Four Octobers Read online

  From her window, Miss Henry continued to pour out a stream of verbal abuse, now threatening to call the police and have them both arrested and sent away to reform school if they didn’t get away from her house this instant. Andy kept backing up slowly, but Jimmy seemed to be rooted to the spot.

  “Come on, man,” Andy said, his voice twisting with urgency. “She’s crazy as a shithouse rat. You don’t know what she’ll do. Get the bottles, ’n let’s go.”

  Jimmy raised his head and glared at Andy, his eyes shaded by his sun-bleached brows.

  “You just about knocked my front teeth out, you prick, and you’re worried about your bottles?”

  Andy couldn’t reply. Miss Henry was still shouting at them from the house, her voice rising higher, clapping against his ears like sharp peals of thunder. All he wanted to do was get away from there, but he knew he couldn’t leave Jimmy behind—you never left a pal behind, especially when he was hurt.

  “You coming?” he called, fighting his own panicky urge to run.

  “Yeah… sure,” Jimmy whispered.

  But even as he said it, Andy caught the funny tone in Jimmy’s voice. In stunned silence, he watched as Jimmy picked up both empty Coke bottles, one in each hand, and slowly straightened up.

  “What the heck are you doing?” Andy shouted.

  Jimmy didn’t say a word as he wiped his mouth on the back of his arm, leaving a thin, red smear on his chin and cheek. Hefting one of the bottles like it was a baseball he was preparing to throw, Jimmy turned slowly and lobbed it onto Miss Henry’s front lawn. It hit the ground with a dull thunk and then rolled across the dry, brittle grass until it bounced off the granite foundation of Miss Henry’s house.

  “What the heck are you—”

  Andy’s voice choked off when Jimmy pitched the second bottle onto Miss Henry’s lawn where it landed not three feet away from the first one. Then Jimmy turned and grinned at Andy, his red teeth looking like he’d been eating cherry-flavored Life Savers all day.

  “You’re so worried about getting the deposit back?” Jimmy snarled. “Don’t be chickenshit. Go get ’em yourself.”

  Andy seethed with anger. A low, painful vibration shook his gut, but he had no idea what to say or do. For what seemed like a full minute, he just stood there staring at the two soda bottles lying in the shadow of Miss Henry’s house. They only represented two cents, but as Andy’s mother always said, and he knew all too well, “Two cents is two cents.”

  “I saw what you did, young man,” Miss Henry screeched from her window, her voice cracking with rage. “Don’t think for a minute I didn’t, and don’t think I won’t call your parents, either!”

  “Screw you,” Andy whispered.

  He didn’t really want Miss Henry to hear him. If his father ever found out he’d talked like that to an adult—especially a helpless old woman—he’d have his hide tanned, for sure.

  Without another word, Andy turned and started up the street alone. The dappled shadows of the maple trees overhead did nothing to cut the heat that prickled like a tight-fitting collar around his neck. Not once did he look back to see what Jimmy was doing.

  He couldn’t care less.

  Andy walked all the way home alone. By the time his house came into sight, he was seriously considering not showing up for the football game that afternoon at Pingree Park. That would teach Jimmy to be such a wise-ass!

  When he walked inside the house, grateful to be out of the sun, his mother asked him where Jimmy was. Andy mumbled something about how he had taken off to go swimming with Tyler, then went upstairs to his bedroom and slammed the door shut. He flopped down onto his bed and idly thumbed through a couple of old issues of Superman, but he couldn’t stop thinking about how angry he was at Jimmy for doing such a stupid, mean thing. He couldn’t talk to his mother about it. He already knew that she would say something about how it proved what showing off with his money in front of his friends would get him.

  Guilt gnawed at Andy when he thought about how he had hurt his best friend, but he assuaged it by telling himself that none of this would have happened if Jimmy hadn’t swiped his soda in the first place. After an hour or so, he began to calm down, but one thing was still bothering him.

  What was he going to do about his two Coke bottles—worth two cents—that were still lying on Miss Henry’s lawn?

  He decided that he’d go to the football game even though he was still mad. He wasn’t going to miss a chance to play quarterback. But after that, he was going to have to figure out some way of getting those two Coke bottles from Miss Henry’s front lawn.

