I, Michael Bennett Read online

  “Actually, yes. I believe it is.”

  “Sybil who?” said Bridget, pulling out her earbuds.

  “Sybil Ludington. She was only like the coolest sixteen-year-old girl ever,” Jane said, turning to her little sister. “In the Revolutionary War, she got on a horse and warned everyone in the New York militia that the British were coming. She was like Paul Revere, only better because she had to ride farther and faster. This is awesome, Dad,” she said, patting me on the shoulder. “I didn’t know this was going to be a historical trip.”

  “I’m glad you’re enjoying it,” I said.

  “Tell me I didn’t just hear a history lesson,” Ricky yelled from a few rows back. “News flash, Lady Einstein. Just because Dad is making us ride this stupid school bus doesn’t mean we’re at school.”

  Eddie raised his hand.

  “Ooh, ooh, Teacher Jane! Please finish your lesson about the Ride of Sybil Paddington, and when you’re done, may I have permission to open the window and hurl?”

  “Enough, ye scalawags,” Father Seamus Bennett announced from the last row. “There’ll be no hurling on this bus except if it’s the sport that Irishmen play.”

  I looked over at Mary Catherine, who was trying not to grin at me over the Anne Rivers Siddons paperback in her hand.

  “Are we there yet?” I whined.

  CHAPTER 39

  THE LAST OF my thoughts and concerns about my job and the city flew away as we crossed the Newburgh-Beacon Bridge. This was always the best part of the trip when I was a kid: the final marker that said good-bye, concrete and crowds and sweating on the subway, and hello, swim trunks and blue sky and summer fun.

  “Speaking of road markers,” I said out loud, suddenly remembering something and putting on the bus’s turn signal.

  “Everything okay?” Mary Catherine said as I pulled off the first exit after the bridge into the city of Newburgh. “Don’t we need to head up a few more exits?”

  “I have to make a quick stop first,” I said as I made a left onto North Robinson Avenue.

  We drove through Newburgh. Like many northeastern towns on navigable waters, the small city had had its heyday back in the 1800s, when goods traveled by ship. You could still see that nineteenth-century history reflected in its old oak-lined streets, its red-brick factories, its rambling Victorian houses. I always thought it had a faint resemblance to San Francisco, with its quaint old structures and steep streets that sloped down toward the majestic river.

  But as we continued deeper into town, I started noticing changes, and they weren’t for the better. The city, even when I was a kid, had never been exactly bustling, but I definitely didn’t remember this many boarded-up buildings and businesses. Actually, as I passed a 99 cents store and an Internet café that advertised wire-transfer service to “Centro y Sudamérica,” I wondered if I’d made a wrong turn and was now rolling through a grittier section of New York City.

  I made some turns and got lost once before I finally found what I was looking for.

  Mary gaped out the window as I stopped the bus.

  “Hot dogs, Mike?” she said. “We have hot dogs in the cooler.”

  “These aren’t hot dogs,” I said. “These are Pete’s hot dogs. It’s a family tradition. My dad always stopped here first thing to kick off the summer. Just you wait. They’ll knock your flip-flops off.”

  I picked up a baker’s dozen loaded with lots of Gulden’s mustard and sauerkraut. I sighed as I snapped into the first bite. Tube-steak heaven. The dogs were as perfect as I remembered. Pete’s hadn’t changed one bit. The kids seemed to like them, too. At least they couldn’t complain or aggravate each other while they were chewing.

  I closed my eyes as I took a sip of orange soda. When I open them again, I’ll be twelve, I thought. My first summer with braces and E.T. playing in the movie house down the block.

  I opened them, but instead of traveling back to the simpler days of yesteryear, I watched as a tricked-out Acura rolled by the hot dog stand, the thump of its megawatt rap music like a heart under a stethoscope. Not only that, but the two tough-looking Hispanic males in the front seat glared at me and my kids with silent malevolence until the light turned green and they peeled away. What was that all about?

  I thought about Perrine for a second before dismissing it. It was just a coincidence. Had to be. I was just being paranoid.

  “Okay, kids, back in the bus,” I said as I wiped mustard off my chin with a napkin. “This city living is for the birds. Time to get off the grid.”

