For Whom the Minivan Rolls: An Aaron Tucker Mystery - By Jeffrey Cohen Page 0,90

in jeopardy.”

“No,” he said. “But if you get killed, I’ll have two murders on my hands, and how will that look when it comes to salary review time?”

“I’ll do my best to avoid that,” I said, and hung up. I picked up Ethan’s last page, an English assignment called “Ethan’s Favorite Time.” It was an essay about the child’s favorite time of the day, and of course at the top, he had written, “Ethan’s Favorite Time—Ethan,” like Mrs. Fisher didn’t know that Ethan had written something called “Ethan’s Favorite Time.” I started to read, and then looked at the top of the page again. And I stared at it for a few moments.

Oh, for crying out loud!

I got up and walked up the stairs to Ethan’s room. The door was open, so I didn’t knock. He was sitting at his computer, not at the Nintendo.

Ethan writes poetry. Two years ago, he wrote a poem for a school assignment, and got enough positive feedback from adults that he just continued to write poems. And he’s actually pretty good. I’ve never had much use for poetry myself, but my son communicates through his poetry in ways he can’t always manage in ordinary conversation.

On his computer screen was the beginning of a new poem, called “Wavelength.” Of course, it said “Wavelength—Ethan” at the top. And it read: “Nobody else is on my wavelength, I know/It bothers me sometimes, but I try not to show.” That was as far as he’d gotten.

He saw me reading over his shoulder. “No one, I think, is in my tree,” I said. “I mean, it must be high or low.” Ethan stared up at me, confused. Was the old man going off the deep end?

“Did I get something wrong?” he asked. He assumed if I had come upstairs, it was about homework. I sat down on his bed and looked at him. Ethan was puzzled, and swiveled back and forth in his chair absent-mindedly.

“It was you, wasn’t it?”

“What was me?” Now he figured he was in trouble over something, and got ready to explain how it was really Leah’s fault.

“It was you with the barbecue sauce. You wrote ‘Fuck Ethan’ out on our sidewalk, didn’t you?”

He looked down at the floor and shrugged.

“It wasn’t until just now that I figured it out,” I told him. “First you wrote the word ‘fuck’ on the sidewalk, and then you signed it with your name. Just like you do on all your homework.”

He shrugged again, wondering what punishment he would now face. Ethan stole a quick involuntary glance at his Nintendo machine, knowing that inappropriate behavior usually resulted in a loss of video game time.

“Did you just learn the word?” I asked. “Was that what it was, and you just felt like using it?”

He tried shrugging again, but saw from the look on my face that shrugging wasn’t going to be enough. “I guess,” he said. “But I didn’t just learn the word. I just felt like writing it.”

“Where’d you get the barbecue sauce?”

Ethan’s eyes were still avoiding me, but he doesn’t make eye contact much under the best of circumstances. “Matthew stole it from Big Bob’s, this place by school. And he kind of. . . dared me.”

Good old Matthew. The kid who had taught Ethan how to make the fart noise under his arm. You could always count on Matthew.

“You did it to show Matthew?”

He started to shrug, and decided to nod instead. “And some of the other guys. Warren Meckeroff, Avil, and Thomas. They said I was a baby and I wouldn’t do it. When they saw me write my name, they ran, and I didn’t know what to do with the barbecue sauce, so I threw it by the garbage cans, because Mom was coming.”

“Why didn’t you just tell us this?” I asked, and immediately realized how stupid that sounded. “Because you figured you’d get punished?”

He nodded, and slowly started to cry. I kneeled next to his chair and put my arm around him. “It’s never easy being Ethan, is it?” I said. He stopped crying and looked at me.

“What do you mean?” he asked.

I smiled. “Forget it.” I got up and started to leave the room.

“Dad?”

At the door, I stopped and turned. “What is it, Pal?”

“Am I. . . do I. . . um, what punishment. . .”

I smiled a crooked smile. “Don’t worry about it, Chief. Just don’t do it again. And Ethan. . .”

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Don’t tell your mother, okay? Oh, and one more thing.”