Billy Goat Hill Read online

  “Hold still, Luke! I won’t let you fall!”

  Luke’s reply is barely audible—a faint, wheezy whimper of dread. His leg trembles within my grasp, but a small amount of progress is obtained when he stiffens his body and doesn’t squirm.

  The direness of our predicament hits me with a massive blast of fear as the unconquerable force of gravity begins to have its way. Ever so slowly we slide forward—like hunks of helpless iron summoned by a giant evil magnet.

  Please, God, help me! What can I do?

  I think of Reverend Bonner, the pastor of the church we once upon a time regularly attended. I tear through my memory searching for the Sunday school lessons that had gone in one ear and out the other. A fraction of both testaments flare and fade as a refrain of “Onward Christian Soldiers Marching Off to War” rattles around my skull.

  Overcome by hopelessness, I pray:

  God and Jesus in heaven, please stop these birds. I am sorry for sticking my gum in the hymnal book. I am sorry for letting Gooey take the blame for putting green dye in the Highland Park public pool last summer. I am sorry for telling our next-door neighbor Carl that eating Russian rye bread means you are a communist.

  Please, God, save us!

  At that precise instant, we stop sliding and Mac starts tugging on my pant leg. The birds are suddenly gone, too. I seize the moment and clamp my hands even harder around Luke’s ankles like Popeye would after a big swallow of power-packed spinach. With Mac’s help pulling and tugging at my trousers and using my elbows as a fulcrum, I begin to heave the load backward toward safety.

  In my mind, I become a scared but heroic soldier crawling under strafing machine gun fire to rescue my wounded buddy, except I am crawling uphill in reverse. Connected by arms and legs, we undulate caterpillar style making small, painful but steady gains. My long sleeves do little to pad my elbows, and after three or four thrusts of bony skin against rasp-sharp granite, I see red smudges slowly pass in front of me and disappear under Luke’s shaking legs. I experience no pain, only dry-mouth fear and a surging desperation to survive. I scream into the rock that is grinding against my sweaty face.

  “Pull, Mac—PULL!”

  Please, God, we need You!

  Then I feel something shaking me, something more than Mac pulling at my trousers, and from somewhere far above me I hear a distant voice call out my name…

  “Wade!”

  “Pull!”

  “Wade!”

  “Pull!”

  “Shut up, you big donkey!”

  “Huh? What? Pull! Crimanee sakes!”

  Squinting, I sit up in amazement, expecting to see blood and feathers all over Luke’s head. No blood. Not even a tiny scratch. I see splotches of freckles on a face wracked with concern, nothing else.

  “What in the heck is the matter with you?”

  I wince as a drop of salty sweat stings my left eye. “Why didn’t you wear your darn Dodgers hat today?”

  “What?”

  “Never mind. Did I fall asleep?”

  Worry gathers in Luke’s eyes. “I don’t know. I was tossing rocks, and you started yelling something about a pool. You scared the heck out of me.”

  “It was—pull.” I feel my elbows…no shredded skin. Oh man. I rub my eyes.

  “Pull what?”

  “Never mind that. Are you okay, Luke?”

  “Me? Heck, yeah. Why wouldn’t I be? But, um, I think we might have a little problem.”

  “What problem?”

  Please, God, no more mockingbirds.

  Luke’s eyes narrow. He nods in the direction behind me, and Mac starts to growl real low in his throat, like he does when something isn’t right.

  I look over my shoulder and spot a motorcycle cop clambering up the back side of Eagle Rock. His shiny helmet reflects sunlight like a mirror in my eyes.

  “Ah shoot.”

  There is no place to hide and no way to escape. With nothing to do but stand there and await our fate, I glance back at Luke.

  “We’re busted,” he mouths.

  Mac goes on full alert and positions himself at my feet, my command his every wish. He does not bark, though the low growling continues and he shows some teeth. He will attack only on my order or in defense to direct aggression. To lay down his life for ours is his purpose, his heart.

  The cop scrambles up to the top of the rock. Pausing fifty feet away, he faces us but says not a word as he lingers catching his breath. Luke and I stand transfixed, like passive creatures relying on highly evolved camouflage to fool an approaching predator. But we are as exposed and vulnerable as baby turtles in the sand at low tide. And at this moment a big hungry gull is in our midst.

