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I listened to the radio more than ever during those dark days after shooting Jesus in the eye. Singers like Fats Domino, The Coasters, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Buddy Holly, filled me with brand new passions. The strangest desire to be with the opposite sex—Carol Hudson who lived a block away, maybe. So much closer than Miss Marilou Jenkins. I’d learn how to do dances like the bop, and the chicken, and feel the…her body. Maybe. I began to dwell on what it all might be like. Down there in my bedroom. Down there. All alone.
Something

deep inside me was stirring. Outside my little window I imagined her waiting on hands and knees, smiling. She was tapping. Tapping. Tapping ever so softly on the glass…
“Hey, Skip. Skip!”
What an ugly voice, I thought. Well, yeah. She turned out to be Jimmy.
Behind him, with his hands on Jimmy’s shoulders and a grin as big as could be, was good old faithful Mickey, lately sprung from his house arrest and no doubt come to rescue me from mine. I left my wistful daydream of floating down the mighty Mississippi, head in the lap of my Nubian princess, Carol. No. Miss Marilou Jen…no. Carol. Definitely Carol.
A visit by Mickey—or Jimmy, especially—was strictly forbidden. Lock-up meant lock-up. Period. Had the Pope himself come to visit me, he would most likely have been told to go away. That was the depths to which my mom’s despair over me had sunk. Should she have caught my two best friends trying to woo me out of the dungeon, God only knows what fury would have been unleashed. They’d have been railroaded out of the yard with a rake or a broom, and as for me. Well.
“You aren’t mad at me anymore?” I whispered.
Jimmy answered as though the question was stupid. “Nah. Everything turned out okay. I ain’t mad. Get up! Open the window.”
“No. I can’t. You’d better just go,” I said, motioning for them to be quiet. Mom was somewhere in the house upstairs, maybe heading for the broom closet as we spoke.
The small awning window set high up in the wall of cinderblock immediately below the floor joists was locked shut, and so I hopped from my bed and darted over to it. Jimmy motioned for me to open it, but I shook my head.
“Get outta’ here, you idiots! You want me to get another thirty days?”
“Just open the window.”
“No! I already told you I can’t.”
“We have to tell you something,” Mickey tried to whisper.
“No. I wanna’ get out of here someday, and if Mom catches you…” The vision of a beautiful raft filled with me and my buddies and half a dozen naked girls popped into my head suddenly, and I wavered. Could it be they’d been thinking about it, too? “Well…what’s so important?”
They both looked at one another, grinning, knowing they’d won the first part of the battle. Jimmy motioned once again that the window needed to be opened. I knew very well that I shouldn’t, that giving in to my curiosity would be my downfall, but I did it anyway. The open space between the dusty window glass and its casement was just big enough for a pint-sized burglar to enter, and so Jimmy slid through, followed quickly by Mickey.
The radio on my nightstand sang out a current hit by a very hip new group. Danny and the Juniors. I tuned the volume up a little, and then returned my attention back to my friends, confident that the noise of At The Hop would mask the chatter of the upcoming conversation.
“What is it?” I asked.
“We gotta’ get you outta’ here,” Jimmy told me. “Mickey and me was just over at Mrs. Rashure’s store an' we saw this paper taped on the front window. There’s gonna’ be a soap box derby race Saturday after next! We just gotta’ build one an' get in on the action, but there ain’t much time left.”
“Yeah,” added Mickey, “and you’re going to be the driver! We pulled straws. You won!”
“We did?” I asked.
“Well, since you’re stuck down here all by yourself, we put one in for you. You drew the longest,” Mickey said.
“What are we going to build this racer out of…and when?” I asked.
Jimmy plopped down onto the bed excitedly, and then answered. “Clifford has a pretty cool wagon with a perfect set of wheels for what we need. Real new. Slick as shit! You could give that wagon a shove, and it’d keep rollin’ forever! No sense askin’ him to donate it after the creek deal, so we’ll just borrow it for a coupla’ weeks when he ain’t lookin’. We don’t need the wagon part of it, just the wheels and axles. ‘Course we’ll give it back after we’re done with it. Not sure where we’ll get the stuff to make the chassis, but we figured you’d have an idea there—bein’ good with wood an' all.”
