The soundtrack in my head is constant, like the Muzak at the grocery store, only with a better playlist.
One time I asked my older brother if he heard music too. He said no; he heard an announcer’s voice saying, “Duane Anthony Riggs has just pitched his third perfect game of the season for the Tampa Bay Rays!”
Right now the tune in my head is pretty sad—a slow drip in a minor key, but it’s the right soundtrack for what’s going on. Ben is mad at me for telling Cody, mad at Cody for telling Cass, and just mad in general. Plus, I didn’t get much sleep last night. Thunder and rain pounding the roof kept waking me up. I dozed off solid just as it was getting light. The clock by my bedside says nine fifteen. Usually I’d be at Ben’s by now or he’d be here.
Yup. He’s mad.
The old cat sleeping on my chest is purring in his sleep, setting a steady rhythm.
As I rub my hand across the Giz’s bony ribs, I imagine his soundtrack. “Electric can openers,” I whisper. “A symphony of electric can openers.”
I press a few chords into Gizmo’s furry back, playing him like a piano. Slowly his eyes open, and he gives me that look cats do almost as well as girls, the one that says, Whatever you’re doing, cut it out. He stands up, sways on his rickety legs, and starts sharpening his claws on the front of the US Army T-shirt I wore to bed.
After a couple of light plucks, he digs in.
“Yow!” I want to throw him across the room, but I guess I deserve it for treating him like a keyboard.
I dress quick and ease past my parents’ bedroom. The door is open, the bed a mess, but Mom isn’t in it so she probably made it to work.
Downstairs, no one’s in the kitchen. I check the view out the front window. Dad’s car is gone. He’s between sales trips, so I’m guessing he’s whacking a golf ball at Jake Gaither Golf Course.
I eat some cold pizza, drink one of Mom’s Diet Sprites. What to do? Where to go?
Not Ben’s. I could go straight to Nowhere and play some piano, but what if Ben’s already there? I step out into the steamy heat. The rain that fell down is going up again. The air’s all thick like in a bathroom after a hot shower.
I think, cool air, in-tune piano, Jemmie’s. She isn’t thrilled with me either, but when is she ever? It’s worth a try. And maybe I’ll tell her, yeah, I’ll get my parents over for a concert, although it probably won’t happen. Sometimes just getting the two of them in the same room is a major feat of engineering.
When I get to the Lewises’, Cass and Jemmie are in their usual spot on the porch swing, two dripping glasses of sweet iced tea on the railing.
They glance up from the books in their laps. Cass bites her lip. She probably wants to ask about Ben, but all she says is hi.
Jemmie looks kind of startled.
I nod at the open books in their laps. “Required reading?”
Jemmie snaps back to the same old Jemmie. “You think I’d read about some old man and the sea for fun?”
When it comes to required reading I’m the last holdout.
“Go on in.” Jemmie nods toward the door. “The piano’s right where you left it.”
That’s my invitation to leave. Instead I stare at her. The music in my head squeals to a stop. Jemmie has these flecks of yellow in her brown eyes. Have I mentioned that?
I notice the flecks because she’s staring back—bet I have pizza sauce on my face or something.
“Go on,” she says again. “Nana Grace has been asking where you’ve been.”
Inside, Nana Grace is running an old T-shirt over the piano. “Just shinin’ it up for you.” She gives the wooden lid that covers the keyboard one last swipe, dusts the bench for good measure, then folds the lid back, exposing the keys. “Go on, child. Play me something.”
As I sit down, I take a quick look at myself in the mirror over the piano. No pizza sauce on the face. Nothing new in the zit department. I look okay—at least for me.
Nana Grace watches me slide the bench forward. I put my right thumb on home base, middle C, and strike the note. I know she’s waiting for me to play, but I always start with that one note.
“Mmmm…mmm,” says Nana Grace as the note dies out. “Can’t nobody play C the way you do, Justin Riggs.”
“Thanks.” I can’t get my parents to even notice my music. All I have to do is play middle C to get Nana Grace’s seal of approval.
As she walks into the kitchen shaking her head over my natural talent, I begin searching out a melody, and I wonder if Jemmie is listening too. Or if maybe my music’ll just bother her while she reads.
I don’t know how long I’ve been playing when I feel a hand brush across the back of my damp T-shirt—and for a second I think it might be Jemmie.
“You got the gift, child,” Nana Grace says softly. “You surely do got the gift.” The hand gives my arm a light slap. “Bet you also got an appetite.” She doesn’t wait for an answer, just walks across the room and sticks her head out the front door. “Girls? Come on in for lunch now.”
It’s lunchtime? My stomach rumbles. Guess so.
“Can you stay?” Jemmie asks as the girls come inside.
