The Janitor's Boy

  Scanning the list made Jack feel better, and when he glanced down at the town, Huntington looked good again, safer. Jack closed his binder and then got out his math book, a spiral notebook, and a pencil. He zipped his jacket and pulled up the hood. He leaned against one of the bell supports and angled himself to catch the best light.

  He’d found a quiet place, and now he was doing his homework, just like he’d said in the note to his dad.

  Math went fast—it was always easy for Jack. Then he opened up the book he was reading in English, The Indian in the Cupboard. He had read it before, but that didn’t matter. He always read the books he liked again and again. He was supposed to stop after chapter four, but the action swept him along. He knew exactly how Omri felt, and Little Bear, too.

  Looking up some time later, Jack saw it was getting dark. He shivered, and his back ached from leaning against the steel post. He hadn’t noticed while he was reading.

  Leaning forward near the pillar at the front of the tower, Jack could just read the time and temperature sign at his bank down on Main Street.

  Four fifty-three. Only seven minutes to get back to the shop in time to meet his dad. Jack said he’d be there at five, and he would be. He hadn’t been late for anything in years—not school, not a rehearsal, not a single assignment.

  It was downhill all the way to the shop, and Jack made it with a minute to spare.

  Chapter 14

  HomewARD

  John Rankin’s Chevy pickup was getting to be an antique. It was a ‘72, but if it hadn’t been for the changes in styling, no one would have guessed. The original green paint was still in great shape, and underneath the denim seat covers the vinyl seats weren’t worn at all.

  The old green Chevy didn’t look like some trophy truck, the kind you see at a truck rally at the Holiday Inn on a Sunday afternoon. This was a real truck, a working truck. It was a tool, and John Rankin took good care of his tools.

  Climbing up onto the seat next to his dad, Jack knew the routine by heart. Pump the gas pedal four times. Pull the choke lever out two clicks. Count to fifteen, turn the key, and vooOOOm, the engine jumps to life. Worked every time, heart of summer or dead of winter.

  Jack was glad it was so late, and almost dark, too. He didn’t want any kids to see him riding with his dad. Jack thought, And that’s another thing that’s different. I’d never want a truck, and my dad has had this one forever.

  Easing out of the back lot onto Summer Street, his dad asked, “So how was the library?”

  Jack said, “Not so bad.”

  “Hmmm.”

  They waited for the light to change, and John Rankin sat stiffly, both hands on the steering wheel, his index fingers tapping along with the clicking turn signal.

  Jack wanted to know what his dad thought about him messing up that desk—and why he hadn’t even yelled at him. Now would be the perfect time to talk . . . maybe even say he was sorry.

  The light seemed to stay red forever. The silence felt uncomfortable, but Jack couldn’t think of what to say. Then he remembered his talk with the librarian. “Mrs. Stokely said it was hard to get the library moved last summer.” His voice sounded too loud.

  His dad nodded and said, “Yup.” He put the truck into first gear and pulled forward.

  Jack saw they weren’t heading toward home. Instead of turning north onto Randall Street, they kept going west on Main Street and turned onto South Grand Boulevard. Jack pictured where they were, remembering how the town had looked from the top of the tower.

  Waiting at the next traffic light, John Rankin cleared his throat. Trying to sound casual, he said, “You get teased much about your dad being a janitor?”

  The question caught Jack by surprise, but he didn’t show it. “Nah. One or two kids have said stuff, but they’re jerks. I don’t pay any attention to it.”

  “That’s good. Hate to think you’re getting razzed on my account.” His dad fell silent again.

  Jack could have opened up and said a lot more, but he stopped himself. Thinking about having a talk was easier than actually doing it.

  The light changed, and the traffic eased ahead. Jack looked out at the store windows and the new-car dealerships, and his dad kept focused on his driving. It was rush hour in Huntington. There were no real slowdowns, but the major streets were pretty full for twenty or thirty minutes every afternoon.