  The stare-down ends when the cop proceeds to remove his helmet and peel off his black leather gloves. We watch as he carefully matches the gloves palm to palm and loops them under his belt. Then he removes his sunglasses, folds them, and slips them inside the breast pocket of his black leather jacket. He is smooth and precise, even elegant, the way he does these things. His eyes never leave Mac as he slowly comes our way. He smiles, and something seems queer for a second. Then my heart nearly jumps from my chest.

  Leapin’ Lizards! Its the Sergeant!

  I am astounded by how different he looks. Not at all the way I remember him from Billy Goat Hill. He’s wearing a muscle-tightened police uniform, he’s clean shaven, his dark hair is cut military short, and though not menacing or scary like he was that night, he is every bit as formidable as the biker version I’ll never forget. When finally he speaks, its the same voice I have stored in my brain, just softer and more refined than the raspy-throated speech of Scar.

  He keeps his eyes on Mac. “I bet your folks don’t know you’re up here.”

  Mac returns the Sergeant’s stare but has quit growling. Slowly, he folds his ears back and tucks his tail between his legs, as if the Doberman part of him is concerned about his uncropped, unbobbed appearance. Not afraid, more submissive, he sidesteps over and cautiously stretches to sniff the Sergeant’s boots.

  “Yes, sir, that’s right. They don’t know we’re up here.”

  It doesn’t take Luke long to spout off. “Our father’s a drunkard. He doesn’t care what we do. But our mom would sure skin us good, if she knew.” He flashes a punctuating grin while I wince with embarrassment.

  The Sergeant is unfazed. “Do you guys know who I am?”

  Mac suddenly plops his rump down on the toe of the Sergeant’s boot. He looks up and accepts a caress from the Sergeant’s leather smelling hand. This is an amazing development as Mac rarely takes to strangers. Then I recall the piece of latex scar I’d let him sniff. Though it has been six months, Mac recalls the scent and deduces that the Sergeant is not a threat.

  Remembering we were supposed to forget about the hazing of the rookie cop and factoring in the potential ramifications of our present circumstances, I decide it’s best to play dumb. “No, sir, I don’t believe we know you.”

  Luke on the other hand is true to form. “It’s Mister Scar, you big dumb donkey!”

  The Sergeant, momentarily taken aback, blurts out a healthy chortle, and Luke reacts with a nervous, squeaky laugh, which he cuts short when he catches the stern set of my jaw. It is clear he doesn’t quite get it.

  “Well, if it isn’t Wade and Luke Parker…my, how you boys do get around town.”

  I nod. “You look different, sir.”

  “Yep. This is what I look like when I’m riding motors, my favorite duty. Once in a while I need to work undercover, like that biker get-up you saw on Billy Goat Hill. You keep that just between us friends, okay? And, by the way, I’m glad you remembered you weren’t supposed to remember.” He gives me a solemn wink.

  I warm to the kudos and flash a lofty smile at Luke, which sails right over his head. It wasn’t easy to teach him to tie his shoes, either. Patience.

  Mac gets up and pads over to the only scrap of vegetation on the top of Eagle Rock, a half-dead little shrub clinging to a crack in
the granite. He gives it a procedural sniff and then lifts his right hind leg. It is always the right leg, which makes for a lot of U-turns in his life.

  “Darn dog,” Luke mutters.

  The Sergeant watches Mac as he relieves himself. “How come you think your dad doesn’t care about you coming up here, Luke?”

  “Earl? Why, he doesn’t care about us at all. He’s never around much anyway.”

  Luke does not intend it, but I think his harshness toward our father also reflects poorly on me. I try to recoup some dignity. “Earl is a traveling salesman, sir.”

  “Yeah? So was my old man. What does he sell?”

  “You know all the supplies they sell at truck stops?”

  “Not really. Like what?”

  “You know—trinkets, gadgets, postcards, books, shaving kits—the stuff truckers need when they’re on the road.”

  “Oh. Well, then I can understand why he’d be gone so much.”

  “He sells those funny balloon things they put in those machines in the men’s bathrooms too,” Luke adds.

