Untouchable (4 page)

“They’ve come from all over the country,” the TV reporter said. “Single people, couples, possibly entire families now living in this compound at the foot of the Tehachapi Mountains.”

“I knew it,” Bob said. “Used to camp up there.”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Fowler said into the phone. She had one finger pressed into her open ear. “I can’t hear you. There’s a TV here that’s turned up too high.” She slid the plexiglass window between the dispatch office and the garage shut.

“What are you looking for?” Molina said. He’d turned from the TV, was watching Darby scan the floor.

“Lost my phone.”

“Check the vans,” Roistler said.

“Already did.”

“Call,” Bob said, shouting over the TV.

“What’s that?”

“Call your number from the office, listen for the ring.”

“Bob,” Roistler said. “You are a goddamn genius.”

Bob poured himself a cup of coffee, flipped Roistler the bird.

Darby went around into the dispatch office. Mrs. Fowler was off the phone, had her reading glasses perched back up on her nose, her face pressed into a paperback romance. Darby slid open the window, shouted out into the garage.

“It’s set to vibrate, so we have to cut the noise.”

Bob turned down the TV. Darby dialed the secret number. Mrs. Fowler lifted her nose out of the book and they all kept still, listening for the sound of the phone.

“I think it’s lost,” Roistler said, finally. “I haven’t felt a single vibration.”

They stood against the wall in the school courtyard, backs against the brick, boys only. The girls were somewhere else, playing soccer, running relay races. The boys lined up according to height and The Kid generally ended up at the short end of the spectrum, next to Matthew Crump, the shortest of them all. It didn’t really matter where he stood to start the game though, because after a few throws everything shifted and reshuffled as boys ducked and jumped and got hit and fell out of line and The Kid always found himself smack dab in the middle of the line of fire.

The boys with the ball were always gunning for The Kid. Brian and Razz were their names. Brian was from another sixth grade class. Razz was from The Kid’s class, though he really should have been up in seventh grade. His real name wasn’t Razz, it was Ramón, but Razz was his tagging name, the name he used when he was spray-painting on walls around the neighborhood. His older brother was in a gang, that’s what the other kids said, and Razz would be in the gang, too, in another year or so, which is why he kept his head shaved down to the scalp and wore his clothes as baggy as he could without getting sent home from school. Brian was tall and blond, a real athlete, always won the relay races and push-up contests in P.E. class. He had a throwing arm like a big league pitcher. Whenever Brian had the dodgeball, girls came over from whatever they were doing to watch him throw and cheer him on and giggle to each other about how strong he was.

The dodgeball was hollow, red rubber, basketball-sized, and when it bounced off the wall behind the boys’ heads it made a loud, vibrating punching sound, and when it bounced off the boys themselves it made the same sound and hurt like heck.

Brian and Razz found The Kid wherever he stood in line. They were helped by other boys who stood next to The Kid and held his arms so he couldn’t duck or jump or fall out; not even surrender, not even quit.

The line winnowed down as boys fell out or got hit. Matthew Crump fell out, Little Rey Lugo got beaned in the stomach and stumbled forward from the wall, clutching his middle like all of his guts were going to spill out. The Kid got hit right above his left eye, but there was a rule someone had made that if you got hit in the head it didn’t count toward elimination, you had to stay in the line, so over the course of a game The Kid could get hit in the head six or seven times and he just had to stand there while the other kids got hit in the stomach or shoulder or fell out.

The Kid adjusted his notebook, made sure it was safe where he always kept it during P.E., tucked into the waistband of his shorts, covered by his t-shirt.

The rule about getting hit in the head was not an official rule, was not spelled out by the P.E. teacher when he ran down the instructions for the boys before the game began, but the P.E. teacher was over on the other side of the courtyard anyway, supervising the girls’ relay race and talking to Miss Ramirez, telling her his loud, dumb jokes, so the made-up rule about getting hit in the head was in play and strictly enforced.

One by one, the other boys were eliminated. After they got hit or fell out they became spectators, standing in loose groups behind Brian and Razz, watching the game. The Kid could feel the cold-slap sting in the places where the ball had hit him. Cheeks, forehead, chin, neck. Brian stood fifteen feet away, dribbling the ball, planning his next throw. The Kid tried to avoid eye contact with Brian, tried not to antagonize him, get him angry.