  After a mile or so, his dad pulled the truck up next to the curb in front of a big used-car lot and shut off the engine. “I know I’ve told you that my dad was in the car business.” Pointing to the right, out the window by Jack, he said, “My dad used to own that lot back in the fifties—Honest Phil Rankin. He ran it right up to the day he died. That man could sell anything to anybody, and he made a good bit of money—it’s his money that’s going to put you and your sister through college before too long.”

  He paused, both hands back on the steering wheel.

  Jack looked over at his dad’s face, lit up by the string of bulbs that ran above the first row of cars. His eyes were open, but he wasn’t really looking at anything.

  “I worked for my dad every Saturday morning from the time I was twelve until I left home to join the army. Hated it. I washed cars, all year-round, every Saturday, sometimes after school, too. Hardly got paid at all.

  “He used to bring a customer over to where I was washing. He’d come near on purpose and do his sales pitch, and when the deal was closed, he’d come find me. He waves a check or a stack of fifty-dollar bills at me. ‘Did you hear how I did that?’ he says. ‘See how I cut off every possible escape? I hope you listen good, Johnny boy, because someday this is going to be your place. You learn how to do this right, and it’s like finding money on the sidewalk.’ I nodded and just kept on washing. I didn’t like to think about that.”

  John Rankin paused, reaching for words. Jack could tell he was forcing himself to talk. His dad had never said this much to him at one time before, not even when they used to go fishing and sit together all day in the old red canoe.

  “And you know what really drove me crazy?”

  Jack shook his head but immediately felt silly. His dad wasn’t waiting for a response from him. He was years and years away.

  “I never had a car—no car, all during high school. Here it would have been so easy for my dad to set me up with any old car, just something to call my own, just a little independence. But that wasn’t his way.

  “Then one Saturday night when I was a senior in high school, I swiped his office keys, went down to the lot, and drove off in a red Corvette. I was borrowing it, just for the night.”

  Jack hardly breathed. Almost without meaning to, he slipped a hand into his right pocket and felt the two keys he had “borrowed.”

  As he described the Corvette, a little smile played at the corners of his dad’s mouth. “That was quite a rig, let me tell you. First gear would run out to fifty miles an hour. Way too much car for me. And wouldn’t you know, I whacked that thing into a phone pole about a mile and a half from here. That fiberglass body just broke up into a million pieces.”

  Jack gasped. “You mean you totaled a Corvette? Did you get hurt?”

  “I was shaken up, and I had a cut on my chin, but I was mostly okay. The car was another story. That thing wasn’t even good for parts. Bent the frame, cracked the engine block. Blue-book price was sixty-five hundred dollars—that’s still a lot of money, but back then that was a whole lot of money.”

  Jack asked, “What did your dad say?”

  “He came right over to the hospital, of course, but he didn’t even ask if I was all right. First thing he says is, ‘You got a big debt to pay off, mister. And you’re going to pay it too. This summer you’re coming to work for me—full-time. You got college plans, but till you dig out of this hole, you can forget all about ‘em.’

  “Well, I was never going to be some used-car salesman, not even for a summer. And I told him so. ‘You’re just a loud-mouthed junk dealer in a cheap sport coat.’ That
’s what I said to him. And I said I’d rather join the army than work for him. And come next morning that’s what I did, just to spite him. And I don’t know what hurt him worse—calling him a junk dealer or me running off to the army.”

  The flow of the story seemed to stop, but Jack felt there was more coming. He waited, and his dad began speaking again, his voice a little quieter.

  “You were about two years old when your grandpa died. At the wake a man came up to me and said, ‘Your daddy gave me a car one afternoon, and he made me promise I’d never tell a soul. That car got me to and from my first job for three years. Your dad was quite a guy.’ I thought the man was nuts. He had to be thinking of someone else.

  “But then the next day at the funeral three other people came up and said almost the same thing.

