Nate took it easy over the weekend, feigning recovery from his alleged fever and catching up on the sleep he’d lost. Occasionally he looked out the window to see if Grub was lurking about. Before last night, Grub had been an intermittent school yard menace, more of an inconvenience, actually. At the very worst, he had been an occasional purple tittie-twister at recess. Now that he had stood up to Grub, Nate realized that he would have to be on the alert for him at all times.
Monday came and Nate went to school, wondering if Grub would be there for the next round but hoping that he’d actually gotten rid of him. Gratefully, he saw no sign of the bully.
Bill VanDiver approached Nate with a smirk. “Join Grub for a midnight snack Friday? Sorry I missed it.”
“Yeah,” Nate said, “You should’ve been there to see Grub running away.”
“Yeah right.”
“Ask him,” Nate said. “That is, if you can find him.” Nate shot a furtive glance around the school yard.
Just then, Freddie came up. A small crowd had already started to gather to hear the exchange between VanDiver and Nate.
“It was so cool,” Freddie said enthusiastically.
VanDiver seemed to waiver “Nate says Grub ran away Friday night. Did he?”
“Yeah,” Freddie said. “After he shot at us and we chased him.”
“Us? He shot at me,” Nate said. “You and Skip were hiding off in a whole different area.”
“Actually, he shot at Jim Frank’s nigger.”
The allusion to gun play and the mention of Davis Corners’ most noted icon galvanized the crowd. Everyone started asking questions at once. Freddie started to answer, but backed off in deference to Nate when he saw the glare Nate aimed at him. This was clearly Nate’s moment and Nate’s story.
Nate told the story pretty much the way it had happened, but with the embellishments the boys had added afterwards in the car. He sounded like his Uncle Henry, the way he paused when he wanted the listener’s imagination to churn a while, before he supplied more detail. He used his eyes to work the crowd, just like his Uncle Henry did on Sunday afternoons in Grandmother Tillman’s living room, trying to pull each listener in. Nate was a hero because he had driven away Grub Hanley. More important to him now, however, was that he had a story people wanted to hear.
Nate’s classmates wanted to know how he’d come up with the plan and how it felt being shot at. He lied, of course, about how it felt. He couldn’t tell them that it hadn’t felt like anything when it happened. He couldn’t tell them that he was out of danger by the time he realized he’d been in it. So he told them that he’d felt like he was going to be killed for sure and that his whole life had raced before his eyes.
“Wow,” Margaret Haynes said, “Just like they say it happens.”
At every opportunity over the next few days, Nate kept getting drafted to tell the story to different audiences. He was a celebrity, and by the end of the week, just about everyone in Davis Corners knew the story, either having heard it first-hand from Nate or retold by someone else. Nate started to get nervous about his newfound notoriety. For one thing, he liked the idea of Grub Hanley thinking he was dead. For another, he didn’t want his parents hearing about it, because then he would be dead. Most of all, though, he didn’t want Grandmother Tillman or Washington hearing about it. He felt that he would die of embarrassment if either of them knew. For Grandmother Tillman, he was embarrassed by the language, for Washington, he was embarrassed by the association with Jim Frank’s statue.
When Nate rode his bike home after school on Friday, his nervousness went to panic as he saw his father’s car and a police car in the driveway. Optimistically, he wondered if there’d been a death in the family, but he knew it was somehow related to his adventure at Founder’s Hill.
He walked into the living room and saw his parents sitting stiffly on the couch. A police officer in a brown uniform was sitting on a straight-backed chair taken from the dining room. Nate’s mother had a look on her face that expressed both shock and hurt at the same time, as if someone had just slapped her. It intensified slightly when Nate walked in, as if she had been posing with it, but was now turning it on for real, the way an actress might turn on her character just before she walked on stage. Nate’s hopes for a death in the family evaporated. That look could only mean he was in serious trouble.
“This police officer has some questions for you,” she said. “And when he’s through, your father and I have a few of our own.”
The police officer said, “I’m investigating something that may be harmless or which could be serious, so it’s important that you tell me the truth. Your parents here want you to tell the truth, that’s what they’ve taught you, isn’t it?”
Nate admired the officer’s technique and wondered if he’d learned it in police school. “Yes, sir,” he said.
“A young man’s missing,” the police officer said. “Grub Hanley hasn’t been seen since last Friday night. We think he’s just run away, but I understand that you might have some information that would corroborate that.”
“Why do you think that?”
“We’ve talked to Miss Collins, the principal from your school, and she said there were lots of stories going around that you and Grub were involved in an incident Friday night.”
Nate’s mother sucked in her breath and held it. Since the officer hadn’t actually asked him a question, Nate tried just staring back at him in silence. After three seconds he cracked.
“Yes, sir. I saw him Friday night.”
Nate’s mother let out a gasp and his father shifted on the couch.
“What happened?” the policeman said.
Nate told a censored version of the story, how Grub had been bullying him on the school yard and saying only that he’d cursed at Grub. The policeman nodded at that, and Nate assumed he’d already picked up the details in other interviews. He hoped the policeman wouldn’t make him say exactly what he’d said to Grub. Nate quickly went on with the rest of the story, not identifying who picked him up and gave him the ride. He told what happened at Founder’s Hill. His plan sounded incredibly stupid to him as he recounted it in his living room to three grown-ups.
