The Forgetting Time(63)

Okay, okay, so maybe it wasn’t the best drum solo ever of all time, maybe he wasn’t, like, Lars Ulrich, but in his life this is what amounted to a major fucking victory and he was going to take that baby and ride it all the way home, the AMAZE-ing Harrison’s brother’s friend’s weed flowing through him making everything all right, making everything so very, very all right that he did an extra loop around the block, down past the neighbor’s vicious dog to the edge of the cornfields and back again, and didn’t even particularly dread sailing back into his own driveway, where Thanks be to God his mother’s car was out. Could it get any better? He could grab a carton of ice cream and go upstairs to his room and text Gretchen. Or—even better—think about Gretchen without having the stress of actually texting her, lying there on his bed while the high was still in him, thinking about Gretchen’s breasts jiggling to the beat of his killing drum solo, her knees swaying open and shut in that jeans miniskirt she’d worn to school day before yesterday—or wait—even better—skip Gretchen entirely, too much work, and get right to it on the Internet, ready set go! Now that was a pleasant way to spend an afternoon.

He swung back down the block again, tingling with anticipation, his dreads flying like wings above his ears, then decided he’d better get on with it before the high faded. He never risked bringing any pot home—for one thing, his mom was all up in his ass about that shit and for all he knew would ship him out to a military academy if she found so much as a bud in his pocket, which was hard, actually, to keep on top of, to keep one’s head in the game like that about every stray bud when you got stoned as often as he did. So far, though, she’d merely sniffed at him a few times after he came home, as though he were a rancid meat loaf in the fridge. She probably didn’t know what the stuff smelled like, thought he had some funky-ass sweat. Luckily no one messed with his locker at school. He could have a drugstore in that thing and no one would be the wiser.

He dropped his bike in the yard and ran to the door. But there were people walking around the house, looking around. White people. A man and a woman, and a little kid, too. Uh-oh. Maybe some Jehovah’s Witnesses, though most of the Jehovah’s he’d seen around there had been black. He didn’t even know there were white Jehovah’s. Did Mormons come this far out? Got to hand it to them, bringing the kid along, that was a nice touch. Hard to slam a door on a kid.

Funny little kid, too. He was hopping up and down like he was pretending to be a kangaroo, yelling, “This is it, this is it, this is it!” He kept patting the aluminum siding as if the whole house were a big red dog.

“Can I help you?” Charlie said. Summoning up his best this-fine-young-man-was-raised-right grin, which he could beam right through his stoner’s haze. His specialty, actually. He could be sitting in the office of Principal Ranzetta herself right now and she’d have nary a clue. And had done so, in point of fact.

The three of them gaped at him.

The woman spoke up at last. “Is Mr. or Mrs. Crawford at home?”

Boy, they sure did their homework, these evangelical types.

“Mom isn’t here right now. Maybe come back another time?” He looked up at them hopefully.

The lady and the old guy glanced at each other. They looked like they were having a disagreement without saying anything. Like the woman had an agenda and the old guy wanted out of there.

Were they from the school? He didn’t recognize them, but the old guy did have a school superintendent-y kind of vibe and the woman could be an administrator or maybe even a cop, she had that wired-up look. Maybe they’d found the pot in his locker and she was going to lock him up or throw him out or send him to rehab like that lame-ass in social studies who got caught with a bottle of peppermint schnapps in his desk. I mean, schnapps? That’s what you get busted for? In your desk? Schnapps?

But why’d they bring a kid, though, if they were there to bust him? He couldn’t wrap his head around that. The kid kind of creeped him out, too. He was staring up at Charlie with these weird, shiny eyes.

“So. What’d you want my mama for?” Charlie dropped the fine-young-man bit and stood squinting at the three of them.

“That’s between us, I’m afraid,” the woman said. She seemed tense.

Uh-oh.

He had a thought. It glowed with possibility in his brain, so he said it.

“Are you with the TV?”

“What?”

“You know, like America’s Most Wanted, something like that?”

“No, we’re not. Sorry.”

“Oh.” His mom was always talking about going on a show like that, keeping the word out there. They didn’t do missing black kids, though, as far as he could tell. Only pretty white girls.

So who were they then? He fixed them with a long, pot-emboldened stare and watched them shift uncomfortably. Good, he thought. Go away, strange white people.

A pause. No one said anything except for the little kid, who was still bouncing on his toes and mumbling to himself, “This is it, this is it.”

Go away, go away, go away, strange white people, he repeated silently.

“We’ll come back later,” the old guy said.

Hallelujah. You, mister, are a genuine psychic. (Maybe it wasn’t too late for the porn, after all?) “No!” The kid had this tiny little kid’s voice, like he was on helium or something. “I want to stay!”