The Battle for Jericho Page 8

  The cop turned into our driveway, put the cruiser in park, and got out. He reached down and opened the rear door for me. (There were no handles on the inside of the door.) I climbed out with my backpack on my shoulder. “Thank you, sir,” I said, with genuine gratitude.

  “Stay off that highway, son, unless you’re in a car.” The cop nodded at me (but did not smile), got behind the wheel, and backed out of the driveway.

  Dad came rushing out of the house, waving for the cop to stop, but the cruiser was already rolling down the street and the officer never saw him. Dad therefore shifted his attention to me. “What the hell was that about?” he snapped at me. “What the hell were you doing in a police car?”

  “He was just giving me a ride home, Dad.” I tried to sound casual. As if I traveled with police escort all the time.

  “Don’t give me that, boy. He’s a cop, not a taxi driver. Why were you in that police car?” Dad looked me up and down, and then a frown darkened his face. “Did you get into a fight?”

  “Uh… no, sir.”

  “Then why the hell are you all bruised and bloodied?” His eyes widened in horror. “Did that cop hurt you?”

  “No, no. No, sir. I sort of got into a… like, pushing match with Hutch. We shoved each other around, and then he kicked me out of his mom’s car. I was walking home down Highway 22, and that cop came up behind me, told me it wasn’t safe to walk the highway, and made me get in his car. Then he brought me home.” Sometimes, you have to go with the truth.

  Not that the truth set me free. “For God’s sake, Jericho, what the hell’s wrong with you? Are you out of your mind? You got into a fight with your friend, and then you stood right there and lied to my face about it. ‘Pushing match’ my eye. And you were walking on that highway? Are you trying to get yourself killed?” He didn’t wait for my answers, which was good because I didn’t have any for him. “Get the hell in the house. Go to your room. No television and no telephone for you tonight.”

  “Can I make just one call? Can I call Lissandra? She’s been sick, and I wanna see how she’s doing.” I put on my best daddy’s-little-boy face and held my breath, ready to drop to my knees if Dad started to refuse me. I am not above abject groveling.

  Dad caved. “All right, you can make one call. After that, I don’t want you on the phone for the rest of the night.”

  “Thank you, sir!” I slipped past Dad and hurried toward the house before he changed his mind, dogged by the suspicion in his eyes.

  ONCE I was in my room, I dialed Lissandra’s number. Her dad answered and said her mother had taken her to the doctor. I was alarmed until Mr. Ackerman explained that the visit was only a yearly checkup, and that Lissandra was actually feeling much better. I asked him to give her my best and let her know she couldn’t call me back tonight because I was on punishment (again), but that I’d talk to her tomorrow.

  With nothing more entertaining to do, I lay down on the floor and waded into my homework, trying to finish another chapter of Moby Dick. I wasn’t aware I’d fallen asleep until a knock on my door brought me around. I looked up to see Hutch standing in the doorway.

  He seemed hesitant, embarrassed, and frightened, all at the same time. I could see that I’d done a real number on him. His right eye was swollen and bruised; his bulky, oversized jersey was torn, a ragged flap hanging down from his left shoulder; and his lower lip was split down the middle, caked with dried blood. “Hey,” he said, giving me a small, almost shy wave.

  I sat up, wiping at my mouth with the back of my hand. “Hey.”

  “Your dad let me in. He chewed me out, said you and me should be ashamed of ourselves. You didn’t tell him that we—”

  “I told him we had a fight.”

  “Oh.” The tension in his face eased a bit. He took a few steps into the room, tentatively, as if he was afraid I might jump him again. “Jerry, I’m sorry, man, about the fight and leaving you behind. I came back for you. I swear. I drove all around the parking lot, then I drove up and down Poplar twice, but I didn’t see you.”

  I was feeling pretty regretful myself. I hated that I had hurt Hutch, especially with all the things that had happened with his parents. “That’s okay, man. I deserved it. A cop gave me a ride home. And I’m sorry too. It was my fault.”

  “So… we’re cool?”

