Don't Take Chance
by
M. F. Lipari
The Lie
I suppose Chance has been running through my head lately because it was just around a year ago that he went missing. I know I should've told somebody about what happened to him, but he made me promise not to tell, and, besides, he did it all for me. He knew how much trouble I would get in if I told, so when the police came to my door I lied.
I still remember the desperate look and the thousand tears on his mother's face when I said that he was gone. But he made me swear on my blood not to tell; he was convinced that nobody would believe the truth anyway.
At times I thought Chance was crazy, or maybe just partly crazy. Other times, I was certain that Chance was destined to become somebody real famous. A really great man doesn't just sit around thinking "Gee, I ought to become great today." No, he just gets up off his butt and does it. That's the way Chance was. He certainly was different; that's why I liked him so much.
I guess the whole damned thing started simply because we couldn't find something fun to do. I roll that day over in my mind like a re-run of one of those early television cartoons. Somehow when I think about it, I realize now that we should have seen something coming.
The air just wasn't right on the day it all started. Don't misunderstand; it was a perfect day alright. The sky was blue, the wind was cool and crisp, and the lively smell of magnolia was drifting in circles around my backyard. But it was the last week in August, and in south Louisiana the last week of August should be soggy and hot, and the sky should smell of salt and look like gray cotton.
It was one full week till school. Me and Chance were sitting on my back porch eating ice cream sandwiches, drinking Coke, and trying hard to get our minds off St. Ignatius High School. Chance looked pretty down; so did I, for contrary to the pious name and all, St. Ignatius is a bad school, full of a lot of bad kids.
Two gangs work out of St. Ignatius. The Southside Wrecking Crew and The Mordant Mob. I suppose one can tell where the Crew got its name from, but nobody has ever been able to make the Mob. While The Crew is responsible for lunch money extortion, the Mob dabbles in drugs and gambling. But the one thing both companies participate in is making a ninth grader's life similar to the third monkey on the gang plank of Noah's Ark.
That's right. We were incoming members of the freshman class.
"Hey, Man, what you wanta do?" Chance suddenly mumbled through a mouthful of ice cream.
"I don't know. What you wanta do?"
That's where we were when all of our troubles began, when all of a sudden a leg poked through two overgrown wisteria vines on my back fence, like somethin' out of a vampire novel.
"Shit, Brandon, look at that," Chance said.
"Hey, you! Whatcha doin' back there?" I called out.
"Y'all don't shoot," a voice echoed from behind the fence. "I need some help."
Me and Chance jumped off the porch and ran to the bushes to see what the matter was. Wow, we would've paid a body for what happened next. It was John Naughton Plauche' caught in my fence.
"Hey. Y'all get me out of this mess," he hollered.
Me and Chance looked at each other and smiled. Then we grabbed hold of Plauche's hands and boosted him out of the vines and over the fence.
Plauche' barely landed on his feet. He was wearing a frayed, cheap baseball jersey that was partially blood-stained. He shook leaves out of his dark, curly Cajun hair and smiled. "Thanks man," he said as he dusted off his clothes. "I'm Plauche'"
"No kiddin'," Chance said.
"Y'all know me?" Plauche asked as he proceeded through my yard to the front driveway.
"Who don't know you?" Chance answered.
Plauche stopped abruptly, stared Chance in the eye, kicked a piece of dirt, and started walking again.
"Hey, what were you doin' back up in the woods like that?" I said while trying to keep up with Plauche.
"What's your name, kid?" Plauche said, staring at the pavement as he walked. He didn't even answer my question.
"I'm Brandon La Croix."
"You ask a lot of questions, Brandon," he said and shook his head.
Without thinking about it, me and Chance found ourselves following Plauche down my street. But seeing how Plauche was not talking, I was beginning to feel a little stupid following him like that, so I stopped plumb-dead in the middle of the street. Chance saw me and stopped too.
Plauche took a few more steps, then turned and said, "Hey, what's wrong with y'all?"
"Yeah, Man! What's up?" Chance shot a sour glance and nodded for me to continue.
I took it as an invitation to join John Naughton Plauche. See'in how Plauche called the rules at St. Iggy, and see'in how everyone at school claimed to know him, and seein' how Plauche was the most popular kid on the campus, me and Chance followed him like two rats behind the crazy guy who played a flute to capture all those kids.
"Okay," I said and continued.
"Where we goin'?" Chance broke the silence as we marched next to Plauche.
"Up the street," Plauche answered.
That's all Plauche had to say. Plauche had the reputation for charming anybody into a set of dire circumstances. Some people are like that; it's a spirit thing, the power of suggestion. Plauche owned the dark spirit. He once convinced every member of the St Ignaius High School Band to drop their pants at half-time during homecoming. And after that, he only became ever more popular. He was the only kid who was allowed in both gangs. Yeah, most kids thought it was a privilege to be a part of one of Plauche's schemes. I tell you that at that moment I felt it was a huge pile of good circumstances that Plauche had fallen into my Wisteria patch. Ain't it a helluva' shame, though, that we can't see that the earth is not straight, but round, that it takes a pretty sharp turn when you go too far; I should've seen that. At that moment, though, I was happy that me and Chance was in with Plauche.
