Hold Fast (13 page)

He never said anything first. He went over to his desk and I spose he took out a book and started to read.

After about ten minutes he spoke to me.

“I told you to watch what you said to him.”

“Ah, shut up!” I snapped. I wasn't in any mood for that.

He didn't answer me. He went back to whatever it was he was doing. Then, after another long spell of quiet, he said, “What are you going to do now, Mike?”

“None of your business.”

I was pissed off still. But after a long time lying there and thinking about it, I knew there was no reason to be taking it out on him. I turned over and sat up on the bed, my back up against the wall.

“What are you going to do now?”

“Get the frig outa here, that's what.”

“What, go back home?” he said.

“Maybe.”

“Dad won't let you.”

“The hell with him.”

“He won't, I know he won't. Especially after tonight.”

“You think I cares about him? If I wants to take off, I'll take off. And he won't be stopping me.”

Curtis looked hard at me. “What, just sneak off and not tell anybody?”

“Why not?”

“How will you get there?”

“Thumb rides, if I got to.”

“All the way to Marten? What about you don't get picked up?”

“I'll stay there until I do.”

“And what about it starts to rain or something?”

“Ay, what is this? A bloody quiz game or something? If I gets it in my mind to go then I'll do it one way or the other. Nobody is going to stop me.”

He sat there thinking about that for a long time. Like doing something like that was too much for him to believe.

I dug out every cent of money I could find. All the dough in every pants pocket and every drawer. Dumped it all in the middle of the bed. I counted it out. With the ten bucks Aunt Flo sent me the week before, it all came to $30.42.

“That's enough to get me a damn good ways. I can get home a dozen times with that much.”

Curtis hardly noticed what I was doing. When I said how much it was it didn't seem to register with him. He was thinking about something else.

“I wonder what I could sell if I really needed money?” I started to think. “My watch I guess.”

“Michael?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said, still thinking.

“What about if I go with you?”

If he had fired a shotgun through the ceiling, I wouldn't a turned my head any faster.

“Wha? You're kiddin?”

“No.” He shook his head. “I really think I want to go with you.”

That was a lot more than I could believe.

“You're not bluffin?”

“No.”

“Really?”

“No. I'm sick of this place.”

“Hold on,” I said. I had to have time to get this straight. “You mean you'd just up and leave?”

“Yeah.”

“You mean you wouldn't mind hitchhiking?”

“Rain or snow, I wouldn't care.”

“What if we don't get picked up?

“What is this — a quiz game or something?”

We both laughed.

Holy shit. You talk about. Cripes, he wanted to run away from home. He wanted to skin out just as bad as I did. I had a buddy, a real buddy. I really had someone to take off with. I couldn't let a chance like that go by.

We shook on it. That sounds dumb. Something like you'd see in a movie on TV. But that's what we done. We got up and shook hands on it. We was going to skin out from St. Albert together.

In an hour we had it all figured out perfect. That night we would get everything ready. The next morning, Tuesday, Curtis would make out he was going off to school like usual, only he'd double back and I'd meet him with the stuff and we'd take off. No more to it than that. It would be almost a whole day before anyone would start to wonder where we was. That would be enough of a head start that they wouldn't have a chance of catching up with us.

After talking to Curtis about what stuff we could lay our hands on, I figured out a new plan. We wouldn't go
to Marten right away. We'd spend the first few days off in the woods somewhere. That'd give the old man something to chew his fingernails about.

The hardest part was getting the stuff ready without making anyone suspicious of what we was doing. We needed sleeping bags, of course, and knapsacks. Curtis had said that he could come up with both of them. There was a load of that stuff stashed away in the basement. With the old man's dough you had all that whether you needed it or not. Red nylon knapsacks with the aluminum frames. They might a been used once. It was the kind I'd seen hitchhikers on the highway with. In that way they fitted in perfect. It wasn't the kind I was use to. Anyone around home who spent much time in the woods wouldn't have that kind. Too big. Too expensive.

