As Ever, Gordy

  "Coward!" I hollered after him. "Why don't you run home to your mother and tell her I got snow in your face?"

  Pritchett looked over his shoulder and smirked. "At least I have a mother to run home to."

  His words stabbed into my heart like a knife. I had no idea anybody could cut me so deep without laying a hand on me. Busting with anger, I ran after him, calling him every cuss word I could think of.

  Luckily for Pritchett, a car stopped beside him before I caught up with him. "Hop in, Bobby," I heard his father say. "You have a dental appointment this afternoon. Did you forget?"

  Pritchett muttered something and slung his sled into the back seat. "See you later. Smith," he said as he rode past me.

  I watched the big Buick slide around a corner and disappear. If Pritchett's old man hadn't come along, I probably would've killed him.

  Well, maybe the dentist would do the deed for me. I'd heard about people dying of heart attacks when they had their teeth pulled. Pritchett was kind of young, but still—I could always hope.

  Just then, Toad and Doug coasted to a stop on either side of me. "I thought you were going to beat the living daylights out of Pritchett," Doug said.

  "I would have, but his father picked him up."

  "Yeah, sure," Toad said. "That's why you were lying on your face in the snow."

  "I slipped!"

  Toad took one look at my fists and stepped back. Fortunately for him, Doug changed the subject. "See the fancy bushes in that yard?" He pointed to the house across the street. It sat right at the bottom of the hill.

  I glanced at the bushes and shrugged. "They don't look like anything special to me."

  "When you coast down the hill, take a shortcut across that yard and see what the guy who lives there does."

  I spit in the snow, eager to hear what the guy did, but Doug was busy wiping the snot from his nose with the back of his mitten.

  "This crazy professor comes out and yells if he sees you," Toad put in. "He threatens to call the cops and stuff like that."

  "Cut across his yard, Gordy," Doug said. "I dare you."

  I'd never been one to turn down a dare, especially when I was in the mood for trouble. Towing Brent's dinky little sled, I climbed to the top of the hill. Lizard and Magpie were still up there, tight as beads on a string. When they saw me coming, they started whispering to each other, shooting evil looks in my direction. Maybe they thought it was my fault Pritchett had left.

  "Watch this, Lizard," I muttered, belly flopping downhill straight toward the professor's house. The sled's runners sang on the snow, the wind bit my face. I felt like I might take off and fly, but instead I zoomed across the professor's lawn, turning this way and that, circling bushes and laying down a great set of tracks.

  Just as I swerved back to the road, I heard a door open. "Hey, you!" someone yelled. "Get off my property!"

  I stopped so fast Doug plowed right into me and sent us both sprawling into the snow. To keep from crashing into us. Toad spun around and around and ended up in the professor's hedge—the kind with thorns three inches long.

  The professor shook his fist and let loose a string of cuss words I couldn't have topped. "I'll call the cops if I see you boys in my yard again!" he bellowed.

  We shouted a few insults at him, most of which had to do with his big belly and his wife's mustache, and thai ran up Beech Drive.

  When I got to the top, I spotted Lizard and Magpie in a huddle with a hunch of other girls. Just for the fun of it, I tossed a snowball at Lizard. She saw it coming and ducked. It hit a guy behind her, a tenth or eleventh grader twice my size. He and his buddies came after Toad, Doug, and me and shoved us down on our faces in the snow. They roughed us up pretty good before they lost interest in us. Of course. Lizard thought that was a scream.

  Before she realized what I was doing, I tackled her and threw her down on her back. I was planning to rub snow in her face to show her just how funny it really was, but somehow I tripped and landed on top of her.

  For a second, we lay there staring at each other. Lizard's face was less than an inch from mine, her cheeks rosy from the cold, her blond hair spread on the snow, her lips pink. Before I knew what I was doing, I kissed her. Right on the mouth. I didn't plan it. Didn't even think—it just happened like it was totally out of my control.

  "Get off me!" Lizard thrashed around in the snow, beating me with her mittened fists. "Let me up!"

  I rolled away, sort of dazed by the whole thing, and we both scrambled to our feet. I couldn't decide whether to apologize or try kissing her again.

