Banana Man (a Novella) (7 page)

“No, sir. I won’t do that again.” Danny picked up his bike and carried it up the gravel slope and across the tracks to the other side. Then he started the long bike ride to the traffic signal. He glanced back several times to see if Officer Tibbs was still there, and he was. Tibbs watched Danny all the way until he reached the traffic light and pressed the crosswalk button. Then the officer got in his patrol car and drove away.

Danny checked his watch: 3:45. He’d forgotten it was broken, but he knew by the time he crossed the street at the traffic light, at least another fifteen minutes had gone by.

Danny was losing time, and he was losing it fast.

CH
APTER NINE

Burned Building

Danny waited at the street corner for the pedestrian light to change. When it lit up in green letters, WALK, he proceeded from one side of the street to the other, rolling his bike alongside him as he went. He made sure he stayed in the middle of the crosswalk lines.

When he was halfway, two men wearing orange vests and hard hats stepped off the far curb. They walked boldly into the middle of the intersection. Drivers honked at them, but the burly men ignored the horns and pointed aggressively at each driver, telling them to stop. All cars came to a halt.

One of the construction workers stayed in the intersection, his hands up in a forceful STOP gesture. He eyeballed each driver in turn, making direct eye contact, and slowly spun around, showing his hands to everyone. None of the cars moved.

The other man gave hand signals and shouted at the driver of a flatbed delivery truck, helping him steer the truck in reverse through the intersection and onto a corner lot. The flatbed carried a giant bulldozer on its back. He yelled: “LEFT . . . GOOD . . . KEEP GOING . . . RIGHT . . . YOU’RE GOOD . . . MORE . . . ”

The signal was the only access point that crossed the tracks for this side of town, and the sudden halt in the flow of traffic caused the line of cars to back up.

As Danny stepped onto the sidewalk at the far side of the street, he saw more construction men swarming a small, half-burned building. A telephone pole had crashed through the building’s roof. Fire-burned shadows and soot covered the building’s exterior stucco from a recent fire, and the smell of fire still lingered in the air. The roof had partially collapsed. One construction man walked around the property, tearing down yellow police tape as he went.

There was a car-sized hole punched into the side of the burned building. To Danny, it looked like a scary entrance to a haunted house. He wanted to walk over there and peek inside but he knew the construction men would stop him.

On the edge of the street and standing tall was a brand new telephone pole. Danny could tell it was new because the wood was a much lighter color than the other poles, and the big electrical box at the top was shiny and bright. Even the electrical wires that stretched away from it and connected to the other poles down the street looked new.

An obese man sat inside a small crane’s cab and pulled on levers. For a few seconds there was a strained, groaning sound as the crane’s cables ripped the telephone pole from the building. The roof collapsed further. The crane then spun the dangling pole around and lowered it onto a trailer.

Danny inched his way closer to the busted telephone pole, trying not to draw attention. He wanted to get a better look.

The telephone pole was splintered and snapped near its base, like something big had rammed into it and broke it and knocked it onto the building. Its electrical box was twisted and fire burned.

Two men tossed retaining straps to each other and began securing the busted telephone pole to the trailer. One of them recounted the story behind the fire to the other man. Danny listened:

“So I’m sitting at the light in my truck and listening to the Emeralds lose their fourth in a row when this Honda loses control in the rain. It drifts, gets clipped by a big rig doing about sixty. The Honda skips off the highway and punches into the building. Big rig knocks over the telephone pole. The high wires snap and start whipping around, sparks are flying. Pole crashes onto the building. Gasoline ignites, and everything goes up in flames. The driver is screaming the whole time. Even in all that rain, the electrical fire and that gasoline burned for hours before they got it under control –”

The bulldozer fired up. It caught Danny’s attention. He watched a muscular man drive the hulking piece of machinery off the back of the flatbed. It took several minutes. All the while, the man standing in the middle of the intersecting and directing traffic kept the cars at a stand still. Traffic had backed up considerably. The line of cars continued down the road as far as Danny could see.

Danny got on his bike, and started riding toward the post office.

CHAPTER TEN

Peter Duncan

His mother’s favorite market was in the same shopping center as the post office.
When Danny saw the grocery store, he couldn’t help but think of grocery shopping with his mom.

She claimed the market had the best prices in town. Saving money was important to her, and every penny counted.
Pennies add up
, she’d say,
they add up to nickels and dimes!
She liked to park the car at the far end of the parking lot so they could scout for change while they walked to the store. His dad wouldn’t let her do it if he was there. It embarrassed him. But Danny didn’t care. He even found a $5 bill in the parking lot one time. She said he was the luckiest boy in town. He bought comics with it, of course.