The “borrowing” thing again. We were skating on thin ice already, but I let Jimmy continue.
“We need your mechanical help, ya know. You gotta’ sneak outta’ here, somehow. You just gotta! Come with us tonight, ok? We’ll get Clifford’s wagon, take it over to my garage, then go find some stuff to build the rest of the chug with.”
“Nope. Not on your life. I’m not stealin’ any more stuff, and I’m not sneakin’ out. No way.”
Sure, there was a way. For the next fifteen minutes while the radio blared and every spirit in Heaven kept tapping me on the shoulder telling me to continue shaking my head no, I listened to the plan. The vision of a glorious first-place winning chug grew stronger with each of Jimmy’s colorful words, and, eventually, my better judgment went down the toilet.
“Well, maybe…”
“We’ll come by at seven,” Mickey said beaming. “Be ready!”
Jimmy shook his head, emphasizing his agreement, and then the two of them crawled back out the way they’d come in. I stood looking up at the window as Come Go With Me wafted from the speaker of the radio. The background vocal, deep and rich, played against the lead singer’s tenor voice and the piano, “…never, never, never, never…” The drumbeat on my shoulder grew stronger.

***
“Skip, you’ve been a regular little angel,” my mother announced out of the blue when she’d set the platter of hamburgers down and taken her seat at the dinner table. “I think you’ve learned your lesson, right LaVerne?” She had a bad habit of addressing my dad while looking at me, or vice-versa, and I often couldn’t be sure just who the comments were supposed to be directed at. This particular time, though, I was certain Pop wasn’t the one who’d learned a lesson. I sat silently while she waited for him to fill up his plate and answer her.
“I hope so,” he said.
“Yes, I think you have. And Jimmy and that Mickey haven’t come ‘round, neither. I don’t want you playing with either of ‘em for a while. They’re steering clear of this house…” She rambled on for a few more minutes in short, disjointed sentences concerning bad influences, trouble, and more bad influences.
“So I think we’ve decided…haven’t we, La Verne…to let you off the hook tomorrow. You can leave your room. You’ve had enough punishment. But if you ever pull off another stunt like you did last month, goddamit, well…what did we say we’d do to him, LaVerne?”
Pop shook his head. He had no idea, I’m sure. This was one of Mom’s extemporaneous sermons, loaded with assumptions that anyone else might be involved, or that any prior discussion had even taken place.
“Well, you won’t like it, will he LaVerne?”
“No, he won’t.”
I ate quietly after Mom had abruptly dropped the remainder of the charges against me and then moved on to other topics, none of which had a blessed thing to do with me or my friends, thank God. I was a free man as of tomorrow at sunrise. Unless something bad happened in the meantime—and it looked like something might.
Politely excusing myself from the dinner table, which made both of my parents blink with surprise, I left the kitchen dinette and headed out the back door onto the enclosed back porch. Before me stood the steep basement stairs leading down to the basement. What, I asked myself, was I to do? It was 6:45. In fifteen minutes Jimmy and Mickey would arrive, expecting me to join them in the merry hunt for unsuspecting Clifford’s wagon. Of course I couldn’t go. Not now. But that isn’t to say that I wouldn’t. Jimmy was a master of persuasion when he needed to be; when there was something stuck in his mind like a heated metal splinter screaming to be yanked out. If I said no, he’d list a hundred reasons why I should back up and say yes. And all of them were bound to make perfect sense in that moment.
The idea occurred to me to retrace my steps. Go back upstairs and leave my bedroom as dark as an abandoned mine shaft. I could do the unreasonable; begin to fill the sink basin with soap and water and start the dishes without a fight. Jimmy and Mickey wouldn’t dare try to approach me up there. Something deep inside told me, begged me not to take the coward’s way out, though. Face them—face Jimmy. Simply tell him my time of confinement wasn’t quite finished. Tell him that borrowing Clifford’s wagon was really just stealing Clifford’s wagon. He’d understand, he’d…no, he wouldn’t. For the second time in my life a cloud of real anxiety descended over me. It wasn’t so much that I didn’t possess the courage to make the right decision—I knew I didn’t under Jimmy’s pressure. It wasn’t even that stealing the wagon was the worst caper we’d ever planned. It was the realization, as clear as crystal and hard as a diamond, that this time around, giving in would be unforgivable. I knew the stakes, knew that the voice in my head and the ever-increasing tapping on my shoulder really meant something which I’d only once before been called on to acknowledge. I was about to make the second meaningful moral choice of my young life.
