It's Up to Charlie Hardin Read online

  Or maybe not . . .

  “Pilot? You aren’t not neither.” It was the day after the latest trotline failure. And Charlie pronounced this ritual triple denial with scorn.

  “Am so too,” said Roy, folding his arms to stiffen the firmness of his stand. “Jackie said.”

  “Nobody pilots a tire,” said Charlie. “You guide it or drive it or push it or shove it if you’re big enough, which you’re not, so even if some people did, you couldn’t.”

  “Betcha a million bucks,” Roy insisted. Then, seeing that this had no reality in their world: “A dollar, then.”

  For a moment Charlie considered this, if only to call Roy’s bluff. But if Roy ever had a dollar, by now it would be in Jackie’s pocket, so Charlie ignored the offer. “Well, Mr. Tire Pilot, where’s Jackie gonna be while you get it going? Seems like he’d want to do the piloting himself.”

  “I ast that too. Says it needs somebody big to stop it and take it back home with him. He’ll be down the hill across the street where he can catch it.”

  Charlie pondered this. Jackie had drawn little Roy into his plans only that morning, while Charlie and Aaron were downtown at the hobby shop. Waiting for plans to mature was not one of Jackie’s strong points. If Roy could be believed, it was Jackie’s intention to let Roy guide the old tire casing as it gathered speed down the street beside the castle wall. This adventure would start at the top of Castle Hill (adults called it Eighth Street), and continue for a steep block downhill through the Nueces Street intersection, where Jackie would bring it to a stop as it began to climb a gentle rise.

  This was all in theory, a theory none of them had ever tested. Though he could not have explained in so many words, Charlie understood that an experiment this complicated has more variables than a boy has excuses. And every thing that can vary in such a setting can do it in umpteen ways. Picking a complication at random, Charlie imagined an innocent bicyclist passing that intersection. If the cyclist believed traffic would obey a city stop sign, which was a pillow-sized iron pimple bolted to the macadam with the raised letters S T O P painted in red, that cyclist just might sail through the intersection to be collected by twenty pounds of rubber going in another direction at high speed. It was not to Charlie’s credit that his vision made him smile, but then, Charlie didn’t own a bicycle.

  Roy hurried off to whatever fate held in store and Charlie ambled away until he was sure he could not be seen by Roy. Then Charlie ran the necessary few blocks as fast as he could toward the Fischer place. “Jackie’s tire—down Castle Hill,” he was panting, two minutes later.

  Between Charlie’s gasping and Aaron’s translating, the boys were both hurrying back toward the Eighth-and-Nueces intersection before Aaron got it straight: Charlie hadn’t been chased down the hill by a flaming tire. Moreover, as for what was about to happen, perhaps no one on Earth had a decent guess. Anyone who wonders what boys were created for might be directed to situations like this.

  At the intersection they found Jackie peering up the hill, cursing, hands on hips as he watched a small figure at the hilltop wrestle a slightly smaller object that seemed determined to escape. He turned to see the newcomers settle at curbside and grumbled, “If that dumb B-Word rolls it in the gutter once more I’ll let one of you guys do it.”

  Aaron: “Awww. You’d do that just for me?”

  Charlie: “Your lucky day, Aaron.” The sarcasm was elaborate.

  Jackie could tell he would find no willing helper here. Always sensitive to teasing, he turned and glowered. “Or I could just pound your head up your A-Word if you get smart, Hardin.”

  “Sure, after you chase me up that tree.” And Charlie took a few steps toward the same oak, fifty yards away, where Jackie had taken his lumps so recently.

  Jackie calculated the distance to the oak and sprang forward with, “If you think I can’t . . .”

  But Aaron interrupted with, “Here it comes, guys,” and the contest was instantly canceled. Judging by the slow wobbles and wavering atop the hill, no one could tell at first whether little Roy Kinney or the tire was controlling its descent, and Jackie stood transfixed, swaying from side to side as if hoping to steer them by example. A Packard sedan appeared on Nueces and cruised slowly past Jackie, the driver staring mystified at him without glancing higher to find the reason for the plump youth who seemed to be dancing a slow hula.

