DAD COULDN’T STAND the Pagoda family, our right-side next-door neighbors. He said they had all lost control of their senses. “Just look at ‘em,” he hollered when he watched them do something weird like paint a giant atomic-bomb target on their roof. “They are out of control. The parents just let those kids get away with anything.” The oldest, Gary, had just been sent to a juvenile prison for stealing cars. Frankie was my age. His whole face was still bruised from when he dove off the roof into their swimming pool. He was a little short with his leap and hit his forehead on the concrete edge around the pool. The whites of his eyes were still blood-red. And Suzie, his twin sister, had just tried to dye her brown hair blond with Clorox, but it turned from brown to green. Mr. and Mrs. Pagoda bred show dog poodles for a living. Inside their house they must have had thirty dogs in cages. Every time I visited them, I took a deep breath of fresh air before I stepped inside. It was the last chance for good air, because the house smelled nasty, like dog crap and piss and damp fur. It made me gag and my eyes sting. And when I left their house my clothes smelled like a used diaper.

Frankie and I were building a tree fort around the far side of their house. We were finishing one started by his older brother before he was arrested. The platform was in place and we were adding new ladder rungs to climb up the outside of the trunk.

“Let’s build a roof,” I suggested to Frankie. “Then when it rains we can stay in the tree.”

“What about lightning?” he asked.

I thought that was a dumb question coming from someone who’s roof-dived into swimming pools. He also had a spiraling scar up and over his shoulder from being hit by a boat propeller while water-skiing on old snow skis. “We’ll put a lightning rod on top of the tree,” I said, “and run a wire down to a bucket, and if lightning strikes, one of us can put it over his head and be turned into Frankenstein’s monster.”

Frankie laughed. He always laughed at my dumb ideas—which encouraged me to say and do dumb things.

“Yeah. We can do anything we want. It’s our tree fort.”

Pete had been snooping around our yard looking for me and now I watched him run over to the tree.

“What are you guys doing?” he asked, panting.

“What’s it look like?” I said.

“We’re building a clubhouse,” Frankie explained.

“But you can’t join,” I said. “It’s private.”

“I’ll tell Mom,” he said, meaning that he’ll tell that I’m in the Pagodas’ yard. Dad had told us not to play here. “If old man Pagoda had a brain, he’d be dangerous,” Dad said, and, “If brains were dynamite, she couldn’t blow her nose.”

I groaned. “All right. You can join. But you have to pass the initiation. You have to play Barnum and Bailey Circus Dare.”

“Okay,” he agreed, without asking what it was.

I pulled a long plank from the woodpile and set it under the tree. Then I put a round piece of log under the middle of the plank, like a seesaw. “You stand on the low end of the plank, facing out,” I instructed. He did, as I climbed up into the tree fort. “When I jump on the high end,” I shouted, “you fly up in the air and do a front flip.”

“Okay,” he said.

I jumped and landed with both feet on top of the board. Pete flew straight up in the air, just like in the circus. He flipped forward and landed on his butt. He laughed and hopped right up. “Let’s do it again,” he shouted.

“This time, go straight up and try to land on Frankie’s shoulders,” I said and placed Frankie in the right spot. When I jumped, he flew up, and on the way down he stepped on Frankie’s bruised face instead of his shoulders.

Frankie dropped to the ground and howled. “He’s re-broken my nose,” he cried.

“Come here,” I ordered and looked him over. “Naw, you’re fine.”

“One more time,” begged Pete.

“Okay, do a back flip.” I climbed the tree and jumped. When I landed on the board, Pete shot straight up. Then he threw his head back and flipped around wildly like a dropped cat. He landed with a thud on his back, then jumped right up.

“Wow,” he said. “I’m dizzy.”

Then I saw his arm. His forearm had hit the edge of the plank and now he had a second elbow between his old elbow and his wrist. I thought I was going to be sick.

“Can we do it again?” he asked, as his broken arm flopped over to one side.

Frankie turned his head away and started to gag. Pete gave me a funny look. Maybe I can just walk away, I thought, and in an hour he’ll finally discover the break and wonder how it happened. But I couldn’t. I just pointed at his arm and made a scared, moaning noise.

Then he saw it. “Aghhh!” he wailed and looked up at my face as if I had stabbed him.