Is she giving me a too-bad-I-have-to-invite-you look or an I’d-really-like-you-to-stay-for-lunch look? I consider taking a chance and saying yes, but I’d be eating in front of her—not a fast snack, but a meal at a table, talking with my mouth full, public chewing. “Thanks, but I gotta do something with Ben.”
“Oh.” Cass wraps her arms around herself. “Would you tell him I said ‘hi’?”
“Sure.” It isn’t much, just two letters, but it might make Ben feel better. “Anything else?”
“Just hi.” She tucks her hair behind her ears. “Hi and…I guess I wouldn’t mind talking to him sometime.”
“Okay, I’ll tell him. He wouldn’t mind talking to you either,” I add fast. I know Ben will be in a crappy mood until he does. “Thanks for the lunch invitation. Bye, Nana Grace. I’ll see you guys later.”
“Don’t forget the ‘hi’ for Ben,” Cass says.
I point at the pocket of my shorts. “Got it.” As I turn away I hear a laugh. Sounds like Jemmie’s.
Luckily, I’m halfway down the front steps before my stomach lets out another loud growl.
I consider going home. At the moment there’s stuff in the fridge, but I have supplies at the hideout, too, and a “hi” and a “wouldn’t mind talking” to pass on to Ben if he’s there.
It isn’t as hard to get to Nowhere as it was when we first found it. We’ve stomped out a rough path, but everything is still wet after the rain, and I have to sidetrack around a few muddy spots. As I get closer I listen for Ben. He makes noise, especially when he’s on a project.
I catch my first glimpse of the roof between the trees, but the woods are still free of Ben commotion. Wondering if he’s even there, I begin to whistle the tune in my head.
I stop. Something looks different. I let out a low whistle. The dead branch, the Sword of Damocles that always looms over the roof and bugs Ben, is gone. While I was playing piano, he probably cut it down and then went home for a shower. No reason to go to the hideout if Ben isn’t there. I’ll catch him at home. The tuna-forked-out-of-a-can lunch I had in mind will be beat by whatever Ben’s throwing together at his place.
But as I turn to go, I hear something. It isn’t the cheepy-cheep of a bird or some other nature sound. It sounds more like a groan.
When I don’t hear it again, I shrug and take a step toward home.
“Jus…My name sounds like another groan.
“That you, Ben?” I turn and jog toward our hangout, but don’t see him. He must be around the back.
I almost lose the lunch I didn’t eat when I find him. The scraped trail through fallen leaves shows where he dragged himself over to the tree. He’s managed to pull himself into a sitting position against the trunk. His shirt is off. One pants leg is soaked in blood. So is the shirt he has pressed against his thigh.
“You okay?” I ask, like an idiot. But there’s a lot of blood and I’m not good with blood.
He nods toward the chainsaw that lies a few feet away, the blade partway buried in the ground. Cody’s magic hat sits right next to it. “I slipped on the wet roof. The saw got my leg on the way down.”
He stares at the wadded-up T-shirt in his hands. I do too. The little wrinkles on his knuckles look like they’ve been traced with a red pen. “I can’t…stop the bleeding.”
My stomach flips and I hope I’m not going to be sick as I watch a fat drop of blood splat onto the ground. “Let me.” I kneel and put my palms flat against the bloody T-shirt and press down. “Pays to have a plus-size friend, right?”
His blue lips turn up in a half smile. “Funny,” he whispers.
“Yup, that’s me, Mr. Funny,” I babble. “By the way, Cass says hi.”
“Really? Tell her I say…hi back.”
“First chance I get.” I lean hard. Blood is still dribbling down the side of his leg. “What do I do, Ben? Tell me!”
His eyes close.
“No, wake up, Ben! Think health class. Think first-aid films. Come on, Ben,” I beg. “Tell me what to do!” He knows I slept through the first-aid videos in health class.
He shakes his head. “Told Dad I needed a cell phone. He wouldn’t listen.”
“Ben? You’re bleeding, big-time.”
His head falls back against the tree trunk. “Dad’s gonna kill me for taking the chainsaw.”
“Come on, Ben! What do we do?”
I’ll do whatever he says, but he has to come up with something.
“How about…a nap? I’m tired.” His eyelids drift shut.
“No!” For a second I pretend this is a video game. In my head, Ben loses some points, then leaps to his feet. “Ben?” I stare at my bloody hands—Ben is headed for Game Over. “I need instructions, like, right now!”
“Guess I’ll never get my driver’s license,” he mumbles.
I yank my T-shirt over my head and wrap it around Ben’s blood-soaked shirt, then tie it as tight as I can behind his leg. “Now what?”
“Go. Get help.”
