Nightwitch by Ken Douglas Page A

immediately. His father was too cheap to buy shells and he was too lazy to load his own. He had Arty do it, but Arty wasn’t about to mention it, because it would be like calling him a liar and that couldn’t be good.
    “ How much?” It wasn’t fair. They had an unwritten rule. Arty’s paper route money was his. He bought his own clothes and paid for his own lunches at school. None of the other kids had to do that. He needed his money.
    “ Twenty bucks.” His father had opened the door of the truck and the dome light came on, illuminating a two day stubble and a wicked mean look in his eyes. Arty shuddered as his father stepped down, spitting a cigarette in the street. He wanted to tell him no, but he knew the consequences and didn’t want to suffer them, especially not on the street at the beginning of his route.
    “ That’s gonna leave me real short, Dad,” Arty said. He had three hundred and sixty dollars hidden in an envelope, taped behind his top dresser drawer, but he was hoping he would never have to use it, because he was saving up to run away.
    “ I’ll pay you back,” Bill Gibson said, yawning and acting like he meant it, but Arty knew he’d never see the twenty again. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. He sighed and took out the money, four fives and three ones.
    “ Here you go, Dad.” He separated the fives from the ones and handed them toward his father.
    “ That all you got?”
    “ I had to pay for the new tires for the bike. I gave Mr. Wilkes the money yesterday, right after I got paid.”
    “ Damn.”
    “ But you said you only wanted twenty.”
    “ I lied.” His father snatched the remaining three dollars from his other hand.
    “ How am I gonna pay for lunch?”
    “ Not my problem, boy.” Bill Gibson turned away from his son. He climbed back into the truck, settled behind the wheel, slapped a mosquito on the back of his neck, then popped a cigarette into his mouth.
    Arty watched till the truck turned the corner at the end of the block and he was worried. If his father started taking his money on a regular basis, he would have to raid his stash, something he didn’t want to do. He would have to run away much sooner than he’d planned.
     
     
    * * *
    “ Arty and Carolina sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.”
    Arty heard the voice singing out of tune and turned to see Brad Peters coming up the walk behind them, wearing a black leather jacket over a white tee shirt. He hated that song. Why couldn’t Brad leave them alone?
    “ Hurry,” Arty said, “he can’t bother us once we get inside.” He took her by the elbow and started pushing her at a faster pace toward the safety of the school doors. The last thing he wanted was trouble with Brad.
    He wanted to look behind to see if Brad had sped up, but he continued on, like he hadn’t heard the bully behind. Sometimes that worked with his father, especially if he’d been drinking. But sometimes it only made him madder, and those were the times when he really lit into him.
    “ K-I-S-S-I-N-G,” Brad repeated, too loud to be ignored, but they were almost to the steps and Arty decided to risk a glance behind to see how close he was. Turning his head, he saw that Brad was too far to catch them before they were inside the school and he felt a surge of warm relief. Now he could only hope that someone else would irritate Brad enough during the school day to take his mind off of whatever mischief he had planned for him.
    “ Look!” Carolina grabbed onto Arty’s arm and pointed. “There!” Arty faced back forward, looked up and sighed, then stopped. In front of them, barring their way up the concrete steps, were Brad’s shadows, Ray Harpine and Steve Kerr, both dressed in Levi’s and white tee shirts, the standard uniform of Brad’s small gang. Only Brad wore the black leather mantel of leadership.
    Arty’s first impulse was to run, but he was too fat and too slow and besides he would never leave Carolina