JMJ

Chapter Six

"Hi, Mom!"

SNAKE

"Empty," I said shuffling out of the shack.

It was kind of a funny thing to come out of my mouth. I'd been feeling empty at least since Ace had gone sick— probably since we lost our green. Ah, who knows? Probably longer than that even. The other funny thing about it coming out of my mouth was that I didn't hiss it. I was actually starting to remember that I was gunna just spit raspberries if I stuck my tongue outside my mouth like Grubber and apparently messier than him too. What's even funnier was that before the green I used to hiss what I spoke anyway. You know, between my teeth like a normal person instead of a snake.

Anyway, feeling empty as I was facing the blank faces of the guys didn't make me feel any better about that empty couch. Though, when that fathomlessly deep mind of Arturo took in my single word, he recalled some tragedy in the souls of his ancestors that made me shiver.

"Face it," he said, "the boss didn't want us to see him like that, so he went off somewhere to die alone."

I sucked in between my teeth. Billy didn't move as though not comprehending what Arturo was saying. Grubber squinted, his lips actually pursed, and I shivered again. It was so unnatural to see him like that. He looked back at me with this defiant look in his eyes. He had it at times, but I don't think I ever saw it stronger.

The wind whipped over the dump bringing in the sour smells of rotting food and oily must. Cars went on the way they always did making the wind sound more like a mechanical river. A motorcycle snarled. Some dog barked. Some kid squealed, and we just stood there digesting Arturo's epitaph.

I can't speak for the others, but I barely breathed as I blinked trying to comprehend a world without Ace in it, but I could not even comprehend a world where Ace was weak yet.

He was a living legend. I mean, I knew he was human and all, but I think for the first time I realized at least something about myself. Even though I knew he was human, I had thought of him as something immortal, and if something immortal could die, what did that make the rest of the mortal world? But I could get no answers from myself or the wind or Grubber's normal-looking but seriously intense eyes, and suddenly Grubber blinked.

I blinked too and huffed.

Then even more suddenly Grubber turned. Apparently we were all sort of staring at him, and the rest of us continued not moving a muscle as the world's eternity seemed to pass us by on all sides like we did not exist. Grubber walked with a steady confident pace away from us as though to step out of the time capsule our shoes were glued to as a bus squeaked somewhere in the distance and a shout from some angry driver somewhere in the opposite distance. A paper cup blew past us like a tumbleweed and echoed its empty insides. We watched Grubber, his tongue sticking out again and him trotting like a dog to go find his master. I felt my insides sink.

None of us followed him. None of us called after him. In retrospect, I'm still not sure if Grubber was just leaving because the gang no longer had a reason to exist without Ace and without the green or if he really was going to try to find Ace to keep him from giving up and dying in shame. I didn't really know Grubber enough to know what he would do in a situation like this.

I felt my head sink into my shoulders with that notion: I didn't know him. Did I even know Ace? Did I know Lil' Arturo and Big Billy?

Slowly I turned to them. They were apparently already looking at me. Maybe I sighed. If I had I was unaware of it. I just put my hands in my pockets and stared back at them in a deep slouch.

"Duh… what's going on again?" Billy asked.

"Tsss…." Was all I could answer through my teeth.

"What are we going to do is a better question," said Arturo.

"You don't really think he'sssss…"

"He's not coming back," Arturo said closing his eyes somberly. "Just like when mi Tío Toledo was stabbed by a mouse-sized blade in just the right way that if he removed it he would bleed to death and if he left it in he would risk undoing it by accident, but it was inevitable to bring him to death anyway. When he ran out of money for his margaritas, he went and hid himself behind the nearest bridge and his blood pooled into the water of the stream now known by the locals as the Río Rojo. They found him there a corpse as dry as the sand behind him and the pool at the end of the stream was the color of a wilted rose."

I simmered. "Like we really needed that."

Of course I was replacing some Uncle Toledo I had never seen with Ace in my mind. I already felt sick enough without Arturo adding his colorful irony. Maybe it was just how he was dealing the situation, but I suddenly had to ask myself if I even liked Arturo. I knew I didn't like him as much as Ace had.

"So…" said Billy then interrupting the tension that might have built quicker if he hadn't. "Grubber gunna get Ace under bridges?"

Arturo and I looked at each other with widened eyes, differences suddenly aside.

"Maybe we should look for him?" I asked with a shrug.

Another pause.

"Sí," Arturo answered.

