Crazy Dangerous (32 page)

It happened in late May, full spring, the afternoon. I was running. The trees were blooming with light-green leaves and the hills were green and grassy. The sky was blue with big, slow white clouds moving across it. And the air—I don’t know how to describe it exactly—it had that strange cool spring feeling in it, that feeling as if you remember something wonderful but you’re not quite sure what it is.

Anyway, like I said, I was running, training for track next year. It was going to have to be next year because the principal had canceled all the rest of the meets this year. He and the teachers and a lot of the parents figured that the kids in school were too traumatized about what had happened at the big meet to go on having track. They figured we were so traumatized that they kept sending therapists and doctors to talk to us. They kept making us have assemblies in the auditorium to discuss our feelings. Politicians gave speeches to us. And even some people on television yelled at one another about us. That’s how traumatized everyone figured we were.

In real life? In real life, mostly, it was obviously they, the grown-ups, who were the traumatized ones. We kids just figured we had to put up with our parents and teachers therapizing and talking and arguing until they all calmed down. They just needed time, that’s all.

Still, with track canceled, I kept running as much as I could so I’d be ready for next year when the meets started again. Sometimes I ran at the school track and sometimes over in the eastern part of town.

But this day, this beautiful spring day, I went running back up into the western hills, back up that dirt road that led to Jeff Winger’s barn, the road where I had seen Jennifer that time and where Winger and his pals had found us and beaten me up while Jennifer escaped.

I had stayed away from this place for several weeks. Somehow, for a while, I just didn’t feel like going back there. But then, this day, it being spring and so beautiful and all, I guess I just figured the time had come. It was just a place after all. Just a place where things had happened. It wasn’t haunted or anything. So back I went.

Running along there with the hills on either side of me—knowing the barn where Jeff had held his stolen cars was up ahead—knowing that the other barn, too, where Harry Mac had died was right nearby—I couldn’t help thinking about the whole thing again. All those kids were in some kind of detention now. Jeff and Ed P. had pleaded guilty to charges of grand theft auto. Nathan and Justin had pleaded guilty to attempted murder and all sorts of other stuff. They were all going to spend a lot of time locked away.

But it was Mark Sales who got the worst of it. He was going to be charged as an adult for a whole bunch of things surrounding the attack on the school: several counts of attempted murder, attempted use of an incendiary device—all kinds of things. If he was convicted—and he was sure to be convicted—he was probably going to go to prison for the rest of his life.

One of the therapists who visited the school said she didn’t think that was fair. She said Mark was just mentally ill like Jennifer was. She said sometimes schizophrenia runs in families that way. It was a genetic condition, she said.

I didn’t believe that. Or at least I didn’t believe that was the whole story.

Sure, Mark and Jennifer were both mentally ill—but Mark was something else too. Because even when she was hallucinating, Jennifer was a good person. All she wanted was to help and protect people. She was confused and sick and it was painful for her. But there was no cruelty in her, and no violence.

But Mark—Mark was different. He had all these horrible ideas in his head—about how the people in Sawnee didn’t understand his greatness and his power, how the little people had cheated him out of his championship, how they needed to be taught to be afraid, and how he was going to teach them by killing them, and on and on. So, okay, maybe Mark was mentally ill. But he was also evil. And those aren’t the same things at all.

Whatever he was, Mark had somehow managed to talk Justin and Nathan into following him. I guess they were the following type and didn’t bother to think things through for themselves. The three of them had been buying supplies for their big plan—guns and explosives and the car they used—from Jeff Winger, who’d been getting all that stuff from his criminal friends in Albany. When Jeff started asking questions about what Mark was up to, Mark threatened him, told him to shut up or he’d kill him. That’s why when Jeff found out Harry Mac was talking to the police, he told Mark because he was afraid Mark would think it was him doing the talking. Mark and Nathan and Justin killed Harry Mac—which made Jeff so scared, he didn’t tell the cops about Mark, even after they’d arrested him.

I was thinking about all that as I ran up the long, slow hill. And I guess I was lost in those thoughts because, all of a sudden, I got this weird feeling, like someone was watching me. I glanced back over my shoulder—and I was really startled to see there was a green pickup trundling along right behind me. Somehow it had come up on me without my even knowing it was there.

The next moment, the pickup pulled up alongside me and slowed to a stop. I stopped too and looked in through the window, breathing hard from my run.

At first I didn’t remember the old man sitting behind the wheel, but then the scrunched, round, wrinkled face and the dark, sparkly eyes came back to me. This was the same farmer who had come along this road before, when Jeff and his thugs were beating me up. He was the reason the thugs ran off. In fact, without him, they might have really done some serious damage to me.