I continued on to the basement and the waiting dilemma. In my room I turned on the radio and sat in the darkness, waiting apprehensively. Upstairs, the muffled voice of Mom drifted through the floorboards, breaking every now and then for a brief instant when she allowed Pop to offer his one or two word response. Through the folds of the curtain the shadows outside moved furtively; elm leaf lines of fingers fidgeting like those of a nervous felon tapping on the table in an eerie courtroom, awaiting his sentencing. The minutes ticked on. The jury arrived.
“He ain’t down there,” I heard Jimmy say in a dejected whisper to Mickey. “Damn it. Now what?”
“Maybe he’s doin’ the dishes. Let’s go around to the kitchen window,” Mickey answered.
“Yeah, okay.”
I summoned the dot of courage hiding inside me and jumped across the room to the window.
“Wait!”
The shuffle of their feet stopped and they returned. Jimmy spoke first. “What the hell are ya doin’ down there in the dark? Open the window!”
“No. I’m not going. You guys go on without me.”
“What? Whatd’ya mean you ain’t goin’? I thought we decided it was time…”
”I can’t. I can’t help you steal Clifford’s wagon…I can’t. You’ll just have to do it and build the chug yourselves.” There, I’d said it.
My heart beat madly as the words left my lips. I felt a cold blanket of fear. As far as opening the window, I knew that if I did I’d be outside with them before I took another breath, and then be on my way to deeper pits of trouble. The dusty glass separating us was my only protection, a shield against their beckoning. Jimmy pressed his face against the glass and I could see his cat-eyes searching the room. He said nothing for a minute as he looked around, then spoke again as he pushed against the window with his fingertips.
“Open up.”
“No.”
“What’s got into you? We ain’t stealin’ the wagon…just borrowin’ it for a while.”
“No, we’re…you’re stealing it, and count me out. I’m in enough trouble. I don’t want any more.”
Behind Jimmy I could see Mickey begin to pace, the moonlight making his movements appear all the more frustration ridden. I’d crossed the first bridge, but I knew the fight was anything but over. Mickey might walk away, but Jimmy, I knew, was loading his cannons in the silence. Soon enough he opened fire.
“It ain’t stealin’! We’re givin’ it all back. There won’t be no trouble, for God’s sake. He won’t even know it’s gone. We’ll even let him hold the trophy.”
“No.”
“C’mon. What’s come over you? Just come help us. Your ma’ll never know you was gone! Think about flyin’ down the street in the best racer in the city. Why, even that stupid Clifford’ll have to cheer when you cross the finish line! Think about the fun. The glory. Open up!”
“Uh-uh. You guys go on without me. I’m not leavin’. Sorry,” I answered with as much courage as I could muster. A heretofore unknown strength began to creep over me in the darkness, in the silence that followed. Maybe Jimmy would

lose this time around.
“C’mon, Jim. Leave him be. We’ll do it ourselves…we don’t need him. Let’s get outta’ here,” Mickey finally said. Then he directed the next words to me. “Eat your heart out when you see Jim flying under the checkered flag. We don’t need you. Chicken crap eater.”
And so they crept away, over the cracked and narrow concrete walk, in the direction of the alley behind the house. Clifford would lose his wagon—for a week, or a month, or maybe forever. Maybe they’d get away with it, maybe not. Maybe they’d even win the race. But it was all going to happen without me this time. It looked as though I’d lost my two best friends.
I returned to my bed and sat down with a mixed feeling of betrayal and relief, wondering if tomorrow’s news on our TV would show the two of them being led away in handcuffs by a stony-faced cop. Probably not. Jimmy was blessed by the devil when it came to dodging bullets. I turned the volume of the radio up, crawled under the covers without undressing, and stared out at the moonlit shadows dancing across the yard until I fell asleep with the best feeling in my heart that I’d ever had. For once I hadn’t caved in.

***

As promised, I was allowed to step outside the following morning into a bright and beautiful day, free and forgiven.
