John D. MacDonald

Kids on Wheels

I suppose I gave my folks a pretty hard time about it. But I sort of had to. I mean I’d always run around with the four of them, Mitch, Bobby, Arn and Del, and this year they all get motor scooters, and where does that leave me? On a bike with the little kids, that’s where. Mitch was the first one to get one. He used the money he earned last summer and bought a beat-up one, and then he really put it in shape. His people don’t care much what he does, and that gives him plenty of freedom. Bobby got a brand new red one next, and even though it was brand new, it still wouldn’t go as fast as the one Mitch fixed up. Bobby’s people buy him any old thing he wants. He just yells until he gets it. He runs things at his house and he sure knows it. Then at Thanksgiving Arn’s grandmother bought him one. He’d told us he was working on her, and once he got it his folks sort of had to let him use it. That left just me and Del on bikes and pretty gloomy about the prospects of getting a motor scooter. When the other three were feeling good, they’d let us take one around the block and that was about all. And sometimes we could go along, hanging on behind, but not often.

What really stoned me was when Del’s people bought him a used one in good shape. There they were, the four guys I’d always run around with, and I was out in the cold. One of the most terrible times of my life started right then. The thing is, you can’t make your folks understand a thing like that.

I tried to pick the right times to ask Dad. There didn’t seem to be any right time. The first time he stared at me and his face got stiff and he yelled, “Clara! Come in here and listen to this kid.” Mom came in from the kitchen and he made me repeat what I’d asked him and then he said, “Davie, you are not going to have one of those damn things. Florida has got the narrowest roads, the craziest drivers and the fastest traffic there is. I am not going to mount any son of mine on one of those scooters so that some vacationing creep from Dubuque can bunt him off into the boondocks and mush his head against a palm tree. Let’s have no more nonsense, Davie. My God, a bike is bad enough.”

I looked at Mom and saw her nod in agreement and I went out and shut myself in my room. But you see, I had to keep giving them a hard time on account of the way the other guys changed. They’d ride all over together on weekends and after school. They had a sort of a club, and it didn’t take them long to shut me out of it because I was still on a bike like the little kids. They hung around together like always, only now it was four instead of five the way it used to be.

I tried, but it was kind of like begging. They’d be in the side yard of the High, with the scooters parked in the shade. Mitch would be squatting with a cigarette pinched short and his tough face like a fist and I’d go on over to them. Bobby is almost as pretty as a girl, but the last time we scrapped I barely licked him. And skinny Arn would be there and Del with that hair that looks like it’s on fire. I just wasn’t a part of it any more. I’d try to work up something, some of the stuff we used to do, but I’d just get the cold eye. It seemed like I was left out of everything.

One time I phoned Bobby to go to the movies with me on Saturday afternoon but he said he was doing something else. Then I tried Arn and it was the same thing. And Del too. Del couldn’t seem to remember how it was when the other three had scooters and lie and I were the ones left on bikes. So I went to the movies alone, but when I got there I saw those four scooters parked and locked in front, so I didn’t even go in. I just walked around town and took a bus back home.

It was funny how they seemed to all get older and tougher, and they said things I couldn’t follow when I tried to hang around with them. They’d take girls for rides, the girls hanging on in back, but you can’t ask a girl to go for a bike ride with you. I got so I stopped trying to talk to them. You’ve got to have some pride, I guess. I got mopey all right, and it wasn’t any act I was putting on to give my people a bad time. I felt that way. I spent a lot of time in my room, and I did more reading than I ever had before. I’d try to bring it up with Dad, but it would make him so sore I knew I was hurting things rather than helping them.

There was a yellow one on the floor at Sears. I guess the guy in that department got used to me coming in and looking at it. I liked the oil and leather smell of it, and it looked fast enough. I tried to tell myself it was going to come through at Christmas for me, and I nearly convinced myself, but that was a laugh. I had to pretend that it was just jolly to get the books and the new spinning rod and reel and the rest of the junk. I tried to make the act as good as I could, because Christmas is no time to apply the old pressure, but I thought they looked at me kind of funny.

