Inside, the captain’s bed sits in the middle of the room. It has a high metal railing along the side to make sure he doesn’t roll onto the floor. From his point of view, it probably seems like he’s in jail. There are a couple of chairs and a chest of drawers, but nothing to make this look like anyone’s home. You might think Richard would’ve put some plants or flowers in there, at least, but no such luck for the captain. He lies there stiff as a mummy, wrapped tight in his sheets, a white strap with a silver buckle across his stomach.
“Damn,” Bobby whispers bitterly. “They’ve strapped him in like he’s Hannibal Lecter or somebody.”
As we gather round his bed, his eyes open. He stares at us, but his face is blank. No sparkle of the Yimmies or dark fear of the Nogo Gatu in his eyes. Nothing.
“Captain,” whispers Bobby. “It’s me. It’s Bobby. We came to visit you.”
Still nothing registers in the captain’s eyes.
Padgett leans over him. “Are they treating you all right in here?”
The captain’s mouth opens, but no words come out.
“We hauled Angelica back to your house,” I tell him. “She’s a little cracked up but nothing we can’t handle.”
“We’ll get her fixed up in no time,” Bobby says.
The captain still looks at us as if we’re strangers.
“They’ve got him all doped up,” Bobby says. “He’s practically a zombie.”
“What’s that smell?” asks Padgett. “Something stinks.” And Bobby’s like, “Jesus, it’s shit. He shit himself, and they just let him lie here in it. What kind of place is this?”
I’m like, “Maybe I should go down and get Karina,” but Bobby says no way—that’ll just get us kicked out.
“Well, we can’t let him stay like this.”
“We’re not going to,” Bobby says. “Here, help me get this thing unstrapped. We’ll take him into the bathroom and get him cleaned up, and then we’re going to spring him out of this hellhole.”
Padgett and I look at each other. We’re just teenagers. We know we don’t have the authority to do anything like this. But I guess neither of us was ever the kind to let that stop us before.
“Whatever you say,” I tell him. “You’re the commander.”
“Come on,” says Bobby. “Let’s go.”
While we wrestle with the strap and the sheets, the captain looks on blankly. A car shows about as much emotion when mechanics are working it over. Once we get him up, helping him to the bathroom is a whole new challenge. His legs barely work. He stares down at them as if he’s not sure what their function is.
“You can do it,” says Bobby. “One foot in front of the other.”
Finally, we get him in the bathroom, and Bobby cleans him up while me and Padgett strip the sheets off the bed. None of this is a pretty chore. I can’t help thinking about my mom and little sister. They helped Grandma like this for a long time. Some people wouldn’t do it. It’d be beneath them. But our family has more guts than that.
The captain’s clothes are in the closet, and it takes all three of us to get him dressed. As we work on him, he finally perks up a little. The smallest trace of a smile tugs at his lips. “I used to have clothes just like this,” he says.
We’re about finished with him when the door opens behind us. We’re startled so bad, everyone but the captain practically jumps out of their shoes.
“What are you doing?” It’s Brianna.
“Where’s your sister?” Bobby asks her. “You’re supposed to be keeping her busy.”
“She’s still in the cafeteria playing Hearts with Bridget. Why does the captain have his clothes on?”
Me, Bobby, and Padgett trade glances. “Look, Brianna,” I say, “we have to get him out of here. He doesn’t belong in this place.”
But she’s like, “Wait a minute. That’s not part of the deal. You were just supposed to visit with him. You can’t take him off the grounds.”
“He was lying here in his own shit,” says Bobby.
“I don’t care,” Brianna says. “You take him out of here and my sister will get fired. Not to mention you’ll probably get arrested for kidnapping.”
Padgett tries to take the logical route with her. “No one’s going to get arrested,” he says. “All we want to do is haul him back to his own house and let him come down from whatever drugs they’ve pumped him up with. Once Richard sees that it’s better for him to stay at home, everything will work out.”
“Yeah? Well, what if it doesn’t? You don’t know what’s going to happen. He might do something twice as crazy. He might kill himself.”
