The Liberation of Gabriel King Page 3

  It was a Tuesday morning, and me and Frita were making a track and field course outside my trailer.

  “Let’s pretend we’re in the Olympics,” Frita said. The Olympics were coming up and Frita had been reading all about them.

  “This part of the road can be the track and then we can bring out stuff to be the hurdles and the high jump.”

  We looked around the trailer until we found what we needed. There was a lamp with a broken switch, Momma’s old blender that wouldn’t blend, the pillows from the couch with the stuffing falling out, the stool with the cracked seat cover, and three buckets.

  “Someone’s got to count,” Frita said, “so we know if we set any world records.”

  I said I’d count first, so Frita lined up beside the lamp.

  “On your mark, get set…”

  The mailman walked right into our course and tripped over the blender. “Crazy kids,” he said, shaking his head. He took out a yellow slip and handed it to me. “This one’s for you, Gabe. Guess you’ve got a package down at the post office.”

  The mailman put the rest of the mail in the box, then headed next door. Frita ran up to see my package slip, but she jumped over all the obstacles first, ending with a flying leap onto the pillows. I counted and she made it in record time. Record for Hollowell, Georgia, anyway.

  She stood up and hopped over to me. “Did you order something?” she asked when she reached me.

  “Nope,” I said. “Maybe it’s for Pop.”

  “But it says it’s for you,” Frita pointed out. “Ask your momma if we can walk into town and get it.”

  Frita reached down and scooped up a huge daddy longlegs that was crawling over the finish line. She dangled him between her thumb and forefinger and I jumped a mile even though that spider wasn’t anywhere near me. I ran right quick to the trailer and poked my head inside the front door.

  “Momma,” I yelled, “can me and Frita walk into town?”

  All I heard was a muffled sound from the back, but that was yes enough for me.

  “Okay, we’re going!” I hollered.

  I went back out to the yard where Frita was setting that spider down on the pillows real careful.

  “Ready?” I asked, keeping my distance.

  The daddy longlegs scampered away. Good riddance.

  “Yup,” Frita said. “Let’s take the old dirt road. It’s quicker.”

  I felt my gooseflesh rising.

  The old dirt road was a narrow stretch between the peanut mill and the town of Hollowell, and nobody used it except the eighteen-wheelers that came to pick up the peanuts. They came barreling down out of nowhere. Momma always said a man could get run over and killed on a stretch of road like this and no one would know it for days. Me and Frita talked about it once and we guessed you’d get eaten by buzzards. They’d pick at you with their huge beaks until you were nothing but a pile of bones.

  “Who’s in a rush?” I asked.

  Frita said, “Don’t be a chicken, Gabriel King.”

  Then she took off, so I didn’t have any choice but to follow.

  We left the obstacle course set up and ran through the trailer park, then cut through the secret path. Soon as we stepped onto the old dirt road, I looked up and down for eighteen-wheelers. Then I looked in the sky for buzzards, just in case, but there weren’t any. There was only dry dust chokin’ up my tongue and making it hard to breathe. Everything was pressing in again, even with Frita right there beside me.

  “Race ya,” I said, so we could get to town faster. I took off three seconds early and ran full out, but Frita still beat me by a mile. By the time I turned onto Main Street, she was already sitting in front of the post office. I could see her perfectly clear because there are only seven buildings in the town of Hollowell, so you can see just about everything at once. There’s the post office, the town hall with its big green lawn and gazebo, Mae’s Pit Stop Restaurant, the general store, the Baptist church, and the gas station. Then a little farther down there’s the Hollowell Elementary School.

  Frita stood up when she saw me coming.

  “What took you so long?” she asked, but she didn’t say it mean, only teasing. I was all winded, so I handed Frita my yellow slip and she marched up the steps into the post office and gave it to Mr. Alfred. I walked in real slow behind her, taking in big gulps of air.

  “Morning, Frita. Morning, Gabe,” Mr. Al said. He looked at me and shook his head, chuckling. “What are you two up to today?” he asked.

  “Nothin’,” Frita said.