I think it was Mom who finally made the decision. She could tell easier than Dad, because he was away all day, that I didn’t have anybody to run around with any more. My birthday was February seventh. On the fifth, and that was a Sunday, Dad and I had a serious talk in the kitchen. As soon as I figured out what he was driving at, my heart just about jumped right out of my chest. He said it was like a deal. I had to make certain solemn promises. The promises sort of tied me down, but I didn’t worry about that. All I could think of was riding to the school and turning in on that yellow job with the fat tires and the motor making that nice burbling sound, and tooling it up to where the other guys were parked, and then I’d be back with the guys again, the way it used to be.

I had to obey all the traffic rules and make arm signals. I couldn’t take it out after sunset. I couldn’t take it out on Route 41. I had to keep near the curb. None of this riding down the middle of two lanes of traffic. I could have one other person aboard, but not two. I had to buy the gas out of my allowance. I had to keep it in good shape. No racing, and no clowning around on it. No fancy stuff. No showing off. I promised on my word of honor. The important thing was to have one. Without one I was nobody, and that was a bad feeling. And the last promise was to get my grades up. They’d been sort of sagging ever since I got cut out of the group.

Tuesday was my birthday. I didn’t tell the guys I was going to get the yellow one. But all day Monday and Tuesday at the High I was laughing inside, and I felt like yelling. Tuesday I went home on the bike so fast that my legs were trembly when I got home. And it was in the garage. It was so beautiful that my eyes got blurred and I couldn’t see it good. They’d brought it on a truck. Mom giggled at me and then she must of seen how much it meant and she hugged me. It made me feel funny because this last few months I’ve gotten taller than she is. I couldn’t take it out. There were plates and things to fix up. I’d forgotten that. Dad came home early, in time for us to go down in the car to the court house and get the red tape fixed up. Then we went back and put the plate on and I took it out to the driveway and kicked the starter and it turned over the first time. It made a good sound. They weren’t sure I could handle it, but I told them not to worry. I went down the street on it and looked back and they both looked sort of funny standing there. I don’t know what the word is, but it would be something like lonesome.

I revved it up a little when I was out of sight, and the third time I went around the block they’d gone back into the house. I didn’t want to use it too much all at once. Like making candy last when you’re little. I put it in the garage in the space I’d cleared for it, and I patted it, and then I went into the house feeling as if I’d done a lot of growing up all of a sudden. Like I was more of a person.

The next morning was just like I thought it would be, practically. I cut it fine getting there, so I’d be sure the others were there. I didn’t ride up to them grinning like a kid. I kept my face stiff. I parked it and they were all looking at me.

They came over and looked it all over and it was like old times again. Arn tried to spoil it by saying it was a junky make, but Mitch said it was pretty hot, and I liked him for that. They wanted to try it but there wasn’t time before the bell. I locked it and we all went into the school together, the five of us, like it used to be. I guess that was the longest school day there ever was. We agreed to meet out on Garden Road after school. I made a fast trip home and unloaded the books and went out there. It’s a good broad paved dead-end road without many houses. We did all kinds of things, trading off, and racing and so on, and mine turned out to be second fastest after Mitch’s. Bobby was sore about that, because he’d been second fastest. There was one thing — they’d all had a lot of practice and they could handle theirs better, but I knew it wouldn’t take but a couple of days to catch up, because I could always handle a bike better than the others and almost as good as Mitch.

I finally said I had to go and Bobby said to drive it over to his house after supper. I said I couldn’t. And they looked at each other and for a minute it was like I was out of the club again. We went barreling down Garden Road to Collier Street and they cut out into traffic, cutting it pretty fine so that people blared horns at them, but I had to stick to the curb like I promised, and they made a lot better time than I did. That made me sore, mine being the second fastest, but I’d sworn my word of honor and I just had to learn to like it.

You know how it is when people have secrets. They stop talking when you come around. And there’s a special way they look at you. We’d be in the school yard and Arn would say, “How about that guy last night? I never did see anybody so mad...”

And Mitch would say, “Knock it off.”

They wouldn’t look at me then, but I knew something was going on. There was still something I wasn’t part of. I tried to find out. Bobby said, “Come on along with us Friday night and see, Dave.”

But I couldn’t, on account of that promise. Just by having a motor scooter I’d gotten a little way back into the group, but I still wasn’t a part of it. I was a daytime part, but that wasn’t much good except on weekends, and it wasn’t too good then.

