With Styx’s charm set on low, we were no longer fearless adventurers. We became three boys too far from home.
It was a relief to arrive back in our own woods. We fetched the lunch box and sat under the trees with it. Styx was still in a bit of a mood.
It fell to me to be the impossibly charming one, so I leaned in to practice my Styx-craft. “This one time,” I told him, “we brought a couple of frogs to church. We had them in our shirt pockets. In the middle of the sermon, one of them got the Holy Ghost and started leaping around and croaking all over the altar.”
“Just one of them?” Styx said.
“Yeah, it was my frog that went nuts,” I said. “The reverend called it the Lord God in action through nature. ‘Wake!’ he yelled out to the whole congregation.”
Bobby Gene laughed. “The other one stayed quiet in my pocket the whole time. Real prayerful.”
“No way,” Styx said.
“Yes, way,” Bobby Gene confirmed. “You’re not the only one with wild stories.”
“Tell me another.”
I thought about it. “This one time, we took a jar of lightning bugs into the grocery store…”
Styx puffed on his candy cigarette and scrubbed at the lunch box like it was going to save his life. It was gentle and tedious work. His long fingers danced with the rag against the metal. He massaged each hinge lovingly as I regaled him with the best stories I could think of from our entire lives up until now.
Finally Styx raised his head. “Check it out.”
The lunch box was clean. It wasn’t as perfect as a new one, but it had character. Kinda like the beat-up old furniture Mom liked that we weren’t supposed to call old.
“Is it an antique?” Bobby Gene said, reading my mind.
It had a faded blue and red picture on it. A cartoon man flying with his fists forward and a cape streaming behind. The telltale S on his chest.
“It’s a bird, it’s a plane…,” Bobby Gene said.
“It’s Superman!” we chorused.
“Is it valuable?” I ran my finger over the image. The lunch box looked like it might have been awesome…when it was new.
“It’s worth enough,” Styx said. “Some people are into this kind of thing.”
Styx stayed for dinner, then we hung out on the back porch as the sun went down. Lightning bugs flicked across the yard, teasing each other with their taillights. We lounged in the chaises, shooting the breeze. And then Styx got kinda quiet again.
“Listen,” he said. “We need to make moves on this motor, right?”
“Is now the best time to talk about it?” I pointed up to the open window screens. Dad was watching TV pretty loud, but you never knew how sound might carry.
“We can talk tomorrow,” Styx agreed. “I just don’t think we should put it off anymore.”
Had we been putting it off? We’d only just gotten the lunch box ready. But Styx hadn’t seemed to be in a big hurry until today.
“Pond trip tomorrow?” I suggested.
“Sure thing,” Styx said. “If it’s hot like today, that’ll feel good.”
Bobby Gene and I glanced at each other. Awkward. How to tell Styx we weren’t allowed to swim?
Mom poked her head out the door, sparing us. “Wrap it up, boys.”
“Aww,” we chorused. It wasn’t even totally dark yet. The cruel reality of summer was that bedtime often preceded actual dark.
“Good night, Styx,” Mom said, in a tone as clear and final as the end-of-school-day bell. She balanced Susie with one arm and waved the other hand over the dessert dishes surrounding us. We were meant to clean up and follow her, and Styx was meant to go home.
But Styx, not having a mom of his own and all, was never one to pick up on these things. He flopped back onto the chaise and wiggled his butt into the cushion, getting comfy. He crossed his arms behind his head.
“The night is young, Mrs. Franklin,” he said.
“And so are you,” Mom answered. “It’s near bedtime.”
“We have to go in,” I whispered to Styx. “That’s her pre-punishment voice.”
He glanced at me with clear disdain for my rule-following. “If that’s how you want to roll,” he said.
It wasn’t how I wanted to roll. Of course it wasn’t. But Styx didn’t understand the pressure we were under.
“Say good night,” Mom ordered.
“Good night, Styx,” we said.
Mom herded us inside. There was no use complaining. She put Susie in her high chair, then handed us each a cup of water in the kitchen. We were always required to hydrate after being outside, especially in the summer.