  Charlie decided that no collision was likely with the car but, just in case, turned his face away hoping to remain anonymous. Aaron, carefully estimating the terrain in general, trotted backwards along the curb away from the intersection. If Jackie failed to corral the tire—now gathering speed at a frightening pace while Roy sprawled headfirst behind it—the job of stopping it might fall to Aaron.

  With no other cars in sight, Charlie sprinted across Nueces and up the street’s incline to Aaron while keeping his eye fixed on the tire, which now emitted a raspy humming whirr as it neared Nueces Street, and its noise must have been a song even Jackie could not ignore. It sang, “Here I come, all gooey burnt sticky twenty pounds of me, heading straight for you at forty miles an hour, and you better be ready, boy.”

  Jackie thought of the two impudent upstarts somewhere behind him, and his dimwit apprentice limping down the hill toward him, and chose courage over good sense. The tire hurtled down the exact center of the street, its hum now a musical note, and Jackie must have seen a split second beforehand that it would hit that S T O P sign squarely because he braced himself and prepared for the tire to rebound into him. He was prepared for it to sting a bit, but after all, it was only rubber.

  What he didn’t prepare for was the tire’s Olympian leap from the iron pillow that was the stop sign, soaring over Jackie’s shoulder to continue past the intersection as Aaron had suspected it might. Jackie floundered and spun on his heel, and saw the tire rush only a little more slowly toward the two witnesses as he shouted, “Grab it!”

  The boys traded glances and shook their heads as one. “Rassle Porky Pig’s unicycle? Nope,” Aaron called, including the insult because Jackie was too busy to make him pay for it. Jackie hurled himself forward in pursuit of his property. As it passed Charlie in the street the tire had slowed further, moving roughly as fast as a boy might run, cresting the small rise and moving down the even gentler incline with nothing to stop it before West Avenue and, beyond that, the Shoal Creek bottomlands.

  Meanwhile Roy trotted up favoring one leg, hoping he could draw enough attention to justify the spasm of boohoos he was saving. The others ignored him, too familiar with Roy’s habits as a sympathy sponge. It seemed for a moment that Jackie might catch the tire but now it was gaining speed again. “C’monnn, Jackie,” cried Aaron like a cheerleader.

  “C’mon, tire,” Charlie retorted, at which Aaron laughed so hard he snorted, then sat down on the curb holding his stomach. It was becoming more likely that no one would catch the tire until it found an obstacle, and Charlie joined Aaron in enjoying the situation. It may have been this lack of earnest support that made Jackie send a furious glance over his shoulder.

  Roy inspected a rip in his pants. “He mad at me?”

  “At everybody in the world,” said Charlie, and Aaron could only nod.

  “Boy, that durn tire musta been doing a million jillion lillion miles an hour,” said Roy.

  “That’s crazy. I have an aunt named Lillian,” said Charlie.

  “She must be really, really big,” said Roy, which set Aaron off again.

  “She’s little and kind of skinny,” said Charlie.

  “Then why do they call her Lillian?”

  “Shut up, Roy,” Aaron gasped. “I can’t stand it.”

  The three boys sat on the curb and watched while Aaron caught his breath and Jackie grew smaller in the distance. As the tire entered the driveway of a stately home on West Avenue, Charlie squinted and shaded his eyes. “He better leave that thing where it fetches up,” he said.

  “Not him. He’s no quitter,” Aaron said, wiping his eyes
.

  A moment later they heard a faint, resounding thump as Jackie was trotting down that driveway, followed quickly by a symphony of breaking glass, as if all the old milk bottles in Austin had jumped off a cliff together.

  Roy looked at Charlie, who looked at Aaron, who said, “We’re two blocks away. Who’s gonna blame any of us?”

  “Whoever saw Roy start the tire, is who,” said Charlie, and in an instant little Roy had left them, racing for home in the storm of tears he had thought he’d forgotten.

  The two boys argued whether to walk in Jackie’s direction until, minutes later, they saw him trotting back toward them. The tire was conspicuously missing. Though he wasn’t moving fast, Jackie gave every sign of wishing he could, his chest and belly heaving with every step.

  As Jackie drew near, Aaron stood and approached him but Jackie’s exhausted headshake made questions pointless. “Castle—Bushes,” were all Jackie could muster. Following the sore-footed Jackie across the street, they sank down half-hidden by grass between a spreading pomegranate bush and the castle’s stone wall. Normally reddish, Jackie’s complexion had become pale around his mouth but gradually he recovered enough to speak. “Tire’s lost,” he admitted.

