Slider’s Son Read online

  A voice from somewhere off on the far side of the creek yelled, more like screamed, “What do you think you’re doin’?”

  Shirley quick as a wink handed Grant the gun. They looked at each other. Grant rested the butt of the gun on his toe. They looked in the direction where the voice had come from. And they waited.

  A slight figure, bundled up, bigger than Shirley and smaller than Grant, stepped out from behind a thicket of wild raspberry bushes.

  “Little Joe?”

  “Who’d you think it was?”

  Two smaller bundled figures, wearing long skirts, followed him out from behind a snowbank, stomping through the snow toward Grant and Shirley. Little Joe’s little sisters.

  “Are you nuts?” Little Joe yelled. “You’re scarin’ off every possible rabbit in the county.”

  “There aren’t any out here anyway. There’s nothin’ to scare off!”

  “There were before you got here,” Joe said. “Show ’em.” He nudged the larger of his bundled-up-sisters, muffled in a scarf so that only Emma’s eyes showed above the wool. She lugged a good-sized jackrabbit, dangling by its ears, from behind her back. The smaller girl, Alice, hauled out a smaller one.

  “Two?” Shirley said. “We didn’t see any.”

  “Then why you shootin’ to beat the band, anyway?” Little Joe demanded. “Now none of us’ll get anymore.”

  “I didn’t know you were here,” Grant said. “Sorry. Thought everybody’d be home havin’ Christmas—eatin’ Christmas dinner and stuff.”

  “Eatin’ Christmas dinner, huh?” Little Joe slung Big Joe’s .22 in the crook of his arm. “That’s why we’re out here, stuff-inghead. So we can have Christmas dinner.”

  Grant felt Shirley looking at him. “Come here,” he said, motioning Little Joe over toward the creek with his head.

  Joe came.

  Behind him, Grant heard Shirley ask, “So, Emma. Alice. What did you get for Christmas?” It made Grant cringe.

  “A sock doll,” came Emma’s voice. “Mama made me a sock doll. Her name’s Flossy. Like the Bobbsey twin girl in the book from the library.”

  “Me, too. A sock doll. Mine’s named Elizabeth. It’s the most beautiful name in the world.”

  Grant grabbed Joe by the arm and pulled him out of earshot. “Joe, did you eat Christmas dinner?”

  “Naw. Dad drank up the grocery money . . .” He looked over to make sure his little sisters couldn’t hear as he lowered his voice. “Durn it all, Grant, I could kill that son-of-a-gun myself. He promised the girls candy canes and dolls and promised Mama a pot roast, and he came home skunk drunk on Christmas Eve with nothin’. Nothin’! Mama made them dolls just in case ’cause she can’t trust what he says. A guy shouldn’t hate his own father, but I do, Grant O’Grady. I do.”

  He stared at Grant, as if he dared Grant to tell him he was damned to hell for hating his father. Grant said nothing.

  “Mama made potato soup with an onion in it for dinner. Said it was special, magic Christmas soup. The girls ate it up.” Little Joe kicked loose snow into a ridge with the toe of his worn leather shoe. “Mama would have made roast and potatoes and onions if he’d a done what he said. Dad passed out drunk already, so I told Mama we’d come shoot something for a nice Christmas supper. I wished I could have shot a goose or a duck or something, but there aren’t any of them out in this cold.”

  Grant nodded. “Sorry about scarin’ off the rest.”

  “It’s fine. Two rabbits will make a plenty nice dinner. One of ’em is big, too.” Little Joe grinned at Grant. “Thanks again for the skates.”

  Grant nodded. “You’re welcome.”

  “You get that rifle for Christmas?”

  Grant nodded. He was glad to see Little Joe was wearing new warm mittens, at least. Mrs. Thorson must have made them for him. Grant couldn’t bring himself to ask if Joe had gotten anything else for Christmas. He didn’t mention that he was going to take Harley out on a brand-new sled when he got home.

  Both Emma and Alice wore rags wrapped around their shoes for added warmth. Grant’s own toes were damp and getting cold. He couldn’t imagine how cold their feet must be. He moved the butt of his rifle so that it tapped the toe of his shoe, making sure he still had feeling in his own toes.

  “Well, we all better get on home before all our feet freeze. See you later. Merry Christmas.”

  “Merry Christmas,” the Thorson kids chorused.

