She hadn’t expected a silver blade.
Chapter Seven
Arty was three blocks from home, pedaling into the dark with a rack full of papers, when he heard the familiar sound of his father blasting away on the horn. Six in the morning and most of the town still asleep, but his father didn’t care. He stiffened his heart and his right leg and pushed back on the brake, no sense pretending he didn’t hear.
At first he thought his father had discovered that he snuck out last night, but he shelved that thought as quickly as it came. He wouldn’t be coming after him in the truck if he was pissed. When his dad was pissed he couldn’t sleep till he hit something. He would have been waiting up if he knew Arty hadn’t been at home last night, belt in hand, and Arty would have felt its sting way before he would have folded paper one.
He put the kickstand down and rubbed his hands together against the cold. The pickup backfired as Bill Gibson downshifted and the tires chirped when his dad popped the clutch. Bill Gibson was never easy on anything or anyone, not clutches, wives-Arty’s mom was his dad’s fourth wife-or his son.
The pickup drew closer and Arty saw the shotgun in the gunrack behind his father. So he was going shooting today. That explained why he was up so early, but not why he had come chasing after him. It couldn’t be good, nothing his father ever did was good.
“ Hey, son,” Bill Gibson said.
“ Yeah, Dad?” Arty tensed. His father never called him son. It was almost friendly.
“ Can you give me some money? I’m a little flat and I need some shells.” Arty recognized the lie immediately. His father was too cheap to buy shells and he was too lazy to load his own. He had Arty do it, but Arty wasn’t about to mention it, because it would be like calling him a liar and that couldn’t be good.
“ How much?” It wasn’t fair. They had an unwritten rule. Arty’s paper route money was his. He bought his own clothes and paid for his own lunches at school. None of the other kids had to do that. He needed his money.
“ Twenty bucks.” His father had opened the door of the truck and the dome light came on, illuminating a two day stubble and a wicked mean look in his eyes. Arty shuddered as his father stepped down, spitting a cigarette in the street. He wanted to tell him no, but he knew the consequences and didn’t want to suffer them, especially not on the street at the beginning of his route.
“ That’s gonna leave me real short, Dad,” Arty said. He had three hundred and sixty dollars hidden in an envelope, taped behind his top dresser drawer, but he was hoping he would never have to use it, because he was saving up to run away.
“ I’ll pay you back,” Bill Gibson said, yawning and acting like he meant it, but Arty knew he’d never see the twenty again. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He sighed and took out the money, four fives and three ones.
“ Here you go, Dad.” He separated the fives from the ones and handed them toward his father.
“ That all you got?”
“ I had to pay for the new tires for the bike. I gave Mr. Wilkes the money yesterday, right after I got paid.”
“ Damn.”
“ But you said you only wanted twenty.”
“ I lied.” His father snatched the remaining three dollars from his other hand.
“ How am I gonna pay for lunch?”
“ Not my problem, boy.” Bill Gibson turned away from his son. He climbed back into the truck, settled behind the wheel, slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck, then popped a cigarette into his mouth.
Arty watched till the truck turned the corner at the end of the block and he was worried. If his father started taking his money on a regular basis, he would have to raid his stash, something he didn’t want to do. He would have to run away much sooner than he’d planned.
“ Arty and Carolina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
Arty heard the voice singing out of tune and turned to see Brad Peters coming up the walk behind them, wearing a black leather jacket over a white tee shirt. He hated that song. Why couldn’t Brad leave them alone?
“ Hurry,” Arty said, “he can’t bother us once we get inside.” He took her by the elbow and started pushing her at a faster pace toward the safety of the school doors. The last thing he wanted was trouble with Brad.
He wanted to look behind to see if Brad had sped up, but he continued on, like he hadn’t heard the bully behind. Sometimes that worked with his father, especially if he’d been drinking. But sometimes it only made him madder, and those were the times when he really lit into him.
“ K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Brad repeated, too loud to be ignored, but they were almost to the steps and Arty decided to risk a glance behind to see how close he was. Turning his head, he saw that Brad was too far to catch them before they were inside the school and he felt a surge of warm relief. Now he could only hope that someone else would irritate Brad enough during the school day to take his mind off of whatever mischief he had planned for him.
“ Look!” Carolina grabbed onto Arty’s arm and pointed. “There!” Arty faced back forward, looked up and sighed, then stopped. In front of them, barring their way up the concrete steps, were Brad’s shadows, Ray Harpine and Steve Kerr, both dressed in Levi’s and white tee shirts, the standard uniform of Brad’s small gang. Only Brad wore the black leather mantel of leadership.
Arty’s first impulse was to run, but he was too fat and too slow and besides he would never leave Carolina alone. Even if the bullies would never hurt a girl, he couldn’t leave her. He quivered, but he stood his ground. They might tease him, but they would never thump him right in front of the school. That was too close to trouble, even for Brad.
“ First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes Arty pushing a baby carriage.”
“ Funny, Brad, real funny,” Arty said. Arty hated to be embarrassed and embarrassing him was something Brad was good at, just like his father. He wished he knew how to fight. Sometimes he would stretch out in bed and dream that he was slim, tough and not afraid of anyone.
“ Got a girlfriend, Arty?” Ray came down the steps with Steve following behind. Both boys cast long early morning shadows and the sun reflecting off their pale white faces gave them a ghostly pallor. Steve cracked a knuckle and Ray farted.
“ Yeah, got a girlfriend?” Steve echoed. The bullies laughed.
But Arty wasn’t laughing. He wanted to clench his fists against his fear, but was afraid the bullies would take that as a sign of aggression. “I’m not hearing anything funny. Sorry guys.” He tried to sound calm, but couldn’t quite pull it off. He could never fool his bully of a father either.
“ He’s not hearing anything funny, guys,” Brad said through a false smile and hooded eyes. He was wearing his camouflaged duck hunting cap and he tilted it up.
Ray moved behind him, but Arty didn’t want to take his eyes off Brad. He reminded him of a zoo snake stuck in a glass cage.
“ Shoot any furry little animals lately, Brad?” Carolina said. Brad went hunting with his father every weekend.
“ What’s it to ya,” Brad said.
“ Must make you feel like a big man,” Carolina said.
“ We don’t just do it for fun. We eat what we kill,” Brad said, defending himself.
“ Most people buy their meat at the store,” she said.
“ Yeah, and most people eat meat.”
“ I don’t eat it because I like animals,” she said.
“ Yeah, and me and my dad go hunting because we like animals, too. We like to eat ’em. So there.”
Ray got down on his hands and knees behind Arty. Arty suspected something was wrong, because Brad’s fake smile turned into a real one and he seemed to be looking beyond them, but before he could turn his head to find out what was going on, Brad let out a loud laugh and said, “Hey, Arty guess what?”