It's Up to Charlie Hardin Page 4

“Nothing,” Charlie called, tightening the cap again, pushing the jug behind a box. “But I found that ol’ egg.” And he made his way back to surrender his find.

  Sue Ann promised to refrigerate the eggs until Easter and, before leaving them, told the boys to put everything back as they found it. This did not fit any plans of Jackie, who claimed his gram expected him at home. Moments later, with Jackie and Sue Ann gone, the other three boys sat listening to a screen door slam upstairs.

  Roy began to smile because he saw the others doing it, then reconsidered. “Why are we smiling?”

  “’Cause Jackie didn’t wanta help,” said Aaron.

  “So he scooted,” Charlie added, “so he won’t get any jam.”

  Roy’s eyebrows shot up. His lips formed a silent “jam.” His smile was instantly reborn. “You brung some?”

  “We all did,” said Aaron, climbing back over storage boxes, grunting as he snagged something from the shadows. “Last summer, remember?” Aaron could not know how near he—all of them, in fact—had been to an explosion, thanks to the six-month buildup of pressure inside the glass jug. Charlie’s accidental release of some pressure had spared the boys some serious grief.

  “Gol-leee, dog,” said Roy. He studied the foamy half-liquid gunk through the glass. “I got dibs,” he announced.

  “Oh, I just bet you do,” said Charlie, dripping scorn. “I found it, and Aaron’s next.” And he unscrewed the cap again. The hiss was not so fierce this time, but it produced a glance between the older boys that said, “This may not taste like it smells.” Now bubbles of foam filled the jug and popped at its mouth.

  But the smell had them all salivating; sweet and wild and tangy and—something undefinable. “It’s my house,” said Roy.

  “And my sugar,” Charlie countered.

  “And if I don’t get first dibs, I tell.”

  Aaron took a turn at the scorn business. “That you hid it away? So what?”

  “So I tell Jackie,” said Roy.

  “Aw, let him go first,” said Charlie, who had intended this from the moment he first wondered about the taste of the stuff.

  One glance at each of the older boys was enough to make Roy wonder if he had won this privilege too easily, but when Aaron growled, “Here, gimme that thing,” Roy snatched up the jug and licked at its mouth. Then he licked again. Next he tipped the jug up and took one small sip. Followed by a very large one.

  The others grabbed at the jug together when Roy was seized with a spasm of coughs, and while Charlie took an experimental sip, Aaron watched purple stuff spray from Roy’s nose. Coughing, sneezing, Roy groveled in the dirt while the older boys ignored him and sampled their lumpy fluid.

  “Wow, I wish my mom’s jam was this good,” said Charlie, blinking away tears.

  “Don’t hog it,” said Aaron, who knew Charlie’s capacity for sweets. He swirled the jug and drank more of the runny pulp while Charlie waited his next turn.

  Charlie slapped lightly on the smaller boy’s back until, blinking while his eyes streamed, Roy sat up again. The others expected his usual snivel but, after one look at the way Aaron gulped at the jug, Roy made a brave decision. “Gimme it,” said Roy, and claimed the jug.

  While Roy swilled a half-cupful, Charlie wiped his eyes. “Tastes kinda hot,” he said. “Pepper hot, not stove hot. But maaan . . .”

  Aaron, blinking his own tears away, watched Roy with a pensive air. “Yeah, like Passover wine,” he said. “Smells like it too, a little.” The two shared another glance. Then, “You know what I think? I think a little jam like this will go a long way. Hey, Roy! Now you’re the hog.” Roy managed to shake his head without taking his lips from the jug.

  “Leave some for Jackie. Or we’ll tell,” Charlie chimed in.

  Roy lowered the jug, grinned, and produced a belch that really needed a larger boy. “Bites your tongue,” he said happily.

  Charlie screwed the cap back on the jug and hid it away where he had found it. “We gotta remember this.”

  “Next time, a whole pound of sugar. And two jugs,” said Roy. He looked around, blinking. “I’m full,” he decided. “You guys got any marbles on you?”

  At any given time, a boy’s pockets might contain a penny or two, a pink blob of bubblegum (chewed only a little) wrapped in waxed paper imprinted with a tiny comic strip, a rubber band, and half a dozen cheap glass marbles. So, though Roy needed no answer, the older boys dug into their pockets and found enough colorful little spheres to have a game.