  “Yeah.” I gave him a smile. “You want to try….” I glanced at the door behind him, making sure Dad wasn’t lurking around. That feeling of excitement came back to me. My voice dropped to an anxious whisper. “You want to try practicing again? Without the fighting?”

  Hutch broke into a big grin and nodded. “Tomorrow after school?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Okay. Well, I’m gonna head on home. I want to get cleaned up before my parents get there.”

  “Hutch, I hate to break it to you, but you can’t wash away a black eye and a busted lip. Your folks will know you had a fight.”

  “That’s not what I’m worried about.” He pointed at his ripped jersey. “This is my dad’s, and I don’t want him to see it like this. At least not with me in it.”

  “Good luck with that.”

  AS PUNISHMENT for the fight, Hutch lost the privilege of driving his mom’s car. Thus deprived of our chauffeur, Mac and I met in front of his house at seven thirty Wednesday morning for our usual walk to school.

  With a scowl etched into his face, Mac was unusually quiet, a sure sign that he was upset. He shrugged off most offenses rather casually, so I knew it had taken something major to put him in his present mood. After walking two blocks in silence with him, I said, “Okay, what happened?”

  “I don’t wanna talk about it.”

  “You’d probably feel better if you—”

  “Hey, you didn’t wanna talk yesterday, I don’t wanna talk today. Now drop it.”

  There was a tremor in his voice from some emotion that was on the verge of boiling over, and that only made me more concerned. I wanted to help him, but if I pressed him further, he’d take out whatever he was feeling on me. I couldn’t afford another fight, especially with a dude as big as Mac.

  So I dropped it.

  I WAS at my hall locker, searching desperately for my biology textbook. I wanted to get to homeroom before the bell rang and tagged me late. There were plenty of very fine females passing up and down the hall behind me, but I barely noticed any of them. A numbing little bit of depression weighed on me. The upcoming tryst with Hutch was on my mind. It bothered me that I was so excited about it. I wasn’t supposed to be excited about throwing myself into another round of boy-on-boy action. I was supposed to hate the very idea of it. Right now, I should have been in the process of forcing myself to go lip-lock with Hutch instead of eagerly counting down the minutes, the way I’d been doing since last night. At this point, I was supposed to be fighting to overcome my natural revulsion toward the unnatural, trying to convince myself that it was my duty to kiss Hutch because that was the only way I could meet my contractual commitment to destroy human society.

  A pair of arms slipped around my neck from behind. I almost screamed, thinking it was Hutch, afraid I would turn around and lock my mouth on his face the way those little sucker-headed fish latch onto the bellies of sharks. A moment later, I caught the familiar light scent of Pink Rose, the perfume that would forever remind me of my girl. Zing! That’s all it took. Those disturbing thoughts I was having about Hutch immediately dropped down several pegs in my mind as a different kind of excitement hit me.

  “Hey, baby,” Lissandra breathed softly in my ear. It was a heavenly sound. “Oh, I’ve missed you.”

  I turned, and she melted into my arms, kissing me all over my face.

  “Don’t worry,” she said in between smacks. “I’m not contagious anymore.”

  Who gives a damn? Infect me! Infect me!

  She stopped kissing and pulled back, looking me over. I swear to you, she almost licked her lips. “Did you miss me?”

  “God, Lissa, yes.” I studied her
face. She was prettier than ever. Soft brown skin. Gorgeous tan eyes, framed by long black lashes. Fluffy black curls on her head. Perfect, upturned nose. Sweet, lush lips. And best of all, no mustache.

  “Daddy told me about all of your calls. That was so sweet of you to worry about me, Jericho. And now I want you to know how much I appreciate you.”

  She kissed me. Long and deep. Somewhere, in some distant and deeply buried part of my mind, a wee voice protested. You know you’re not supposed to do this. Dylan told you to break up with her. Dylan told you no contact with girls. You’re on the gay team now.

  I heard the voice. And I closed my eyes, pulling Lissandra closer still as I kissed her back. I’ll be gay later, I thought, and the little voice shut right up.