We passed Samara Bonaventure's house on our way clear to St. Rose Street. Sam was in her front yard, petting CousCous, her pet terrier.
"Hey, Sam," Chance blurted out at her.
"Hey, Chance," she said as she waved back with her mouth hanging open, an obvious reaction to the present company we were keeping.
A curt smile ran across Chance's face when he waved back at her. I felt a little on a high-horse, too, being that we were with Plauche. So we continued up St. Rose with all the confidence of a pack of Catahoula hounds in a squirrel's nest, and as we walked Plauche looked at me peculiarly, as though he was about to disown us, but then he seemed to change his mind. "Brandon," he said forcefully, "what y'all up to tonight?" Then he stopped.
"Uh, uh," I began to stutter, knowing how uncool it was not to have any plans on a Saturday night.
"We're gonna hang at Northside Mall." Chance stepped right in and saved me.
"Ah, man. I was thinking y'all might ought to go camping with me."
"Where?" Chance asked.
"On Lafitte's Bayou."
"Wow, Lafitte's Bayou. Sure, but will your mom let you go?" I said.
Chance immediately kicked me on the shin.
"Shit, man," I chopped at him for hitting me.
"I'll go," Chance said.
Plauche shifted his weight to one leg, "I don't know. You boys seem to have trouble with your mothers."
"Not me, Man!" Chance exclaimed. "I can do anything I want." Chance stared at me with his usual cat-eyed stare, daring me to say okay.
"Alright," I finally said, "I'll go."
"Good," Plauche said. "Y'all meet me at the old train bridge off Thibodeaux Road at five-thirty. Oh, bring some food. Lots of it." He started walking away from us, but before he left, he turned around and yelled. "By the way, my real name is Naughton."
Now take it from me as the gospel, John Naughton Plauche was never called John or Johnny. I'm pretty certain that his mother had even forgotten his name. Everybody who knew him called him Plauche. But only his closest friends were allowed to call him Naughton, and those were the kids who had it made at St. Ignatius.
"What are we going to do?" Chance hissed at me as we turned back towards my house. "We'll never live this down. Our one chance to make it big, and shit, now we're gonna look like two idiots."
"We can tell him that our uncle died."
"Yeah, great idea," Chance said sarcastically. "Do we tell him that both of us had an uncle die on the same day?"
"Well," I grumbled. "You are the one to get us into this."
"Me, you stupid idiot. You said you'd come, too."
"Oh, yeah," I screamed, not taking the time to realize that, by now, we were standing right smack-dab in front of my house, and that Mama was perched on the porch with both hands on her hips, watching us.
"Hey, hey. What's going on?" She said.
"What?" I looked up at her.
"What are you two fighting about?" She asked.
"Uh, uh… Oh, we were arguing whether or not I should sleep over at his house tonight." I turned to Chance and winked. "I told him that it was my turn to sleep at his house. Right Chance? But he said that it was his turn to sleep at my house."
"Yeah, Mrs. La Croix," he answered. Chance didn't know where I was going with the lie, but as usual he backed me up.
"You know he slept over last Saturday."
"I'm afraid he's right, Chance," she said.
"You see, I told you so." I hammed it up, then I punched Chance like we had really been in a fight. "Can I go, Mom?"
"Well. If y'all quit all this fighting."
"Great," I yelled, knowing that I still had to dupe Chance's mother.
As soon as mama went back into the house, Chance walloped me on the arm. "Why did you tell her that lie?"
"Stupid. You're so stupid, Chance. I tell my mom that I'm at your house, and you tell yours that you're at mine."
"I ought to punch you in the mouth for getting' me in this mess," Chance said as we shuffled down the road towards his house.
Chapter Two
The Truth
One great thing I forgot about Chance Boudreaux was that he never, not under any circumstances, did he ever lie to his mother. You know, now that I think about it, Chance's mother may have been the reason he was such a good person.
Chance's mother was very beautiful. Most guys heckled him about her, and he didn't like that. I knew better than to say something about how pretty she was. But that didn't stop me from thinking it. She was part black, and you could see it in the slight kink in her hair and the shine of her caramel-colored skin. Chance didn't let me talk about it. It never mattered to me. Not ever. But it mattered to him.
As we started towards Chance's house it only then just occurred to me that he wouldn't lie to her.
"Hey, what you gonna do?"
"Ain't no way she's gonna let me go down the bayou all night without a grownup." He was shaking his head.
"What are we gonna do, then?"
"Don't know."
We quietly continued our walk through the Garden District, thinking about how to get out of the mess we were in.
"I know what," I said, "let me do all the lyin'!"
"What do you mean?"
"I'll tell her you'll be spending the night with me. And you don't say a word. Then you won't be the one to lie."
"Just because you don't say the lies don't mean you ain't tellin' em."