“I didn’t mean it,” I cried. “Honest.”

He turned and ran. I was right behind him. “Don’t tell on me,” I begged. “Please don’t tell.”

He screamed and his helpless arm flopped left and right with his running.

“You can have my stamp collection,” I said.

He hollered even louder. “Mommmmm!”

“You can have my marble collection,” I said.

He yelled in great long shrieks.

We had reached the front door of our house. “You can have my allowance for life,” I said. “For life,” I repeated.

“Daaaaaad!” he screeched.

I blocked the doorway. “Just remember, when you thought you shot down the airplane I was really nice to you.”

‘ ‘Mommmmm! ‘ ‘

I opened the door for him. I didn’t know yet if he turned me down or if he just wasn’t listening.

Mom dashed out of the hallway like a sprinter. “Oh, what happened!” she asked and then saw that his arm was broken before I said it. Pete held it up for her to examine as he gasped for breath. Tears ran down through the dirt on his face.

“It looks bad,” she said firmly, “but we can fix it.” She turned to me and I flinched. “Jack,” she ordered, “go get your father. He’s in the shower.”

I wanted to turn and run. I knew Dad’s first question was going to be, “How’d it happen?” I opened the bathroom door and hollered in, “Hey, Dad, Mom needs you.” I didn’t say what was wrong, because I knew that most accidents happen in the shower and I didn’t want to shout out, “Pete shattered his arm!” and have Dad get worked up and slip in the shower and break something of his. I imagined Mom having to drive us all to the hospital, and since she can’t drive, we’d get into a flaming accident and in one day I could be responsible for wiping out our entire family.

“What’s she want?” Dad asked, sputtering under the shower nozzle.

“Well, Pete busted his arm, and when you get a chance, they need a ride to the hospital,” I explained, trying to stay calm during an emergency like in safety films at school.

“Jesus,” he cursed. “As soon as I turn my back on you kids, something happens.” He turned up the water pressure and slapped water at himself. “I’ll be right out,” he gurgled.

When they returned from the hospital, I was in my room. What Dad had said got me thinking. “It’s true that as soon as you turn your back, or as soon as you think nothing bad can happen, it does,” I’d written in my diary. “Just look at the Titanic. The captain said, ‘Even God can’t sink this ship.’ Then, on the first voyage across the Atlantic Ocean, boom, it hit an iceberg and sank. And as soon as a daredevil utters the words ‘piece of cake’ before attempting a stunt, he is doomed. ‘Piece of cake’ becomes his ‘famous last words.’ Mom says she can wait all day for a delivery truck to arrive, then as soon as she runs the bathtub and gets in, the doorbell rings. And when I was little, Dad bought a convertible. Every time we took a drive with the top down, it rained.”

I reread everything I had written, then locked up the diary again and hid it under my mattress.

On the way from the hospital, Mom and Dad had stopped at the grocery store and let Pete pick out dinner. When they arrived home Dad started the grill on the back patio. I set the picnic table. Mom made potato salad and Betsy picked limes off the tree in the back yard for limeade.

“Anything else I can get you?” I asked Pete as I passed by him. He was sucking milk through a strawberry-flavored straw.

“Your marble collection,” he said quietly.

“No way,” I muttered. He was becoming more like Betsy every day. “You told on me.”

“I didn’t tell how you did it.”

He hadn’t. He told Dad he “fell” across the board.

After dinner I went into my bedroom and began to sort through my marbles. I picked out most of the ones I didn’t want, and threw in a few beauties to trick Pete into thinking I was giving him my whole collection. Dad would go nuts if he knew how I broke Pete’s arm. He’d probably take me out to the back yard and start flipping me up into the air like a moon shot until I crashed and burned.

I was sitting on my rug when Dad drifted into the room and sat on the corner of my bed. This is it, I thought, I’m dead.

“I just want to talk with you for a moment,” he said. I took a deep breath.

“It’s your responsibility to take care of your younger brother.” He stated this as a fact.

“I know,” I replied, “but bad things happen when you least expect them.”

“Yeah, only it’s called not paying attention to what you’re doing.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. If I could apologize fast enough, he might go away.

