December Park(29)

I trotted across the street to the edge of the woods behind the Mathersons’ house. I noticed black tire marks on the pavement where Keener’s pickup had burned rubber and peeled out. I hurried onto the Mathersons’ lawn and headed toward the pine trees where I had hid from Keener and his gang. On my mind was the gut feeling that there had been someone else hidden among those trees with me last night. It hadn’t been one of Keener’s buddies—they would have snatched me and dragged me out—but it had been someone.

Now I attempted to locate the exact spot where I had crouched and hidden the night before. My gaze fell on broken limbs and crushed pinecones, so I assumed I was in the vicinity. I wasn’t exactly sure what I was looking for, but I felt a compulsion to see if there had been any clue left behind. A shoe print, perhaps.

But I found no shoe print. I found no evidence of any kind. I continued to wend through the trees for several minutes, swatting at bristling boughs and crunching on brown pine needles, but the only shoe prints I discovered were the big sloppy impressions left behind by the Keener Gang’s shit-kicker boots. Had I imagined someone else here? Had it all been in my head? I finally surrendered to defeat and gave up.

On my bike, I sped through the sleepy streets of the city while passing only the occasional neighbor shuffling to the edge of their driveway to retrieve their morning newspaper. Some looked dismayed at the dried egg yolk shellacked to the sides of their cars, a casualty of Mischief Night. Later the streets would be teeming with trick-or-treaters, and before the night was over there would be more cars to clean and fistfuls of candy corn chucked in the gutters, looking like busted teeth.

Cold air whipped in off the bay, smelling strongly of wood smoke and cedar and vaguely of impending snow. They were calling for a harsh winter this year. Already the Generous Superstore had its shelves stocked for the predicted snowstorms.

I rode my bike parallel to the highway and eventually turned in to the plaza where I chained my bike up outside the Quickman. Inside, rubbing the feeling back into my hands, I ordered pancakes, sausage links, bacon, and scrambled eggs. The Quickman made the best scrambled eggs, moist without being too runny, saturated in cheddar cheese, and drizzled with bacon bits.

I went over to the bank of pay phones at the rear of the eatery and dialed Peter’s number.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Mrs. Blum. Is Peter up?”

“I think so. Hold on, Angie.” She leaned away from the phone and called for Peter. I could hear a TV or a radio in the background. When she came back on the line, she said, “He’s grabbing the upstairs extension.”

“Thanks.”

“How’s your dad?”

“Oh, he’s okay. I haven’t seen him much lately. He’s been busy with work.”

She sighed. “I guess it’s a hectic time for him, all right,” she said and sounded glad to be rid of me when Peter picked up the extension.

“Hey,” I said. “Get your butt down to the Quickman.”

“What are you doing out so early?”

“I needed to leave before my dad got up.”

“Jesus, man, what’d you do now? Are you in trouble again?”

“Just get down here, will you?”

He groaned. “Give me fifteen minutes,” he said, and hung up.

I dropped the phone back on its cradle, then sat at a window booth where I waited for my food. I was the only one in the place, and I found idle contentment in watching the lights of the shops along the plaza come on one by one as daylight broke across the sky. There were paper jack-o’-lanterns taped to the shopwindows. On the front door of Mr. Pastore’s deli was a cutout of a black cat, its spine arched and spiky as if it had been zapped by a current of electricity. Spooky tapestries hung from the old-fashioned streetlamps that ran the length of the sidewalk. The entire parking lot looked like a charcoal etching.

When my food came, I sliced up my pancakes and drowned them in blueberry syrup. I nibbled at the strips of bacon, avoiding the earlobes of jiggling fat at the ends, and ate a single forkful of egg before I set my fork down and just stared out the window. As ridiculous as it was for Keener to hate me for what had happened to him, so was it equally ridiculous for me to hate my father for what Keener had done to me. But I did. I knew it was stupid. My eyes suddenly burned. At that moment, I was all too aware of my swollen lower lip and my purpling eye.

Something banged against the plate-glass window. The palm of Peter’s hand was pressed against the glass, pulsing like one of those face huggers in Alien. Pleased to have startled me, he grinned. I shook my head and waved him in. He leaned his bike against the window and entered the Quickman on a gust of cool air.

His smile faded as he approached the booth. “What the hell happened to your face?” he said, sitting across from me.

I decided to play coy. “Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Are you shitting me? It looks like someone hit you with a goddamn truck.”

“Eat this,” I said, pushing my plate in front of him.

When the waitress came by, he supplemented the meal with a heart-stopper, the Quickman’s specialty—a toasted parmesan bagel slathered in melted cheese and topped with a fried disc of salami that curled like burned paper around the edges.

“Seriously, man,” he said, stuffing his face with egg. “What happened to you?”