I sighed in relief to know that he had just been going through a small bout of pessimism. If I was more creative I might have gotten a little dramatic myself, but imagination was not my forte. So, without another conflict we headed out. We checked all the likely places first. The arcade. The latest abandoned construction sites. The park behind all the thicker bushes. Our favorite alleys near the dump. The subway nooks also nearest the dump. Our haunts by the open water drains. No sign of him. Of course even if he had been in one of those places, he probably would not have come when we called. We were supposed to come when he called, and if he wanted anything right now he wanted to be left alone.

We came back to the dump. No Grubber or Ace. We were miserable and hungry and very low-spirited.

"Maybe we should check all the not likely placcces?" I asked, my "s" returning through my teeth without the tongue.

Arturo looked at me with those blank catlike eyes. He shrugged. "After dinner."

"Everything sure is serious without Ace," remarked Billy.

"You ssssaid it, Billy," I sighed.

"Maybe he'll show up if we do something Ace would do," said Arturo.

That didn't make much sense to me. "What are you talking about?"

"We attack a pizza boy for pizza just like the old days and run off with it, come back here, and then maybe Ace and Grubber will come."

I winced. Did he even believe what he was saying? What was his problem? He was starting to annoy me again, but all I said was, "What about the green?"

"We don't need the green. If my papi and all the great of my family could do it without the green then so can I follow in their footsteps."

"Mph."

Is that what this was about?

"You're afraid of no green so much that maybe Ace just left because we lost what made us great before the green," said Arturo. "Maybe he is ashamed of us."

"But we weren't great before the green," I protested.

"Ace was."

I couldn't deny that one, so I just changed my argument. "Ace is sssick!"

"Uh…Aren't we going to get pizza now?" asked Billy.

Again Arturo and I looked at each other in a sort of truce. Besides, I knew at this point it was two against one, and I was the one. Figures. I almost missed Ace socking me in the face for it.

I slumped. "Yethththth."

I forgot about my tongue and spat it.

"Is Snake trying to be Grubber again?"

Arturo just blinked catlike at Billy again. With tongue still slightly protruding out of my mouth, I slumped further and shuffled after them. Without the snakelike finesse of the green I almost lost my balance.

#

Let's just say it was one of the few times I actually had been confident I was right and regretted not doing what I felt was smart. Even with the green, without Ace we might have sucked anyway trying to jump the pizza guy. Without the green we were greener than we were at fourteen, if you know what I mean. We were like driving cars that we forgot had no wheels rather than people who never had a car to begin with.

Long story short, we messed up. The police were apparently right across the street eating Danish dainties. Even with crumbs puffing out their lips as they charged us, they were serious— not to mention armed.

How I got a face full of pizza myself, I'm still not sure. I know I wasn't trying to take a bite. The pizza guy was the one who had tumbled and was now hiding behind a staircase. I was standing with cheese stuck to my hair and sauce and sausage dripping from my face.

Then I felt a tug on my wrist.

"Vamos!" snarled Arturo.

"Ah!" I cried, but I obeyed.

I ran after Arutro, hardly knowing where we were going. I felt a hot heavy presence behind that I knew was Billy. We couldn't even run as fast as we used to, and I was practically pins and needles with every shout from the police, and the spice in the sauce made it worse as it stung my eyes. My tongue could only reach so far around my lips and even then I almost bit my tongue turning a sharp corner and half tripping over Arturo into the dark shadows of that surreal evening.

I collided with a chain-link fence soon afterwards. Arturo had ducked through a rip at the bottom already. He was somehow still as quick as rat, but then he had not been as changed as I had been or Billy. Without thinking of anything at the moment, I scrambled over the top after him and half rolled onto the other side with bumps, scrapes, and bruises. At least most of the pizza rubbed off my face through the trash and weeds I wrenched myself out of.

Arturo was right about one thing, I admitted, beside myself as I raced after the little bullet. We got so good with the green— especially since that thing with Sedusa that we weren't allowed to mention. As Ace put it, "What do you mean? That never happened. You must have been dreaming it."— the green made us lazy, and now we can't survive life, especially without Ace.

It was a terrible feeling that crushed itself around me like the crusher at the dump, but it only spurred me on. It was an Indiana Jones type death trap I felt like I was racing against. There were no second chances.

Thud!

Reality hit me like a wet blanket in the face. I spun around. So did Arturo.

For a split second I thought Billy was hurt, but a split second more and I knew he was caught!

Without the green, Billy would be caught for good!