A funny thing happened. I was coming home from school and a prowl car stopped me. A fat cop made me give him my name and address. I asked him what was wrong, but he wouldn’t tell me. I was doing my homework that night when a different cop came to the house. He talked with Dad. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. It made me nervous, even though I knew I hadn’t done anything. Then Dad called me in. They both stared at me as if I was some kind of a bug.

“David, have you ever taken that scooter out at night when your mother and I haven’t been home?”

“No sir.” I always use sir when he starts calling me David.

The cop said, “You can’t believe kids any more these days.”

I looked at Dad. I said, “I made a promise and I kept it.”

The cop got up. “Okay, sonny. There’s nothing I can do about it, but we’re looking for you and your pals, and people are getting sick and tired of this nonsense so you better not let me catch you out on that thing at night.”

Dad said, with his face getting red, “Don’t bully the kid. He doesn’t lie. I’m getting a little tired of your attitude.”

The cop gave a tired smile. “Sure. I hope he doesn’t lie. Thanks for your cooperation.” He left.

“What’s it all about?” I asked Dad.

“There’s a gang of kids on motor scooters who’ve been going around at night raising hell. Setting fire to palm trees, ripping down signs, smashing rural mail boxes, dumping over trash cans, tossing rocks through windows. Do you know anything about that, Davie. Do you know who they are?”

“No, I don’t.”

He looked at me for a long time. “If you did, you wouldn’t say so, and I suppose that’s okay. But don’t get mixed up in it. It could be bad.”

That was a Monday. The next day in the school yard I said, very casual, that a cop had been to the house.

“Mine too,” Bobby said, and he snickered. Then he made his eyes very round and made his voice higher and said, “Gee, officer, I don’t know anything about those boys. They must be terrible boys to do things like that. I’d be scared to do things like that.”

Arn laughed so hard he rolled on the ground.

“It is you guys, isn’t it?” I said. By that time I knew the answer.

Mitch looked at me in a hard way and then shrugged. “Maybe it is and maybe it isn’t.”

“Tell me about it.”

“You come along some night and we’ll initiate you, Dave. You’ll have to learn to ride in formation. That’s tough, at night, wide open and about six inches apart. You pass that and maybe we’ll make you a member of the Night Raiders,” Del said.

“Don’t shoot off your fat mouth,” Mitch told him.

The bell rang then, and I was saved from having to tell them that I couldn’t go along. Arn walked in with me and said, half-whispering, “We’ve been hitting the beach houses.”

It all gave me a strange feeling. I wanted to go along to prove I wasn’t scared to go along, because I knew that’s what they were thinking. I had to make up a lie. I thought it up in history class. I told Mitch at lunch. I said, “I’d like to go along, but my father doesn’t want me driving it after dark, so he takes the key when he goes out.”

“That’s tough,” Mitch said.

It turned out that wasn’t a very good lie. Because the very next day Mitch asked to borrow my key. He pressed it hard into a little cake of soap and picked it out with his finger nail and gave it back to me. The next day in school he showed me the duplicate key. He’d filed it out of a key blank himself. He had a little file with him. It didn’t work when we tried it, but he filed it a little more and it worked as good as the one that came with it. Then he didn’t give it to me. He winked and put it in his pocket and said he was going to save it for emergencies. I had the feeling I was getting into something, and I didn’t know how to get out.

The next week Del said to me, in front of the others, “I heard my old lady talking to yours on the phone. Your folks are going to Lakeland overnight Thursday, aren’t they? And taking your kid sister and leaving you here?”

“That’s right. They didn’t want me to miss school. I’m staying alone.”

Del looked at Mitch. “Have things eased off enough by now?”

“Could be.”

They looked at me. “Old Dave is kind of pale, isn’t he?” Bobby said.

I knew they were nervous about it too, but they were making themselves feel big and brave by acting like I was chicken. Maybe I was. I know that all day Thursday I felt like the bottom was out of my stomach. In the morning when I had gone to school, I’d gotten all the usual orders and instructions about food, and what was where, and be good, and get to bed early and so on, because they would be gone when I got home from school. I kept wishing they’d have car trouble or something or other, and they’d be home when I got home from school.

