Read Online Something for Nothing by David Anthony - Free Book Online Page A

his most serious look. “And some people don’t.”
    When he drove past the Weavers’ house, he saw that the driveway was empty. Hal’s Mercedes was gone, and so was Miriam’s station wagon. Martin knew where Miriam was. Tuesdays and Thursdays she taught art at the high school. He wondered what the kids thought of her. Especially the boys. She probably put up with a lot of shit in there. When he was that age he died for good-looking teachers. Couldn’t stand it. He’d act out, make an ass of himself—anything to get their attention.
    He also wondered what the other teachers thought of her. The men probably hovered around her classroom door, acted surprised to see her when she came out in her smock or whatever she wore, her hair up, her expression a little mysterious.
    â€œOh, hi,” they’d say. “I didn’t know you were teaching today. How’d it go? I hope those kids aren’t giving you too much trouble. Some of them think art is just free time.”
    She’d see right through it, he knew, but it bothered him just the same. Not that he’d be any different. He’d tried the same crap with Peter’s fourth-grade teacher—some horseshit he’d stolen from Linda about how the kids weren’t quite adolescents but weren’t really little boys anymore, either. On the other hand, she’d engaged him, told him about how crazy a couple of the boys could be. So there was that.
    At the intersection not far past the Weavers’, about eight or nine houses down, he didn’t keep going straight ahead, like he usually did. Instead, he took a right, and then another right a few hundred yards after that, onto the frontage road that ran along the outside of their neighborhood. On his right was the walnut orchard that bordered theneighborhood and acted as a kind of buffer between it and the frontage road. The neighborhood kids played back there all the time. Some of the older boys had put up tree forts, probably smoked cigarettes and looked at
Playboy
. They had battles with the green walnuts that were all over the ground. Peter said they used garbage-can lids as shields and pelted the shit out of each other with the walnuts. Sometimes, on a quiet evening when they were really going at it, Martin could hear the shouts and screams from his yard. He liked hearing it, but he got annoyed that Peter wasn’t out there with them.
    â€œThat sounds like fun, doesn’t it?” he’d asked once or twice, but Peter said that the older kids threw the walnuts too hard.
    Martin slowed for the opening he wanted. He pulled onto the dirt and then forward until he was shielded from view by the rows of trees. You’d have to really be looking to notice him back there. He turned off the ignition and sat there, not really thinking, just sitting. His window was rolled down, and he listened for any unusual sounds, maybe someone tending the trees. But he didn’t hear anything. He sat for another minute or so, feeling the tingling in his body.
    He got out of the car and cut into the orchard, toward his neighborhood. Whoever owned the orchard came through once in a while and plowed the soil into big loosened chunks of dirt, and so he wasn’t able to walk steadily in his alligator shoes. He slipped and stumbled a little, holding his right hand out for balance now and then. But he didn’t fall. He had to stop once or twice to get his bearings, figure out which house was in front of him. Then he saw where he wanted to be, and headed toward the gap in the Weavers’ fence. It was one their kids had made for easy access to the orchard—just a couple of slats that had been kicked out. Martin had noticed it during one of the cocktail parties. He’d been out on the patio, yakking with some neighbors and tossing back drinks and stealing glances at Miriam. Standing now on the orchard side, he peeked through the gap. He would have been surprised to