I would have stood there dumbfounded until the police caught me too, but Arturo grabbed my wrist band, and before it could slip off my wrist, I gulped and fisted my hand. I raced after Arturo again, and I don't even remember getting back to the dump. All I know is, once we got there, I was afraid we had been followed. I was pacing and rubbing my fingers and grinding my teeth in agony about it.

Then we ate what left in the base. Then we went to sleep— or Arturo did. I just laid there for hours with teeth clenched and eyes peeled as I fingered my hat or curled up as tight as ball on and off or laid flat on my back staring at the creaky ceiling and clutching my sides.

But suddenly, finally, I blinked. A hazy hot sun was baking my arm and blinding my eyes while the rest of me remained in shadow.

I stood up in an instant off the floor. Arturo was there eating breakfast. Where he got it, I didn't ask, but he didn't stop me from sharing it. We didn't speak a word. We hardly looked at each other. It was awful this "And then there were none" thing happening to the once solid, unbreakable gang. I realized that I had thought we were immortal that way. I realized most gangs probably always felt that way. Bands probably did too. But just like a band, a lot can happen in three years, and once one person's gone, the whole thing can unravel with just the slightest breath. That breath was long past.

When we were done eating, we agreed to go outside together. We didn't say anything, still. We had not even looked at each other, but it was an agreement that had been more unanimous than anything we had agreed upon since it was us making the decisions between ourselves. Now we didn't even have Billy. Somehow that had made our strange bond stronger rather than abandoned us to our obvious personality clashes.

We stopped a few paces from the shack. Again, there was no eye contact. It was so quiet, I could actually hear birds. Most of them were gulls or crows, but I couldn't remember the last time I'd heard them. There was no music. There was no crashing. There was no laughing. There was nothing.

Empty. The word felt like a heavy walrus climbing up my back, and I could not resist it long.

Finally I turned to the only living person within the nearest proximity. Now the only person who even knew I was here. It was such an empty feeling. Arturo looked back, his eyes blank and catlike. His stance was as unmoved as a stone. Could he really be that unfeeling? I knew it was just a façade, but then what was wrong with me crouching into putty?

His cat stare went right through me, but then I saw under his thick bangs just the slightest pucker. His face made the slightest grimace almost like he was going to cry and he was trying to hold it in.

I squirmed.

Arturo closed his eyes and sighed with the passion of his passionate family.

"Good bye."

Then more suddenly than Grubber, he spun around and trotted away just like a cat of the streets with nothing more to eat and so was off to find a new place.

I only stared. I could not move. My shoes were glued to the ground. My body was shrink-wrapped like an action figure and not a very action-paced one either. I watched as helpless as I had watched Grubber leave. Arturo disappeared. I was left.

I could have allowed that creeping surreal feeling from last night to overpower me, but I had a different thought then that changed the whole mood. It was far more sobering even if wistful, but at least it kept both my feet on the ground instead of allowing myself to sink into the quicksand of my empty mind. If everyone was gone, there was no reason to stay.

It was the green that had kept me going even when I felt like giving up. It was Ace that had kept me steady even when I felt like I'd had enough. Not from guilt so much in the sense that what I knew we did was wrong, but because it was hard to live like a teenaged bandit. It was hard to keep hard like a pack of street dogs. But now there was no green. There was no Ace. There was hardly a Snake. So, I turned and left like everyone else had. I didn't know where everyone else went but I knew where I was headed.

Home.

#

Is it funny that I like the smell of hot wet asphalt?

The drizzle felt kind of good too, really. Not that I wasn't happy to get out of it under the awning. Not that I was thrilled about the awning looking exactly how it had three years ago. Same little wind-chime with the one broken chime. Same bucket catching water from going through the cracks into a grungy cellar. Same rickety steps to the same second story of the once grand house for some big-shot in the Victorian age. Now a three-part narrow apartment complex with the same rusted name with faded blossoms, leaves, and berries painted on it that had once been bright and cheerful in a time before I ever remembered in the window of the middle apartment: Ingleberry.

Did it always look this miserable?

Did I have to have the dumbest last name in history?

I huffed.

"Yesss…"

There was nothing for it now. I plunged up the groaning steps. I stuck out my finger long before I reached the doorbell. I could hear it echo behind the thin walls as I touched the cracked plastic. Then I waited.

The courtyard behind me was the same. The combination to get into the courtyard was the same. I grimaced. The neighbor's weird wire art was still the same by the look of the rusted shapes of pigs and elephants to the right. The other neighbor's old lazy dog was too old and lazy to bark at me still.