  “Hot in here,” Roy said, wiping sweat from his brow. “Let’s go out.” And as he led the way into the tree-shaded backyard, he paid no attention to the murmurs of the older boys.

  No Austin yard was very useful to a boy without a room-sized plot of barren dirt with the flatness of a table. A twig might serve to scribe a two-foot circle roughly in the middle of the plot, with a straight line drawn three paces distant for “lagging”—a competition to see who could toss a marble nearest the line, which established the order of business. A favorite marble for shooting was a “taw,” and a boy who insisted on using a taw larger or heavier than the norm was likely to find himself playing alone. This, because a boy captured a marble by shooting it out of the circle with his taw, and a heavy taw had an unfair advantage.

  Moments later they had forgotten all about eggs and liquid jam while they knelt in the dirt and exercised their thumbs, shooting from outside the circle, with urgent calls of “knucks down, you’re ooching,” and “missed by a mile.” They were not playing “keepsies,” in accord with a common belief that playing for keeps was as sinful as any other form of gambling.

  The first time Roy hiccuped, no one paid much attention. The second time, he was taking careful aim and grunted in irritation as his shoulders jerked. Aaron, patiently waiting his turn, sighed and leaned his head against Charlie’s back. Charlie did not notice. Then Aaron giggled. Roy, hunkered down with his knuckles properly touching dirt, turned his head sideways to see what Aaron thought so funny. And then, very, very slowly, remaining bent in a kneeling position, Roy fell over, his hair in the dust inside the circle, and still holding the marble.

  Now Charlie began to laugh too. So did Roy, in total silence with eyes closed as if in unspeakable joy or agony, and after an endless pause he flicked his marble, which soared away nowhere near the field of play. It was then that Aaron saw the wet patch spreading from the crotch of Roy’s pants, and pulled himself fully upright. “Charlie?”

  “I see it. And smell it too.” He toed at Roy’s arm, none too steadily. “Hey, Roy. You peed. You know what? You are one dumb kid.”

  Aaron snickered again. “Shikker,” he muttered.

  From Charlie: “What?”

  “Drunk. Charlie, he is!”

  Charlie bent down to shake the smaller boy’s shoulder, lost his balance, and found himself sitting. “I think he’s snoring,” said Charlie, and blinked. “And you’re fuzzy.”

  “Charlie, we’re all drunk,” Aaron said suddenly. “That jurn dam—durn jam did it, and we’re in big trouble.”

  They both risked a look toward the house, expecting a frown from every window, but no one was watching. “Not yet we aren’t. We better carry him back under the house,” Charlie said.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe we can sit him up,” Aaron said.

  The deed was done with more haste than skill, but moments later Roy slumped with bowed head in the sleep of the innocent, more or less sitting, hands in his lap, legs splayed before the scribed circle while two larger figures melted away over the Kinney back fence.

  Charlie had no hope of avoiding church services on Easter morning, and because his hard-boiled eggs were still in the Kinney refrigerator, he took care to craft a special, unusually earnest and detailed prayer. Mostly it involved homemade jam, good intentions, and avoidance of punishment. Evidently God was in a forgiving mood. When Charlie migrated to the Kinney home after lunch, no one seemed curious about Roy’s long nap the previous Friday. After Sue Ann distribut
ed the eggs, each of the four boys took a turn hiding all the eggs in a neutral location, which was the ill-tended grounds of the public library a few blocks away. They might have preferred the small adjacent park but had learned in previous years that younger egg-hunters with watchful parents would be numerous as insects there on this day. Since the library was closed on Easter Sunday, no one would shoo them away. They managed to lose two eggs and crack a few more that afternoon, but took these setbacks in good humor and each took his eggs home for future use. No bright yellow eggs figured in any of this.

  For the next few school days, Easter and its products were forgotten, but on Thursday, Jackie Rhett declared war. Charlie learned this when, at the end of morning recess, he saw Aaron in the hallway of Pease School. Aaron rubbed an ear with one hand and displayed a badly flattened egg in the other. “Just thought I’d give you fair warning,” he said. “I’ll tell Roy at lunch if Jackie doesn’t see him first.”

