“You really think my stories can save your brother’s life?”
“Yes, I do.”
Frankie stands up slowly, walks to the water’s edge, where he stoops and picks up one of the smooth river stones. He holds it in city-boy hands, feeling the smoothness of it. When he turns back to me, his eyes have a sudden hardness, like he’s borrowed some from that stone.
“Writing takes time, Jack. I’ll need time to think.”
My heart thumps.
“Pete don’t turn eighteen for a whole month. Ain’t that plenty of time to think?”
He turns out his lower lip and frowns. “And I can’t make anything up. Pete has to be doing things worth writing about.”
“Pete does the most amazing things you’ve ever seen!” I stand up, because Frankie ain’t said no yet and now there’s excitement rising within me, blowing like a hot air balloon. “He runs. He swims. He fights with the boys in town. Hell, he and Will are planning an expedition to find a wrecked fighter jet! Ain’t that exciting enough?”
“Running, swimming, and fighting, no, it isn’t,” Frankie says, shaking his head. “But a wrecked fighter jet, now that’s different. That’s exciting. Tell me more.”
“It crashed on a snowy winter night ages ago,” I say, aware that I’m talking fast now. “This was before I was born, mind you, so I don’t remember it. Will barely remembers it. But Pete remembers, and Pete wants to find it.”
Frankie slowly begins to nod. “An expedition. An adventure. That could work.” He begins pacing beside the creek, shoes snuffing up clumps of creek sand. He passes the stone from hand to hand, and I know what he’s really doing is tossing my idea, turning, feeling, testing. All at once, he stops. The stone falls with a plunk.
“Okay.”
I’m trembling.
“I’ll need a few things,” Frankie says, brushing the sand from his hands.
“Anything,” I say. My eyes are getting watery.
“I need a typewriter.”
“I’ll find one,” I say. “If I have to steal it. What else?”
“A quiet place to write where nobody will bother me.”
“The barn.”
“The barn?”
“It’s perfect! It’s quiet, and you can use Grandma Elliot’s old sewing desk.” The blood is rushing in my ears. I can hardly believe it.
Frankie frowns.
“And I need one more thing, Jack: I need to be there when they find it. I have to be there. The story won’t work if I’m not. You understand?”
I tell him I understand. I begin to sob. Next thing I know, I’ve got both arms around my cousin, thanking him over and over. Frankie don’t know what to say. It’s a while before I quit my blubbering, and by then, the softness has come back to his face.
“Don’t thank me yet, Jack . . . Not until we get a story and get it published.”
“We will. I know we will. You’re the best writer I’ve ever seen!”
“Maybe, maybe,” Frankie says. “But I need those things: a typewriter, a quiet place, and I go with you all when it happens.”
I stand up straight and stick out my hand. “A typewriter, a quiet place, and you come with us.”
We shake.
From his place in the sand, Butch looks up and barks.
It’s another second or two before we hear what he hears, a deep rumbling from up Hopkins Road. Faint, like thunder. Only there ain’t a cloud in the sky.
Butch barks again and stands up. And that’s when I know.
“Better help me get hold of Butch,” I say, grinning, wiping snot from my face. “Here they come.”
“Who?”
“Crash Callahan and his motorcycle riders, that’s who! Come on, now!”
We grab Butch by the collar and duck under the bridge just as the first rider comes ripping overhead. Something drops from above, a flash of sunlight on green glass, and an empty beer bottle smacks into brown creek sand a few feet from us. The rider lets out a whoop, a leathery voice that knocks back and forth off the water and the bridge. Next thing we know, Crash’s whole horde is tearing across the bridge, flinging empty bottles that come down like a glassy green rain. Frankie and me hunker down beneath them, our fingers looped through Butch’s collar, holding him close as he barks and bits of old birds’ nests and flakes of rusty metal shake loose from the rafters and drift down around us.
We stay a while that way, my cousin, my dog, and me, hearing the growling above and feeling the earth shake under us.