  “You mean like you can’t find it,” Charlie prompted.

  “I know where. Under preserves,” Jackie said. “Stuck under busted jars and shelves.” As he fought for more breath, the silence built.

  Aaron guessed, “That old garage was fulla preserves?”

  A nod. “Back wall, on shelves. Oboy. Smelled like peaches. Some woman yellin’ in the house but I got away.”

  Charlie and Aaron traded glances before Aaron said, “You wiped off what Roy chalked on the tire, then.”

  “He didn’t write nothin’,” said Jackie.

  “Said he did,” Aaron insisted, “just before he started it down.” A pause while Jackie digested this idea. “Scared you’d kill him if it got away.”

  Jackie lay back on the grass and shut his eyes. “Maybe I’ll kill him anyway. What’d he write?”

  “He did you a favor,” Charlie supplied, and looked at Aaron again. “Least he thought he did.”

  With all the energy he could muster, eyes still tightly closed: “What’d he write,” Jackie demanded.

  “It said, ‘Propety Jackie Ret.’” Aaron spelled it out. “Nobody knows who that is. You know Roy can’t spell.”

  Something like a tiny strangled sob escaped from Jackie. “Nah,” Charlie chipped in. “But just in case, what’ll you say if they come for you?”

  It was remarkable, under the circumstances, how quickly Jackie roused himself to hurry off for home snuffling. The others managed to keep their conspiracy silent until Jackie had turned a corner a block away. Then Charlie said, “What will he do when Roy tells him there wasn’t any chalk?”

  “Nothin’,” Aaron shrugged. “Roy says the first thing that comes into his head.”

  “I reckon Jackie will have a choice. Believe a ten-year-old who still writes letters to Santa, or you and me.”

  “So Roy will prob’ly get the slats beat out of him anyhow. Doesn’t hardly seem fair,” said Aaron.

  “It’s what he gets for bein’ Jackie’s pal. You know how dumb he is,” Charlie replied.

  “Jackie, or Roy?”

  “You choose,” said Charlie. “I bet they spend the rest of today under beds somewhere.” The boys grinned at each other, pleased with their deception.

  And in the duration of a heartbeat, they forgot the whole business. Aaron said, “You know what? I really liked that orange box kite we saw at Woolworth’s. Forgot to bring money.”

  “I know where you can get some. Kite line too, if you’re not scared to go after it,” said Charlie. To sweeten the challenge while Aaron considered, he added, “And I’d buy an RC Cola for a guy with a new box kite.”

  The next second, they were trotting toward Shoal Creek with no idea of the danger they would soon face.

  CHAPTER 14:

  PLAY MONEY

  While only halfway to the creek, Charlie noticed a rising lack of enthusiasm in his pal that soon became a list of reasons for not entering that storm drain. To one objection he replied, “Naw, we don’t need my dog with us. Anyhow, what do you care, he’s a worse scaredy-cat than you are.”

  When only a block from their goal, Aaron wondered out loud whether he could drive himself any farther through mortal exhaustion. “Jump on my back, I’ll carry you the rest of the way,” scoffed Charlie, who knew a flimsy excuse when he heard one.

  Finally, when Charlie hopped up to the mouth of the concrete pipe, Aaron balked like a pony. “I didn’t bring my flashlight,” he said, refusing to accept a helping hand.

  “Course you didn’t. It’s here, though. I left it up inside, remember?”

  Aaron decided that Charlie’s grin was a trifle too smart-alecky. “And how smart was that,” he sneered, “when we’ll have to feel our way up there in the dark just to reach it?”

  “And so you get yourself a case of the sissy vapors, afraid we might get lost in a plain straight pipe,” Charlie retorted, refusing to back down an inch.

  “I just don’t feel like it today,” said Aaron. “Hey, why don’t we go to the castle and invade Normandy? We haven’t done that yet. Yeah, that’d be keen, we’ll wade ashore on Omaha Beach with tommy guns and you can be the fierce ol’ sergeant and—”

  “—And you can be the hero corporal who druther invade a million Nazis than go get your own money that’s ten feet away.”

