Hideout Read online

  “Son, did you move that stack of scrap lumber I had out back?” Dad asked me.

  I’d forgotten all about it. “Yes, sir,” I said. “I took it to build something with.”

  “Build something. Really? Is that where my saw and hammer went?”

  I nodded.

  “Build what?” he continued.

  “Just a platform,” I lied. “A swim platform.”

  “Where?”

  “Near Grover’s house. He asked if I could sleep over again tonight,” I added.

  “I suppose that’s fine,” Mom said. “What time will you be back?”

  “You know, before lunch.”

  “Maybe you can get Grover out of the basement and take him fishing,” Dad said.

  “That’s what I was thinking,” I said.

  After we finished eating, Dad went outside to wash his boat. It had been sitting on a trailer in our yard since the end of last summer, and he was getting it ready to put in the water again. He’d already ordered the lumber for another boat lift.

  I got my plate and started for the kitchen. I walked around Mom and put the plate in the sink and continued as calmly as I could to the garage. I got another lawn bag and dropped a couple of Dad’s shop towels into it. Then I returned to my room and stuffed my pillow and a few extra clothes on top. As I tried to slip through the kitchen unnoticed, Mom stopped me.

  “Seriously, Sam? You can’t go over to the Middletons’ hauling a garbage bag. What do you have in there?”

  My heart started racing. Mom can sniff out an iffy situation like a bloodhound.

  “My pillow and pajamas,” I said. “And some things I borrowed from Grover. So they don’t get wet.”

  Mom studied the bag. “Please, leave the bag in the boat when you get there.”

  “Okay,” I said, hurrying away.

  “And make good decisions,” she said.

  “I will,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

  I went out the back door, the lawn bag slung over my shoulder. I hurried to the Bream Chaser, relieved that Dad was still in the driveway and wasn’t there to question me any further. A moment later I was racing along the bayou toward the swamp.

  Deep down, I knew there was no way I’d ever get away with it.

  16

  I dumped the contents of the lawn bag on the deck, and Davey smiled.

  “You’re really gonna stay?” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said reluctantly. “But only for one night. We’ve got to figure out what you’re gonna do before I leave tomorrow.”

  Davey didn’t seem to care about tomorrow. “I caught another fish while you were gone,” he said.

  “Great,” I said. I pointed to the pile of clothes. “There’s some clean clothes you can change into.”

  “I feel okay now,” he said.

  “Well, you still look like you’ve been rolling around in the mud.”

  “I’ll give ’em back to you,” he said.

  “Don’t worry about it,” I said. “Get changed, and then we’ll put some new tin over that giant hole in the roof.”

  While Davey changed into fresh clothes I went inside to spread the sheets on the bunks. The camp already smelled better with the wet mattress gone, and it felt better after drying in the sun all day. After a moment Davey came inside and stood there smiling like he thought there was something funny about wearing my clothes.

  “You look fine,” I said.

  “Same size,” he said.

  “They’re a little big, but that’s okay.”

  “You take the bottom bunk with the mattress,” he said.

  “I’m fine on the boards.”

  “I’m scared on the bottom,” he said.

  “No wonder you got so wet.”

  Davey didn’t answer. He kept watching me like I was supposed to tell him everything to do.

  “How’d you get onto the roof?” I asked.

  Davey led me outside and showed me the tree he’d climbed. I got the hammer and nails and started up. In a moment I was standing on top of the roof, terrified. It wasn’t just the height—the tin was so rusty and the beams so rotten I was worried I’d fall through at any moment. From below, Davey slid me two sheets of the salvaged tin he’d brought from one of the other camps. I laid them over the hole and quickly hammered them down.

  Once the roof was repaired I climbed down again and stood on the deck, feeling I’d narrowly escaped injury.

  “What do you wanna do next?” Davey asked, like I had all the ideas.

  I wiped the sweat from my forehead. “How many fish have you got on the stringer?”

  “Just one. I had some more, but they died.”

  “Maybe we can get another one before dark.”

  “We can sit outside and watch the jugs. You can tell when there’s a fish on there. It starts movin’ around.”

  Taking a break sounded good. “All right,” I said. “Let’s go watch.”

  We sat on the edge of the deck, our feet hanging over the marsh grass. The jugs sat motionless on the black creek water.

  “So have you thought about what you’re gonna do?” I asked. “If your family doesn’t come, I mean.”

  “They’ll come,” he said.

  “You didn’t seem so sure this morning.”

  “I feel better about it now.”

  “Don’t you think they would have at least checked on you?”

  Davey didn’t answer me right away. “I think one of the jugs moved,” he finally said.

  I glanced at the creek. The jugs hadn’t moved at all.

  “Davey, you have to think about what you’ll do if they don’t show. You’ll have to come with me.”

  “I won’t go back,” he said stubbornly.

  “What if you could get another foster home?”

  “I don’t need another one. I’m gonna live with my dad.”

  “What does your dad do, now that he’s out of jail? What’s his name? Maybe I can find him for you. Find out where he is. Maybe something happened to him. My dad’s a policeman, and he can find just about anybody.”