“Just keep it in mind,” he continued, “that paying attention to what you are doing is one of the big rules in life. The sooner you learn it, the better.” He winked at me, which meant the end of the conversation. Then he stood up and left the room.

A wink was not a bad ending to being “talked to.” Last year, he told me about a science teacher he had in school when he was my age. The teacher had a nasty way of ending his talks. He’d built a very high and deep chair for the bad students—high and deep enough so that their shoes couldn’t touch the floor. Across from them, he sat in a tall wicker chair. On the student’s chair he had taped strips of metal across the seat cushion. The metal was attached to wires that ran under the chair and across the floor to an old Lionel train transformer that was beside the teacher’s seat. If the student needed a rough “talking to,” then at the end of the talk the teacher said, “Now let this be a lesson to you,” and blasted the student from his seat with a jolt of electricity.

•

The next morning Pete knocked on my door. “I need five dollars,” he said.

“I don’t have five bucks.”

“I’ll tell Dad.”

“You’ve become a monster,” I yelled. Betsy was definitely giving him directions. “I’ll work on it,” I said and slammed the door.

I decided to train BoBo to be my younger brother. He was safer and cheaper. “Come on, BoBo,” I sang, and the dog jumped off the bed where he was sleeping. I tied a bandanna around his neck and put a broken wristwatch on his front leg. He followed right behind me all around my room. If I could shave his body and teach him how to walk on two legs, he’d be perfect. Already, he was less trouble than Pete.

But it didn’t matter. That evening, after Dad left my room for the second time in two days, I opened my diary. “Disaster,” I wrote. I had just finished teaching BoBo how to tell time and was looking out the window. A few blocks away, I saw a thick cloud of smoke slowly traveling down a distant street. The houses blocked my view of where it came from. I thought it was a burning car that was still being driven. Or some strange weather condition, like a baby tornado. Then Frankie Pagoda rode his bike up our driveway. “Hurry up,” he yelled through my window. “It’s the mosquito fogger.”

I ran outside. Pete was playing with his Lego blocks in the carport. “Where are you going?” he asked and jumped to his feet.

“To chase the fog truck,” I said. “But you can’t come. It’s too dangerous. Dad said I have to look out for you. I won’t be able to see you in all that mosquito fog even if you’re an inch away from my nose, so stay put.”

“You owe me five bucks,” he screeched.

“I’ll give it to you later,” I yelled and hopped on the back of Frankie’s bike. “Come on, Frankie.” I slapped him like a horse. “Hurry before he catches us.”

Following the fog truck was the best fun. Kids from all over rode their bikes in the cloud of dense smoke, which smelled like kerosene and billowed out of a big pipe on the back of the truck. When I was in the middle of the cloud, I couldn’t see a thing. It made me feel like I was flying through the air. It was a wonderful feeling as long as you didn’t collide with another kid.

Frankie and I entered the cloud from behind. I could hear the kids screaming and yelling and bikes clashing as we worked our way into it. The best part of the cloud is the solid white middle. That’s the place that makes me feel like I’m drifting up over the world, empty and weightless like a hot-air balloon. The white is so dense it’s like being buried in pure sugar, except it has no weight. Sometimes I can’t tell up from down and I lose my balance.

Suddenly, the fogger engine stopped and the cloud lifted. There were about twenty other kids on their bikes. “Boooo! Hissss!” we shouted, like when the film breaks during a movie. “More! More!”

The driver of the truck stepped out of the cab and hopped up onto the bed of the truck. Ignoring us, he refilled the fogging engine tank with gasoline and started it up. I looked over my shoulder and spotted Pete and BoBo in the back of the pack. Pete was riding slowly because he could only use his one good arm.

“Hurry up,” I hollered to him. Slowly, that huge white cloud began to cover us as we moved forward. “Where are you?” I shouted as Frankie picked up speed.

“Here,” Pete said, just to my right.

“Get closer,” I yelled. Then I heard the crash.

“Owwww,” he cried out. “Jack!”

I hopped off the back of Frankie’s bike, and when the fog drifted away, I found him. He had collided head-on with a mailbox on the edge of the street. He was lying in the grass with his good hand over his mouth. BoBo was whimpering and licking his face. “Let me see, let me see,” I shouted. He lifted his hand. His left front tooth was chipped in half. “You might as well have my allowance for life,” I said, sighing. “I won’t need it where I’m going.”

