The Book of Joby (98 page)

“And what’s wrong with being proud?” Joby demanded more fiercely than he’d meant to. “Every kid who’s ever grown up has known better than his elders somewhere along the way, and nothing ever comes of it for ninety-nine percent of them. You got unlucky. Being unlucky isn’t any more a sin than being lucky is a virtue!

“While I was driving back here from Ben’s funeral, I looked down to fiddle with the radio, Hawk. Your mom nudged me, and I looked up to find my car way over the centerline. I yanked it back where it belonged, took a deep breath, and forgot all about it. Was it my fault there was no one in the other lane? Does my good luck make me better than you?
Your mom
was in the car, Hawk. I could have killed her. If you’re so sure of this unbending justice you’re inflicting on yourself, don’t be a hypocrite! Get up and punish me for what I could just as well have done to you this week!”

As Joby’s voice had risen in frustration, Hawk’s eyes had brimmed with tears and begun to spill at last.

“I just want to take it back!” Hawk cried, rigid as a board. “Every minute. That’s all I think or feel, but I never can! I never will be able to!”

Joby rushed to pull Hawk off the bed and wrap him in his arms, which Hawk lunged into as a drowning man might hurl himself into a life raft.

“You’re just a fallible, good-hearted, deserving human being, Hawk, like
all the rest of us,” Joby said, crying too now, “with as much right to grieve, and be understood and cared for, and
healed,
as me or anybody down at that memorial service.”

As they clung to each other, weeping, Joby realized that for all the pain and anger they’d been dragged into so suddenly, all he felt now was hope, and love, and most of all, gratitude, that whatever he had suffered in his life might somehow have equipped him for this moment.

“I still wish you’d been my father,” Hawk half-whispered.

“Will stepfather do?” Joby replied as quietly.

Hawk leaned back to stare at him. “Have you asked her?” he said, hopeful.

“Not yet,” said Joby. “Not in the middle of all this, but I’m going to, as soon as we all get a little breather. We both know what she’ll say, I think.”

For the first time that week, Hawk began to smile, then pulled suddenly away, looking toward his bedroom door. Joby turned to find Laura there, wiping tears from her eyes too. Unsure how long she’d been there, Joby smiled reassuringly and waved her in.

“There’s someone here to see you, Hawk,” she said quietly, stepping back into the hallway instead.

From out of sight beside her, Nacho and Tholomey shuffled through the door looking timidly at Hawk, who wiped his eyes and stared back at them like a man resigned to execution, maybe even longing for it.

“Hawk,” said Nacho, clearly struggling with emotions of his own, “we’ve come to say—me and Tholomey—we
all
decided that day in the cave. It wasn’t just your fault.”

“It was a good service,” Tholomey murmured. “You were missed though.”

Losing his brief composure, Hawk sat on his bed and began to cry again. The two boys came to sit beside him, one on either side, each with an arm across his shoulders as he wept. When Rose peered around the doorjamb and came in to join them, Hawk cried even harder, while Joby went to Laura, who clearly needed holding too.

On the first clear afternoon they’d seen in weeks, quite a parliament of skaters had convened outside the community high school, laughing, jeering, or, when one of them pulled off some particularly impressive maneuver, tapping the tails of their boards on the pavement in approval. The school grounds’ wide cement walkways and paved courtyard, low concrete walls, ledges, stairs, and metal handrails provided the kind of terrain skaters loved, and Bridget never chased them off the way so many of the ognibs back in
town did these days. Sometimes she even came outside to sit with them and watch as they perfected their ollies, nose-grinds, tail-slides, or, if they were veterans like Nacho, more advanced “flippity tricks.”

Having warmed up with a quick series of back-truck tricks, Nacho finished his ride with a seemingly effortless front-side flip, then comboed a radial 360 with a 180 end-over between his legs, while spinning his body 180 degrees to land back on the board in reversed stance before it touched the ground.

The trick won a loud round of catcalls and board banging as Nacho slid gracefully to a halt. He turned to take a little bow, but instead stopped to stare at a boy watching them from underneath the trees that edged their impromptu arena. He seemed seventeen at most, wearing baggy denim pants, ratty tennis shoes, and a long-sleeved, black cotton shirt. He had startling blue eyes and shoulder-length sandy blond hair streaked with gold around the bangs and sideburns. His chiseled features were all that saved him from looking pretty as a girl, Nacho thought.

The boy, leaning on a skateboard of his own and returning Nacho’s scrutiny, was no one Nacho had ever seen, though that meant very little these days, when more than half the people in town on any given day were no one Nacho had ever seen either. Still, given Taubolt’s state of occupation, it never hurt to be suspicious.

“That was tight,” the strange boy said quietly. “Can I skate with you guys?”

“It’s a free country.” Nacho shrugged.

By now, a number of the others had noticed the newcomer, and watched as he lifted his board and started forward with shy determination.

“What’s your name?” Nacho asked as he approached.

“GB,” the boy muttered self-consciously

“GB?”
said one of the younger boys, smirking. “That like the
heebee geebees
?”

Seeing how this embarrassed the new boy, Nacho frowned at the brat who’d teased him and growled, “Give it a rest,” before asking GB, “Where you from?”

“Seattle,” GB answered, still clearly unsure of his standing here.

“That’s a ways,” Nacho replied. “Your family here on vacation or something?”

GB looked away uncomfortably. “Wouldn’t know.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asked a kid named Barnard. His family was of the blood, but they’d been drawn to Taubolt only weeks before the Cup had vanished, and he was always trying to show he belonged by being suspicious of other newcomers.

