The Battle for Jericho (25 page)

“N
EED
some help?”

I looked up. Sweat trickled into my eyes, stinging like acid and making me squint. It was a cold afternoon, but I’d been hard at work since early that morning, and although I had stripped down to just a sweatshirt and jeans, my body was still overheating from the exertion. My sleeves were shoved up, and my arms were covered in suds up to the elbows. I hefted a shoulder and rubbed the burning sweat from my eyes.

Hutch smiled at me over the hood of my mom’s car. He was wearing one of the old sweat suits Dad had given him after he moved upstairs to my old room.

I immediately glanced at the house to see if Dad was watching. With the way the sunlight reflected off the windows, I couldn’t tell if anyone was looking at Hutch and me. “Nah, man,” I said quickly. “I’m handling this. It’s Saturday. You don’t want to be out here washing cars. Go on back in the house and relax.”

“It’s boring in there.” Hutch was sporting a new haircut. He’d taken the twenty bucks I’d given him and walked over to the barbershop after breakfast. He’d come back with a Butch cut, sort of faded on the sides and back, and trimmed down to less than a half inch on top. Long hair had given his face a certain softness, but now he seemed to have a harder edge to him, like a boxer or something. He had thanked me again when he got back, but he looked even hotter now, and that would have been enough thanks for me if it didn’t also make him even harder to resist. He reached down and grabbed the extra sponge from the bucket of sudsy water. “How about I start on your dad’s car while you finish up your mom’s?”

“Hutch, you don’t have to do that. This is my punishment, not yours. Go play a video game or something. Have some fun.”

“I don’t mind. I want to help.” He dunked the sponge back into the water, and then turned around to begin scrubbing the top of Dad’s car.

I hurried around Mom’s car and plucked the dripping sponge from Hutch’s hand. “Seriously, man. Don’t do this. If you help me, it’ll just get me into more trouble. My mom and dad will say I’m trying to get out of my punishment by getting you to wash one of the cars—”

“But you’re not making me do it. I
offered
to help.”

“That doesn’t matter,” I said, shaking my head. “Mom and Dad will think I’m trying to skip out on part of my punishment. And for that, they’ll dump something even worse on me, like cleaning out the garage. So don’t do me any favors, man.”

Hutch seemed to get it. He nodded and stepped back, wiping his wet hand on his pants. “I’m sorry you got into trouble, dude. But why’d you miss your curfew like that? Were you upset about something?”

“It’s nothing you need to worry about, man.” I dropped the extra sponge into the bucket and went back to work on Dad’s car.

“Okay. Well, maybe we can catch up with Mac later and go over to the park or something, shoot a few hoops.”

I turned to him and smiled. He was such a cute little goof. “I can’t, Hutch. I’m grounded, remember?”

He grimaced, making a motion as if he wanted to kick himself. “Oh. Right. Well, maybe we can play cards or Monopoly later.”

“
If
my parents will let me even do that.”

“Maybe they will. They’re not so bad.” He rubbed his hands together to warm them. “Your dad had a talk with me yesterday after you left.”

Oh Jesus.
“What about?”

“He’s been making calls. You know, to see what he could find out to help me now that my parents have kicked me out. He came across something called the emancipated minor law.”

“Emancipated minor? What’s that?”

“He said it’s something where I go to court and ask a judge to sort of declare me an adult so that I’m free from my parents, and I can do stuff like rent an apartment and take care of myself.”

“Don’t you have to have a job for that?”

Hutch smiled. “I’ll find one. I can work part time and still keep up in school. I know I can.”

“I think that’s a dumb idea, man. You’re a kid. It takes a lot of money to pay rent and buy groceries and stuff. How are you gonna do all that and stay in school? It’s crazy.”

“Well, your dad seems to think I can do it.”

“Yeah. Well, I don’t think you should do anything like that.”

Hutch shrugged. “Your dad says he’s gonna get more information about this emancipation thing and how it works. He said we’ll talk some more. Maybe then I’ll have a better idea about what to do. See you later.” He started turning back toward the house. Abruptly he stopped, his attention drawn toward the street.

I looked over my shoulder, following his gaze. The street behind us was empty. I turned back to Hutch. He had that somebody-stepped-on-my-grave look. “What’s wrong?”

“I… I thought I saw….”