After dinner, Dad had come into my room and sat on the corner of my bed.

“What happened?” he asked.

I explained how I tried to keep Pete from following me.

“Did you ever think that you could have just turned around and led him home?”

“No,” I said.

“Don’t you think you should set a good example for him?”

“Yes,” I said, feeling doomed.

“Then why don’t you use your head, before you break it open like that Pagoda kid.”

“Yes,” I said again.

“Or before Pete breaks his head instead of his arm or tooth.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“I can’t be here to watch over you kids all the time. When I turn my back, I count on you to use common sense.”

“Yes, Dad.”

“I don’t want people talking about our family the way they talk about the Pagodas.” He got up and strolled out of the room.

Late that night, Pete began to complain that his arm hurt. If it’s broken, it could be the end of my life, I thought.

“Are you sure it hurts?” Dad asked him.

Pete started to cry. They got dressed and took him to the emergency room at the hospital.

“What happened?” I asked when they returned.

“The doctor didn’t set it right the first time,” Mom explained. “They had to cut the cast off and reset the arm.”

“How’d they do that?”

“The doctor just held it against the edge of his desk and gave it a crack.”

I felt sick. “Really?”

“I know how you feel,” said Mom as she ran her hand through my hair. “It was the most painful thing I ever watched.”

“What did Pete do?”

“They gave him a shot of painkiller and Dad just put his hand over Pete’s eyes. That was all.”

“Was it because he ran into the mailbox?” I whispered, knowing how Dad thinks.

“No. This was set wrong from the beginning. So don’t worry. Now go to bed, and don’t say anything to your father in the morning. He’s ready to sue every doctor in town.”

All week long I minded my own business. When Pete asked if I wanted to sign his new cast, I refused. I didn’t want to get near him. I spent my time trying to train BoBo to be a human. I slipped a T-shirt over his head and put his paws through the armholes. And I changed his name to Eric. I thought I might ride down to the Salvation Army store and buy some used baby shoes and put them on his paws.

But I was bored. I knew I shouldn’t, but a few days later I drifted over to the Pagodas’. There just wasn’t anything else to do. Before I left our house, I poured Dad’s Old Spice aftershave over my left hand.

“Come in,” hollered Mr. Pagoda, after I knocked. I took a deep breath of air and opened the door. The smell was like sticking your head in a toilet. I held my perfumed hand to my face just about each time I took a breath. Mr. Pagoda was stirring a big pot of thick yellow goop on the stove. It boiled up and spit out of the pot like a volcano. He jumped back and shielded his eyes.

“What’re you making?” I asked.

“Experimenting with banana skins,” he grunted as he stirred the pot. “Everyone throws them away. If I can make something useful out of them, I’ll make a fortune. Right now, I’m making a banana-skin shoe-repair kit in a can. When you get a hole in the bottom of your shoe, you just spray this stuff on and keep walking. What d’you think?”

Just then, the pot erupted and a wad of banana shoe glue hit the ceiling. It looked like it was stuck up there for life.

“Where’s Frankie?” I asked, looking around.

“Out back, I think.”

I nearly ran for the back door. “Air, I need air,” I gasped.

Frankie was hanging conch shells on the clothesline. Conchs are hard to pull out of their shells, so he was reaching into the shell with a pair of pliers, grabbing the long, skinny foot of the conch and pinning that part over the clothesline. “This way,” Frankie explained, “the heavy shell will make the conch really tired, and soon the shell will drop to the ground.”

“But they’re already dead,” I said. “They stink.”

The Pagodas were like a picture-book family I once read about called the Stupids. Everyone knows that if you want to remove a conch from its shell you just drop it in boiling water and it comes right out.

“Why don’t you do it that way?” I asked Frankie.

“Dad says it boils the color out of the shells, and he wants to sell them to tourists.”

“I thought you were going to eat the conch.”

“No way. They’re like chewing on dog toys.”

He finished pinning up the last one. “What do you want to do?” I asked.

