Here by Mistake Page 25

  She lost the sweetness. “Promise me.”

  “No, I’m—”

  Brandon stopped at the sight of Quint, slumped in his chair, looking very sad. He thought back to the Quint he had taken leave of only yesterday. That Quint had been almost a kid himself—a kid looking out for three younger kids, a kid taking every chance he could think of to get those kids back home. The one in front of him was old and gray and looked tired now. This Quint had always been there for him, letting him hang around, listening those times when he couldn’t stop talking, never being too busy. The two Quints: they were the same person, with one big difference. Arguing with eighteen-year-old Quint had been fun, and he missed it already. Arguing with fifty-eight-year-old Quint was no fun at all. It made him feel lousy.

  “Quint,” Brandon murmured. “I owe you. I’ll do anything . . .”

  Quint looked up.

  “ . . . except give up the niche.”

  Quint exhaled and rubbed his eyes. “It’s okay, B. Just promise me this: Before you use that damn thing, you and I have another talk.”

  “Sure.”

  Brandon still felt badly for Quint. Then he remembered a conversation they had had a long time ago. “Quint, whatever happened to Gabriel?”

  “Heard he did some time for loan-sharking while I was still at Tulane. After that I don’t know. I still think about the night we made the bet. Still wish you’d never seen him.”

  Brandon nodded. “Remember what I told you forty years ago?”

  “You said you’d never see me differently because of him.”

  “That’s right. And I don’t.”

  Quint’s tired eyes smiled and he chuckled. “Fair enough. Thanks, B.”

  Sarah cut in. “Never mind Gabriel. You and I need to talk more about the niche, B. You’re not using your brain on this one.”

  “Forget it, Sarah. You’re not getting your way this time.”

  She laughed lightly. “No?”

  “No.”

  “Want to bet on that?”

  Brandon smirked. “You owe me four Dr. Peppers already.”

  “I knooow,” Sarah said. “That’s too many. Let this bet settle everything. If I can talk you out of it, you buy me a Dr. Pepper. If I can’t, I buy you one.”

  “Forget it. You can’t win it.”

  Sarah turned to Quint and Stephen. “You’re my witnesses.” She offered her hand to Brandon.

  Brandon was just sick of arguing. He took her hand and shook it.

  It was midafternoon before Brandon got home. He ran upstairs to his room and changed into his Jethro shirt. The niche was his, and the adventures to come would make 1965 look like a walk up to Broadway. He stepped in front of his mirror and pushed his fists into the air. “YES,” he said.

  His mother would ask him where the shirt had come from. He would say it was just some old thing Quint had given him, which was true enough. His father wouldn’t notice the shirt, any more than he ever noticed anything. He could bounce past his dad in astronaut gear and not get a second look.

  That morning his father had gotten all over him for leaving his socks on the floor. Socks on the floor. Knocking Reginald on his face and calling Stephen the N-word was okay, but not socks on the floor. Quint would say his dad was only ten, most kids rip into geeks, blah, blah, blah.

  Brandon sneered as he recalled his dad in 1965. He slid open the top drawer of his dresser and took out a pair of black dress socks. He dropped them in the middle of the rug and left the room.

  At five that afternoon John Stratham was reading the Sunday Rollings Journal in his easy chair in the family room. The air conditioner, on high, was fluttering the edges of his paper. Brandon came in, stepped over some advertising sections, and sat on the couch.

  “Dad,” he said.

  His father didn’t answer.

  “Dad.”

  His father snapped the paper. “Hmmm? What?” he asked. He went on reading.

  Brandon glowered at him. “Nothing.” He got up to leave.

  His father folded the paper and put it aside. “Brandon . . . wait.” He took the remote from his lap and aimed it at the air conditioner. The roar came down to a whoosh. “What’s up?”

  Brandon tried not to sound angry. “If you’re busy, that’s okay.”

  “I’m not busy. Come on.”

  Brandon stepped over the advertising and sat down again. He began nodding at nothing in particular. “Anything in the paper?”

  “Not much. What’s up?”

  “Um,” Brandon said, “um . . . ”

  His father waited.

  Brandon cleared his throat. “Before school was done we had a guest speaker in health class. The guy talked about bullies and bullying, things bullies do. I’ve been thinking about it.” He felt a pang of embarrassment cribbing Quint’s words from 1965: “If I’m honest with myself, I have to say I bullied a few geeks in my time. I wasn’t good to them. I kicked them to the curb.” He tried to look his father in the eye. “Did you ever bully anyone, Dad?”