“You thought you saw what?”

“Nothing.” He gave me an uneasy smile. “Guess my mind’s playing tricks on me.”

A joke about senility popped into my head. Under the circumstances, it wouldn’t have been funny, and the joke stayed in my head. Hutch turned and ran back into the house.

M
AC
was sitting on the hood of my dad’s car, watching as I waxed Mom’s car. He had a big, smug smile on his face.

He was getting on my nerves. Which was exactly what he wanted. “Don’t you have anything better to do?” I asked, irritated, without looking at him.

“Nope.”

“Go home, Mac. I’ve got work to do here.”

“There ain’t nothing to do at home,” he replied. “Besides, I like watching your folks crack the whip on you. Hee hee.”

Big jackass.
“Well, could you at least not leave butt prints on my dad’s car? I just finished waxing that thing.”

He responded by scooting his butt back and forth over the hood.

I growled and kept working on Mom’s car. She didn’t have to work tonight, so she and Dad were going out to dinner and then to the shooting range. Such sweet romance. Can’t wait to have dates like that of my own. They were planning to leave at six this evening. That still left almost three hours for me to finish, but I wanted to make sure I was done in plenty of time, so I doubled down and worked even faster.

“So what did they get you for this time?” Mac asked.

“Curfew violation.”

“Ouch. Your folks are serious as a heart attack about curfew.”

“They’re serious about everything.” The guilt had been eating away at me for hours now. It was hard to keep holding it in. “That’s not all I did, man.”

“I figured there had to be something else. Your folks don’t usually take free labor out of you for nothing.”

“They don’t know about this other thing I did. Not for sure. It’s sort of a… sex thing.”

Mac’s grin turned goofy, and his voice got hushed. “You’ve been doing Lissandra, huh?”

“It’s not Lissandra.”

Now his eyes got wide, and his grin went into pure raunchiness. “Dang. Who is she, man? Who’d you do?”

“Mac, I’m not naming any names. And I didn’t actually go all the way, but I got real close.”

He sat up the way a dog does when you wave a piece of bacon in the air. “How close?”

“
Too
close. As in committing-a-sin close.”

“Sin?” He smiled. He leaned toward me. “Come on, man. Pretend we’re Catholic. Confess, my son.”

“Go to hell,” I shot back, rolling a tired grin at him. The next moment, my mood sank again. “You think God really punishes us for our sins?”

“You mean, like, by sending us to hell?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t believe in hell.”

“You don’t?”

“I see God as this being who’s all love. I just don’t believe that a being like that would make a place to torment puny beings like us forever and ever. I don’t believe he would even let a place like that exist.”

“But there has to be a hell. The Bible says there is.”

“Hey, you asked me what I believe. It’s okay by me if you believe something else.”

At times, my head seems to get so heavy with stuff I just want to lay it down somewhere. I closed my eyes and sighed. “You ever think about that guy, Dylan Cussler?”

Mac was quiet for so long that I opened my eyes and turned to him, wondering if something was wrong. He was staring at the ground, a troubled expression on his face. Finally, he looked at me and said, “I try not to, but yeah, I think about him sometimes. It was one thing to go in and trash his house, but we hurt him.”

“Actually,
I
hurt him.”

“Doesn’t matter. I was there. I was in on it.” He looked away again, his eyes full of regret. “I don’t like homosexuals. Something about boy-on-boy action just bothers me. It makes my stomach turn. But since that stuff with Gina Marie happened, I started thinking about some things. Even with Gina Marie showing me all that girl-on-girl play and trying to get me to fool around with Lester, I wouldn’t want to see anybody beat her down for any reason. I feel the same way about that Dylan guy. He didn’t deserve what we did to him.”

“Yeah. I think you’re right.”

“I still can’t figure out how we got away with that, especially since you showed the guy your stupid face.” Mac slid off the hood of my dad’s car, grabbed me by the back of my neck, and gave me another of his playful shakes. “Anyway, stop thinking so much, man. It’s not good for you. You’ll just hurt yourself.”

Setting me free, he announced that he was hungry and disappeared into his house for a snack. I ignored his advice, going over our conversation in my head. Maybe he was right. Maybe I should stop trying to work through my guilt and just quit doing the things that made me feel that way. I loved my parents, and I didn’t want to be a disappointment to them. Maybe I should stop questioning everything and just be what they needed me to be.

