Just a Hat, page 6
“Youssef, are you still hungry? Do you want me to heat up some more food?” she called from the hallway.
“It’s okay, Maman,” he called back. “Just getting a drink of water.” He pulled open a cabinet door and took down a glass. After her bedroom door closed, Joseph turned on the water, using the sound of the water to cover the clatter of his plundering in the drawer for the flashlight. What if she came back into the hallway and saw him holding the flashlight? Joseph tucked it into the waistband of his shorts, but it tumbled onto the hardwood floor just as he turned into his bedroom.
“Youssef?” called Maman.
“I’m fine, Maman-jun. Just dropped something. Good night.”
Thankfully, she didn’t get up to check on him.
Although he didn’t think he could possibly sleep, Joseph did doze off a few times. He’d jerk himself awake to check the clock. 11:13 p.m. 11:49 p.m. 12:31 a.m.
Oh, no! He should have started getting dressed at 12:15 a.m. It would take him a good thirty minutes to walk to the railroad tracks. Quickly, Joseph threw on the jeans and T-shirt he’d concealed under his bed and tied his sneakers in the dark. Fighting impatience to make up lost time, he slid the window up carefully, stopping to listen for any sound from Maman’s room.
The drop to the ground was too far for him to close the window back, so he prayed she wouldn’t check his room in the night. Joseph slid out the window feet first. He balanced on his belly to pull down the window sash as far as he could before he slithered down. Mosquitoes would probably swarm in the open window.
The neighborhood was bathed in the weird orange light of streetlamps. Joseph hurried down the sidewalk. Once he reached the feed store, he was out of range of regular lighting. The buildings were farther apart. It was spooky, reminding him of the scene in To Kill a Mockingbird when Jem, Scout, and Dill crept to Boo Radley’s house. As if on cue, a dark, pulsing cloud flew out of a tall myrtle hedge right over his head.
Joseph ducked, clutching the flashlight defensively. Every curse word he knew rolled out unchecked. He squatted for several seconds on the road next to the hedge until his logical mind could convince his pounding heart that he’d only scared some roosting birds. His English teacher, Mrs. Thornton, would want to know the theme of the story, something Joseph never could figure out. This time it was easy. The theme was that birds really do sleep at night and you’d best be ready to be scared out of your wits if you wake them up.
If he hurried, he could outpace visions of chainsaw killers, cat burglars, and crazy men named Boo hiding trinkets in oak trees. Okay, forget walking. Joseph jogged the last quarter mile. Roberto was already at the railroad tracks, and Joseph climbed behind him nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t been scared witless by some birds and wasn’t sweating from his jog. “¿Problema?” asked Roberto.
“Nah.”
After the long walk to the edge of town alone, the ride with Roberto to the property flew by. It was almost a full moon, so once his eyes adjusted, it was pretty easy to see. They met a few oncoming cars, but Roberto pulled down into the roadside ditch. They idled as still as statues until the headlights passed. When they reached the big culvert, they puttered down into the creek bed and under the barbed-wire fence. They followed the edge of the creek all the way to the brush where they’d stashed Roberto’s dirt bike.
It took only ten minutes for Roberto to replace the damaged plug wire while Joseph held the flashlight. Joseph urged, “See if it will start.”
Just then, they heard something. “Shhh . . . wait,” said Joseph. “Cállate.”
It was the sound of clanking metal, not a natural sound in a field at night. Joseph shook away the image of a chainsaw and listened. There was the sound of chains, but also the sound of a truck idling. Supposedly ghosts rattled chains, but Joseph had never heard of them driving trucks in dire need of a tune-up.
Joseph inched his way up the creek bank, and Roberto followed. This time the metal crashed loudly, the sound of a chain falling into a metal gate. Just above them, there should be a cattle gate on the lane to the old barn in the field. Who would be coming to a barn in the middle of the night?
Having already been bested by boos and birds of the night, Joseph slowed his pace. Roberto crept ahead of him to peer over the bank. When Joseph reached the top, Roberto crouched and used a dirt hill to move closer. Joseph didn’t want to get closer, but he followed.