  ****

  The football game went really well for the first half. Andy’s team, the Pirates, was playing their archrivals from the other side of town, the Giants. In another two years, kids from both teams would be trying out for the high school squad, and their rivals would be from neighboring towns. For now, though, they played like the state championship was at stake.

  It was a grudge match today. So far this autumn, the Giants had taken three out of four games. Fortunately, Bernie Pine and Billy Dean—the two best players for the Giants—weren’t playing today. Bernie was supposedly visiting relatives in New Hampshire, and Billy was home sick with the flu. The Pirates were on a roll, scoring three touchdowns in the first quarter, while the Giants were scoreless. Going into the fourth quarter, the score was thirty-one to nothing.

  Andy was playing quarterback, as he always did, and Jimmy was wide receiver. Throughout the game, they had barely looked at each other and had spoken only when they had to in the huddle. When Jimmy caught a long pass, Andy couldn’t help but shout out a louder than normal congratulations. That broke the ice, and Jimmy smiled back at him. Without saying another word, they both knew that their spat was over.

  That was one of the remarkable things Andy had noticed about himself and his friends: they seemed to get over their anger and hurts quickly while adults—at least his mother and father and any other adults he had observed—seemed to hold onto grudges and slights as if the pain fueled their meaning for living or something. Life was too long, Andy figured, to be mad at anyone for very long… except maybe the Baldachi twins, who were always picking on him and threatening to beat him up after school.

  Halfway into the last quarter, the Giants scored a touchdown but missed the extra point. The sky to the west had turned a deep, bruised purple, and white lines of lightning jumped from cloud to cloud as the storm drew closer. A cold autumn breeze picked up, carrying with it the rich scent of the woods that lined the perimeter of the field. Andy wanted desperately to finish the game so the Giants wouldn’t be able to say they could have won if they had played the full game.

  By the time the Pirates had the ball again, the tumbling thunderheads were closing rapidly, sealing up the sky. With only minutes to go, Terry Waters took a handoff from Andy and fumbled on the line of scrimmage. Knowing it had been a bad handoff, Andy wanted to redeem himself and called a quick huddle. Before the team could take their places in line, though, the clouds lowered, and rain began to fall. For the first few seconds, just a few fat raindrops thudded into the ground like bullets, raising little puffs of dust along the sidelines and in the center of the field where the grass had worn away. A moment later, the sky opened up, and the downpour began.

  Both teams and all of the spectators scurried for cover. Andy and Jimmy and a few of their teammates who had ridden their bikes to the field sought shelter in the baseball dugout, where the rain made loud pinging sounds on the corrugated tin roof. Everyone else scurried for their cars.

  “This really sucks,” Jimmy said under his breath so their coach, Mr. Monroe, wouldn’t hear him. He was standing close to Andy, his face and helmet beaded with rain. “Now we won’t get our Popsicles.”

  Andy looked at Jimmy and smiled tightly. After every winning game, it was traditional for Mr. Monroe to take the team downtown to Frank’s and buy them all Popsicles. But in that instant, looking at Jimmy, all Andy could think was that he alr
eady had almost enough money to buy a Popsicle—two whole cents were lying on Miss Henry’s front lawn in the form of the two returnable Coke bottles. Win or lose, he’d been planning to go downtown after the game and retrieve those bottles. Now, as soon as the rain let up, he would have to go straight home.

  Andy watched in silence as the kids from the Giants ran to their parents’ waiting cars and trucks, got in, and drove away. The rain was coming down so hard it bounced on the pavement, creating a low line of silver mist that was pierced by the headlights of the departing cars.

  “I was hoping it’d stay warm enough so we could sleep out in the tree house tonight,” Andy said, shivering as he turned to Jimmy. He practically had to yell to be heard above the rattle of rain on the dugout roof. Above the line of trees to the west, a fork of lightning danced down to the ground and was followed almost immediately by a deafening clap of thunder.

  “Whoa! That was a close one,” Skippy Monroe, the coach’s son, said.