  “Well, your mom and me, we went through all my dad’s papers, and sure enough, every year he gave away one or two cars—about thirty in all over the years. That’s a lot of money. I mean, these weren’t fancy cars, and old Honest Phil figured out how to take some tax deductions, but still. And we found a box of letters from the people he’d helped out. It was like a whole part of himself he never let me see. And I thought, ‘If he could give all these cars away to strangers, why couldn’t he give just one to me?’ Took me a long time to figure that one out.”

  Jack asked, “Was he just being stingy?”

  John Rankin shook his head. “If he was stingy, then he wouldn’t have given all those cars away. No, I think he just wanted me to learn that I had to make my own way. He loved me, and he didn’t want me to be spoiled.”

  Jack had been watching his dad’s face as he told the story. He had that same feeling he got from one of those trick puzzles—the kind where you stare and stare, and a picture suddenly appears. He was just beginning to see a new image.

  Jack and his dad sat quietly. The traffic kept whizzing by, and two or three couples were walking around the lot, looking at the used cars. The salespeople circled like eagles.

  Then the traffic slowed to a crawl, and a guy driving a big blue Oldsmobile leaned on his horn right next to the pickup. Both Jack and John jumped in their seats, and then laughed nervously.

  John put the truck in neutral and reached for the ignition. As he started the engine he turned to look at Jack. “Just so you know it for good and sure, I don’t expect you’ll ever be a janitor, Jackie. My life is my life, and yours is yours. I’m just glad that we get to run side by side for a few years, that’s all.”

  Checking the rearview mirror, he said, “Now, we’d better shoot on home, or your mom’ll start calling the hospitals.”

  The green pickup bucked a little in first gear as John Rankin edged out into the stream of traffic on South Grand Boulevard.

  At the next corner he swung a right turn onto Oak Street and headed north.

  During that short drive home Jack realized two things.

  He didn’t know much about his dad—hardly anything.

  And he definitely wanted to know more.

  Chapter 15

  DiscoveRies

  As he hauled his gum-busting equipment around the high school, it began to dawn on Jack just how huge the place was. It was like four of his old elementary schools stacked up, one on top of the other. Four times more floor space, four times as many classrooms and wastebaskets and pencil sharpeners, four times as many lights and light switches and radiators, four times as many restrooms and sinks, not to mention the gyms and the locker rooms and the industrial arts shops and all the rest of it.

  And it all worked. It was more than seventy-five years old, and everything worked every day. Jack tried to imagine what it would be like to be responsible for keeping the whole place going, and quickly gave up. It was almost too much to think about.

  It took Jack two more scraping sessions to get the library free of gum.

  The last four tables were the worst, and by the time he was done with all the chairs, the three-gallon bucket tucked behind the door in the supply closet was nearly full of gum. The loaded bucket weighed about twenty pounds, and it gave off a sickening combination of odd, gummy smells. Jack kept his gum bucket covered with a cloth to keep the odor from filling the supply closet.

  Looking at his pail of trophies, Jack thought, I wonder if I’ve invented a new category for The Guinness Book of World Records?—Greatest Quantity of Gum Ever Removed from School Property during Four Hours!

  Both Wednesday and Thursday Jack had wanted to stay late like he had on Tuesday. He discovered he was actually looking forward to another ride home with his dad. It seemed like there was never time to talk to him at home. Dad was always tired, or spending time with Mom—and then there was Lois, the world’s biggest pest. Another ride home would be good.

  Jack thought a lot about what his dad had told him on Tuesday, and now he wanted to ask him a million questions. Especially about the Vietnam War, about being in the army. Jack also wanted to know more about his grandfather, Honest Phil. And about how Dad and Mom met and got married. Tons of questions.

  Jack had also wanted to stay late so he could use the time after gum patrol to search for the door that matched key number 73. He’d been on the lookout. He watched for doors in odd places, but Jack was pretty sure he would not find the steam tunnel door without a serious hunting expedition.

  Still, as much as he wanted to stay, on Wednesday and Thursday he went right home because he had too much work. He had to do a big social studies project about the thirteen original colonies, and he had to prepare an oral report on The Indian in the Cupboard. The project and the book report were both due on Monday—another conspiracy hatched by evil teachers to overwork him.

