In just a few months he'd be ready for college. He'd filled out all the forms, applied for aid, and sent in his money along with his applications, using Josh Philbin's address for his return mail.
“What would you like, Nevil?” Pete asked courteously.
“Whatever's free. Three burgers, fries, two milk shakes, double order of onion rings. What'ya want, Pop?”
“If it's free, I'll have the same thing,” the older Menalis said slyly.
Pete stared at father and son. He had several options. He could give it to them free and then pay Josh for the food. He could just give it to them and say nothing. Or he could tell Nevil and his father . . . what?
“It's not free, Nevil, and you know it. I have to account for everything at the end of the night. Mr. Philbin keeps a tight inventory. Do you still want the food?” He knew they'd say yes and then stiff him. They'd just get up and walk out. Nevil was forever bragging about doing it in other places. Sometimes he'd say the food was overdone, underdone, or there was a bug in it. After he ate everything.
Now, Pete tallied up the check in his hand and said, “Pay me now and I'll order the food.”
Maybe he took a stand because of the hope, the dream, that tomorrow the man he was going to meet would really be his uncle and he'd be out of there.
Nevil was sloppy fat like his father, their bellies hanging out over their belt buckles. Nevil struggled now to get out of the booth. Pete backed up a step and then another step. The teenagers stopped eating long enough to watch. “You insulted us, Petey. I don't like it when you insult my old man.”
“Then don't call your father your old man. Show him some respect. Do you want the food or not?”
“Sit down, Nevil. He's right.” Avrim laid a ten dollar bill on the table. Pete wasn't sure, but he thought he saw respect in the older man's face. “I said sit down, Nevil.”
“Jeez, Pop, those kids are going to tell everyone I backed down from this smarty-pants tomorrow.”
“So live with it, Nevil, and don't ever call me your old man again.”
“You wait, smart boy, your ass is gonna go in a sling,” Nevil spat. “You wait and see what I do to that fancy surfboard of yours. You just wait!”
Pete walked back to the kitchen. The cook, a middle-aged man with tired eyes, too many kids, and an equally tired wife, said, “You handled that real good. Josh is going to be real proud of you. I'd get that surfboard out of their house if I was you.”
“I took it out a long time ago,” Pete replied. “Josh is keeping it for me. Josh keeps all my stuff. The only thing I have at their house is some clothes. Old stuff. He took a knife to my clothes not too long ago.”
“You shoulda left, Pete. Josh said he'd take you in.”
“It's okay, Skeeter. It's just a few more months. Maybe sooner if tomorrow works out.”
It was eleven-thirty when Pete took a last minute check of the restaurant, turned on the alarm, and left by the back door. He was barely in the alley when he was jumped from behind. Taken off balance, he went down and was immediately jerked erect, his assailant behind him. Two people, he decided; one with a knee in his back, an arm around his neck choking him. He was pummeled from the front, kicked in the ribs and groin. He was shoved forward, landing in trash he'd taken out earlier, before his assailants fled. He felt his eye squeeze shut and knew his nose was broken. His face felt twice its normal size. Warm blood trickled down his neck. He thought he was going to die. Right then he
wanted
to die.
Who was going to find him? It was dark as pitch in the alley. They wouldn't find him till morning. Maybe by then he really would be dead. And who would care? Who would give a good rat's ass if he died? No one. Not one damn soul walking the earth. “Well, I goddamn well care,” he muttered. He belonged in a hospital, that much he knew. People there would take care of him, make him well. If he didn't die.
He tried to crawl, mewling like a newborn puppy, to the back entrance. If he could just get to the door and open it, the alarm would go off and the police would come. So would Josh. Maybe even Skeeter. They'd take him to the hospital, and a nurse who smelled sweet and clean, the way his mother used to smell, would take care of him. She'd smile at him, touch his forehead and tell him everything was going to be all right. He'd believe her too. Nurses and mothers didn't lie.
