“Those two boys do that kind of thing to you a lot?”
“No sir. I mean they never did that before. They do plenty of . . . of other stuff, but not that.”
“What other stuff?”
“Beat me up. Steal food. Put centipedes in my bed.”
Mr. Bentley paused, thinking.
Keiffer glanced up.
Mr. Bentley straightened and turned to Mr. Toms and Mr. Noonan. “Well, you know how the boys are. It’s not the first time something like that has happened.”
Keiffer glanced at Mr. Toms, who sat with his arms crossed, scowling, tapping a finger on his arm. “What’s your point, Mr. Bentley?” Mr. Toms said.
“My point is that Mr. Nitt has had it in for Mr. Keiffer for some time. Mr. Keiffer’s roommate told me about the centipedes. I’ve no reason to believe that trying to pin the letter on Mr. Keiffer was any different. Besides, I just can’t see Mr. Keiffer writing something like that. And we did find it in Mr. Nitt’s room.”
Mr. Toms, his arms still crossed, looked directly into Keiffer’s eyes. He was mulling something over.
Finally he said, “Did you write that letter, son?”
Keiffer felt as if his mind were a total blank. The thoughts and words he needed to tell the truth were just not there. Part of him wanted to get it out, get the whole thing over. But a stronger part of him was terrified.
“I don’t know anyone named Julie,” he mumbled.
Mr. Bentley sat back in his chair.
Mr. Noonan’s silence was almost too much for Keiffer to bear.
“I’m going to ask you one more time, son,” Mr. Toms said. “Is that letter yours? This is very important. Expelling a boy from this school is no small thing. Now I want you to tell me—did Mr. Nitt take that letter from your room like he said he did?”
Keiffer’s thoughts raced.
He saw, in his mind, the hot cigarette nearly burning his armpit, and he saw himself stripped naked in the pasture. He saw Nitt kicking him in the hallway, and the hate and rage in his eyes. He saw him shoving Casey and calling him a homo. And the cookie box with the missing cookies, and the centipedes in his bed, and the stolen letter, his letter, his, the private one he wrote that was meant for no one else to see but himself, no one, ever.
“Son?”
Keiffer could not speak. He was gone. He knew it. Gone, gone, gone. He’d pack tonight probably. Call his mom.
There was a long silence.
He’d tell them the truth.
Keiffer felt himself swaying, just slightly. He could hardly keep from passing out.
Tell them.
Keiffer shook his head. “No sir. I did not write that letter.”
Mr. Toms studied him. A long, thoughtful look.
Finally he said, “I’m inclined to believe you.”
Keiffer looked up, then down. Then up.
Mr. Toms breathed deeply, thinking. He rubbed a hand over his face. A truck shifted gears out on the road, the sound of the engine falling, then rising again.
Mr. Toms stood. “You can go, Mr. Keiffer.”
Keiffer stayed where he was.
Tell him, he thought. Tell him now.
Keiffer stood and left the room.
In less than
twenty-four hours Nitt was history.
Put on a plane to Honolulu.
Expelled.
For days Keiffer
felt awful. He didn’t know what he’d meant to do, but getting Nitt kicked out of school wasn’t part of it. He’d just wanted to . . . to get him. That’s all. Just get him.
And he did, better than he’d ever even imagined, and that felt good.
Yes.
No, it didn’t.
He would tell. To lie was wrong.
But what did it matter anymore? He was going crazy anyway. He was already a whack. Mrs. Noonan had made him that way.
All right, he decided. I’ll do it. I’ll tell. Just not right now. But soon.
Keiffer kept more
to himself than ever after that, going a little crazier every day, he thought. His life was one big mess. He waffled back and forth many times a day: Tell, now. No, it’s done, let it be.
But above all else he had to get Mrs. Noonan out of his mind. If it hadn’t been for her, none of this would have happened.
He stopped eating for a while. Then started again, nibbling. Never laughed or smiled. Never tried to talk to anyone. Just sank down into himself.
And, eventually, he even began to stop dreaming about Mrs. Noonan.
But then . . .
He was outside in the quad one sunny afternoon when he saw Mr. and Mrs. Noonan walking toward him. They were holding hands.
Maybe his mind was playing tricks on him, but Keiffer thought Mr. Noonan seemed to have taken on a new way of looking at him since that meeting in Mr. Toms’s office. It was really weird, because Keiffer thought it was a look of admiration, almost as if Mr. Noonan respected him for having had the guts to talk with Mr. Toms the way he had. Stand up to Nitt’s lie like he did.
Even so, Keiffer found it almost impossible to look Mr. Noonan in the eye. He’d glance at him and turn away quickly. That’s how it usually went.
Mr. Noonan smiled as he and Mrs. Noonan approached.
They stopped.
