It’s just past dinner, right about when the sun gets that lazy way of hanging lower in the sky, when I spy that green pickup truck making a turn onto Clifton Street two blocks up. It could be him. Might only be Mr. Nortak, though. Both of their trucks may as well be twins.

My backside rises from the rickety wooden steps on the front stoop, and I try real hard to draw the distance closer to me.

The truck whips into the Nortak driveway.

It’s not him—yet.

Grandma Boyle hollers from just inside the front door, “Come inside, Ray Tom. He ain’t coming.”

An anxious shuffle has a go at my feet. Nerves have me clearing my throat, testing my voice to see if I can say what’s on my mind. “He’ll be here soon enough,” I manage, though it doesn’t come out overly confident. “He just gets hung up sometimes, is all.”

“Hung up in that beer garden.” Grandma says it like she knows for certain.

“You don’t know that,” I tell her, just as sure of my own proclamation as she is of her own.

Grandma won’t give up, though. “Known him longer than you have, boy. He ain’t never going to change.”

I come off the front stoop, eye that brown grocery sack filled with the clothes I’m meant to wear over the weekend. “Suppose he does change? You going to tell him you’re sorry for always doubting him?”

Grandma declines a reply this time, letting her silence do all the arguing she’s not up to doing herself.

Uncle Verl, baby brother to my mother, lands beside me on the stoop, like he just fell from the evening sky. “Don’t pay her no mind, Ray Tom,” he says, patting his shirt pocket in a search for that pack of cigarettes that never goes anywhere without him. “She’s seeing my daddy when she’s talking about yours.”

Uncle Verl, he’s a tall, skinny type; wears his brown hair long in back but short on top. He’s only twenty-one years old, which is just eleven years older than me. But he doesn’t talk down to me like I’m a stupid kid, though.

“Maybe he had to work over again,” I say, not truly believing it myself—and I’m the one saying it.

“Could be,” Uncle Verl says, tucking a Marlboro between his lips. That shiny silver Zippo of his catches the last of the sun, splashes a glare in my eyes. “I’m guessing if he is working over, well, you might have to wait till tomorrow to see him. Which means we can have us a go at some of those new Xbox games I picked up on the cheap from Darryl at work.”

My shoulders give up that stupid shrug they always do when I can’t think of something to say.

“Darryl,” I finally manage. “Isn’t he the crackhead?”

“Meth,” says Verl, “—same difference, though.”

“How come he’s always selling stuff he only just bought? I mean, that makes no sense to me.”

“Yup. But hey, as long as he’s cutting me a deal, I don’t care what he does with what’s his.”

My gaze trips over my grocery sack again. Thoughts of my father tumble through my head, recalling the last two weekends he’d been meant to pick me up, only to have forgotten. He drinks some—just not as much as Grandma Boyle claims.

Verl pulls on his cigarette, breathes off a thick silver-gray cloud that stinks up the air. “Just remember these days,” he says, “—when you got kids of your own, I mean.” He finds his feet again and wanders down the street toward Tammy Sistler’s place.

Tammy’s his girlfriend. They have a daughter named Ivy together. Ivy’s just six—which means Uncle Verl had only seen fifteen birthdays himself before he became someone’s dad. Grandma Boyle doesn’t believe for a red-hot minute that Ivy belongs to her Verl.

Grandma just thinks she knows everything.

Me and Mom, we moved in with Grandma Boyle two years ago, once the divorce became final and our old house was sold. It didn’t seem fair, me not having a say in where I should live. I mean, Mom’s got Grandma and Uncle Verl and Ivy. My Dad’s got nobody to come home to after work.

“I’ll never get married,” I tell myself from time to time. I mean, why do something that will probably just end in a bad way? It always does. Mom and Dad, Grandma and Grandpa Boyle.

Just about every kid at school has divorced parents.

Grandma Boyle snatches up that grocery sack once the sun is completely down behind the trees across the street—which means it’s been decided I won’t be waiting for Dad anymore tonight.

“Go on out and play while there’s a little light left, boy,” she says, leaving me alone on the stoop.

It’s Chad Nortak that’s caught my attention, the way he’s standing on the corner where Clifton Street crosses Waycroft Avenue. He’s waiting for the others—no doubt looking for a night of trouble. That’s what they do, Chad Nortak and Tanner Felcher and Mickey Denby; they break windows, tag buildings with spray paint, and steal from cars left unlocked in the grocery store parking lot. Those boys have seen the backseats of more police cars than most adults. And they’re only two grades ahead of me.

