~ The Director ~

by

John Paulits

Wambo drove faster now than he did before. In the rear of the truck, Tommy, Mouse, and Royal bounced off the walls. Talking to each other was impossible. After an active, bruising twenty minutes the truck paused, the motor running. The boys pulled themselves together and listened to the truck door open and, a moment later, close. The truck moved forward slowly until it stopped for good and the sound of its engine died.

The boys lay still, waiting to hear a sound they recognized. Finally it came—the Slam! of a house door.

Tommy parted the curtains on the back of the truck. “I think he’s gone. I think we’re behind the Frankford Avenue store.” He put a leg over the tailgate and jumped to the ground. Mouse and Royal followed him. The day had faded to twilight.

They were in another backyard fenced in by tall boards topped with barbed wire.

Royal ran to the gate. “I don’t believe it,” he grumbled. “We’re locked in again.”

“These guys don’t want anybody to know about anything they do,” Mouse complained. “How are we going to get out of here?”

Tommy beckoned the boys to the other side of the truck where they wouldn’t be seen. “Never mind us getting out. We can’t let them get out of here. Let’s let the air out of their tires.”

“Yeah,” Mouse burst out. “I know how to do that.”

“Is it like a bike?” Royal asked.

“Yeah, same thing.”

The three boys squatted next to the rear tire on their side. Mouse unscrewed the small black top from the air nozzle. “Turn the top upside down and push the pointy thing into the hole like this.” A loud hiss came from the tire.

Royal grinned. “That’s easy.”

“Come on, Royal,” Tommy beckoned. “We’ll do the ones on the other side.”

Tommy took the front tire, and Royal took the rear tire. In a moment two more tires hissed out their air. When Tommy and Royal finished, they hustled back to the other side where Mouse crouched, deflating the fourth tire.

Tommy smiled in satisfaction. “Four pancakes.”

“Now what?” Mouse looked at Tommy. “We still have to get out of here.”

Tommy shrugged. “Same as at the house. Through the store’s the only way.”

Mouse moaned.

With a wave of his hand, Tommy led the boys to a wooden backdoor with four small rectangular windows. He looked at Mouse and whispered, “Cross your fingers.” He turned the knob, the door opened, and the three boys stepped inside. Tommy put his hands out to feel his way through the darkness toward another open doorway, through which he could see the dim evening light coming through the store’s big front window.

“There’s a phone behind the counter,” Royal whispered. “I saw it when I came back to get the cards. Remember? Remember how I came back to get the cards with addresses of the stores?” Royal wanted his friends to recall one of the great triumphs of his life.

“We remember, Royal. We remember,” said Mouse. “But how can we use a phone right in front of them? They gotta be close by. We have to get outside and find one.”

Suddenly, two pairs of footsteps pounded down a flight of stairs on the right side of the store. The startled boys jumped back into the dark room, but as they did, Royal knocked a small wooden box off a desk. The store light came on. Tommy bumped into a mop, and the mop knocked over the metal bucket it sat in.

Outlined by the light of the store behind them, Wambo and Jeremy, each carrying a suitcase, stared stupidly into the backroom.

“Who’s there?” Wambo called into the darkness. He put his suitcase down reached for the light switch.