  Suddenly Davey looked at me. “He’s a policeman?”

  “Yeah.”

  Davey began breathing hard.

  “Hey,” I said, “it’s not like that. He’ll help you. He won’t make you go somewhere you don’t want to.”

  “Y-you can’t tell him about me,” he stammered.

  “Okay, I won’t tell him about you. Geez, it’s okay.”

  Davey stared at the water.

  “I can get on the Internet,” I said. “I can look for your dad myself.”

  Davey nodded and appeared to calm down.

  “So tell me about him,” I said.

  “His name’s John Wilcox. But he just got out of jail, and only Slade knows where he is.”

  “So where is Slade?”

  “I think the jug moved,” Davey said.

  “No it didn’t.”

  “Yes it did.”

  “No it didn’t,” I said.

  Davey stared at the jug a moment longer. “I don’t know where Slade is,” he said. “He told me he had some stuff to do.”

  “Maybe something happened to him?”

  Davey suddenly got up and went into the camp while I stayed there, growing frustrated.

  “You won’t even listen to me,” I said. “And you won’t let me help you.”

  Davey didn’t answer.

  “Why’d you even ask me to come here?” I said over my shoulder. “I could get in a lot of trouble over this, you know.”

  I heard Davey moving something across the floor on the other side of the wall.

  “My parents might have already called my friend’s house and found out I’m not there,” I said.

  The camp grew quiet.

  “I told you everything I know,” Davey said behind me.

  I turned and looked up at him. He was holding out a plastic sack. I took it from him and studied it.

  “What’s in there?”

 
; “You can have it for the boards and the food, and for me gettin’ you in trouble … I don’t need it.”

  I opened the bag and saw that it was stuffed full of money. There must have been thousands of dollars in there.

  17

  The sun was starting to fall below the treetops, and the air was turning chilly. I stared at the money in disbelief. I’d never seen so much in my life. The first thing I thought of was Officer Stockton telling me about the robbery at the fish market.

  “Where’d you get that money?” I asked.

  “Slade gave it to me.”

  “Where’d he get it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess he earned it.”

  “What kind of boat does he have?”

  “He doesn’t have a boat.”

  “Well, how did he get out here before?”

  “His friend Jesse brought him. Jesse has a boat.”

  “What kind?”

  “A pontoon boat.”

  I took a deep breath of relief.

  “What?” Davey said.

  “Nothing,” I said. “But I can’t take all this. I can’t take any of it.”

  “I don’t need it,” he said.

  I set the bag down and stood up. “There’s probably enough there to do whatever you want, Davey.”

  “I don’t know how much it is.”

  I fought back the urge to dump the money out and count it. “Take it inside and put it back.”

  “But it’s yours now.”

  I frowned. “Fine. Then go hide it for me.”

  Davey got the bag and went inside with it.

  “I’ll get a fire put together,” I said, “so we have it to light when it gets dark. I’ve got some dry shop towels to burn, but I didn’t have time to get more lumber.”

  “I’ve got somethin’,” he called from inside.

  I was putting the towels into the grill when he returned and held out pieces of a broken chair I remembered seeing in the corner. They looked dry enough.

  “That’ll work,” I said, taking them from him.

  “I’ve never had anybody spend the night over,” he said.

  “Seriously?”

  “Dad went to jail when I was seven,” he said.

  I arranged the wood over the towels and thought about it. “That’s a long time to be in jail for a fight.”

  “How long is it usually?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But that’s like … How old are you?”

  “Twelve,” he said.

  “Yeah, he was in jail for five years. That’s pretty long.”

  Davey laughed for the first time that I could remember. It was a funny, choppy laugh. “I’m not stupid,” he said.

  I laughed with him and shut the grill.

  “No. I don’t think you’re stupid … just stubborn.”

  Davey smiled.

  “You wanna go in your boat?” he asked. “You haven’t taken me in your boat.”

  “Sure,” I said. “We can go for a quick ride before it gets dark. And you can go swimming and clean up.”

  * * *

  Davey sat on the front bench seat while I motored out of Ware Bayou and into the river. When I sped up he turned and looked at me with his wide grin. He started to stand, and I shouted over the engine noise for him to sit down. He did and looked back at me again, and he was laughing. Then he faced forward and held his hands up in the air, feeling the wind on his palms.

  “You’ve never been in a boat before?” I shouted.

  He shook his head. “Nothing fast. Just that canoe,” he said. “This is awesome!”

  “This one’s really not that fast either,” I said. “Dad’s is way faster.”

  Davey looked back at me, the grin still frozen on his face.

  I went about a quarter mile and circled back. When we were at the creek again, I slowed in the middle and shut off the motor. The sun was low in the treetops, and the swamp was quiet and still, settled into a predusk lull. I took my T-shirt off and tossed it on the seat.

  “You wanna swim here?” Davey asked.

  I studied the water and the marsh grass at the edges, looking for alligators. I didn’t think they’d attack us, but I was still uneasy with all the big ones I’d seen in the area.

  “Sure,” I said.