  Converting a hundred yards into ten feet as Charlie did for purposes of ridicule gave Aaron his turn to scoff, and he did it in tones loud enough to echo in the pipe. Had Bridger or Pinero been in the basement at this moment, several futures might have been less perilous. But the echoes faded while Charlie took a heroic pose, pointing into darkness.

  “Okay, it’s up to Charlie Hardin to go get you some light. When I turn the flashlight on up there, that’s when you follow me. Right?” He took a step, then turned. “Right?” No reply.

  Charlie knew his friend well. He had a vague understanding that some of Aaron’s expressions, and his cautious ways, were flowers from seeds planted by a culture older than Rome. When a boy is soaked in the mysteries of a thing, that thing’s power becomes magical. And some magical things can be awful, far worse than anything real—in the mind of the boy.

  Charlie’s magics were not as deeply rooted. He felt sure that once Aaron dared to stand in that pipe, to feel his wealth in his fingers, another fearsome fanged booger would evaporate from his imagination. So Charlie held his commanding pose and said very slowly, “Aaron Fischer, I’ve been up that thing and back. There’s lots of money in there that already belongs to you. In fact, I just might put mine somewhere else but I won’t move yours. In a minute there’s gonna be a flashlight shining on it and if you won’t come up and get it, I reckon somebody else would be happy to, if I told him it was there.”

  “Somebody like who?” Aaron did not like where this conversation was headed.

  He liked it less when Charlie said, “Oh, anybody.” The boys stared at each other. Aaron hesitated, reflecting that they knew one boy who was not a fearful sort when facing anything less than a police badge.

  Sensing that the stakes needed to be raised, Charlie said, “Even some little kid. The dumbest kid you ever saw. A kid so dumb he’d tell everybody and show the treasure around and let some bigger kid cheat him out of it.”

  Aaron let a brief movie run through his mind. He knew exactly which dumb little kid and which bigger kid Charlie had in mind. The prospect of watching this happen, or hearing about it, or even thinking about it afterward, was a thorn stabbing into his sense of right and wrong. And it would be embarrassing in a way that Aaron rarely experienced. And Charlie, blunt and direct as a billy goat, was a kid who could make it all happen. “I hate your guts, Charlie Hardin. Help me up there,” he said.

  Charlie was pleased to lead, imagining that all was well again, familiar w
ith the gloomy aspect of the pipe ahead and the way it seemed well lit when he glanced behind. He could feel the hand grasping the back of his belt and kept up a commentary intended to be useful. “You wanta straddle the grit, and keep a hand on the side of the pipe to steady you,” he said, and, “Look back now and then and see what we passed,” and “Up ahead there’s a littler pipe that comes in on the left side, maybe big enough for your ol’ booger cat.” This earned him a set of knuckles jabbed hard against his backbone. “Well, don’t blame me, it’s your stupid cat,” he joked. “And anyhow, it’s where our stuff is.” He found, also, that it was easier to be cheerful in such a place if he kept up a constant stream of chatter.

  Presently they came to the smaller pipe where, as he expected, Charlie found the money, marbles, and flashlight. Aaron wasted no time in flicking his flashbeam on and off, directing it here and there while Charlie implored him to keep it on the treasure. “You wanta get some of this stuff or not?” Charlie asked crossly.

  Aaron said nothing, but he counted out a small trove of coins, paused, then took a few coin rolls. “It’s funny how we can’t see ahead but we can see our way back real easy from here to the creek, even without the light,” Charlie said. And because he was getting no replies, he went on, “Want me to show you those ol’ bottles that broke and we dropped them down here?” Aaron turned away without a word and set off up the pipe ahead of him using the flashlight.

  With Charlie now in the rear they advanced farther into the storm drain. Charlie was encouraged by the way his pal moved forward, and imagining that his role in Aaron’s progress was a cause for self-congratulation, asked, “Now, aren’t you glad you’re not scared anymore?” Again Aaron ignored him, but stopped and squatted when they reached the glistening shards of bottles they had disposed of months before. Aaron studied the faint daylight reflected down from the street grating.

  Then an errant flick of the flashbeam revealed something in the pipe farther ahead, and Aaron advanced near enough to recognize debris in a large rupture in one side of the pipe.