Later that night, while my family watches Walter Cronkite on the evening news, Frankie and me slip away to the barn to try out our typewriter.
I’ve pinched a candle from the kitchen and it only takes me two matches to get it lit. It’s a fine, cheery little flame that takes to the wick, and in its yellow light, Frankie rolls a piece of paper into the machine and starts to type. The keys seem loud as gunshots in the big dark barn.
Frankie’s fingers flow quick over the keys, and I’m impressed he don’t have to stop and look for the right letters. When he’s done, I lean in and see what he’s written:
NOW IS THE TIME FOR ALL GOOD MEN TO COME TO THE AID OF THEIR COUNTRY.
I whistle soft and low.
“Well, we’ve got our typewriter,” Frankie replies, smiling. “So when do we find this fighter jet?”
I bite my lip.
“What?”
“I ain’t exactly asked Pete and Will about you coming along with us just yet, Frankie. And truth be told . . . they won’t like it.”
In the candle’s flickering light, Frankie’s face changes: the smile leaves and his dark eyes seem to grow glints in them, like sharp rocks deep beneath the surface of still water.
“Because I’m a city boy. And city boys aren’t tough at all, are they?”
I don’t answer him, but he’s right. That’s exactly why.
Frankie frowns. “Jack, that is honest to goodness bullshit.”
I’m surprised to hear Frankie cussing, but before I can speak a word he goes on.
“All right, so I don’t like spiders, or snakes, or being in the middle of nowhere without so much as a streetlight or a car horn to let you know there’s other people living on the planet too. Lots of people don’t live like that, but that doesn’t make them soft. You know what it’s like where my family lives? I’ll tell you. A week into the riots, four boys from the West Lake housing projects drove into my neighborhood and stopped at the corner store at the end of my block. It’s a place to buy sandwiches and cigarettes, and maybe that’s what they were there to do. Or maybe they were there to burn the place down. Nobody knows because some men on the rooftop shot them all. Ever wake up to gunshots? It sounds like a car backfiring except it doesn’t stop. One of the West Lake boys died that night, and it didn’t look good for the other three when the ambulance took them away. Now, my old man is a cop, and he’s looking for those men. Alone. Without me. Because he and my mom think I’m safer if I’m here with you. But I want my father safe, Jack. I don’t want him getting shot too. And there’s nothing I can do to help him here. So I’ll go on your adventures. I’ll write your stories. But I won’t have you think for one second I’m not tough as you.”
When Frankie finishes there’s tears in those dark eyes, and I’m so shocked and ashamed of myself, it’s a while before I can even think to say anything. Here I am sick half to death worrying about my brother, who’s alive and safe and still right here at home with me. Meanwhile, Frankie’s worrying about his father chasing murderers in a place that’s on fire.
Frankie wipes his eyes, still frowning, but the anger’s gone out from him, out of his voice now. “And I think that’s why I want to help you, Jack. Because I can’t protect my father. But maybe I can help you save your brother. Maybe I can help you keep Pete.”
The candle’s tiny flame sways, and the liquid wax around the wick brims over the edge and goes running down the candle, cooling and slowing as it goes.
“Frankie, I had no idea,” I manage, and I feel tears starting in my own eyes now. “I’m sorry. God’s honest truth, I’m sorry. And I’m thanking you from the bottom of my heart for helping me.”
Frankie sniffs one last time and wipes his nose with his sleeve.
“Forget it.”
The next morning I find Pete whittling on the porch. Will sits on the picnic table, reading a newspaper article on Bobby Kennedy, who’s ahead in the polls.
I come right out and say it: “Pete, me and Frankie want to come along with you and Will to find that old wrecked fighter jet.”
Will, from the table: “No.”
Pete pauses, his knife perched at the edge of the stick. He cocks an eye at me through his long, straw-colored hair.
Will again: “No. Pete, they can’t come!”
Pete grins and closes his pocketknife. “That’s a hard slog into them hills, Jack. A whole county away and likely bombs laying about. Is Frankie tough enough for it?”
Frankie comes around the side of the porch. “Even city boys know not to step on bombs.”
Will throws the paper down. “It’s miles away over rough country. No way!”
“Frankie’s plenty tough!” I tell him. “He’ll do just fine!”
Pete turns his green eyes on our cousin. “You ever been camping, Frankie?”
“Never.”
My jaw drops. “Never?”
Will grins triumphantly and jabs a finger at us. “See? Useless! Pete, tell him he can’t come.”
“I am not useless,” Frankie shoots back. “I can carry whatever needs carrying.”
I feel the whole thing slipping away. “Frankie has to come!” I cry out. “He just has to.”
Will draws a deep breath, and I can tell he’s about to let loose, but Pete waves his hand and everybody goes quiet.
“If Frankie can prove he’s tough enough, then he can come. If not, then he can’t.”
Will’s face darkens. He’s been overruled and he’s mad.
I grin. “Ha!”
“I’ll be the final judge of whether he’s tough enough,” Pete declares. “And I’ll decide what he has to do to prove it.” His eyes sweep over the three of us, daring us to argue with him. Will is fuming; I can almost see smoke coming from his nostrils, but he keeps quiet.
Beside me, Frankie says not a word, but his dark eyes are leveled right at Pete.
Pete flicks his pocketknife open again and goes back to whittling his stick.
“What do I have to do?” Frankie asks.
Pete don’t even look up. “Nothing too hard. Jump into the Sucker Hole is all. Off them railroad pilings.”
My eyes grow wide. “The railroad pilings?”
Will grins. “Hope city boys can swim,” he says as he goes back to his newspaper.
“Of course they can!” I insist, hoping hard that it’s true. “You’ll see.”
Frankie is silent, but his eyes jump to me.
“Oh, we will,” Pete says. “This afternoon.”
I lead Frankie for the barn, walking slow and easy. When we get far enough away from the porch that my brothers can’t hear, he whispers to me.
“I have to jump from where?”
“Just off some old railroad pilings, that’s all.”
“And what is the Sucker Hole?”
“A nice, deep part of Apple Creek. It’s great for fishing. It’s great for catching suckers.”
Frankie shakes his head. “I’ll say.”
Chapter 7
THE SUCKER HOLE
The Sucker Hole is dark and green and flat as a windowpane, a still stretch of Apple Creek that lies between the teetering stone pillars of the ruined Coatesville railroad bridge. On either bank, the crumbly stacks lean toward one another like old men in a long talk, moss and tufts of green grass poking through here and there and flicking in the wind like hair on their stony scalps.
The builders of the Coatesville line placed those stones a long time ago. They laid tracks, they raised a bridge, and poor Apple Creek had to amble along underneath it while freight trains thundered across day and night. Then came a war. The railroad and its bridge were stripped, their steel skeletons carried off to cities to be made into guns or tanks or bombs, and all that was left were those two towers—and ’course Apple Creek, same now as it was then or would ever be.
The creek took them in, those lonely heaps of stone, and now herons nest on top of the stacks and fish collect around their bases in thick, silvery clouds—minnows and smallmouth bass and largemouth bass and trout.