The Pricker Boy (14 page)

I don’t go in the water. I won’t go in the water.

The ambulance comes on the fourth day. I figure that’s when Ronnie’s blisters start to ooze. I’m sure that’s what sends Mrs. Milkes over the brink. I stand in the backyard with Nana, watching them walk Ronnie to the back of the ambulance.

“If that boy can walk, he doesn’t need an ambulance! All he needs is a little jewelweed and peppermint!” Nana shouts to Mr. Milkes, who ignores her.

Ronnie sees me as he steps into the back of the ambulance, but he doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t wave, and his eyes quickly dart away. The driver closes the ambulance doors behind him.

“I only rode in an ambulance once,” Nana says after the vehicle leaves. “And I didn’t need it any more than that boy.”

“What’s that, Mrs. Cumberland?” Mr. Milkes says, stepping to the edge of his yard.

“I said
I only rode in an ambulance once, and I didn’t need it any more than that boy
!”

“Serves him right for being out there,” Mr. Milkes responds, then turns to head back into his cottage.

“Thirty years!” Nana shouts at him, and he turns back around. Nana holds up her left hand so that Mr. Milkes can see the stump where her index finger was. “Thirty years I’ve been without that finger. Lost it at work in a grommet press.” Mr. Milkes nods and pretends to be interested. “You put your left hand in, you take your left hand out,” Nana sings. “Then whack! Your finger ain’t yours anymore. It belongs to the grommet press!”

“And is that when you got to ride in the ambulance?” Mr. Milkes asks, glancing once at the doorway to his cottage.

Nana scowls. “They forced me. I could walk! I could drive! I wasn’t ready to go to the hospital. You know what they say about having on clean underwear when you go to the hospital?”

Mr. Milkes nods politely and then checks his watch. “Is that right? No clean underwear?”

“It was clean, all right! Only it wasn’t mine. I hadn’t done laundry in a few days, and when I was getting ready for work and opened the dresser drawer—whoops! No underwear. So I looked in Mr. Cumberland’s drawer. He had clean underwear.”

Mr. Milkes forgets about his watch and the door of his
cottage and stares at Nana. “You wore your husband’s underwear?”

“If I had it to do again, I’d do it differently, but yes.”

“I can tell you truthfully, Mrs. Cumberland, that my wife has never worn my underwear.”

“Don’t be so sure! A man never really knows what his wife is up to while he’s out of the house.”

Mr. Milkes’s eyes flicker with anger. “What are you saying about my wife?”

“I’m not talking about sex,” Nana says, shaking her head. She turns to me. “Is that all men think about?”

Mr. Milkes starts toward the door of his cottage, but he only makes it a few steps.

“Anyway, there they were, walking me out to the ambulance, and I was just desperate to get to my car so I could go home and put on my dirty underwear, which at least was for females.” Nana chuckles. “I’m so glad I married that old fool. God bless Mr. Cumberland!” She kisses the stub of her missing finger. “Nice talking to you, Mr. Milkes! I’ll brew up something for Ronnie and send it over with one of the boys.” I help her inside the house.

One summer we raided the wild grapevines that grow all over the woods. When the grapes grow ripe each year, they become mushy and sour, and they leave purple stains on the bottoms of your feet after they drop to the ground. Early in the summer they’re green, and they’re hard little pellets, hard enough to sting if thrown with enough force.
Vivek got a handful, and he chucked some at Pete. Then Pete got a handful, and he chucked them back at Vivek. Emily wanted to stay out of the fight, so she climbed to the top of Whale’s Jaw with a book. I only had to fire a single barrage at her before she climbed down and chased me down the paths. And that was it: the Great Green Grape War had begun.

Ronnie and I teamed up for a while, and he disappeared into the woods to “gather more grapes.” I could have killed him for leaving me alone to defend myself, but when he returned he had a whole grocery bag full of them, and together we were able to overtake Whale’s Jaw and drive Vivek and Pete back onto the paths. But then Ronnie kept talking about how we were “partners,” so I turned on him and joined Emily. Pete turned on Vivek, so Vivek went to Ronnie, and on and on.