The farmer’s shriveled old hands held on to the wheel as he leaned over and looked out the window at me. He chewed thoughtfully on his wrinkled lip.

“I know you,” he said after a moment.

“Yeah,” I said through my panting breath. “We met once before.”

“That’s right. That’s right. I see you around too,” he said. “Walking to the school sometimes. With that girl, that pretty little black-haired girl . . .”

“Zoe,” I said.

“Zoe Miller, that’s right.” He nodded slowly. “Nice girl, seems like.”

“Yes, sir. She sure is.”

The old man chewed on his grizzled cheek some more, as if he had a very dry joke stuck in there, wanting to be told. “You’re the preacher’s kid, ain’t you? The one who stopped those fellas with all their guns.”

“Well . . . the police stopped them.”

“But you drove that bomb car into the river. That was nice going.”

I shrugged. “Thanks.”

“Bet your dad must’ve been proud of you.”

I laughed. “He said I must be the only kid in the world who could break into a mental hospital, steal a car, run from the police—and have it turn out to be the right thing to do.”

The old man in the pickup laughed too, a hoarse, wheezy laugh. “That’s good, that’s good. I like that. I like a man of God with a sense of humor. If God don’t have a sense of humor, we’re all in big trouble.”

“Yes, sir. I guess that’s right.”

The old man looked out through the pickup’s windshield at the road as if he were considering something far away. I thought he was going to drive off then. But he didn’t. He glanced over at me again and he said, “So tell me something.”

“Sure.”

“The way I heard it, there was some girl—some crazy girl in the mental hospital. Way I heard it, this girl was having visions about it all. She saw the things that would happen before they did.”

“Jennifer,” I told him. “And she’s not crazy. Anyway, I don’t like to call her that. She’s just . . . well, she’s just got a sickness, that’s all. And she doesn’t exactly have visions . . .”

“No?”

“No. She overheard her brother’s plans and that became part of her hallucinations.”

“Ah. Is that right?”

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s always some kind of explanation for things like that. It’s not a magical world or anything.”

“No?”

“That’s what my dad says.”

“Well, your dad sounds like a good fellow.”

“Yes, sir, he is.”

“And how’s she doing now? The girl in the hospital, I mean. This Jennifer.”

“She’s not in the hospital anymore,” I told him. “They gave her some medicine and she’s back home now. The medicine seems to help her a lot. She’s even started coming back to school sometimes.”

“Has she? Well, well. The things they’ve got these days. That’s good to hear. Must be tough for a girl like that to fit in, though. Tough for her to make friends and all.”

“She has friends,” I told the old man. “I’m her friend. Zoe’s her friend too.”

He made a sort of smacking sound with his lips. “Good deal then,” he said. “Good deal.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well,” he said, “you take care of yourself, son.”

“You too.”

“And keep on training. You’re gonna run a good race when the time comes. I’m sure of it.”

“Thanks.”

He put the truck in gear, and it made a loud grinding noise. And once again, so softly I could hardly hear him under that sound, the old man said, “Do right. Fear nothing.”

And the green pickup started to pull away at the same slow pace as always.

I stood there watching the truck pull away—and wondering if I’d heard the old man correctly. Because his words reminded me of something else now. I remembered how, after everything was over, after the police had questioned me and brought me home, after the newspapers and radio and TV had interviewed me, after the mayor had held a celebration and given me an award, I sat down alone with my dad in his study and told him everything that had happened from the beginning to the end. He wanted to hear it all, he said, step-by-step, from the very start of it. And so I told him, beginning with the day I played chicken with that oncoming freight. I told it to him pretty much as I’ve told it here.

And while I was telling him, a funny thing happened. I got to the part about the angel statue—the statuette of the archangel Michael on his shelf. And when I reached that part, my dad kind of blinked at me from behind his round glasses.

And he said, “What statue?”

And I said, “The one right over . . .” And I began to point at where the little statue was. Only it wasn’t there anymore. “It was right there,” I told my dad. “The archangel Michael. With his sword. It had this Latin writing on it:
Recte age nil time
.”

My dad shook his head. “No, I don’t . . . I don’t have a statue like that. I’ve never even heard that phrase before.”

“It means, ‘Do right; fear nothing,’ ” I told him.

“Yeah, I know what it means. But I’ve never had a statue like that. You must’ve seen it somewhere else.”

I started to say no—no, I knew it was here, it was right here. I was sure of it. And I was sure I hadn’t imagined it, because I didn’t know any Latin, and I couldn’t have made the phrase up myself.