“Now don’t you go and get into more trouble with Jimmy and that Mickey,” Mom cautioned me as I pulled the front door open. “Your father will skin you alive.”
“Nah, I won’t. Promise.”
When she’d turned her back and gone about her business, I hopped down the front steps and ran to the side fence separating our yard from the Riley’s. The garage door behind Jimmy’s house was open wide, and inside I could see him and Mickey working furiously to remove the sleek wheels from Clifford’s wagon. My first impulse was to call out to them and ask them what was up. To make amends; defy my parents’ warnings. Both of them looked up and saw me standing there, but continued with their task without saying a word to me. I watched for a moment and then turned and walked away.

I didn’t leave the yard the entire week. Where was I to go all by myself? To Clifford’s or Allen’s house? I really had no desire to stir up any more trouble with either of them for the time being, and besides, word had spread up and down the block that Mrs. Childs and Mrs. Young were gunning for me and Jimmy and Mickey after the incident at the creek. An alliance had been struck between the two women—a menage de deux—even though Allen’s muddy clothes, lack of dexterity, and injured pride were entirely of his own making. I hadn’t thrown him in the creek, for Pete’s sake—none of us had. And as far as Clifford was concerned, I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he would have chosen that dorky neighbor of his over me and Jimmy and Mick. But, he had. I guess his wagon getting Shanghaied served him right in a way.
I was over my mea culpa state of mind and itching to dismount the spiritual horse I’d uncharacteristically hopped on while in prison. Jimmy and Mickey had worked like two tigers tearing up a gazelle on that chug, had hidden the body of the stolen wagon high in the rafters of the garage after they'd dismembered it, as I stood beyond the fence watching. They glanced over at me every now and again, but neither of them bothered to acknowledge my presence.
“Tough luck, chicken shit,” I knew they were saying to one another, and to me. “Tough luck. You ain’t gonna’ share in any of the glory.” That would be Jimmy speaking, of course. Without me being around him, his grammar would be hopelessly spinning ever farther down the whirlpool in the toilet bowl.
I spied on them each afternoon the week following my release from bondage; looked on with certain pangs of envy as they sawed and hammered and cussed the chug together. Now I was no connoisseur of motor cars, or un-motor cars for that matter, but I must say that the thing they’d pieced and patched together was unlike anything I’d ever seen in my thirteen years on this planet. It was just plain ugly. Still, beauty was no requisite for speed, I knew, and the litmus test would be their first test run down Mrs. Riley’s long driveway. If it stayed together I figured they might have a fighting chance of at least getting into the derby. Winning the whole bag of potatoes would be something else again.
The chug was a little noisy during that first run, so they dragged it back into the garage for some minor adjustments, then shot it out again. It didn’t sound as if whatever they’d done to it had corrected the problem, but after the second run they patted one another on the back, shook hands, and most likely would have danced together except they knew I was looking. They were all smiles, and confident their larceny was going to pay handsome dividends the next morning at the race. I wasn’t so sure. The thing had been born on the outskirts of Hell, as far as I was concerned, kind of like a Dr. Frankenstein’s monster on wheels. No good could come of its birth.

I wandered along behind them at a safe distance to the site of the competition, curious to see if Jimmy’s and Mickey’s labors would ripen into a good showing. From all across the city dozens of toe-haired kids had gathered, led by a retinue of beaming fathers and the machines they’d built. Looking over the field of entries it seemed obvious to me that none of the kids could possibly have fashioned those marvelous, perfectly painted, sleek-bodied racers without the help of Ford Motor Company designers. They were beautiful. Somehow the title, “Soapbox Derby”, applied only to the Jimmy-chug. Indeed, he and Mickey had scrounged up a ratty looking crate and mounted it onto the front of the rickety chassis, while everyone else must have scoured the pages of Car and Driver to come up with the jet-like fuselages their dads had put together for them.
On the side of the crate, either Jimmy or Mickey—I suspected Mickey, because it was spelled correctly—had painted the name “Rocket Flyer” in black letters, and like the first launches down at Cape Canaveral, the Flyer was unfortunately doomed to die.
