The Liberation of Gabriel King (8 page)

Life was strained. Summer was at its peak—you couldn’t move an inch without breaking a sweat—and there’s nothing worse than suffering in the heat while your best friend is sore at you. The only saving grace was the Bicentennial. It was on its way and we were real excited.

The last week of June, me and Frita met up in Hollowell to get ice cream cones. I’d saved up my allowance every day since I’d squished the centipede, so it was my treat. Frita got a strawberry cone and I got a vanilla one and we sat on the lawn in front of the town hall to eat them. That was a good spot because you could listen in on everyone’s conversations.

“
You got those fireworks set for the Fourth, Joe?
”

“
How about those sparklers for the kids?
”

“
Who’s in charge of the parade floats this year?
”

Everyone had something to say, and it was fun listening to them with ice cream dripping down your chin. At least, it was fun until Duke and his pop pulled up in their old monster truck. I’d been trying not to think about Duke all summer, but now I remembered him right quick.

“Let’s go,” I said to Frita, but she stayed put.

“They’re not gonna chase
me
away,” she said. She was pretending to be brave, but I noticed how she watched real careful while Mr. Evans climbed out of the truck. Duke climbed out after him and said something to his pop. Then he glared at me and Frita, but she glared straight back. Mr. Evans glanced over at us but he didn’t say anything. He just kept walking to the general store.

“See?” said Frita. “That wasn’t so bad.” But I wondered who she was trying to convince—me or herself. I was glad Mr. Evans hadn’t called Frita any names again, but I didn’t want to stick around until they came back.

“C’mon,” I said. “Let’s go back to my house and make another obstacle course.”

I tried to pull Frita up with me, but she didn’t budge. Her eyes narrowed into slits like she was getting an idea. Then they started to sparkle again. I couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Only thing I knew for certain was it meant trouble.

“I got a better idea,” Frita said.

“What?” I asked, real suspicious. I sure hoped it didn’t involve bugs.

Frita’s chin jutted out like it did when she got something in her head she was going to be stubborn about. “Gabe,” she said, “it’s time to do some liberatin’.”

*   *   *

The thing about trouble is, if you think you’re going to land in it, you can be pretty certain you’re right. One minute I was sitting outside the town hall with an ice cream cone, and the next minute I was crouched in a pricker bush outside Duke Evans’s trailer.

Looked like our fear-busting was back in business.

“You sure we should do this?” I asked, peering between the branches.

“Yup,” said Frita. “Duke’s trailer is on your list, right? Well, it’s on mine too, so now’s our chance.”

We were just a few feet away from the edge of Duke’s yard.

“What if someone’s home?”

“We know they’re not,” Frita said, “that’s why we’ve got to do it now.”

I sniffed the air, remembering what Duane Patterson said about Mrs. Evans’s corpse. I didn’t smell anything, but there wasn’t any wind today.

“Duane said they’ve got Dobermans in there,” I whispered.

Frita wiped her brow.

“I don’t hear any barking,” she said, but we both stayed
real silent just in case. I hadn’t put Dobermans on my list, but that was only ’cause I hadn’t thought of them at the time. Truth was, I’d rank them right close to spiders.

“Didn’t your momma and daddy say not to come around here?” I said.

I could hear Mrs. Wilson’s voice in my head. “
Don’t you go near that place. You hear me, Frita Wilson?
” She’d said it a hundred times. Then I thought about what Pop had said about me and Frita needing to watch ourselves. Maybe this was what he’d meant.

“Pop said we ought to be careful—” I started, but Frita interrupted me.

“Hush up,” she said. “Didn’t I tell you that liberatin’ is serious business?”

I nodded.

“Well, there’s no kind of serious business that isn’t risky. Besides, we’re watching out, aren’t we? Why else do you think we’re in the bushes?”

I had to admit Frita had a point.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s check things out. I bet you two dollars it’s not so scary once we get up close.”

Frita darted out of the bushes, but I grabbed her back again and held on tight.

“Don’t be a scaredy-cat,” Frita told me, real stern. “It’s broad daylight.”

Frita pulled loose of my grip. She dodged an old tire and a car fender, then she hesitated. We’d never been this close
before. I closed my eyes and held my breath. Then I opened one eye and watched as Frita darted the rest of the way to the door. She touched it with her palm, then looked back over her shoulder and grinned.