  Mr. Al went in the back and brought out a big manila envelope and handed it to me. I tore it open.

  This certifies that

  GABRIEL ALLEN KING

  completed the Fourth Grade

  at Hollowell Elementary School

  Hollowell, Georgia, May 1976.

  There was a class picture inside the envelope too. I frowned and stuffed everything back in.

  “Something good?” Mr. Al asked.

  “No,” I said.

  Me and Frita went outside and sat down on the lawn in front of the town hall. I picked a pebble out of the grass and threw it at one of the election posters hanging up on the community board. I aimed for the one of Gerald Ford and pretended he was Duke Evans. Then I pretended I was Jimmy Carter and everyone was going to vote over which one of us went to the West Wing next year because there sure wasn’t room for both of us.

  Me and Frita were quiet for a long time.

  “At least you got a class picture,” she said at last.

  I pulled it out of the envelope and there I was, front and center, looking like a first-grader. My hair was all messed up, like a rat’s nest. I’d forgotten it was picture day, so I’d worn my oldest tattered overalls. Frita was two rows above me and her hair looked perfect, all done up in a neat bun on top of her head. She was smiling real huge. There were only ten kids in our class, but even so, Frita stood out. She was the only black person in the picture and the only girl on the top row.

  I remembered how Frita’s class picture got all crushed in the dust, so I yawned like I was bored instead of grumpy.

  “Who wants a stupid old picture anyway,” I said. “Maybe I’ll throw it away.”

  “Throw it away?” Frita said, opening her eyes wide. “You can’t waste a good picture like this. Look, there’s Ms. Murray—the best teacher we ever had. You want a picture of Ms. Murray, don’t you?”

  “Nah,” I said. “You can have it. I’ll get another one next year.”

  Frita took the picture out of my hands.

  “Well, I’ll keep it if you’re going to throw it away,” she said, “but you know you’re not staying behind. You got a certificate to prove it, right there.”

  I picked up another pebble and aimed for Gerald Ford again, but this time I hit Jimmy Carter right on the nose. Frita shook her head.

  “Gabe,” she said, “we got to do something about you.”

  “You mean so I don’t get pounded?”

  “I mean so you’ll move up with me next year.”

  “Why can’t you stay behind?”

  Frita wrinkled her nose.

  “Then how would we ever get out of elementary school? Nope,” she said. “We got to think of a plan.”

  “A plan?”

  “Yup,” said Frita. “Something to help you stop being chicken.”

  I scowled. Didn’t seem to be anything that could do that, but I thought it over.

  “Frita,” I said at last.

  “Yeah?”

  “If we can’t make me brave, then will you stay behind with me?”

  Frita frowned, but finally she shrugged.

  “I guess,” she said. “But I’m going to come up with something, and when I do, you better try it. No halfsies. Deal?”

  “Deal,” I said, sticking out my pinky.

  Frita linked hers with mine and we shook on it.

  Chapter 7

  FRITA’S PLAN

  WHEN FRITA SAYS SHE’S GOING TO COME U
P WITH A PLAN, YOU BETTER watch out, because it is by God going to happen. The very next day she called me on the phone to say she’d come up with an idea, so I rode my bike over to her house even though it was pouring down rain. Got there in ten minutes flat, but I was still soaked. Frita met me in the driveway and I could tell she was excited. Her eyes were sparkling like water in a puddle after the sun comes out.

  “Here’s what you’re going to do,” she said, as soon as I’d dried off and we were in her room with the door shut. “First, you’re going to make a list. Write down everything you’re afraid of.” She narrowed her eyes until they were teeny, tiny slivers. “And you better be honest or it won’t work.”

  “I’ve got to write down everything?”

  Frita nodded. She handed me paper and a pencil and waited for me to write.

  “Then what’ll we do?” I asked, suspicious.

  Frita grinned. “Then we’ll cross ’em off one by one, saving Duke Evans and the fifth grade for last when you’re most brave.”

  I about choked. That was the plan?

