Chapter 23
When Clay was thirteen years old, he thought he was old enough to stay home by himself.
Either that or sit vigil with his father at the hospital.
He was almost a teenager. But instead he had to spend the night at Uncle Teddy and Aunt Deb’s.
This was before Judd had acquired the doublewide for them.
Back then they lived in a regular trailer.
They had a bedroom with four walls in the rear of the trailer, but Clay had to sleep on a bunk that folded down and hovered over the dining table.
The only things between Clay and the back bedroom were a tiny bathroom, a tiny kitchen, and a couch-like storage thing.
Judd usually gave Clay a choice between staying with Teddy and Deb or staying with Sue and Carol.
Sue and Carol had a real house with a guest bedroom.
He had his own bathroom there. And Carol was an excellent cook.
She was also a nurse in case Clay happened to be not feeling well—this was before she retired from nursing and opened her Nymphomaniac fly shop.
But not that night. That night Judd insisted Clay stay at Teddy and Deb’s. Clay understood why. She could die tonight. She being his mother, Pam. She could die, and Judd, as much as he loved Sue and Carol, wanted Clay to be with blood relatives even if the quarters were cramped.
The partition between the bedroom and the rest of the trailer opened, and Uncle Teddy emerged, slid the partition shut, and disappeared into the bathroom.
When he emerged, Clay watched Teddy reach for the partition handle to return to the bedroom.
But Teddy must have felt Clay’s eyes on him.
He stopped, turned around, and took a few steps toward Clay.
“You up, little man?” whispered Teddy.
“Yeah,” said Clay. “Can’t sleep.”
“Me either,” said Teddy. “But Deb can, so let’s keep our voices real low so we don’t wake her up.”
“Okay,” whispered Clay. He looked at his uncle’s shadowed face, the gold ring in his right ear reflecting a whisper of light.
“Can I get you something to eat? Bowl of cereal or a Pop-Tart?”
“Sure,” said Clay. “I’d eat a Pop-Tart.”
“That sounds good to me, too.” Teddy turned on an under-cabinet light, opened a cupboard near his head, and pulled down a box of Pop-Tarts. “We got brown sugar cinnamon. That work?”
“Yeah,” said Clay.
“Toasted?” said Teddy.
“No thank you.”
Clay heard the tearing and crumpling of Mylar.
He watched Teddy put two Pop-Tarts on a paper towel, then another two on a second paper towel.
He handed one paper towel to Clay up in his bunk, took the other for himself, and sat on the couch.
They ate without talking for a minute and then Clay said, “Is she ever going to come home?”
Teddy swallowed and said, “I don’t know, little man. I’m not going to sit here and tell you everything will be fine because it won’t be. If not this time, then some other time. I’m sorry about that. It’s not fair.”
“How come they won’t let me sleep at the hospital with her? Dad gets to.”
“Because you’re only thirteen,” said Teddy. “And even if you were older, I think only one person can stay there. No matter if they’re family or not.”
Clay swallowed. The brown sugar melted down his throat. “I bet if she wasn’t asleep for three days, she would have chose me. Not him.”
“That’s probably true,” said Teddy.
“Dad knows that,” said Clay. “So he should let me stay there instead of him.”
Teddy didn’t respond right away. He ate another half of a Pop-Tart and said: “Want to hear a story about your dad when he was your age?”
“All right.”
“It was 1976. And it was the bicentennial. Know what that is?”
“No.”
“It was the country’s two hundredth birthday.
The revolution started in 1776, so 1976 was two hundred years.
The whole summer was like the Fourth of July.
Red, white, and blue all over the place.
Everyone wearing bicentennial hats and T-shirts every day.
And then on the actual Fourth of July, the whole day was like times ten. ”
“Was it fun?” said Clay.
“We thought it was,” said Teddy. “We were fourteen. Of course the coolest part about it, to me anyway, was the fireworks. And sometimes firecrackers. They were illegal in Minnesota, but you could buy them in Wisconsin. Only an hour away. So one day your grandpa Karl, he tells me and your dad we’re going fishing over in Wisconsin.
And we did go fishing. He was a plunker like your dad. ”
“What’s a plunker?” said Clay.
“Anglers who throw big lures. Or live bait. Things that make a kerplunk sound when they hit the water. But not fly fishermen. We’re quiet.