  Davey pulled his shirt off and removed his glasses and wrapped them in it. Then he set the bundle on the seat and leaped in. He surfaced and grabbed the side of the Bream Chaser and hung there, watching me.

  “You comin’?” he asked.

  I slipped over the side and hung next to him. Even though I was nervous about alligators and whatever else might be in the dark depths under my feet, the water was cool and refreshing. I looked at Davey and laughed nervously. His face was still streaked with dirt and grime. I reached into the Bream Chaser and grabbed my shirt and gave it to him.

  “Get it wet and rub your face,” I said.

  “I can use my shirt,” he said. “The one you gave me.”

  “It’s fine. Use mine. It’ll dry.”

  Davey wet the shirt and started rubbing his face. In a moment he put the shirt back in the Bream Chaser, and when he turned to me he looked much better.

  “You still lookin’ for the dead body?” he asked.

  “I wish you wouldn’t talk about that while we’re swimming.”

  Davey laughed his funny laugh.

  “Not really,” I said.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “You can tell there’s nobody in there. Like their spirit got sucked away.”

  “You’ve seen one?”

  Davey nodded. “My mom. In the coffin.”

  “Geez.”

  “It’s not scary like you think,” he said.

  “Well, if I had one float up beside me right now with crabs all over it, I’d be scared.”

  Davey laughed again. “Yeah,” he said. “Me too.”

  “But I’ve been working on being brave,” I said.

  “Then I’ve got an idea,” he said.

  Davey made up a game to test our bravery. We took turns swimming ten feet down to the bottom of the creek and bringing up handfuls of mud to prove we’d been there. The cool, murky depths were terrifying and thrilling at the same time. The mud was as black and stinky and gooey as tar. Then, out of nowhere, Davey got excited and tossed a clump of it at me, and it splatted on my forehead. I looked at him in disbelief, muck dripping down my face. I could tell by his expression he didn’t know if I was going to get mad or laugh. I laughed, but mostly because he looked so funny and nervous about what he’d done. Then I lobbed some back at him, and that started the mud war. We spent nearly a half hour ambushing each other on different sides of the boat until we were coated with the stinky stuff and laughing until our sides hurt.

  * * *

  After the war we washed the mud from our hair and faces and climbed back into the Bream Chaser. When we finally started back to the camp the sun had set behind the trees and the creek was dark with cool shadow. The swamp was filled with the chatter of frogs and cicadas and crickets anticipating the darkness. Two alligators glided slowly across the surface, hunting for fish. I pulled the switch for the navigation lights and studied the waterway ahead. As we motored slowly through the cool, cheeping dusk, I sensed that now I was getting myself deeper into a kind of trouble that was a lot more complicated than a few lies. I was convinced that Davey really had told me all he knew, but somehow he seemed more strange and mysterious than ever.

  18

  When we got back to camp the mosquitoes were out. Davey got the insect repellent, and we took turns wiping it on ourselves. After we put our shirts back on, we lit the fire and started cooking the fish. We stood before the grill, mesmerized by the flames. Even with stars everywhere overhead, the swamp was darker and louder and spookier than I expected. I couldn’t even imagine spending a night alone there.

  “You know,” I said, “when your dad and brother show up, they might not like this place the way it is.”

 
“I was gonna get some more of that roofing tin from those other camps.”

  “I can help you before I have to get back.”

  “Don’t do that.”

  “What?”

  “Talk about leavin’.”

  “You know I have to leave.”

  “Just don’t talk about it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I won’t.”

  We ate the fish with a can of green beans and passed the jug of drinking water between us. When we were done I put more wood on the fire until the flames leaped above the lid and the light reached out to where we were sitting.

  “There must be a million frogs out there,” I said.

  “Five million,” Davey said.

  “I hear there’s bears out here,” I said.

  “I saw some wild pigs one day.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. They came right behind the camp. About six.”

  “With tusks?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I remembered Davey’s eyesight. “Probably hard to tell,” I said. “But maybe that’s what made the trail.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  Later, when we went inside, Davey climbed up to his bed and I got onto the bottom bunk and pulled one side of the sheet over me to keep off the mosquitoes. I lay there feeling so far away from home that I could have been sleeping on the moon. It was especially hot and stuffy with the sheet over my face. I didn’t see how I was going to sleep.

  “Mosquitoes gettin’ you?” he asked from above.

  “No. You?”

  “No. They’re not gettin’ me at all.”

  “Good,” I said. “It’s pretty hot, though.”

  Neither of us spoke for a moment.

  “You know that canoe?” Davey said.

  “Yeah.”

  “It used to be ours when we all lived in Escatawpa. Slade went and got it for me. I remember one time Daddy paddled me out here in it. All the way from the bridge. I was little, and he made me sit in the bottom in front of him and his knees came up over my shoulders. It seemed like it took a really long time, like all day. But I liked it. It was quiet and I could hear the birds, and the fish made swirls next to us.”

  “What’s your dad like?”

  “He’s kind of short, like me. He has a jagged scar on his forehead where a dog bit him when he was my age. He said they didn’t sew it up right. He always brushed his hair over it.”