B
Y
FOUR
THIRTY
, I was done. Both cars were gleaming in the slanted red-orange rays of the setting sun. I had rinsed out the sponges and put them away with the bucket, and the old towels I’d used for drying were piled in the laundry room basket. Now I was draining the water hose. My one-man car wash had been in operation since ten o’clock that morning, and I was worn out. Remind me to never, ever piss off my mom again.

The motion of a car pulling up to a stop at the curb behind me barely caught my attention. It was probably one of the neighbors who lived across the street. My body was cold and tired, and the only thing on my mind was getting a hot bath, a hot meal, and turning in early. There were footsteps behind me, but I ignored those too, focused on winding up the hose so I could put it away. By the time I realized there was something weird about the footsteps—the sound of them was getting louder instead of receding—the person was right behind me.

I turned around.

“Hey, Jericho,” said Mr. Hutchison.

H
UTCH
and I stood side by side in the door to the dining room. We peered into the living room where Mom and Dad stood facing off with Mr. Hutchison. Mr. Hutchison was a big man, but not in an obese sort of way. According to Hutch, Mr. Hutchison worked in construction for almost fifteen years. He still built things for people—furniture, tool sheds, doghouses—in his spare time. His body was broad with muscles that just seemed to keep thickening from hard work.

“Have a seat, Mr. Hutchison,” Mom said, waving her hand at the sofa. “Let me take your coat.”

“No thanks, Mrs. Jiles,” Mr. Hutchison replied, unzipping his jacket but keeping it on. “I’m not gonna take up too much of your time. I just came to pick up Barry.”

Hutch shifted next to me, his body stiffening. I could almost feel the angry resistance that swept through him. Or maybe I was just projecting what I was feeling onto him.

In a very calm, clear voice, Dad replied to Mr. Hutchison with, “Why?”

Mr. Hutchison seemed taken aback. He blinked at Dad a few times. “I’m taking him home.”

“Why?” Dad repeated.

Now Mr. Hutchison just looked confused, and he didn’t answer.

“Mr. Hutchison, what my husband wants to understand,” said Mom, “is the reason you want to take Barry home. After hearing how you threw Barry into the street, I’m more than a little curious about that myself.”

The sides of Mr. Hutchison’s thick, round face went bright red. “That was just a misunderstanding. Things got a little out of control. I’m sorry the whole thing happened.”

“I see.” Mom turned to Hutch. “Barry, your father’s sorry about the whole thing. Is that enough for you to go home with him?”

Hutch didn’t hesitate. “No, Mrs. Jiles.”

The red in Mr. Hutchison’s face darkened, and anger tightened his eyes. He owned a hardware store, the only one in the immediate area of Benton and Webster’s Glen. That gave him a steady base of customers. But Walmart was building one of its megastores in Benton, and Mr. Hutchison had been fuming for months, knowing he couldn’t compete with the prices a giant like that would offer. I remembered how furious Mr. Hutchison’s face would get every time he’d come home complaining to his wife about Walmart, as if he was going to head right over to the construction site in Benton and take that sprawling building apart piece by piece. That was the way he was looking at Mom now.

“This is not up to Barry,” Mr. Hutchison said. “He’s my kid, and I say he’s coming home with me.”

Dad stepped in front of Mom, his arms folded across his chest. “Well, I understood Barry to say that he has no intention of going with you. So he’ll be staying here for now.”

Mr. Hutchison looked directly at Hutch, his face softening in a way that, to me, was as fake as the money in a Monopoly game. “Hey, I talked with your mom. She’s okay with you coming back. You just have to follow that rule we gave you. You do that and you won’t have any more problems with us.”

“What a crock of shit!” I snapped before Hutch could say anything. Mom, Dad, and Mr. Hutchison all turned as one and gave me the same indignant glare, but I didn’t back down. “You think Hutch is gonna stop being gay just because you tell him to?” I said to Mr. Hutchison. “He’s not going anywhere with you.”

Dad turned back to Hutch’s father. “I apologize for my son. He knows he’s not supposed to talk to adults that way, and I’ll be reminding him of that later. But he is right about one thing. Barry is not leaving with you today if he doesn’t want to go.”