Chapter 18

Kingston 76

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Chapter 18

Rounding the corner after school the next day, Timothy found Warren Street alive with diesel engine noise. Mr. O’Connor’s truck was running in front of his house, it looked like it was ready to roll.

Timothy craned his head to look inside the cab, hoping for a chance to try the CB radio or something, but Mr. O’Connor wasn’t in there, he was just letting it warm up.

Timothy went inside his own house to grab a snack.

“Mr. O’Connor’s truck is running,” he announced to Cathryn.

“I noticed,” she said.

The framed Georgia O’Keeffe print was actually vibrating against the wall.

Timothy found a rice cake and dumped a pile of sugar on top so it might resemble something like a cookie. Outside, the massive truck’s horn blew.

He went running back outside, as did several other kids, and moms too. When Mr. O’Connor pulled out of town, it was a neighborhood event.

“Where you going, Mr. O’Connor?” Timothy yelled over the engine noise.

“Heading out west Timbo!” Mr. O’Connor called with a big smile on his face. “You take care of the street while I’m gone!”

“Will do, Mr. O’Connor!”

Mr. O’Connor put the truck into gear. As he eased it out of its parking space, the truck belched black smoke, which everyone had to fan from their faces with their hands.

He blasted the horn one last time, then waved his left hand out the open window as he drove off triumphantly to pick up his payload then head out to what Timothy imagined was the Wild West.

Everyone waved and called after him, including Mrs. O’Connor of course, who was left standing alone on her front porch.

“You need anything, you just let me know,” Mrs. Vanderbeck called over to her as the smoke from Mr. O’Connor’s truck began to dissipate.

“Oh, I’ll be fine, thank you,” Mrs. O’Connor said. “Maybe now I’ll be able to get some sleep around here.”

There was a neighborhood joke that Mr. O’Connor snored so loud that Mrs. O’Connor actually preferred it when he was gone, but everyone could only imagine how much she missed him, because they missed him too.

Timothy went back inside to finish his sugar-covered rice cake.

The investigation now had a looming two-week deadline, but Charles had baseball practice today, so there was not much that could be done.

He killed some time walking around the block to look at some of the old stone houses with renewed appreciation. He looked at his Timex. It was still only 4:15. What was he going to do with the rest of his free time?

#  #  #

Timothy had been looking forward to this particular experiment from the Real Men’s Guidebook. It involved creating a small explosion to blow open a padlock.

Sitting at the desk in his room late in the afternoon, he cut the heads off a few dozen match sticks. He was in the process of pulverizing them into potassium chlorate powder when his mom knocked on his door.

“Can I talk with you a minute?”

Timothy covered the gunpowder-like substance with a piece of looseleaf paper.

“Sure, Mom.”

She sat down on the bed, took brief note of whatever odd project Timothy was plotting out on his bulletin board, then got down to business.

“I got a phone call at work today from Mrs. Brenner.”

“You did?”

“Something about you needing glasses to see the chalkboard?”

Oh shit. Was this where Timothy’s alibi worked so well that it was going to wind up getting him busted anyway?

“I think she’s calling everyone’s mom about this.”

“I don’t think so, she was pretty specific.”

“No, really, she called Brandon’s mom, I think she called Steven’s mom too.”

Digging the hole deeper, would she bother calling other moms to check?

“She did?”

“Oh yeah, it’s like a general thing.”

Timothy’s mom looked skeptically at him.

“You promise me you’re not having trouble seeing the board?”

“I promise,” he said, holding his hand up, like scout’s honor.

“And if you do, you’ll tell me so we can see about getting you glasses?”

“I will...I actually think it would be kind of cool to have glasses, if I actually needed them, but I don’t.”

This last line seemed to seal the deal. His mom nodded her head and rose from the bed. Taking a last look around the room as if she were looking for something in particular, she walked to the door.

“One other thing,” she said, “have you seen the camera around?”

“The camera? Oh sure.”

Timothy eagerly went into his bottom drawer and got it for her. Compared to getting busted for skipping school, admitting he’d borrowed the camera seemed like nothing.

She looked at the blank window on the back of the camera when he handed it to her, and shook it to confirm that it was empty.

“There was film in this camera, what did you do with it?”

Her voice was suddenly more concerned than when she’d been talking about the phone call from Timothy’s teacher.

“I had it developed,” Timothy said. He reached back into his drawer and handed her the FotoMat envelope.

She opened the envelope brusquely.

“Timothy, this film was not yours to play around with,” she said, almost angrily.

She flipped quickly past the first several photos, the ones of her and Timothy on Lake George. When she came to the pictures of her and Cathryn she seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. She smiled as she looked at them, then, holding them up, her voice turned serious again.

“These photos are very important to me,” she said.

If she’d been holding their vacation photos, or even the one Halloween photo of her and Cathryn and Timothy, he would have agreed and apologized profusely.

But she was only holding up the photos of her and Cathryn.

He found himself growing angry.

“Why are those ones so damn important?”

“Don’t curse at your mother.”

“Tell me,” he repeated, “what makes those ones so important?”

“If you must know, it’s because this was the weekend that Cathryn and I decided that we would be together.”

Really? This was more important than the vacation she took with her own son?

“Okay, so Cathryn moved in with us,” Timothy said, “why do you have to make such a big deal about it? She’s just your roommate.”

“She is not just my roommate, Timothy,” she said, now speaking as angrily as he was. “She’s my partner, we are a couple whether you want to accept it or not, and you’d better start welcoming her into this house like she’s a member of this family or there will be hell to pay.”

Timothy pushed past her, marched down the hallway and flew down the stairwell.

“You get back here, mister,” she called after him.

“I’ll go where I want,” he said, slamming the front door behind him and hitting the street.

#  #  #

The schoolyard was empty.

It was suppertime and everyone was at home with their families, except for Timothy, who sat alone on the swing set at the edge of the parking lot, not swinging.

He wished he had a cigarette.

Why couldn’t she have held up those photos of Lake George along with the other ones? He’d be home eating dinner right now if she had.

What the hell had happened between her and his dad? Why did he have to leave?

And why did life have to be so unfair?

Somewhere in the background he heard it. The unmistakable sound of a car in desperate need of a new muffler, slowly making its way into the school parking lot.

It came to a stop several feet away from the swing set and continued to sit there, idling.

At first, Timothy did not look up. But it soon became obvious that the car was not going anywhere, and that his solitary meditations, for now, were over.

He rose from the swing, walked over to the Calico Chrysler, opened the passenger door, and fell with some resignation into the front seat.

He didn’t say anything and neither did his mom as they drove the three blocks back home.

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