  I roll my eyes.

  The Sergeant chuckles out of the side of his mouth and scans the valley below. “Yeah, I guess truckers need those, too.”

  I want very badly to strangle Luke, but I manage to stand there and tolerate him while I wait for the Sergeant’s lecture, which I am positive is coming.

  Mac finishes his business and does one of those vigorous scrape-the-ground-with-the-hind-paws behaviors that dogs like to do afterward. His nails scratch and click loudly on the hard surface, which I can tell annoys him. There is no dirt or grass to fling in the air.

  “Darn dog,” Luke mutters.

  I grow tired of waiting for the lecture. “Are you mad at us for coming up here?”

  “No, but I am worried about you guys. This can be a very dangerous place. A few kids have fallen from here.”

  Luke perks up. “Did they die?”

  “To my knowledge, no one has ever survived a fall from Eagle Rock. I remember a kid named Jakey Blume…” He looks away. “Jakey fell to his death from this very spot about thirty years ago.”

  “Did you know him?”

  “Yes—he was my best friend.”

  Luke is intrigued. “How did he fall?”

  The Sergeant exhales a long breath and sets his gaze on the distant skyline of downtown Los Angeles. He doesn’t speak for nearly a minute, and while I can’t read his mind, I can tell from the unmistakable slump of his shoulders that he bears a heavy burden. He ends the silence with a sigh and lowers himself to sit on the rock. I feel sorry for him. I know something about death and loss. The wake of pain and sorrow keeps bumping you long after the ship of darkness sails over the horizon.

  Mac comes over and nudges the Sergeant’s shoulder with his nose. He wants to hear the story as much as we do. Luke and I sit down, one on each side of the Sergeant, while Mac curls up a few feet behind us.

  “It’s been years since I’ve thought about Jakey Blume. You boys would have liked him. He was a real character.” The Sergeant cheers himself slightly. “We met in first grade at Garvanza Elementary School.”

  “Hey, that’s where me and Wade go to school!”

  “Yes, I know. In fact, I’ve taken the liberty to talk to both of your teachers.”

  “You have?” Hearing this makes me nervous.

  “You boys made quite an impression on Miss Cherry and me. We were worried about you making a habit of late nights at Billy Goat Hill. We work out of the Highland Park police station, and I grew up here, so I know the immediate neighborhood like the back of my hand. I’ve made a point to check up on you guys, look out for you a little, you might say. It’s nothing to worry about, but a good thing all the more—now that I know your dad’s not around. You may be pulling the wool over your mom’s eyes, but at least I know you’re not ditching school or plotting to rob a bank anytime soon. Both of your teachers said very nice things about you, by the way.”

  Great. Now we have a neighborhood cop keeping tabs on us. “That’s good to know. Uh, so, what about this kid Jakey?”

  “Jakey Blume. He liked to pull wild stunts in the middle of the night, too. You had to be careful about daring him to do things, because, by golly, he would do it. He was a little crazy, I guess.”

  Poco loco, I say to myself.

  “I liked to hang around with Jakey. He wasn’t boring. I remember one time I dared him to do something outrageous at our school May Day festival—”

  “I was in the May Day festival!”

  I lean forward, catch Luke’s eye, and give him the shut up look. “What was the dare, sir?”

  “I dared him to dress himself up to look like our principal, Mrs. Hackworth.” The Sergeant grins. “Giant gazzangas and all.”

  Luke doesn’t get it, and then does get it when the Sergeant positions his hands, arthritic-like fingers curled in front of his chest, to illustrate his point.

  “Hundreds of parents had gathered around the edge of the school yard. When the time came for the festival to begin, one of the teachers started playing marching music real loud on one of those great big Victrola machines we used to have in the old days.”

  Luke and I look at each other, and the Sergeant realizes we haven’t a clue what a Victrola is.

  “Anyway, first the kindergarten class came marching out smiling and waving. Next, along came the first graders with long paper streamers tied to their wrists, every color you could imagine fluttering and floating in the wind. Then out came the third graders followed by the fourth graders and so on.”

  Luke, fancying himself a May Day expert, nods enthusiastically, and the Sergeant laughs.