  Chapter 10

  I WAS in relapse the entire day, delirious over the female form. I couldn’t concentrate in any of my classes. I nearly flunked a pop quiz in American history. When the teacher called on me in English, I couldn’t remember even one detail from what I’d read about Ishmael and Ahab the night before. In PE, I didn’t get my hands up in time and instead stopped a hurtling basketball with my face. I couldn’t stop thinking about Lissandra. We sneaked kisses between classes, and I cut my geometry class so I could eat with her on her lunch period. When I should have been focusing on all things gay, my head kept recycling memories of my girl’s soft lips pressed against mine, of my hand taking trips down inside the front of her blouse. There are wonderful things down inside the front of a teenaged girl’s blouse.

  There had to be a way to nudge my desires back in the gay direction. I’d made the choice, and now I had to follow through. According to the pastor at my church, millions of guys, over thousands of years, had managed to put their heterosexuality on hold and burn with unholy desire for each other in their support of the never-ending quest to upend the natural world as God had created it. If they could do it, damn it, then so could I.

  After the final bell, Lissandra met me at my locker, offering to treat me to a sundae at Mickey D’s. I thanked her but told her I couldn’t make it. (No, I still hadn’t told her that we must break up, but turning down that sundae was a start, okay. Baby steps, remember?) She smiled, said we’d get together this weekend, kissed me, and ran off to catch the school bus that would take her home.

  Mac had football practice, which was fine by me because his mood had not improved one bit through the day. That brought me, finally, to my little get-together with Hutch this afternoon. Since my parents were still at work, I invited Hutch to come home with me.

  The walk from school was actually fun. Hutch and I talked video games and movies, made jokes about some of the teachers, and speculated about future careers for some of our fellow students. We agreed that long-headed Charlie Spaulding, who was forever dreaming up ways to steal cars, was well on his way to becoming either a full-time inmate at the local prison, or a consultant for the Nashville police department’s auto theft division. We decided that Amy Hauser—who already had five cats and said she would collect more if her parents hadn’t stomped emphatically on the idea with all four of their feet—was going to be a veterinarian animal hoarder. The laughter felt good, and I was pretty relaxed as we rounded the corner onto my street. Walking up to my house, however, our smiles faded. We fell silent.

  I unlocked the door and led the way to my room. Hutch had been in my house dozens of times when my folks were out, and it was never any big deal. Now, guilt was pounding at the back of my head like a hammer.

  “Hey, let’s not push things, okay?” Hutch said as we entered my room. “Let’s just sit here and talk. We’ll take our time and see where things go.”

  That made sense to me. I nodded and said, “Okay.”

  We sat down side by side on the floor, our backs against the bed. We began to talk. The subjects were trivial at first—the school’s upcoming basketball season, family plans for Christmas—and things seemed to ease between us once more.

  “Your face, the black eye and stuff, it looks better,” I said. The swelling had gone down a lot in his lip and around his injured eye. I felt another jolt of remorse for hurting him.

  “Yeah. My dad put compresses on me. They helped a bit.”

  Then, from out of the blue, came another, different wave of guilt. “I’m sorry I got you in trouble yesterday and made your mom take her car from you.”

  “Don’t worry about that, man,” Hutch replied.

  “Did your folks come down hard on you about the fight?”

  “It didn’t bother my dad all that much. He sees fighting as a ‘guy’ thing, not something a ‘fag’ would do. He was more upset that I took his jersey without asking and got it torn up. He smacked me around a little for that. My mom completely freaked out about the fight, though.”

  “She did?” There was a sort of skepticism to my voice, but I completely understood why she would get upset, what with the number I’d done on her son’s face.

  “Yeah, but it wasn’t really the fight that got to her. Yesterday was just a bad day for Mom. I think that was the real reason she took the car from me. She wanted to get back at the world, and she used me as a surrogate. Yesterday was bad for my dad and me too, but it was especially hard for my mom. My sister left us….”

  “Your sister left you? What sister? You never said you had a sister.”

  “She died. Nine years ago yesterday.”

  “Damn. What happened?”