“I’m on my own,” GB said, still looking no one in the eye. “Just me.”

Nacho took a second look, noting that his unkempt condition seemed a tad more authentic than current fashion dictated. “You run away?” he asked.

“No,” GB said. “I’m just on my own.” He looked Nacho in the eye at last, and said, “I’m lookin’ for a job, and a cheap place to rent, if you know one. Just a room.”

He was a runaway, all right, but Nacho figured that was no one’s business but his own, so he stuck his hand out and said, “I’ll keep an ear out. Welcome to Taubolt.”

GB responded with an expertly hip handshake, knocking his fist against Nacho’s as they disengaged. Then he threw his board down and jumped on to ride fakie down the cement walk into a half-cab flip before popping his board up and carrying it to one of the benches without so much as glancing toward the others for reaction.

“Not bad,” said Nacho, jumping onto his own board to follow GB’s route into a clean 360 shove-it with a 180 foot rotation.

“Sweet,” said GB appreciatively.

“HORSE!” said the kid who’d made fun of GB’s name.

“Yeah,” said another neophyte named Jessie. “You and him, Nacho!”

“He just got here,” Nacho objected. “Give ’im a break, you guys.”

“It’s okay,” GB said behind him, then added hesitantly. “If you want to.”

“You played horse?” Nacho asked.

GB nodded modestly. “I mean, you’ll win, but it’d be fun.”

“Nacho’s gonna grind him flat,” someone whispered theatrically.

It was a tough call. If Nacho refused, it would be like snubbing the guy, but if he said yes, and beat him, these bloodthirsty little board babies might laugh the boy back into the trees. Before Nacho had decided what to do, GB jumped on his board, got some speed up on the walkway, and ollied off the stairs into the courtyard, executing a flawless 360 flip, his feet grabbing the board again before landing, as if they were welded to it.

That resolved the issue. This guy was good enough to look out for himself. In fact, Nacho wondered if he was being sharked by Mr. Modest, here. If so, Mr. Modest was in for a surprise. Grinning, he stepped on his board and matched GB’s jump without much effort. Then, coming back up the stairs, Nacho kicked out into the street and ollied up into a long crooked grind along the curb, came off fakie, then popped into a half-cab flip. Boards banged on the pavement behind him, but GB duplicated the trick with apparent ease. GB’s next gambit was a front-side half-cab heel flip. There were
grunts of surprise and admiration from the others. No doubt about it, Nacho thought, he’d been sharked. This guy was way too good. Nacho got up some speed, and headed into the trick, but as his body came around, the board brushed his foot before completing its rotation, and he barely made the landing. In the courtyard behind them, there was a sudden quiet. This wasn’t funny anymore. Third turn, and neither of them even had an “H” yet. Nacho decided it was time to cut things short.

“You’re damn good,” Nacho said to GB, “so let’s ditch the kiddie stuff.”

He started kicking fast back down the walkway toward the stairs, did a quick front-side flip, then ollied up huge into a backside grind down the handrail to the courtyard, but his weight was too far back. As he began to fall, the
other
skills that were his birthright leapt up instinctively, stalling his board just enough to make the landing possible. He hadn’t meant to cheat. His use of power had been a reflex. But half the kids here were of the blood, and their silence made it clear that they all knew what he had done. Flushed with embarrassment, he turned to GB, searching for some excuse to save his honor with the others by conceding the game without exposing his real reasons to GB and all the other ognib townies here.

Still struggling after some solution, Nacho saw GB looking at him strangely, half a smile playing on his lips before he pushed off down the walk, did the front-side flip, and ollied up onto the railing, just as Nacho had. But at the end of GB’s grind, he popped into a truly impossible kick flip and nailed the landing in the courtyard below.

The silence now was absolute. Every boy there was astonished, but Nacho knew that any who were of the blood had sensed GB’s use of power. GB picked up his board, turned to face Nacho with a look of tense defiance. “Fair is fair,” he said quietly.

Nacho’s mouth dropped open, a flood of questions scrambling up his throat, none of which could be asked until he got this kid into some less public setting.

Before he could think how, Barnard hissed, “Hey, watch it! Donaldson!”

Everyone turned to see the town’s new scourge of skaters park his patrol car across the street, climb out, and swagger toward them.

“It’s getting pretty close to dinnertime,” the young officer said. “Shouldn’t you boys be headed home?”

Everyone looked sullenly away or at the ground.

“Bridget says that we can skate here,” Nacho answered levelly.

“If you mean,
Mrs. O’Reilly,
” Donaldson countered, “she may be head
teacher here, but this is not her property, so her permission’s kind of beside the point.”

“Who called you then?” asked Barnard, who’d already been ticketed in town for being a “public nuisance,” which is what they called skating these days.

“That’s none of your concern.” Donaldson frowned. “You’re disturbing lots of neighbors in the area, and they’re worried that one of you is going to break a leg here any moment. The school board’s not too eager to get sued. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave.”

“Where are we
supposed
to skate then?” Nacho asked, uncowed.

“Your name Nacho?” Donaldson asked with obvious irritation.

Nacho fell silent, alarmed that Donaldson knew his name. He’d been careful to keep a low profile since the officer’s arrival.

“Yeah, I thought so,” Donaldson said. “Karl Foster told me all about you.”

“Foster doesn’t
know
all about me,” Nacho replied.

“There’s people here in town who are mighty curious about his mysterious departure a couple weeks ago,” Donaldson said menacingly. “You know anything about why he might have left?”