Mr. Leo Peeper's Denver 500, Patrick Sean Lee [best young adult book series .TXT] 📗

stealing Clifford’s wagon. He’d understand, he’d…no, he wouldn’t. For the second time in my life a cloud of real anxiety descended over me. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t possess the courage to make the right decision—I knew I didn’t under Jimmy’s pressure. It wasn’t even that stealing the wagon was the worst caper we’d ever planned. It was the realization, as clear as crystal and hard as a diamond, that this time around, giving in would be unforgivable. I knew the stakes, knew that the voice in my head and the ever-increasing tapping on my shoulder really meant something which I’d only once before been called on to acknowledge. I was about to make the second meaningful moral choice of my young life.
I continued on to the basement and the waiting dilemma. In my room I turned on the radio and sat in the darkness, waiting apprehensively. Upstairs, the muffled voice of Mom drifted through the floorboards, breaking every now and then for a brief instant when she allowed Pop to offer his one or two word response. Through the folds of the curtain the shadows outside moved furtively; elm leaf lines of fingers fidgeting like those of a nervous felon tapping on the table in an eerie courtroom, awaiting his sentencing. The minutes ticked on. The jury arrived.
“He ain’t down there,” I heard Jimmy say in a dejected whisper to Mickey. “Damn it. Now what?”
“Maybe he’s doin’ the dishes. Let’s go around to the kitchen window,” Mickey answered.
“Yeah, okay.”
I summoned the dot of courage hiding inside me and jumped across the room to the window.
“Wait!”
The shuffle of their feet stopped and they returned. Jimmy spoke first. “What the hell are ya doin’ down there in the dark? Open the window!”
“No. I’m not going. You guys go on without me.”
“What? Whatd’ya mean you ain’t goin’? I thought we decided it was time…”
”I can’t. I can’t help you steal Clifford’s wagon…I can’t. You’ll just have to do it and build the chug yourselves.” There, I’d said it.
My heart beat madly as the words left my lips. I felt a cold blanket of fear. As far as opening the window, I knew that if I did I’d be outside with them before I took another breath, and then be on my way to deeper pits of trouble. The dusty glass separating us was my only protection, a shield against their beckoning. Jimmy pressed his face against the glass and I could see his cat-eyes searching the room. He said nothing for a minute as he looked around, then spoke again as he pushed against the window with his fingertips.
“Open up.”
“No.”
“What’s got into you? We ain’t stealin’ the wagon…just borrowin’ it for a while.”
“No, we’re…you’re stealing it, and count me out. I’m in enough trouble. I don’t want any more.”
Behind Jimmy I could see Mickey begin to pace, the moonlight making his movements appear all the more frustration ridden. I’d crossed the first bridge, but I knew the fight was anything but over. Mickey might walk away, but Jimmy, I knew, was loading his cannons in the silence. Soon enough he opened fire.
“It ain’t stealin’! We’re givin’ it all back. There won’t be no trouble, for God’s sake. He won’t even know it’s gone. We’ll even let him hold the trophy.”
“No.”
“C’mon. What’s come over you? Just come help us. Your ma’ll never know you was gone! Think about flyin’ down the street in the best racer in the city. Why, even that stupid Clifford’ll have to cheer when you cross the finish line! Think about the fun. The glory. Open up!”
“Uh-uh. You guys go on without me. I’m not leavin’. Sorry,” I answered with as much courage as I could muster. A heretofore unknown strength began to creep over me in the darkness, in the silence that followed. Maybe Jimmy would

lose this time around.
“C’mon, Jim. Leave him be. We’ll do it ourselves…we don’t need him. Let’s get outta’ here,” Mickey finally said. Then he directed the next words to me. “Eat your heart out when you see Jim flying under the checkered flag. We don’t need you. Chicken crap eater.”
And so they crept away, over the cracked and narrow concrete walk, in the direction of the alley behind the house. Clifford would lose his wagon—for a week, or a month, or maybe forever. Maybe they’d get away with it, maybe not. Maybe they’d even win the race. But it was all going to happen without me this time. It looked as though I’d lost my two best friends.
I returned to my bed and sat down with a mixed feeling of betrayal and relief, wondering if tomorrow’s news on our TV would show the two of them being led away in handcuffs by a stony-faced cop. Probably not. Jimmy was blessed by the devil when it came to dodging bullets. I turned the volume of the radio up, crawled under the covers without undressing, and stared out at the moonlit shadows dancing across the yard until I fell asleep with the best feeling in my heart that I’d ever had. For once I hadn’t caved in.