I don't even know why I tried with him. It was that way with him and his mother. They trusted each other.
"What you gonna do?"
"I'm gonna tell her the truth."
"Shit, no. You'll get me in trouble. She'll call my mother. You just can't do it."
Chance suddenly stopped, stared into the cool sun like it was offering him an idea. "Listen, Brandon, you're just gonna have to trust me. I'm telling her the truth. It'll be okay."
That's the way it was with Chance. Whenever he decided to be forthright, things just turned out okay. So I trusted him. Now that I look back on the mess of trouble we were fixin' to get into, I wish I hadn't.
As we hauled ourselves up the front steps of Chance's porch, I heard the sound of the television blaring through the blue cotton curtains in the living room. When we entered the house, Mrs. Boudreaux was standing in front of the set watching her daily game show while she was folding a pile of clothes.
"Hey, Miss Boudreaux," I called out over the loud TV.
She barely looked up at us. She really loved those game shows.
"Come on," Chance whispered, "follow me."
We made out way into the kitchen. "Sit down," he said. "You want something to eat?"
"No, Chance, I don't. What the hell are you doin'?"
"Here," he said, and he pulled out some cookies and milk. "Eat these, and act like nothing special is gonna happen."
I set about downing the cookies. I didn't want them, but they were homemade. That was just like Miss Boudreaux; her cookies were always homemade. She was an artist cook and before long I had eaten too many.
Chance went about the kitchen, pacing up and down like a newborn puppy.
"Chance, what are you doin'?"
"Shut up, would you?"
Then right out of the blue his face sprouted a huge grin, and I knew things were gonna be alright.
"Mom," he suddenly yelled out from the kitchen.
"Yeah, Chance?" She answered.
"Mom," he said a little louder, "can I spend the night with Brandon?"
"Hold on, baby, I'll be in there in just a minute."
Chance didn't stop at that answer. "Mom," he screamed from the kitchen again.
"Yeah, honey," she answered back over the sounds of the television.
"Where's my backpack?"
"What do you need it for?" Miss Boudreaux said softly, for now she was in the kitchen facing us.
"I want to spend the night with Brandon."
"Oh, did you ever think about asking me first?"
"I just did, Mama."
"When?"
"M—om." Chance grinned. "Don't you think you better lay off those game shows. I think they make you lose your mind."
Mrs. Boudreaux suddenly broke out into a smile that only angels are allowed to have. "Okay, honey. What do you want?"
"I'm gonna go with Brandon to stay the night with him."
"Did you ask Mrs. La Croix if you can spend the night?"
"Yeah."
"Let me call her and make sure she doesn't mind."
"Oh, Mama, you don't have to call her and check up on me every time, do you? Okay, I can't lie to you," Chance said and raised his arms. "You caught me. We're really gonna go sailing down the bayou and out into the Gulf of Mexico on a grand adventure. We're gonna meet pirates, and rustle alligators, and rescue girls in distress. That's what we're gonna do."
I was fixing to let go of my bowels when he said that. Beads of sweat popped up on my forehead. Mama would kill me when she found out.
But Miss Boudreaux didn't turn purple with anger like I expected. She laughed instead. "Okay, Chance. I suppose you're getting a little too old for me to go checking up on you."
"No, Mama, I'm serious. We are fixing to wash away down the river like Huck and Jim."
Oh, shit, that's enough, I thought. She already said yes. Take it.
"You know, Chance, you really do read too many action adventure stories." She laughed. She crossed the room and hugged Chance and gave him a kiss on his forehead. He scowled when she did that, but I knew he secretly liked it. You see, I knew Chance better than anybody. He really did like it.
Now that I think about it, I wished she had believed. If she had, it wouldn't be the last kiss that she would ever give her son. Isn't it funny that I had to lie to my mama? All Chance had to do was tell the truth.
Chapter Three
The Midnight Ride on Paul Revere
The train bridge off old Thibodeaux Road was conspicuously quiet when me and Chance arrived that afternoon. We heard only the sounds of turtle crickets playing under the bridge. Naughton was nowhere to be seen, and I was beginning to get nervous.
"Hey, you still want to go through with this?" I asked Chance.
"What do you mean? Sure. Don't you?"
"I don't know; we'll be all on our own; nobody is gonna know where we are. And what about the bayou. Shit, man, the bayou is scary during the day, much less at night."
But Chance wasn't listening to me. He just stared down that dusty, old road, anxious to get on the water.
"You think Naughton meant for us to meet him on the bridge, or on the water?" he asked.
Chance completely ignored me and scrambled down the levee to the bottom of the bridge. I followed. I'm good at following, always have been.
It was only five yards to the bank, but it felt like fifty as we waded through soda cans, left-over fishing gear, and ant colonies that tunneled through the top of decayed, crusted lunch bags.
"Ah man, look at this place," I complained.
I was seriously beginning to hope that Naughton was gonna give up on us two flunkies and find some other dupes to con. But he didn't do that. For in just about two minutes we heard the rumbling of a six-thousand year old motor boat plugging its way towards us.