“How’s it going, Keiffer?” Mr. Noonan said.
“All right.”
“Staying out of trouble?”
“Yes sir.”
Mr. Noonan grinned and tapped Keiffer’s shoulder. “Good man. Say, have you ever met my wife? I know you’ve seen her around, but I don’t think you’ve actually met, have you?”
Keiffer shook his head. “No sir.”
He couldn’t look at Mrs. Noonan either.
Just seeing her reminded him of Nitt, and his own private letter, the one Mr. Toms had in his desk drawer. Just thinking that made him cringe. No, he couldn’t look at her. Mrs. Noonan was a bad dream for him now.
“Well, then,” Mr. Noonan said. “Julie, meet Billy Keiffer. He’s a fine young man and not a bad chemist.”
“Hi, Billy,” she said.
Her voice so soothing.
Saying his name.
So soft and light.
He forced himself to look up.
She was smiling, her head tilted slightly. She reached out to shake hands.
Keiffer hesitated, then took her hand.
Took Mrs. Noonan’s hand.
The
hand.
There was nothing else in the world now.
Nothing.
Forty Bucks
Shane, a tenth grader
at Farrington, and Jimmy, a seventeen-year-old Kaimuki High School dropout, were just about to lock up the Taco Bell on Kalanimoku Street when the old man came in.
This old guy wasn’t old like a one-soft-taco-and-low-fat-milk kind of old, but more like a two-bean-burritos-with-no-onions-and-ice-tea old guy. Tired, puffy bulges like tiny hammocks hung under his eyes, and above, at a slight angle, he wore a brand-new black felt cowboy hat with a gray feather hatband.
“Mister, we wen’ close, already,” Shane called from behind the counter. Jimmy was in the back mopping the floor.
The old man smiled and nodded and went on over to sit at a table as if Shane had said, “Come on in and have a seat.”
“Hey, mister, I said . . . tst.”
Shane frowned and shook his head and walked out around the counter to look into the night to see if anyone else was hanging around out there. When he saw no one—no cars, no nothing—he started to go over and lock the door but decided not to because he still had to get the old man out of there.
Shane went to where the man had set himself down and, resting his hands on the table, leaned forward and gently said, “Mister . . . we wen’ shut down, already. You gotta go. We closed.”
The old man scratched his slightly whiskery chin and thought a moment.
“Una cerveza fría, gracias. Solo una cerveza fría.”
Shane looked dumbly at the man, then straightened up. “Hey, Jimmy,” he called. “Try come.”
Jimmy came out carrying the mop. “What? Who’s that? We stay close.”
“I know that, but he don’t. You tell him.”
Jimmy leaned on his mop and said, “We stay close, old man. No food.”
The old man yawned, rubbed the back of his neck, and said,
“¿Qué cerveza tiene? No, olvidelo. No importa. Deme lo que tenga frío.”
“What he said?” Jimmy asked.
Shane shrugged. Wasn’t Japanese. Wasn’t Chinese or Filipino. But it did sort of sound like Mrs. Medeiros when she got mad. “Maybe it’s Portuguese,” Shane said.
“Portuguese? You know Portuguese?”
“No.”
Jimmy frowned. “How about sign language? You know that?”
“Only the sign on the door that says Closed at 11
P
.
M
.”
“So what we going do?”
Shane and Jimmy stood there a moment studying the man who sat there smiling up at them.
“¿Hay algún problema?”
the man said.
“Maybe he wants a burrito.”
“Well, then he going say ‘burrito,’ ah?”
Jimmy shrugged. “We couldn’t make him one anyways. Gotta turn everything back on again. And I ain’t doing that.”
The old man reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a wad of crisp, clean twenty-dollar bills. He peeled one off and put it on the table.
“¿Es suficiente?”
he said.
“Put that away,” Shane said. “We ain’t selling anything. We closed.”
When the old man looked blank-eyed at him, Shane added, “No likey talk, no likey money. Closed, I said.
Pau.
Time for go home, already.”
The man frowned and peeled off another twenty-dollar bill and put it on top of the one already on the table.
“¿Basta con esto? ¿Cuánto cuesta una cerveza?”
“Hoo, the guy rich,” Jimmy said. “For forty bucks I make him one burrito triple supreme.”
Shane scowled at Jimmy.
“Kay-okay,” Jimmy said. “Just joking.”
Headlights from a pickup truck pulling into the parking lot glared in the window. The driver gunned the engine, then shut it down. The lights went off.
“Aw, man,” Jimmy said. “Now we got more people coming in. Did you lock the door?”
“No. I was waiting to get this old guy out.”
Two boys about eighteen years old got out of the truck and slammed their way through the door into Taco Bell. One was kind of fat and the other tall and lanky, with a tattoo of a knife with dripping blood just above his elbow. The two boys glared at Shane and Jimmy. The bloody-knife one noticed the forty bucks on the table and said, “You buying, old man?”