Every Thursday the market published a full page of coupons in
The Valley Tribune
. She and Danny would sit at the kitchen table and cut them out. She’d stuff them in a jar for safekeeping, and whenever it was time to buy groceries, she’d dump them onto the table and Danny would flatten them out as best he could. She always waited until he got home from school to clip the coupons. For her, any time spent with her son was quality time.

They would walk the aisles at the grocery store together, mother and son holding hands. She’d put an item into the basket, and Danny would double check to make sure they had a coupon for it. It was his job to make sure everything that went into the basket had one, otherwise they couldn’t buy it. Each week, they could pick one item that wasn’t on sale. She always picked cherry cola, and he always picked peanut butter cookies from the bakery.

Danny liked grocery shopping. He liked holding his mom’s hand. Every once in a while she would say,
Someday when you’re older, you won’t hold my hand anymore.
He thought that was silly. No matter how old he got he’d always want to hold her hand.

As Danny neared the post office, he spotted two boys in the empty lot behind it: Peter and Justin. They were two grades older than Danny, and both were notorious trouble makers. Danny could see the boys were up to no good. They were chucking mud balls at cars on the highway. It would be a matter of time before they broke a windshield or caused a wreck, and a driver stopped to scold the boys or call the police. Peter and Justin weren’t stupid though; the lot backed up to a forest, and they would dash into the woods at the first sign of trouble.

The nicer of the two kids, Justin Werth, played along with whatever mean-spirited adventure Peter dreamed up. Justin rarely instigated but always participated, and everything was funny to him. Justin was Peter’s sidekick. They did everything together.

Peter Duncan was entirely different. He was a villain. He pummeled smaller kids on a weekly basis and dished out black eyes whenever he could. Sometimes he got what he deserved; Danny had seen him sporting black eyes and bruises of his own. Every teacher knew Peter on a first name basis, and every teacher had broken up a Peter Duncan fight at one time or another. The kid was mean to the bone, like something wretched festered inside him. He was practically a permanent member of after school detention. In fact, when Danny first saw Peter behind the post office, he wondered why Peter wasn’t in detention.

As Danny rode his muddy bike closer and closer to the two boys, he watched their bombardment of passing traffic, and silently hoped he could get to the post office unnoticed.

Justin targeted the cars with as much precision as a youngster could. His throws were purposeful and focused. Unlike Justin, Peter’s throws were short and jerky, and fast – as if the more mud he flung into the air, the better.

Justin took steady aim through a squinted eye at an approaching van. At precisely the right moment, he let fly a hefty chunk of mud. It sailed through the air with near perfect timing and struck the van’s side,
thunk!
Even though he scored a hit, the break lights didn’t pop on. Apparently the driver didn’t know the car had been struck, or maybe he didn’t care. The van roared down the road, oblivious to the blob of mud stuck to its side panel. Justin packed another mud missile.

When Danny finally got close enough for the boys to see him, Peter pointed at Danny and yelled, “Did the little boy fall down in the mud?” Justin took a quick moment to laugh at his friend’s comment, and then returned his focus to pelting the passing cars.

Danny ignored Peter’s remark, and simply said, “Hi Peter. Hi Justin.”  He didn’t care for Peter or Justin, but he wasn’t afraid of them either.

Peter eyeballed Danny as if trying to size him up. Then he flashed an evil grin. He chuckled to himself while he mashed together a baseball-sized mud ball. He didn’t try to hide what he was preparing to do, and Danny kept a wary eye on him. Then Peter took the whole idea to a dangerous level: he grabbed a jagged rock and pressed it into the mud baseball, just enough to leave a sharp edge exposed. With angry and sudden compulsion, he cocked his arm and threw it at Danny. He missed wide, but Danny still ducked, and the mud ball splattered against the side of the post office, narrowly missing a window. Peter laughed. “Go home and wash your face and your bike!”

“At least I have a bike!” Danny said, and immediately regretted it. Sometimes he blurted out whatever thought came to mind. Danny hustled his bike toward the front door of the post office. Peter’s wrath was not to be taken lightly, and sure as the falling rain, it was coming quick and fast.

Justin took another quick pause – long enough to laugh at what Danny said – and then continued throwing mud at the passing cars. He wasn’t terribly interested in Danny.

Peter stood there and fumed, clenching his fists, and breathing in short, angry breaths. He contained his rage for as long as he could, which amounted to a few seconds, and then it burst free and he screamed. He bolted after Danny. By the time he rounded the building’s corner, Danny was pushing his bike through the crowd of folks waiting to get inside the post office. There were too many people for Peter to do anything rash. Peter glared at Danny, and then he turned sharply and walked away.

Danny knew he made a mistake by saying what he did, but there was no mulling over it now. He had to get inside and get the mail so he could get home and buy Banana Man.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

The Post Office