The sponsor of the race, Peepers’ Hardware Store, located over on the eastside where tons of those rich families lived, had erected a grandstand and stuck up a banner on the temporary fence strung out along the street. Mr. Leo Peepers was a well-known personality in the city. Having made some kind of fortune selling rakes and shovels and lawnmowers, he must have tired of that small accomplishment because he’d talked his way into the TV business. This guy named Dick Clark was having a phenomenal success with his program out of Philadelphia called American Bandstand, and ever the one to seize on an opportunity when it presented itself, Mr. Peepers started up his own version of the program on a local TV station soon after American Bandstand hit. The Denver Bandstand became the ugly little sister of her counterpart back east, but for a couple of laughable years it captured the eyes and ears and not-so-good dancing abilities of many local teens. After each song ended on his program, the dark-haired, black-suited, balding man with horn-rimmed glasses never failed to grab his mike, dance into the crowd of nervous-looking kids on the set, and say, “That was a real humdinger, wasn’t it?” No, I’d always thought after hearing him say it, it was not

a “humdinger”, real or otherwise. I think his absolute lack of coolness and that idiotic phrase were the two reasons his dream child got buried after two incredibly rotten seasons. Anyway, he still had the hardware store and tons of money, so he sponsored events like the derby to do his part to help keep us kids out of trouble—and of course to acquire more fame and fortune in the process.
Mr. Leo Peepers himself was the official who pompously raised the white flag and slung it downward to send each pair of racers off, down the long incline toward the finish line. The blazing morning sunlight hitting the back of his bald head sent showers of multicolored beams ricocheting in every direction. Were it not for the cat’s-eye sunglasses worn by almost every high-fallutin’ woman standing in the bleachers, dressed to the nineteens

, cheering on their sons and booing the rest, they each and every one would've suffered corneal damage for sure because of Mr. Peeper’s head.
Jimmy was entry number Sixteen. Four feet away sat number Seventeen; some kid in a coupe de-ville looking machine, smirking and mouthing something at my friend. Jimmy’s hand left the wheel for an instant, exposing a raised middle finger in response. Twenty or thirty outraged mothers saw it and let out a chorus of their own mild cuss words, demanding that the shithead from the westside be thrown out of the race. The kid’s father, a swarthy, arrogant looking man wearing a white suit, Panama hat, and expensive shoes, lit out of the bleachers like the shell from a Howitzer, fuming and blustering till Hell wouldn’t have it. He bounded over the fence, program waving in front of his head as if he were swatting a swarm of flies. Mr. Peepers had been entertaining the rest of the officials on the opposite side of the street when Jimmy flipped the kid off, and hadn’t seen a thing. I guess none of them had.
“Did you see what that little s.o.b. did! Did any of you see that?” the guy yelled. And so on, and so on.
When he turned around, Mr. Peepers’ beady little pupils dilated—I could see them burst forward against the coke bottle lenses of his horn rim glasses like exploding black bubbles. The kid’s father continued on, demanding something or other. Well, something. He definitely wanted Jimmy and his “blankedy-blank, whatever you call it…” to be “blankety-blankety blankety out!” And I thought my mom knew how to cuss. She would have blushed in the face of that man’s language. He must've been a drill sergeant once upon a time. That or else a Catholic.
Mr. Peepers got all flustered by the time the tirade ended, and he waltzed over to Jimmy, past the still smirking little asshole in his formula racer. He said some things to Jimmy, who shook his head yes, and no, and no intermittently during the course of it, and then Peepers turned and questioned the now angelic-faced kid next door. Whatever answers the other boy gave seemed to stymie Peepers to no end, because he threw up his hands and walked away, leaving Rocket Flyer poised and at the ready behind the wheel chocks.
I just knew our chug was going to more than do justice to its name. I just knew it. To be safe, I searched the lengthy list of patron saints in my head to say a quick prayer to, but the nearest I could come to anyone worth a damn was Saint Christopher. He’d have to work.
“Dear Saint Christopher, patron of all those…” Mr. Peepers’ flag went down. “Help him! Amen!”
I don’t think Saint Christopher appreciated the necessary brevity of my prayer, or maybe he just didn’t quite understand it.
Number Seventeen took off slowly at first. That seemed good. But then it gained speed, as though…as though that damn Saint Chris had gotten behind it and pushed it himself. He got the wrong chug! I scratched him off my list.
