The Fourth Stall (5 page)

Chapter 7

I
guess that this is as good a time as any to take a moment and tell you about how our business got started. How Vince and I built it up out of nothing.

It all started when my family lived in this trailer park called Bella Vista. I was in kindergarten and we had just moved to town. Vince lived in the trailer next to mine. He was really nice to me right from the start, which was cool because nobody likes being the new kid.

The day we moved in, my parents were moving boxes inside and unpacking and stuff like that. I sat out in the grass in front of my trailer playing with some Transformers.

“Hey,” I heard someone say.

I looked up and saw a kid about my age standing over me. He had dark hair and dark eyes and he was smiling.

“Hi,” I said.

“Is that Soundwave?” he asked, nodding at my Transformer.

“Yeah,” I said.

“Cool. He’s my favorite. Hey, do you like nachos?” he asked.

“Uh, yeah, why?” I asked.

I was pretty sure that he was going to ask me to come over and have some with him because that’s usually what followed a question like that, but of course at that time I didn’t know what Vince was like.

“Cool. Me, too. Hey, do you want to go play football?” he asked.

“Uh, okay, sure,” I said.

After I got my parents’ permission, we set out walking toward the huge playground across the street. I saw some kids of all ages in a clearing running around and throwing a mini football. I’d never played with older kids before, so I was already really nervous. At that time I didn’t realize that that’s just how trailer parks are. They’re kind of like their own little club. There were only so many kids living in Bella Vista trailer park, so they all usually kind of hung out and played together regardless of how old they were.

“My name’s Vince,” he said as we walked toward the clearing.

“Cool. I’m Christian.”

Right before we got there he said, “Have you ever seen a rattlesnake in real life before?”

“No, have you?” I asked, hoping that he had and that he’d tell me all about it.

“Nope,” he said, and then he didn’t say anything else.

After a while longer he said, “My grandma says that pudding is the only reason to get out of bed in the morning.”

I started laughing and so did he. I knew it already—I was going to love hanging out with this kid. He’d made me laugh even though I was so nervous I felt like crying.

When we got to the playground, Vince coughed loudly and said, “This is Christian. He’s a good friend of mine and he wants to play, too.”

“Okay,” said an older kid holding the football. “I’m Barry and this here is Eric.” He pointed to another older kid. “We kind of run the football games here. You’re totally welcome to play if you want.”

“Thanks,” I managed to say. I was still nervous, but these kids seemed pretty nice. And it was Vince who had gotten me the invite.

“Hi,” said a few of the other kids closer to my age.

Then we played football. Well, we played football as well as a group of kids between kindergarten and fourth grade could, which was with lots of fumbles and dropped passes and not a lot of rules, even though we still spent a lot of the time arguing over the few rules we did have. But it was fun, mostly because I’d just made a new friend.

Vince came over the next day and we played video games. And the following day I went to his place. Pretty soon, we were hanging out every day. And I still hadn’t got tired of Vince saying stuff like, “My grandma says that the only real way to eat a pinecone is with tortoise gravy and a sense of self-worth.”

We would go over to each other’s trailer and play video games and board games. We used to do this thing called Gameday. It was where we would play all of the board games we owned on the same day. And we would track our scores and keep records of who was winning and losing in this huge notebook. That was Vince’s idea. Turned out he was obsessed with statistics and records even back then. It’s no surprise he eventually became the business manager.

The point is: We were pretty inseparable. And one of our favorite things to do was to bring all of our action figures to this huge playground in the middle of the trailer park and play desert action movies and stuff. We did this almost every single day during that summer between kindergarten and first grade.

But one day we got there and found the sandbox occupied.

Some kid sat in it playing with a Tonka truck. He wore a black cape and his dark hair was all slicked back tightly like a smear of oil.

“Hey, this is our spot,” I said.

The caped kid looked up; his face was cool and calm.

“Noch tchoday hittsch shoht,” he sloshed, spit spraying from his mouth.

“What?” Vince asked.

The kid held up his index finger and then reached into his mouth and removed a set of white vampire teeth.

“I saaaaaid, not tooodaay it’s not,” he replied, and smiled a dark and evil grin.

“Look, we’ve been coming here every day for forever, so you should move. You can go play in the sand under the swings,” I said, pointing over the kid’s shoulder. “It’s big enough for you to play in, but it’s not big enough for us. That’s fair, right?”

The kid continued to smile and said, “Kristoff, the Dark One, moves for no mortal.”

“Well, it’s two against one, and we’ll beat you up, so you should just move, okay?” I said. I didn’t really like making threats, but we just wanted to play. Even an immortal vampire was no match for the two of us and I think he knew it.

“Yer gonna pay for this,” Kristoff said as he got to his feet. He shoved the teeth back into his mouth, tucked his truck under an arm, grabbed the edges of his cape, and ran toward a white trailer across the street. He flapped the cape continuously the whole way home.

We sat down in the sand and began to play. About twenty minutes later I spotted Kristoff making his way back into the park. And this time he had someone else with him.

“Uh-oh, look who’s back,” I said.

Vince turned and watched Kristoff and an older kid slowly make their way over to the sandbox. They stopped about ten feet from the edge of the sand. A huge smile was planted on Kristoff’s face. The older kid was maybe a third or fourth grader. When you’re in kindergarten, a third or fourth grader can be pretty intimidating.

“Who’s that?” I asked.

“This is my brother, Mike,” Kristoff said.

We looked at Mike. He wore jeans and a T-shirt. He didn’t really look that mean or scary. But he was big and he was scowling at us.