  “They cover this in health class?”

  “Yes!”

  His father was taken aback. “Okay, I just didn’t know. So . . . you want to know if I was a bully?”

  Brandon nodded. Go ahead, say no, he was thinking.

  His father seemed to shrink before his eyes. “I was a terrible bully, Brandon.”

  Brandon flinched.

  “A terrible bully,” his dad repeated. “I was the smallest kid in my crowd, and I wanted to fit in. I wanted it more than anything in the world. So when my friends didn’t like a kid, I didn’t like him either. If they bullied him, I bullied him worse. If they shoved a kid, I got that kid on the ground and punched his face. Everyone knew I did the worst things. I was just terrible.”

  “Who’d you bully?”

  “Different kids. Whoever didn’t fit, whoever we wouldn’t let fit. Whoever was afraid of us.” He nodded at the window. “I was worst of all to Mr. Jones.”

  Brandon tried to look surprised.

  “Did he ever bring this up?”

  Brandon shook his head.

  “I didn’t think so. He’s not like that.”

  “Did you ever . . . tell him you were sorry?” Brandon asked, amazed at what he was hearing.

  “Yes,” his dad said. “Twenty years ago, when we moved here. I hadn’t seen him for years, even though we’re both from Rollings. I walked over one day when he was mowing his lawn. He stopped the mower and shook my hand and welcomed me to the neighborhood. We talked awhile and I reminded him what I’d done. I said how sorry I was. He heard me out and said, ‘Yes, yes.’ Then he gave me that big smile of his and said, ‘Oh, hell, John, we were just kids. We can’t sweat that stuff. .’ From that day to this we haven’t talked about it . . .” His voice trailed off, and Brandon had to lean in to hear. “He was really good about it, but sometimes I wish he’d just punched me in the mouth.”

  “What?”

  “I might not’ve felt so lousy all these years if he had.”

  “You felt lousy?” Brandon said, forgetting himself. “You?”

  “I told you—I did terrible things. Every time I see Mr. Jones I think of them. And I can’t undo them.” He looked Brandon up and down and said without transition: “I don’t remember seeing that shirt before.”

  Brandon looked up quickly. “Oh, um, Quint gave it to me. It’s really old.”

  “Oh, right,” his dad said. “Brandon, before I forget, be sure to thank Mr. Jones for the campsite. I did yesterday, but you should too. After all, he had you in mind when he set it up.”

  “Campsite?”

  “For Tuesday. You do still want to go, don’t you?”

  Brandon racked his brain for something under “Campsite” but came up blank. “Sure,” he said awkwardly. “Um . . . who’s going again?”

  “Who’s going again? You and me. Who do you think?”

  Brandon’s faith in his ability to bluff was fading fast.

  “Lean forward.” Hi
s father pressed one hand to Brandon’s forehead and the other to his own. “You don’t feel hot. Brandon, since yesterday you’re acting like you just dropped in from Mars. What’s going on?”

  “N-nothing,” Brandon said. “I just forgot the . . . details.”

  His father’s hand dropped to his armrest. “Details,” he said. “Well, the details are these: Mr. Jones told me a week ago you were saying how much you love camping. He said you wanted me to take you but wouldn’t ask me yourself. He said he knew the owner of a lakefront site outside Newcomb. And he said he could get us in on really short notice. I said, ‘Sounds great, I’ll ask Brandon.’ You said, ‘Wow, let’s go,’ and I had Mr. Jones set it up. We’re supposed to spend Tuesday through Friday there. Sound familiar?”

  “Yes,” Brandon said, nodding with great emphasis. “It’ll be great, Dad,” He got up and stepped over the advertising sections. “Great, really. Wow.”

  His father’s eyes followed him to the door.

  “Oh, yes. Camping. Wow,” he continued as he left the room.

  Brandon made his way down the hall and up the stairs to his room. He picked his socks off the rug, folded them neatly, and placed them in the drawer. Then he noticed himself in the mirror. His hair was in a wild shape from his having just run his hands through it. He took his comb off the dresser and fixed it. Then he stood next to his bed and let himself fall backward on it. He stared at the ceiling. “And I thought 1965 was complicated,” he said.

