Last Summer Boys(13)

“Who?”

“Crash Callahan and his motorcycle riders, that’s who! Come on, now!”

We grab Butch by the collar and duck under the bridge just as the first rider comes ripping overhead. Something drops from above, a flash of sunlight on green glass, and an empty beer bottle smacks into brown creek sand a few feet from us. The rider lets out a whoop, a leathery voice that knocks back and forth off the water and the bridge. Next thing we know, Crash’s whole horde is tearing across the bridge, flinging empty bottles that come down like a glassy green rain. Frankie and me hunker down beneath them, our fingers looped through Butch’s collar, holding him close as he barks and bits of old birds’ nests and flakes of rusty metal shake loose from the rafters and drift down around us.

We stay a while that way, my cousin, my dog, and me, hearing the growling above and feeling the earth shake under us.

I don’t mind it. Not one bit.

Frankie and me are going to make Pete famous.

Frankie and me are going to save Pete’s life.





Chapter 6


OLD SAM





When the last of Crash’s riders has gone up the road like crap through a goose, Frankie, Butch, and me scramble up the bank and watch the cloud of settling dust. Frankie and me are giggling like girls that none of them knew we were hiding under the bridge the whole time, but Butch is mad that he missed them and it’s a good long while before he quits his barking.

“I bet I know where they been,” I tell Frankie. “Up to Sam’s place.”

Soon as the words leave my mouth, I remember what Mr. Hudspeth said in his store, how Crash Callahan and his boys tore Sam’s chicken coop apart, and that I shouldn’t be laughing at all.

My feet are moving before I even know it, down the road, the opposite way the riders have gone.

“Come on, Frankie. We better go check on him.”





“Few things you should know about Sam,” I tell Frankie as we walk. It’s about a mile and the day is hot now, with insects buzzing in the hedges and Butch trotting dutifully alongside. “He’s hard of hearing, so talk loud if you talk at all, which you shouldn’t because he don’t much like talking. Second, he’s got a smell to him. Pretend like you don’t smell it. Lastly, now that I think on it, he might also have a typewriter for us.”

“How so?”

“Because old Sam’s a pack rat. He never throws anything away if he can help it, and Lord above, he helps it.” Fact of the matter is, in Sam’s musty trailer he keeps everything from empty milk bottles to spent cartridges to LIFE magazines. Ma says it’s on account of the Depression; Will says it’s on account of Sam being crazy. But crazy or not, Sam is famous in our valley for killing a whole mess of Germans in World War I in a place called the Argonne Forest in France.

Samuel Williamson was born with a rifle in his hands.

It’s close to noon when we spy Sam’s silver trailer shining at us from under the trees. He’s lived by himself here ever since his wife, Myrtle, passed. You can tell it’s Sam’s place because of the mailbox Myrtle made for him: a box of tin hand-painted red, white, and blue atop a four-by-four post at the edge of the road.

When we come up, we find Sam wrapping a line of barbed wire around it.

He’s wearing a wide straw hat and long underwear with the sleeves rolled up over his thick, muscular forearms. Sam’s got a body like a bull, and the beard around his chin is like steel wool. He straightens up when I call out his name, watery eyes squinting at us from under the deep shade of the hat. The rifle comes up with him: a lever-action .22.

“Who’s that?” The words come out like a breeze through marsh reeds. Old. Strong.

A real breeze blows then, and we smell something awful.

“It’s Jack Elliot and his cousin,” I shout.

The rifle dips. Sam’s beard twitches in what might pass for a smile.

“Better than I was expecting. And what’s Jack Elliot and his cousin want?”

Truth be told, we only come out this way to check on him after the riders. But I don’t want to say that. I don’t want to tell this old man I was worried for him.

“We’re looking for a typewriter,” Frankie says suddenly, loudly, at my side. “Thought you might be a good person to ask.”

Sam turns the watery eyes on Frankie, looks him up and down.

“You’re Effie’s boy what lives in the city.”

“Yes, I am,” Frankie answers.

“You look it.” Plucking a dirty handkerchief from his pocket, Sam snatches the hat from his head and dabs at his forehead. He returns the hat and goes back to staring at Frankie.

Insects buzz.

I look at the barbed wire.

“Trouble with the hogs?” I ask, though I know it ain’t.

Sam’s red face gets redder. “Not hogs, not hogs,” he growls. “That’s the Hoodlums did that.”

Sam gives a mighty sneeze, and his body shakes with the force of it.

“Daggumit!” He whips the handkerchief to his nose and blows, a car horn blasting along the roadside. “Hay fever,” he wheezes through the rag. Then he goes on: “The Hoodlums was out of range by the time I made the porch. But I shoulda knowed. They been coming once a week now, hollerin’ like the devil’s own in the middle of night and sometimes in the middle of day. Them fellers is getting bold.”