"Is that him?" Said Chance. A huge smile ran across his face.
"Jesus H. Christ, I sure hope not."
"Hey, y'all," Naughton yelled and waved. He was clinging to the side of the Paul Revere. Yep, that's what was painted on the sides of the boat—if you could call the gray, tattered hunk of wood going putt-putt down the middle of the bayou, a boat. How much dorkier could we get?
"Grab the rope," said Naughton. As he cut the engine, he stood and threw the rope at Chance.
"Ah, man," Chance said, excitedly. "This is great."
"You got to be kiddin'," I said.
Naughton and Chance turned and looked at me like I had been locked up in Jackson State Mental Hospital for quite some time.
"What do you mean?" Naughton asked. He was now on the river bank with his chest proudly stuck out like every bit of stinking pride he had was packed inside the stupid muscles of that chest.
"Uh, uh," I stuttered for a few seconds. "Are you sure she's sea worthy?"
What a stupid question! I kicked myself hard for that question. But it did seem to get me out of looking like a shit-faced coward.
"Sure, it's sea worthy, man. Besides we're just goin' down the bayou."
"Come on," Chance whispered as he put his face up to mine. "Don't chicken out on us now." Chance waited a moment for me to reply, but he didn't push me any further "Listen, man," he continued, "I won't go if you don't want to."
Chance meant it. He would risk looking like a pansy, and risk getting shook down at school for me. With one nod of my head, he would have turned around and walked away from the adventure and from all the possibilities of being in with the popular crowd at St. Ignatius High School.
"Alright, I'm in," I said, at last.
So, okay, there we were fixing to take a midnight ride on the Paul Revere down some of the most treacherous bayou in south Louisiana. I handed Plauche my Boy Scout pack.
"What the hell is this?" he asked.
"You said to bring supplies."
"No, I said bring some food. How much food do you need to eat? Look at this stuff. Is this a Boy Scout pack? Are you some kind of freaking Boy Scout?"
"Yeah, and I'm one badge away from being an Eagle. You wanta make something about that." Truth is, I was proud of being a Boy Scout, and on that subject he wasn't gonna make me cower
"Okay," he said and smiled. Then he grabbed my pack and laid it in the front of the boat.
Within just a few minutes, maybe less than that, I had forgotten all my fears about the trip. An ancient feeling came over me, like the hunter on his first kill, or a sailor spearing a whale. There is something about a man on the water that makes him feel that he is the master of his destiny, and once I embarked on that scrawny, pathetically doomed ship I was suddenly the king of the high seas. I suppose that was what we all felt as we headed into the jungle. Slow, though, it was, for the outboard motor could only push us along a little bit faster than the gators, and that ain't fast.
For five miles, from the old train bridge on Thibodeaux Road to the overpass at the highway, we were proud of ourselves. We passed a couple of hunting camps and smiled and waved at the Budweiser-sedated Cajuns sprawled out on the banks waiting for catfish to take a little nibble off their worms. Chance kicked off his shoes, laid back on the sun-caked, old leather bench and rested his feet up on the railing while I sat on the bow with my hand gliding through the water.
The ride was smooth; the sun was glittering. But then the air changed; that's when we passed under the overpass at the main highway in Hahnville. Of course I felt obliged to point out that fact to Naughton.
"Hey," I said. "You notice anything peculiar?"
"Nah," he answered. Chance had fallen asleep, so I didn't even bother waking him.
"Where's all the people?"
"What people?" Naughton answered.
"The camps, the fisherman. They all disappeared."
"Oh, that's because we're headed deep into the bayou. There ain't no camps where we're going."
"It's getting dark, and the trees don't look the same."
"Yeah, ain't it great?" Naughton smirked.
Naughton was contented, but not me. Something just plain wasn't right. It smelled real lonely where we were headed. Suddenly the trees weren't just on the banks anymore; they loomed over us, and their branches resembled giant gnarly arms. And the clear, lively green leaves turned old and nearly black. A faint speckle of sunlight forged its way through the branches making it look more like eight o'clock than five-thirty. When the sun failed to touch upon the water, the view grew cloudy. Every tree, every log, and every piece of moss looked like a wild animal waiting to pounce.
"Hey, Naughton," I said and fired a quick glance at him. "Shouldn't we be setting up camp by now?"
"Just a little while longer," he replied.
"Where're we headed?" I asked.
"Don't know."
"What do you mean, you don't know?"
"I ain't never been here before. How should I know?"
"What do you mean you never been here before? I thought you went camping all the time."
"Never been camping in my life."
"Shit. Chance, wake up," I shouted.
"What?" Chance said, rescuing his Chicago Bulls cap off his face before it fell in the water as he sat up.
"Wow. Shit!" He said as he looked around the looming darkness. "How long have I been asleep?"
"Never mind that. We don't know where we are, and we don't know where we're going."
"What do you mean?"