  Fourteen

  December 26

  The day after Christmas, after supper, Grant answered a knock on the door.

  Frank grinned up at him from the step. In the lamplight, he pointed to his new bike parked on the dark street. “Wanna go for a ride? On my bike? Bring your gun?”

  “Tonight? Why bring my gun?”

  “Never know.” Frank shrugged. “Want to?”

  Grant shrugged into his coat and went to get his rifle. He slid six rifle shells into his pocket. “Frank wants me to go for a ride on his new bike.”

  Mamie nodded. Slider never even looked up from his newspaper. “You need your rifle for what, in the dark?”

  “I’m not exactly sure. Frank said to bring it.”

  Slider leveled his gaze at Grant over the paper. “Use your head, son. Frank doesn’t usually use his.”

  “Sure.” Grant pulled on his mittens and wool cap and closed the door behind him.

  “Hop on, son of Slider.”

  Grant swung a leg over the back of the beautiful new blue bike, balanced his rifle in his arm, and Frank stood on the pedals. Grant felt keenly aware that both Orland and Frank got new bikes and he didn’t, but when he thought about Little Joe’s mittens, he felt the weight of his own rifle and was ashamed for wanting a bike. Maybe he really was a stuffing-head, like Little Joe called him.

  The hard-packed frozen snow made a skreeking sound under Frank’s tires in the silence of the night. The whole town was hunkered down, tucked into a blanket of darkness. The only warmth peeped out in squares of yellow light from gas lamps and electric light bulbs in homes they passed.

  “Where we going?”

  Frank shrugged. “Just exploring. Need to put some spark in this town.”

  “Spark?”

  Grant hung on. Frank pedaled up and down Main Street. Dark stores, dark creamery, dark livery, dark bank and courthouse. The only light besides the street lamps escaped through the cracks around Grumpy’s door, and red Christmas lights strung above the street spread an after-Christmas glow.

  “I know what you can shoot,” Frank said. “I bet you can’t take out one of those red light bulbs on the top of the steeple.” He nodded toward the Lutheran church at the end of Main Street as they turned up South Road by the railroad tracks.

  “I can’t, ’cause I’m not gonna shoot at the top of a church.”

  “If you are a good aim, you could pick off one single red light bulb, and nobody would know the difference. They’d just think it busted somehow.”

  “Except that you can hear a rifle shot all across town. Especially in this frozen air.”

  “So? We’ve got the fastest get-away bike in town.”

  “And my dad knows I have my gun.”

  “He won’t hear it.”

  “You don’t know Slider very well, do you?”

  “Come on. You chicken? Bet you’re not a good enough shot. Just one shot. Say you saw a coyote comin’ down South Road. Toward McElroy’s chicken coop.”

  “You’re bats in the belfry. Just ride.”

  Frank and Grant circled three more blocks. Grant could tell by the way his nose stuck shut while he breathed that the temperature was around zero. Down Main Street again. Grant found himself gazing at the red lights that Reverend Tollefson had strung up and down the four sides of the Lutheran steeple for Christmas. Big red bulbs. Perfect targets. He wondered if he could hit just one . . .

  Frank braked. “Come on, Grant. Don’t be a goody-goody. Take out one of the lights. Or aren’t you that good of a shot?”

&
nbsp; Grant shook his head. “Not in town.”

  Frank pedaled past Mandan Mercantile and out past the Lutheran church at the end of Main Street, crossed South Road, and stopped just before the railroad tracks. “There. We’re out of town. Now?”

  Grant thought about Slider leveling him a look and saying use your head. “Naw.”

  “Let me have a shot if you won’t,” Frank said, and put his hand on the gun. “Can I?”

  When Frank reached for the gun, Grant let him take it.

  “Loaded?” Frank asked.

  Grant pulled a shell from his pocket and dropped it into Frank’s outstretched hand.

  It was a long shot to the church steeple from here, but Frank straddled the bike, slid the rifle shell into the chamber, snapped it shut, sited carefully, and pulled the trigger. The shot echoed, a crack in the thick frozen silence. Nothing else moved. He reached out his hand for another shell, loaded, aimed again, and fired. One red lightbulb near the top of the steeple popped in a little burst of flame and went out. “Ha! I’m a dead-eye. Bet you can’t beat me.”

  Grant sighed and took the gun back. “I don’t reckon we ought to be shooting Christmas lights at all.”

