Authors: Barry James Hickey
The taxi carrying Mr. John Battle drove north on Cascade Boulevard in what locals called the Old North End. The street was strewn with the fallen leaves of late autumn. Stately 1880’s mansions separated by high stone walls lined the street on either side, hundreds of feet back from the street.
The cab pulled up to the curb of a large three-story frame house located in the center of the block. The house had a proud authentic appearance. A four-foot high weathercock was mounted at its peak. A simple wrought iron fence lined the front of the half-acre property with eight-foot stone walls running along the sides and back.
Battle gave him a fifty-dollar bill from the briefcase. “Can I take my bag this time?”
The driver smiled at the crisp bill. “You’re good to go, pal.”
John forced the briefcase into the duffel bag and climbed out of the cab.
The driver spoke into a two-way radio, asking dispatch to “give me another load,” before driving off.
Battle struggled towards the low entrance gate. An oval brass address plaque was welded on the fence.
John lifted the iron gate latch. The gate easily lilted open in a slow lean towards the house. The former prisoner took the long walk towards the beautiful grand old mansion surrounded by great old trees guarding the property. He took the first step up the granite porch, feeling a sharp pain in his side. He paused, looked down and saw blood seeping through his shirt.
Battle limped up the remaining steps to the giant oak door and knocked. He waited for someone to answer, moving the duffel bag in front of him to hide the fresh bloodstain.
A woman in her late sixties or early seventies answered the door. She had a healthy spirit with a sense of style, class and propriety.
“Mrs. Powell?” Battle said.
“Mister Battle, I presume.”
They shook hands gently.
“So good to finally meet you,” she continued. “I was afraid
“I took a little side trip,” he grinned innocently.
“Understandable. You look exhausted, Mr. Battle.” She gestured for him to come inside. “Please. Enter. Welcome to my home.”
He picked up his duffel bag and grimaced. His head was spinning, his legs uncertain. He entered the dim hallway. It was floored and walled with heavy dark wood. He noticed the long ornate staircase leading to a mid-floor landing that turned to the upper floors.
“Welcome to Loomis House. My great grandfather built it over one hundred years ago. Your weekly donations will be used to catch up on the taxes and fight the bureaucrats in my never-ending crusade to get this grand old dame registered as a National Historic site.”
“You live here alone, Mrs. Powell?”
“Yes. I buried my husband last year.”
“Kids?”
“My self-serving children escaped to the coasts years ago.” “But they still send Christmas cards?”
She turned and smiled. “Sweaters, too. Every year at least
He grabbed onto the bottom of the staircase. “Please don’t consider me rude, Mrs. Powell, but would you happen to have a...” he set down the duffel and exposed his bloody shirt. “A Band-Aid?”
Battle’s knees buckled and he slid to the floor. Mrs. Powell knelt over him and examined his wound.
“Tsk, tsk, tsk,” the elderly woman spoke with admonishment. “What is this? Have you been a naughty boy, Mr. Battle?”
“For the right reasons, Mrs. Powell. I sold a kidney down in Mexico.”
“Illegally, I’ll bet. No stateside doctor would take a kidney from someone with your medical problems. It’s inhumane.” She touched the wound. “I think I can control the infection, but you’ll need a few days of bed rest if you expect to fight another day.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Powell.”
“You are most welcome, Mr. Battle. Think we can manage these stairs?”
“We can try.”
She took his shoulders and pulled him to his feet. “How much do you weigh?”
“In Mexico, I was one sixty.”
“Before or after the sale of your organ?”
“Before.”
Mrs. Powell clucked her tongue. “You are quite a prize, I expect.”
She pulled him up the long stairway one step at a time. John Battle was surprised by the white-haired woman’s strength.
The mid-afternoon sun brought no warmth. Crisp red, orange and yellow leaves were falling. In a few weeks, all but the sturdy gray green pines would stand bare and exposed.
Amber Beulah stood at the guardrail of the footbridge, studying the streambed below for signs of life.
She was barely seventeen, but the weight of the secret baby ball inside her skinny kid belly made her feel thirty.
What have I done
?
Two minutes of a strange new terror and pleasure while I leaned against a dead tree. What have I done? I’m a mistake. Worthless.
She pressed her arms against the pair of library books that were now a month overdue. She adjusted her flimsy black waistcoat, pulling it down. It was a good buy. Two bucks at the secondhand store, according to the price tag. What made it even better was that she stole it. She just slipped it on and walked out the door. Amber didn’t like stealing, but there was no job, no allowance. You didn’t get an allowance at the group home for wayward girls.
Winter’s coming
, she realized.
Below her, two of her friends darted into view from under the thin-laced canopy of Cottonwood trees that lined the narrow banks of Shooks Run. Toby was catching a lobbed pass from Matt.
Better check in with the gang
, she decided.
She made her way down the narrow, muddy red path that led from the Shooks Run bridge to the old log by the creek’s edge. The log was maybe a hundred feet from the bridge, somewhat hidden under the shade of the grandfather Cottonwood. It was the biggest tree along the creek, as far as she could tell. Its trunk was nearly ten feet wide, its height at least eighty feet, with branches spreading out just as wide as the tree was tall.
