The Trouble in Me Read online

  Gary walked directly to the car and got in and started it up.

  “But this is my dad’s,” I said, still not convinced that my dad wasn’t lingering in the shadows.

  “It still is,” he said. “I’ll drive it up to Alabama. And you can drive it back to him. End of story.”

  “I don’t have a license!” I exclaimed. “And I don’t really know how to drive.”

  “Sink or swim,” he replied. “That’s how the pros learned.” He shrugged his shoulders as he revved the engine. “Now get in. I can give you a few lessons on the way up, but after that you are on your own.”

  It was a long drive with few words in between. The water pump squealed like a stuck pig the whole time.

  “Why doesn’t this piece of junk have a radio?” Gary asked, slapping at the dashboard where a radio would have been placed.

  “It’s a company car,” I said. “No distractions allowed. Do you want to talk?”

  “Not really,” he said, his eyes shifting back and forth across the rearview mirror as he watched for cops. “Except, why is the engine temperature rising?”

  “Pull over,” I said. “It’s the leaky water pump.”

  My dad kept two jugs of water in the trunk to fill the radiator when it dropped down to half full and the temperature arm on the dashboard pointed to HOT.

  From then on we pulled over at every other gas station and refilled the jugs and kept the water pump working, which in turn kept the engine from seizing up.

  We took the Sunshine State Parkway as far as the new exit in Wildwood. From there he knew the two-lane back roads. We drove through the night and into the morning. Eventually we crossed the Florida-Alabama border. Leigh lived in Dothan, not far from there. As he got closer, Gary began to worry about Leigh’s brothers and he started talking.

  “If I had a gun I’d take care of those brothers,” he said. “Does your dad keep one in the glove compartment?”

  Not that I knew of, but I checked anyway.

  “No,” I answered.

  “Damn,” he said. “I knew I shouldn’t have buried those guns in the backyard, but they were dirty.”

  “You mean they’d be dirty from being buried,” I said, correcting him.

  He backhanded me the moment I said the last word and just as quickly I could taste blood.

  “I don’t tolerate idiots who correct me,” he growled. “I buried them in the vault.”

  “What vault?” I asked, and raised a hand to protect my face.

  “The vault I buried in the hole I dug. You watched me, you idiot,” he said.

  “You told me it was a giant Chinese crested,” I replied.

  “And you were stupid enough to believe it,” he remarked.

  I almost said, Well, who is the stupid one now? but thought better of it.

  “Leigh wanted me to bury my past and start fresh with her,” he continued.

  “And you did it?” I said incredulously.

  “Hey, even a guy like me loves nice girls. I guess that’s what makes me a parent’s nightmare. Huh?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Gary kept his foot on the gas and the water pump was whistling like a train.

  “Pull over,” I said. “It needs water.”

  “No. We’re almost there,” he said.

  The water pump howled. The engine was overheating and I could feel the temperature rise through the firewall and under the bottom of the cabin. The floor was so hot I tucked my shoes up onto the seat.

  “Pull over!” I said. “The car is going to blow.”

  But he wouldn’t. “Her place is just around the bend,” he replied. And it was.

  He turned the corner and the moment we pulled up on the front lawn I didn’t know if he slammed on the brakes or if the engine seized, but we came to an abrupt stop. Smoke was rolling out from under the hood.

  He hopped out and walked with purpose to the front door of a white house trailer.

  “Hey, Leigh,” he called out, and knocked on the door. “Hey, honey!”

  He pushed his hair back to make a nice face when she opened the door. But the door didn’t open.

  He knocked again.

  “It’s me,” he said. “Gary.”

  There were no other cars. The windows were barely cracked open. The trailer home looked empty. I noticed the red flag up on the mailbox and walked across the unmowed grass.

  “Leigh, it’s me,” Gary continued. “Open up.”

  But in his voice I could hear that he was coming to believe something was wrong.

  I opened the mailbox, which was nailed to a post, and pulled out a sealed letter with Gary’s name on it. Somehow I knew that what was in the letter would hurt him more than all his punches had hurt me. Somehow that cruel thought made me feel better, but smaller too, as if I were my old self again.

  “Hey,” I hollered across to him. “Mail call.”

  He half twisted toward me, trying, I’m sure, in those few seconds to imagine what could possibly be in the letter. From the pinched expression on his face he knew it wasn’t good.

  He ran at me and snatched it from my hand then quickly peeled back the bottom of the envelope. With two fingers like tweezers, he removed a much smaller piece of paper. Maybe it was a lined diary page or just some scrap. I knew it would start on the front side with “Dear Gary.” I was standing close enough to read the back, where it ended with larger, looping handwriting: “Love you forever, Leigh.”

  He read both sides and crushed it in his hand. He returned to the car and retrieved the can of lighter fluid I had used to burn my clothes. Then he marched up to the front door of the trailer. He wrapped his leather jacket around his fist and punched the decorative diamond-shaped glass in the door. It popped out of its frame. He squirted some fluid on Leigh’s balled-up letter. Because Alice had dropped his good lighter in the teddy-bear meltdown he pulled out a pack of cheap restaurant matches and lit the letter, then flicked it through the window. Then he went to a side window and smashed the pane and squirted the fluid on the back of an upholstered couch, and across the curtains. Once he set those on fire I knew there was no turning back. He then went around to the other side of the trailer. I heard glass smashing and I figured he continued to do the same.