  “Nuh-uh,” I said, leaving that paper in a heap, but Frita gave me a look that could have withered okra on the stalk.

  “You pinky-swore,” she reminded me.

  Drat.

  I picked up the pencil and made a column of numbers down one side of the paper. I wrote fifth grade next to number one even though we were going to save that till last. Then I wrote down Duke Evans, Frankie Carmen, spiders, and alligators next to numbers two, three, four, and five.

  “You done?” Frita asked after a while.

  “Nope,” I said.

  Frita jumped on the bed. She was wearing a bright orange jumpsuit with flared ankles, and every time she jumped, the flares puffed around her legs.

  “Done yet?”

  I wasn’t. I was only on number eighteen.

  “Maybe I’d be able to finish if you’d let me concentrate…”

  Frita was quiet for a long time. She did handstands against the wall and watched me upside down. I started a second column down the other side of the paper.

  “Now are you done?” she finally asked.

  Truth was, there were maybe just a few more things I could have written down, but I said yes just so she’d stop asking.

  “Okay,” said Frita, sliding against the wall. She crumpled in an upside-down heap of gangly legs and elbow-y arms. “What’s the first thing on your list?”

  “You mean aside from Duke and Frankie and the fifth grade?”

  Frita nodded.

  “Spiders,” I said slowly. Big ones, small ones, and hairy fanged ones. I’d never met a decent spider.

  “Okay,” said Frita, “we’ll start with that.”

  “What are we going to do?” I asked, but Frita didn’t answer. She took her raincoat out of her closet and pulled on her yellow galoshes.

  “You’ll see…,” she said. “This is the best plan ever.”

  Then she stopped.

  “Better get the jars and flashlights out of the basement,” she muttered.

  I stopped dead in my tracks. Frita’s basement was number eight on my list and she didn’t even know it.

  “I’ll wait up here,” I said, but Frita grabbed my arm.

  “We’re just going down for a minute,” she told me. Then she walked out of her room and down the hall, dragging me with her. There was a light at the top of the basement stairs, but it was too high up even for Frita to reach, so we crept down the steps real slow. They creaked under our weight and Frita’s feet made loud squishing sounds in her galoshes. I listened just in case Terrance was down there waiting for someone to pound on, but there wasn’t a sound. Then I listened in case he was upstairs waiting to sneak up on us like he’d done when we were checking out his punching bags. But I didn’t hear anything from that direction either.

  My heart was beating super fast. Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump.

  It was dank and musty in the Wilsons’ basement, and everywhere I turned, there were posters that said MALCOLM X on them and drawings of panther heads staring at me from the darkness. I turned in a full circle, staring at the walls, wondering why Terrance hung out down here. Mrs. Wilson said a boy his age needed privacy, but I didn’t see what was so private about punching things.

  I followed Frita away from the stairs over to a box that was sitting on the floor. She dug around for the flashlights while I stood next to the little punching bag, breathing in the smell of sweat. My eyes started to adjust and I studied the canvas real hard. That’s when I saw it—even in the darkness.

  There was blood on one corner.

  I stepped back quick, my heart beating twice as fast, and backed right into Frita, who was putting new batteries into one of the flashlights.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked, but I could hardly breathe.

  “Let’s get out of here,” I whispered.

  “Why?” Frita said, taking out two jars and turning on the flashlight. “We’re just getting the stuff we need. Isn’t any reason why we shouldn’t—”

  That’s when Frita’s flashlight went out.

  “BOO!”

  I screamed, and then I saw him.

  Terrance was standing right behind Frita, one hand over the front of her flashlight.

  I didn’t wait around. I took off so fast, I should have gotten a gold medal. There was a space the width of one small person between Terrance and the wall, and I squeezed through it and bolted up the stairs.

  “Where you going, Twerp?” Terrance called out after me, but I was already gone. I hadn’t even put my raincoat on, but I stood outside and got drenched waiting for Frita.

  Chapter 8

  SWAMP SPIDERS

  FRITA WAS SOME MIFFED.