  Andy looked worriedly back to where the lightning had flashed, trying to gauge if it had been anywhere near his house. He always had the irrational fear that his house was going to burn down.

  “Be careful on your way home,” Skippy said. He had a high-pitched voice that irritated Andy because it always sounded like he needed to clear his throat. “I had a cousin, lived out in Maynard. One day after a rainstorm he stepped into a puddle. The sun was out and everything, and—BLAM! —a bolt of lightning fried him on the spot.”

  “No way,” Andy said, looking at Skippy with a nervous half-smile. He didn’t want to believe him, but he couldn’t help thinking that Skippy didn’t have to worry because his house was just across the street from the playing field.

  The storm passed over as fast as it had blown up. The ozone-tinged breeze from the west had snapped the unusual October heat wave, but the boys couldn’t have continued the game even if the Giants hadn’t all gone home. Huge puddles of tea-colored water filled the field. The sun angled out below the retreating gray clouds, touching everything with a burning edge of gold.

  “Guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” Jimmy said as he and Andy made their way to the bike-stand where they had left their bikes. Drops of water dangled from the handlebars and seats, looking like beads of mercury.

  “Yeah, guess so,” Andy replied as he cupped his hand and scooped the water from his seat, sending it flying in a silver spray. His team shirt and shoulder pads were heavy on his back as he rolled his bike forward a few steps and hooked his helmet onto the handlebars, preparing to ride away.

  “You ain’t still mad at me, are you?” Jimmy asked, hanging back as though he half-expected Andy to punch him.

  For just an instant, Andy’s anger flared again, mostly because he thought they had an unspoken understanding that it had passed. Now Jimmy had gone and ruined it all by mentioning it out loud.

  “No… No way,” Andy said as he placed one foot on the bike pedal, preparing to take off. “But I should make you go back to Old Lady Henry’s with me ’n get those two bottles. Or else give me two cents.”

  Jimmy shot him a crooked grin that exposed his yellowing, stump-like teeth and said, “Yeah, but what’s two cents among friends, right?”

  “Still two cents,” Andy said simply.

  Before Jimmy could say anything, Andy started running forward. He leaped onto his bike and started pedaling for home. The stiff breeze and his wet shirt clung to his chest and shoulders like clammy hands and made him shiver.

  Before he got home, Andy realized something else about himself and—maybe—about people in general. He was still mad at Jimmy, at least a little bit, and that he would probably stay mad at Jimmy until he figured out a way to get those two empty Coke bottles off Miss Henry’s front lawn.

  It was petty, he knew, but during the ride home, Andy began to understand a little more how people—especially adults—could hold onto grudges so long. Jimmy had done something mean-spirited, something that had screwed him over.

  Just a little.

  But enough so until he righted that situation, a little piece of… something had been chipped away from their friendship. This left him feeling a little more alone than he had ever felt before in his life. As he wheeled his bike into the driveway, he decided that, if this was what growing up was like, he didn’t really like it.

  ****

  The night was filled with the creaking sound of crickets and a soft, whistling wind as Andy eased the door shut behind him and started down the back steps. It was almost midnight. There wasn’t much of a moon—just a thin, bone-white crescent riding low above the trees to the west. It cast the thinnest of shadows in the ink-dark night. Stars winked in a brilliant array overhead, a backdrop to the cloudy, gray smear of the Milky Way that arced from horizon to horizon.

  With every step Andy took, the back steps creaked, sounding in his ears as loud as gunshots in the night. Off in the woods, he heard the muffled hoot of an owl and couldn’t help but shiver.

  Once he was down on the grass, he made his way slowly around the side of the house to the gravel driveway. As soon as he was out in the open, he started running. The wind whistled in his ears, and his sneakers scuffed on the gravel. His parents had their bedroom window closed, so he was pretty sure they wouldn’t hear him. If, by chance, either one of them happened to wake up during the night and check on him, they would—hopefully—be fooled by the pile of clothes he had stuffed under his blankets to make it look like he was sound asleep. It had worked before, and it would probably work again tonight… unless they checked a little closer.