  “Chicken? You can’t shoot straight, can you? You can throw but you can’t shoot? You can throw like a son-of-a-gun, but you can’t hit the broad side of a barn with a gun? I bet.”

  “Yeah, I can.”

  “Cannot. I dare ya.”

  “My sister could hit one of those lights.”

  “But you couldn’t? Grant, I double-dare ya.”

  It was too much. Grant looked around. Not a soul had stuck their head out or come to see what the gunshots were about, so he pulled a third shell from his pocket and slid it into the chamber. He lifted his rifle and looked down the barrel until a single red bulb was exactly lined up in the sighting notch on the gleaming new rifle. He could hear his dad’s voice: Use your head. He wasn’t using his head, but who would know? He squeezed the trigger.

  The red ball exploded. A burst of flame shot out as the ball shattered. A lightning-like streak shot down the steeple, and the whole string of red lights popped and went out.

  “Criminy!”

  “Now ya done it,” Frank said.

  “Let’s get out of here!” Grant grabbed Frank’s waist, hooked his rifle in the crook of his arm, and Frank stood on the pedals to motor them away. They turned the corner into the alley behind the Main Street stores, and as they did, a shadow lurched out from behind the Cleaver’s Butcher Shop. Frank swerved to avoid it.

  Big Joe slipped on the ice and then caught his balance, swaying. He brushed snow out of his hair.

  “Son-of-a-gun,” Frank muttered. “Gosh darn son-of-a-gun is everywhere.”

  “Boys.” Big Joe leveled his gaze at them and steadied himself. “You hear them gunshots?”

  “Nope,” Frank said.

  Big Joe’s eyes focused as he swayed. “You got a gun! It was you! You boys shot down the steeple! I saw it explode. Flames. You aw-almost set the church on fire. You . . . I gotta tell Sheriff Slider what I saw . . .” And Big Joe staggered, then lurched between Cleaver’s and the Creamery, toward Main Street and Grumpy’s Tavern. “You boys are in tr-tr-trouuuuuble. You stay away from Little Joe, you hear?” Over his shoulder, he said, “Little Joe, he’s a good boy even if he is a half-breed. Don’t need no bad influence like you.”

  “Gosh darn him anyway,” Frank said. “Somebody ought to put that son-of-a-gun out of his misery. I’d gladly kill him my own self. Wouldn’t be any loss to anybody. Did you know he didn’t even bring his own kids anything for Christmas? Drank up all the Christmas money, is what I heard. Grumpy wouldn’t serve him anymore, so he went out to Squaw Island and bought a couple bottles and got fallin-down drunk. For Christmas Eve.”

  Grant shuddered. He didn’t want to tell Frank what he knew about Little Joe’s Christmas.

  “And he has the gall to call us a bad influence. Always stickin’ his nose where it doesn’t belong.”

  Grant felt a stone of worry form in his midsection. He’d done stupid stuff with Frank before, but this was probably the worst besides Frank dangling off the water tower within an inch of his life. Maybe Big Joe wouldn’t remember to tell Slider. Maybe he would pass out before he even made it to Grumpy’s. And freeze to death. Grant felt a twang of guilt thinking it would be a relief if Big Joe froze to death. But if he didn’t die, maybe the image of the steeple “on fire” would fall right out of his drunken brain before he reached Slider. Chances were, though, Big Joe wouldn’t forget.

  “I could kill that big drunk oaf. I really could, Grant,” Frank said. “Better not give me your gun right now, or I’d shoot him my own self right now. Believe me, I’d love to.”

  “Maybe you better just take me home.”

  “Maybe we should go ride around some more. Until this blows over.”

  When Grant finally let himself in the back door at home an hour later, Mamie was sitting in the living room, reading by lamplight. She looked at Grant.

  “Evenin’, Mom.”

  “Anything you want to tell me, Grant O’Grady?”

  “Wh-why?” He gulped.

  “Just asking.”

  If his mom already knew, things would only get worse. She didn’t ever greet him like this, so she must already know. How could word spread this fast?

  “Um, Frank shot out a light bulb in the Christmas lights on the Lutheran Church.”

  “That all?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “And?”

  “He dared me. Said I couldn’t hit it.”

  “So you can’t resist a dare? Is that what you’re telling me?”

  “I . . . I guess I didn’t resist it. I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Why don’t you put away that rifle and high-tail it downtown and talk to Slider about this before he comes looking for you? Might be easier on you that way.”

