The Journey Back Read online

  “Where you headed?” he asked. “You one of those hikers?” The kid didn’t look at me when he asked me this. He faced the river and, like I said, his hood was up, so I couldn’t see his face.

  “Yeah,” I told him. “I’m hiking the towpath down to Georgetown.”

  “Wow. I guess that’s a long way, huh?”

  “Pretty long.”

  “How many miles?”

  Was this a test? If I was hiking the whole path then I’d know how many miles total, right? I had to think fast. “It depends on the route you take,” I said.

  The kid nodded. Guess he didn’t realize there was only one route, which meant he wasn’t too bright.

  “So what’s your name?” he asked.

  “Gerald,” I replied right off. “What’s yours?”

  The kid turned to me and smirked. “Ronnie,” he said.

  But I didn’t believe him.

  “I’m skippin’ school,” he said as he picked up a stone and shot it downhill.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him, “I won’t turn you in.”

  “Aw, gee. Thanks.”

  I don’t know, was he being sarcastic?

  Somehow, we ended up talking about stuff. Like music and movies. I told him some of the things I’d learned about the canal towpath, and he told me about this girl he knew who worked for one of the restaurants across the river in Harpers Ferry. He said she could get us free hamburgers and maybe some fries.

  My eyes grew wide. “That would be great,” I said. “I am really starved for a hamburger.”

  “Me too. I gotta wait for her to finish her shift though. Mind if I stretch out on your rock for a bit?”

  “No. Suit yourself,” I told him.

  So he laid back and closed his eyes. I figured it was okay for me to rest a little, too. Maybe dream about that big fat juicy cheeseburger I was gonna get. I’d ask that girl to put onions, catsup, and pickles on it.

  Big mistake.

  As soon as I closed my eyes that kid grabbed my backpack and took off.

  I sprang to my feet, but the hill was steep and rocky and I didn’t have my boots on!

  “Damn!” I hollered. I slapped my own leg in anger.

  Grabbing my boots, I put everything on as fast as I could, then I tore after that kid, stirring up a big cloud of dust as I slipped and slid all the way downhill.

  “Go get him!” I yelled at Buddy and pointed. The dog fell down the hill in front of me and charged ahead.

  Ten minutes later, I completely lost sight of the boy—and the backpack. When I passed some people on bikes, I asked if they’d seen a kid run by.

  “Yes!” a woman told me. She pointed backward with her thumb.

  “He stole my backpack,” I said.

  Another woman pulled out her cell phone. “Should I call the police?”

  “No!” I exclaimed, holding up my hands to stop her. “It’s okay.”

  The women seemed confused by that.

  “Friend of mine,” I blurted. “He’s just foolin’ around—like he always does. I’ll catch up to him. Thanks anyway.”

  I tried to keep jogging, but I was whipped. I never even saw the rock that tripped me up. Next thing, I’m on the ground, holding my foot and rocking back and forth it hurt so bad. When I tried to stand, I couldn’t put any pressure on it. I limped down to the river to get a drink, then took my boot off and stuck my foot in the cold water. I stayed there a long time, soaking my ankle, but it got messed up bad and was already puffy and turning shades of red and purple.

  When Buddy returned and sat down beside me, I petted his head. “Thanks for trying,” I told him. I had lost everything. With the backpack went the guidebook, the flashlight, the matches, the pancake mix, and the rest of the bread, even the trucker’s gray jacket. All I had left were the clothes on my back and the stuff in my pockets: three dollars and a jackknife. I pressed my lips together and shook my head. My own fault. But if I ever caught that kid, he’d be sorry he ran into me.

  I found a stick to lean on, like a cane, and when evening came I made my way slowly. By the time I got to another campground, I was totally beat and hid down by the river. I found a spot with a bed of leaves and a rock to prop up my foot. My ankle was so bad then that after I took the boot off, I knew I wouldn’t be able to get it back on. So I spent the night there, scratching at bug bites on my face and hugging myself to keep warm. What else could I do? Made me think of this poster in Miss Laurie’s office: Do what you can with what you have where you are.

