They were just about all out of food when the gang of trailer-park kids came around. There were about seven of them, ranging in age from eight to thirteen, as desperate-looking as their parents. They wore filthy T-shirts and jeans, filthy sneakers. One of them, a dopey-looking white kid with an Afro puff of curly brown hair, didn’t even have shoes, Jane noticed in horror from behind the counter.
“Hey, you guys like baseball?” the oldest of them, a short Hispanic kid, said with a nice-enough smile. “I’m Guillermo. We got a little field back here, and we were wondering if you guys wanted to play.”
Before they could answer, Guillermo turned to Seamus, showing him the dinged-up aluminum bat he was holding.
“Would that be OK, Father? Could they play some baseball with us?”
“That would be fine, kids. Just don’t go too far. We’ll be leaving soon enough.”
Jane stood behind the counter, frozen. She stared at her grandfather like he was crazy. She didn’t want to play baseball with California’s version of Children of the Corn. She was twelve! And a girl!
“C’mon, now. Jane, Eddie, c’mon out from behind there,” Seamus said. “You’ve been a big help today. You can play for a little while with them while Brian stays here with me to clean up.”
Jane and Eddie looked at each other.
“Yeah, c’mon,” Guillermo said, patting Eddie on the shoulder as they left the food bank. “It’s this way.”
They went behind the food bank caboose, toward a stand of pines and oaks. Behind about twenty yards of trees was their field. It looked comically bad. There was a flat plain of red dirt with a tree for first, a large, dangerous-looking rock for second, and a rusted hunk of metal that might have once been a motor for a refrigerator for third base. The newest-looking object in sight was a tall fence that bordered the outfield, with barbed wire running along the top.
Eddie looked at the fence and then at the circle of poor kids standing around them, staring silently. For the first time, he noticed that none of the kids had a ball. Did they use rocks or something?
“Um, you want to choose sides or what?” Eddie said to Guillermo.
Guillermo laughed.
“No,” he said, shoving Eddie hard in the chest. “I want your money. Cough it up, you little bitch.”
CHAPTER 37
“What?” Eddie said in amazement. “Wait, you’re joking, right? C’mon, are we going to play, or what?”
Guillermo shoved him again, harder.
“I’m not kidding. Give me your money.”
“Don’t forget his iPhone, G,” said the kid with no shoes. “You know some do-gooder city kid got an iPhone, dawg.”
Guillermo grabbed Eddie roughly by his shirt and poked him hard in the chin with the tip of the grungy metal bat.
Jane started crying then. This wasn’t happening. How could this be happening?
“Give me everything you have, or I’m going to knock the shit out of you,” Guillermo said.
“I knew it!” Brian yelled as he came running from behind the trees off to the right.
Guillermo froze in place as the six-foot-one former Fordham Prep nose tackle grabbed him by his shirt and shoved him, sprawling, onto the ground.
The trailer-park kids scattered immediately into the woods as the kid and his bat went flying. Jane stood there, wide-eyed. She didn’t know what she wanted to do more: wrap her arms around her big brother’s neck or do a cartwheel.
Brian picked up the bat.
“Hey, it’s OK, man. I was just playing around,” Guillermo said, dusting himself off as he finally stood. “Now give me the bat back, OK? I was only kidding.”
Brian hefted the bat.
“This bat?” Brian said. “You want this bat back?”
Brian turned and hurled it as hard as he could. It made a whistling sound as it spun through the air like a thrown airplane propeller. After a while, it landed out of sight, in the vegetation on the other side of the barbedwire fence.
“There’s your bat back, punk,” Brian said. “Go fetch.”
“Hey, why’d you do that?” Guillermo said in honest shock.
“I wonder,” Brian said, squinting at him. “You think you can mess with my little brother and sister? You’re lucky I didn’t return the bat upside your head.”
The kid looked at Brian, then at the fence, and suddenly started crying.
“I need the bat back. It belongs to my brother, man. Now he’s going to kill me.”
Brian eyed the kid.
“Then go get it, you little baby.”
“I can’t. Look where you threw it, man. Right into the middle of Cristiano’s patch.”
“So what? It’s a fence and some bushes. Start climbing.”
“Just some bushes? You crazy? Open your eyes. That’s weed, yo! That whole thing is a cash crop of premium weed. Cristiano don’t play. He’s got dogs, man. Rotties in there. Booby traps, too, people say. What goes in there, stays in there.”
“Did you say weed?” Jane asked. “As in marijuana? You can’t grow weed. That’s illegal.”
“Hello? Where the hell are you from? That’s all they grow around here,” Guillermo insisted, wiping tears from his eyes.
“And that makes you what? Cool or something?” Brian said, shaking with anger. This place is America? he thought. He really felt like punching the kid right in his face.
“Eddie, Jane, come on. We’re getting the hell out of here now,” Brian said.
“But what about my bat?” the kid screeched. “My brother, man. He’s going to go crazy!”
Brian turned to the kid and pointed a finger in his face.
“To hell with your bat, and to hell with you, too, you evil little runt. I hope your brother does kill you. He’ll be doing the world a favor.”
As they ran back to the food bank, Brian knew what he’d said wasn’t very Christian, but he was sick of this. These weird hippie families and messed-up poor people. All the drugs everywhere. I mean, they’d come here to help this morning, and Eddie had almost gotten beaten by some juvenile delinquent? How’d that make sense?
Seamus was closing the back door of the station wagon when they got back to the food bank.
“Did you win?” he asked as the kids quickly piled into the car.
“Oh, we won, Gramps,” Eddie said with an innocent smile. “Could we go now?”
“Is everything OK?” Seamus asked, staring at them.
“Fine,” Brian said, nervously looking over his shoulder, back at the trailer park. “Could we get going, though, Gramps? I, uh, really need to use the bathroom.”
“So do I,” said Eddie.
“And me too,” Jane said. “Really bad.”
“OK, then,” Seamus said, trying to turn the old car’s engine over. It wouldn’t catch.
No, Brian thought. Please, God. Please help us.
“Hold your horses, and, um, everything else,” Seamus said as he tried again.
The engine churned and chugged, but again there was nothing.
We’re going to be stranded, Brian thought. Stranded, and then the Lord of the Flies kids would come.
Then it caught. The big old muscle-car engine finally fired up, rumbling happily.
In the backseat, Brian crossed himself as Seamus got their rear in gear, and they finally pulled out.
CHAPTER 38
It was five-thirty A.M. when Mary Catherine led the horse out of the barn behind Aaron Cody’s house. It was still dark, and cold enough to see the plumes of the horse’s breath. She turned as a cow mooed forlornly somewhere off in the darkness to her left.
“And a fine good morning to you, too, madam,” she said over her shoulder. “Wonderful weather we’re having, don’tcha think?”
She smiled. When she could squeeze it in, her early-morning ride was by far the best part of her day. It was a moment to be still, a moment to be sane and serene before the kids got up and the chaos began.