Brian made a few quick stutter steps toward The Kid and fired the ball. It slammed into the right side of The Kid’s head, bounced off and away into the courtyard. Cheers from the other boys. Someone ran to retrieve the ball. The Kid stumbled, woozy, but he stayed upright, kept his hands at his sides. It was important not to cry, not to show that the ball hurt, although of course everyone knew that it hurt, could see that it hurt. Crying or covering up would only make things worse in the long run. The Kid knew this from experience. So he stood as straight as he could after getting hit, kept his head up, his hands at his sides, ready for the next throw.

Brian did his stutter step and hurled the ball again, his face twisting with the effort. The Kid ducked but still got hit, this time in the forehead. More cheering from the boys as the ball bounced out in a long, high arc.

The Kid watched the P.E. teacher’s back, hoping that he’d turn around, see that it was just The Kid left against the wall and blow his whistle, stop the game. But the P.E. teacher was busy yelling at Michelle Melendez, who all the kids called Michelle Mustache. Michelle was tall and fat and had dark hair on her upper lip, and she never hustled or ran or even seemed to care in P.E. class or in school in general, for that matter. The P.E. teacher was yelling at her because she was refusing to run during the relay race. She was just grabbing the baton from the girl who passed off to her and then walking her leg of the race in her heavy, rolling swagger, shoving the baton hard at the next girl on the team when she reached the end.

Brian stepped and threw, hitting The Kid squarely on the nose. The sting was bad enough to make The Kid’s eyes fill, to blur his vision for a few seconds. Hoots and hollers from the crowd of boys. Was his nose broken? He felt it with his hand. It didn’t seem like there was any blood. Someone ran to retrieve the ball for Brian. When The Kid’s eyes cleared, he looked for Matthew in the crowd, Matthew’s round head, Matthew’s black face among the brown and white faces. The Kid had dinner at the Crumps’ house once a week, had what Mr. Crump called a
standing invitation
, and tonight was that night. Mrs. Crump always made meatloaf or shepherd’s pie or ground chuck casserole, something thick and hard to digest, but at least it was homemade, it was a break from the frozen pizzas his dad made, the takeout Chinese food, the drive-thru windows they visited.

The Kid couldn’t find Matthew in the crowd and this made him worried, both because some kids could have dragged Matthew back out of sight to do bad things to him but also because it was good to see his friend standing there during the dodgeball game, it was reassuring to think that there’d be something after this, dinner at the Crump’s house and making comic books up in Matthew’s bedroom.

Brian stepped and threw, hitting The Kid in the side of the neck. Stepped and threw, hitting The Kid in the throat. Stepped and threw, hitting The Kid in the mouth to a thrilled round of
Oooooos
from the other boys. Every time The Kid got hit, the boys closed tighter around the scene, this secret thing, blocking it from outside view. Brian jogged in place, impatient for someone to retrieve the ball so he could throw again.

The Kid tasted something in his mouth, hot salt and battery tang. Blood between his teeth. The freshness of the mouthwash was gone. He worried that the blood in his mouth would give him bad breath, would give the kids in class something to complain to Miss Ramirez about. But he worried more about spitting it out, a red blotch on the concrete, showing Brian and the others this inside thing. He worried more about what the sight of blood would do to the crowd of boys.

He finally found Matthew, standing on the other side of the courtyard talking urgently with Miss Ramirez and the P.E. teacher. The P.E. teacher turned and saw the crowd of boys and The Kid alone against the wall and blew his whistle. When the crowd didn’t budge he blew it again, louder this time, the whistle screaming over the noise in the courtyard, and the boys started to disperse, reluctantly, the edges of the crowd dissolving first, pulling away from the heart of the group, making their way inside to the locker room. Brian held fast at the center, though, bouncing his weight from leg to leg, gripping the ball, readying for one last throw.

The whistle had blown. The game was over, technically. The Kid no longer had to stand against the bricks waiting to get hit with the ball. The game was over, officially. He could walk away from the wall and the game.

Brian made a last stutter step and threw at The Kid but The Kid ducked away from the wall and the ball
ka-ranng
ed off the bricks, bouncing far out into the yard. Some of the other boys laughed at the missed shot, hooted at Brian for missing The Kid with his final throw.