"Naughton has never done this before."
"What?" Chance stood abruptly; the boat started rocking side to side.
"Sit down, Chance," shouted Naughton.
"Look, slow this stupid boat down," Chance demanded.
"All right," said Naughton. He pulled the boat up to an old cypress knee and shut down the engine. "What's wrong with y'all?"
"I can't believe you brought us out here without any clue of where we'd be going," I shouted.
"Oh, does the Boy Scout have a problem with the dark," Naughton razzed me. "What—you need your Mommy?"
"You son-of-bitch," I yelled.
"That's enough," Chance broke in. "It's not that big a deal. We'll just camp here, and in the morning we'll take the same route back up the bayou."
"I don't know how that's gonna happen. We must've taken fifteen different turns at fifteen different forks."
"Jesus, Brandon. Just once, would you trust something will work out?" Chance added. "Here, take your pack and climb onto the bank."
I stood and reluctantly grabbed my pack, glared at Naughton like he was the devil himself and sprang across the bow of the boat towards the bank.
"No, not there, you idiot!" Naughton yelled at me.
I made land, alright, in cold, stiff mud. At first it had only my two feet, kinda like a mouse in a mouse trap. For a moment, as I stared down at my missing shoes, I chuckled at the scene. Then I looked back up at Naughton who began to laugh.
"Ha, Ha," I said sarcastically. The joke soon ceased, for within a few short moments the mud had swallowed my knee caps. "Jesus, get me out of here!" I screamed. My waist was being vacuumed down, down into the bowels of the Mississippi Delta.
"Grab his pack," Chance told Naughton, calmly. "I'll get him."
Chance jammed his tennis shoes between two cypress knees and pitched his body forward. "Here," he said, as he steadily grabbed my hand.
In the beginning, the most Chance could do was stop the sucking motion of the mud on my body.
"Get him out!" Naughton was on the bank screaming.
"I can't. It's like concrete." Chance was beginning to break as the rippled strain of his muscles popped through his white baseball jersey and the sweat poured through the cotton.
"Don't let go, Chance," I looked up at him and cried. "There ain't no bottom here."
"I won't," he whispered with a faint breath, for that was all the strength he seemed to have left.
"Jump," Naughton said.
"Okay, here we go," he said, "Ready? Hold on." Chance bounded across the mud to the hard river bank, and I trailed like a dead corpse being dragged through a cemetery.
I was shocked at how strong Chance was, how fast thinking. And I was grateful. But the mud had swallowed half my body. I laid on my back staring straight into the top of the trees. That's all I managed to do since I was paved in a hundred pounds of Mississippi mud. I must have looked like a shitty Pillsbury Doughboy.
Naughton started laughing as I tried to roll over. I couldn't even sit up, so Chance had to help me take off my pants. That's when Naughton really let me have it.
"What, didn't the Scouts even teach you how to take off your own pants? Or do you need your precious Mommy for that too?" He really laid it on thick.
"Shut up, Naughton," said Chance. "Go set up camp. Get some firewood and some bayou water so we can clean these pants."
Naughton was really laying it on thick now. The worse part is that I wanted to go home. Muttering, and laughing to himself, Naughton shuffled off into the woods.
Chapter FourThe Book
The next thirty minutes the bayou grew cool. I suppose I may have been the only one to feel cold since I was lingering around in the middle of the swamp in nothing but mud-caked Jockey shorts. But as I now recall, there was something else in the air. A sour wind had blown through camp. It came in from the north, or west, could have been east. We really didn't know where in the world we were.
"Hey, Naughton, light the fire," Chance ordered.
"With what?" Naughton answered.
"You mean to tell me you didn't bring matches on a camp out?" Chance said.
"All I brought was a six-pack of Dr. Pepper."
"Jesus!"
"That's okay," I interrupted. "I've got matches in my pack."
For the first time Naughton acknowledged me with a curt grin. "All right, man," he said, and then gave me a high thumbs up. After that we started getting along.
Nighttime submerged us into darkness. A mass of trees loomed overhead not even allowing any moonlight through. Only firelight brightened our spirits and our camp. Sure, we had been used to camping in our backyards; that was easy, what with moonlight, and the shine from a nearby street lamp. Now, except for the glowing green eyes of raccoons staring at us from the woods, it was black.
I was shivering. We had soaked my pants in the bayou water and hung them on a cypress tree branch to dry. With no pants and only damp boxers, I sat as close to the fire as possible, staring deeply into the flames.
"Hey, y'all hungry?" Naughton asked.
"Yeah," Chance and I said, at the same time.
Naughton flipped me a warm Dr Pepper. Chance pulled out his Mama's homemade brownies. I put my potato chips and Oreos on the pecan log near the fire, and we started the feast.
"Ah, man, hot soda. It just don't taste right," Naughton complained. "Anybody bring some water?"
Me and Chance shook our heads in unison while gobbling down the Oreos. A good half-hour passed and then we slowed our eating enough to talk.
"Hey, Brandon. Seriously, you alright?" Naughton asked.
