RULES AND THINGS NUMBER 118
You Have To Give The Adults Something That They Think They Can Use To Hurt You By Taking It Away. That Way They Might Not Take Something
Away That You Really Do Want Unless They Are Crazy Or Real Stupid.
They Won't Take Everything Because If They Did They Wouldn't Have Anything Left To Hold Over
Your Head To Hurt You With Later.
I stopped talking and gave Mrs. Amos a chance to jump right in.
She held her hand up in my face and said, "Enough. Mr. Amos, give him the blanket and pillow off the bed he was in and put him in the shed."
Todd said, "Yeah, Jones, keep a sharp eye out for the vampire bats in the shed." It was like a miracle, Todd's asthma was gone and he turned into a real chatterbox. "Oh, and watch out for those spiders and centipedes, Jones. The last kid who got put in there got stung so bad he was swollen up as big as a whale when we got him out in the morning."
I guess I didn't look scared enough 'cause Todd kept going. "The kid before that hasn't been found to this day. All that's left is that big puddle of his blood on the floor. Isn't that right, Mother?"
Mrs. Amos said, "Now, Teddy, hush up, you'll just tire yourself out more."
I noticed that she never denied the things Todd had said about the vampires and centipedes and spiders and puddles of blood.
As I followed Mr. Amos I kept a sharp eye out for my suitcase.
When we got to the kitchen the first thing I saw was that there was a double- barreled shotgun leaning against the side of the icebox. I didn't have time to wonder why they'd be so scared they'd keep a big gun like that out in the open because I spotted my suitcase slid way under the kitchen table! I didn't let Mr. Amos know I'd seen it, but it did make me get a lot calmer. We went out of the back kitchen door and down the steps into the dark. We walked around to the back of the shed and he put a key in a padlock. A chain rattled, the lock came off and the door creaked open.
Even though it was nighttime there was a whole different, scarier kind of dark in the shed. A colder dark with more grays and more shadows. A old smell leaked out and it seemed like it was the perfect smell that all this gray would have.
Mr. Amos nudged me and I took a baby step into the shed. He could kiss my wrist if he thought I was going to beg him and say things like "I'll do anything you folks ask me if you don't lock me up in here all alone." I squeezed my tongue between my teeth to hold it still 'cause I know a lot of times your brain might want to be brave but your mouth might let some real chicken-sounding stuff fall out of it.
I stood a little bit inside and looked around. Right under the window was a pile of stacked wood. There were a bunch of dusty spiderwebs in front of the little window and someone had pasted old yellow newspapers over the glass so the kids who got locked in here couldn't peek out.
Mr. Amos handed me the blanket and pillow and gave me another nudge. I took two more baby steps in.
I looked down at the floor. If I was like a normal kid I would've busted out crying, but I just stood there breathing hard. It was a good thing I'd bit my tongue, because I came real close to saying those stupid begging words to Mr. Amos. Right in the middle of the floor there was a big black stain in the dirt!
They really were going to make me sleep in a shed with a patch of blood from that kid who had disappeared out of here a couple of weeks ago!
The floor went completely black when Mr. Amos pulled the door shut. I couldn't see it now, but I'd re-memorized the exact shape the stain was in.
The padlock snapped shut with the loudest click I'd ever heard.
***
THE ONLY THING I could hear was my own breath. It was so loud that it sounded like there were six scared people locked up in the shed.
I closed my eyes and thought real hard about making my breathing slow down. Pretty soon it sounded like the five other breathers in the shed had left. I was still scared but now it was that get-real excited-and-want-to-move- around kind of scared.
It didn't take too long for my eyes to get used to the dark. There was a gray gas can in one corner next to a bunch of gray rakes and a pile of gray rags, and a gray tire next to some gray fishing poles. Maybe Mr. Amos had only pretended to lock the door.
I reached my hand toward the gray doorknob and quick as that I went from kind of calm to being in that stand-in-one-place-with-spit-drooling-down-the- front-of-your-shirt kind of scared.
Halfway up the door were three little flat monster heads guarding the doorknob. Each head had two little round eyes staring right at me. The eyes were the only thing in the shed that weren't gray. They were a bright yellow with a big black spot right in the middle.
I dropped my blanket and pillow and back-stepped until my legs hit the woodpile behind me. From all the fast breathing going on you'da thought the five other scared people had come back and brought a couple of scared friends with them.
Each head had a wide-open mouth with a sharp set of pointy teeth and lips smiling back ready to bite. It felt like the shed was getting smaller and smaller and the little mouths were getting closer and closer.
Then I knew what I was looking at. The doorknob guards were three dried-out fish heads that someone had nailed to the door.
I ran over to the pile of rags and poked at one of them with my shoe to make sure there weren't any rats or centipedes hiding under it, then I picked it up and hung it over the fish heads so I couldn't see them and they couldn't see me.
I picked up my blanket and pillow and had to decide what was the best way to sleep. I knew the door was no good, I'da bet all sorts of bugs and roaches were crawling around.
I remember what happened to my best friend, Bugs, when a cockroach crawled in his ear one night at the Home. Four grown folks had held Bugs down whilst they tried to pull it out with a pair of tweezers but the only thing that they did was pull the roach's back legs off. When they were digging around in Bugs's ears with the tweezers you'd've thought they were pulling his legs off, not some cockroach's, I'd never heard a kid scream that loud.