“We won’t let that happen,” I say, but she’s like, “What are you going to do, live there?”
Bobby walks over and puts his hand on her shoulder. “Listen, Brianna, I want you to understand this—the captain’s dying right here. Maybe not physically, but his soul is. Look at him. Everything that makes him the captain is gone, hollowed out, like a jack-o’-lantern. That’s the worst thing there is right there. Worse than killing himself. So think about that, because we’re taking him out of here no matter what. You can go tell your sister, you can tell the nurse. I don’t care if we have to fight them on the way out, but we’re getting the hell out of here with the captain right now.”
She studies the captain for a moment. Her face softens. “Okay,” she says. “But you better get him out pretty quick before the next bed check. I’ll go try to make sure no one comes down this way.”
Bobby hugs her. “Good girl.”
We give her enough time to get back to the cafeteria before we hoist the captain up from the bed. His legs still don’t work all that great, so while Bobby leads the way, me and Padgett help the captain shuffle across the room and out the door. The way his legs wobble, it’s like trying to teach a hundred-and-seventy-pound baby how to walk.
In the hall, I lose my grip on his arm and we both end up crashing into his neighbor’s door. From inside the room comes a loud shout—“Hey! Who’s out there?”
“Oh crap,” says Padgett. “We woke Mr. Kuykendall.”
Mr. Kuykendall isn’t finished either. “Nurse!” he yells. “There’s somebody trying to break in here! Nurse! I don’t pay my good money to have transients knocking on my door at all hours of the night!”
“Jesus,” says Bobby. “We better get the hell out of here. Let me get hold of the captain. Padgett, you go ahead and make sure nobody’s looking.”
Bobby loops the captain’s right arm around his shoulder, then hoists him up and carries him down the hall like a big bundle of laundry, Mr. Kuykendall still barking angry-old-man curses behind us.
At the end of the hall, Padgett stops, peeks around the corner, then holds up a hand to stop us. The first thought that flashes through my mind is Brianna told her sister what we’re doing, and now everybody who works there is ready to come down on us like a squad of Nazis. But I should know better. Brianna’s too true blue for that.
A moment later, Padgett waves for us to come on and then scurries ahead to hold open the front door. Outside, we dash for the VW, Bobby bringing up the rear, the captain still in his arms. I open the passenger door, and me and Bobby climb into the back, squeezing the captain between us to keep him propped up.
“Are you okay?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “Buoyancy is the number-one rule of thumb,” he answers regretfully.
Bobby pats his knee. “Don’t worry, we’re taking you home.”
Padgett cranks the ignition. “Should we wait for Brianna?” he asks, and Bobby tells him no, we have to get the hell out of here now. But I’m like, “Wait a minute. We can’t just leave her stranded here. Besides, her sister’s expecting her to leave with us.”
“Okay,” says Bobby. “But if she’s not out here in five minutes, I say we hit the road.”
Exactly five minutes later, Brianna walks outside.
“Did they suspect anything?” I ask as she opens the car door. “Did they hear Mr. Kuykendall
?”
She sits in the front seat. “Everything’s okay for now. But Karina’s not going to like it when she does the next bed check and finds that empty bed.”
“Don’t worry,” Bobby tells her. “I’ll buy your sister a whole bag of weed to make up for it—shit, I’ll buy her a pound of it—but for right now, let’s step the hell on the gas.”
As we pull out of the parking lot, relief sweeps into my chest—for a second. Then I see a pair of headlights flick on in the parking lot of the nursery across the street. We head west and so do the headlights.
“Don’t look now,” I say, “but I think someone’s following us.”
43
At the first intersection we come to, Padgett slows to a stop, and Bobby’s like, “What are you doing, dude? Blow the stop sign. There’s no one coming.”
“But what if it’s the cops behind us?” Padgett says.
I stare out the back window. “I don’t think it’s the cops. The headlights are too high off the ground. It looks more like it must be a truck.” Then a bad thought hits me. “Or it might be a Hummer.”
Brianna looks at me. “Crap—a Hummer?”