When the door remained shut in front of me, I thought about going over to pat his droopy head. He made a kind of whine inviting me to. I bet he recognized me, though he forgave me for tying cans to his tail. Maybe it was more than laziness that kept him in his doghouse after all. I hadn't been that nice to him towards the end.

I shivered again despite the humid heat. Was it guilt?

I was just stepping down one step back into the listless drizzle, when the inner door opened.

I bolted back into place instantly fully alert, all melancholy gone. Terror replaced it.

Well, this is why you came, wasn't it? I demanded myself.

The second door opened.

It was the same pale freckled face. The same raven-black hair that matched her aquiline nose. The same lipstick in pale rose on her long thin lips. But the expression was that of more terror than I expected as she looked at me like a ghost was standing there slumped and wide eyed on the steps. She must have been expecting a neighbor, or at least the landlord. I guess in a million years she would not have expected it to be me.

In any case, I finally admitted where I had gotten that still silence from, cuz she just stared as still as I was.

I wasn't sure how long we were going to stare horrified, so I gathered up all the strength I could muster. I couldn't take it anymore. Conjuring up what I considered to be the confidence of Ace, actually, I threw out my arms in a way that was meant to be forceful. They came out just noodle-like and into shrug. Trying to grin my hardest, it came out a sickly toothy thing. My brows knit into a rat's nest under my hair and hat.

"Hi, Mom!"

The voice came out how I wanted it, at least. Bright, optimistic, careless, and all-sanguine. Apparently that wasn't what she had wanted though. In fact, it broke the spell of spellbound-awe and returned to her the fact that I had left without a word in the first place, and… been pretty rude to her the last few months up to that point. I had not exactly planned on my leave, of course, but because after one night and then another, staying with Ace and the gang, I had one day realized I never was going back.

Well. Until now.

The look of horror in her eyes flashed like a lightning clap. The lightning speed of her hand was something I really had not expected, though it was a thing I was not completely unfamiliar with since the days of the Gangreen Gang when I spoke out of place. Never from her, though.

Smack!

I stared blankly again. I felt my face grow hot and my spine go chilled. I think even tears were swelling on the sides of my wide eyes.

It was such a different experience coming from my own mother.

I blinked.

She had never slapped me before. Ever.

But maybe. Well. In this case, I might have deserved it. I felt guilt swim in my stomach. It could be nothing else. I resented it in my held breath.

A few seconds later the whole world changed again. She leaned forward on her lean frame, and with her arms flung wide she pressed me against her as though to suffocate me, but there was no harm meant this time. She was hugging me for all she was worth, and somehow that scared me more than the slap. She was crying in gobs.

Had I expected something different?

I went limp and let her do her thing.

"Sanford!" she at last got out through her hoarse chokes. "Why?! Why?!"

I felt like apologizing, but somehow it didn't come out. I just let her lead me inside, and I was in a daze more surreal than Robocop having digital visions of the life he had before. Only for me, it was like going back in time. Like nothing ever happened. Gangreen was a dream, and I'd been in a coma until now. I just came back from the hospital, sure! That was it, and my mom was there just as beside herself as I was.

But after I was sat down with a glass of water and a towel around my wet clothes, finally she demanded with desperation and misery, "Where have you been!?"

Again I was frozen with terror.

She didn't know?

I thought for sure, she'd know.

She really didn't know where I'd been all this time?

Of course, she hadn't, stupid! The press didn't know anything about me. Maybe if my mom had gotten a good look at a photo or on the news, but why would she have bothered herself to know more about Ace of the Gangreen Gang? She never would have thought me that bad. I didn't have the green anymore to prove it either.

I gaped like my brain just slipped out of my skull.

"Sanford?' she asked.

She looked strangely beautiful in a mother kind of way. Had she always looked like that?

"I don't know where to sssssssssssssss… sorry."

Mom lowered her head and sighed. Her long bangs covered most of her big dark eyes. "I'm sorry too. I… I'm just glad your back."

I swallowed hard. I wasn't going to cry.

"Me too," I lied.

At least it felt like a lie considering the fact that if Ace had still been in charge of the Gangreen Gang, I'd still be long gone, and I resented that. I resented a lot of things. Too much emotion. It was overwhelming and annoying.

The kitchen smelled like cinnamon because of the cinnamon sticks Mom always kept in the narrow window. I had to admit I liked the smell of cinnamon better than the smell of wet asphalt. But there still was this other smell I wasn't overly fond of. Then I realized it was myself.

Oh.

Well, I had been living in a dump.

"You want I should go take a shower?" I muttered.