Bucking the Sarge

  ALSO AVAILABLE FROM LAUREL-LEAF BOOKS

  BUD, NOT BUDDY, Christopher Paul Curtis

  ACCELERATION, Graham McNamee

  FRESH GIRL, Jaïra Placide

  SHABANU: DAUGHTER OF THE WIND, Suzanne Fisher Staples

  DR. FRANKLIN’S ISLAND, Ann Halam

  COUNTING STARS, David Almond

  FALLING FROM FIRE, Teena Booth

  DAUGHTER OF VENICE, Donna Jo Napoli

  TARGET, Kathleen Jeffrie Johnson

  TAYLOR FIVE, Ann Halam

  To Shakira Chantelle Wilson and

  Darnell Lee Wilson

  And to the memory of my dear Uncle Sterling June Sleet

  Many thanks to the following people who read the book and offered valuable suggestions:

  Elaine Astles, Kay Benjamin, Pauletta Bracy, Steven Curtis, Terry Fisher, Dante Gatti, John Jarvey, Teri Lesesne, Edward Langstone, Megann Licskai, Blake Lundy, Mona Lundy, Kendra Patrick, Barb Perris, Alison Root, Traki Taylor and Mickial Wilson, Uncle Bullethead. And especially to WL, Eunice Blatt.

  “Luther T. Farrell, you got to be more careful.”

  Sparky climbed into the front seat and slapped something brown and squarish on the dashboard of my ride.

  My wallet!

  My hand flew to the back of my jeans and patted the pocket where my wallet was supposed to have been. Stupid. I know.

  I snatched my wallet and opened it to see if anything was missing. I felt like I’d been gut-punched. Except for one thing, it was completely empty.

  “Aw, man, someone jacked me! Where’d you get it?”

  “On the floor in Mrs. Bohannon’s lab.”

  I’d been in Mrs. Bohannon’s lab after my last class. She’d been trying to help me develop a knockout science fair project and she was almost as excited about it as I was. If I came up with a great idea I’d be the first student ever to win the science fair for three years in a row at Whittier Middle School. And probably the first at any school in Flint.

  It had to be one of those chemistry geeks who’d picked my pocket! I bet it was that Lucas Sorge.

  Sparky said, “You know what, Luther, I didn’t think it was possible, but if word of this gets out your reputation will sink even lower than it was before. You know everybody already thinks there’s something wrong with you the way you stress out over that science fair, but if I let people know you lost your wallet you wouldn’t just be known as a wannabe brainiac, you’d have the rep for being a absentminded wannabe brainiac.”

  “Sparky, this isn’t any time to be joking around, I’ma be in some big trouble.”

  Sparky said, “And ever since you were in Pampers who is it that’s had your back? Who’s been there with you through the fire, to the limit, to the wall …”

  I tuned Sparky out and started worrying about what my mother, aka the Sarge, was gonna say when she found out all my stuff had been ripped off. No, let me break that down; it wasn’t what she was gonna say that had me worried, it was what she was gonna do. The Sarge’s discipline techniques aren’t the kind of thing you’d learn on the Parenting Network, they’re more like what you’d pick up from watching the Animal Channel.

  Sparky kept running his mouth: “… but I don’t expect any thanks, it’s just another case of me selflessly bailing my boy out.”

  I said, “How’re you bailing me out? How’s you giving me a empty wallet supposed to be bailing me out?”

  “It wasn’t completely empty.”

  Here it comes. Sparky was about to say something about the only thing the thief had left in my wallet.

  I’m not ashamed, I’m not trying to hide anything, it was a condom. To be real, it was the oldest condom on the face of the earth. It’d been in my wallet so many years that I’d had to give it a name—I called it Chauncey. Chauncey and that wallet had spent so much time together that it would’ve been a crime to separate them, not that there was any chance of that happening anytime soon. They’d been together so long that Chauncey had wore a circle right in the leather, and a circle ain’t nothing but a great big zero, which was just about my chances of ever busting Chauncey loose and using him.

