"When You Can't Just Walk Away" I
by Myra Love
  Article # 452 Article Type: Weekly Serial

When I was fourteen, I joined a gang. At the time I didn’t think of it as a gang. After all, a little town in Missouri isn’t Los Angeles or even St.Louis. I was a high school freshman who’d finally made some friends. Or so I told myself. My new friends called themselves the Razors. They were guys like me, angry and destructive. Then Anita Carswell busted me and turned my life on its head. At first I saw her as my worst enemy. But soon that changed. No, I take that back: I changed. But let me start at the beginning, or at least near the beginning.

“I can’t believe this is happening to me,” I muttered after swearing up, down, and sideways because I had to tutor freckle-faced Susie Ellis in math. It was either that or be arrested for breaking and entering. “I’m sitting in the library waiting to tutor a stupid ten year-old girl who probably can’t tell a decimal from a dog or a fraction from a frog. If any of the Razors saw me I’d never hear the end of it.”
I had come up with a story to tell my new friends, Mark Fogg, called Fogger, Jeremy Hazelton, Mike Walsh, and Sean McCabe. I’d told them I had doctor’s appointments three afternoons a week because I’d been diagnosed with a blood disease.
“ Yeah!” Fogger had chimed in, “Buzz has a blood disease all right. He’s a vampire! Or maybe a werewolf.”
Sean started to howl, and the others joined in. Soon the howling turned into laughter, and I laughed with them, just to show I was cool. But I didn’t feel cool. I felt terrified that I’d lose my only friends if they knew the truth.

The fear was familiar. I had a lot to live up to if I was going to be a Razor. So far, my performance had been less than stellar.
“ So how did your first job go?” Mike asked.
“ Yeah,” Jeremy piped up. “What did you get?”
I pulled an old ink bottle out of my pocket.
“ What the hell is that?” Fogger spat.
“ That’s all she had,” I replied. “A bunch of old ink bottles and a lot of other junk that looked like pen points and little rubber sacks.”
“ Maybe they were condoms for cats,” Jeremy snickered. “That old bat loves cats. Her yard is always crawling with them.”
“ Ha, ha, cat condoms!” Fogger laughed. Then he hit Jeremy on the side of the head. “That’s very funny, Hazelton.”
“ Buzz, my boy,” Fogger said, turning to me with a sneer, “if this is the best you can do, it’s probably just as well you’re gonna miss out on three afternoons a week. Not only did you bring back nothin’ but a stinkin’ ink bottle, you missed your ride.” He poked me in the chest. “How the hell did you get back to town anyway? You couldn’t have walked on that foot.” He pointed to my tightly wrapped ankle.
I knew I had to lie. “I did walk,” I insisted. “At first anyway. Then I fell and twisted my ankle. So I had to hitchhike into town.” I shrugged. “A trucker stopped and let me ride with him.”
“ Well,” Fogger continued, “McCabe waited a hell of a lot longer than half an hour. What took you so long?”
“ I was looking for something better than an ink bottle to bring out,” I replied. “But I didn’t find anything in the basement. And I heard her walking around upstairs, so I couldn’t get anything from up there.”
Fogger shrugged. “Well, at least you didn’t get caught. You know, if you’re caught, you’re out.”
I nodded.
“ So you’re not a total screw-up,” he added.

But the truth was that I, Buzz Haynes, had screwed up royally. I’d tried to break into a house through a cellar window. I used a tire iron, just like every other Razor, but I got caught. If I’d known the house belonged to Anita Carswell, I would have gone somewhere else. I didn’t really know her, but I knew of her.
Back in the good old days before he got what he calls a sign from God, my dad told me about high school math class with Anita Carswell. The way he told it, he never backed away from any man and once he got religion, he wasn’t afraid of the devil either. But Anita Carswell scared him when he was in high school, and he never got over being afraid of her. It didn’t help that he was rotten at algebra, which is what she tried to teach him. I guess I got my math genes from my mom who’s a bookkeeper.
After his sign from God, Dad rarely found himself in a talking rather than a hitting mood. In fact, he stopped doing much of anything except eating, sleeping, reading the Bible, and preaching. And hitting me and my mom. He’d always done that, but all at once he had an excuse, our sinfulness. And if he ever mentioned Anita Carswell, he just called her a damned witch on her way to hell. I guess that condemning her felt better than being afraid of her.
It was tempting to blame Miss Carswell for the mess I found myself in. And I did at first. After all, I’d had the tire iron in my hand and was getting ready to give her basement window a second whack since my first had only cracked the glass. I swung my arm back hard and found myself toppling over backwards. Something had added to my momentum and before I knew it I’d lost my balance. I tried to break my fall and twisted sideways with my left foot under me. An excruciating pain shot up my leg. I yowled and fell onto my butt, adding pressure to my twisted ankle. I yowled again and jerked my head sideways only to look up into the frowning face of an old woman standing over me with my tire iron in her hand.
“ You’re Clarence Haynes’ son, aren’t you?” she asked. “You’re Rutherford Haynes.”
Since she obviously knew the answer, I just yowled again. “You broke my ankle, you old bat.”
“ And you broke my window,” she replied.
“ I wish I’d broken your head,” I squawked. “Damn you! My foot hurts!”
“ If you keep on howling like a puppy,” she announced calmly, “I’ll put a leash on you and drag you into my kitchen to ice that ankle.”
She extended a surprisingly muscular hand, “Come on! Up you get!”
Totally humiliated, I shoved her hand aside and tried to stand up on my own, but I couldn’t. I let out another yelp and flopped back down with my sore foot under me.
“ Don’t be a jackass, Rutherford,” she ordered me. “Take my hand!”
“ Buzz!” I shouted at her. “My name is Buzz!”
“ Buzz is your nickname,” she said. Itook her hand, half hoping to pull her over. I was tall for my age, almost six-foot, and stocky, but she had an iron grip and got me up on my feet with no problem.
“ Jesus, that hurts!” I whined as I tried to put my weight on the injured foot.
“ You’ll have to lean on me,” she said calmly. “Once you’re inside, I’ll put some ice on your ankle. Then you can tell me why you were smashing my cellar window.”
I grunted, tempted to put all my weight on her. However, I knew that if she fell over, so would I, so I used her shoulder for balance as I hopped to her back door and up the three steps into her kitchen.

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