  But I also started thinking of throwing in the towel and giving myself up. Would I get sent back to Cliffside? How much more time would they give me?

  In some ways, I thought, it wouldn’t be so bad going back. At least I’d have dry clothes, a bed to sleep in, and three meals a day—plus snacks. Like a granola bar with raisins and nuts, a bowl of buttery popcorn, a shiny apple, a hard-boiled egg with a little salt and pepper sprinkled on it . . .

  But then what about Hank and LeeAnn? What about my mom?

  I shook my head sadly, torn about what to do and disappointed in myself. I felt dumb I hadn’t done this better. At least one thing came out of that mess: I vowed to myself that I would never ever trust anyone again. Not ever.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  BLUE LIGHT

  All night I lay there with my ankle throbbing like crazy, bug bites itching, and gnats trying to crawl in my eyes. But at least, I thought, I didn’t have that blue light shining in my eyes. I had a lot of time that night and all the next day to think about giving myself up and letting my mind drift off to dumb things like that blue light at Cliffside.

  It got so I really hated nights at that stinkin’ prison. And yeah, it was a prison even if they did call it Cliffside Youth Center on our sweatshirts. In August, when the juvenile court judge sent me and J.T. out to the mountains, she called it a forestry camp, but I don’t know where she’s been at because it hasn’t been a real forestry camp for like seventy years. I saw a picture so I know that a long time ago, during the Great Depression, it was one of those CCC camps President Roosevelt created for guys with no money. They lived at the camp and worked like dogs all day clearing land, building hiking paths, stone walls, stuff like that.

  On the wall in the office where we first come in, there’s a framed-up yellowed newspaper picture from back in the 1930s with all those CCC guys piled into the back of a truck with their axes and shovels, heading off to work. Civilian Conservation Corps is what CCC stood for. I’ll tell you, I would have much rather worked my butt off like those guys than peel potatoes, analyze my life, and go to school all day, which is mostly what we did.

  Anyway, like I said, the nights were bad at Cliffside. There were two dorms, twenty boys in each, and all of us in one big room with tiny windows so high up you couldn’t see out. Our beds were jammed together and separated by only a skinny, gray, metal locker, which barely had space for a change of clothes and a toothbrush. We couldn’t have anything from home except a couple family pictures, but I didn’t have any. Wished I did though. It would have been nice every once in a while to look into little LeeAnn’s pretty blue eyes or get a glimpse of my baby brother, Hank, who was growing up so fast. At night sometimes, I’d close my eyes and try to remember what the kids looked like while I settled into that hard, lumpy bed and pulled those scratchy blankets up to my chin. No talking allowed, which was fine with me, so we’d listen to the music they kept on low for a while. WQZK, 94.1 out of Keyser, West Virginia. It was Top 40 stuff, most of it pretty good actually. Supposed to calm us down. I know for a fact some of those guys had tears in their eyes when they finally rolled over and went to sleep.

  To my left in that dorm was Abdul, and to my right was Dontaye. I got along okay with both them guys. Abdul was pretty private, but he always said “good night.”
So did Dontaye, only he talked to me some, too. He was sixteen, which is two years older than me, and hadn’t been to school in over a year. We were both at the same math level so sometimes we worked together on homework. I never talked about my family, or my crime, or nothing, but Dontaye spilled out stuff about his life back in Baltimore that made me seriously wonder who had it worse—him or me. He said prison saved him, although I’m sure that didn’t mean he liked being there at Cliffside. It seemed like he was way too young to be a dad, but I know he missed his little boy back home. He kept a bent-up picture of his baby son taped inside his locker door and kissed it with his finger every night.

  At least Abdul and Dontaye could sleep. In no time, I’d hear ’em both snoring away. Not me. I’d lay there for hours, my hands behind my head, still thinking and worrying about stuff long after the radio got turned off. Even after lights-out the place was never dark ’cause they kept that one blue lightbulb on overhead all the time. Drove me nuts that blue light ’cause it was like somebody staring at me all the time, so I could never really sleep. Boy, do you know what that does to a person?

