That entire summer was hot. It was June when I left Ft Wayne, Indiana and it had been miserable a month already. The neighborhood dogs had taken to living under the porches only coming out when someone turned on a hose to wash their cars. In school they had set up loud fans in all of our classrooms but we were all busy day-dreaming of summer vacation when the older boys would go down to the quarries to swim out behind the woods or if they were old enough and slick enough to borrow a car from someone would drive up to Van Wart to see the new show at the drive in. The kids in our grade went out to the basketball courts on the weekends but not us, me, my brother Logan, my best friend Austin and his little brother Jimmy. On Saturday afternoons we always had a plan. Logan and I would wake up, take a shower if mom caught us leaving and smelled us, then grab our bikes and make it over to Austin’s. His mother was great. She would greet us with a smile and a dismissive shake of her head. Then she would press her hands on her thighs as if smoothing down her jeans and ask if we wanted some lemonade. She must have bought gallons of that stuff. Austin looked just like her. He had the same small nose and bright red hair but his was always sweaty and pushed down in rows across his high forehead. He had the most freckles of any kid I had ever known. With his pale skin his arms and nose always looked sunburn but he wanted to be outside nonetheless like it was the only place on earth he’d want to stay.
That Saturday morning seemed no different. Logan and I swallowed down our lemonade before the ice had made it cold. Austin reached up for his Yankees cap-salty lines ran around the whole thing- and off we went. Austin and I were out of the drive way and down the narrow dirt road before the kids could get out of the garage. Riding over there Austin and I were neck and neck. Logan and Jimmy were trying but falling behind.
“I know they put new ones up. I can taste it!” Austin said to me as we made the turn off bumpy road and onto the asphalt that marked Central Street.
“You said that last week but it was still the old ones: two ugly guys and the real ole man that looked like a circus act,” I called back.
“This week’s different.”
“Sure.”
Austin pressed down faster on the pedals and started speeding away. I stood and drove my feet harder ready to catch up to him but remembered the boys behind and slowed back down. The two of them were tiring. They had their mouths hanging open and a look of desperation. Jimmy, with his wavy red hair that always needed a hair cut and permanently bushy eyebrows arched up like he was waiting an answer, looked as though he’d just topple over. His bike, Logan’s old one, was too small but he’d use it just the same if it meant tagging along. He was trying to show he was old enough to hang around us. In second grade he would start attending the same school as us and his idea of winning the World Series was to be Austin’s best friend.
We all knew where Austin was going so I stayed back for the kids. It was too hot to be running around like that anyhow. Most of Central was a ghost town that early. I saw Mr. Sanders outside the grocers leaning on his broom with his eyes half asleep like he was out in right field and Mrs. Miller was walking with her daughter, Isabella-I hated her. The street still had that nice rosy glow like they showed on I Dream Of Jeanie. Across the street in the lawn with all the pinwheels, Mr. Moyer was outside watering his flowers creating a growing river that ran down his curb, across the street and into the gutter by me. I, naturally, rode through it and watched the trail my tires left on the sidewalk till they faded to nothing and I was stuck watching the houses again. I knew each of them, knew how many seconds were between the houses too. Miss Laurie’s house was next, exactly twenty-eight fence posts past the purple mailbox with the wooden sign leaning against it that advertised “Home Made Rock Candy.” Soon as I saw the sign I heard her husband’s saw coming from his workshop in the garage. It was only a few hundred yards farther so I let myself coast down the closest thing to a hill we had till I turned right into the small white brick, windowless post office. I leaned my bike against the wall next to Austin’s. Hearing the jingling of the bells hooked around the door handle, I made my way inside letting my eyes adjust.
The place always smelled like tea, it gave me a headache but my mother insisted it smelled “homey.” I waved hello to Ms. Henley who was giving me the evil eye behind her brown like curly hair. All the older women in Fort Wayne had the same hair. She was sipping her tea from a white mug that had a huge crack running through a rose painted on the side. Beneath the flower read “1st Place” in cursive. I was trying to get back on her good side after she caught me walking on her prized yellow flowers to reclaim my baseball the week prior. I was fairly sure my mail had been coming late ever since and I was awaiting birthday money. I presented my best smile; she ignored me.
The post office couldn’t have been more than that the size of the principle’s office but we always pressed ourselves out of the way so no one would hear our whispers. I walked up to Austin who propped up like a trophy figure against the back wall.
“Ms. Henley’s still got it out for me,” I said.
“You pummeled her tulips.”
“I’m pretty sure they were perennials. I have that word stuck in my head and I doubt I would even know it unless someone had been shouting it at me.”
“Where the kids?”
“Oh. Probably just leaving their bikes. They weren’t far behind me,” I answered.
“Hope not with the speed you were going.” Austin rolled his eyes and tapped his chewed fingernails.
Jimmy and Logan came shuffling through the small door, hands in pockets, eyes wide looking up at us. Ms. Henley smiled at the two of them.
