The Most Dangerous Thing - Laura Lippman [72]
His brothers, who had been following the parade on their bikes, circle back, riding in slow, lazy circles around them.
“Let’s take turns,” Sean says. “We can go faster than you.”
“He’s too big for you to carry.”
“Not for me and Tim together.”
They leave their bikes by the side of the road—no need to fear them being taken here in Dickeyville, where everyone knows everyone, although some colored kids might come along. The brothers make a seat of their hands and carry Go-Go the next block. Tim then takes him back on his shoulder for a segment. And so they go, now part of the parade. But for the final stage, for the approach to the finish alongside the stream, Go-Go wants to get back on his father’s shoulders and do his hand thing again. This time, Sean carries the hockey stick.
They’re all dripping with sweat, smelly and disgusting. But the woman who frowned at Tim’s can of Schaefer smiles at him now. He smiles for himself. Go-Go wins second prize—really, it should have been first, just for the sheer stamina involved—but he’s pleased as hell with the ten-dollar gift certificate to G. C. Murphy’s and the look on his face is more than enough reward for Tim. Even with Tim back at work, things are still lean for the family.
Go-Go must understand this because later that night, after running through a list of all the things a boy can do with ten dollars at G. C. Murphy’s, he offers to put it toward school supplies.
“That’s okay, buddy,” his father says, tucking him in, something he seldom does in the summer, when the boys are allowed to stay up as late as they wish. Something he seldom does, period. “It was your costume, you get the prize, spend it on whatever you want. Where’d you get the idea?”
“I found a hockey mask.”
“Where did you find a hockey mask?”
“In the woods.”
“In the woods. I thought we agreed you weren’t going to go into the woods alone.”
“At the end, in the vacant lot on Tucker Lane. Not in the woods-woods.”
“OK. So you found a hockey mask, just lying there?”
“Yeah. At first I was going to be the killer in Friday the 13th. I didn’t get to see it, but Sean and Tim told me about it.”
“That wouldn’t have been a very nice thing to be on the Fourth of July, buddy. It’s your country’s birthday.”
“I know. Besides, that would mean I was a girl because in the movie, it’s a lady who wears the hockey mask so people don’t recognize her when she’s killing them. I don’t want to be a lady.”
“Of course you don’t. You’re a boy. You’re all boy. And what you did, that was better. Jim Craig—that’s in the right spirit.” A pause. “Where’d you get all the other gear, buddy? The stick and the pads?”
“Oh, some boys lent it to me.”
“Really? What boys?”
“I have to give it back. Not the skates. I wore my own skates. Do you remember when you taught me how to skate?”
Go-Go’s memory is generous. Tim didn’t exactly teach him how to skate. He left that to the older boys. He does remember the rink at Memorial Stadium, a bone-cold frustrating day of Go-Go walking on his ankles. Tim hated every second of it and kept retreating to the car to “get warm” and listen to the Colts playing out of town. Turns out that all that walking on his ankles had prepared Go-Go well for today. “Yeah, I remember.”
“That was a good day.”
“If that was a good day, then I guess today is a fantastic day.”
“Yeah.” Go-Go frowns. “It is, but it doesn’t feel quite the same. Things aren’t as good as when I was little.”
That fuckin’ freak in the woods. For all Tim knows, that monster gave Go-Go the hockey mask last summer, that’s how he lured him into his house. That man took his boy’s childhood and there’s not a damn thing Tim can do about it. Talking makes the least sense, he doesn’t care what anyone