I suddenly looked down at myself, squatting in my shit-brown underwear, practically perched over the fire like a chicken over her roost, and I started laughing. Chance swallowed his last brownie, glanced over at me, and he, too, let out a howl. Just at that moment, we were under a misguided notion that we were finally having some fun.
We soon grew lazy, warmed by the fire and stuffed like little fat puppies after their first feeding. The late summer locusts began their busy chatter; an occasional frog burped, letting us know that he was not rattled by our presence.
"Hey, where we gonna sleep?" Chance broke in.
"Oh, I got a plastic tarp," Naughton answered.
"Plastic! Plastic is awful."
"I got a down sleeping bag," I said.
"Well, there's three of us," Naughton replied.
"If you unzip it, it opens to the size of a full bed."
Chance and Naughton nodded their heads, but none of us was about to admit that we were going to sleep together. So the air went quiet.
"Hey, you two boys going to St. Ignatius next year," Naughton broke the silence.
"Uh huh."
"What grade y'all in?"
"Ninth," Chance answered.
"Yeah, I'm in tenth," said Naughton.
"Everybody knows you, Naughton," I said.
Naughton lowered his head between his knees for a second; when he raised it his eyes were motionless with no expression. "Oh, yeah," he whispered and shrugged his shoulders.
"We went to elementary school with you," Chance said. "You were always in trouble. Remember?"
Still no reply from Naughton.
"Yeah. Remember how cool everybody thought you were?" I joked.
"They still do," Chance said.
Naughton shrugged his shoulders again. I was thinking he was shy, but that wasn't it.
"Remember the time you locked old, fat Miss Shackleford in the teacher's bathroom? Man, you could hear her scream all the way to the lunch room. Remember, Naughton?" I laughed.
Chance elbowed me as I continued to laugh. He knew, alright, that something was wrong with Naughton. And that it wasn't just a good old fashioned case of shyness.
"Hey, Naughton," Chance changed the subject, "how'd you get your mama to let you go tonight?"
"I don't have to ask nobody for nothing. Never do." Naughton was staring at us slant-eyed.
"Wow, that's great," I pronounced.
Chance elbowed me again, hard this time.
"Shit, man, what's up with you?" I said.
"Shut up," he snapped, then he turned back to Naughton. "It's because you don't have a mama, do you, Naughton?"
Naughton shook his head and said, "Nah, I live with a foster family. It's my third since second grade."
Me and Chance and Naughton went real quiet, staring into the fire like it held some answers to life or something stupid. I was just embarrassed for Naughton.
"Where'd your parents go?" I asked.
"Brandon!" Chance tried to stop me.
"No, it's okay," Naughton said, and he leaned towards the fire and poked it with a stick. "Nobody ever lets me talk about it." He paused. "My mother was killed in a car accident. A drunk driver just slammed into her at a red-light and never stopped. He just left her for dead. She never told anybody who my father was. Grandma was already in a nursing home, so they placed me with a foster family." He paused. "Placement. Ain't it a horrible word?" Naughton stared into the flame. The emptiness in his eyes shot shivers down my neck.
"Dishes get placed in a cabinet," he continued, "all tucked away somewhere until they're needed. Not people. You don't just place a person somewhere until he is needed. You know, most of the time, nobody needs me. That's why I didn't ask nobody about camping. They don't need me. Until they get the check from the state. Most of the time I just go when I want to."
The popping firewood threw sparkles into the treetops and for a moment took away our sorrow.
"Hey, man," Chance said to Naughton, "I know what its like. My dad left when I was in third grade."
"Yeah, where did he go?" asked Naughton.
"I don't know. Mama never talks about it."
"Why did he go?"
"They fought a lot. But I really think it was because my mama's black; he just couldn't handle the way people treat us."
"Your mama's black?" Naughton stared up at Chance. "You know, I thought there was something peculiar looking about you."
"His mama is part-black, and she's real pretty," I said.
"That's enough," Chance scolded me.
"Hey, man, you ain't got no problems with me. I don't care what color anybody is. That stuff's in the past, anyway." Naughton smiled for the first time.
"Not entirely," Chance said and shrugged his shoulders.
Chance wasn't gonna let us talk about it anymore. Sometimes, though, I thought he needed to talk about it. Just like Naughton. But he changed the subject real fast.
"Do we know where we are?" he asked.
"What do you mean?" answered Naughton.
"I mean, do we know how to get out of here?"
"Sure. In the morning, we just take the boat back down the bayou."
"Hey, what time is it?" I asked.
We glanced at each other. Nobody had a watch.
"Wow," Chance laughed, "ain't it strange not knowing what time it is?"