Seems like a good idea for about three seconds, then the first spot of blood comes through my shirt-bandage. “There’s no time.”
He waves a bloody hand. “Just go. I’ll rest while…” His eyelids close again.
“Ben? Ben!” I glance around at trees and more trees and Cody’s monument to a bunch of dead people. “Hey! Can anyone hear me?” I yell. “Anybody out there? I need help!”
Someone who knows what to do has to show up, like, right now. This can’t be up to me.
Hearing a rustle, I whip around. It’s just a bird, scratching through the leaf litter looking for lunch. No one is coming.
“Think,” I mutter.
What are my options?
Stick with what I’m doing now? I glance down. Now my T-shirt is soaked too.
Go for help? But if I quit applying pressure he could die; I don’t need a first-aid video to figure that out.
I can’t go for help and I can’t keep doing what I’m doing. There has to be something else. I swallow hard.
There is.
My brother tried it out on me once when he was on leave from basic training. It’s called a “fireman’s carry.” Firemen don’t use it anymore, something about there being too much smoke and heat when you carry a victim up that high, but it’s still used in the military to get an injured soldier off the field.
Duane—especially after lots of one-armed push-ups for the sarge—is in great shape. Before I knew what was happening I was hanging across his shoulders. Then, being an instructional kind of brother, he’d showed me the steps.
“Ben.” I shake my injured buddy’s shoulder. “I gotta get you on your feet.”
He slaps at me. “Go away.”
“Stand up!” I put my hands under his armpits and try to drag him to his feet. I get him halfway up, then pin him to the tree by shoving my head into his stomach—my hands are still in his armpits, trying to keep him from sliding back down. “Straighten your knees,” I pant.
I hear the sound of his back scraping the bark as he pushes up, and—he’s doing it! “Steady…steady.” Before he can fall over, I drop to my knees and turn sideways to him as he topples. Just like Duane showed me, I have one of his arms draped over my shoulder, a leg draped over the other. The bad leg is hanging down my back, which is good, because me grabbing his bleeding leg would have to hurt. To hold him in place, I grip the leg and arm in the front, hard.
All I have to do now is stand up.
“Sorry about this. It’s probably going to hurt.” And by that I mean hurt both of us, because now I have to lift his full weight and my own. “One…two…three.”
He lets out a moan as I lurch to my feet.
“You’re killing me, Jus.” He says that sometimes when I make him laugh, but he isn’t laughing this time.
“No choice. I have to get you out of here.”
“Put me down. Right…now.”
“Can’t do that.” I fall forward a step. “You’re heavier than you look.”
“Lighter than I was…this morning.”
“Hey, funny is my department.” Man, I should save my breath. I think I’m going to faint.
I peer ahead, imagining Leroy cutting between the trees, all strong and in shape. Duane’s about a million miles away, but Leroy could happen—if we’d told him about Nowhere, and if he wasn’t doing time in summer school.
I’m not strong or in shape, and Ben is way heavier than he looks. I stagger forward. “Hey, Ben, this is like a summer camp relay race gone bad.” He doesn’t make a sound. “Not that I’ve ever been to camp.”
His bare skin feels clammy and cool against my back, and suddenly he’s slipping off my shoulders. “Ben, you gotta try to stay up there.” I bend forward and yank hard on his arm and leg, but he doesn’t make a sound.
Hunchbacked and panting, I travel as fast as I can, my brain jittering. What if I drop him, or trip over a root? What if he dies while I’m carrying him? What if he’s dead already?
“Ben, say something.”
I’m glad when he groans, overjoyed when he says, “You walk like…Frankenstein.”
“I take it that’s not a compliment.”
He doesn’t answer. I feel something warm and wet on my back and realize it’s my best friend’s blood. Can’t think about it.
I stagger toward help, but there are so many trees and brambles and low spots to stumble into, we don’t seem to be getting any closer.
“Hey, I forgot. Cass says she’d like to talk.” I thought that would get an answer, but it doesn’t.
The path that sketches through the trees goes on and on. My lungs are ready to bust out of my chest.
I’m not going to make it.
Story of my life—I try and I fail. I don’t try and I fail.
Justin Riggs carrying Ben Floyd more than a few feet? Stupid idea. Doomed. There must’ve been a better way, but Ben is the idea man. I’m the guy who says, “Sounds good to me,” and goes along. Now I’m killing him.
“Ben?” When he doesn’t answer I squeeze his arm. “Say something!”
“Okay, okay, I’m up,” he mumbles.
Through a break in the trees I see the shiny black of a hot tar road. I can’t believe it.
The maroon metal of a battered pickup flashes by. “Hey!” I yell, lurching forward.
Missed that one, but another car’ll come along any second.
Has to.