“I have a great idea,” he said. “I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”

We went around to the swing set on the far side of his house, where my mom couldn’t see us. He held up an old Hula Hoop that he had wrapped in gauze bandages. “It’s a daredevil game I saw on TV. I’ll get on my skateboard and ride it down the slide. You squirt lighter fluid on the gauze and set it on fire and I’ll fly through it. Suzie has a Polaroid camera and she’ll take pictures and we can send them in to the TV program and see if we can get on the show.”

“How do I hold the burning Hula Hoop?”

“With this.” He tossed me an oven mitt.

“Are you sure this will work?”

“Don’t know until you try it, my dad always says.”

I knew what my dad would say.

“Wait here,” Frankie said. “I’ll go get Suzie.”

It would be neat, I thought, to see a picture of myself flying through a burning hoop on a skateboard. I’ll show it to the kids at school. No one could top it.

Just then, Pete spotted me and ran over. “What’re you doing?” he asked.

“Nothing that concerns you,” I said sharply.

“Allowance for life,” he whined. “You said so.”

“It might be a short life.”

Frankie and Suzie joined us.

“Okay,” announced Frankie, “I’ll go first.”

I could see this leading to trouble. Pete will want to try it and he’ll go up in flames and Dad will build a real electric chair just for me. “We have to go,” I said to Frankie. “Come on, Pete.” I grabbed his good arm and jerked him away.

That evening, when we sat down at the dinner table, I felt proud of myself for keeping Pete alive. I knew I couldn’t tell Dad how I had used good judgment, because he would go berserk when I told him Frankie planned to skateboard through a flaming Hula Hoop. Mom dished out the corned beef and cabbage and Betsy passed out spoons.

“What’s that foul smell?” Dad asked, wrinkling up his face. “What’s rotting?”

“Calm down, it’s just boiled cabbage,” Mom said.

“I can’t calm down with that smell coming in the windows. What is that stench?” He held his napkin up over his nose.

I knew what it was but refused to say.

“It’s the conch meat,” Pete shouted and pointed.

From our windows, we could see the fly-covered bodies of the conchs that Frankie had left pinned to the line after the shells had slipped off

“God, these people are disgusting,” Dad griped. “I can’t wait until we move out of this neighborhood full of loonies.”

“Me too,” Betsy added. “Did you hear that Gary Pagoda stole another car and was caught in Miami?”

“The kid is a criminal,” Dad replied. “Ugh! How do they expect us to eat dinner with that stench in the air?”

It wasn’t a question anyone wanted to answer.

“Jack,” he said to me, “go over there and tell those people to take down that garbage.”

“Me?” I asked. “Me?”

“You,” he said right back. “You know them. They’re your friends. Now go tell them that they’re smelling up the neighborhood.”

I scooted back in my chair. “Okay,” I said. I looked at Mom. She was no help. Betsy gave me her thin-lipped smile. Pete crossed his eyes at me. I knew what he was thinking.

I took a garbage bag from the utility room and went directly to the Pagodas’ back yard. The conchs looked like diseased chicken wings. One by one, I yanked them off the line as the flies and smell swirled around my head. I didn’t have gloves and the spongy meat squished between my fingers. Conch juice ran down my arm and dripped off my elbow. When I finished, I scrubbed my hands with Dad’s Lava soap to get rid of the smell.

“Good job,” Dad said when I returned to the table.

“Go change your shirt,” Mom said. “It picked up the odor.”

After dinner, Frankie knocked on my window. “Hey,” he said, “my brother’s back home. Do you want to watch him tattoo a naked lady on his arm?”

“I can’t,” I said.

After Frankie ran off I couldn’t sit still. “I think it’s time to go fishing, Eric,” I said to BoBo. There was still plenty of light.

He looked up at me and I read his mind. Yes, Jack, I would like to go fishing, he was thinking. I unlocked my door and quietly walked down the hall with my rod in one hand and the tackle box in the other. I didn’t want Pete tagging along so he could drown and ruin my life.

We went directly to a secret place behind Big Daddy’s Liquors. A large water-drainage pipe emptied into a canal. I sat on the rounded edge of the pipe and opened my tackle box. I took out my net and waded into the shallow water. A small rapids formed where the water broke over the sharp rocks that narrowed the canal as it passed under an old railroad bridge. I held my net in the running water and in a few minutes I had a small shiner. “Piece of cake,” I said.