A truck sat at the cattle gate with its headlights off. A dark figure pushed open the gate, and the truck pulled forward. Whoever was holding the gate shut it behind the truck, but he didn’t padlock it.
“It’s the Edmondson cousins’ fathers,” whispered Roberto. “I recognize the truck.”
“What are they doing here in the middle of the night?” asked Joseph.
No answer.
The figure who’d shut the gate got in the passenger side, and the truck pulled up to the barn. Again, the passenger got out and opened the barn door. The truck slowly pulled in, and the passenger followed it inside, shutting the barn door behind him.
“Let’s go,” said Joseph. “We can push the bikes out to the road, and they won’t hear us start them.”
“I want to see what they’re doing,” said Roberto. “Let’s sneak into the side shed. Maybe we can see through the boards.”
“No,” said Joseph.
“Why not?”
“There’s ticks in that tall grass.”
“We’ve snuck out of our houses in the middle of the night onto private property on a school night, but you’re worried about ticks?”
At least Roberto didn’t call him a dumbass.
“Come on. They’ll never know we’re here,” urged Roberto.
“Alright,” said Joseph, but it wasn’t. Before Roberto could think he was scared, Joseph crawled into the grass first. It was wet with dew and top-heavy with late-summer seed. His jeans would be soaked within half a minute.
Roberto fell in behind him, and they crawled to the sagging shed attached to the main barn. It was full of ancient round bales of hay taller than Joseph. That gave him some comfort as he knelt in their musty shadows. Cobwebs everywhere. And bugs. Joseph could feel things crawling all over him.
14
COWBOY HAT
Voices came from inside the barn. Suddenly, a small generator started. Lights flashed on. Roberto and Joseph both found gaps in the boards and peered in. “That’s the truck we saw them driving from Dallas that night,” whispered Roberto.
Inside were more round bales of hay. In the loft were hundreds of smaller square bales connected by blankets of spider webs. And probably ticks. Chiggers were bad because they’d eat a circle around your ankles, but ticks traveled inside your clothes and went up to the penthouse suite.
Joseph’s eyes followed the movement inside the barn. It was easy to tell the two men inside were brothers. Both had brown, straight hair, and both wore jeans, T-shirts, and greasy ballcaps. That would explain Larry’s dirty lid.
An old gray plank door to a room stood open, what Joseph guessed was an old feed room. That was where the generator sound was coming from. Both men disappeared inside, then reemerged a few minutes later. This time they both wore new jeans, Western-style dress shirts with bolo ties, expensive boots, and cowboy hats. What the heck?
The new Ford pickup was a red dually made for pulling livestock trailers. One of the men jumped into the bed of the truck and unlocked the toolbox behind the cab. He removed the top trays, lots of tools, and then some flat metal pieces. Afterward, he caught several white cube-like bundles thrown to him from the other man. He packed them deeply into the toolbox, eventually replacing the flat metal pieces over the top of them. Finally, he arranged all the tools back in the box and reset the trays. Joseph worried about the time. Should they go, or wait to see if the Edmondsons would leave?
His question was answered when the man in the bed of the truck locked the toolbox and jumped down. He closed the tailgate while the other man cut the generator and closed the storeroom door. They exited the way they came in, this time driving the shiny, red pickup back out to the highway. Only when the truck was on the paved road did its headlights come on.
“What was that?” asked Joseph, brushing away and scratching at what he was sure were hundreds of insects crawling up his clothes.
“Drugs,” said Roberto.
“How do you know that?” asked Joseph.
“You don’t watch Hawaii Five-O?” asked Roberto. “Or Starsky & Hutch?”
“No,” admitted Joseph. They didn’t have a television. Baba let him go to the movies occasionally. He’d seen Star Wars. Three times. Baba only knew about one time.
“Come on,” said Roberto.
Roberto always wanted to push the edge, but tonight, Joseph wished that Mateo were here. They needed a grown-up.
Joseph trailed Roberto to a single entrance door from the shed into the barn, swatting at bugs and hating the feel of the heavy, clammy-wet jeans on his legs. If he could just get out of this, he’d go on no more night rides with Roberto.