  CHAPTER 40

  TWENTY MINUTES AFTER our hot dog lunch, we made a turn off a forested road and rolled the bus over a tree-lined gravel driveway to its final stop.

  I couldn’t stop smiling as the old rambling lakeside cabin came into view. It looked the same as I remembered it, as if I’d traveled back in time. Any second, the screen door would creak open and out would come my grandma and uncles and aunts and all my cousins, waving and smiling and sunburned.

  The vacation house had been in the Bennett family for a couple of generations, until Seamus’s brother, Cosmo, retired from the fire department and moved in year-round. Cosmo had died a few years before and in his will gave the old girl back to the family as a whole to be used as a vacation place again.

  “So what do you think?” I said to Seamus as he stepped over beside me.

  Seamus had been a skilled carpenter, among other things, before he had become a priest, and he and his brother, Cosmo, and a few of their friends had built the place over the course of one long summer back in the early sixties.

  Seamus took a deep breath as he stared at it. His blue eyes were wet, misted over.

  “I remember sitting with Grandma out on the back porch, and we’d hear that sound of tires on the gravel, and you had to see her face light up,” Seamus said. “Thirty years would disappear in a second because the family was together, her children and grandchildren.”

  He looked down at the ground.

  “God, she was a beautiful woman. I still miss her. This place brings back so many memories,” he said.

  “Let’s go make some more, Seamus,” I said, putting my arm around him as we came up the creaky steps.

  Even inside, it looked the same. There was the same massive bay window in the back that looked out over a faded dock and the mile-long lake. I smirked up at the old deer head on the wall, which we used for games of hat toss. My thirst for nostalgia ended abruptly in the kitchen when I realized we would be using the same old hit-or-miss 1960s appliances.

  In the family room, I walked over to the wall where some old framed photographs were hanging beneath a mounted boat oar. I took down the one that showed two rows of grinning men above the caption THE SHAMROCK HUNTING & FISHING CLUB.

  “Kids, come here. Have a look at this!” I yelled.

  Everyone ran over. Seamus rolled his eyes when he saw what I was holding.

  “Who can guess who this is?” I said, pointing to a strapping, shirtless, handsome young man in the back row of the photo.

  “That’s not Grandpa Seamus, is it?” said Mary Catherine in shock.

  “Hubba-hubba,” said my eldest, Juliana, squeezing Seamus’s bicep. “Pleased to meet you, Monsignor Stud Muffin.”

  Everyone laughed.

  “No, Daddy,” said eight-year-old Chrissy, shaking her head at the photo. “That’s not Grandpa Seamus. Grandpa Seamus is old, silly.”

  “Yes, Daddy is silly, isn’t he?” a red-faced Seamus said, putting the picture back on the wall. “Who’s ready for some badminton?” he said, making a beeline for the yard.

  CHAPTER 41

  THE NEXT MORNING, after preparing a late breakfast fit for a king-or a dozen starving wolverines-I took to the water. By a little past noon, the only thing between me and my most natural state was an inner tube and my surfer Jams. Sun on my face, heels trailing in the cool water as I floated gently down the lake, my only earthly concern was keeping the adult beverage prepared for me by the great people at Anhe
user-Busch upright on my stomach.

  I took another hit of my red, white, and blue Budweiser tallboy, squinted up at the tiny clouds high above me, and smiled. The Mike Bennett stress reduction program was going swimmingly indeed.

  Off to my right came the occasional sound of my kids laughing and screaming as they cannonballed off the house’s faded old dock. Seamus, who had already swum the entire length of the lake earlier that morning, was teaching them how to swim. Or at least how not to drown.

  Besides a volleyball tournament scheduled for three, I was planning on filling my day with a massive amount of nothing except kicking back and letting the pristine lake take me hither and yon.

  But plans change. Sometimes drastically.

  It was about two o’clock, as I lay there in a beery, sun-dazzled state, when I heard the whistle. When I sat up, I saw Mary Catherine waving from the distant dock. I looked over for a panicked moment to see if it had anything to do with any of the kids in the water, but it looked like everyone was in the backyard playing volleyball.