She leaned her hips against the counter, crossed her arms and stared at us. We stood on the tile in our bare feet, slugging down the cool, smooth water. They were big cups. Mom was on to something with the water thing. No matter how squirrelly we felt when we burst in the door, by the time we’d chugged it all down we were looking pretty docile.
Over the rims of our cups, we watched her watching us. Uh-oh.
“Okay, guys, we need to have a little talk.” Her tightly crossed arms and eagle-eye stare said plenty.
We lowered our cups and waited. From the living room came the low, familiar sound of the TV news. I tried to take comfort in that. The impending “talk” was not serious enough for Dad to be involved.
Or else, so serious that it was better for Dad not to know. I gulped.
“You’ve been spending a lot of time hanging out with Styx lately, haven’t you.”
“Not that much, really,” I said, at the same time as Bobby Gene said, “Oh, yeah, he’s great.”
We glanced at each other.
“Only sometimes,” I rambled on. “In the afternoons, a little bit. We have our chores with Cory in the morning and all. We’ve been real faithful about that.”
“Styx is a troubled boy,” Mom said.
“How come you don’t like him?” Bobby Gene said.
“I didn’t say I don’t like him. He’s very charming.”
This is what Mom says about people she doesn’t really like.
“It sounds like he’s had a hard life, is all. Sometimes that makes people a little rough around the edges.”
Styx was rough around the edges, for sure. He did what he felt like. He saw everything and calculated all the angles. What would Styx say, right now, to Mom?
“We’re trying to be good neighbors,” I said. “You wouldn’t want us to turn our backs on someone just because he’s had a hard time, would you?”
Mom’s lips tightened. She didn’t want to have to disagree with that.
“He doesn’t really have a family,” I explained. “He’s all alone and he’s new here. We can help him, you know? Be a good influence and stuff.”
Surely that wasn’t even stretching the truth too far. Styx was learning all kinds of stuff from us, just like we were learning all kinds of stuff from him.
Mom uncrossed her arms. “I need you to know I have some concerns, that’s all.”
Bobby Gene sighed, his feet twitching toward the hallway. “Can we go?”
“Okay,” Mom said. “Caleb,” she added as Bobby Gene went tearing off to our room. I lingered so she could say whatever she had to say that my brother wasn’t likely to understand. “You know what I mean, right, sweetie? About Styx?”
I shrugged. “Yeah, I guess.” Even though, no, I really didn’t.
“If you play with him, I need you to be careful.”
“We’re always careful.”
Mom bent and kissed my face. “It’s still my job to remind you.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I wiped away the spot as if she’d slobbered on me like Susie would.
“Styx wouldn’t have let Mom push us around like that.” I was griping so loudly, Bobby Gene started patting the air to quiet me down.
“When it’s Mom, it doesn’t count as pushing us around,” he said.
“Still.”
We had LEGO pieces out strewn around the room. We were pecking through the piles, looking for all the green and black ones. We were going to build a scale model of the moped.
Bobby Gene scooped up a handful of pieces and made a LEGO waterfall through his fingers. “Styx is good for dealing with people like Cory, but he really doesn’t get what we’re up against around here.”
“How great would it be to have no parents?” I fantasized as we got into bed. “To do whatever the heck we wanted, anytime.”
“Yeah,” Bobby Gene agreed. “Except then one of us would have to get a job or something.”
He was harshing my vibe with his practicality.
“Forget about that part. I’m talking midnight Rice Krispies candy. Ice cream for breakfast.”
“TV all night until the sun comes up?” Now he was getting into the spirit.
“Twenty-four-hour video game marathon.”
“Pizza for every meal.”
“No news, only our shows.”
“No vegetables.”
We kept on making the list until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. “No parents would be the coolest,” Bobby Gene mumbled. He slid into a half snore.
“Yeah…” I drifted away too.
One last thought slipped through my mind. Styx’s face, on the sidewalk earlier.
“Hey, Styx, you ever ride in a limo?”
“Once.”