  “None of the groups kept any better step to the music than the younger kids in front of them. They all made a big circle around the schoolyard and then were lined up by their teachers and told to sit on the blacktop in front of the cheering audience. In the middle of the schoolyard, there was a small wooden platform where…”

  “…the principal stands!” Luke shouts with glee.

  “Yes.” The Sergeant grins and buffs his knuckles on the top of Luke’s head.

  “Our principal, Mrs. Hackworth, was smiling and nodding encouragement to the students as they circled around her. Finally, the sixth graders made up the caboose. They were showing off, marching real cool, like they were in the army or something.”

  Luke blows out a mouthful of disgust. “Those darn sixth graders always think they’re big shots.”

  I am enjoying the story and listen intently while the Sergeant’s deep voice works on me like the expert hands of a masseuse.

  “Then, when Mrs. Hackworth wasn’t looking, out came Jakey, smiling and waving to the crowd like he was a movie star. I was sitting with my third grade class in a fluffy sea of red, white, and blue pom-poms. I wasn’t thrilled to be carrying pom-poms around like that. You know, in front of people and all.”

  I nod, knowing the feeling exactly.

  “Anyway, Jakey was all dressed up to look just like our beloved principal, complete with her peculiar pigeon-toed waddle, blue tinted hair, and goofy condescending smile. At first, many of the people over on my side of the schoolyard didn’t notice him. But it wasn’t long before the laughter started. In seconds, everyone was watching him strut along behind the last group of marchers. That is, everyone except Mrs. Hackworth.

  “Jakey was a great actor. He had the specific walk, the hair, the highfalutin smile, and of course, the trademark gazzangas. Well, let’s just say it was obvious who he was lampooning.”

  Luke interrupts again. “What does lambdoonie mean?”

  “Lam-poon-ing” the Sergeant repeats. “It means to make fun of something.”

  Luke grins. “I thought so.”

  The Sergeant nudges Luke in the ribs. “Mrs. Hackworth still hadn’t turned around, but she was beginning to get this confused look on her face, not understanding why so many people were laughing. Jakey was really getting into it and so was the crowd. He started walking ki
nd of crazy-like, pigeon-toed, except exaggerated. Kind of like Jerry Lewis.”

  “Yeah! That Jerry Lewis is cool! He really cracks me up!”

  Mac is sitting up now, intently listening in, his head cocked to one side.

  The Sergeant shakes off a private memory, nostalgia drifting in his eyes. “The thing is, Jakey Blume was the type of kid who just didn’t know when to quit.”

  I think of Gooey and his calling my bluff about riding the Crippler at night.

  “He began to lose control of his performance. You might say he was overcome by the awesome forces of femininity.”

  Luke and I exchange blank looks.

  “I mean the gazzangas kind of took off on him, swinging and swaying, get the picture?”

  We do, and we grin accordingly.

  Luke is giggling but still manages to speak. “I bet the principal didn’t like it much when she finally turned around and saw your friend, Jakey, making fun of her like that. What happened?”

  “You’re not going to believe it.” The Sergeant looks up at the sky, big-eyed, as if he still can’t accept whatever it was that had happened.

  “What, sir?”

  “Tell us!” Luke demands.

  “Woof!” Mac barks, making us all jump and start laughing again.

  “Darn dog!” Luke shoves Mac away. “He thinks he knows what you’re talking about.”

  “Leave him alone, Luke. Please finish the story, sir.”

  “Be patient,” Luke chides. Then he mimics one of my own little catchphrases. “Duke Snider waits for his pitch, you know!”

  He loves to aggravate me by repeating my material back to me. “Would you please cork it?” I shoot him my deluxe evil-eye glare, and he sticks his tongue out at me.

  The Sergeant ignores us, his mood tide reversing direction again.

  “Please, sir, finish the story. What happened next?”

  “Well, the gazzangas were actually large rubber balloons filled with water and tied with twine that looped around his neck. The dress he wore had plenty of room for Jakey and the water balloons, and when his performance got out of hand, the balloons started rocking from side to side until they somehow crisscrossed and flung all the way around to his back. He looked like a hideous cross between a badly deformed camel and the Hunchback of Notre Dame.”