Backward Glass by David Lomax

Author:David Lomax
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: teen, teen lit, teen fiction, ya, ya fiction, young adult, young adult fiction, science fiction, fantasy, time travel
Publisher: Llewellyn Worldwide, LTD.
Published: 2013-08-12T04:00:00+00:00

Part Four

The Little Hobo Boy,

August 1957

One

One Saturday in early August 1957, I got the opportunity to take part in a story I had been hearing all my life. Three older boys in a downtown neighborhood started in on a vagrant kid who had been staying in an abandoned house.

My grandmother still lived there in my time, so I remembered what she had told me about the old Tarkington place, whose shell-shocked war-vet owner had been moved into a home by his kids. A bunch of local kids had been going there to drink or make out for a couple of years. When I arrived on the street in the early hours of a Wednesday in late July after having walked more than ten miles, it was the natural place to hide out.

I spent two weeks there, avoiding other kids, spending my last bit of money. I was glad when I finally got jumped.

The kids who did it had worked up a sense of outrage at this stranger invading their neighborhood. Despite the fact that in the last couple of years they had tossed their share of rocks through the windows of the Tarkington house, they decided that I was going to have to pay for defiling the house of the local war hero. They caught me crawling out of a basement window on a sweltering August afternoon.

I wasn’t a pushover, though, the way you’d figure a skinny little fifteen-year-old would be when confronted with three older boys. I fought back like I had nothing to lose, and I guess also like I knew I’d be rescued, knew the whole script of how this fight would go. When Boyd Fenton broke my nose, I stepped back, pulled it as straight as I could, and asked if he was done yet.

“What the hell is going on here?” said Brian Maxwell, striding around the corner into the Tarkington backyard where they had taken the vagrant kid. “Fenton, what are you doing?”

“Hi, Brian,” said Fenton, straightening up from his fighting crouch. “You seen this little thief? He’s been breaking in and John saw him stealing from Tuck’s the other day. Little gypsy or something. We’re giving him the run-off.”

Brian examined me. “Kind of blue-eyed for a gypsy, Fenton. How’re you giving him the run-off if you don’t let him, you know … run off?”

“Making sure he doesn’t want to come back,” said John Timson.

“And teaching him respect,” said the third kid. “He’s gotta learn he can’t just break into Mr. Tarkington’s house like that. Guy was a war hero.”

Brian shook his head. “Bines, two years ago, you said I could be the leader of your gang if I’d break in here and set up a clubhouse. I don’t think you’re the guy to teach respect. Find something else to do.”

“No,” said Fenton. “We found him first, Brian. We’ll let him go in a couple of minutes anyhow.”

“Good. So it’s a couple of minutes.”

Fenton squared his shoulders and thrust out his chest. “I didn’t say we were done yet.

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