  While I was making up my mind. Lizard hauled off and slapped me so hard she made my nose bleed. It's always been sensitive, probably on account of the old man hitting it so often when I was a little kid.

  I thought she might feel bad when she saw my blood spatter all over the snow, but she was too mad to notice. "How dare you?" she yelled. "How dare you kiss me?"

  She wiped her mouth with the back of her mitten like she was scrubbing away my germs. "Ugh!" she spat. "I hate you, Gordy Smith! I hate, loathe, and despise you."

  Grabbing her sled, lizard ran off with Magpie. She never looked back, not once, but Magpie shot a scaredy-cat glance over her shoulder. Maybe she thought I'd chase them. Fat chance of that. Dumb girls—who needed either one of them?

  Toad and Doug looked like they wanted to laugh but weren't sure they should. I picked up a handful of snow and pressed it against my nose to stop the bleeding.

  "That dame needs a good punch in the old kisser," I said. What I really meant was, I wanted to kiss Lizard again—not that she'd ever let me. Without meaning to, I'd made her hate me even more than she had before. If that was possible.

  Doug smacked his fist against his palm and said, "Pow! Take that. Lizard!" When I laughed. Toad figured it was safe to join in.

  "Let's cut across the professor's yard again," I said, hoping they'd forget about me kissing Lizzy Lizard.

  This time I got up enough speed to circle the house. I glimpsed the professor at the front door and then at the back door. By the time I slid to a stop in the middle of his lawn, he was at the front door again, hollering at me. I don't know why I did it, but instead of running, I sat on my sled and grinned at him. Scooping up a handful of snow, I bit into it. I was daring him to come after me, and he knew it.

  At that moment, Doug shot past on his sled. "Throw it at him, Smith," he yelled. "I dare you."

  It seemed like a good idea. I packed the snow into a ball and hurled it at the professor. Splat—it hit him in the mouth just as he was opening it wide to shout a few more curses in my direction.

  I took off fast, dragging my sled over the bumps and ruts in the road. Toad and Doug were right behind me, but I wished Lizard had been there to see the expression on the professor's face when the snowball hit him. He was so surprised, his eyes almost popped out of his head. Surely she would have laughed at that.

  When we'd put a few blocks between us and the professor. Toad said, "Let's go to my house. My mother's at work, so we can raid the icebox."

  Toad was the only kid I knew whose parents were divorced. I'd heard his father ran away with somebody else's wife. That's why his mother had gotten a job at the factory across the train tracks. But Toad himself never talked about it. Sometimes I thought he truly believed nobody realized his dad was gone. In a town like College Hill, he should've known better.

  We spent an hour or so eating just about all the food in the refrigerator and listening to the radio. Kid shows like Jack Armstrong and Sky King and Sergeant Preston of the Yukon—good for some laughs. Then Toad showed us a book about the facts of life his mother had given him, which was good for even more laughs.

  While we looked at the book, we smoked a few of Toad's mother's cigarettes. Camels, recommended by doctors everywhere—Your T-zone will tell you why.

  I hadn't had a smoke for so long, I almost coughed up a lung. Guess my T-zone was out of practice. If Grandma had seen me, she'd have said, "Serves yo
u right I hope you choke to death." Thinking of her made me feel kind of bad but not bad enough to put the dumb cigarette out.

  Around five, Toad started getting nervous. "Mom should be home soon," he said, peering out the living room window.

  Taking the hint, Doug and I left. It was a nice winter afternoon, not too cold, and I wasn't in a hurry to go home. After Doug headed for his house, I cut down the alley behind Lizard's house, dragging Brent's sled behind me. I was so busy staring at Lizard's kitchen windows, I didn't see Magpie till I practically bumped into her. She hadn't seen me either, probably because she was lugging a big bag of trash to the garbage can by the garage.

  "What are you doing here?" she asked, as friendly as usual.

  "Is this alley private property or something?"

  Magpie blushed and shook her head. "I just didn't expect to see you, that's all."

  She tried to step around me, but I shifted in the same direction. "Can I ask you a question?"

  Magpie shrugged. The wind tugged at her hair, and she held the trash bag tighter. The look on her face reminded me of a cat cornered by a dog.