Pete knew he blacked out twice before he made it to the back door. Every crawling step was pure torture. He knew some of his ribs were broken and there seemed to be something wrong with his left knee. Still he struggled. When the bells, whistles, and siren went off in the restaurant, his first thought was he'd died and gone to heaven. He started to call his mother and then he blacked out.
When Pete woke again, he knew he was in the hospital. It hurt to breathe. Everyone seemed to be talking at once. Josh Philbin was cursing, using words Pete had never heard before. “You take care of him, I don't give a shit what it costs. Get him one of those special nurses to sit with him.” Then he heard Skeeter's voice, but couldn't hear what he was saying. Later, when they took him to a room, he heard Harriet Wardlaw talking to Josh, but again he couldn't hear what they were saying.
He knew he was going to cry, and he didn't care. He felt a cool cloth touch his cheeks. “It's okay to cry, son,” a kindly voice said quietly. “There's no one here but you and me. My name is Maryann and I'm your nurse. Is there anyone you want me to call?”
He thought he said Barney, but he wasn't sure. Where was Barney right now? What was he doing? Barney would never have taken the beating he'd taken. Did that mean he was a coward? They'd come up behind him, pinned him. There was no way he could have fought back. That alone had to make them the cowards, because they hadn't taken him on in a fair fight. He thought he said, “Oh shit.” He heard a chuckle and a voice say, “That sums it up pretty good. You need to sleep now. There's a lot of people out there in the waiting room who care about you. Tomorrow you can see them.”
This time he knew he spoke aloud. “Who?”
“Mr. Philbin, a police officer named Nathaniel, his brother, that nice Miss Wardlaw, Mr. Skeeter, and the two police officers who found you. That's seven people. Sometimes patients come in here and there's no one waiting to find out how they are. Sleep now.”
When Pete woke the following day, he was aware of two things immediately. The first was that he was in intense pain. The second was his room. There were flowers everywhere. One arrangement would have made him laugh if he'd been able to laugh. The florist had taken pains to make the arrangement look like a hamburger with a milk shake and fries on a tray. There were balloons tied to a plastic football, and violets in a cup that had a picture of a basketball on the side. A giant teddy bear with red balloons tied to his paw was on the dresser. Flowers of all colors lined the windowsill.
The doctors came then, one after the other. He was going to live, they said cheerfully. He was going to be in pain for a few days, and on crutches for six weeks or so, but he would live with that too. You're young, they told him. The young heal rapidly. This last was said so carefully, Pete cringed.
“You have visitors, lots of visitors,” his nurse said.
Pete opened his eyes. He wanted her to look like his mother, but she didn't. Maryann had gray hair and dimples. She was plump and she smelled like Noxzema. A grandmother? He asked. She nodded. A grandmother was almost as good as a mother. He waited for her to smile. She did when she gave him four little pills. “It will ease some of the pain. We don't want you to depend on them. We'll give them a few minutes to take effect, and then I'll show in your visitors.”
He could barely distinguish them, but he recognized all the different voices. He was told not to talk, they would talk to him. And they did. They told him how much they cared, how sorry they were that such a thing could happen to a nice person like him. “I'm going to kick some ass, I can tell you that,” Josh Philbin said. “I'll find the SOB that did this to you. Skeeter here has some ideas, and the police are out there doing their job.”
“You're not going back there, Pete,” Harriet Wardlaw said. “I checked with the courts, and it's been agreed that you can spend the last months before college with Mr. Philbin and his wife.”
He wanted to ask about his uncle. Was the meeting still on or was it canceled? Harriet Wardlaw held up her hand. “Pete, I told Mr. Sorenson we should wait a few days. I want you bright-eyed and bushy-tailed when you meet him. Is that okay? Raise your hand if it is.” Pete's hand fluttered. What was a few more days? If he looked anything like he felt, he might scare off this person who could prove to be his uncle. He fell asleep in the middle of his thought. His visitors tiptoed from the room promising to return the following day.
He dreamed. Of a faraway place called Bell's Beach. The waves were monster high and his father was riding his new surfboard. Christening it, he shouted. His mother was standing on the beach with him, holding his hand. Her eyes were full of love and kindness. Her hair was blowing about her face. How pretty she was. He told her she was prettier than an angel, and she smiled.