  Mary Catherine whistled and waved some more. Something was up.

  “I knew it,” I said as I started kicking and splashing back toward the house. It had been too quiet for too long.

  “Sorry to bother you, Mike. It’s probably nothing,” Mary Catherine said as I finally made it back and tossed the tube up onto the dock.

  Unfortunately, one glance at the concerned look on her face as I pulled my dripping self out of the lake said the opposite.

  “Okay. I’m here. What’s wrong?” I said.

  “It’s Brian and Eddie. They left to go to the pizza place down the road about an hour ago, and they’re not back yet. I called and texted Brian’s phone, but it seems like maybe the battery is dead. I just sent Seamus down the street to see if maybe they went to the neighbor’s. They weren’t there, but the neighbor said when he passed the pizza place, he might have seen Brian and Eddie talking to two girls and a teenager with a car.”

  No wonder Mary Catherine was looking concerned. Brian was sixteen but Eddie was only thirteen, and they were hanging around some older kids and girls? It just didn’t sound right.

  “A car? What kind of car?” I said, pissed. We’d had a big family meeting with the older ones about always making sure to let people know where they were.

  “A black convertible,” Mary Catherine said, biting at a thumbnail.

  “A black convertible?!” I repeated after a frustrated breath. “Oh, well, that’s just great. Maybe they’ll learn how to drag race. Let me get dressed, and I’ll go find them.”

  “Do you think they’re in trouble?” she said.

  “No, no, Mary Catherine. I’m sure it’s probably nothing. I mean, how much trouble could they possibly get into up here in the sticks?”

  CHAPTER 42

  FROM THE BACKSEAT of the growling Mustang convertible, Eddie Bennett wiped the blowing hair out of his eyes, looked out at the green blur of passing roadside trees, and shook his head.

  He couldn’t believe it. He thought coming up here into the country was going to be dullsville 24-7, but wow, had he gotten it all wrong. Right off the bat, as he and Brian walked into the country-road pizza place, they met two girls, Jessica and Claire. Not just any girls, either. They were older, pretty high school girls wearing Daisy Duke shorts and tank tops and lots of makeup. They started talking to Brian first, joking with him, but after a little while, they were saying how cute Eddie was and asking him if he liked older women.

  “Come on, we’re going to go for a ride,” the redheaded one, Claire, said, pulling out her cell phone as they came outside in the pizza joint’s parking lot.

  “Yeah, come on. It’ll be fun,” added Jessica, who had wild, mascara-rimmed eyes. “Or do you have to go home and ask Mommy?”

  “Of course we’ll go,” Brian said before Eddie could open his mouth.

  Then Claire sent a text message, and this guy, Bill, a long-haired dude with tattoos and those freaky flesh-tunnel earrings, rolled up in a rumbling black Mustang convertible. It was hard to tell how old he was. At least twenty. Eddie had gotten into the backseat with Brian and Claire, and now here he was, roaring through these wild country roads with the top down and Mac Miller blasting from the stereo.

  I ain’t gotta Benz, no just a Honda

  But try to get my money like an Anaconda.

  Who knew life could get this cool? Eddie thought.

  “Hey, you dudes havin’ fun?” Bill said, turning down the stereo. “Jessica tells me you boys are from New York. That right?”

  “Yep,” Brian said with gusto. “New York, New York. Born and raised.”

  “Big Apple in the house!” Eddie tossed out, but then shut his mouth as Brian gave him a glare.

  Bill nodded and looked at them in the rearview mirror. He had a long, weird-looking face, Eddie thought, like one of the elves from The Lord of the Rings. Kind of cool but also sort of creepy, actually. Eddie looked away.

  “That’s cool,” Bill, the tattooed elf, said. “I love the city. It’s good to meet people who are down. Hey, I have an idea. I know a spot over in Newburgh where they sell some primo smoke, you know what I’m sayin’?”

  Jessica started giggling in the front seat. She stopped as Bill gave her a long cold look.

  “Problem is,” Bill continued, “I don’t like buyin’ on my own. You guys mind if I make a stop there and have ourselves a party? If you don’t, that’s cool, too. It’s a pretty hairy, scary block. I just thought it’d be no biggie since you were from New York and all.”