“See?” she said. “Not so scary. I told you.”

Far as I was concerned, Frita could have all the glory. I stayed planted in my spot, but Frita didn’t put up with that.

“Get over here, Gabriel King,” she hollered. “You can’t cross this off your list unless you get out of that pricker bush.”

I crawled out and scooted around to the back of the trailer where Frita was trying to see in the back window. There were a thousand voices screaming inside my head and every one of them was telling me to run, but Frita couldn’t hear them.

“Let’s see if Mrs. Evans’s corpse is really in there,” she said. “I’ll give you a boost.”

I shook my head. “No way.”

“You have to,” Frita told me. “I’m too big for you to boost up, and we can’t see in even on tiptoes. All you got to do is look.”

“What if I see her?”

Frita was making her hands into a cup shape so I could step into them.

“Well, then you can cross corpses off your list too.”

Huh. I hadn’t thought of that. I guessed the quickest way out of there was to take a peek, so I put one foot in Frita’s
palms and rested the other one on the side of the trailer to balance. Then I put my hands on the window and pulled myself up. The old wood was scratchy beneath my palms.

“What do you see?” Frita asked. “Do you see Mrs. Evans? Is she dead?”

Frita was pouring out questions, but truth was I couldn’t be sure exactly what I saw. The old curtain hanging over the window made everything look ghostly white.

“I see some furniture,” I said, “and there’s a pile of clothes in one corner. There’re some shoes in the pile and…” Wait! Were those shoes, or were they feet? Sure did look like feet. Maybe underneath that pile of rags was Duke’s dead momma. Maybe that’s why our parents didn’t want us near here. I turned to look at Frita, but all I saw was Mrs. Evans coming at me with a broom.

“
You kids get away from here!
”

Frita let loose such a high-pitched scream, a dog started yelping from across the street. She pulled her hands out from under my feet so fast, I didn’t know what had happened. One minute I was peeking in the window trying to trace the outline of a corpse, and the next minute I was lying on my back in a cloud of dust and Mrs. Evans was raising her broom high above my head.

For a minute I was frozen stiff, but then that broom was coming down quick. I rolled onto my side and clambered to my feet. I felt like I’d been hit by an eighteen-wheeler, but I got up and ran like the dickens.

“
Don’t you kids be coming around here! I don’t want to catch you near this place ever again. If I do, I’ll
…”

I could hear her yelling after us halfway back to my place. On every other occasion Frita could run way faster than me, but I was so scared I clear out beat her to my trailer. I got there a full minute before she did.

Frita could barely catch her breath.

“What did you…Can you believe…Did you see…”

She lay down on the ground, sprawled out like a limp rag doll, and I sat down beside her, my heart still thumping.

“Gabe,” she said at last, breathing hard, “I think we nearly got ourselves killed.”

That was the God’s honest truth. We’d gone in worrying about one corpse and come out worrying about two.

O
NE THING I LEARNED ABOUT LIBERATING:
S
OMETIMES IT’S NOT SO
easy to decide when it’s done. Now we were twice as scared of the Evans trailer as we’d been before, but Frita said that had most definitely been our best try, so we crossed it off in black Magic Marker. Then we decided to take a breather.

July first, Frita came over and brought an article from
Life
magazine. It was all about the Bicentennial, so we propped it up against Jimmy’s spider tank so we could both see it at the same time. We lay in the grass on our stomachs, reading it, and every now and then we’d turn the magazine around so Jimmy could see the pictures.

We were looking at a two-page spread of fireworks when Frita asked her question.

“Think we should go to the fireworks in Hollowell?” she asked, studying the page.

“Where else would we go?”

“We could go to the ones in Rockford.”

“Why would we do that?” I asked.

Frita shrugged.

We were quiet for a minute, but then she said, “Terrance told me there wouldn’t be any black people at the ones in Hollowell. He said they’d all be going to Rockford.”

I wondered why it made a difference. Never seemed to bother Frita before.

“Terrance said white people aren’t celebrating
our
independence. He says they’re only celebrating the independence of white people.”

Huh. I thought we were celebrating everyone’s independence.