The old man smiled up at him.
“Ellos no me entienden. ¿Hablan español? ¿Les puede decir que solo quiero una cerveza?”
Then he made drinking motions with his hand.
When the old man said “español,” Shane knew he was speaking Spanish because he’d heard his older brother say that over and over last year when his brother was taking Spanish in the eleventh grade.
“Hablo español, amigo,”
he’d said about fifty thousand times. No,
“Yo hablo español, amigo.”
“¿Cerveza?”
the old man said again.
The tattoo boy looked at his friend, then at Shane and Jimmy. “What he said?”
Jimmy said quickly, “Nothing. Who can understand him? Anyways, we’re closed.”
The tall boy said, “Door’s open, so you open, and we hungry.”
“If you don’t believe me, look at the sign on the door,” Shane said. “We closed fifteen minutes, already.”
The old man, looking as if he’d decided that he wasn’t going to be understood and was wasting his time by hanging around, shook his head and got up to leave.
The fat boy glanced at him when he stood up, then turned back and got in Shane’s face, so close Shane could smell his stink breath.
Shane took a step back.
The fat boy pulled out a long switchblade and flicked it open and grinned when Shane turned white as a boiled octopus.
When the old man saw the knife his eyes squinted down so slightly you almost didn’t notice any movement in them at all. Slowly he sat back down, his eyes pinned on the knife. He put the two twenty-dollar bills back on the table as if he’d changed his mind about leaving.
The fat boy poked Shane’s chest with his finger. “My fren said Taco Bell is open, know what I’m saying?”
Shane nodded. “Yeah, but—”
“You like me stick you wit’ this, or wot?”
Shane clammed up.
“Eh, eh, eh,” the old man said to the fat boy.
“No se ponga así. Tranquilícese. Les invito a una cerveza.”
“Whatchoo talking? German, or wot?” the fat boy said, folding the blade back into the handle and putting the knife into his pocket. “Hey, Jojo, this guy talking German.”
“Not German, you stupit. That’s Russian,” Jojo the tattoo boy said.
“Russian? No kidding? How come got one Russian fut in Taco Bell?”
“Shuddup, who cares. Hey, you two. Make us some food.”
Jimmy hurried back over to the counter and started to turn everything back on.
The fat boy swept his hand over the table, grabbing up the old man’s forty dollars. “I could use this,” he said, slouching over toward Jojo. The old man followed him with his eyes.
“Whatchoo looking?” Jojo said, glaring at the old man.
The old man kept staring, didn’t even blink.
“Futhead,” Jojo mumbled after trying to stare the old man down and losing. He and the fat boy went over to a booth near the front window and slumped down into it and started mumbling about something or other.
Shane eased back around the counter to help Jimmy. “Maybe we should call the police,” he whispered.
“No, just make some tacos or something. If we call the police, these guys going come back again . . . and then we going had it.”
Shane nodded. Maybe Jimmy was right.
Together they brought out some trays of cheese and refried beans and sliced lettuce and tomatoes and hamburger meat.
“Whatchoo like eat?” Jimmy called out to the two boys.
“Six tacos and six burrito supremes,” the guy named Jojo said.
“And two root beers,” the fat guy added. “Big Gulps.”
“Big Gulp is 7-Eleven,” Jimmy said. “Anyways, we don’t have root beer.”
“Hey! I said I like root beer, and no make smart mout’ or you going be sorry, you stupit taco flipper.” The fat guy laughed at what he thought was a pretty clever insult, taco flipper.
Jimmy whispered to Shane, “How we going get root beer?”
“How should I know? Maybe go across the street to Foodland. You got any money?”
“Two dollars, about.”
“Get some more from the cash register then,” Shane said.
“What if when I open it that guy comes over and takes the money like he took that old man’s money?”
Shane thought about that, then searched his own pockets. “Here, I got another dollar. Just get three dollars’ worth of root beer and get back over here as fast as you can.”
When Jimmy started for the door, Jojo looked up. “Hey! Where you t’ink you going?”
“Get some root beer.”
Jojo laughed. “Hey, Wayne. He going get you some root beer.”
The fat guy, Wayne, chuckled and slapped his knee. “You walk out that door, taco flipper, and you going meet Mr. Blade.” He laughed some more and patted his pocket where Mr. Blade waited.
Jimmy inched back behind the counter.
Just then the old man got up and walked over to the table where Jojo and Wayne sat. He sat down next to Wayne, the guy who had taken his forty dollars.
“Creo que empiezo a comprender. Sois un par de golfos. Y estáis molestando a estos jóvenes.”
“Get out of here, you stupit Russian fut,” Wayne said, scowling at the old man. He slid farther away, closer to the window.