  I said, “Man, the Sarge’s gonna kill me.”

  Sparky said, “Maybe it’s not as bad as you think, maybe this’ll help.”

  He snapped his fingers like a magician and a card appeared.

  I took it from him. “It figures. My library card, what’s a thief gonna do with a library card?”

  Sparky said, “I can understand why they left you that, but what I don’t get is why they left that condom. Old as that baby is, I bet they could’ve got some good money from a museum for it.”

  Sparky snapped his fingers again. This time my driver’s license appeared.

  Whew! The Sarge had had to pull some serious strings to get me that, if I’da had to go apply for another one it wouldn’ta been good.

  Sparky started reading from my license: “Height: six foot four, weight a hundred thirty-five.” He snorted and said, “Yeah, maybe if you had twenty pounds of quarters in your pockets. And here’s something I don’t get, if I’m a few months older than you and I’m only fifteen, how come this license says you’re eighteen?”

  Even though I treat Sparky like a brother, the Sarge taught me that there are some things that aren’t anybody else’s business. I said, “Connections, my brother, connections.”

  Sparky said, “I guess so.”

  He snapped again and read from the piece of paper that magically appeared in his hand. It was the title to my ride. “Yeah, you really would need some serious connections to be fifteen years old and have a eighty-five-thousand-dollar ride that’s already paid off.”

  He shook his head and handed me my title.

  He snapped again. This finger popping was starting to get old, but at least every time he did it it meant I was getting something back.

  Sparky was holding three credit cards.

  Oh, snap! Sparky handed me my JCPenney’s card, my Platinum MasterCard and my American Express Gold Card.

  That was just about everything, just about. I waited for another pop.

  Sparky was torturing me. Finally he snapped again and a fifty-dollar bill was in his fingers. It wasn’t what I was really looking for, but fifty bucks is fifty bucks. It was my emergency money. He handed it to me and said, “I know I’m supposed to be your boy, and I know we swore to have each other’s backs from womb to tomb, from birth to earth, but after going through your wallet I gotta let you know something, my brother.”

  “What’s that?”

  “You need to quit all that whining about how rough your life is.”

  I said, “Look who’s talking.”

  “Naw, Luther, I’m for real.”

  I told him, “Buckle your seat belt, Sparky, you know I gotta pick up my crew by four.”

  Sparky buckled his belt as I pulled away from the curb. I always parked a few blocks away from the school.

  We’d had this conversation about who was better off before. We look at things in different ways but we always stay tight.

  Sparky’s been my main dog since kindergarten. His real name is Dewey but he outgrew that around second grade.

  His father used to be a fireman and since their crib was just around the corner from the firehouse, his dad let him walk down there after school and polish the bell and do other cool things all the time.

  After his dad got shot the other firemen still let Sparky hang around and always had something for him to do.

  Darnell Dixon, the Sarge’s go-to guy and my boss and one of Flint’s leading psychopath nut jobs, had told Dewey, “It’s a crying shame the way they treat you down at that fire station, youngblood. Word is that the way you hang out there so much they think of you like
some kind of little mascot. Fact is they been calling you Sparky the Fire Dog behind your back.”

  That’s one reason I have so much respect for Sparky. Darnell called himself trying to be hateful but Sparky flipped the script on him. He took the name and wore it with honor. He was proud of the firemen because they always made him feel at home and mostly because they reminded him of his pops, so from the time he was seven years old he made everyone call him Sparky.

  I turned left onto Court Street.

  Sparky said, “Naw, Luther, you got it straight-up made. Stop and think about it, you know how you always making them lists for everything you’re gonna do and everything you want to do? If I sat down and made my own list of the top one hundred things that I’d ever wanted in life you’d already have ninety-eight of them.”