Rocket Flyer sat like a rock on a flat plain. My heart fell to my feet. Several seats away I saw Mickey raise his hands and cover his eyes. Finally, when number Seventeen was a dozen yards away from the finish line, one of the officials loped up to the rear of Jimmy’s chug and gave it a good push. The run went well after that for thirty feet or so, until the rear wheels began to shudder. I knew what was coming next. They folded outward like those of a newborn fawn that hasn't found his legs yet, then left the axle altogether. The back end of the chug hit the pavement and then stopped on a dime. I gawked in horror as the now-free wheels went sailing past a stricken Jimmy. The wheels crossed the finish line not very far behind the coupe de ville, then roared on down the street on their own merry journey. Everyone roared except Mickey and me, and of course, Jimmy.
Mr. Peepers took his cue and grabbed hold of the pineapple-sized microphone from the judges’ table. Parading around like a carnival barker, he announced over and over again to the delight of the crowd, “That was a real humdinger, wasn’t it?”
A few of the men in the bleachers, those who rightly suspected Jimmy’s middle finger statement might have been an answer to something said by his opponent, and not simply a Westside hoodlum’s goading, exited their seats with the intention to help him remove the chug from the racetrack. Mickey joined them, but I, being persona non grata, stayed where I was for the time being.
The removal of the downed Rocket Flyer reminded me of Grandma Cowden’s funeral procession a few years back—four men in the lead, with a hand on each corner of the casket-chug, solemnly carting it away. Mickey escorting a downcast Jimmy a couple of steps behind. Despite the fact Jimmy had constructed the thing with stolen wheels, and probably stolen everything else, I felt immense pain for him. It’s one thing to be beaten in a fair competition, and I’m not saying the race was particularly unfair, even though most of the boys had very little to do with the engineering and building of their entries. It’s something else again, though, to be utterly humiliated, and then looked down on like an abandoned dog on the streets. That’s how my best friend looked in that moment. I swallowed my pride and ran down to offer my support in that, his hour of need.
The four men laid Rocket Flyer down at the far end of the bleachers, well out of earshot of the crowd who were by that time unconcerned with the spectacle that had occurred only moments earlier. Three of the men left immediately after patting Jimmy on the back. I stood at a distance and observed the remaining adult, a kindly looking guy with graying hair, dressed impeccably in a dark suit. He lingered momentarily, as Mickey consoled Jimmy, and then approached them, placing a hand gently on Jimmy’s shoulder.
“Bad luck, young man. Bad luck. But don’t be too disheartened. Things like that happen to the best men in the world. You’ll survive. We all do. Do better next time. Try again.”
Jimmy glanced up at him with tears in his eyes, his unkempt shag of hair poking out in all directions. I thought I saw him force a tiny smile, a flicker of thanks, before dropping his head down again. That was probably the first time a grown male, someone responsible and even remotely sympathetic, had ever offered Jimmy a word of encouragement after a defeat. The man turned, walked with an unpretentious air of civility past me, and returned to the races. I cautiously joined Mickey at Jimmy’s side, half expecting to be told to shove off.
“You just get here?” Mickey asked. His tone of voice held no rancor, and that eased my mind. Jimmy sat on the rear end of the Flyer and didn’t look up.
“Nah, I saw the whole thing. I’m sorry. Don’t know if it would have made any difference had I helped you guys build the chug, though. I mean…I probably would have made it even worse. I’m sorry,” I answered.
Jimmy finally looked up, his eyes a little red and swollen. “What coulda’ been worse? That kid told me before the race that I was a fuckin’ loser, an’ my racer was uglier than me. He told me I’d get my ass kicked by him an’ his fancy racer, an’ he was right.”
“Nah, he wasn’t. You heard that guy who just left. You lost, but you’re not a loser. Next year we’ll build another one and come back. Maybe you’ll get to have a shot at him again. It’ll be different then. We’ll make it better; better than any chug in the universe. I’ll help.”
Another tear began to form in his eye, but he quickly wiped it away. He stood up and hit me on the shoulder with his fist, and the old smile grew slowly back onto his face. The time had come to shake the dust of defeat off, gather up the remains of Rocket Flyer, and head back across town to our lowly homes. Next year would be different.

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