The Trouble in Me (10 page)

“Sure,” I said, breathing harder. “Does that mean I get to end up being like you?”

“Don't be ridiculous,” he said as he lit a cigarette. “Even if you could be me you don't want to be me. Heck, I don't even want to be me.”

“Yes you do,” I said quietly because I was a bit timid with what I was about to say. “I've given it a lot of thought. I want to be your double—kind of like a twin. Then you'd have someone just like yourself to hang out with.”

He seemed amused by this. “You're a little stranger than I thought, Sailor Jack,” he remarked. “But like I said,
maybe
. Someday you'll meet my friends and you'll see just how far you have to go to come up to our level.”

I didn't like the thought of his friends. They'd just steal Gary's attention away from me. Maybe I could convince him not to see them. After all, my job was to give him good advice to keep him out of trouble.

Just then the doorbell rang.

“You going to be around later?” Gary asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

“Great,” he said. “I have a little something for you—later.”

“Like what?” I asked.

“What!”
he shot back harshly. “I hate that word! Like when Alexander Graham Bell said, ‘Mr. Watson, come here. I want to see you,' Watson didn't sit on his ass and whine, ‘What ya need me for, boss?' Did he?”

“No,” I said.

Gary blew cigarette smoke in my face. “Be like Watson and come when you are called. I already have parents who ruin my mood by asking
what
I'm doing. And now I have a probation officer crawling up my butt asking me
what
, so just either wait for me to show you
what
or go spend your time trying to be a girl with your sister and her friends.” He reached out and grabbed the window curtain and handed it to me. “Wipe your mouth. You had a bathroom accident and you're bleeding.”

“Gary!” Mrs. Pagoda sweetly called down the hallway as the house shifted a bit toward her. “Your Mr. Mercier is here and I hope you filled out those papers.”

“I did!” he hollered back, tossing his butt in the toilet and flushing.

Then he turned to me and leaned his forehead directly onto mine. His nose was against my nose. As he spoke his lips buzzed over my lips. “If in any way you screw this up for me I'll kill you. You know that grave I dug yesterday? Well, the last asshole who screwed me over is in there. So no funny business. Pay attention to me and agree with everything I say.”

He pulled his face away, tousled my hair a bit, and gave me a shove forward. “Go be the fake good kid I know you are,” he whispered. “Lie to my probation officer even better than you lie to your parents, yourself, or any girlfriend you might have had.”

“Got it,” I said, feeling anxious but eager to perform well in front of the probation officer. I was a pretty careful liar and once I got started I could slip one lie into another and into another like a nest of little boxes that all fit together.

When we entered the living room, Mrs. Pagoda was disappearing up the hallway. She moved like a slow billiard ball rolling toward a pocket and then she opened the door to a darkened den and rolled in. In the flickering light from a television, I could see Mr. Pagoda's feet resting on an ottoman, but I couldn't see the rest of him. Mrs. Pagoda closed the door behind her.

In the living room, Gary put his heavy hand on my shoulder to steady me. “Mr. Mercier,” he said in a respectful voice, “meet my new friend, Jack Gantos.”

Mr. Mercier was dressed in a baby-blue suit and white open-collared shirt and when we shook hands he held mine tightly enough to keep me from pulling away.

“Nice to meet you,” he said crisply. “Do you have a record?”

I glanced at Gary. I was stupidly thinking of a record album.

“He's so clean,” Gary said to Mr. Mercier, “that he doesn't even know what a ‘record' means.”

“You ever been to jail?” Mr. Mercier asked, giving my hand an extra squeeze. “You ever been busted for shoplifting? You ever skip school? You ever steal a bicycle?”

“No, sir,” I said. “None of those things.”

“Then why would you suddenly start hanging around with this criminal, who thinks
right
and
wrong
are the same word in the dictionary?”

He let go of my hand and began to crack his knuckles. If he had snapped my arm it wouldn't have sounded as loud as him cracking his thumb.