God, it really was strange. Besides the wasted, lazy hours during summer when Mama would leave me alone to explore the wonders of the ditch that ran past the fence in my backyard, my life was bounded, chained by the minute hands of the clock. When the clock read seven-thirty-except on Saturday mornings-I was supposed to eat my breakfast, whether I was hungry or not. At ten-thirty, right after the nightly news, I had to be tucked in my bed. And at eight-fifteen every morning, the dreaded school bus arrived. Until that ill-fated campout, there had been no escape from the clock. All of a sudden me and Chance and Naughton were walking into a season without boundaries. We would have called it freedom then, but now that I look back on it, it was a little like Hell.
"Hey, maybe it's time to lay out the tarp and sleeping blanket," Naughton suddenly said.
"Okay." Chance nodded.
Naughton and Chance made our bed; meanwhile, I checked my pants. They were still wet. So we settled in for the night, the three of us on the same blanket. I wouldn't have admitted it, but I was glad we had to bunk together.
As the fire dissolved into a smoldering heap, the moonlight strung long, eerie shadows through our camp. Animal hooves trooping between the trees vibrated more like human feet than deer, and the persistent echo of an owl hollering for its mate sounded like an elderly moaning woman. The ever maddening crooked bayou lapped all night long, and every now and then something dangling from a tree slithered or plopped into the water. Despite the noises, however, I soon fell asleep.
Mama had always griped about what a sound sleeper I was. "Good grief, Brandon! You could've slept through the bombing of Hiroshima," she would say. On school mornings, she practically had to hit me over the head with a pillow to get me to wake up. She never had to do that on Saturdays, though; on Saturdays I was up before Scooby Doo concluded his first howl.
I was sleeping so soundly that I didn't hear Chance trying to wake me up, probably around midnight. We didn't have a watch, so we didn't know what time it was.
"Brandon," I heard a voice seeping into a dream I had been having about Sally Watson. "Brandon," the voice said again, and then a poke at my shoulder finally did the job.
"What," I said angrily. I always hated it when someone woke me up.
"Hey, man, I think someone's out there."
"What are you talking about?" I said, but I tried to lay my head back down.
Chance poked me again. "Hear that?" he said.
"Leave me alone," I said and rolled over.
"Naughton." Chance turned and poked Naughton next.
It was too late, I was awake. "Hear what?" I said as I groggily sat up.
"Listen." Chance put his finger to his mouth to hush me.
The night had turned as black as a black cat. A cloud must have rolled in from the north and covered the big yellow moon. My muscles tightened around my neck as I fumbled around the camp for the flashlight I had in my backpack. If only that stupid cloud would cross over the moon!
"I don't hear anything," I whispered.
"Shh!" Chance muttered. "There, listen."
For an instant, I heard nothing, but then it came at me. Someone was near, very near. And it sounded like he was reading a map.
"Naughton, wake up," I whispered.
"What," he answered.
The noise broke again.
"Someone's out there."
"No way," said Naughton.
"Listen up."
We remained motionless and waited for the noise to start back up again. Soon the rattling of the fellow's map started again, and it sounded like he was real close.
"Who's there?" Naughton said.
I finally found my flashlight, turned it on, and raised the beam right smack dabbed into the eyes of the intruder.
"Hey, you," I yelled before I got a good look at the fellow.
I started to laugh, for a huge mama raccoon and three sickly looking babies stared back at the flashlight as they sat on a log feasting on our left over Oreos.
"Scat!" Chance screamed at them as though he was mad. "Who was stupid enough to leave food out, anyway?" said Chance.
Chance could, now, act fierce and unafraid all he wanted, but that wasn't stopping me and Naughton from laughing.
"What's wrong with y'all?" Chance said and waved us away. "We could've been in danger."
"That's okay, Chance," I said, cutting the teasing short. "I needed to go take a leak anyway. Somebody put some more wood on the fire so I can see."
"Ah, man, do it in the woods. Not around here," Naughton complained as he added a few more sticks to the fire.
"I will, I will. But, Jeez, Man, I gotta see where I'm going."
I was relieved when the cloud finally crossed over to the dark side of the moon and threw shadows on the glittering darkness. Only then was I able to see well enough to stroll back to the water where the Paul Revere was moored.
As I neared the shore, I hesitated, creeping ever so slowly. Making sure I missed sinking in the mud again, I looked for the giant Cypress where we had hung my pants. I found them still hanging and still damp, but when I was finished, I slipped them on anyway.
For a moment I leaned on the Cypress tree and gazed at the reflection of the half-moon bouncing off the water and the wild creatures of the night. I chuckled at myself. It was all so suddenly like a dazzling fairy tale where the swan, or in my case a bayou crane, dances on the lake. How could anybody be afraid of this?
But, then I had to return to the campfire, and as I shifted back through the woods I slipped, a little, on the soggy ground, and lost my standing position. So much so that I found myself hunched over and peering straight into the dirt. It was at that moment that I saw something shiny stuck in the mud.
It was a book half-buried in the peat bog. Because it was soaked in mud, it looked like it had been there a very long time. Instead of tugging on it and possibly breaking it, I rammed my finger into the soft dirt and scooped it up from underneath. It was small enough, so I placed it in my pocket and continued back to camp. Chance and Naughton were perched near the fire when I returned. They were chomping on the remainder of the brownies.