***

As promised, I was allowed to step outside the following morning into a bright and beautiful day, free and forgiven.
“Now don’t you go and get into more trouble with Jimmy and that Mickey,” Mom cautioned me as I pulled the front door open. “Your father will skin you alive.”
“Nah, I won’t. Promise.”
When she’d turned her back and gone about her business, I hopped down the front steps and ran to the side fence separating our yard from the Riley’s. The garage door behind Jimmy’s house was open wide, and inside I could see him and Mickey working furiously to remove the sleek wheels from Clifford’s wagon. My first impulse was to call out to them and ask them what was up. To make amends; defy my parents’ warnings. Both of them looked up and saw me standing there, but continued with their task without saying a word to me. I watched for a moment and then turned and walked away.


I didn’t leave the yard the entire week. Where was I to go all by myself? To Clifford’s or Allen’s house? I really had no desire to stir up any more trouble with either of them for the time being, and besides, word had spread up and down the block that Mrs. Childs and Mrs. Young were gunning for me and Jimmy and Mickey after the incident at the creek. An alliance had been struck between the two women—a menage de deux—even though Allen’s muddy clothes, lack of dexterity, and injured pride were entirely of his own making. I hadn’t thrown him in the creek, for Pete’s sake—none of us had. And as far as Clifford was concerned, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he would have chosen that dorky neighbor of his over me and Jimmy and Mick. But, he had. I guess his wagon getting Shanghaied served him right in a way.
I was over my mea culpa state of mind and itching to dismount the spiritual horse I’d uncharacteristically hopped on while in prison. Jimmy and Mickey had worked like two tigers tearing up a gazelle on that chug, had hidden the body of the stolen wagon high in the rafters of the garage after they'd dismembered it, as I stood beyond the fence watching. They glanced over at me every now and again, but neither of them bothered to acknowledge my presence.
“Tough luck, chicken shit,” I knew they were saying to one another, and to me. “Tough luck. You ain’t gonna’ share in any of the glory.” That would be Jimmy speaking, of course. Without me being around him, his grammar would be hopelessly spinning ever farther down the whirlpool in the toilet bowl.
I spied on them each afternoon the week following my release from bondage; looked on with certain pangs of envy as they sawed and hammered and cussed the chug together. Now I was no connoisseur of motor cars, or un-motor cars for that matter, but I must say that the thing they’d pieced and patched together was unlike anything I’d ever seen in my thirteen years on this planet. It was just plain ugly. Still, beauty was no requisite for speed, I knew, and the litmus test would be their first test run down Mrs. Riley’s long driveway. If it stayed together I figured they might have a fighting chance of at least getting into the derby. Winning the whole bag of potatoes would be something else again.
The chug was a little noisy during that first run, so they dragged it back into the garage for some minor adjustments, then shot it out again. It didn’t sound as if whatever they’d done to it had corrected the problem, but after the second run they patted one another on the back, shook hands, and most likely would have danced together except they knew I was looking. They were all smiles, and confident their larceny was going to pay handsome dividends the next morning at the race. I wasn’t so sure. The thing had been born on the outskirts of Hell, as far as I was concerned, kind of like a Dr. Frankenstein’s monster on wheels. No good could come of its birth.

I wandered along behind them at a safe distance to the site of the competition, curious to see if Jimmy’s and Mickey’s labors would ripen into a good showing. From all across the city dozens of toe-haired kids had gathered, led by a retinue of beaming fathers and the machines they’d built. Looking over the field of entries it seemed obvious to me that none of the kids could possibly have fashioned those marvelous, perfectly painted, sleek-bodied racers without the help of Ford Motor Company designers. They were beautiful. Somehow the title, “Soapbox Derby”, applied only to the Jimmy-chug. Indeed, he and Mickey had scrounged up a ratty looking crate and mounted it onto the front of the rickety