“Momma and Pop and me are celebrating your independence,” I said, “and we’re going to Hollowell.”

Frita shrugged like it was no big deal.

“I was just wondering,” she said. Then she flipped the page around so Jimmy could see. “You think Mr. Evans will be there?”

She said it real casual, but I could tell she’d been gearing up to ask me that. I hadn’t thought about it none, but I supposed he would be. “Yup,” I said.

Frita flipped off her sandals and wiped the sweat from her brow.

“No big deal,” she said, tapping on Jimmy’s tank. Then she turned over on her back and changed the subject. “Want to go swimming in the catfish pond?”

Frita was already wearing her bathing suit top with shorts because it was too hot to wear other clothes. Swimming
sounded real good, except there was always a clump of sixth-graders at the catfish pond, and two of them were sure to be Duke and Frankie.

“We could use the sprinkler,” I said.

“Sprinklers are for babies.” Frita looked at me like she knew exactly what I was thinking. “It’s time we did more liberatin’ anyway.”

Frita stood up. “I’ll do something off my list if you come swimming.”

Now my ears perked up because I was always interested in what was on Frita’s list, and it
was
pretty hot out.

“What’s left on your list?” I asked.

“The rope swing…mostly.”

“Mostly?”

Frita nodded.

“It’s on my list too,” I said, but that was the wrong thing to say, because Frita got all excited.

“Go ask your momma if we can go,” she said, standing up. Then she picked up Jimmy’s tank and twirled him like a ballerina.

“This will make us brave for sure,” she said.

*   *   *

Maybe Frita was going to be brave, but I knew I was headed to almost certain death. I said I’d do five other things off my list if we stayed home and used the sprinkler, but Frita was being a locomotive again.

“Just wait,” she told me. “After this you’ll feel so brave, you’ll be first in line for the fifth grade.”

Fat chance of that. Besides, the sixth-graders never let anyone else use the rope swing. It was an unwritten rule. But apparently Frita didn’t intend on following it.

“No one’s going to tell me what I can or can’t do,” Frita said as we walked to the catfish pond. “We’ll just march right up to that tree and climb to the top before anyone can stop us. It’s only fair. Ain’t their tree to…”

Frita stopped mid-sentence. We’d reached the pond, and there in a clump, just like I’d suspected, was a whole group of sixth-graders. Smack in the middle of them were Duke Evans and Frankie Carmen.

Soon as I saw them, my whole body tightened up like a dishcloth that was being wrung tight. Duke and Frankie were real close to us, standing on the opposite side of the cypress tree, chewing on candy cigarettes and talking to some girls. Any minute now they’d turn around and see us.

“Let’s go home,” I whispered, but Frita shook her head.

“No way,” she said. “We got just as much right to be here as them, and I want to go swimming. They’re not going to scare me.” She started forward, but I pulled her back again.

“What if Duke wants to fight? You punched him in the nose, remember?”

Frita made a face. “I can whup Duke Evans and Frankie Carmen both,” she said, “and they know it. Now, come on.”

Frita was right about one thing. She
could
whup Duke and Frankie both and they probably wouldn’t risk getting walloped in front of girls, but I bet they could think up something else to do. I stared at them, then up at the rope swing hanging off the high branch. I was so nervous, I could feel the waterworks gearing up, but I choked them down and Frita grabbed my hand.

“You can do it,” she whispered. The look in her eyes said she believed it even if I didn’t.

“You sure?” I asked.

“I’m sure,” she told me.

I swallowed hard and let her pull me toward the tree.

My heart was pounding fast and my throat felt full, like I couldn’t breathe, but Frita held tight and neither Duke nor Frankie turned around to notice us. Frita slipped off her sandals and shorts, real silent, and I took off my T-shirt and sneakers extra fast and left them next to Frita’s stuff. Then we climbed up the tree, quick and quiet as we could.

The bark was rough against my toes, but it was easy to get my footing. I kept looking down at the ground below, and the higher we climbed, the more certain I was that there was no way I’d survive. But I couldn’t turn around now. Frita and I sat down on the tree limb facing each other, gathering our courage. For a minute we were completely silent. I watched her face and listened to the sound of my heartbeat.
Thump, thump, thump, thump
.