“What are you looking at, geek?” Chad hollers in my direction. The boy works over a cigarette like it’s the last one he’ll ever smoke. “Thought you were supposed to be at your dad’s this weekend.”

I slough off a shrug, leave it at that.

But Chad, he’s the one always looking for the last word in a situation. “Drunk again, is he?”

It’s like my middle finger just does its own thing, the way it stands alone, aimed in Chad’s direction. “Fuck you,” is what I say, loud enough to be heard by him—and by Grandma Boyle!

“Raymond Thomas!” Her voice is high and screechy, painful, like tin foil on a cavity filling. “If I ever—”

I already know the whole spiel, the threats of soap in my mouth, of weeks on end spent weeding the flower bed along the side of the house.

Chad’s laughter pokes holes in the dying light. “Don’t take it so hard, geek; my old man’s a drunk, too. He’s doing a stretch over in county for running a stop sign and wrecking a cop car.”

It’s my feet that take up that unspoken dare, carrying me to the sidewalk, bringing me closer to the boy known for beating up kids for no particular reason at all. I won’t run, though, like those other kids do; I’ll stand my ground and fight back. It’s a notion I tell myself, though I’m having trouble believing it.

Chad’s cigarette slips free from his fingers; it’s a natural thing, the way he grinds it into the sidewalk under his Nike high-tops.

I say, “I heard you stole those from Jimmy Rickman.” I mean those shoes, of course.

I’d never noticed just how dark Chad’s eyes could dim once he set his gaze on a particular target.

“Don’t be an asshole,” is all he says.

“If your dad’s in jail,” I ask, hoping he won’t suddenly sock me for being so nosy, “who was driving his truck earlier?”

“Maybe it was me,” says Chad. “Ain’t a hard thing, driving a truck.”

“You’re just twelve, though. Don’t the cops stop you?”

“If you drive careful, nobody notices.” He sifts his shirt pocket, retrieves another cigarette, tucks it between his lips, just the way Uncle Verl does. “Besides, I’m thirteen, not twelve.”

I don’t know that I’d call it bravery, but I sure don’t feel too scared to ask the question I find in my mouth. “If you’re thirteen, then why are you only in seventh grade?”

That dark gaze threatens to grab hold of my throat and strangle the stupid right out of me. But that’s not what Chad does. He just spits on the sidewalk, right where everybody has to walk, and mumbles something about being held back last year. Which for the likes of Chad Nortak, that means he flunked.

But Chad, he’s not up to discussing his scholarly failings. He dips the tip of his Marlboro into the orange tongue of a pink Bic lighter, sucks the smoke into his lungs, and says, “You wanna tag the high school with us tonight?”

*      *      *

It’s an easy enough thing, sneaking out at night. My bedroom at Grandma Boyle’s house is just off the kitchen—where the pantry used to be. Everybody else sleeps upstairs. Except Uncle Verl. Most nights he just stays over at Tammy Sistler’s place, along with Ivy. When he does stay at home he usually sleeps on the couch.

Mom’s got his old room. It was hers anyway, back before she met Dad and ran off to Vegas to get married without anybody else even knowing.

They didn’t run off to Vegas for the divorce.

My feet feel strange being in shoes at one in the morning. I guess they’re just not used to being needed this late at night.

The back door screeches like it means to snitch on me. But nobody wakes up; Uncle Verl sometimes comes in this way when he and Tammy are arguing. I’m the only one who ever hears him, though.

I’d never snitch.

“You ever tag before?” Chad Nortak’s words flutter through the air like fireflies going in different directions.

My head floats with excitement, with the rush of being out in the night without anybody else even knowing. Shadows move through Grandma Boyle’s backyard, hiding behind those ancient oak trees along the fence line.

What if somebody sees me, decides to tell Grandma?

Chad knocks a hole in the moment, says, “Can’t tag with me if you go chicken, geek.”

He goes over the fence at the rear of the yard, the loose clang of spray-paint cans in his backpack disturbing the night.

I could just run back inside and avoid the trouble.

But I don’t.

Why chicken out now?

My feet slap the hard dirt in the field between our neighborhood and Wendell High School, carrying me quickly toward Chad and his paint cans.

Chad says, “Glad you could make it, geek.”

Sweat runs down my spine as if I sprung a leak at the back of my neck. I pull down a few deep breaths, sucking on the humid air, but there’s really no way to settle my heart, to keep it from punching its way out of my chest.

I give my voice a try. “Where’s Tanner and Mickey? How come they aren’t coming along?”