The Kid had made a mistake. He knew this immediately. The whistle had blown, he was following the rules, but he had made a bad mistake. Brian was still standing where he’d thrown the ball, fifteen feet from The Kid, murder in his eyes. A bad, stupid mistake. He should have stayed against the wall for that last throw, let the ball bounce off his face or the side of his head one more time. What difference would it have made? But now he knew that what happened next in the locker room with Brian and Razz and whoever else would be much worse.

Brian joined the jumbled line filing into the school, giving one last slanty look over his shoulder at The Kid. The P.E. teacher herded the rest of the boys inside, Matthew sticking close by him for protection. The Kid stood at the wall until everyone was gone, until even the girls had passed, Miss Ramirez and Michelle Mustache, everybody. Waited until the courtyard was empty before spitting a thin stream down to the cement. A shocking, scary thing to see, a bright red splat by his sneaker, part of The Kid’s insides left out there on the ground. He nudged the splat with his toe and spread it out across the ground, erasing it from sight.

The graffiti had appeared sometime during the night, sprayed across the sidewalk in front of the house, a long string of challenges and curse words. Darby scratched at the dried paint with the toe of his work boot. The Kid had certainly seen it on his way to school, had probably already copied it into his notebook, minus the curses. He wondered if The Kid had heard it being sprayed, if he’d been woken by the
shht-shht
of the aerosol can in the night.

The security bars weren’t enough. He’d have to figure out something else, some other way to keep The Kid safe at night.

He swung open the gate, got back into the pickup, pulled up the short cement driveway and parked in front of the garage, just beside the house. The house was small, fifty or sixty years old, sun-beaten and sagging. The clapboard, sky blue when they’d bought the place, had faded to gray, worn to white in places. The roof and windows and front porch all slumped a little, gravity tugging, all things Darby needed to fix, all things he had neglected, the exception being the new security bars, the steel door, gleaming incongruously in the bright sun. Lucy would have hated the bars, would have said that treating their neighbors like criminals would only encourage them to behave like criminals. But Lucy wasn’t there now and The Kid stayed alone two or three nights a week and Darby had to make sure he was safe in the house.

He splashed concrete cleaner across the sidewalk, waited for it to soak, sprayed the graffiti away with the hose.

He moved through the house, turning out lights. The Kid was a notorious light fiend. Darby walked from room to room, flipping switches. He looked for the cell phone without luck. He stood in the hot shower and scrubbed the feel of the job from his skin, the recliner and the carpeting and the hole in the wall. He pulled clean clothes from the dresser in the dark bedroom behind the kitchen, their old bedroom, all the shades drawn, the room undisturbed for a year. He was in there just long enough to get his clothes, get out. He dressed in the kitchen, washed The Kid’s cereal bowl, set it to dry on the counter.

Sometimes after overnight jobs he went to a diner with Bob, ate breakfast. They’d sit in a booth, bleary, overtired, plates of sausage and eggs on the table, so wired from the job and all the coffee they’d drunk that they ordered more coffee just to help bring them down, to soften the edge of the morning. Sometimes when Bob was too tired to come along, Darby went to a diner alone, sat in a booth, letting his body adjust to the light, the movement of a normal day beginning around him.

Without the cell phone, he’d had to come straight home. There was always a good chance that The Kid would call from the school therapist’s office, transmit a coded message, and now that the cell phone was apparently lost, Darby would have to listen for the home phone, The Kid’s Plan B.

He made himself a bologna sandwich, drank one of the squeezable juice bags he packed in The Kid’s lunch every night. Stood in the kitchen, out on the front porch.

He was almost completely deaf in his right ear. The net result of a fight years ago outside a bowling alley in Carson. Sometimes he could plug his good ear and still hear muffled voices, the buzzing of loud machinery. Sometimes he got vibrations, echoes. Sometimes in quiet moments he heard what sounded like bells, early morning, the middle of the night, a faraway ring. A little eerie, a little disconcerting. He used to tell Lucy when he was hearing it, sitting at the kitchen table, or on the couch in the living room. He’d stick his finger in his good ear and look up, away, listening. She’d stop talking to listen along with him.