“Who cares if it’s a Hummer?” says Bobby as we pull away from the stop sign. “It could be a Mack truck for all I care.”
I’m like, “Yeah, but the thing is—Rick Nichols is the only one in town who has a Hummer.” I’m thinking I might prefer the police to Mona’s husband. Everybody knows the dude is jealous to start with, but if Dani really told him about Bobby and Mona, like Tillman said, then he could turn straight-up deadly.
Bobby doesn’t seem worried, though. “How would that dick even know where I was? I mean, it’s not like I’m a regular at Oak Grove.”
Brianna’s still looking over the seat, a sort of sick expression on her face.
“What?” I ask her. “You know something, don’t you?”
“Maybe,” she says, casting her gaze down toward the floorboard.
“What’d you do?”
“I sort of told Tillman what we were doing tonight. But I never thought in a million years he’d call Rick Nichols about it. I didn’t even think Tillman knew Rick.”
I’m like, “God, Brianna, why did you tell Tillman? You know he’s got it in for Bobby.”
“Hey, he asked me what I was doing tonight and I told him. It’s not like I’m used to lying to him about stuff, you know.”
I look out the rear window again. The headlights are closer. It’s pretty certain they belong to a Hummer.
“What should I do?” asks Padgett. “I can’t outrun him in this piece of junk.”
“Pull over,” says Bobby.
“What?”
“Pull over. If this dude wants trouble with me, I’ll be glad to give it to him.”
I’m like, “Wait a minute, Bobby. This might not be like with Jace. Rick Nichols—you don’t know him—he could have a shotgun in there.”
“So what?” Bobby says. “What’s he going to do, shoot me? Who cares? Pull over, Padgett.”
But I’m like, “Don’t do it, Padgett. Keep on going. They can’t do anything to us while we’re driving.”
“They could run us off the road,” Brianna says.
“Pull over,” Bobby demands. “Pull over right now, or I’m going to jump out the door.”
Padgett checks my face in the rearview mirror. I nod. What else is there to do? Bobby has his mind set. But the terrible thing is I know Rick Nichols has every reason to come after Bobby. Bobby knows it too. He just doesn’t care.
Before we’re even completely stopped, he bursts out of the car, strides back, and stands in the middle of the road with his arms folded across his chest. The rest of us, except for the captain, are right behind him when the Hummer squeals to a stop about twenty yards away. I expect Rick to throw open the door any second but he doesn’t. The motor revs and the headlights glare at us, but nobody steps out.
When my eyes get used to the brightness of the lights, I see Rick isn’t alone. Two other black silhouettes sit in the car with him. It’s easy to tell one is Tillman, so the other must be Dani. She’s probably muttering in Rick’s ear, telling him all the havoc he needs to wreak on Bobby. In the dark, the three of them look like soldiers of the Nogo Gatu.
Finally, Rick rolls down the window and yells, “I ought to run you down, you son of a bitch.”
I’m like, What a creep. If they’d just get out of the Hummer, we’d take them down with no problem, but Rick’s too much of a coward.
“Go ahead,” Bobby yells back. “Tromp that pedal.”
The Hummer creeps forward before stopping again. “This town’s sick of you trying to ruin people’s lives around here,” Rick shouts.
“The whole world’s sick, as far as I can see.”
“You aren’t fit to walk this earth anymore.”
“I know it,” Bobby tells him. “So why don’t you go ahead and do what you have to do.”
I’m like, “God, shut up, Bobby. He’s jealous enough he might do it.”
Rick guns the engine, but the Hummer stays put. “You don’t want to test me, asshole. I’ll run you over in a second.”
Bobby looks at his watch. “A second’s up, buddy, and I’m still standing. If you want to see me start shaking, then you might as well leave because that’s not going to happen.”
I know Bobby’s calling his bluff, but this is getting too crazy.
“You think you’re some kind of big war hero?” Rick says. “That’s not what anyone else thinks. Everybody around here sees you as a loser who got kicked out of the army.”