The sleeping bags — down-filled, arctic ones. Nothing but the best. The old fellow never spared the money. Curtis said that his old man had it in his mind that they'd do a lot of camping and hiking last summer. It was a sudden brainwave he had. A lot of families was starting to do it. So he got every one of them fitted out. And then, after one night in a canvas tent, they chucked it all up. I couldn't imagine either one of them making much of a go of it in a canvas tent, the fuss that was kicked up when there was either bit of dirt in the house. I could just picture Aunt Ellen waking up on a rainy morning or trying to cook breakfast over an open fire. It wouldn't be the state, I knows.

The knapsacks and sleeping bags was better than anything I could a dreamed for. Curtis snuck it all up into the bedroom without them knowing anything about it.
Through the basement door, then out around the house to the bedroom window, where I grabbed it and hauled it in.

Two or three times we had to stuff it all under the beds in a hurry when Aunt Ellen came banging at the door. First she was trying to get me to come out for something to eat. I said no. Finally she got Curtis to go out and bring in a sandwich to me. I wouldn't eat it, no way. Another time she came banging on the door because she said I was wanted on the phone. I sent Curtis out to see who it was.

It was Brenda.

The whole time since that morning Brenda hardly came into my mind. After we started packing I thought of her once, how I should maybe try to see her before we took off. Then I forgot it again. I had too much other stuff on my mind to be thinking about girls.

Then her phone call. I sent Curtis back a second time, telling him to say to her that I couldn't come to the phone right away. I would get a hold of her tomorrow. Maybe I would be outside the school around dinnertime.

That was a lie, of course. I wouldn't see her the next day. Perhaps I'd never see her again. For a while that bugged me. Then again the idea of sticking around just to be near her was foolish. I liked her a lot. I really did. But it couldn't a been love, now could it?

I would write her a letter. That's what came in my mind to do. Write a letter and explain everything. I did that later on, after all the packing was finished and everything was all set for the next day. The two pages I wrote wouldn't get any prize for the best letter ever written to a girl, but it wasn't bad, if I have to say so myself.

I knew that Brenda was probably feeling really rotten about the whole thing, blaming herself for all that happened. So I started off by telling her that Kentson had no cause to go shooting off his big mouth like he done, no matter what. Then I figured I better set her straight about everything else that went on that day, because who knows what garbage other people had been trying to tell her. But the bit about where we planned to go — I didn't trust even her with much information about that.

I ended up the letter with a part about how much I would miss her. It was tough to get it down the way I wanted it. But after enough times, I got it right.

I sealed up the envelope and put it on the desk right out in front so I wouldn't forget to mail it in the morning. Then I got ready for bed. I got in under the covers, turned off the light, but I didn't go to sleep. I stayed awake till I was sure everyone else in the house was in bed and asleep. Then I unlocked the door quietly and looked out. I tiptoed to the bathroom. You can just imagine what a relief that was. After all that time, I needed a leak so bad that it felt like my top teeth was floating.

The morning plan went off like clockwork. Not a hitch. Like he always done, the army sergeant rapped his knuckles on the door at seven-thirty. He spit out a little reminder about me apologizing to the Kentsons, “or when I get home from work I'll drag you over there myself.”

I wouldn't even let him know I was awake. By the time you gets home from work, I had a mind to tell him, I'll be long gone. Then you'll have something else to yell about.

Our setup came off like this:

8:30 — Curtis strolled out of the house. Shouted to his mother that he wouldn't be home till late in the afternoon. Said he had a chess club meeting.

8:31 — The drop-off of the knapsacks from the bedroom window in plastic garbage bags.

8:32 — Curtis laid down the two garbage bags near the side of the house and went on walking down the street.

8:50 — I came out of the bedroom and told Aunt Ellen that I wasn't hungry. Didn't say much else to
her except that I was going for a walk and if I didn't get back to dinner it was because I might go over to the hospital after to spend some time there. Yes, I had money enough to buy dinner.

