a half mile up the road. The boys hid in the woods. José said, ‘That Escalade goes for eighty grand. All that bling, they deserve it.'

They don't,
Ray didn't say. Nobody does, not the poor folk, not the pimps neither. ‘Punks, every last one of 'em.'

José poked Ray's gut. ‘A man's gotta eat, right, kid? Yo, after we get our bread, let's go boost us some DVDs. Gonna get me the
Goodfellas
deluxe.'

‘You got
Goodfellas
deluxe in your stack twice, still in the wrappers.'

‘Then I'm-a swipe me that other one,' José said. ‘That Godfather dude, homeboy never got his shirt on the whole movie. “My name es
To
ny Mon
ta
na.” That Scar-face was a first-rate thug, them model-lookin chicks hangin half-nekkid around that dope swimmin pool he got out back his mansion there.' José leveled his window-breaking pipe Uzi style at Ray. ‘“Say hullo to my lil' friend!”' He purred
rat-a-tat-tat
as he sprayed Ray with invisible bullets.

Ray couldn't make the
rat-a-tat-tat
sound, came back with a lame
ka-click
as he mimed lock and load, gave José the gory glory he wanted.

José danced like Tony Montana gobbling up machine gun fire at the end of
Scarface,
the kingpin stoked on coke as if he'd sucked dry a generator big enough to power the city. Ray played along, body slammed the J-man. José flipped and pinned his boy, never mind Ray had J by four inches and seventy pounds. If life ever boiled down to a face-off Ray could check-'n'-deck the J-man in one throw. Not that Ray knew this yet.

‘You got cut,' José said.

‘Scratch is all.'

José grabbed Ray's arm, checked out the cut. ‘It's not bad.'

‘Gimme back m' arm.'

‘I tolt you to wrap yourself, kid. How come you ain't take off your shirt?'

Ray looked away, shrugged. ‘Was cold.'

‘
Right.
Idiot.' José eyed Ray. ‘You did real good back there. Let's get paid.'

They worked their way through the woods to Van Cort-landt Park South and Jerry's Auto Glass, Best in The Bronx, the closest windshield fix for the thirty-some smashed cars. Jerry picked his teeth. ‘'Sup boys?'

‘You're up early, Jerry,' José said.

‘Thinkin I'm gonna be busy today.' Jerry nodded at a banner strung over the garage bays:
TODAY ONLY, 20%
DISCOUNT
.

‘Might as well've had us put flyers under the windshield wipers,' José said.

‘Except there's no more windshields to put them flyers on, right, Slick?'

José nodded. ‘Howzabout our money?'

Jerry twirled his ear hair, sniffed his waxy fingers. ‘Howzabout how many?'

‘Thirty-some,' José said.

‘That's good. Thirty-some shields is good.' From a wad in his chest pocket Jerry flipped José a hundred.

‘Buck fifty, we said,' José said.

‘See, here's the thing.' Jerry took out his fake teeth to get rid of a string of food. ‘I'm short right now.'

‘You're short all the time,' José said.

Jerry was short. He didn't like short jokes. ‘And you're funny, till I stab you.'

‘You stab me in a
dream
you better run,' José said.

Jerry laughed, sounded like a car that couldn't get started. ‘You can't be fifteen, either of yous.'

‘I'm fifteen, yo. Ray's almost.'

‘He looks younger. Look at that head. Tweedle Dum. You a tard, Ray?'

Ray was a whiz kid, but he wasn't quick in the way of whipping off fast comebacks. He was slow smart. ‘Just lemme show you how retarded I am.'

‘Easy, Ray. Ray's a genius, Jerry. Ray fillets you for brains.'

‘Whatever. Frontin like you're sons of Gotti. I'd laugh except it's sad.' Jerry laughed. ‘Go blow that hundred on your video games or whatever yous do, come back next week, maybe I got another gig. Yous worked, what, two minutes, scored a hundred bucks. You don't like it, go spot drugs, see how long yous last.'

‘We said a buck fifty.' Ray stepped to Jerry with no aim of doing anything but stepping to Jerry.

‘Chill, Ray. We see you soon, Jerry.' José mimed a gun, popped a shot at Jerry.

‘Next time I'm gonna make it up to you,' Jerry said. ‘Thirty-some shields, huh? Nice. My daughter can go to Catholic school now. God bless you. I'll light a candle for yous.' Jerry went into the shop to rinse his teeth.

‘We oughta torch that punk's joint,' José said.

‘Gimme a gas can and a Zippo long neck, I'll do it.' Ray didn't want to torch anything. He didn't want to pop windshields either, but a man had to eat. ‘A man's got to eat, dammit.'

‘Like I said,' José said.

And a man has to stand by his brother,
Ray didn't say. You survive foster care and juvie together, you stick by each other, you bet you do. Ray slugged José's shoulder.

José pulled Ray into a headlock. ‘Let's get us a grill and grill us some fish,' José said.

‘I'll grill it.'

‘You know you will.' José laughed. He had a cool laugh, loud enough to wake the dark side of the world.

‘Hell you laughin about, punk?' Ray laughed, had no idea why he was laughing.

José smiled a mouth full of perfect teeth. ‘He's callin me a punk now. Think you're tough, Ray-Ray?'

‘I know I'm tough.'

‘The double Ray. The Ray-man. Kid Ray. Yeah, you might just be tough. But not as tough as me.'

Ray didn't say anything.

‘Ha!' José jumped Ray's back, made Ray carry him, played slap drums on his head. ‘Let's git us a grill, son.'

They hopped a yard fence and stole a mini grill. On the subway south into Manhattan they flanked the grill, put on their gangster squints, dared the early-morning shift training in from The Bronx to say anything. An easy-to-make undercover cop boarded at 207th Street. ‘White boy tryin to front homeboy,' José whispered.

The boys ditched the grill, slipped out of the train to the street. They bummed smokes from a nice old alcoholic so blind he didn't notice the boys were too young to smoke. They hunkered behind a Dumpster until two trains later when the 1 rumbled down the elevated track. They timed their run, hopped the turnstile, mixed with the morning rush into the head car. Tenement towers shadowed the train. ‘I wonder what's gonna happen to that grill now,' Ray said. ‘It's kind of sad, if you think about it.'