“That’s exactly right. So this fourth car finally pulled up, an unmarked car, and this Detective Sergeant something got out waving a piece of paper. By now the cops were pissed off at Warren because he’d made ’em do all that. They surrounded the truck. The detective sergeant showed him the paper. Warren read it. Then he said, ‘I’m still not giving permission, but I guess you’re gonna look in my truck now. It’s not locked.’
“The lady sheriff and the K-9 team pulled open the doors and climbed in. About ten seconds later, the lady reached under the driver’s seat and pulled up a metal pipe and a Baggie with some rocks in it.”
I had to interrupt because I didn’t understand. “Rocks?”
“Yeah. Crystal meth. Or crack. I don’t know. Could have been either one. Doesn’t matter, really—they’re both illegal. So the lady sheriff called out to Warren, ‘Do these belong to you, Mr. Giles?’
“Warren said, ‘Nope.’
“Then she looked at Jimmy and me, but she was still talking to Warren. ‘I must assume they could belong to anyone who had access to this truck. In which case, you will all need to come down to the county courthouse for processing.’ ”
Arthur stopped talking. He swallowed hard. Then he continued: “Warren knew it was over then. He told her, ‘No. Those two don’t know anything about it. The stuff is mine.’
“And that was that. They cuffed Warren’s hands behind his back. They leaned him against the truck and searched him. Then they stuck him into the back of the lady’s police cruiser. She handed us a card showing where they were taking Warren, and they drove away.
“I looked over at the Boy Scouts. They were all staring at us. I swear, if one of them had said anything, or blasted a boat horn, I’d have ripped his freakin’ head off.”
An angry flush crossed Arthur’s neck and face. “Me and Jimmy didn’t know what to do. People started pulling into our lot again. Me and Jimmy started selling off the Christmas trees for forty, twenty-five, even ten bucks each. Whatever the customer said, we said, ‘Yeah, whatever. Take it.’
“About four o’clock, a lady from the hotel came walking over. She handed Jimmy a paper with a phone message on it. Warren had gotten himself out on bail already. He wanted to get picked up outside the courthouse.”
Arthur shook his head in admiration. “He had appeared before a judge, who had set his bail at five thousand dollars. Warren told the judge, ‘I’ll get you the five thousand dollars if you let me go back and sell my Christmas trees. That’s what I’m down here for.’
“The judge said no. He asked Warren what else he had as collateral. To make a long story short, Warren met with a bail bondsman and signed over the truck. The bail bondsman paid five thousand dollars to the court, and the judge let Warren go.
“Anyway, I took off in my car as soon as we got the note. I drove straight down Colonial Drive until I got to the courthouse. I was expecting Warren to be mad as hell at me, but he wasn’t. He was just standing outside there like it wasn’t any big deal. I rolled down the window and started to apologize, but he waved it off. He told me to slide over because he wanted to drive.”
Arthur stopped and swallowed hard again. “He said that he forgave me. He understood why I did it. He knew I meant well. All that kind of stuff. He made me promise to save him from hellfire, like he always does. Then we drove back out to the lot. Warren rolled down the window and said, ‘Get in the damn car, Jimmy Giles.’
“We pulled around to the hotel. That took no time, you know? We had never really unpacked. So we were right back on the road, Warren behind the wheel, heading for home.
“After a minute, Jimmy asked Warren, ‘What about the trees?’
“Warren said, ‘Eff the trees, man. We’re out of the tree business.’
“Jimmy asked, ‘What about the truck?’
“ ‘The bail bondsman can keep the truck. He can keep the trees, too. I ain’t never coming back to Florida. What do I care?’ ”
Arthur paused.
I commented, “It must have been a long drive back.”
“Yeah. It was kind of quiet. After Warren told us what went down in the courthouse, he didn’t have much else to say. And he had left all his Christmas cassettes in the truck.
“He drove until South Carolina. Then him and Jimmy bought a whole case of Pabst Blue Ribbon and proceeded to drink it. So I drove the rest of the way up.”
What could I say except “Arthur, I am so sorry”?
“Yeah. I know. So am I.” He added, almost imperceptibly, “Damn Boy Scouts.”
When I entered the office conference room, the unlikely team of Arthur and Mikeszabo were sitting together, working on a poster.
I asked Arthur, “What’s that?”
He flipped the poster over so I couldn’t see it. He answered impatiently, “Nothin’. I had an idea, that’s all.”
When he didn’t go on, I prodded him. “What was the idea?”
“I talked to Mrs. Lyle about a new slogan. Maybe something stronger than ‘NEO.’ She hooked me up with Mike here.”
“And?”
“And nothing. You’ll have to wait for the rest.”
“Okay.”
As kids filed in, they looked curiously at the poster, too, but no one else asked about it.
Wendy Lyle has not been back. I guess that scene with her father and Arthur was the last straw. Chris Collier doesn’t come anymore, either. Maybe they’re too busy with play rehearsal, being the two leads and all.
But otherwise, the group is growing. And the plague is growing. We might not have known much about meth in September, but we sure do now. There has been a major increase in car robberies, in panhandling, and in zombie sightings on the streets. There has been a major increase in corpses down at the hospital, too.
At least two kids per week join our group. Some are court-ordered; some come on their own. Folding chairs now ring the table two deep.
When everybody was seated, Catherine Lyle opened the meeting by laying out a topic. She touched her notebook with a long fingernail and said, “I’d like to talk today about living with someone who has a drug or alcohol problem.”
She looked at Jenny. “Jenny brought up this topic two weeks ago, and I noticed that a lot of you responded to it.”
Not surprisingly, Ben responded to it again. His hand shot up. “Yeah. Jenny talked about having to be the perfect kid so people won’t know your parents are using.” He asked Jenny, “But what if you can’t be the perfect kid?”
Jenny replied, “Well, you can’t. Nobody can.”
“What if you keep screwing up, and they send a social worker out to your house? And everybody gets mad? And you get a lot of tests, and then you get diagnosed?”
Ben looked at Catherine Lyle, who smiled at him kindly.
Mikeszabo held up his hand. He said, “I lived with parents who were using drugs, but I don’t anymore.”
Catherine squirmed slightly. “Why is that, Mike?”
“Because they got arrested. They’re in jail.”
“Oh?” Her eyes darted to her notebook. “Mike? Did this happen
“Yeah. A month ago.”
“Okay. So… where do you live now?”
“With the Weavers.” He smiled at Jenny. “Now I gotta be perfect all the time, too.”
A few kids chuckled—at the irony, I guess.
Some high school kids started telling stories about living with alcoholics and drug addicts. The stories were different, but they had points in common—missed birthdays, angry Christmases, public embarrassments.
Arthur really got my attention when he contributed this: “I have a… a relative who lives near me. I used to go over to his place all the time and play Nintendo. I guess he used to get high, but I didn’t know what was