  It was never totally quiet in there either and not just because there was a mouse scratching away in the wall near Abdul’s bed. We had this guard, a guy named Joey, in the room with us the entire night, sitting behind his big desk. He wore his leather jacket all the time and he had a vicious case of Dunlap’s disease—you know, his stomach done lapped over his belt. An old stupid joke, I know, but that was him. He was like an old, stupid joke. A big, fat kid who never grew up. I could hear him fold and unfold the newspaper, but my guess is he only read the comics, if he could read at all. I could hear him clipping his fingernails. I could hear him shuffle and snap cards in place during a game of solitaire. I could hear him rip open his junk food and crunch away on all that stuff he got from the vending machine. Heck, I could even smell the guy—like I knew when he got Fritos and when he started in on a pack of them cheese crackers, all of which he washed down with cans of Red Bull. He always left the cans on his desk for us to see in the morning. Like I wondered if he wanted to rub it in our faces that he could use the vending machine and we couldn’t.

  So, I didn’t miss sleeping in that dorm. No way. But here’s the weird thing. I was out in the woods, alone. No blue light in my face. No fat guard named Joey keeping an eye out. Still, I had this eerie feeling that someone was watching me.

  The next day, I found out who it was.

  I hobbled down to the river to get a drink and was throwing sticks for Buddy when I spotted some little fish darting around in the water. Man, I was so hungry I was tempted to reach in and grab a few of them fish to chow down on, but I knew I couldn’t catch ’em just like that. So I rigged up a spearlike thing by wrapping the jackknife onto a stick with some vine. I didn’t know if it would work—or if I could actually eat raw fish, but I had to try. When this big catfish come along, I stood up and sent that spear flying into the water. Trouble is that I threw it so hard that the knife came off the stick and I lost my balance and fell in.

  Big splash. Naturally, the fish got away. I was left soaking wet and feeling like a fool. I pulled the knife out of the sand and was wiping it off with my shirt when I heard someone laugh.

  I opened up the big blade on my knife and positioned it tight in my hand. I also picked up a stick from the rock beside me. Slowly, I stood up in the water.

  The laughing stopped.

  “Who’s there?” I demanded.

  Buddy barked at the bushes.

  “I know you’re in there!” I called out.

  Unbelievable. But out steps this skinny little kid who was about the same size as my little brother, Hank, who’s eight. No kidding. I bet they were the same age only this kid looked like a wimpy little nerd—one of those pale, freckle-faced bookwormy types who couldn’t throw a ball or shoot a basket.

  The boy seemed scared.

  I shushed Buddy and brought down my hand holding the knife.

  “I’m not gonna hurt you,” the kid said. “Honest.”

  “Yeah, well, why were you spying on me?”

  “I wasn’t spying,” he said, pushing the glasses up on his nose. His voice got quiet. “I was just watching you. You and your dog . . . What’s his name?”

  I glanced down at the dog, who stared at my hand, ready to leap the instant I threw the stick. “Buddy,” I told him. “His name’s Buddy.”

  “I wish I had a dog like that,” the kid said.

  I tossed the stick and, while Buddy jumped in the water to fetch it, I sat down on the rock to take the weight off my ankle. While I folded in the blade and slipped the knife back in my pocket, I kept my eyes on the kid. “Who are you?” I asked. “And what are you doing out here?”

  “My name’s Luke,” he said. “Me and my dad, we’re staying at the campground.”

  “Yeah? Is it a big campground? A lot of people?”

  “Pretty big. A lot of people.”

  “Did you tell anyone about me?”

  The kid shook his head. “Nobody.”

  “Well don’t, okay? I don’t want anybody to know I’m here.”

  “Okay. I promise I won’t tell.”

  I limped out of the water and up onto the riverbank.

  “What happened to your foot?” he asked.