  Jack sometimes wished he could put things off to the last minute, but he just wasn’t glued together that way. He had to start an assignment the moment it was given and work steadily until it was out of the way. It was like he couldn’t help it. He had to get things done on time, had to be places on time.

  So Jack had ridden the late bus home on both Wednesday and Thursday, right after gum patrol.

  Friday morning there was a light dusting of snow over Huntington. Jack listened to the morning newscast, and a woman reported that there had been a full three inches in Minneapolis overnight, and that it looked like it was going to be a snowy fall and winter. As if that were news in Minnesota.

  Jack loved snow, and the more the better.

  But, walking into the old high school, Jack noticed what the snow and salt and sand were doing to the floors.

  Instantly Jack thought of his dad.

  He realized that his dad probably hated to see the first snow. The long, cold Minnesota winter must mean a lot of extra work for him.

  Mrs. Lambert wasn’t in the room when the bell rang at the start of Friday’s math class, and Jack wished she were. Kirk Dorfmann had not taken any more cheap shots at him, but that was just because he hadn’t had the opportunity. In the halls Kirk and Luke laid off because they were afraid of what Pete might do. Math class was the only other time Jack saw them, and Mrs. Lambert had kept a sharp lookout for trouble.

  Kirk had been moved two rows away from Jack, and the distance helped. The problem was that Luke Karnes sat between them.

  Making sure that Kirk was watching, Luke pulled a piece of pink gum out of his mouth and made a big show of sticking it to the underside of his desk. Then he said, “Hey, Kirk, do you think I should get old John to clean this off? . . . Or should we ask Ackerby to have young Jackie do it?”

  Kirk gave a little sneer and said, “What’s the difference? If you’ve seen one janitor, you’ve seen ‘em all.”

  Jack ignored both of them. They were idiots, completely clueless—pathetic. Jack found it remarkable, but he wasn’t even tempted to trade words with them, much less trade punches. It was like he had moved into a whole different world, and they were still stuck somewhere else, trying to reach him.

  But Luke wasn’t done. He felt like he needed to impress Kirk today, and he thought Jack was ignorin
g him out of fear.

  Big mistake.

  Luke reached across the aisle and flicked Jack’s ear. “What’s the matter, Jackie? Didn’t your hear me, or are you just acting stuck up?”

  Jack didn’t lose his temper, but he did respond. Glancing quickly back toward the door to be sure Mrs. Lambert was still absent, he swung left to face Luke, his legs out in the aisle. Before Luke could even flinch, Jack stuck his right foot under Luke’s long leg, just behind the knee, and lifted the leg straight up—no violence, just a little muscle.

  Luke pulled his leg away, and Jack didn’t try to stop him. Jack had accomplished his mission. Because as Luke jerked his leg away he banged it against the bottom of his desk and jammed it right into his own gob of fresh, sticky gum.

  As Jack swung around to face front again Mrs. Lambert walked in the classroom door. Striding to the front of the room, she said, “Quiet down, everyone. I know how you all hate to miss even a little bit of your precious math class, so please get your homework out.”

  Then Mrs. Lambert noticed Luke trying to deal with the pink blob that was smeared onto the right leg of his new Abercrombie corduroys. Turning around, she pulled a tissue from the box on her desk. “Here, Luke, just cover it up for now so it doesn’t get stuck anywhere else. I’ve told you never to bring gum into my classroom, haven’t I? That is one of the reasons why.”

  With a perfectly straight face Jack said, “Hey, Luke, there’s this stuff that’ll take that mess right out. Stop down in the janitor’s shop sometime, and I’ll show you what to do.”

  Mrs. Lambert smiled and said, “That’s nice of you, Jack.”

  And Jack said, “Oh, it’s nothing—all in a day’s work.”

  Chapter 16

  BeninD the cuRtAin

  After school Jack was surprised to find Mr. Ackerby waiting for him in the workshop. His first thought was that Luke Karnes had ratted, and now he would have a whole bunch of new trouble.