  "How come you and Lizard hate me so much? Before I moved down to North Carolina, I thought we were getting along pretty good. You helped me take care of Stu, and I built you a nice tree house. Remember that?"

  Magpie frowned at her feet, big as boats in a pair of red rubber boots. "We don't hate you," she said softly. "It's just that..." She glanced at me, her face scarlet. "I mean, Elizabeth and me, well, we..."

  "You what?"

  Before she could answer, the back door opened and her mother stuck her head out. "Margaret, who are you talking to?"

  "Nobody, Mother." With that. Magpie ducked around me, dumped the trash into the garbage can, and ran for the house.

  I watched her dash up the steps two at a time, practically tripping over those big old boots. She looked back once before she disappeared inside.

  "Nobody," I muttered. "She was talking to nobody."

  I picked up a handful of snow, packed it tight, and threw it hard at the garbage can. Bong—the can tipped over and the lid flew off. Coffee grounds, empty soup cans, and chicken bones rolled across the snow.

  "Nobody did that," I muttered, running down the alley toward the train tracks. "Nobody at all."

  11

  WHILE WE WERE EATING DINNER THAT NIGHT, THE PHONE rang. Stu picked it up. "Yes, this is Stuart Smith." There was a pause. He held the receiver tighter, his face tense. "Gordy did what?"

  From where I sat, I could hear a woman's voice buzzing out of the phone like an angry wasp.

  "I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Sutcliffe," Stu said when he had a chance to speak. "Yes, certainly I'll speak to him about it."

  Stu stammered a few more words of apology and hung up. I slid down in my chair and poked at the Spam on my plate. It quivered like something from outer space—where I wished I was. Stranded on an asteroid, maybe. Lost on Mars. Fighting Radar Men on the moon.

  Barbara sighed. "Oh, Gordy. What now?"

  "That was Toad's mother," Stu said as if I didn't know. "She told me you were at her house this afternoon, eating her food and smoking her cigarettes. Is that true?"

  "I only had one cigarette," I muttered. "I didn't even inhale."

  "I don't care whether you inhaled or not," Stu said, his voice as calm and level as usual. "The point is, you have no business going into someone's house and behaving like that. Mrs. Sutcliffe was counting on the chicken for dinner. She had to give Toad tomato soup and crackers instead."

  "Poor Old Mother Hubbard and her little dog Toad," I mumbled, mad my buddy had told on me. Some friend. He'd probably made it sound like it was all my fault, when he was the one who'd said we could eat whatever we wanted and smoke, too.

  "Bad Yuncle Poopoo," said the troll.

  Before anyone else had a chance to jump on me, the phone rang again. Stu picked up the receiver. "Professor who?" he asked.

  "Oh, shoot." I braced myself for what was coming next.

  When Stu hung up this time, his face was pale with anger. If he'd been Donny, he'd have hauled off and socked me, but instead he swallowed hard and said, "That was Professor Whitman."

  "I was just fooling around. I didn't mean—"

  But Stu was too upset to listen. "I just don't understand you, Gordy. Why do you insist on misbehaving? Where does it get you? By now, you should have—"

  "How did Whitman know who I was?" I interrupted. "He's never seen me before in his life."

  Stu looked at me coldly. "If you must know, Professor Whitman got your name and phone number from Doug's parents."

  Ratted on again, first by Toad and then by Doug. Next Lizard's dad would probably call and tell Stu I'd thrown his daughter down in the snow and kissed her. Everybody else had told on me. Why shouldn't Lizard join the crowd?

  While I was scowling at my Spam, Barbara butted into the conversation. "I know Professor Whitman. What did Gordy do? Cut through his yard on his sled?"

  To my surprise, she started to laugh. "The neighborhood kids have always done that," she went on, "just to see him come roaring outside, yelling like a madman. It's a tradition—almost a rite of passage."

  I looked at Barbara hopefully. It was hard to believe, but it sounded like she might be taking up for me.

  If she was, Stu was too upset to notice. "That's not all Gordy did. He damaged rare plants, cursed, and hit Whitman with a snowball."

  While Stu described my behavior, June looked worried, but the troll ate it up. Eyes wide, he clutched a forkful of mashed potatoes in one hand and a soggy piece of bread in the other. I bet he couldn't wait to get big enough to do the same thing.

