The Trouble in Me by Jack Gantos Page A

Gary’s house.
    This time I knocked on the door. He pulled it open and gave me a quick punch to the face like a fist popping out of a cuckoo clock. I shot straight back onto my ass.
    â€œDid I not tell you to keep your mouth shut?” he said.
    â€œBut I didn’t do anything wrong,” I whined, and rubbed my lips.
    â€œWhich is why I only gave you a love tap on your kisser … for being so sensational . I gotta pay you back for that performance. I owe you one. He didn’t believe a word you said. Every word gave him indigestion. But he couldn’t catch you in a lie. Now let’s go have some fun,” he said, taking two steps forward and one to the side. “I thought of a new game for the Pagoda Olympics of the Future.”

 
    FIRE AWAY
    He hollered for his brother and sister and they appeared from somewhere and followed us out of the house.
    He strolled across his yard and across the street, where he began to tug on the brass corner grommets of a giant canvas tarp that covered some kind of vehicle.
    In a minute we could see a shiny new Broward County Police tow truck. There wasn’t a spot on it.
    â€œWhere’d you get that?” I whispered. “Out of the factory paint shop?”
    â€œWhat did I tell you about asking questions?” he replied. “Remember the juvie code: To stay safe is to stay stupid.”
    He opened the passenger front door and pulled out a chain saw and a can of gasoline.
    â€œJust watch,” he said, “and learn from the master of the new Olympic Games.”
    In their front yard they had a tall, whippy-looking Australian pine tree—the kind that wasn’t like a Christmas tree, but more like a thin southern pine with pinkish bark and a flexible trunk. The branches stuck out from either side of the trunk like long furry dog tails that wagged this way and that in the breeze. The needles hung down limply like rows of knotted green ribbon.
    It was an odd tree and very delicate and beautiful—more of an exotic musical instrument from another century, a strange kind of magical harp. Its beauty seemed out of place at the Pagoda house and now it appeared to be a very nervous tree, shaking all the time like one of those shivering Italian greyhounds that, even in Florida, were dressed in sweaters. As it turned out, it should have been nervous.
    â€œIt’s the destiny of trees to give their lives for our pain and pleasure,” Gary announced, and made the sign of the cross in its direction.
    He gassed up the chain saw and pulled the starter cord. Instantly the nasal, angry growl of the saw lashed out in circles at the air. Gary held it over his head as if gutting the sky and walked up to the tree and quickly began to cut through the lower branches. He left about six inches of each branch attached to the trunk. As he pruned a branch above himself he could next step up to that stub. He used the stubs like rungs on a ladder, with the screaming saw spitting out wood chips over his head and into his hair.
    The smell of the pine was refreshing. I had become used to the constant rotting stench of the canal.
    Gary ascended that tree one step after the other, as easily as a telephone man climbs a pole. It was impressive. When he reached the top of the tree, which was about twice as tall as the peaked roof of their single-story house, he sliced off the elaborate headdress of unfurling new branches and leaves. Then he choked the saw off and began to descend one notch at a time.
    The saw swung in his hand like it was a weapon and he was the big-game hunter who had just felled a giraffe.
    â€œFrankie,” he ordered on the way down, “collect all those branches and stack them up so we can use them to camouflage the tow truck.”
    â€œAlice,” he called out, “get me that big spool of nylon rope we use for tripping up water-skiers.”
    She ran back into the garage and in a moment came out with a plywood spool with