“Use your flashlight,” suggested Roberto. Joseph pulled the flashlight from his back pocket. “Shine it on the storage room door.” Joseph aimed the light, and together they pulled open the wooden plank door. Inside was the generator. Two garment bags hung from nails, and two hat carriers sat on a bench along with the old clothes and shoes. Joseph worked the flashlight around until Roberto caught his wrist and aimed the light. “There.”
It was an old wooden feed bin. Roberto lifted the lid and looked inside. There was nothing but a big empty box, but it wasn’t as dusty as it should have been. Roberto got on his knees and pulled at the bottom until it popped out of place. He tugged up, and Joseph aimed the flashlight down into inky darkness.
“I’m going,” said Roberto.
“No, let’s get out of here,” said Joseph. “We know there’s drugs down there. That’s enough.”
“I want to see,” said Roberto, and he threw a leg over into the feed trough. Once he’d found a foothold on the top rung, he steadied himself with one hand and beckoned for the flashlight with the other. Joseph handed it to him.
Roberto was down there for about five minutes, but in the darkness, it felt endless to Joseph. When Roberto climbed back up, he handed Joseph the flashlight. “It’s drugs in a big room. They’ve dug a whole basement down there. They’re still digging in places with shovels, I guess making more room. There’s piles of those packages. One of them was open on a table. Those guys are taking drugs somewhere, probably Dallas. There’s only two choices at the crossroads: town or the highway to the interstate.”
“We need to get out of here,” said Joseph.
“Yeah,” said Roberto. “Let’s get it all back like it was and get outta here.”
And they did. Afterward, they pushed their dirt bikes down the streambed out to the ditch by the county road. Roberto’s started on the third try. They raced back toward the Ybarra ranch, stopping only once to play statue with a passing car. Joseph was comforted by the thought that the Edmondsons had gone in the opposite direction. Even though they had no way of knowing if they’d been watched, it still felt as though they should know. You can’t unknow what you know even if other people don’t know you know.
With a hundred yards left to go to the Ybarra house, they cut their engines. Roberto pushed his bike to the workshop. He returned about ten minutes later, and Joseph scooted back to let Roberto on ahead of him. Ten minutes alone with the ticks was too long.
“My papá gets up at 5:00 a.m. to feed the horses,” said Roberto. “I have to hurry, or he’ll see me or hear me come back.”
“Go as fast as you want,” said Joseph.
Roberto opened up the dirt bike, expertly avoiding mailboxes and trash cans on the side of the highway. He dropped Joseph off a block from his house. Joseph eased home, no longer afraid of birds, boos, or chainsaws in the dark.
An angry, worried mother would be much worse, especially when she told his angry, angry father on Friday. When he reached his bedroom window, Joseph realized he had a problem. He’d closed the window sash partway on his way out, and now he had the added weight of wet jeans. Oy veh. The gas meter was just a little too far away to use for a boost. So jump, Joseph told himself. Just watch your . . .
Owwwww. Joseph stood completely still, hoping Maman hadn’t heard him hit his head on the window. Hard. He wasn’t about to try that twice. There was no way he was getting back in the window with the sash that far down. He needed something to push it up. There was plenty of stuff in the garage, but he couldn’t remember if the side door to the garage was unlocked. The house was silent, but a car passed in the predawn, and Joseph pressed himself into the shadows. A neighbor calling the police about a prowler would be a thousand times worse than Maman telling Baba he’d sneaked out of the house at night.
After he made sure there were no more cars, Joseph retrieved an old broom from the back porch and used it to push up the sash. He propped the broom against the sill before he jumped. One good jump, and he flopped over the sill on his belly. He tilted his head down until his hands touched the floor, then he slowly worked himself in until he could throw a leg over and stand up. After stopping to listen again for Maman, he pulled the broom inside and eased the window back down. It was almost shut when he heard Maman’s footsteps in the hallway.