  Sparky started ticking things off on his fingers. “One, you’re toting all that plastic around and I know that AmEx card don’t even have a limit; two, you got your own vehicle; three, you got a for-real, honest-to-God, straight from the Secretary of State phony driver’s license that says you’re eighteen when we both know you’re only fifteen—and a immature fifteen at that; four, you kiss every teacher in school’s behind and get good grades; five, you carry fifty bucks in your wallet at all times; six, your momma owns half the ghetto; seven, she’s got them group homes; eight, she’s got so much cash she lends money out like a bank; nine, you got six million dollars she set aside in that education fund …”

  I interrupted, “Being real it’s ninety-two thousand, five hundred and ten dollars, and that’s ninety-two thousand, five hundred and ten dollars for more than two years of eighty-hour weeks.”

  Sparky said, “Whatever, Number ten, she bought that bad fifty-three-inch plasma TV….” Sparky ran out of fingers so he started slapping the dashboard. “Eleven …”

  Bam!

  “… she had Darnell Dixon hook you up with that free satellite; twelve …”

  Bam!

  “… don’t no one care if you watch high-definition cartoons from sunup to sundown; thirteen …”

  Bam!

  “… you’re gonna inherit all them things from her, and that’s just the start. You got it all, baby.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  Sparky said, “Of course you do have a couple things going on that wouldn’t make my list.”

  I said, “A couple? How ‘bout having to look after a bunch of grown men twenty-four seven?”

  Sparky said, “And for number two, the way you have to clean those dudes up and change some of their diapers.”

  I said, “And three, having to work all day Saturday and Sunday and from four till midnight every other night.”

  Sparky said, “And four, when it comes to basketball you’re a waste of six-feet-and-four-inches.”

  I said, “And five, having to make sure my crew gets shaved, dressed, washed up, medicated, driven to the rehab center, and driven to their doctors’ appointments and therapy sessions. Then there’s prepping and painting the rental houses for new tenants, and cleaning the—”

  Sparky said, “And six, there’s the thing about you not being exactly the best-looking brother in Flint.”

  Sparky was on a roll, but he was wrong there. I’ve always thought of myself as being handsome, but in a unusual sort of way. And if that Clearasil really works it won’t be too much longer before I’ll be handsome in a more normal sense of the word.

  Sparky said, “Then seven, there’s the fact that you ain’t never had a woman, and probably never will.”

  I said, “And eight, the fact that … wait a minute, you’re trying to say I’ve never had a woman?”

  Sparky looped his thumb and pointing finger in a circle and said, “N’e’en one, nada, baby.”

  I said, “So you mean to tell me your momma had a sex-change operation? I knew there was something strange about her.”

  Sparky laughed and said, “I know you don’t want to start panning on folks’ mothers, do you?”

  He had me there. When it comes to having your mother talked about I’m wide open to being abused. I changed the subject.

  “What about you, Sparky? You’re the one who’s got it made and doesn’t know it.”

  “Wha-a-at?”

  “Let me break one of my patented Luther T. Farrell lists down for you. Number one, you don’t have someone standing over you all the time telling you what to do—”

  Sparky interrupted, “Two, I got no funds, I got no job.”

  I said, “Three, you can come and go anytime you want to—”

  “Four, I got no clothes, I got no shoes.”

  I said, “Five, you come to school only if you feel like it—”

  Sparky said, “Six, half my meals are at your place and I’m eating that same garbage you serve them people you look after —”

  I said, “Seven, you got me as your best friend.”

  Sparky trumped the whole conversation: “Eight through two hundred forty-seven thousand, I live in Flint.”

  I don’t mean to say my boy is obsessed, but Sparky blames all our problems on the fact that we live in Flint. Yeah, I’m looking to get out someday myself, but this is one of those things that me and Sparky don’t think alike on. But that’s not his fault. My mind is trained in a different way than his.

  I like to look at everything philosophically, and he doesn’t. I’ve known since I was about six that thinking that way will get you what you need in life so I’ve been studying philosophical junk since then.

  It gets a laugh every time I tell someone but by the time I’m twenty-one I plan on being America’s best-known, best-loved, best-paid philosopher. And that’s a job that there’s gotta be a big demand for ‘cause how many full-time, famous, professional American philosophers can you think of?