  Brandon made the camping trip with his dad. Each night by the fire he talked about school and track and Quint and Sarah and Stephen. His dad talked more about the bullying things he’d done as a kid. He told Brandon about the time a bunch of kids—including John Stratham—had jumped Reginald Jones in front of the Birmingham house. Three kids new to the neighborhood had chased the bullies off. As far as his dad could recall, one of those kids had looked like Brandon. Brandon laughed at this, and his dad admitted that memory was a funny thing and forty years a long time.

  June turned into July and July into August. Gradually Brandon got used to the changes his adventure in 1965 had brought about. He thought most of them were for the better. He saw a lot of Sarah and Stephen. Both told funny stories about not knowing things they should have known and not remembering people they had already met. But both were quick learners and were doing okay.

  After much effort, Brandon started calling Mr. Jones “R” when they were alone. “Give yourself time, B,” R laughed as he struggled with it. “It’ll come.”

  Brandon found Mrs. Jones as friendly and talkative as her husband. Over the summer she and R invited Brandon, Sarah, and Stephen to lunch three times. It was moving for Brandon to sit in the same kitchen where young Reginald had prepared lunch for them that day, all the while keeping a worried eye on his mother. R and Mrs. Jones kept them laughing with stories and jokes, and always sent them home with snacks for later on. It became hard to remember old Jonesy and the insults he and Brandon had thrown at each other.

  When they were alone Brandon and R talked often about the two days they had shared forty years before. R filled in many gaps for Brandon, explaining important things that had happened after he and his friends left 1965. By the end of the summer Brandon found talking with R almost as easy as talking with Quint. And, like Quint, R never discussed the secret of the niche with anyone who didn’t already know it. “How could I talk about it, B?” He laughed. “They’d stick me in a loony bin.”

  On August 6 the niche was delivered to the Stratham house.

  “Ugly,” Brandon’s mother said as movers eased it out of the van in its frame. “Why on earth did Aunt Faye leave you that?”

  Brandon’s father was no more impressed. “The basement,” he told the movers, pointing to the outside entrance to it. He scowled as they carried the niche past him.

  Brandon ran ahead to the entrance and opened the steel doors. He hopped down the steps and switched on the lights. “Easy, careful,” he said as the movers descended with their load. He showed them a spot near the furnace, and there they leaned the niche against the wall.

  When the movers had gone Brandon pulled the slats off the frame and stood them in the corner. He inspected the niche and found not a scratch, nor a smudge, nor a speck of dirt. He switched off the lights and drew the curtains over the basement’s small windows. In the semi-darkness the niche gave off its smoky glow, and Brandon could make out the inscription from across the basement. “Awesome,” he whispered.

  Brandon kept his promise to Quint. They saw each other often over the summer and talked about everything—including the niche. But they didn’t have it out about Brandon’s plans for it until August 15. That talk lasted three hours. As Brandon later put it to Stephen, “It was intense.”

  Sarah didn’t wait for August, or even July. Every time she saw Brandon she made her case against using the niche again. He always listened politely. After each session she smoothed her hand over his cheek and smiled. “This is one bet I’m not losing.”

  On the afternoon of Saturday, August 27, Stephen climbed the steps of Brandon’s house and rang the doorbell.

  “Stephen,” greeted Brandon’s mother. “He walked up to Broadway with Sarah. He said they’d be half an hour, so they’re probably on their way back.”

  Stephen nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. Stratham.” He hopped down the steps, hitched his backpack to his shoulder, and started for Broadway.

  Two figures approached in the distance, and he ran to meet them. The figures turned out to be Brandon and Sarah, all right. And each was holding a Dr. Pepper.

  Stephen gasped, “Who bought?”

  Both were smiling pleasantly. Neither answered him.

  “Come on,” Stephen said. “Who bought?”

  Brandon took a swig of soda and spilled some down the front of his Jethro shirt. Sarah gave a tut-tut shake of her head and took out a pack of towelettes. She pulled one loose and dabbed the stain.

  Stephen watched her irritably. “So, did you buy?”

  No answer.

  “You must have. B wouldn’t give in.”

  They walked past him in the direction of Brandon’s house.

  Stephen stamped after them. “Cut it out, B,” he cried. “Did Sarah buy?”

  At that moment in Brandon’s basement the niche was shining more brightly than ever.