She and her friends had rolled the dead log down to the creek three years ago. The bark was stripped, burned or chipped away. Knives had found their marks in the way of inscriptions and symbols.
Toby reached the log at the same time as her, football in hand. He was tall, a medium-skinned black teenager,
the color of a football
, someone once said.
Pigskin
.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
Toby saw the books in Amber’s hand. “Didn’t make it to the library again, huh?”
“That’s just my excuse to get me out of the house,” she lied.
The truth be told, Amber had read every word of each book twice already.
Toby tossed the football back to Matt and sat down. He was done with football.
“Anything happen yet today?” Amber asked the boys.
“Naw,” Matt said on approach. Also finished with football, he plopped himself down alongside Toby. “Just chillin’.”
Two more kids appeared on the bridge above. Julio and Marie.
“Say, fools,” Julio yelled down. “Anybody want a beer?”
“Julio stole another twelve pack!” sidekick Marie said with triumph in her thin voice.
They scooted down the path to the old log. Julio tore open the beer box for distribution.
“I’ll pass,” Amber said.
“You
pass
?” Julio guffawed. “Since when does Baby Beulah pass on beer?”
“Winter’s coming,” she said.
“Winter always comes,” fat ass Julio yelled. “Just like last year and two years before that.”
He wasn’t just fat. Julio was a smart aleck, too. Amber wanted to swear at him, but then Julio would just swear back. Then, as usual, they would fight on and on just for the sake of arguing. But not today for Amber. Winter was definitely coming and she was actually worried about school for the first time in her life. Would they finally kick her out? Then what? And the group home. Could they kick her out, too? Then she would have no one to turn to but her loser friends. And what could they do besides hide her in basements and laundry rooms and garages for a few weeks until she was picked up by the cops and incarcerated for being a runaway.
Again…
Not to mention her
latest
development…
Two minutes standing under a tree…
She crossed to the old Cottonwood, watching the other members of her little gang of five. They all settled their lazy asses on the log, popping open stolen cans of beer. Matt lit up a smoke, took a hit and passed it down the line. Cigarettes were the main currency between the small band of outsiders.
Amber sighed. Her crew was starting to bore her. All they ever did was drink booze they swiped and smoke cigarettes they borrowed. Then there was Julio’s infantile yelling of stupid obscenities at joggers and cyclists passing by on the footbridge nearby.
That
drove her crazy. At seventeen, she was done.
“You look like vultures all sitting there,” she sneered from her standing perch at the tree.
“We are vultures,” Julio said.
“Preying on scraps and leftovers,” Amber quipped. “What’s it been? Four years since we met here?”
“Seems like yesterday,” Toby said. “Remember what our first gang name was?”
“Tadpoles,” Marie laughed, rubbing the name carved deep in the log next to her. “We called ourselves ‘Tadpoles’.”
“Weren’t we supposed to turn into frogs by now?” Amber asked.
“I hate frogs,” Marie said.
Marie was an attractive girl with looks that made her seem older. She was also lazy as a brick from relying too much on her sex appeal. All she wanted in life was to be liked by boys. She passed the group cigarette down the line and crossed to the old tree, leaning against the opposite side from Amber. A leaf fell and touched her ear.
“I think the tree is dying,” she said. “All the leaves are falling off.”
“The leaves are supposed to fall off. They fall off every year. The tree is deciduous,” said Matt. “We got two kinds of trees on the planet. Deciduous and coniferous. Anything else you want to know?”
“Whatever,” Marie said. “I know I didn’t want to know
that
.”
She hated the feeling in her brain and stomach and knees when her so-called friends teased her about how dumb she was.
It wasn’t her fault she didn’t have the answers to everything ever taught. Who had time for all that, anyway? Reading was a ridiculous drag. The only real Math she needed was for fast food purchases. Forget about Social Studies. She was never going to vote anyway. The only place on earth she wanted to live in after she escaped Colorado Springs was Los Angeles, so screw Geography too.
Marie had a secret plan boiling in her brain. Any day now, she would walk into a beauty school and sign up. After she received her hair styling certificate, she was going to move to Los Angeles. She would cut hair for rappers and producers. She’d make new friends. Forget about the Tadpoles and goodbye forever Shooks Run. That is, if she ever finished high school. She glanced at Amber, her fake friend for over four years.
“Let me see one of them books,” Marie said.
Amber handed her the skinny one. Marie read the title.
“CATCHER IN THE RYE?” Marie was puzzled. “What the hell kind of name is that? Is it about baseball?”
“No,” Amber said, snatching back the book. “It’s about growing up.”
“A kid’s book, Baby?” Matt asked. He was a skinny smart aleck with rotting teeth, freckles and fading red hair. “What’s the other book about?” he asked.
Amber blushed. “It’s an historical novel.”
“What’s the title?” Matt pressed.
Marie reached over and snatched the book from her. Amber reached for it back, but missed. Marie skipped to the community log and tossed the book to Matt.
