They stopped when their quarry reached the corner. For a second it looked like Arty might turn around. Oxlade tugged on Gibson’s shirt sleeve and darted to the center of a neighbor’s lawn, hiding behind a large tree. Gibson followed, but it wasn’t necessary, as Arty kept his eyes forward.
“ What’s he doing?” Gibson asked, with his back to the tree.
“ Just standing there, like he’s thinking or something.”
Gibson chugged his beer and set the bottle down among the tree’s large root system. He wanted to belch, but held it. Oxlade finished off his beer as well, setting the bottle next to Gibson’s.
“ There he goes,” Oxlade said as Arty turned right toward Fremont Avenue. As soon as he was out of sight the two men jogged to the corner. Two blocks later Oxlade jumped back when he saw the flash.
“ What was that?” Gibson whispered to his friend. Lightning was his first thought and he hunkered down, waiting for the thunder. He looked upward, frowning at the overcast sky when the expected thunder blast didn’t sound.
“ Don’t know,” Oxlade said, “Maybe a power line shorted out.”
“ Yeah, that must be it.” Gibson stood out of his crouch, ashamed of himself for being afraid of nothing. For a second he thought about going back home and having another beer, but he didn’t want to give up in front of Oxlade, and besides he wanted to know what the boy was up to.
“ Must have scared the shit outta your boy.”
“ Yeah.” Gibson scanned the neighborhood, seeking his son. The power flash, or whatever it was, had distracted him and he’d lost sight of the boy. He didn’t know what to do. He stood in the center of the sidewalk, rubbed his jaw and tried to think. He didn’t want to admit they’d come all this way for nothing.
“ Where’d he go?” Oxlade was scanning for Arty, too.
“ He must have gone into one of those houses.” Gibson pointed to the left.
“ But which one?” Oxlade pulled his loose fitting pants out of the crack of his ass again. “And even if we know which one, how can we find out what he’s doing in there? How am I gonna claim the bet if we can’t prove he’s got a girlfriend.”
“ Let me think a second.” Gibson didn’t like the thoughts that came into his head. He imagined Arty sitting around a fancy table, making up all kinds of stories. But whose table. Who was the boy lying his ass off to? Another kid’s parents? That pretty little teacher? A cop?
The last thought chilled him. He wanted to be home in front of the TV. He wanted another beer. He hated the night and the quiet, but he couldn’t go away without knowing. He wanted to catch the boy red handed and make him talk, before he had time to make up any lies. Surprise was the best way.
“ There he is, over there.” Oxlade pointed.
Gibson squinted into the night and saw his son moving out from between two parked cars up ahead. Both men dropped into a crouch and slid behind an old Chevy pickup parked ten houses down the block. They watched as Arty crossed a front lawn up ahead and slipped through the bushes guarding the space between two houses.
“ I knew it. He’s sneaking out to visit a girl.”
“ We don’t know that yet.”
“ Come on, Billy Boy, give it up. Let’s go back and play some cards.”
“ Not yet,” Gibson said. If he hadn’t seen Arty crawl through the bushes he wouldn’t have believed it. He didn’t know what to do. Part of him wanted to crawl in there after him, pull him out by the scruff of the neck and give the little bastard a good going over for sneaking out at night, but the other part was afraid of dark places.
“ How long you wanna wait?”
“ Just a little while.” Gibson reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and a silver Zippo, and with the fluid motion of a serious smoker, he flipped the lighter open with his thumb and spun the flint to flame, so fast that an observer would have thought he ordered up the fire by snapping his fingers.
He shook his other hand with just enough force to cause a cigarette to expose itself from the pack. He caught it between his lips and touched it to the flame. He took a deep drag, letting the smoke fill his lungs. He loved the taste of filtered tobacco mingled with the smell of lighter fluid.
“ Here.” He held the pack out and Oxlade took one. Then they sat on the curb and smoked.
“ I think he went in a window,” Oxlade said. “If he was my kid I’d march right up there and bang on that door.”
“ Which door?” They could see from where they were that the lights were on in both houses.
“ Both.”
“ Let’s wait a few minutes, ’case he comes out,” Gibson said.
“ It’s a good thing I brought something to the party.” Oxlade pulled a fifth of cheap whisky out of his pants pocket.
“ Seymour, you think of everything,” Gibson said. Oxlade was beaming as he opened the bottle. Gibson scooted closer to him. He wasn’t a man to pass up a free drink.
“ I gotta take a leak.” Oxlade got up. “I’ll be right back.”
Gibson watched as he walked around to the other end of the truck. He heard the steady stream hitting the street. He took a long drag on his cigarette and pondered his problems. His wife and son were bricks lashed to his ankles and he was drowning. But there was nothing he could do. He couldn’t afford a divorce and Lucy wouldn’t see him any more if he didn’t get one. If only something would happen to them, he thought, but he didn’t have the courage to do anything. No, he was stuck. He was going to wind up the rest of his days in this god forsaken town with a skinny wife, a fat boy and a dead future.
“ I’m back,” Oxlade said, interrupting Gibson’s thoughts.
“ That was fast.”
“ These old bones ain’t dead, yet.” He zipped up.
“ Damn, this is good.” Gibson took another pull on the cheap whisky.
“ I figured if we gotta wait till you get ready to do something, we might as well be enjoying ourselves while we’re doing it.”
“ Yeah,” Gibson said, but he thought for a second, trying to work out if Seymour Oxlade was insinuating he was chicken, but when the second was over he decided his friend had only been making conversation.
For the next fifteen minutes the two men sat on the curb, drinking. The world started to seem quite all right to Bill Gibson. He looked at Oxlade and was pleased that he’d met someone like him. A friend he could relate to. He wondered how he got the scratches on the side of his neck. He bet that would be a story he could enjoy. He was about to ask when Oxlade pointed down the block and said, “Someone’s coming.”
“ But this is our street?” Gibson laughed at his joke and Oxlade joined in.
“ Yeah, this is our street. We were here first,” Oxlade said.
Gibson tried to clear his head by taking a deep breath. It wasn’t fair, he thought, here he was sitting and having a couple of drinks with his friend, minding his own business, when someone has to come along and spoil it. Probably someone from the neighborhood who was gonna tell them if they didn’t move on they were gonna call the police. He hated this town of snobs.
“ Maybe we should charge a toll,” Oxlade said, his thoughts running along different lines than Gibson’s. He looked down the block. Whoever it was had stopped, offering only a dark shadow in the fog. He dropped his cigarette in the gutter, stomped on it and slid back around the pickup, so that the truck was between him and whoever was out there. Oxlade moved with him. Gibson was glad to see that words weren’t necessary between them.
“ Can you see anything?” Gibson whispered.
“ No, we’ll have to wait till he gets closer.” Oxlade was whispering, too.
Gibson wondered who would be out walking in the fog and he willed himself to be quiet. Then he coughed. He tried to cut it back, but that only made it worse. He coughed again, sending sounds bouncing down the street. “Sorry, I couldn’t keep it in.”
“ Maybe I should just pop on over and say hello and see who it is. It’s a free country, you know. We got just as much right to be here as anyone else.”