  Grant wiggled his toes, so cold he couldn’t feel them anymore. He didn’t have an ounce of desire to go back outside. But he looked at his mom, and shrugged back into his coat. “Should I go get Frank?”

  “This isn’t about Frank. By now, you ought to know Frank doesn’t exactly have the sense he was born with. This is about you, Grant O’Grady.”

  Grant buttoned his coat, the worry stone now a boulder in his stomach. Durn Frank for talking him into it. Durn Big Joe. If it weren’t for Big Joe, he’d have gotten off scot-free. But it wasn’t Big Joe’s fault. And not even Frank’s. Not this time. It was his own stupid fault.

  He pulled on his cap and mittens and headed to Grumpy’s to face the music.

  Fifteen

  Facing the Music

  Grant eased himself into Grumpy’s, the smoke and familiar odor of burned rubber engulfing him. He leaned the door shut with his back and took in the scene.

  His dad and Big Joe were standing face-to-face, locked arms like they were wrestling. “You are one stupid drunk son-of-a-buck. The steeple is not ‘blowed off.’ It’s still there. So what else did you make up about my boy?”

  Grant felt himself shrinking, the worry stone in his stomach exploding. Grumpy and the regulars, Henry Olson, Lawrence Messner, Askil Snortland, Ole Bjelland, along with Sims and two other men, didn’t even notice Grant. They were too busy watching Slider and Big Joe’s stand-off.

  Grant swallowed hard. His dad was defending him. And this time, his dad was wrong, or rather, Big Joe was right. Or partly right. He hadn’t blown up the steeple. Just the electric Christmas lights.

  “Take it back, you dumb drunk son-of-buck,” Slider said. “I’m so tired of you causin’ trouble and not takin’ care of your own. What’d you do for your own kids for Christmas, huh? Can’t you be civil to your family one day of the year? If my kid did blow up the steeple, at least he had a Christmas present to do it with!”

  Grant shrank more. His father, flat out, plain and simple, didn’t believe a word of Big Joe’s drunk story. Nobody would believe Big Joe over Slider. Big Joe was
so skunk-drunk, he wouldn’t know what he’d seen. Grant and Frank might be off the hook.

  Slider twisted Big Joe’s arm behind his back and marched him toward the door—straight at Grant. “Come see for yourself. The steeple’s still there. You got the delirium tremens or you’re just plain makin’ stuff up.” Then he spied Grant. “Grant! What’re you doin’ here?”

  “Uh, hello, Slider.” Grant tried to grin, but it didn’t work.

  Slider eased off Big Joe’s arm, and Big Joe twisted loose and let fly a punch toward Slider’s head while he was off-guard. Slider ducked, but not quite fast enough, and Big Joe’s fist grazed Slider’s cheek. It bloomed dark red from the impact, and a stripe of blood ran the length of a little cut below Slider’s eye.

  “Watch it!” Grant cried. Slider turned as Big Joe swung again. Slider dodged this one and brought his own fist up under Big Joe’s chin. Big Joe folded like a Christmas tree paper chain in a pile on the floor.

  The men turned back to the bar. Big Joe on the floor of the tavern wasn’t exactly something new in Grumpy’s.

  “Now, then,” Slider said. He opened the door, and with his bare hand, scooped a pile of snow to hold against his cheek. He shut the door with his backside. “Now, then,” he repeated. “Grant, why don’t you tell us why Big Joe says you and Frank blew up the Lutheran steeple. Other than the fact that the steeple’s still there, and Big Joe is seein’ things double-triple-style ’cause of the shakes.”

  Grant swallowed. “No idea.” Then he looked up into Slider’s face, and he couldn’t even form the words for the rest of a lie. He felt as if his whole self would turn to stone if he looked Slider in the face and lied. “’Cause . . . ’cause we went riding on Frank’s new bike.”

  “Go on.” Slider shifted the handful of snow, higher on his face.

  “And Frank wanted to shoot something, and I said not in town, so he rode outside the city limit, and then he shot one red light bulb off the church steeple, and then he dared me, and I said no, I really did, but he double-dared me and said it was ’cause I couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, and I shot one, dead-on, and the whole string popped and went out. Sort of like a ball of fire. So maybe Big Joe thought it was the steeple on fire. It was just the light bulbs.”