8:53 — Put on my heavy work boots and my winter coat. Exit from the house.

8:55 — The two garbage bags in my hands, I proceeded down the street. No problems. I was carrying the strong ones.

9:01 — Crossed paths with Curtis near Kelly's. Everything fine. Fingers crossed, no fool-up yet.

Then our biggest, toughest decision of all morning — what to do with the stupid math book Curtis was sposed to be carrying to school.

“Fire the thing in the garbage can, you dummy. Do something with it,” I told him. “Com'on.”

Now, if you're Curtis, one thing you don't do is fire books in garbage cans. First he had it in his mind to take it with him until I talked him outa that. No sir, nothing like that gets taken with us. Then he was going to ask the girl who worked in the drugstore to hold on to it for him, the stun arse. Finally, you know what he went to work and done? He got fifty cents worth of stamps from the stamp machine next to the mailbox, licked the whole works the one time, and flattened them all on the outside cover of the book. He wrote his address on the inside. Then he let her slide, down into the mailbox on top of my letter to Brenda. Can you picture that? Cripes, I just about died laughing at him.

Then we started walking to the highway. Each of us
had a garbage bag in our hand. By ten o'clock we was on the shoulder of the road, knapsacks on the backs, thumbs out. Within fifteen minutes we had our first ride. Ay, on our way!

It was that easy. No sweat atall, my son. We'd be long gone, Teddy boy, by the time you got smart enough to figure out what happened.

“Where're you fellows goin this time of the day? Aren't you supposed to be in school?” The words coming from the driver of this Chevy Nova that picked us up. After, that is, we was aboard the car with the door closed and driving off.

Well, we was bound to strike a few little snags. But no problems that I couldn't handle. That was minor stuff.

“No, we got a holiday. Trouble with the furnace,” I said right away, real quick on the answer.

I sure could crack them off when I had the need to. Probably the school had electric heat, for all I know. The school home was shut down three times in one month last year with furnace trouble. So I figured it would be as good a thing to say as any.

“How far are you goin?” I asked him. All the time completely relaxed, you know.

“Oh, it's about seventy miles, I guess.”

I gave Curtis a little wink with the old eye there. Not bad for the first ride. Not bad atall. Now I'm no pro when it comes to thumbing rides. Home I was all the time hitching a ride back and forth between Marten and the next place down along the shore, Spencer's Harbour. But that's only four miles. And I knew practically everyone
who had a car anyway. Even though Mom wasn't very fussy about me doing it.

Well, anyway, we was going along great, enjoying the ride, you knows, like you would. Thinking to myself — this is it. I'm actually leaving St. Albert behind. Heavens only knows where we might end up, but what odds. Every mile was one mile farther away from misery.

Hard to say what was going on in Curtis's mind back in the back seat. He was the one who wanted to come. Nobody forced him into it. Maybe he had the same relief I did. Who knows.

Anyway, we was going along great when buddy started pumping the holy load of questions to us. He was an old fellow, I spose around sixty-five. One of those fellows who wants to know everything. And I was the one who had to come up with all the answers. No way would Curtis open his mouth.

Well, I laid it on — this fancy big string of lies about a mile long. All about how we was brothers and we was going to Gander to visit our sister who lived there with her two children, Susan and Craig — I put names on them right there on the spot. And how since the school was closed to put in a new furnace, we'd be able to spend all that time at our sister's place. And how she loved to see us come.

And nah, our parents didn't mind us hitchhiking like this, not atall, because it saved so much money with bus fares gone up now, and nah, there was no danger to it anyway since we'd done it thousands of times before. We wasn't scared of getting stuck without a ride because people always picked up young fellows our age. They felt
sorry for us. And no, never once in all the times we done it, did we ever get stuck out on the highway in the cold and the rain. We always listened to the forecast before we left. That's one thing our parents always done was make sure it wasn't going to rain or snow. No, it had to be a good forecast right across the island before they'd think about letting us go.