I gently slipped the hook into his mouth and out his gill. I dropped him in the water and slowly let out the line. The current carried the shiner about ten yards downstream. A perfect location for a hungry snook.

After fifteen minutes, nothing happened. I figured my shiner was worn out. There was a 7-Eleven store next to the liquor store and I had enough change for a small grape Slurpee.

“Stay, Eric,” I ordered BoBo and set my rod down on the pipe. “And guard that with your life.” He looked up at me, then went back to sleep.

Those were my last words to him. I had taken about ten steps when I heard him yelp. When our very first BoBo was hit by a car in front of our last house, he had yelped in exactly the same way. I spun around in time to see a large alligator clamp BoBo’s head in its mouth, then drag him back down the bank. BoBo’s legs kicked out at the ground, but the alligator held him tight as it slithered backward down the bank and into the water.

I was terrified of the alligator. It was at least ten feet long, and I knew they were fast. Sneaky fast. I stood still for a minute. I wasn’t sure what to do.

I ran back to the drainage pipe and leaned forward. “BoBo!” I yelled across the water. I looked up and down the canal, hoping that somehow he had wiggled free. “BoBo!” I hollered, left and right. “BoBo!”

He was gone. The water was black and smooth as it rushed by. I stepped from the pipe to the bank and to the spot where BoBo had slept. I stooped down to touch the dirt. I thought it might be warm. Half buried in the sand was the stupid watch I had earlier put on his arm.

This could have been Pete, I thought. He would have listened to me if I told him to “guard it with your life.” He would have been on this exact spot with his back to the alligator. He would have been watching me walk away. He would have been begging me to buy him a Slurpee and I would have been thinking: Buy it yourself. And then he would have been ambushed and bitten and dragged back into the water, into the alligator lair tunneled under the bank, and eaten.

Dad was right. I shouldn’t turn my back on him. I should keep an eye out for him. I’m the older brother and it’s up to me to help him. I shouldn’t break his arm and let him knock his teeth out or punch him like I do. Suddenly, I thought he might be at the Pagodas’ getting a naked woman tattooed onto his arm.

I grabbed my rod and reeled in the line. Pete, I’m sorry, but wherever you are, stay put, I said to myself. I’m coming. I ran full speed with my tackle box in one hand and the rod in the other. I kept my eyes on the ground, picking the spot for each foot, making certain that I got the most out of each step.

I reached our back yard. “Pete?” I yelled as I dropped my tackle box and reel. I stuck my head through the open kitchen door. Mom was mixing a pitcher of frozen juice. “Have you seen Pete?” I asked. I was panting.

“I thought he was with you,” she said.

I took off, running around the Pagoda side of our house. I jumped the low hedge and made for their far yard.

There was Pete. He was kneeling on the top of their slide, trying to get a skateboard lined up under him. Down below, Frankie held the lighter-fluid-drenched Hula Hoop, and Suzie stood to one side with her thumb on the top of a cigarette lighter. They were ready to go up in flames.

“Pete!” I yelled. “Stop!”

I ran up to Frankie and yanked the Hula Hoop out of his hand and flung it as far as I could. Frankie gave me a shove from behind. I turned and got ready to jump him.

“He wanted to do it!” Frankie shouted at me and stepped back.

“It was his idea,” Suzie said, pointing to Pete.

“That doesn’t mean you should let him do it,” I yelled.

I looked up at Pete. “Get down here. I have something terrible to tell you.” He let the skateboard go down the slide and he took the ladder.

“BoBo was eaten by an alligator.”

He looked up at me. “Are you lying?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “He was eaten by a ten-foot alligator that could just as easily have eaten you.”

“He had fleas,” Pete said. “I hate fleas.”

“Don’t you get it?” I said. “He was eaten by an alligator.”

“I know what an alligator is,” he said, then added, “BoBo smelled bad.”

“He was your dog!” I yelled. “He worshipped you.”

“He ate my shoes,” Pete said.

“Don’t you get what I’m saying?” I said.

“Get what?” he said.

“No wonder I have to take care of you,” I said.

He stepped away from me. “Do you want to see my tattoo?” he asked.

“What!” I hollered. “What?”

“Just kidding,” he said and began to laugh.

“Give me your other arm,” I demanded. He stuck it out and I dragged him all the way home.