But they had gone by then and the house was empty. My footsteps sounded too loud. I thought of a dozen things, like going alone to the movies and sitting right through until the theater closed, or like doing something to the yellow scooter so it wouldn’t run. But I didn’t do anything, and I couldn’t get the food down that they’d left me when it was time to eat. It got dark too fast and they didn’t come. They didn’t come for so long I decided they weren’t going to. And then after ten thirty I heard the motor sounds and they all came into the driveway.

I went out and Mitch handed me the key and said, “Let’s go, kid. If you still want to.”

I didn’t want to, but I went with them out to Route 41.

At first it scared me. We seemed to be going twice as fast as you could go in the daytime. The lights were tricky. Bobby kept looking around and yelling for me to move in closer. The traffic was fast. The cars would boom by and the wind would swerve you a little. Then I began to get the hang of it and it was exciting. We whooped and yelled, and I made myself forget that I wasn’t supposed to be doing this. I’d started and I couldn’t turn back, and that’s all there was to it.

We went about ten miles down 41 to where the road turns off to Coral Beach where there’s nice cottages and cabanas. We stopped and turned off the lights and had a meeting.

“The first guy who thinks he spots a cop,” Mitch said, “he gives a yell. We scatter. And we join up back at Dave’s house. The best way to fool them is to douse your lights and wheel off into the shrubbery and drop flat and wait. They’ll try to pick you up with a spotlight. Now Bobby, you and Arn and Dave take the left side of the road and the rest of us will take the right side. Go as fast as you can. This place is full of rich jerks who need their signs ripped down. We’ll go all the way down to the hotel, and I got kerosene to set one of those royal palms going, and then we’ll high-tail out of here, all of us.”

We saddled up and took off. The driveways were far apart. We pushed over a whole row of mailboxes. Bobby and I ripped a big sign down. The nails squealed when we wrenched it out of the post. It was hard work, because you had to keep jumping on and off the scooters, and we had to go as fast as the three on the other side of the road.

When a car would come, we’d wheel into the shallow ditch and drop flat. But the thing was, the cops came without lights. And they came from the direction of the hotel. Their spotlight went on and nailed Mitch and I guess we all yelled at once. Bobby yelled to me to follow him. The cops were busy with Mitch. We turned into a driveway with our lights off. I could barely sec the white sand of the drive. The scooter wheels mushed and skidded.

What really scared me was hearing the shot. I wondered if they’d shot Mitch. I was half crying, but I didn’t want Bobby to hear me. There was a parallel sand road there, but it was harder. Bobby switched on his lights and so did I and he motioned me to ride up beside him. I did and he yelled, “This takes us all the way back to Route 41, Dave. Let’s roll.”

“Did they shoot somebody?”

“How the hell do I know?” His voice sounded thin and scared. We went down the road. It was rough. We were going too fast. I held the steering grips until my fingers ached, and it kept bouncing me right up off the scat. All I wanted to do was get home. That’s all I wanted.

Finally we came to the stop sign at Route 41. There were lights coming fast, from the right, going in the direction we wanted to go.

“Come on!” Bobby yelled. He kicked off, but I guess he tried to do it a little too fast. His back wheel skidded in the sand before it got traction on the asphalt of the main road. And he was going to cut it a little too thin anyway. It was hard to tell just how fast those lights were coming, and I started, then turned back fast, not going out onto the highway, but sort of skidding around on the sand. It was a truck, and the air horn made a great sound in the night, and all the tires screamed, and in the middle of that I heard a small sound, something you could hardly hear. The truck went by, swerving and skidding and going onto the shoulder and then coming back onto the road and stopping way down the road. I couldn’t see Bobby any place.

I put the brace down, but I didn’t do it right, and when I got off my scooter, it fell over into the grass, but I didn’t care. There were flares out, and two men were running back with flashlights, and another car was stopping. It stopped, and, where it stopped, the headlights were shining on Bobby’s red scooter, only you couldn’t tell it was a scooter. You could hardly have guessed what it had ever been. It was rolled up the way you roll a bug between your finger and thumb. The road patrol came, and they had a floodlight and that made it easier to find Bobby. He was way over in the field on the other side. Nobody paid any attention to me. It was like I wasn’t there at all. A lot of cars had stopped, and the ambulance came. You could hear it long before you could see the swinging red light on top. They didn’t have any light on Bobby then, and they had him sort of covered. The ambulance came down through the ditch and over to where everybody was, and the man in blue from the highway patrol car said to the man in white, “It’s a kid and he’s dead.”