“Devolvedme el dinero y marchaos en paz.”
“Where you t’ink you are, ah? Speak English.”
Jojo was grinning, as if he was enjoying seeing Wayne squirm. “He’s telling you how handsome you are, Wayne. I think he likes you.” Jojo whooped, and Wayne gave him a stink scowl.
“What’s that old guy telling them?” Jimmy whispered, both of them watching from behind the counter.
“I don’t know,” Shane said. “But I can tell you this: he’s nuts. Those two going cut him up and eat him alive. We gotta call the police.”
Jimmy nodded and inched over toward the phone. One step, two.
“What you punks doing back there?” Jojo called. “Where’s our food?”
“Coming right up,” Jimmy said, leaping away from the phone.
The old man sat staring at Wayne, which made Wayne squirm even more. “Get off this seat, futhead, before I crack and pop you.”
The man put his hand out, open, waiting for his forty dollars.
“I think he like that money back,” Jojo said.
“Shhh,” Wayne spat. “It’s mines now.”
The old man waited, still staring.
Wayne snapped and whipped the back of his hand at the old man’s face.
Quick as a whip, the old man grabbed Wayne’s fist and held it in a viselike grip. Wayne grimaced, his eyes wild.
Shane and Jimmy froze, their mouths gaping open.
Jojo laughed, holding his stomach and sliding down in his seat.
“Como dije, lo mejor es que os marcháis,”
the old man said calmly.
“Pero primero devolvedme mi dinero.”
Wayne struggled, trying to pull his hand away, but the old man held on. Wayne couldn’t break loose. His face grew red, his eyes burning with menace. “You had it, old man. I going drag your bones out of here tonight.”
“Come on, Wayne,” Jojo said. “That’s only one old gramps. You no can take ’um, or wot?”
Wayne reached toward the old man with his free hand, but the man twisted the wrist he was gripping and Wayne’s head fell to the table. “Ow, ow! Let go! I going kill you! Let go!”
“Call Mrs. Medeiros,” Jimmy whispered frantically. “Ask her what we should do. Quick!”
Shane hurried over to the phone, took it off the hook, and hid down behind the counter. He dialed Mrs. Medeiros, who owned the Taco Bell on Kalanimoku Street. The phone rang and rang. Five times, six.
She answered on the seventh ring. “What?” she said, half-awake.
“Mrs. Medeiros, this is Shane. We got a problem.”
“What problem? What time is it? Where are you?”
“I’m here. Taco Bell. It’s eleven-thirty.”
“What’s the problem?”
“This old guy came in, but then these other two guys came in, and they’re starting to fight. What should we do?”
“Call the police, use your brain. That’s why I made you assistant manager. I’ll be right down. You call the police.” She hung up.
“She said call the police,” Shane whispered to Jimmy, who didn’t know whether to listen to Shane or watch the fight or make tacos and burritos or run for it.
Wayne yelped in pain and Shane peeked up over the counter. The old man was still sitting there with Wayne’s head mashed down onto the table.
Jojo slid out of the booth and stood up, his bloody-knife tattoo stabbing out like trouble. He didn’t seem to know what to do. He glanced over at Shane and Jimmy and saw Shane still holding the phone. “Who you calling? Put that down. Now!”
Shane dropped the receiver. It broke when it hit the tile floor. Part of it bounced around on the end of the cord.
Jojo looked back at Wayne, then scowled when outside he saw a police car’s blue lights flashing behind a Corvette stopped in front of the Taco Bell. Two cops were getting out to give some speeder a ticket. “Tst,” Jojo spat. “Hurry it up! Gimme the food.”
Shane and Jimmy went to work, faster even than they ever did when the place was crushed with customers. In seconds they had the six burrito supremes and six tacos wrapped up in paper and in a sack. They slid the sack out onto the counter, keeping the counter between them and Jojo, who rushed toward them with pinched and angry eyes. “Where’s the root beer?” he said.
“We— we—” Jimmy stuttered.
“Shuddup! Gimme some cups.”
Shane pointed to the pop dispenser.
Jojo grabbed two large paper cups and filled them with ice that shot down noisily. “Wayne, let’s go!” he said, filling the cups with Coke. He put lids on them and grabbed two straws.
Wayne all this time jerked around, still trying to get free, still with his head mashed down onto the table because the old man was twisting his arm so hard. Outside, the cops were making the Corvette driver spread-eagle against his car.
“Come on!” Jojo shouted to Wayne. “Stop fooling around.”
But Wayne couldn’t break free.
Jojo looked at the police, then back at Wayne, then hurried out alone. He fired up his truck and drove slowly out of there with the six burrito supremes, six tacos, and two large Cokes.
Shane ran over and locked the door.