Seeing we were all there Austin began. He reached his slender, freckled arm to the highest white paper. He put his whole hand on top of the man’s face and his left eyebrow arched up while he pulled his lips to a sly grin. He didn’t say anything for a full second. Then he inhaled quietly. We watched. He pushed his shoulders back and announced, “He’s 6’2” and from Charleston.”
Under the word “wanted” on the top of the wall the three old posters had been moved down and a new, clean, unwrinkled page had been posted. The sketch showed a man with dark, straight hair to his ears, a simple, thin nose and tiny, close eyes. His chin was covered with small dots, the way they indicated a man who hadn’t shaved in a while. He must have had teeth and cheekbones but the artist left those out. Under the sketch: Conner Anthony Montgomery. The poster said “REWARD” in all upper letters but didn’t give a price tag.
“What do you think he’s wanted for?” Jimmy asked wiping his nose on his arm.
“You know how to read. Says right here ‘Bank Robbery’,” Austin said.
“You know what?” Jimmy continued in his high pitch voice as though Austin never answered. “I think I saw him here! Yeah, last week when I was kicking rocks behind the field at school. There was a guy looked just like that one scrunching down on his knees in the tall grass. He had on ragged pants, a jacket like he was part of the army and had a whole pack with him.”
“You say that every week you dork,” I said because it was true and he got on my nerves sometimes.
“Yeah, but this is different! I saw him. He was all pale and had a big, fancy, leather watch on him. And I think he even had a knife in his pocket!”
“You saw in his pocket?” I asked doubtfully.
Jimmy rolled his feet to stand on the sides, his tell. “No, but…I could just tell. He’s a robber, he must got a knife.”
“That’s great detective work, Jimmy. Stop being such a kid.” Austin said rejoining the conversation.
Logan spoke up, maybe just to end his friend’s exaggerating, “what do you think that man would be doing here?”
“Getting ready to jet. I bet he has a million dollars and is just hiding out till the cops give up on finding him. Then he’d take his money and get out of here. He could make it clean to California. I’d get a car-“
“You’re ten, Austin,” I chided him, “how do you plan on driving it?”
“No matter. I could take a train,” Austin offered shrugging his shoulders and purposefully looking past me.
“No one would ever catch you that way,” I said wryly.
“Austin is too smart for them. You’d get by them, Austin, I know you would.” I tell you, my brother never said anything about me like that.
“You boys ought to clear out of here now. You’re too loud it interferes with my meditation. Get on. Go outside.” Ms. Henley came out from behind her counter, mug in left hand and right hand waving back and forth as though we were flies.
Austin and Jimmy went towards the door and I pulled Logan, who was staring off into nothing, by his collar till his feet came alive. Outside the post office, Austin was already pulling his blue bike out from behind the stack. Jimmy was perched forward as if to make a get away should someone come by.
“Where to now?” I asked not particularly caring.
“Let’s just ride down to the state line, mess around at the truck stop,” Austin said while throwing his right leg over the bar of his bike.
“I don’t like going over there. Can’t we just go back and play catch or something?” Logan asked.
Jimmy had moved over to his bike and was walking it next to his brother’s. “I know what we can do! Let’s all ride down to the fort. I bet there’s no one even around there this time of year.”
“You want to, Austin?” I asked him and gave a noncommittal shrug of my own.
“May as well, better than being stuck at home.” That was Austin’s fear. Sometimes I thought he’d base his life around leaving the town.
The four of us took to our bikes and started back around the outside of town. It was those bike rides I would always look back on with such fondness. Everything felt easy; we had no way of knowing it wouldn’t last. Before the rest of the town was busily doing errands and going to do adult stuff we were half way out of the town, too far to get help. The woods were always like coming upon the green monster. It was the only thing that broke the horizon and sealed us in as a community. Ft Wayne was just a truck stop on the way to Cincinnati for the world but it was what we knew and we wanted to know everything. Folks would say you could stand on a brick and see the whole county. We would go out to the perimeter, out to where the cornfields collided with twenty foot high, spindly trees and watch the people in the town without their ever knowing it.
One time we snuck out to the forest and came all the way back around to the wash behind Austin and Jimmy’s house. We watched his mom set up a surprise party for Austin’s birthday. She had pulled together all of the chairs from the dining room and the kitchen and put them outside on the porch. She had cut stars out of paper and stuck them on to the trees. Austin was convinced he was going to get a new bike since he had left his outside in the rain a few weeks earlier and it wasn’t working well but we saw his mom in her short black pants, hunched over dragging a box behind her. The box had a picture of a huge telescope and Austin looked completely taken aback. His mom tried to wrap the box while we watched but ended up just tying a bow. It was Jimmy who burst out of the woods crying, confessing his sin of spying less than two minutes later. He cried the whole way to his mom’s hip who was a bit caught off guard.
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