“Well,” I said nervously, “because I'm really good at chess and he knows how to play and so we became chess friends.” I was trying to sound convincing. “It's easy because we're next-door neighbors and he's nice—I mean, he doesn't cheat or anything.”

“Gary,” Mr. Mercier said, pivoting so quickly toward Gary I thought he was going to hit him with a sucker punch. “What's your favorite chess piece—the pawn or the queen?”

Gary pushed his hair away from his eyes. “The knight,” he replied casually. “He's just like me. Two steps in one direction”—he took two steps forward—“and then one quick step off the deep end.”

As he said that he turned to the side and dropped down onto one knee.

I laughed and the moment I did so Mr. Mercier re-grabbed my hand, and very hard this time. He wanted to keep my mouth on a tight leash.

“So, Jack,” he said, “how long have you known your new chess friend?”

I cut my eyes toward Gary. I knew he was aching to answer, and he jumped right in.

“Jack and I have been friends since he moved in next door.”

Mr. Mercier let out a sigh of frustration.

“Jack,” he said with more force, “how long have you lived next door?”

It had only been a few weeks.

“A month,” Gary blurted out.

“Let the kid answer the questions,” Mr. Mercier insisted, and slapped Gary across his leg.

“I've known Gary long enough,” I said, “for him to join the Sea Cadets. My dad's the commodore.”

“Is that like the Boy Scouts of the sea?” Mr. Mercier asked in a wise-guy voice.

“Yes,” I said proudly. And then I turned to Gary. “By the way, your uniform just came in. Dad said he'll fit you up at the boathouse. He's got to sew your
accomplishment
patches on, and your name.”

Mr. Mercier jerked my arm to get my full attention and looked at me with such contempt in his shiny eyes that I could stare back into them and see a faint image of myself being crushed by his scorn.

Suddenly he changed the conversation. “You have blood running out the side of your mouth.”

He let go of my hand and pointed at my face as if I didn't know where my mouth was located.

I reached up and touched my lip where Gary had punched me. “I just had my braces removed,” I explained, and wiped the blood on the back of my hand. “My gums are still sensitive.”

“I have you pegged as a total fake,” Mr. Mercier concluded in a voice practiced at being cold. “A serial liar like Gary doesn't hang around with little farts like you—little mama's boys.”

Suddenly Gary was up on his toes. He stood like a boxer shifting his weight from side to side with his hands low and close to his hips, but his face was stretched all the way forward in anger.

“He's not a fake, Mr. M,” he declared, spitting his words. “He's my friend, and he's helping me become a better person.”

“Better for what?” Mr. Mercier asked. “Lying?”

Gary stepped toward him, and right then I stood and put my hand on Gary's shoulder, hoping to settle him down.

Mr. Mercier shrugged off Gary's performance. “Let me give you some advice,” he said toward me, “just in case you are blind or retarded in some tragic way. Gary is a criminal sociopath who makes things disappear—starting with the truth. He's been in and out of foster care, juvie joints, and psych wards all his life. His brother, Frankie, has an IQ that doesn't add up to the coffee change in my pocket. The parents' nicknames are ‘Don't Work' and ‘Won't Work,' and only the sister, who is a dog groomer, keeps this family going on dented cans of baked beans and Alpo—and one of these days she'll wake up and ride off on a bullmastiff.”

“I don't think so,” I said. “They seem to me to be a whole family that sticks together.”

“Yeah, like a box of rats are a whole family,” he said sarcastically, and frowned. “Look, you seem like a nice kid,” he said evenly. “Take my advice and walk out of this house and keep going.” Once again he reached out and gripped my hand. “Any kid that enters this house will never leave as nice as when he arrived. You might think Gary'll end up being more like you, a mama's-boy-chess-king, but you will be more like him—a career criminal in his early years.”

Then he didn't so much release my hand as throw it back at me—but this time it arrived with his business card folded into my fist. “You're playing with fire, kid. Do yourself a favor and leave. Now.”

I looked at Gary.

Gary pointed toward the front door. “You heard the man. Go,” he said insistently. “Save yourself from me. You ever knock on my door again I'll knock you unconscious.” He lunged at me with a mock punch.