I’ll never forget the look of horror on Vivek’s face when he spun around and whipped a handful of the hard green pellets at what he thought was a Pete Morgan sneak attack. He had released his fist before realizing who he was throwing at, and with the sting of the grapes the Cricket started screaming bloody murder. I stood up from my hiding place and went to him, picking him up off the ground and rubbing the spots where little red welts had begun to form. I walked him back out of the woods. I walked quickly. I wanted to get the Cricket to safety, but I wanted to be back in the fray as soon as possible.

I wasn’t back from the house for five minutes before
the Cricket was back to watch the big kids again. I got angry with him, and I tried to ignore him. In a few minutes he was gone again. I ran a full-out assault on Ronnie, using the same grapes that he had gathered for us earlier in the day. I grabbed another handful of grapes and let loose on Vivek. It became a free-for-all, but Pete was long gone by then. He was at the pond, sitting with the Cricket by the water’s edge and building drip castles in the mud. I remember being ashamed when I found out how nice he’d been to my little brother.

The poison ivy scabs are healing. I’m sitting on top of Whale’s Jaw. The woods have changed over the past few weeks. The summer heat has moved in. With it has come a dry spell, and the rich, humid air that we breathed under the trees just a week or so ago is now lighter and dustier. The smell of earth has been replaced by the smell of dry leaves and pine needles, and under our feet the ground no longer feels cool and damp, but dusty and loose.

I reach into my pocket and pull out the ring that we found in the Hawthorns. No one’s claimed it, so I’ve kept it. It’s mine as much as anybody’s, I guess.

Small green pellets rain onto me. I figure it’s one of the others sneaking up on me, but I thought I was alone out here. I spin around to see Pete smiling at me. He launches another handful of green grapes my way.

“Oh, it’s you,” I say, tucking my head in as the green hail falls around me.

“
Oh, it’s you,
” he mocks me. “Some friend. You haven’t seen me in a week and all you can say is, ‘Oh, it’s you.’”

“I thought you were someone else,” I say, settling back down on the rock. He eyes the ring I keep fiddling with but doesn’t ask me about it.

Pete climbs up and sits next to me. “Who’d you think I was? Ronnie? Or Emily? You know, the other day I was up on the hill behind her cottage, and you know how they have that outside shower? Well, she came out to take a shower, and I could see everything … everything.”

I try to ignore him, but it’s difficult when he’s sitting right next to me. He takes the green grapes one by one and drops them down the back of Whale’s Jaw, watching them bounce down to the dirt below.

“Last year she was just a kid, but look at her now. I almost walked right out of the woods and gave that townie a real country welcome, you know.”

“Pete, stop.”

“I’ll stop when I feel like stopping.”

“Why do you have to talk like that? She was your friend.”

“Yeah, well …” is the only answer he has to give.

I shake my head. “Sometimes I don’t understand you.”

“You got something on your mind?” he asks me. “If you’ve got something to say, just say it.”

I don’t respond right away because I don’t want to confront Pete on anything. He reaches over quickly and snaps the ring out of my fingers. I try to grab it back, but he holds
it out of my reach. He laughs. “What? I can’t see it? I just want to look at it, Stucks.”

“Give it back.”

“Give it back! Give it back!” he squeals. He holds out the ring to me, but when I reach for it, he yanks it away.

“Friends for life, and I can’t even look at a stupid ring.” He takes a quick look at it, then obviously loses interest, but he doesn’t give it back to me.

“Do you know who it belongs to?” I ask.

“Don’t know, don’t care,” he says. He stands up and chucks the ring off into the woods.

“Don’t!” I spring to my feet. “Pete! Why did you—”

Pete laughs and holds out his hand. He had only mimed the throw. The ring is still in his hand.

“Give it back.”

He doesn’t respond.

“Give it back now.”

He stares at me. He offers it twice, each time pulling away at the last second. On the third offer, he drops it down into the brush on the steep side of Whale’s Jaw. He sits back down.

“What’s the matter with you?” I ask him.