  “I fell and twisted it. So it’s laid me up some. I was hiking the canal path. Me and Buddy. We were doing pretty good until someone stole my backpack.”

  I swung my head up to look at the kid. “Say, you don’t have any food, do you? Like back in your tent?”

  His face lit up. “Sure! I can make you a peanut butter sandwich.”

  “Oh man. I would love it if you could make me a sandwich. I’d take two, in fact—if you can spare the bread. Boy, I would really appreciate it.”

  Just then, Buddy returned and dropped the stick at my feet.

  “And maybe one for Buddy, too?”

  “Sure!” He turned to go.

  After this kid, Luke, took off, I wondered what I should do. Whether I should get going before he came back with someone, or just hide to see if he came back alone with those peanut butter sandwiches. I was pretty hungry.

  I stood and threw the stick again for Buddy, then touched my puffy black and blue ankle and sat down. I wasn’t ready to give up after all, and I was thinking if I could get some food we’d travel at night again. Even if I did have to limp along, we’d take it slow and work our way down the towpath.

  Sitting there waiting, however, I felt something sticky and made a discovery that was going to change my plans. Those bug bites on my face? They weren’t bug bites. They were poison ivy blisters oozing all around my eyes, down my cheeks, and across my nose. I had it on my arms and hands, too. Damn, I thought. I must’ve picked it up when I was lying in the woods that second night out.

  Soon, the kid was back—alone—and with a plastic bag full of food! Four peanut butter sandwiches, plus a couple bananas and two cans of Coke.

  I scarfed down two of them sandwiches right away while the kid fed pieces of another one to Buddy. Then I popped the top on a can of soda and drained it without stopping. I split the fourth sandwich between me and Buddy and then sat there peeling a banana.

  “Boy, I really appreciate this,” I said around a mouthful. “If I had a bunch of money I’d pay you for it, but like I said I got ripped off.”

  Luke shrugged. “It’s okay. My dad won’t mind.”

  I stopped eating. “Your dad? Did you tell him it was for me?”

  The boy shook his head. “My dad’s not even here. He doesn’t get home from work until almost dinnertime.”

  “He’s working while you’re on vacation?”

  “We’re not on vacation,” Luke said. “We live here.”

  “I thought you said this was a campground.”

 
; “It is! But a lot of people, they live here. Some people got giant RVs and stuff. My dad and me sleep in a big tent. It’s nice though. We got cots and a rug on the floor. We even have a little TV that runs on batteries. Some people, they sleep on the ground. And these two guys we know, Jeff and Kyle, they sleep in their car. They smoke pot, too. We can smell it.”

  “Wow,” I said, and kind of rolled my eyes.

  I finished off both bananas while Luke babbled away about himself. I found out he was in the third grade, just like Hank, that he liked math, but was no bookworm ’cause he hated to read. He said he wanted a dog like mine someday, and he bragged about his rock collection, which sounded pretty lame to me. After a while Luke said he needed to get back to do his homework. I figured I wouldn’t see the kid again so I thanked him a second time for the food and wished him good luck.

  After he left, I took a couple napkins he’d brought, dipped them in the cold river water, and pressed them against the poison ivy on my face. Even though I’d eaten, I didn’t feel so great. I went back to where I’d been lying down and stretched out with the damp napkins stuck to my face and my foot up on the rock. My face itched so bad I felt like I wanted to scratch if off, but I fell asleep anyway and slept clear through the night.

  Next thing I knew birds were singing. I smelled a wood fire, probably from the campground, and I heard a couple vehicles start up and leave. Sunlight coming through the trees started to warm my face and made it more itchy. Then I had that weird blue light feeling again, like someone was watching me. Only this time I couldn’t do a thing about it, or even know for sure ’cause—this was really scary—I couldn’t see anything. The poison ivy had made my eyes swell up and close.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  * * *

  TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE

  “Do you think he’s dead?”

  “No. Watch his stomach. It moves when he breathes. See? He’s not dead. Why would he be dead?”

  “I don’t know. I mean he was starving to death yesterday.”