soon as they had bicycled onto Clarence Street, out of sight of the field, Ryan had rounded on Dylan, cackling. “Man oh man, did you see his face? He looked like he was swallowing live electricity!” Ryan sucked his lips tight, imitating Stinger gasping. Despite his guilt, Dylan grinned, looking over his shoulder.
“I still don’t see how you got a hit trying to get out of the way,” Ryan laughed, and they pedaled racing away from the school. As they slowed on Nash, Dylan turned to his friend.
“Ryan, you know anything about what James has been up to?”
Ryan shrugged. “What do you mean?”
Dylan wondered how much to say. He didn’t want Ryan thinking bad about James. But James was in some kind of trouble. The boys slowed to walk their bikes.
“He’s been leaving out at night—or in the early morning—I don’t know.” Dylan palmed his own ball and flipped it behind his back, and up over his shoulder to Ryan.
Ryan snagged the ball with his outstretched hand. His glasses glinted when he turned back. “Daggett goes to the warning track, aaaaannndd PULLS IT DOWN, robbing Mickey!”
“I take it you mean Mickey Mouse. Mantle is washed up, in case you hadn’t noticed.” Ryan wound up, as if to bean Dylan. Dylan laughed, ducking. Ryan worshipped Mantle, the Commerce Comet.
“I hear some stuff, but you know. Guys might say a lot of stuff that’s just wind. But I tell you, I don’t get why James is wasting his time with Stinger or Scooter. Scooter! That guy’s a chop! And James keeps hanging with them, he’s down the tubes.”
Ryan’s tone dropped as they turned up the sidewalk at Dylan’s house.
They looked up at the sound of voices from inside.
His father’s low, steady voice was saying, “It wouldn’t do any harm to have left him stew in there for a day or two. Nothing you say seems to register—”
Nana’s voice interrupted. “My boys—our boys—are not going to be locked up like animals! I am surprised you would even consider letting that happen!”
They lay the bikes on the lawn and stepped up on the porch just as Sam pushed open the screen door. His expression was a dark scowl. His brow furrowed, and his lips were set in a thin line.
“Hi,” said Dylan. Sam paused at the door, as if he might have forgotten something inside, or as if he might have wished he’d forgotten something. Then he sighed and shrugged the screen door closed. The three stood on the porch in an awkward silence.
Sam nodded to the boys and licked his lips. He ran fingers through his thin hair. “Ryan.” Sam nodded at the lanky boy.
Dylan glanced at Ryan, then back to his father. “Is everything all right?”
Sam wiped a hand on his pants leg, and for a second, Dylan wondered if he’d been drinking. Dylan had never seen a person drunk—at least he didn’t think he had. But he had sometimes wondered about it, after his dad confided that he used to drink a lot.
“How was the game today?” Sam asked. He rubbed the back of his neck.
The boys grinned at each other, and Ryan started to speak. “Dylan kinda decimated the pitch—”
“I need to talk to you for a minute,” His dad interrupted, addressing Dylan. “Maybe you boys can get together later.”
Ryan nodded. “Catch you on the flip side, Hondo!” He handed Dylan his baseball and swung the bat onto his shoulder, glove shoved on the fat end of the bat. Ryan straddled the Hobbitmobile and pedaled back down Nash Street. Dylan watched him lift a hand to wave at Mr. Geise, who was tending his azaleas.
“Hondo?” His dad raised an eyebrow and gave a thin smile.
“Frank Howard. Left field. The Senators?”
“Oh. Of course! Hondo. So how was the game today? Did I ask you that already?” Sam stood sideways to Dylan at the top step, his hands jammed in his jeans.
“It was okay. Some guy got hurt. I tipped the ball, and somehow it ended up in the pitcher’s...uh, groin.” Dylan sat in the glider, watching Ryan’s back as he disappeared around the corner up Stockton Avenue.
“Game called on account of...the pitcher got racked?” His father chuckled. Dylan grinned, embarrassed.
“Something like that. Something exactly like that, I guess.”
“Friend of yours, this poor fella?”
Dylan looked back down the street, at Mr. Geise wrestling with a bundle of azalea cuttings. “Not really. The guys call him Stinger.”
Sam grunted, easing down onto the glider. “I hear that boy is bad news. I hear he’s also a friend of your brother’s.”
Dylan watched the expression on his dad’s face change. How did Sam know about Stinger and James? Dylan untied and retied the rawhide knot on his baseball glove.
“You say Stinger was at the game today. He was the boy you...”
Dylan nodded, looking up.
“You talk to your brother?” Without pausing, his father looked out over the street, lowering his already-quiet voice another notch. “He tell you he got himself arrested?” Sam said the last word like it was coated with lemon juice, sort of spitting it out.
As the words settled, Dylan wasn’t surprised. He felt like he was living with a boy he hardly knew.
“What did he do?” Dylan asked.
Dylan suddenly wished he could take back the question. Not, “Why was James arrested?”, but “what did he do?” He felt guilty assuming his brother deserved to be arrested.
“They say he broke into the back of Mr. Wilson’s store and tried to haul the safe out the door. Mrs. Potts across the street heard noises and called the chief.” Sam said the words quiet, his chin resting on his chest, his hands in his pockets.
Sam’s choice of words sounded odd to Dylan. He asked, “They say?”
Sam plucked invisible threads from the knee of his pants. “James was walking down Stockton towards home early this morning when the police stopped him. He had a screwdriver in his back pocket. Chief Munro says it looks like the jimmy marks on Mr. Wilson’s door frame might have been made by that screwdriver.”
“So what’s going to happen to James?”
Sam raised an arm to wave to Mrs. Duncan as she strolled down the far side of Nash with her dog Gemini. Right on cue, Buster shot from under the porch, loping across the yard. Buster and Gemini had a ritual as old as time, involving the sniffing of each other’s rears.
“We don’t know yet.” Sam sighed and shoved a stray lock of hair back off his forehead. “Chief is pretty sure they got enough to charge him, after they finish running fingerprints. Seems everybody in the world has touched the Wilson’s front door.” Sam sighed. “James swears he had nothing to do with it. No alibi though. He was caught on the street well before sunrise.”
Buster