“Same thing that’s always been the matter with me.” He laughs as if he understands things that I’m incapable of seeing. “My doctor told me that I was, uh, how did he say it? He gave me some disorder or something. Hyperactive defiant something or other. ‘With potential for violence.’ That was my favorite part. ‘With potential for violence.’”

I’m scared to sit back down next to him.

“Your family’s as batty as all hell, but I’ll bet none of you has ‘a potential for violence’—am I right?” He stares at me for a minute. “Anyway, so there’s this pill and that pill and ‘keeping a journal of your thoughts’ and ‘reconnecting with your family’ and the bottom line is that it’s all crap.”

I climb down the back of Whale’s Jaw. Pete watches me as I push through the brush to the steep side and begin searching the ground for the ring. “Is it magic? You lost your magic ring, little boy?”

I ignore him. I move the low branches of a young maple tree out of the way so that I can see better. I spot a glint of gold and grab the ring. I stand and brush it off.

Suddenly Pete jumps from the top of Whale’s Jaw and lands right near me, knocking me backward. I look up and wonder how he did that without breaking his ankle.

“So what do you think?” he asks.

I stick the ring back into my pocket before he has a chance to steal it away again. “About what?”

“Do you think that I have a potential for violence?”

I turn around and push through the brush back to the other side of Whale’s Jaw.

“Sure, I guess. I don’t know. Maybe everybody does.”

He grabs my shoulder, spins me around. “But everybody doesn’t have it written down on paper, where your teachers and parents can see it, do they?”

I don’t answer. He’d grabbed my shoulder pretty hard, harder than was necessary. I take a step backward. He smiles
and steps forward. He locks his eyes on my eyes. He reaches out and slams his open palm into the center of my chest, kicking the air out of my lungs and knocking me off my feet.

I try to scramble away from him, but he follows after me. He drags his feet in the dirt and kicks the dust up at me. I feel my back bump hard against Whale’s Jaw. I place my arms over my face to protect myself. “Leave me alone!” I shout at him.

He starts laughing. “I’m just messing with you!” He reaches down and helps me up. “But you should have seen the look on your face.”

I brush myself off but I keep my eyes on him just in case he jumps at me again.

“You sure were ready to run away. Like a little bunny rabbit. Your family’s got a rabbit and a cricket. A rabbit, a cricket, and a crazy old grandma.”

Again he goes silent. He’s studying me. Studying me the way you’d study an anthill before kicking it. Studying me the way you’d study the ants afterward to see how they’d react.

“I can’t tell you how glad I am that my father didn’t raise me to be like you,” he says.

Now I don’t care how much potential for violence he might have. He can say what he wants about me, but he should leave my family out of it. “My family has always been good to you. They’ve always kept a seat at the table for you. My father … well, he’s been like a second father to you.”

“Maybe,” he says. He reaches into his pocket and pulls
out a pack of cigarettes. He lights one and pulls a few drags off it as he watches me.

“Enough of this,” he says. “I’m going to ask you one last time. Are you going to hang with those little brats all summer? Come out with me tonight. We’re not doing anything except driving around, maybe heading up to Tucker’s Corner. There’s a lake out there that people go out and party at. Or maybe we’ll all just drive … wherever. It doesn’t matter.”

“No. No thanks.”

He walks up to me very slowly, watching to see if I’ll back away. He doesn’t stop until his face is inches from my face. “You smell, you know. You smell like, I don’t know. Like flowers?” He takes a long breath in through his nose. “Not perfume. Like some woman’s lilac water or something. Something someone’s grandmother would wear. You smell like an old woman trying to cover up her stink.” He takes a long drag off his cigarette, blows the smoke over me, then looks me up and down like I’m the most disgusting thing he’s ever seen. “I don’t like you anymore. And that’s something that you should remember the next time you see me.”

But this time it’s me staring. This time it’s me studying him. “That’s not true,” I say firmly. “And just so you know, our table is still open to you.”

He backs off, shaking his head. He turns and walks up the hill toward the Widow’s Stone. “I’m not that hungry anymore,” he calls back over his shoulder.