From the backseat, Dani yells something at Rick, but I can’t tell what it is. Then he revs the engine again, only this time he jams it into gear and the Hummer bucks forward, stopping about five yards away. Still, Bobby doesn’t move. “Come on,” he hollers. “You got a soldier’s vehicle, do a soldier’s job. Just give it one more hard stomp on the gas, and it’ll all be over with.”
“I’ll break you in half,” Rick yells back, “if you don’t promise to stay away from my wife right now. Promise on your mother’s life, and we’ll end this with maybe only one broken leg.”
Bobby snorts out a laugh. “Sorry,” he says. “I don’t have any promises left in me.”
“I’m not kidding!” Rick yells.
“Yes, you are,” Bobby tells him. “You’re kidding yourself. You can’t do it. Not with a real human standing in front of you. You know why? Because you’d have to give up being human yourself, and once you do that, there’s no coming back.”
The engine growls, but the Hummer stays put, and from inside, Dani’s voice rings out, “For Christ’s sake, you wimp. If you can’t do anything, I will.” And in the next second, the door swings open and she charges out. At first, she’s only a black ghost behind the headlights, but from my angle I can see the pistol in her hand. She raises it and fires one shot over Bobby’s head, then another. The noise blows through me like a lightning bolt.
Brianna’s like, “Jesus, holy crap!” and drops to the pavement. Inside the Hummer, Rick goes, “Hey, nobody said anything about guns. I didn’t throw in with shooting anyone.”
A couple more shots fire, and me and Padgett drop next to Brianna, but Bobby stays put. “Come on, Dani,” he taunts, “you’re a better shot than that.”
She keeps coming. She’s in the blaze of the headlights now, and I see the rage on her face. She’s practically demented. She squeezes the trigger again and again, each shot zinging over Bobby’s head. “Kneel, you bastard,” she screams. “Kneel down or I’ll blow your face inside out.”
“Do it,” Bobby says. “Don’t just talk about it.”
She’s right in front of him now, her arm sticking out stiff, the gun only a couple of feet away from his face. I’m afraid she’s gone wild enough to do it, and I start looking for a way to maybe make a charge at her.
“I don’t let anybody cheat on me.” She spits the words at him. “I don’t take that kind of disrespect.”
>
But she can’t pull the trigger.
Instead, she flies at Bobby, swinging both the gun and her empty fist. She tries to knee him in the groin, even tries to bite him, but he wrestles the gun away, and she crashes butt-first to the pavement.
Rick and Tillman burst out of the Hummer, but they’re not about to make any kind of rush now that Bobby’s holding the pistol. Me and Padgett pop up and start toward Bobby, but he does something that freezes us both in place—he jams the barrel of the gun up under his chin.
“Okay, Dani,” he says, his voice flat, emotionless. “Let’s hear it—do you want me to pull this trigger?”
“What?” she says, sniffling, tears streaking her face.
“You heard me. Just say the word, and I’ll blow what’s left of my brains out.”
She sits there on the pavement staring up at him. I look from him to her, then from her to him. It’s my brother here—the hardest guy I’ve ever known—standing in front of me holding a gun to his head. The reality of it burns my eyes, my face, my brain. But I can’t do anything. He’s too far away.
“Bobby,” I cry. “This isn’t funny.”
“I’m not trying to be funny,” he says. “It’s a simple choice. What’s it going to be, Dani? Do you want me to pull the trigger or not?”
She wipes her nose with the back of her hand. The rage bleeds out of her face. She looks more like a confused little girl. “No,” she says finally. Just that—no.
Bobby lowers the pistol, and the bad air in my lungs releases in one sudden rush.
“I didn’t think so,” he says. “Next time you people want to come after somebody, you better make your minds up about what you’re really prepared to do.” He sticks the pistol into the waistband of his jeans and heads back to the car. Dani, Tillman, and Rick do nothing but watch him go.
As he climbs into the backseat with the captain, the rest of us follow him in, and Brianna moans, “That was insane. You know that, don’t you? What would you have done if she said yes, go ahead and shoot your stupid head off?”