“Got a name?”

“Yes. It’s in this notebook that was in his pocket. Want to copy it down? Robert H. Dauby. Got that? Ninety-six Acacia Lane.”

“Tough,” the man in white said. “I know his old man. Real-estate broker.”

It was like I was invisible. Like I wasn’t there at all. The truck driver was talking again. He sounded excited. “Right out of that road over there, right in front of the truck.”

The ambulance went away. People went back to their cars. They used flashlights. It was over. I went back across the road and I stood my scooter up and got it started. I went slow and I stayed near the shoulder. My eyes didn’t work right. I kept having crazy ideas, like turning toward the headlights that came toward me. But I didn’t. I went home and I put the scooter in the garage and unlocked the house and went in. It was nearly two o’clock. I didn’t turn any lights on. None of the other ones showed up. When I woke up I was in the chair in the living room, and it was early morning. The daylight made it look as though nothing had happened, but I knew it had.

I undressed and laid down on my bed but I knew I’d started thinking and I couldn’t get to sleep again. I dressed again and drank some milk, and I didn’t go to school. The morning paper came and there wasn’t anything in it about what happened. I turned on the radio and got the nine o’clock news. The man told about Bobby. He said that three boys with motor scooters had been picked up by the county police for destruction of property in the Coral Beach area. He didn’t give Mitch and Arn and Del’s names, but he said the three boys had admitted that Robert Dauby had been with them after they learned he had been killed. Police investigation had cleared the truck driver of any blame in the fatal accident. There wasn’t anything about me, about any fifth person being mixed up in it, and I guess that they hadn’t snitched. It should have made me feel better, but it didn’t.

The house was very empty. I guessed they’d get back about four in the afternoon. I knew what I could do. I could just say I didn’t know anything about it, and I could say I didn’t feel good and that’s why I didn’t go to school. Maybe nobody would ever know about it. I hadn’t seen anybody I knew out there where it happened, and nobody had paid any attention to me. I could do that and it would be all right.

It seemed like it was going to be a long day. About ten thirty I went out to the garage. The scooter was dusty. I rubbed it off. The yellow paint looked the same, it still had a good smell of leather and oil. But it wasn’t the same as before. It was like it was a different scooter. It sat there and it had a different personality. Squat and ugly and deadly. And there wasn’t any more fun in it.

It was nearly noon when I finally knew what I had to do. I didn’t want to do it. I would almost rather have died than do it, but I knew that I had to. The bad thing was not knowing exactly why I had to. I didn’t want them to worry, so I wrote the note and left it on the kitchen table where they’d see it when they came in through the back.

I wrote, “I went out on the scooter last night with four boys on their scooters. We tore up signs and things. The police caught three of us and the other one was killed by a truck. Bobby Dauby, it was. I’m going to ride downtown and tell the police I was doing it like the others. I didn’t want you to worry, because I’ll maybe still be there when you get home.” I signed it David.

I went out to the garage and looked at it again. I didn’t want to ride it. I couldn’t ride it. So I had to go back in the house and change the note to read that I was walking downtown.

When I got there I walked right by the entrance and stood on the corner. I knew a lot of things, then. I knew that no matter what happened, I wasn’t going to run around with Mitch and Arn and Del any more. Because it had all been spoiled. And I knew I was going to ask Dad to sell the scooter. Not to punish myself, but because I didn’t want it any more. And I knew I washed we could move away. A good long way away.

I stood on the corner and then turned back and I thought that I was going to have to go right on by again. I kept thinking that when I saw my folks again, it would never be the same as it used to be. It would be like the time when it was brand new, and the way they looked standing and watching me ride it for the first time. You lose something, and you can’t get it back.

But when I got to the doorway again, I was able to turn and go up the stone steps and go inside.

Content

John D. MacDonald
Kids on Wheels