“Because they’re mama’s boys. They ain’t allowed to hang around me anymore.” He says it like he means to make fun of those other two, but even tough Chad Nortak can’t hide the sad sound of his own voice. “That makes you my new accomplice, geek.”

Behind Wendell High School it’s quiet and dark, so completely still, like maybe God isn’t bothering with that particular piece of Earth.

“A blank canvas,” says Chad, eyeing those clean bricks. “I do my best work on new walls.”

They aren’t really new anymore, these walls. They’ve stood for nearly five years.

“Surprised you haven’t marked it up by now,” I say, amazed at the sound of my own voice. It’s somehow deeper than usual, certain, confident.

Chad says, “This one took some planning.”

“It doesn’t seem like much planning to me. I mean, we just walked up to it without any trouble.”

“I’m talking about planning the work, geek. A canvas like this deserves only a masterpiece.” Chad drops his backpack on the ground, yanks at the zipper, retrieves half a dozen colors for his palette.

I reach for the can of black, eager to spray a cuss word across the brick façade.

But Chad, he’s got other ideas. “You never did answer my question from earlier,” he says, snatching the can from my hand. “Have you ever tagged before?”

I haven’t.

And somebody like Chad Nortak already knows this.

He asks, “Have you ever heard of Jean Michel Basquiat?”

A flinch of my shoulders opens class on an art lesson I don’t think I’d ever expected from the likes of Chad Nortak. He tells all about this guy in New York City who went from painting graffiti on buildings to having shows in actual art galleries.

“People paid thousands of dollars for his work,” Chad explains, taking hold of a can of blue. The hiss of spray-paint fills the quiet space. “That’s what I want to do—except the part where he died of drugs.”

We fall into a quiet movement; Chad lays colors to the wall, while I hand him what he needs, always keeping my eyes open for intruders who may not appreciate art.

A scarce light trickles out of the windows closest to that side of the building, offering only a subtle splash of illumination, just enough to know the scene developing is tropical, warm, maybe Hawaiian.

“Tahiti,” Chad clarifies, “—where Paul Gauguin painted his masterpiece.”

I can’t say for sure exactly how long we’ve been at this—an hour, maybe two—but the work on the wall becomes something so vivid, so real, like all it would take is to step forward and you’d be there, in Tahiti, on that beach, with that dark girl showing us her boobs.

“How’d you learn to paint like this?” I ask, stunned by the sight, amazed at how quick it came into being.

Chad, his fingers sticky with paint, fishes a pack of Marlboros from his pocket, slips one between his lips, all the while never once taking his eyes off his work. “My mom painted,” he says, flicking that pink Bic. Sadness like black ink stains his tone. “I guess I got it from her. She’s the one who taught me all about art and those who create it.”

His mother had died, though, back before Mom and I moved in with Grandma Boyle.

“How’d she die?” I dared ask.

For a moment that dark gaze of his fixes me hard, like just maybe he’s deciding where to hit me the hardest. (Stomach or face?)

But he doesn’t punch me. He just tells me all about the cancer treatments that stole his mother’s hair, her health, and her life.

“She’d been fine until the chemo,” he says, exhaling a silver cloud of smoke. “My dad, he never used to get drunk—not while she was around.”

At least I have still have my mom, I think, and my dad—even if he doesn’t show up when he’s supposed to.

Light as bright as a noonday sun suddenly falls directly upon us, as if its source just knew we were there the entire time.

“Police helicopter!” Chad yells, bolting toward the field between the school and our neighborhood, leaving me behind with the evidence.

I want to run, too, but my stupid legs won’t budge.

Where’s the sound? I wonder, sifting silence for the noise a helicopter ought to make.

That light, it becomes a solid thing, reaching down from its source, grabbing hold on Chad out in the middle of the field, yanking the boy up into the air, high above the Earth, over the tops of those ancient oaks.

Then it’s gone, that strange and silent light.

And gone, too, is Chad.

*      *      *

Uncle Verl’s the one who catches me coming in just as the sun peeks over the tops of the trees where I’d last seen Chad Nortak. He won’t snitch on me, though, Uncle Verl; not to Mom, not to Grandma. And I can’t even tell him what happened when he asks where I’ve been and how come I look spooked.

All I can do is watch TV, search for reports of a UFO or whatever it is was, of sworn testimonies from other people who saw what I saw, of mention of a boy gone missing from our neighborhood.

But who is there, besides me, to report that missing boy?

Who is there to even care?

I’d never snitch.

* * END * *