“I heard you little punks have been giving my brother a hard time,” Mike said.

“Oh no, he totally started it. He took our spot,” I said.

“Well, that’s not what he says, so how about you guys move so he can play in that there sandbox?”

Vince and I looked at each other. We shrugged.

“Well, we’re playing right now,” I said.

“See, they’re jerks!” Kristoff squealed.

Mike nodded.

“You can play over there,” I said, pointing at the swing set sand.

“Noooo, he’s going to play right there in that sandbox and you’re going to move,” Mike said.

“You gonna make us?” Vince asked defiantly.

Instead of answering, Mike started walking toward us. I hadn’t been all that scared up to that point, but suddenly as this older kid approached looking more and more like a giant, it began to seem possible that Vince and I might soon find our faces forcibly buried in sand.

When Mike was just a few feet away, I said, “It’s two against one, you know.”

He responded by reaching out for my shirt, and as I tried to back away, my feet tangled and I fell onto my butt in the sand. Then the terror took over. You need to remember that we were just kindergartners. And the world is pretty different when you’re that young. It may have been two against one, but as a fourth grader, he was basically twice our size. And he seemed a lot tougher than both Vince and I put together.

We screamed, grabbed whatever toys we could manage, and ran as fast as we could toward my trailer. Mike and Kristoff ran after us. Which led to some more screaming and running on our part.

I heard them behind us. I wasn’t sure how close they got or how hard they were actually trying to catch us, but I wasn’t about to try and find out. I just kept on running. Eventually we made it to my trailer. I turned around and saw Mike and Kristoff standing across the street, on the edge of the playground. They laughed.

Then Kristoff yelled, “This is our playground now, so don’t ever come back!”

We went inside my trailer, feeling pretty dejected.

“Oh man, that was close!” I said. “Are you okay?”

Vince nodded. “Yeah.”

“Do you think they’ll be gone tomorrow?” I asked.

“Yeah. I bet they were just showing off,” Vince said.

But the next day Mike and Kristoff were still there. And the following day Mike and Kristoff were there yet again. And the next day as well. Pretty soon, we came across other kids who Mike and Kristoff wouldn’t let into the playground either. Mike and Kristoff had taken it over.

The only times any of us ever got to go in the playground that summer were when we were either with our parents or Mike and Kristoff were inside eating dinner or something. But those times weren’t very often, and we wanted our playground back.

That’s when we devised a plan. It was officially the first of many plans that Vince and I would develop together.

One afternoon we went to the edge of the playground and peeked around the corner of a nearby trailer. There they were: Kristoff, the Dark One, and his older brother, Mike. They were swinging side by side on the swing set.

It was time for phase one. We went back to my trailer and found my dad in the living room watching TV.

“Hey, Dad?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Will you come play football with us in the playground?” I asked.

“Can it wait until after
Quantum Leap
? It’s over in about ten minutes.”

I knew he’d say that. He watched reruns of this old, weird TV show about a time traveler and a computer named Ziggy every day in the summer from three to four. He never missed an episode and it was almost impossible to get him away from the TV while it was on. My mom had given up trying years ago.

So far, the plan was working perfectly.

“Okay, we’ll go get the football and then meet you there?” I asked.

“Yeah, okay.”

“Thanks, Dad!” I said, and we left my trailer.

We walked back to the playground slowly. We needed the timing of the plan to be perfect, so we couldn’t rush it.

“Wow, your dad really loves that show, huh?” Vince said.

“I guess.”

“Yeah, my mom loves this show called
Doctor Who.
It freaks me out,” he said.

We reached the edge of the playground once again. Mike and Kristoff were still swinging. It was time for phase two of the plan. We walked boldly out into the middle of the playground and stopped just behind the swing set.

“Hey, freak! Want to come suck our blood?” I yelled.

Mike and Kristoff dismounted immediately and turned to face us. The two of us stood staring at the two of them as the sun beat down on the thirty feet or so in between.

“What’re you doing here? This is our playground now!” Kristoff yelled.

“We just want to play in our sandbox like we used to,” I said.

“No way. That’s our sandbox now,” Mike said.

I looked back across the street toward my trailer. I saw my dad just leaving the front door. I took a few steps toward the vampire and his older brother.

“Well, we’re here now, so we’re going to play in the sandbox,” I said.

Mike started walking toward me and said, “You really want to do this?”

“Go ahead, make my day,” I said. I saw some really cool dude say that in this movie I watched with my dad once. It was kind of boring, except for the part at the end where he says that line to this guy and then blows him away with a gun the size of Texas.

Mike kept moving toward me and I held my ground, just hoping that the plan would work. If not, I’d be in trouble. Mike stopped just a few feet away. He squinted an eye at me, as if to make sure I was still there and wasn’t an illusion. Then he scowled and reached out a hand faster than my eyes could move. He grabbed my shirt collar and pulled me up and toward him. His other hand formed a fist and I closed my eyes, waiting for the blow.

But then everything went still as a deep rumble fell down from the sky like the voice of an angry god.

“HEY!
What is going on here?
” my dad thundered as he walked into the playground.

Okay, I should explain something. I know it’s pretty wussy to hide behind your daddy, but we were just little kids and Mike was practically a giant gorilla or yeti or something compared to us. Besides, the smartest and best plans were usually the ones that involved cheap shots. Like in a fight, if you really want to win it, then you’ll bite and scratch and kick people in the groin instead of just punching and wrestling “like a man.”