  "Not to excuse Gordy," Barbara put in, "but Whitman asks for it. Why, when I was little, I—" She covered her mouth to keep from laughing again.

  "What did you do to him?" I asked, eager to keep Barbara talking. If she got started on a funny story, Stu might relax and see the whole thing as the joke I'd meant it to be. The kind of thing Henry Aldrich might do. People in the radio audience howled with laughter when he pulled silly stunts. If Henry could get away with it, why couldn't I?

  But Barbara let me down. "Oh, it was nothing, nothing at all," she said. Turning back into a grown-up, she frowned at Brent. "Please don't play with your food, honey. Either eat your bread or put it down."

  Brent made a fist and slowly squeezed the bread till it oozed out between his fingers. The expression on his face was like seeing myself in a mirror—sometimes it was hard to believe the troll and I weren't blood kin after all.

  "Pop made all of us miserable," Stu said, ignoring the mess the troll was making, "but you can't go on rebelling against authority all your life, Gordy. You need to change your attitude. You should try to..."

  While Stu droned on, I fidgeted with a crust of bread and let his words wash over me like rain. He was taking a psychology course, and most of what he said sounded like it came right out of a book.

  Stu leaned toward me to get my attention. "I know it was different at Grandma's," he said. "You had your own room, you—"

  I slid lower in my chair, more determined than ever not to listen. What did Stu know about Grandma's house that I didn't already know?

  Finally he ran out of words—or just gave up. "Don't you have anything to say for yourself?" he asked me.

  "I'm sorry," I muttered, meaning I was sorry Toad and Doug told on me, sorry the professor and Mrs. Sutcliffe called Stu, sorry Stu was sore at me—but not especially sorry for my so-called crimes. After all, I hadn't done anything that bad. The professor was a nut. Barbara had even said so.

  Stu sat back in his chair. The troll happily poured milk into a hole he'd made in his mashed potatoes. June sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Barbara patted Stu's hand and turned to me. "What do you think we should do about this, Gordy?"

  Several possibilities floated through my head—draw and quarter Toad and Doug for telling on me, torch Whitman's rare plants, blow up his house, rim
away. For obvious reasons, I kept these thoughts to myself. They weren't the sort of answers Barbara wanted.

  "How about writing them each a letter of apology?" she asked.

  Stu stared at her. "Do you think that's sufficient?"

  She shrugged. "It's what my parents always made me do."

  It sounded good to me, but Stu looked doubtful. Which wasn't surprising. After all, what did he know about such things? Compared with the old man's methods, writing a letter was nothing.

  Stu sighed. "Okay, Gordy, write the letters, but don't think you can get away with scribbling a few words on a piece of paper. Spell correctly. Punctuate. Maybe you can learn something in the process."

  I fussed and moaned and groaned, but deep down inside I felt like Brer Rabbit begging Brer B'ar not to throw him in the briar patch. Thanks to Grandma, I'd had plenty of practice writing apologies.

  "Just get on with it, Gordy," Stu said wearily. "I've got a paper to write and a botany exam to study for. I don't have time to argue with you."

  After I'd written my apologies to Mrs. Sutcliffe and the professor, I decided to finish my letter to William. He'd now sent me four, none of which I'd answered. In the last one he'd said, "Don't write. See if I care. Some people have moved into your grandmother's house and I'm friends with one of them."

  I didn't like to think of strangers making changes in Grandma's house, painting the walls, getting new furniture, hanging pictures. Someone in my old room. Someone in Grandma's room.

  Most of all, I hated the idea of William being friends with one of them.

  Picking up where I'd left off last time, I wrote,

  Today I got in trouble three times. I threw a snowball at this crazy professor and I had to write him an apology letter. I also ate the food Toad's mother was saving for dinner, so I had to write her a letter, too. The best thing was, I kissed this snobby girl. Lizard. She got mad, but at least she didn't tell on me, so I didn't have to write her a letter.

  While I thought about what I'd say next, I doodled a few fighter planes at the bottom of my notebook paper. A German Heinkel was going down in flames. I liked the look of pure fear I'd drawn on the pilot's face.