“He ran away when he heard the others shouting,” Nate said. “I think Grub thinks he’s killed me and he’s run away.”
After a long silence, Nate’s mother said, “I don’t know what to say. We’ve tried to raise Nate to be a responsible person and now it’s like I don’t even know who this boy is, sitting here telling this incredible story.”
“Don’t feel too bad, ma’am,” he said. “These are the kinds of teenage high-jinks young boys get into.”
They sat there talking about Nate is if he wasn’t there, and it made him feel like a little kid.
The policeman finally turned to Nate. “Good job of telling the truth. I think you’re right. Grub’s just run away, either afraid or embarrassed.” He wrote some notes in a little spiral-bound memo pad and stood up. “The next time you’re being bothered by a bully, tell your parents or teachers. They know how to handle those sorts of things.”
Nate wondered how his mother would’ve handled it. Maybe she would’ve told him to tell Grub to get his own lunch money, and to tell him that Nate’s father worked hard to give Nate lunch money and it wasn’t intended for the likes of Grub. Nate was sure that would’ve gotten him tittie-twistered to death. And the teachers were as scared of Grub as the kids were. Nate thought about telling that to the policeman so he could see that Nate had done the only thing he could have, that he did what his grandfather would’ve done.
“Yes, sir,” he said contritely.
The policeman handed Nate a business card. “Or call me, if you want. Just remember, there’s no need to take things into your own hands.”
Nate looked at the card. Officer Ernie Roberts it said, and it gave the phone number for the Davis Corners police department. Nate thanked him and put it in his pocket.
As he was leaving, the policeman told Nate’s parents, “Don’t be too hard on him. Grub Hanley’s a white trash bully. Nate had no idea what he was dealing with.”
Nate was sorry to see the policeman go. As corny as he was, he had seemed to be on Nate’s side. Nate felt that the policeman was glad that Grub had gone and was grateful to Nate for having caused it. Nate’s mother shut the door behind the departing officer and marched back into the room. She squared up in front of Nate.
“How could you do this to us?” she said. “Do you have any idea how mortifying that was to have the police come to our home, park in front of our house, where all the neighbors could see, and tell us that our son had been involved with a gun and some hooligan when we thought you were home in bed?”
Nate tried to make some kind of answer, but was taken aback by his mother’s suddenly shifting the emphasis of the crime from his cursing in school yards and sneaking out of the house and almost getting killed to the fact that he had put them into a socially embarrassing situation.
“It’s not so much what you’ve done to me,” she said, “Although God knows how this has broken my heart. I’m more concerned about what it has done to your poor father.”
Nate’s father looked up with surprise and curiosity.
“The complete lack of respect you’ve shown to him in doing this.”
Nate didn’t understand, and apparently from his father’s look of initial bewilderment, he didn’t either. But if his wife dictated that he was hurt and disrespected, then who was he to question. He immediately put on an expression of hurt pride and feelings.
“I’m sorry.”
“You’re sorry?” Nate’s mother said. “Is that all you have to say?”
Actually, Nate had a lot he wanted to say. For one thing, he wanted to tell her that this was about him, not her. She always had the spotlight, he wanted to tell her. This was his turn. It was his story and she was trying to take it away from him. Once, he remembered, she had caught him with a pocketknife he had traded for, and she took it away. That knife had made Nate feel neat. He would open it and watch the light gleam off its blade. He’d heft it in his hand and wave it slowly in the air. He felt good with that pocketknife and she’d taken it away. Now she was taking his story away. She was making it about her, and she was the one telling it, not Nate. He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t have it, it was his.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “I didn’t mean to hurt you guys.”
“Well, this is a fine time to start thinking about us.”
Nate knew there was nothing he could say that wouldn’t set up a counter attack.
“Maybe you should’ve thought about our feelings when you snuck out in the night.” She turned and let out a deep, quavering sigh, then calmed herself. “Your grandmother called, and I had to tell her everything.”
Nate was horrified and wondered how much the policeman had already told her before Nate got there.
“I can’t tell you how upset she is.”
“Then why’d you tell her?”
“Because some of us don’t believe in lying and deceiving our parents,” she said. “She wants to see you tomorrow.”
Nate’s sense of dread intensified. He could take what his mother was doing because he could distance himself from it. He wasn’t prepared to go through this with Grandmother Tillman.
“Why do I have to see Grandmother Tillman?”
“I think she wants to tell you herself how disappointed she is.”
Her tone was taunting. Nate figured that she’d gotten chewed out pretty badly herself. The very fact that he was being summoned by Grandmother Tillman showed that she wasn’t confident that her daughter could handle it. It gave Nate a small degree of compensation, knowing that his mother had gotten demoted a little.
She sighed. “I just hope you’re satisfied.”
There was a sharp, metallic edge to her voice, and Nate wondered what had ever become of the pocketknife she had taken away from him.
Chapter 12
Copyright (C) 2009 Michael A. Hughes
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