Read Online Sidekick: The Misadventures of the New Scarlet Knight by Pab Sungenis - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Pab Sungenis
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remember her. If that’s not the case, I don’t care.
And I remember in excruciating detail the day we buried her when I was five. I didn’t understand what my pop was talking about when he was trying to explain about ectopic pregnancies and hemorrhaging, but I remembered every word.
Likewise, don’t confuse my not liking to talk about my pop all that much with not remembering him. I don’t hate him now that he’s gone, but I still don’t have to like him, do I? As hard as my mother’s death was for me, it had to have been a thousand times worse for him, and he became restless and aimless. We moved around a lot, and he took on odd jobs wherever we went, trying to keep food on the table and even a temporary roof over our heads. Once I was old enough to do a decent job shoveling snow or wielding a hammer, I did jobs with him, essentially turning us into a two-income household.
When we finally landed in Harbor City, he stopped doing handyman jobs and took up ones that had … a much better return on investment. I traded in my hammer and spade for a nice new bicycle, complete with a front basket. I rode it everywhere, quickly learning the streets of my new hometown. Hardly a day went by that I wasn’t out there on my bike, and hardly a bike trip passed that I didn’t have some parcel in my basket from Pop. I never asked what was inside, and I never peeked. I just carried them from one place to another like I was told.
Of course, as with just about any business, the high returns carried high risks. The day everything finally came to a head, just like the day I lost my mother, is one I remember in vivid detail.
It started out as a typical delivery job—a few packages to a warehouse on Ocean Avenue. Nothing to raise the hair on the back of my neck, but something kept nagging me and made sure I stayed alert. If I hadn’t been keeping my eyes and ears open, what was left of my life would have been a hell of a lot different.
I had arrived early and was headed inside when I heard two men talking a little louder than they probably should have been. Most of their words washed over me, but when Pop’s name came up, I went into full-blown high-alert mode. I stepped back as quietly as I could and laid myself flat against the wall next to the door.
I only managed to catch two out of every three words, but I got enough to fill in the gaps. It turned out the guy up the criminal food chain from the warehouse bozos had gotten it into his head that Pop and I were no longer to be trusted. That was all I needed to hear. I dropped the packages, turned tail, and dashed back to my bike as quickly as I could.
You can guess what happened. That’s why I never again locked a bicycle when I left it somewhere. Better to lose it than run the risk of getting knocked out while kneeling and trying to dial a combination.
That day, I didn’t have to wait for my vision to return to know I was in deep shit. The first thing I noticed was the stink of the guy leaning over me, a weird mix of body odor, onion breath, and a whiff of cigar.
“Wake up, twerp.” Ah. My hearing was coming back too. And the chafing of the rope around my wrists and the hard wood under my ass let me know my sense of touch was back. Oh, and that I was tied to a chair, too. Maybe if he leaned in just a wee bit closer I could bite him and see if my sense of taste was back.
“I said wake up ,kid.” A quick backhanded smack upside my head got me seeing stars. At least I was seeing something. I gingerly opened my eyes and stared up at the jerk with the cigar. I’d seen him before at a few of the stops on my delivery route and assumed he was someone just a little bit more important than me and thus unlikely to care about my well-being.
“You know something, FedEx? Normally, I’d be real appreciative of quick delivery service, but this time you may have been just a little too quick for your own good.”
“Huh?” Had I suffered more brain damage from the blow to my
And I remember in excruciating detail the day we buried her when I was five. I didn’t understand what my pop was talking about when he was trying to explain about ectopic pregnancies and hemorrhaging, but I remembered every word.
Likewise, don’t confuse my not liking to talk about my pop all that much with not remembering him. I don’t hate him now that he’s gone, but I still don’t have to like him, do I? As hard as my mother’s death was for me, it had to have been a thousand times worse for him, and he became restless and aimless. We moved around a lot, and he took on odd jobs wherever we went, trying to keep food on the table and even a temporary roof over our heads. Once I was old enough to do a decent job shoveling snow or wielding a hammer, I did jobs with him, essentially turning us into a two-income household.
When we finally landed in Harbor City, he stopped doing handyman jobs and took up ones that had … a much better return on investment. I traded in my hammer and spade for a nice new bicycle, complete with a front basket. I rode it everywhere, quickly learning the streets of my new hometown. Hardly a day went by that I wasn’t out there on my bike, and hardly a bike trip passed that I didn’t have some parcel in my basket from Pop. I never asked what was inside, and I never peeked. I just carried them from one place to another like I was told.
Of course, as with just about any business, the high returns carried high risks. The day everything finally came to a head, just like the day I lost my mother, is one I remember in vivid detail.
It started out as a typical delivery job—a few packages to a warehouse on Ocean Avenue. Nothing to raise the hair on the back of my neck, but something kept nagging me and made sure I stayed alert. If I hadn’t been keeping my eyes and ears open, what was left of my life would have been a hell of a lot different.
I had arrived early and was headed inside when I heard two men talking a little louder than they probably should have been. Most of their words washed over me, but when Pop’s name came up, I went into full-blown high-alert mode. I stepped back as quietly as I could and laid myself flat against the wall next to the door.
I only managed to catch two out of every three words, but I got enough to fill in the gaps. It turned out the guy up the criminal food chain from the warehouse bozos had gotten it into his head that Pop and I were no longer to be trusted. That was all I needed to hear. I dropped the packages, turned tail, and dashed back to my bike as quickly as I could.
You can guess what happened. That’s why I never again locked a bicycle when I left it somewhere. Better to lose it than run the risk of getting knocked out while kneeling and trying to dial a combination.
That day, I didn’t have to wait for my vision to return to know I was in deep shit. The first thing I noticed was the stink of the guy leaning over me, a weird mix of body odor, onion breath, and a whiff of cigar.
“Wake up, twerp.” Ah. My hearing was coming back too. And the chafing of the rope around my wrists and the hard wood under my ass let me know my sense of touch was back. Oh, and that I was tied to a chair, too. Maybe if he leaned in just a wee bit closer I could bite him and see if my sense of taste was back.
“I said wake up ,kid.” A quick backhanded smack upside my head got me seeing stars. At least I was seeing something. I gingerly opened my eyes and stared up at the jerk with the cigar. I’d seen him before at a few of the stops on my delivery route and assumed he was someone just a little bit more important than me and thus unlikely to care about my well-being.
“You know something, FedEx? Normally, I’d be real appreciative of quick delivery service, but this time you may have been just a little too quick for your own good.”
“Huh?” Had I suffered more brain damage from the blow to my
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