“Like it was a TV show, but you have to see it ovah and ovah until you understand how what happened happened?”
“Yeah.” Crash felt that no one had ever put into words the feelings he got while he was learning.
“Why don’t you read me a couple a’ pages?” Otis said.
Crash read nearly a dozen pages out loud, marveling at how good it sounded. He didn’t trip and stumble over the words as he did when he read out loud in English class.
Otis started yawning after a while, and Crash stopped reading.
“Guess we should get some sleep,” Otis suggested.
“Uh-huh.”
Then Otis stood up on his knees and took three stump-like steps, bringing him very close to Crash. He leaned forward slowly and kissed Crash on the mouth. It was a wet kiss, not anything the sophomore had experienced before.
Otis leaned back and asked, “Is there room in yo’ tent for me?”
The youths gazed into each other’s eyes for a long moment before Crash said, “Uh-uh. It’s too small.”
Taking a long time before he spoke again, Otis finally said, “OK. I’ll just curl up in this sweater next to it.”
In his half-asleep state it came to Crash that Otis kissing him was the opposite of Otis getting mad. It made him happy that he was able to calm the angry young man down. He was smiling in the tent when somebody grabbed him by his shoulders and dragged him out.
“Who are you?” a man’s voice shouted.
The sun was up and shining and hurting Crash’s eyes.
“What are you doing here?” another angry voice wanted to know.
Crash held out his arms to show that he wasn’t resisting them, but the man still lifted him from the ground and pulled him so close that Crash could smell bacon on his breath.
“Who are you?” Bacon Breath demanded.
“Percival Martin.” He felt defeated because he used a name he no longer answered to.
“Where’s some ID?”
“In my, in my, in my...”
“In your what?”
“In my backpack.”
“Where is it?”
“Next to the tent.”
Crash glanced at the side of the tent where Otis had been sleeping, but both the sometimes angry young man and the backpack were gone.
When Crash realized that Otis was gone with all his belongings — money and food, cookware and butane hotplate — he was giddy with the knowledge that he had helped his friend.
“You’re going to jail, Percival Martin,” one tall, treelike park man intoned.
They were all sitting around the dining table that night — the entire Martin clan plus Bob. It wasn’t unusual for the family to gather over a meal, but this time there were no plates of food before them.
“What did you do?” Reginald Jr. asked.
Albertha was sitting next to her father. Crash imagined that his sister could hardly wait to get to her room, where she could tell everyone about her crazy autistic brother.
“I figured out how to help all the kids I knew get good grades on their papers and tests.”
The police had called Reginald and Mathilda. They’d come down to the Queens police station and taken their son home.
“But why did you run away?” Mathilda asked.
Brother was peering at Crash with a crestfallen look on his face. This expression presented itself like a simple equation to Crash. It said that Brother realized that he would never be as much fun as him.
“I dreamed that... No, no, no. I saw that one of the kids would tell on me sooner or later. And then when I went to Mr. Schillio’s class and he told me to go to the principal’s office, I knew I was in trouble.”
“The school didn’t say anything about you cheating,” Mathilda said.
Bob was studying his cousin.
“They didn’t?”
“No,” Reginald Jr. replied. “They called to tell us that you were going to be valedictorian of the second years.”
“Oh.”
“You have to stop cheating,” the father continued. “Tell your friends that you can’t do it anymore.”
“Are you OK?” Mathilda asked.
Crash turned toward his mother but had no words to say.
“That goes for all of you,” Reginald said to the other kids. “We never mention cheating again.”
Years passed, but nothing happened that was as powerful or insightful or fulfilling as the day when Crash ran away. He’d kissed fourteen girls and a few boys, but nothing made an impression on him like Otis did amidst the pine trees and darkness, witnessed by lost deer and a few fireflies.
It was on this true adventure Crash had learned that the mathematics of life were ever so much more complex than counting up things in his head.
Albertha married her first boyfriend, Clyde Friarstone. She talked for both herself and her husband while Clyde smiled shyly at her side. Bob became a renowned artist and sometime opioid abuser. He still lied about his age.
Brother worked construction for six years, then he enlisted and did three tours of duty in Afghanistan. During his period of service he avoided the members of his family, most of whom were against the wars. But a few weeks after his last tour, Brother showed up at Crash’s upper-Harlem apartment. Crash served his twin a glass of cabernet.
“When do you graduate, little brother?” Brother asked.
“Next year.”
“You gonna work for the government?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll be a physics teacher at some small college upstate.”
Crash thought that Brother didn’t like this answer, but instead of saying so he asked, “You ever talk to Mom?”
“No,” Crash said in a hushed tone. “She sends cards every once in a while but...”
“I throw ’em away,” Brother said. “She was a bitch leavin’ Dad. No explanation, just a note saying that it was over and she was gone.”
“Why’d you join the army?” It was a question he’d always wanted to ask.
“To serve my country. To save people who got stuck under the Taliban.”
“Did it feel like you broke outta prison and at least just for a little while you were free?”
Brother winced and said, “I got shrapnel in my chest. The doctors say that it’s better to leave it.”
They drank more and talked about old times in the bedroom with cousin Bob.
Crash didn’t tell Brother that Mathilda had sent him her e-mail address or that he’d contacted her a few times. But something about Brother’s visit made him decide to take the subway out to Queens. Her apartment was less than a mile from Forest Park.
He knocked on the sixth-floor apartment door and waited, nervous for the first time since he believed he was about to get expelled. The door came open. A willowy man stood there. He looked familiar, very much so.
“Matthew Sinn?” Crash asked.
“Hi, Percy. How are you?”
“I thought you were dead.”
“I would be if it wasn’t for your mother.”
“It was really because of you, baby,” Mathilda said to Crash at dinner. She’d made chicken and dumplings with almandine French beans and peach cobbler.
“Me?”
“You were so brave.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Your whole life you were different. Nobody understood you. Your teachers were angry because you didn’t need them. And then you ran away to the woods with a backpack and a book. You were only fifteen, and emotionally so much younger than that, but you took your life in your hands...”
“The day after you came back, she took my hands in hers,” Sinn said. “She held on tight and told me I wasn’t going anywhere. Before that everyone came to see me just to say goodbye, but Mattie held on tight. After three months I was in remission. In three years my cure moved in with me.”