  Charlie studied the missile. “Jackie’s?”

  “Gotta be, it’s orange. Shoot; I never saw him. Got me good. I hadn’t thought about bringing our egg war to school.”

  Charlie nodded, shrugged, and said, “Almost late for art class,” as he turned away. He was almost inside the classroom when he felt a solid thump between his shoulder blades. Aaron was already halfway down the hall, looking back with a grin, and those pieces of egg at Charlie’s feet were no longer in a condition to be used again. Thus was the annual egg war declared, each boy against all the others.

  Since Aaron had come to school eggless, Charlie waited for him after school as usual. His plans changed the instant he saw his pal burst out of the building between two girls, pursued by Jackie Rhett. Everyone knew how fast those stubby legs could propel the older boy, but Aaron managed to dodge and weave among others as he made his way across the playground. Aaron stayed a healthy fifteen yards ahead as they sped across the street and Charlie guessed the chase would lead along the byways of Shoal Creek.

  Charlie trotted home alone to his trove of ammunition, which lay on a shelf in the Hardin garage, and filled his pockets. He left his yellow egg, which might need another few days to develop its full authority, and hurried down the street toward a spot near Aaron’s home where one of the trails climbed away from the creek bottomlands. With skill and surprise, he might splatter both opponents.

  But he had taken too long. A half-block from the trail Charlie saw that an exchange of pleasantries had already taken place because Jackie emerged first, watching the expanse behind him; watching it so intently that he didn’t see Charlie. That meant Aaron must be armed now with what remained of one of Jackie’s eggs. It also meant Charlie was in luck.

  Running almost silently, Charlie was within a few paces of Jackie before Jackie heard him and dropped to a crouch, so that Charlie’s egg sailed inches over his head. Facing this new enemy, Jackie hurled a handful of nothing toward Charlie at point-blank range, but this trickery was an old tactic, and Charlie had seen that Jackie’s hands were empty.

  Aaron’s were not. As Charlie veered away to hide among shrubs at the trail, something that might once have been an orange egg found its target of naked skin in the exact center of Jackie’s back between his pants and shirt, just as Jackie leaped to his feet. His “Yow!” said all that Aaron wanted to hear, and most of that eggy debris slid from sight down the crevice in the back of Jackie’s pants.

  Now Charlie had another egg ready, and this time his aim was better. Jackie, in full flight, took the blow on one arm without slowing and found safety behind a pomegranate bush. “No fair, no ganging up,” he called.

  “Who’s a gang?” Aaron cried in protest, bobbing up from cover.

  Charlie, realizing his friend hadn’t seen him, yelled, “I am!” With that, he air-mailed another perfect strike, catching Aaron on the shoulder.

  Aaron lost his balance and fell from sight downslope, giving Charlie time to pull another missile from a pocket. Jackie, seeing that he had not been unfairly singled out, but now eggless while Charlie was armed, took this opportunity to set off for home. Every few steps, small bright orange shreds of his own ammunition dribbled from the legs of Jackie’s pants, which Charlie watched with great satisfaction.

  From nearby, but well hidden: “Where’d you come from, guy?” cried Aaron.

  “Shangri-La,” Charlie called.

  “Durn you, Charlie,” said Aaron, laughing.

  “Durn yourself,” said Charlie, advancing.

  Aaron heard those footsteps. “I got my yellow bomb,” he warned, his voice more distant.

  “Oh, sure you do, and so do I,” said Charlie, knowing both claims were false. He skulked among the shrubs until he saw, beyond his range, a curly head hurrying toward the bottomlands. “I guess that’ll teach guys to mess with Charlie Hardin,” he called, with a quick look to be certain Jackie wasn’t in earshot.

  Charlie walked home whistling, inhaling the sweet air of the victor, replaying the past few minutes and revising and polishing each detail until it suited him to perfection. Finally in sight of home, he had convinced himself that superior Hardin skill, and not luck, was the secret of his triumph.

  He did not alter his opinion until he felt the thump of Ray Kinney’s mottled mouse-brown egg, hurled from behind the Kinney hedge, against the back of his head.