  “Stupid Terrance,” she said. “I bet the basement was on your list and now you’re twice as scared of it. Big brothers ruin everything,” she muttered. We turned off onto the old dirt road. “But don’t worry. We still got plenty more things to cross off.”

  That’s what I was afraid of.

  We walked a little farther, but I stuck close to Frita. The old dirt road was worse than ever on gloomy days like this, and I was jumpy as a flea. The roots of my hair were still standing on end.

  “Maybe we should go back to my place…,” I said, but Frita gave me that look again.

  “Gabriel King,” she told me, “this is good practice. I bet a million dollars the old dirt road is on your list too, isn’t it?”

  “So?” I said.

  Frita got that look in her eye.

  She thought for a minute, then, before I knew it, she took off running. Just like that. I tried to catch up, but Frita was way faster than me and pretty soon I was all by myself.

  “Frita?” I hollered.

  There was no answer, so I stopped and stood in the middle of the road. It was silent and shadowy and the rain was making a mist, thick as pea soup.

  “Frita?” I said again, only this time it came out as a croak.

  Only there was no Frita.

  I looked back over my shoulder, thinking I might head home again, but the way back looked just as creepy as the way forward. Shadows danced in both directions. Truck shadows, cow shadows, and huge looming Terrance shadows.

  My muscles froze so I could barely move. I thought about calling for Pop, but I knew he would never hear me. Instead I took one step, then two steps…Then I heard it. Sounded like a freight train coming straight at me. First the deep roar of the engine, then the bellow of the horn. I turned and sure enough, there were two headlights coming closer and closer…

  My eyes opened wide, but still I couldn’t move an inch.

  There was an eighteen-wheeler headed straight toward me. The horn sounded again, louder this time, and I tried to make my legs go, but I was stuck in place. One more minute and I’d be buzzard food for sure.

  That’s when something snapped. I sprung like a rubber band stretched too tight and dove into the ditch. The horn bellowed one more time, so loud I had to cover my ears with
both hands. I lay flat and shut my eyes, but still I felt it in my stomach as the eighteen-wheeler roared by with a gust of wind and water.

  After that, everything was silent. Everything except Frita, whooping in the distance.

  “Woo-hooo! Wasn’t that great?” she hollered from somewhere far away. “Did you hear that? You hear how he laid on that horn for us?”

  Her voice was getting louder and louder as she ran toward me. I stood up and brushed myself off, but my legs were Jell-O and my heart was going really fast. I felt around in the grass until I found my jar and flashlight.

  Frita caught up to me and skidded to a stop.

  “Did you see the truck driver wave, Gabe?” she asked, dancing around in her yellow slicker. “That was the best.”

  Best wasn’t exactly the word I’d have used to describe it, but Frita didn’t care. She was all excited.

  “Come on,” she said. “Let’s run super fast.”

  I wasn’t sure my legs would move at all, let alone super fast, but Frita took off and I wasn’t about to get left behind twice. I followed like a calf at her heels. She ran past the catfish pond and kept running until we’d reached the swampy area deep in the woods.

  “You sure we should be back here?” I asked.

  Frita waded into the muck. “Yup,” she said. She pulled her flashlight out of her pocket. “It’s perfect.”

  I didn’t see what was so perfect about it. There’s nothing in a swamp but creepy old cypress trees with roots that stick up out of the ground, and Spanish moss that hangs down. There are slick snakes that slither by and spiderwebs with giant yellow-and-black spiders hanging in the middle. Plus, Terrance said there are corpses in the swamps. Corpses of kids half eaten by alligators.

  Corpses and alligators were both on my list.

  I tiptoed in, barely getting my feet wet, still thinking about the way that truck had barreled by.

  “Frita?” I hollered. “Let’s go home.”

  She was way ahead of me, shining her flashlight into the gray gloomy trees. I followed at a distance, and as I walked, my sneakers sunk deep into the muck. It had stopped raining now, but the trees were all drippy, and every now and then an extra-big drip would collect on the end of a clump of moss and wait there until I looked up so it could fall smack in my eye.