  Andy didn’t dare take the “shortcut” through the woods in the dark, but even on the road he was nervous. A few streetlights lined the side of Stockholm Avenue at irregular intervals. Their harsh, yellow glow stenciled the road with shadows from the oak trees overhead. Andy avoided the cones of light as much as possible, just in case someone in one of the darkened houses chanced to look out and see him. There would be a phone call to his parents, if not right away, then first thing in the morning, for sure.

  At the corner of Story Street and Oakland Avenue, Andy heard the soft rustling of… something… off to his left in the dense brush beside the road. It sounded like tearing wet cloth and set his teeth on edge, even though he told himself it was probably nothing. Just a raccoon or, at worst, a skunk that probably wanted to avoid him more than he wanted to avoid it. No matter what he told himself, though, he couldn’t stop the subtle chill that uncoiled along his spine. He increased his pace with several fearful glances at the shadows over his shoulder. Once or twice, he caught a hint of motion of something large, shifting within the shadowed woods, but he told himself it was just his imagination… just a trick of the eye. He didn’t take a deep breath until he was down the hill and walking past the elementary school where the streetlights were strung out more regularly.

  Two cars and a battered pickup truck went by, and each time Andy, warned by the increasing glow of their approaching headlights, ducked into the brush or behind a stone wall to hide until they passed. “Dodge the death rays” was a game he and Jimmy played whenever they snuck out at night when they were supposed to be asleep in the tent in Jimmy’s backyard or up in their tree house. Tonight, Andy wished Jimmy was with him. Things weren’t quite as scary when your best friend was with you.

  Beyond the elementary school was the field where they had played football earlier that afternoon. The faint glow of moonlight made the dew-moistened grass look like beaten pewter. The sidelines and center of the field were lighter strips in the darkness, still blotchy with drying puddles. Walking past the field so late at night, Andy found it impossible to believe that only a few short hours ago, he and his friends had been out there playing. The night changed everything. It was filled with an indefinable magic, and Andy felt curiously detached, almost as though he were a ghost, passing silently through town and viewing scenes from his past life. He paused a moment, resisting the shiver that teased between his shoulder blades. He took a deep, sh
uddering breath if only to convince himself that he was still alive.

  “Cripes,” he whispered under his breath, surprised by the soft rasping sound of his voice.

  A sudden glare of light blossomed behind him. Looking around for someplace to hide, he realized with a bolt of fear that he was too far out in the open. The nearest spot was the big maple tree behind the backstop. Fists clenched, Andy started running just as the approaching vehicle swung around the corner by the school. A bright sweep of headlights washed the street and woods to either side.

  Panting heavily and tucking his head down, Andy ducked behind the tree just in time. Clinging to the rough bark of the trunk, he inched his way around, hoping to God that the driver hadn’t seen him. Once the car was past the tree, he peeked out at it. His breath caught in his throat when he thought he recognized his father’s Chevy Impala.

  “No, it can’t be,” he whispered. His father got up at six every morning to be to work by seven. There was no way he’d be out driving at this hour, not unless he’d realized Andy wasn’t in his bed and had come out looking for him.

  Sweat trickled down the back of Andy’s neck, teasing him like the scraping touch of unseen fingertips. He forced himself to stop panting and took a long, slow inhalation that was so deep pain stitched his ribs. All he could think was how much trouble he’d be in if that had been his father, and he got caught. And all because of Jimmy Nikanen and two cents…

  Two lousy, measly cents!

  Andy leaned forward until his forehead pressed against the rough bark of the tree. He had to think this through. If his father already knew he’d left the house, then he was in trouble, no matter what. He considered heading back home right now, as fast as he could go, and hoped if that really had been his father, he could at least get back into bed before he returned.

  But what if it hadn’t been his father?

  What if he’d been mistaken?

  He’d been so concerned about getting caught he hadn’t really gotten a good look at the car. All he’d seen was a glare of headlights and then its taillights once it was past him as it braked for the turn onto Granite Street. It had been a dark car—either blue or black—but his father wasn’t the only person in town who drove a dark car. It could have been anybody. And if it hadn’t been his father, if he turned back now and went home without getting his two bottles, the whole night would be wasted.