“C'mon, Pete, let's build a sand castle,” Barney called from the water's edge.
“Look, Mom, Barney came back. He said he'd come back for me and he did. He kept his promise. Jeez, he looks the same. I'm almost as big as Barney, huh, Mom? Why'd he wait so long, Mom?
”
“I don't know, honey. Maybe his mother needed him to take care of her and he couldn't leave.
”
“You left, Mom. I would have taken care of you. Barney would have helped me. Do you like it up on the cloud? Do you watch me, do you miss me?
”
“Oh, sweetie, of course Dad and I miss you. We watch over you all the time.
”
He jerked his hand free. “That's a crock and you know it. If you watch over me, then how come that jerk Nevil beat me up? I knew it was him, I could smell him. He had that scuzzball friend of his with him. They smell the same. Barney lied to me. Everyone lied to me. You don't live on a cloud with Dad. I'm not stupid. Everyone thinks I'm stupid. I believed Barney, and then he left me too. I hate him for that. I'm not going to look for him anymore. Go back on your cloud with Dad. Look, he won't even talk to me. He's on the wave on my surfboard. I carried that everywhere they sent me. I had to fight to keep it. Really fight. They wanted to sell it so I could get a haircut and new shoes, but the lady in the blue dress wouldn't let them. You should have come down off your cloud and . . . and ... go away, take Barney with you.
”
“I love you, honey. Barney loves you too. Someday you'll understand that there are things we can't control or change. Dad and I are very proud of you, Pete. Kiss me good-bye. Dad and I have to go now.
”
“Don't leave me again, Mom. Tell Dad I want him to stay.
”
“Goooooddd-byyyyye, Pete,” his mother called as she walked across the water to get on the surfboard with his dad. She blew him a kiss. His dad blew him a kiss too.
“Don't take the surfboard, Dad.”
“I won't, son. I just christened it for you.”
“Hey, Barney, are you going away too?” he asked angrily.
“Yeah, I gotta go too.”
“How come?
”
“ 'Cause my mom said so. You gotta do what your mom says. I'm gonna come back for you, Pete, just the way I promised. I swear on my mom.
”
“Kiss my ass, Barney!” he screamed. “The day you come and get me is the day I'll kiss your ass. I'm big now so you can't lie to me anymore.”
“I'm not lying. I promise.
”
“You're a liar! You promised to come and get me when I was sixteen. I'm seventeen and a half. You damn well lied. I hate you, Barney Sims. I hate your guts!
”
Pete woke, the scream dying on his lips.
“Bad dreams are terrible, but they don't mean anything,
”
the grandmotherly voice said softly. “Shhh, go
back to sleep.” He felt a cool hand on his brow. His anxiety eased and he drifted into a peaceful sleep.
Â
On Friday, late in the afternoon, Pete was sitting in a wheelchair in the solarium when Nathaniel Bickmore, Harriet Wardlaw, and the man who might be his uncle appeared.
“You look like my dad,” Pete blurted, as the man and Harriet sat down, and Nathaniel left. He did, it wasn't wishful thinking on his part. The man's salt and pepper hair was closely clipped, as was his mustache. His dark eyes, the color of chocolate licorice, were keen and piercing. Pete's heart almost stopped beating when the man stared at him, hard, with not a trace of a smile.
“Is this your father the way you remember him?” The man asked him, holding out a photograph. “He was eighteen or nineteen when this picture was taken.”
He had polish on his nails, Pete noticed. He stared at the picture for a long time. “My dad had a bad scar on his neck. This looks like my dad.”
“Which side of his neck?” the man asked.
“The left side. He said he fell over a barbed-wire fence and had to have nine stitches. It was down from his ear. A little part of his ear was crooked.”
“He had eleven stitches,” the man said. “I had to ride him to the vet to get the stitches. The regular doctor was too far away, and my bike was rusty with a bad wheel. The accident was my fault. My father just about skinned me alive.”