I ducked anyway. “What about the Sea Cadets?” I asked. “My dad paid in advance for that uniform.”

“Tell him to call the admiral for a refund. Now beat it.”

I walked quickly out of his house, leaving the chess set behind, and crossed the crackling grass shards toward my front door.

I was embarrassed and angry. All I could do was think of vengeful little things like holding Gary's head down in the canal and letting one of those Korean fish chew his face off. That would be satisfying. Or I could call the cops and have them dig up Gary's side yard looking for bodies.

I grabbed my front doorknob and held it for a moment. Then I froze.

Was Gary pulling a fast one on me? I couldn't tell. He had changed so quickly from almost punching Mr. Mercier to then threatening me.

I went into our house and from behind our curtain I watched out my living room window and as soon as Mr. Mercier drove off in his Ford Falcon I went running back over to Gary's house.

This time I knocked on the door. He pulled it open and gave me a quick punch to the face like a fist popping out of a cuckoo clock. I shot straight back onto my ass.

“Did I not tell you to keep your mouth shut?” he said.

“But I didn't do anything wrong,” I whined, and rubbed my lips.

“Which is why I only gave you a love tap on your kisser … for being so
sensational
. I gotta pay you back for that performance. I owe you one. He didn't believe a word you said. Every word gave him indigestion. But he couldn't catch you in a lie. Now let's go have some fun,” he said, taking two steps forward and one to the side. “I thought of a new game for the Pagoda Olympics of the Future.”

 

FIRE AWAY

He hollered for his brother and sister and they appeared from somewhere and followed us out of the house.

He strolled across his yard and across the street, where he began to tug on the brass corner grommets of a giant canvas tarp that covered some kind of vehicle.

In a minute we could see a shiny new Broward County Police tow truck. There wasn't a spot on it.

“Where'd you get that?” I whispered. “Out of the factory paint shop?”

“What did I tell you about asking questions?” he replied. “Remember the juvie code: To stay safe is to stay stupid.”

He opened the passenger front door and pulled out a chain saw and a can of gasoline.

“Just watch,” he said, “and learn from the master of the new Olympic Games.”

In their front yard they had a tall, whippy-looking Australian pine tree—the kind that wasn't like a Christmas tree, but more like a thin southern pine with pinkish bark and a flexible trunk. The branches stuck out from either side of the trunk like long furry dog tails that wagged this way and that in the breeze. The needles hung down limply like rows of knotted green ribbon.

It was an odd tree and very delicate and beautiful—more of an exotic musical instrument from another century, a strange kind of magical harp. Its beauty seemed out of place at the Pagoda house and now it appeared to be a very nervous tree, shaking all the time like one of those shivering Italian greyhounds that, even in Florida, were dressed in sweaters. As it turned out, it should have been nervous.

“It's the destiny of trees to give their lives for our pain and pleasure,” Gary announced, and made the sign of the cross in its direction.

He gassed up the chain saw and pulled the starter cord. Instantly the nasal, angry growl of the saw lashed out in circles at the air. Gary held it over his head as if gutting the sky and walked up to the tree and quickly began to cut through the lower branches. He left about six inches of each branch attached to the trunk. As he pruned a branch above himself he could next step up to that stub. He used the stubs like rungs on a ladder, with the screaming saw spitting out wood chips over his head and into his hair.

The smell of the pine was refreshing. I had become used to the constant rotting stench of the canal.

Gary ascended that tree one step after the other, as easily as a telephone man climbs a pole. It was impressive. When he reached the top of the tree, which was about twice as tall as the peaked roof of their single-story house, he sliced off the elaborate headdress of unfurling new branches and leaves. Then he choked the saw off and began to descend one notch at a time.

The saw swung in his hand like it was a weapon and he was the big-game hunter who had just felled a giraffe.

“Frankie,” he ordered on the way down, “collect all those branches and stack them up so we can use them to camouflage the tow truck.”

“Alice,” he called out, “get me that big spool of nylon rope we use for tripping up water-skiers.”