"Hey, y'all, what are we gonna eat for breakfast, if y'all eat all of those now?" I asked.
"Oh, we can go back to the last bridge and eat at McDonalds," Naughton said.
"Oh yeah! Did anybody bring some money?"
"I got twenty dollars," Chance said.
"Great, then give me some cookies," I said and plopped down near the fire so that my pants would dry quicker. But when I sat, I felt the clump of muddy book in my pocket. "Hey, y'all look at what I found." I stood and pulled the clump out of my back pocket.
"Wow!" Naughton said, "Where'd you get that?"
I scraped the mud away, revealing a completely silver-plated book. "Wow, it's silver. Wow," I said.
Naughton suddenly jumped up and snatched it from me. "That's not silver, stupid," he laughed. "That's pewter."
"What the hell is pewter?"
"I don't know. I just know it ain't silver. It's not shiny enough."
"I don't know, Naughton," I said and grabbed it back. "It looks silver to me.
"Can I see it?" Chance asked.
"Sure." I handed it to him.
With the book in hand, Chance tilted it towards the light. Me and Naughton glanced over his shoulder.
"You know, I don't think this book is neither silver nor pewter. It's not heavy enough." He slowly opened it. "And I don't think it belongs to some ordinary Joe," he was suddenly whispering.
"Look at that," Naughton said and pointed to the first page. "The paper. That's not real paper. It looks like thin skin. What's this writing?"
"Maybe it's French," I said.
"No it's not," Naughton said. "I've seen real French, and that don't look anything like it. Besides whoever wrote that didn't know how to write. Look, someone couldn't even get the letters in the right direction."
Chance laughed and dropped his hand over the page and turned it ever so lightly. The following page contained mostly numbers.
"Look. What does that mean?" Naughton asked. "18-14-11-04."
"Maybe it's the date of publication," I said.
Chance shook his head. "You ever hear of a thirteenth or eighteenth month?"
"Look, here at the bottom," I said and pointed to the text. "It's in English. I think it's that old timey kind of English."
"Others saye, it is your happiness: I saye, it is your sorrow: Pauvre piti' Mamzelle Zizi!" Chance read. "Now that part is French. I know that."
"This is so cool," I said. "I think it must be an antique, but what's the French part about?"
Chance turned another page, and the page was blank. Then the page was turned once more and before we knew what we did, a sharp set of wheels, stacked like a pyramid, popped up like the clown from a jack-in-the-box.
"What the hell is that?" Naughton screamed
"I don't know, but, look, its clicking like the ticking of a clock."
Something suddenly came over Chance. He closed the book and the wheels went neatly back into place. "Maybe you should put it back where you found it," he said.
"Are you crazy?" I said. "That's a cool book. I'll eventually figure out what the wheels stand for. They're probably some sophisticated kind of alarm system. Besides, the way that thing was buried, the guy who lost it will never find it again." I took my book from Chance and never said nothing about it again.
Well, that's not entirely true.
Another hour and we had forgotten all about the book. We were finally dry and sound asleep in front of our campfire like three kittens curled up and warmed by their mama's belly, that's until I decided to roll over and a wave of heat shot through my butt.
"Ow," I hollered, leaving the sound of pain flying through the air.
"What's wrong?" Chance jumped up immediately.
"My butt's on fire."
"No, it's not," Chance replied as he surveyed my jeans.
"Look," Naughton screamed. "A light. It's coming out of your pocket."
I sprung up and leapt out of my pants like a kid who just walked through a mound of fire ants. I don't even think I pulled the zipper down when the pants fell on the ground in front of us.
"God, what is wrong with them?" said Chance excitedly. "Your pants are glowing. Jeez, they're pink, no, now they're blue."
"I think it's the stupid book in the back pocket. I must have rolled onto it," I said.
"Get it out of here," Naughton screamed.
"I can't, Naughton. I need my pants."
"Then get that goddamned book out of the pants," said Chance.
I leaned over and took hold of one of the pant legs. The leg was cool, but the lights were still lit, brightening the entire campground like a Coleman lamp. I shook the pants upside down until the book and my wallet fell out of the pocket and hit the ground. We circled the thing, leaning over to examine it.
"Hey, the light turned off," Naughton whispered.
"No kidding," I said.
"What was that?" Naughton asked.
"I don't know," muttered Chance. "But right now, I think we'd better leave that book where it's at."
"Yeah," Naughton said.
We sat down on the blanket and stared at the book. Not one of us was saying a thing. We just sat and stared at it, like it was going to suddenly get up and bark at us, and for the first time since we left home, I was getting homesick.
The rest of the night was uneventful. I was the last one to finally nod off because I had my eyes glued on the book, waiting for another episode. But nothing happened, and soon my eyelids grew heavy, though I tried real hard to stay awake, guarding over the camp. But trying to keep awake was like climbing a street pole with monkey grease on my paws. I just couldn't stay awake, and soon I was in dreamland.