  I rest my case.

  It’s because of the way my mind is trained that I don’t join everybody else coming down on Flint so tough. Flint ain’t nothing but a place or a state of mind, and I think a place or a state of mind is all about what you make it to be.

  But not Sparky, he knows that if he lived somewhere flashy like Gary, Indiana, or New Orleans or New York City he’d be sitting pretty.

  I pulled into the parking lot of the Genesee County Adult Rehabilitation Center and hit the horn.

  My crew was standing just inside the front door. They picked up their lunch pails, hooked arms, and started walking to where me and Sparky were parked. There are only four men in my crew right now. We’re down from the usual eight. The Sarge was having trouble filling spots because the other group homes in the area didn’t have the amount of rejects and last-chance cases they usually send to us.

  I opened the door and Mr. Foster was the first to get in. He’s the leader of the pack. Before he got sick he was a top dog with some insurance company. Now he spends his days dogging the rest of the Crew, watching television and reminding me how bad my life is.

  He said, “Gentlemen, good to see you both.” We had finally got his medications tuned so that he didn’t have the big mood swings.

  Mr. Baker was next. He’s the official Happy Neighbor Group Home for Men grumpy old man, nicotine addict and pyromaniac. Medications don’t do a thing to him.

  He’d been holding his breath since I pulled up and now that he was in he let out a lungful of cigarette smoke all over me.

  He put his hand over his mouth and said, “Was that me?”

  He knew how much I hated breathing in smoke. He wasn’t supposed to be smoking but someone at the center would give him cigarettes if he promised not to cause any trouble.

  One of the rehab center’s aides helped in the last two of my crew, Mr. Keller and Mr. Hart, and buckled their belts.

  Mr. Keller has to be kept loaded up on a ton of meds, it’s the only way we can keep him from going off on folks. He’s so far out of it that Mr. Foster calls him Dial Tone.

  Mr. Hart is helpless. He should’ve been in the Sarge’s chronic care home but his people had enough cash to pay the Sarge a littl
e extra something and have him stay with me. They told the Sarge it was worth it ‘cause they liked the care I gave the men.

  And I do take pride in the way I look after my crew. It’s a lot of responsibility and I’ve been pretty much in charge of the Happy Neighbor Group Home for Men since I was thirteen, but I gotta tell you, ever since I’d had that first good feeling and excitement about being in charge of something it’s been a two-and-a-half-year downhill slide.

  “Everybody buckled?”

  Sparky said, “Hold on.”

  He snapped his fingers one more time and the last thing that was missing from my wallet appeared.

  Sparky looked at it and said, “The Methuselah condom says ‘sad,’ but I gotta tell you, bruh, this is even worse. You need to stand in line and get you your capital ‘P,’ which stands for ‘pathetic,’ ‘cause that’s what this is shouting. How long you been carrying this thing around?”

  He handed it to me.

  It was a picture of the woman I’m doomed to love and hate for the rest of my life, Shayla Dawn of the Dead Patrick.

  Sparky was right, this was pathetic. It was Shayla’s fourth-grade school picture. I’d wanted a more recent one but fourth grade was the last time me and the love of my life had had a conversation that didn’t end with us wanting to scratch each other’s eyes out.

  What could I say? I asked Sparky, “Where you say they’re passing out them capital ‘P’s?”

  He shook his head and said, “Like a brother like me would know.”

  He scrambled into the back, sat next to Mr. Foster and said, “Go ‘head, everyone’s buckled.”

  I put the DVD in and the first notes from The Lion King echoed around as I pulled out onto Atherton Road.

  Welcome to the life and times of Luther T. Farrell. A lot of unphilosophical minds think just like Sparky, they think I’m sitting fat, but what do they know? Sometimes you don’t know the true story until you’ve lived it. I’ve lived it. And believe me, some of the time the truth ain’t pretty.

  The next day the phone rang.

  I checked the caller ID.

  “What’s up, Sparky?”