Joseph was too tall to scamper anywhere, but that’s what he did, wet jeans and all, straight to his bed. He slid the broom underneath it and rolled in, pulled the covers high, and turned away from the door. The door clicked open softly. Joseph felt Maman’s eyes searching the dark room. A soft sigh, then muted footfalls to the window. He heard it slide shut, and footsteps approached the side of his bed. Joseph pretended to sleep. Maman’s fingers tenderly brushed his hair. Then she was gone, pulling the door shut quietly behind her.
Only then could he breathe. The fading footsteps moved toward the kitchen, and Joseph could see the faint light come on under his bedroom door. What would he do with these wet clothes? Joseph slipped out of bed, stripped, and shoved the bundle of clothes under his bed as far as it would go. He’d figure out a way to dry them later and put them in the laundry. And that was it. Other than a sore head and the itch of mostly imaginary chiggers and ticks, he was home free.
15
SAFETY HELMET
“Maman, why do the letters from Iran come through California?” asked Joseph.
“They have to be reposted,” said Maman in that tone that meant she didn’t want to talk about it. She placed the new letter in the box with all the older ones. Every couple of months, she collected the Iranian letters in a big envelope and sent them to Joseph’s uncles in Israel. She placed the bar mitzvah RSVPs in a separate pile.
“Why?”
There was a long silence. Maman answered things in her own time. She considered everything, collecting information endlessly before making a decision. Joseph didn’t think his question should require that much mental research. Why wouldn’t relatives from Iran send the letters directly to Texas?
“When we left Iran, it was to escape the Shah’s secret police. We lost everything. Sometimes . . .” her voice faded. Maybe she was still collecting the information for her answer. It was maddening sometimes. Like whether she’d sign the release form so Joseph could play football. She’d made Baba read every single form, disclosure, and information sheet in the envelope and translate it into Farsi.
“Sometimes what?” Joseph prompted.
“We worry that . . .”
Another fade.
“It’s safer.” This time Maman said it confidently, a sentence with a period at the end.
“How is it safer?”
“Youssef-jun, you’re too young to understand. It’s safer for us if the letters go to relatives in California. They can read the news, and then they send them in new envelopes here. I send them to my brothers. That way all the news from home in Iran is shared.”
Okay, Joseph knew that last part was made up. “Safer” and “secret police” were completely different answers than “shared news.” Maman probably wouldn’t say more now that she’d constructed a believable answer that he didn’t believe. That was okay. Now Joseph knew where to start chipping away. He’d have to report the new clues to Shahla. Maybe he could pry some information out of one of his Israeli uncles at his bar mitzvah.
Something about those letters was safe for relatives in California, but not for them. Secret police. Safer. Losing everything. Joseph would find out. In the meantime, he had been studying hard for his bar mitzvah. This year, Joseph’s birthday fell on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. His bar mitzvah would take place in the synagogue on the following Friday afternoon and Shabbat, a day before Yom Kippur.
The bar mitzvah had to sing a section from the Torah and a passage from the Prophets, called the haftara. The Hebrew words to the Torah and Prophets had to be sung according to cantillation marks, like musical notes. Joseph sneaked to LaLa’s house several times to play the notes on her piano. It was easier to learn the notes and sing them that way. The Torah passage that stumped Joseph was:
“And die on the mountain that you are climbing, and be gathered to your people . . .”
The notes were odd, defying an easy cadence. The Hebrew phrase oo-muht was “And die,” and it was as slippery as the word itself, cloaked in darkness. It was not often that Joseph couldn’t pull notes easily from his memory, but he’d never had this kind of pressure. LaLa’s piano recitals were on Saturday afternoons. Shabbat. He’d never participated in a recital with all the pressure of students and parents watching his performance.
Rabbi Rothstein was okay with Mr. Ybarra bringing the twins and LaLa to attend the Friday celebration. Mateo wanted to know if there was a book he could read to prepare. Roberto wanted to know if there would be food and a live band. If not, he volunteered to connect Baba with a really good mariachi band that had an accordion player. Joseph didn’t pass Roberto’s offer along. Baba had hired a three-piece Persian band from a big Persian community near Los Angeles. They’d arrive with all their instruments on the Amtrak train’s Texas Eagle from LA to Dallas.