  Hutch shrugged. “We lived in Mississippi then, in this little house owned by my great grandma, because my dad had lost his job and we needed a place to stay until he got back on his feet. My great grandma had this big wooden washtub that she did her laundry in way back when, before she got a washing machine. Mom used it for a mop bucket. Renee—my little sister—was three. Mom was mopping the kitchen, and when the next-door neighbor drove up, she went outside to give him back the screwdriver she’d borrowed to fix the hinge on the front door. Renee must have dropped her doll and was trying to get it back or something. My dad figured that because we found her doll in the tub after everything was over. Anyway, when my mom came back inside, she found Renee upside down in the tub. She was too little, I guess, to push herself out of the water, and she drowned.”

  I stopped breathing for a moment, horrified. “Hutch… God, man. That’s awful.”

  “My mom blamed herself. She still does. That’s why my dad and I don’t talk about Renee. If you mention her name, my mom gets this blank look on her face. She was like that yesterday. I hate seeing her like that.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  Hutch sighed. His eyes drifted into a sad, far-off look. “My mom wishes I had been the one to die, instead of Renee.”

  Another, deeper wave of horror went through me. “What?” I said, my voice a whisper.

  “My mom told me that once, back when I got caught kissing that guy at school, when she was coming after me with that baseball bat. She told me I should have died instead of Renee.”

  There was pain in Hutch’s face. Some of it, I could tell, was for his mother. That was incredible to me. I couldn’t understand how he could feel sorry for her after she’d wished him dead. Before I found out all of this awful crap, I had actually liked Mrs. Hutchison. She had the sort of face anyone would consider motherly—round, soft, kind. You wouldn’t look at her face and think for one second that she was capable of the kind of ugliness she had directed at her son. Now she firmly held the top spot on my crap list, with Mr. Hutchison following closely at number two.

  Another part of Hutch’s pain was probably for himself and all the rotten stuff that had happened to him. But most of his pain at that moment, I felt, was from missing his sister. What happened next came without forethought on my part, without any goal or agenda in mind.

  I reached over and took Hutch’s hand.

  He didn’t flinch or pull away or even look at me. He just squeezed my hand as if grabbing onto a lifeline.

  “It’s awful, man, what you’ve been through,” I told hi
m. “I had a little brother once. His name was James Caleb.”

  That drew Hutch back from the well of bad memories he’d fallen into. He turned his face to me. “What happened to him?”

  I shrugged. “He just… died, sometime during the night. My mom went to get him that morning, and he was dead in his crib. Sudden infant death syndrome is what the doctor at the emergency room put on the death certificate. I don’t really remember him because I was only four when it happened, and he wasn’t even a month old. I feel guilty for not missing him the way my mom and dad do. I think my dad took it hardest of all. He doesn’t say anything, but it still bothers him, even after all this time.”

  Hutch stared silently at me for a moment. His eyes filled with sympathy. “I’m sorry, man.” He leaned over and put his head on my shoulder while he waited for our mutual pain to ease. And I put my arm around him.

  A week ago, the idea of holding another guy like that, even to comfort him in his obvious grief, would have made me uncomfortable in the extreme. But I wanted to do this. I knew I had to do this, because Hutch needed it. Because Hutch was my friend.

  And I loved him.

  Okay. That scared me a bit, realizing I had such strong feelings for a guy. I knew I loved my dad, every bit as much as I loved my mom. But the guys I hung out with at school and around the neighborhood? Most of them I liked, and I liked some of them a lot, but I didn’t love them. Hutch meant something more to me, however. So did Mac. Them, I loved. Not in a romantic way, mind you, but it would hurt to have them go out of my life.

  Of course, I’d never tell either of them that. Or anyone else, for that matter. It wasn’t the kind of thing a guy said out loud.

  But it was a great thing to feel.

  ONCE Hutch was feeling better, I got two cans of Pepsi from the fridge, and we sat on my bedroom floor, swigging cola while watching Alien on the Showtime channel. I’d seen the movie probably a hundred times, but it was one of those flicks I could never get enough of. I was so engrossed that I almost didn’t notice Hutch easing his hand across the floor toward mine. He was doing it in that sneaky way guys use when they’re trying to get things rolling with a girl. This was nothing like what we’d shared half an hour ago; this was calculated.