  When he circled back around to where I was standing he finally said to me, “It was those frigging brothers. They snatched her. They’re gone. No forwarding address. She said she loves me but it’s better that she stick with her family rather than for us to start our own.”

  It was better for her, I knew. But I didn’t say so. And it was probably better for her family. I hoped they were far away. I was glad the Rambler was dead. He couldn’t make me drive around with him like a furious maniac while he tried to find them.

  And then from his frozen position he yelled out, “Oh, crap!” And he ran for the front door and grabbed the handle. It was already too hot and he jerked his hand back. So he kicked the door in. A rolling ball of orange flames and black smoke curled out the top of the doorway like a bucking bull. The power of the released heat rocked the trailer off its foundation then settled it back down off center.

  Gary took a few steps in reverse and caught his breath.

  “I want my gift,” he cried out. “What I gave her.”

  Then he lowered his head and charged the open door. He dove in below the belly of heavy flames and smoke and landed on the floor, which was carpeted and steaming from the melting glue and nylon fibers. And then he scurried on his hands and knees around the corner and he was gone down the hallway.

  I stood there. Flames roared up like lions and shattered the windows and sent hot shards spinning through the air. I crouched down and kept inching up to the flaming door not knowing what to do. I felt the heat throbbing toward me as I crept forward. I reached out and pawed the air, testing to see how close to the door I could possibly get for when he scrambled back out. But taking a running leap through the flaming mouth of the trailer and down its throat was the path he had chosen, and
if I was on his train that was where I would go, too. I would be in his shoes and pants and jacket, and as his double I would have followed him down that hall and into hell. I’d find him. I’d rescue him. Or I’d die with him.

  But I didn’t. I leaned forward against the heat until it became too hot to even stand there. I took a step back and shouted his name. “Gary! Get out of there.” Then I stepped back and stopped and shouted again. “Get out of there!”

  The heat pushed forward and I kept backing up.

  The square bathroom air vent on top of the trailer blew off, followed by a thick rope of loopy smoke. It seemed the entire steel trailer frame was sinking down like a ship burning on the water. And then Gary dove through the back window. He rolled on the grass head over heels with the red ends of his hair smoldering like a fuse.

  “I got it,” he shouted. “It was in her bedroom.” He was stretched out on his back in the bright green grass as he held up the white king and queen from my chess set. His eyes were swollen shut. I was by his side and slapping at the winking embers on his smoking pants and jacket, which seemed like they would combust at any moment.

  “We were going to be the Olympic king and queen and make all the right moves,” he said. “Golden moves.” He reached toward me with the plastic king in one hand and the queen in the other. “Are they melted?” he asked.

  They were not, though they seemed unnaturally stuck to his open hands, as if glued to his palms.

  His swollen arms were loosely raised above his chest and slowly waving in the air like dancing cobras. I hunkered down onto my knees, trying with my fingers to find some clothing cool enough to grab so I could drag him farther away. I hooked my fingers into his belt loops and tugged him forward. Then, at just the moment I lifted my eyes to look at his blistered arms, the thin pink skin around his wrists detached and rolled slowly down his forearms, like rolling socks, all the way to his elbows. It was like watching snakes shed their skin, and the muscles of his skinless flesh glistened like bloody fillets. I turned when I heard the siren on the fire truck. I waved to the firemen and by the time I lowered my hand they were next to me. One man lifted me up as if I were a puppy and carried me out of harm’s way. The rest surrounded Gary and inched him carefully onto a canvas stretcher and carted him off to the arriving ambulance. An EMT held the radio to his mouth while hollering to prep the burn unit for third-degree burns. Then they sped away.

  The firemen aimed their hoses on the remains of the trailer home. Soon the flames were beaten back and steam rose like a silver scrim before my eyes, and I knew it was all over and I would never see him again.

  The police arrived and questioned me, and afterward they took me down to the station. I answered more questions.

  It was easy to be honest about what had happened. Later, after calling my parents and filling them in on the details, the sheriff rented me a room in a small motel.

  My dad said it was going to take him a day to get a loaner car from work and drive up to get me.

  The motel was named The Crimson Tide after the University of Alabama football team. The rooms were linked together all in a row, like train cars. The office was the engine and the custodian’s workshop was the caboose, with a ROLL TIDE flag off the back railing. I had come full circle from jumping onto Gary’s train to this. It seemed to be mocking me.

  They put me in room 1930. On the outside of the door was stenciled in military letters THE UNDEFEATED TEAM. When the door was closed behind me by the trooper, who had told me not to budge, I did not feel undefeated. I felt beaten. I glanced over my shoulder. There was a giant stuffed red elephant on the bed. If I had a match I think I might have set it on fire.

  I suppose if I really had become like Gary I’d have destroyed myself as he was doing, but I wasn’t him. Nor was I his angelic opposite—a “good” version of him.