“’THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN,’” Matt laughed. “I was supposed to read this in the eighth grade. Anybody else ever read it?”
“I never read a stinkin’ book in my life,” Julio bragged.
“Me, neither,” Toby said just to sound cool.
“I like comics,” Marie said. “BETTY AND VERONICA.”
“I am so tired of you guys!” Amber ambled to the log and snatched her book back from Matt. “You’re nothing but illiterates. Nobody has a job. We never do anything fun anymore! And that was the worst Halloween ever last week. We didn’t do anything, not even costumes.”
“The drinking part was fun,” Julio burped and crushed an empty beer can against his forehead.
“Nobody takes me seriously,” Amber whined, tearing at her brown shoulder length hair. “Why do I even bother?” She punched at the air. “I’m so out of here.” She rearranged the books in her arms and started up the path towards the bridge.
“Where you goin,’ Baby Beulah?” Julio asked.
“To get a life,” she said.
The other kids laughed.
“When you find one, bring it back here so we can abuse it,” Toby said.
Toby was way smart and cool, almost too cool to be a Tadpole. He could be a star jock or a class president if he wanted. Why he chose to be an outcast, he never said. The others in his little gang speculated it was because he didn’t want to be black, but they never told him that.
Amber was at the bridge now. “We have a meeting with Mr. Wirtz, remember?”
She saw a helmeted kid on a dirt bike riding towards the bridge. It was Speed Racer.
Down below, Julio stood up and picked up a rock from the stream. “Hey, Speed Racer! Don’t even think about crossing,” Julio yelled in a bully voice to the kid.
The kid slammed on his brakes at the end of the bridge. “You can’t own this bridge forever,” he screamed.
“But I own it now,” Jason said, tossing the rock from hand to hand.
“Someday, I’ll bring my dad back. Then we’ll see who owns it,” the kid said, as he turned his bike around.
“Tell him to bring back-up!” Julio tossed the rock in the kids’ direction.
Speed Racer awkwardly stabbed at his bike’s pedals, catching them enough to make them spin wildly. He used his feet to push the bike away and disappeared around the bend.
The rock landed with a harmless thud in a thicket of wild bushes under the bridge.
Julio sat back on the old log. Throwing rocks at strangers was a daily occurrence for him.
Amber shook her head with disgust. She hated dreary days like today when her friends were running so negative. There was something gnawing at her from the inside; something she couldn’t put off and avoid; something she couldn’t tell anyone about. Not yet anyway. While her friends poked along, just surviving, she had to come up with a plan of action for herself. Something had to be done about school and the group home and her friends before she ran out of time.
“Hey, Amber,” Matt shouted from the log. “Wait for us.” He stuffed the old football into a crevice under the log and started up the knoll towards her.
“No sense facing death alone,” Toby said.
Julio shoveled the remaining cans of beer into a wet notch in the stream. “God’s little cooler,” he said. He hurried after the rest. “If old Wirtzy says anything to piss me off, I’ll pop him.”
“Sure, Julio,” Marie said as she fell in line.
“Better be cool, Julio. We’re the last gang you got,” Toby said as he took up the rear.
“This ain't no gang. Never kilt nobody, never shot nobody, never robbed a liquor store, never beat up no homeless person...”
“Shut up, Julio,” Marie said. “Just shut up about everything.”
They heard it all before from Julio.
“Hell, Amber,” Julio still ranted. “You think you’re bored around here? Look at the friends I got stuck with!”
“If you don’t like us, you can leave anytime,” Matt said.
“We wouldn’t want to hold you back from all the possibilities at your fingertips,” Toby said.
“Besides, you’re the biggest and fattest reason this place sucks.” Amber didn’t mince words.
Julio lowered his head sullenly. He knew he was talking too much smack. His mouth always got him in trouble. Sure he was big. But he was fat, too. Just a big Teddy Bear acting like a Grizzly. His friends didn’t buy it. Nobody did. But someday, maybe next year when he turned twenty, the fat would turn to muscle. Then kids would respect him. Grown men would respect him, too.
The group reached the top of the ridge by the bridge and followed the bike path that led them away from the creek. The path wound through a stand of short scrub oak until it broke into a small city park with a baseball diamond, a kiddy playground and picnic tables. The park was almost always empty except on sunny weekends and summer holidays. The Tadpoles learned long ago that if they stayed hidden down by the creek, the police would leave them alone. Uniformed cops were lazy. They liked to stay close to their cars. The undercover police, they left the Tadpoles alone as long as the teenagers didn’t pose any real physical threats to the community.
Surrounding the park was an old neighborhood, mostly wooden cottages and tiny Victorian houses. Some of them leaned crookedly from age, but every now and then you could find a clean painted house proudly occupying a yard. The neighborhood was filled with old and large specimen umbrella-shaped elms, maples, ash, blue spruce, white fir and other evergreens.
Back by the creek, an obese man carrying a digital camera sauntered onto the footbridge and took a picture of the old log where the kids had sat. He was wearing a wrinkled business suit.
“Little punks,” Hogan said to himself. He looked at the camera counter. “Fifty pictures decided.
should be enough,” he