We fished this small lake over there. Caught some nice ones.
Grandpa Karl and your dad always kept their keepers.
We had a cooler to put ’em in, but we didn’t have any ice for the drive back.
We stopped to get some at a gas station, and there was a fireworks store right next to it. ”
“Did you get some?” said Clay.
“Well,” said Teddy, “there was some begging involved. More by me than Judd. Even at fourteen years old, he was kind of a rule follower. Fireworks were legal in Wisconsin, but we didn’t live in Wisconsin.
We lived right here in Minnesota where fireworks are not legal, and he had mixed feelings about breaking the law. ”
“Sounds like him.”
“But I kept pushing and eventually Grandpa Karl agreed to let us get a few things. Mostly sparklers and snakes and things that didn’t go boom.
But he did let us get some ladyfingers, which are basically skinny firecrackers.
They do the same thing but seem less dangerous.
Anyway, when we were in there and Grandpa Karl was paying, I did something I shouldn’t have done. I stole a whole brick of firecrackers.”
“How’d you do that?”
“Overalls. Slipped the firecrackers in ’em and walked out. Then when we got home, I opened up a bunch of firecrackers from the brick I stole and emptied out the black powder. Now you got to promise me, Clay, I mean swear on your mother’s soul, that you’ll never try what I’m about to tell you.”
“I promise,” said Clay.
“You swear on your mother’s soul? Because if you don’t, I can’t tell you the rest of the story.”
“I swear on my mother’s soul,” said Clay.
“All right, then,” said Teddy. “You ever hear of a big firecracker called an M-80?”
“I’ve heard about ’em,” said Clay. “They’re really powerful. Can blow stuff up and everything.”
“They sure can,” said Teddy. “That’s why they’re illegal. Plenty of people out there who can only count to seven on both hands because they were messing around with M-80s.”
“Man,” said Clay.
“Man is an understatement. And I’m not proud of what I’m about to tell you.
Because I had my mind set on making an M-80.
I’d seen one before. They look like a big fat firecracker in a cardboard tube, and the fuse comes out of the side, not the top.
I don’t know why it comes out the side, but it does.
So I found a narrow cardboard tube, filled it with the black powder I took from the firecrackers, plugged the ends, and drilled a little hole in the side for the fuse. ”
“Did you light it?”
“I sure did. Thought it would be fun to blow up one of my toy trucks. I put the M-80 in it and set the truck on the dirt in your grandma Lila’s garden. Then I lit the fuse and ran like hell. And it’s a good thing I did. Because my homemade M-80 blew that truck to smithereens.”
“Wow.”
“Yeah, wow. It also blew the hell out of a ceramic fountain, took out all her flowers and vegetables, knocked down a section of white picket fence, and left a crater two feet deep.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get hurt.”
“Sure am. But I knew I was in big trouble. Huge trouble. And it wasn’t the first time.
I’d had a bad year. Got kicked out of school.
Got caught letting the air out of the tires on a garbage truck.
Got busted for painting a mustache and pirate eye patch on a real estate billboard.
So when I saw the damage I’d done, I took off. ”
“Where’d you go?” said Clay.
“To a buddy’s house. Hung out there for a few hours.
Every time the phone rang, I expected it would be my mom or dad looking for me, but it never was.
After a while I felt like I was wearing out my welcome, so I left and started walking home.
Real slow. I was in no hurry to get what was coming to me.
I was cutting through the park and saw Judd’s baseball team practicing on the far diamond.
Thought I’d go over and watch the rest of his practice, then walk home with Judd.
Figured it’d be easier to face Grandpa Karl and Grandma Lila with my brother by my side. ”
Clay nodded. That made sense.
“But guess what. Judd wasn’t at practice with his team.
I was standing behind the backstop, searching for him, and the kid playing catcher asked me if I was looking for my brother.
I said I was. And he said why. Didn’t I know Judd was grounded and wouldn’t be at practice for a whole week?
How could I not know that when the entire baseball team knew it? ”
Clay thought he understood why, but he looked for confirmation in his uncle’s eyes.
“And then I understood,” said Teddy. “Judd took the blame for what I did. He’d never been in trouble a day in his life. He knew, even as a kid, that the punishment handed out for his first offense would be far less severe than the punishment handed out for my tenth.”
“But why? He couldn’t play baseball for a week,” said Clay.