  It was just me all along playing at being his imaginary friend. It was a kid’s game and I was old enough to know I couldn’t reshape myself into him, but I was so bored with my life I took a chance at trying to be someone else.

  In a day or so I had been brought home. I tried to go back to being myself. I sat in my room and attempted to read, but my tears fell onto the page as if the words were storm clouds hanging darkly over every thought. It seems I was full of sadness. My mother could see it in me and so she helped and we soon moved to another neighborhood. But the trouble came with me like an ember, and it burned slowly, and hid cleverly enough to where I couldn’t feel it, and by the time it flared up again it was too late to put it out, and once more I followed in the shadow of someone else.

  AFTERWORD

  The car ride back to Florida with my dad was as bad as you can imagine.

  First, we went to the junkyard to take insurance photos of his company car because the engine had seized up and the car was totaled. We popped the trunk open and transferred all his concrete sample books into his new company car—a Rambler American, which was the cheapest model they made and a demotion for my father.

  After that he asked me what had happened and I told him all about Gary and Leigh and the fire—but not everything. I didn’t tell him about my inner life and how I had wanted to be Gary. I kept that to myself, locked up in my heart, or thought I had. This is what I remember most clearly about the trip home because it’s the truth that always sticks its knife in you the deepest: We were driving in the slow lane because of the lousy car when he glanced at me and said, “I suppose you think you are a great individualist dressed in that getup like some kind of punk antihero. But you are nothing but a common conformist like all the other Pagoda wannabes that are a dime a dozen.”

  I never answered him. Not properly. How can you reply to something like that when you feel dead inside from just having the fire in your heart reduced to ashes?

  Instead I said, “I hate myself.”

  He glanced over at me with a look of bewilderment on his face.

  After a minute or so he said, “You should join the navy when you turn eighteen. It’ll make a man out of you.”

  “I think I’m doing pretty good on my own,” I replied.

  After that we traveled in silence.

  At home I quit the Sea Cadets. I avoided my family. And after we moved, nothing really changed for me. I stayed holed up in my room. I imagine Gary probably returned to his old self, but I did not go back to being my old self. What trouble was in me hardened and stayed under my skin, even though I realized I was neither cruel enough nor sentimental enough to be him.

  Soon the excitement over Mom’s new baby kept the spotlight off me, which was a good thing. At my new school I didn’t join the chess club or the Latin club as before. I kept slipping out of class and hiding in empty rooms. When I did make a run for the exit I had to pass the school’s trophy case. I noticed there was no trophy moment for lost kids like me who’d rather win a Pagoda Olympics gold medal for nearly killing myself than a school sports event that bored me to tears.

  By the time I made it into high school I didn’t care what might next happen to me. My life was never my own, so I abused it because it wasn’t the one I wanted. I don’t know what happened to Gary—after the hospital he got sent back to juvie. He probably ended up in prison. His life was never his own either because no one would allow him to live it his way.

  I dropped out of school and again moved with my parents, this time to Puerto Rico, where I worked on a hotel construction project with my father. The work didn’t unite us. We didn’t see eye to eye on much.

  I quit and returned to school in Florida, where I moved in with a family who rented me an extra bedroom. They were friendly. They treated me well, but I wasn’t interested in pulling myself together when all along it was my goal to escape my parents and then become someone I loathed more than someone I loved. It didn’t take long for me to be a smart-ass to the nice family and make a mess of their home life, so I moved out. But soon I landed on my feet and was living by myself in a welfare motel and making all my own decisions. That was a breat
h of fresh air.

  At last I was in charge. I could choose my own future.

  But while I was waiting around to make a choice, I did what I always did and found someone to make a choice for me. I met some nice guys and they had a plan to make a ton of quick money. They were just missing one piece of the plan to make it all happen, and since I had always been a piece of someone else’s plan I once again fit right in. I wanted to be just like them and that led to another disaster, which released the trouble already lurking within me. If you read Hole in My Life, you’ll see what I mean.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Jack Gantos has been hailed as “elementary school’s answer to Hunter S. Thompson” (BCCB). He is the author of many books, including the Jack Henry and Joey Pigza series; the Rotten Ralph books; the Printz Honor and Sibert Honor memoir Hole in My Life; and the two Norvelt novels-Dead End in Norvelt, recipient of the Newbery Medal, and From Norvelt to Nowhere. He lives in Boston. You can sign up for email updates here.

  BY JACK GANTOS

  Heads or Tails: Stories from the Sixth Grade

  Jack’s New Power: Stories from a Caribbean Year

  Desire Lines

  Jack’s Black Book

  Joey Pigza Swallowed the Key

  Jack on the Tracks: Four Seasons of Fifth Grade

  Joey Pigza Loses Control

  Hole in My Life

  What Would Joey Do?

  Jack Adrift: Fourth Grade Without a Clue

  The Love Curse of the Rumbaughs

  I Am Not Joey Pigza

  Dead End in Norvelt

  From Norvelt to Nowhere

  The Key That Swallowed Joey Pigza

  The Trouble in Me

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