  The girls grinned at each other then turned and stared at Brian expectantly. Eddie stared as well, his stomach getting a strange, light feeling in it, as though he were in the first car of a roller coaster right before the first drop.

  “Let’s do it,” Brian said, pumping a fist.

  Eddie sat there, blinking, trying to catch up. Everything was blurring by faster than the roadside trees. What had Brian just agreed to? To go buy weed? Dad would kill them. Hell, he was a cop. He’d arrest them first and then kill them. But never mind that. Brian was an athlete. He wouldn’t know one end of a cigarette from the other, let alone what to do with a joint if he saw one. He was just doing it because he liked the girls, Eddie realized.

  Eddie opened his mouth to say something, but Brian glared him down again.

  The Mustang slowed and then chirped to a stop. Eddie slid against the door hard as Bill the elf did a dust-raising U-turn.

  “All righty, then, homies. Newburgh, here we come,” Bill said.

  CHAPTER 43

  THE MUSTANG FLEW over a couple of tiny back roads and then bumped over some railroad tracks onto a real road that had businesses on it. A BP gas station, a T.G.I. Friday’s, a Home Depot.

  As they rolled up a hill into the city where they’d gotten hot dogs, Eddie’s stomach dropped again. He wanted to ask Brian why the hell they were doing all this, but when he turned, he could see why. Brian was busy kissing Claire. Great.

  Eddie took out his new cell phone and saw 8 NEW MESSAGES pop up on the screen. They were all from his dad, he knew. They were already in trouble. He slid the phone back into his pocket. This wasn’t fun anymore. It was crazy.

  The Mustang swerved onto a side street that headed steeply down toward the Hudson. They passed old houses. One of them had plywood nailed over its windows. Was a hurricane coming or something? Eddie thought.

  Bill turned down the radio before they pulled onto a narrow road. It looked like something out of Grand Theft Auto IV. Sidewalks strewn with couches and tires, abandoned cars, graffiti all over everything.

  When they suddenly stopped, Eddie felt his lungs seize up. On both sides of the street, sitting on parked cars and the stoops of crumbling, haunted-looking houses, were a dozen or more really muscular black dudes. Most of them were wearing red-red ball caps, red do-rags.

  These are gang members, Eddie thought with sudden terror. Actual real-life gang members.

  Jessica, in the front seat
, laughed as she lit a cigarette.

  Bill jumped out of the car and walked over to one of the black kids and slapped hands. They talked for a second, and then Bill came back.

  “He says I have to follow him into the backyard for a second to do the buy. Will you come and watch my back?”

  Staring at Bill, the evil elf, Eddie realized that he was even older than twenty. More like thirty. He was like a junkie or something. Junkies and gangbangers! What the hell had they gotten themselves into?

  “Don’t do it, Brian,” Eddie whispered to his brother. “This is bad.”

  Brian looked as scared as Eddie.

  “Yeah, Brian. Don’t do it,” Jessica whispered and laughed again.

  Brian bit his lip as he looked at her. Then he climbed out of the backseat onto the sidewalk.

  “It’s okay. Stay here, Eddie,” Brian said, blinking nervously at the gangsters across the street.

  “No way. I’m not staying here by myself,” Eddie said, hopping out after his big brother.

  Eddie tried not to make eye contact with any of the gang people as they walked across the street. Bill and the dealer or whoever he was crawled through a hole in a rusted chain-link fence. Following Brian through the fence into an alley strewn with broken bottles, Eddie smelled what he thought had to be weed. He felt like crying. He would never listen to a rap song again. This was so wrong.

  They’d just come to the end of the alley, between two crazy dilapidated wooden houses, when it happened. There was a yell, and then Bill and the black guy just bolted, suddenly running behind the house on the left.

  Stunned, Brian and Eddie just stood there as a new guy, another black teen, jumped off the back porch of the crumbling house on the right. He had a do-rag tied around his face like a cowboy bad guy. Like everything else he wore, it was red. Red basketball shorts, red Nike sneakers, red tank top.