  CHAPTER 4:

  CHARLIE’S HIGHWAY

  In the next few days, the egg-warriors learned that it had been a mistake to bring war to school. Roy had no classes with the bigger boys and merely kept a wary eye peeled at lunchtime. The others soon developed headaches from frequent dartings of the head, and a whole-body flinch at every sudden move by some other student. Even then, Charlie was grazed between classes by something that might once have been most of an egg—though after being molded into a missile between Aaron’s hands it looked more like a blob of paint-flecked cement—and the same day, Aaron’s locker door took a direct hit as he was about to close it.

  Aaron didn’t see the marksman, but an hour later, when called with Charlie to the principal’s office by school loudspeakers, he soon got a broad hint. From fifty feet away they saw through the office doorway that someone sat almost hidden across from Principal Frost, but they recognized a familiar pair of rundown cowboy boots.

  “Whad you do,” Charlie asked softly, “tell on him?”

  Aaron, his lips barely moving: “Nah. He’d just tell back. And then get me later.”

  Charlie was nodding agreement as they stopped in the doorway. “We were s’posed to come, Mr. Frost,” said Aaron as he locked eyes with a Jackie Rhett who looked as if all the meanness had dribbled out of him.

  “But we can come back later,” Charlie put in.

  “Ah, Fischer and Hardin. Right on time, boys,” said the principal, and swung around in his chair without rising. Mr. Frost was a small man of economical movements and eyes that shone with sly intelligence. It was rumored that his bow ties numbered in the millions. “An eyewitness tells me you young thugs have been terrorizing this poor lad with Easter eggs,” he said calmly. A flicker of his glance made it clear who that eyewitness probably was.

  “Not me,” said Aaron. “Ask anybody, Mr. Frost; it has to be somebody else.”

  Frost’s gaze flicked to Charlie who only said, “Nossir,” with a shrug that practically hid his head in his shirt.

  “But what am I to think when this innocent boy is so terrified of you that he throws eggs at your friends?” said Frost, still at his mildest.

  Charlie and Aaron lifted eyebrows at one another. “I dunno,” said Charlie, thinking of Roy. “What friend?”

  “Felice Gutierrez,” Frost replied, with a friendly nod toward Jackie.

  The other boys stared at Jackie as if he had begun singing opera in some dead language. Aaron managed to squeak, “Sir?”

  “Sixth grade, never talks, scared of everything,” said Charlie, and Aaron nodded. “What about her?”

  “She’s with the school nurse, getting boiled egg combed out o
f her hair,” said Frost. “It was her distinct impression that young Rhett hit her deliberately.”

  In an effort to make sense of it all, Charlie turned to Jackie. “What did she do to you?”

  “I was aiming to egg you back,” Jackie said abruptly, then added to the principal, “I don’t even know that greaser kid.”

  “But now she knows you,” Frost replied, resigned to such disrespect for Tex-Mex children from the likes of Jackie. “And I expect her brothers will, soon. They’re both in Austin High, you know.”

  The boys digested this in silence. Austin High School stood just across Twelfth Street, facing this very school. It did not take an honor student to figure out how quickly a pair of offended Latino teens could launch a search-and-destroy mission after school to find one short-legged Anglo egg-thrower. “She didn’t mention me or him?” asked Aaron, indicating Charlie.

  Frost shook his head. “I didn’t tell her you two caused young Rhett to do what he did.” And after the tiniest of pauses: “Yet.” Rich in experience, Frost could build a threat the way an insect builds a sandhill, grain by grain. When none of the boys replied, he said, “Have you two been bullying poor Rhett?” Seeing rapid headshakes, he went on, “I’ll put it another way. Would you happen to be carrying any food in your pockets? Eggs, for example.”

  Charlie thought furiously, wondering whether his answer could refer to “eggs,” plural, or to the one he suddenly remembered that lay, at this exact moment, in his pocket.

  But Aaron had Frost’s attention, quickly reaching into both pants pockets. He turned them out without a word, producing two marbles and a pink eraser. No eggs.

  But Mr. Frost’s eye was good. He saw the five small flecks of eggshell, one orange, one blue, and three crimson, that clung to Aaron’s pocket. When Aaron noticed the evidence and drew a long breath, the principal stared him down. “You’re going to say you sometimes bring hard-boiled eggs to school for lunch. Aren’t you?”

  “Yes, sir,” said Aaron.