Jail Break

by Anita Sanchez

Heyes clambered up the ladder to the attic, and paused on the top rung to listen.  All was still.  The attic smelled old and musty and specks of dust floated in the bars of afternoon sun that slanted through the window.

“Kid?” he inquired in a cautious whisper.  “Kid, you there?”

Silence.

“Come on, Kid, it’s me.”

More silence.  Heyes climbed all the way into the dim attic, and stood listening in the dusty air.  Then he heard a muffled sob, and a sniff, and knew he had struck paydirt.

“You okay, Kid?” he asked.

“Go away, Heyes,” said Kid’s voice.  Heyes looked in the direction of the voice, and located a huddled form behind some old trunks. He walked a few steps closer.

"I mean it," said Kid in a choked voice. " I'll flatten you if you don't go away."

Heyes smiled, and sat down on the dusty floor.  From the stairs below he could hear the matron's voice. "Jedidiah! Hannibal!" she bellowed, over and over.  "Where are you!  I'll skin you alive if I catch you!"  He grinned.  Matron was too fat to climb any ladders, so they were safe for a while.  He listened to her shouting their names, and had the sense that she was calling for two strangers.  He had detested his own baptismal name since he could remember, and had long ago extracted an oath from the Kid that he would never call him anything but Heyes.  In return, he had sworn never to call the Kid Jedidiah, which Kid detested equally.

"Minchin asked me where you'd gone," Heyes remarked after a while.  "I told him you were in the cellar.  It'll take him awhile to thrash around looking for you down there, he'll get good and dirty."

"I'm not hiding from him, Heyes," said Kid defiantly.  He stood up from behind the trunks.  "I'm not hidin' anymore, I God damn hope he finds me.  In fact I'm gonna go find him.  I'm gonna kill him, Heyes."

Heyes felt a chill at the hate in Kid's voice.  He got to his feet, not sure how to calm Kid down this time. Kid stepped forward into the light, and Heyes could see that his face was streaked with dirt and tears.  Heyes stepped forward, unable for once to think of anything to say. 

 He approached Kid and put a tentative hand on his shoulder.  He could feel Kid shaking with anger.  Kid pulled away and dived back into the shadows, scrubbing at his face again with his sleeve.

Heyes walked over to the window and looked out to give Kid time to calm down.  The branches of a gnarled oak came right up to the window, almost close enough to touch.  Outside it was getting dark; soon the bell would ring for supper and they would have to go downstairs, although their chances of getting any supper were slim.  Old Minchin, hot and dusty from a fruitless trip to the cellar, would undoubtedly thrash them both.

"Come on, Kid," he said resignedly.  "Let's go on down and get it over with, the longer we stay up here the harder they're gonna whip us."

"You go ahead, Heyes," said Kid calmly.  He emerged from the shadows again, his face as clean of tears as it was possible for an eleven-year-old to make it, using only his shirttail.  "I told you.  I'm gonna wait for him to come up here and then I'm gonna kill him." Kid held a metal rod, part of an old trunk, and hefted it in a businesslike way that gave Heyes a chill.  It certainly looked heavy enough to kill a man.

"Come on, Kid, you can't do that," he said nervously.

"Oh, yes, I can.  Every time he beats me it's worse than the time before, Heyes, I ain't gonna wait around to see what the next one’s gonna be like."

"But..." Heyes stopped before he got started.  He knew from experience that argument was useless when Kid got that mulish look in his eyes.  His active imagination could envision the scene that was sure to follow once Minchin made his way up the ladder.  And he would be coming up the ladder soon, Heyes was sure; Minchin hated all boys, but he especially detested Kid, and would hunt him down for another beating if it took all night.

Heyes wondered if Kid would really make good his threat.  Something about the way the scrawny eleven-year-old held the weapon made Heyes pretty sure that if Minchin climbed up the ladder, he would never again climb down.  He took a deep breath.  

"All right," Heyes said.  "I guess you've got a point.  He certainly needs killing."  He looked around and found a heavy wooden chair leg.  He picked it up and hefted it as Kid had done.  "This'll do," he said.

Kid looked startled.  "I told you, Heyes, go on down, I can take care of myself. Old Minchin likes you, as much as he likes anybody, he don't never hit you a lick hardly.  You stay out of trouble.  This is between him and me."

"Nope," said Heyes.  Their eyes met.  Heyes wasn't sure where this was going to end up, but he knew he wasn't going to go down that ladder and leave Kid up here.  They stared at each other, caught in a dead end.  Stay upstairs or go down the ladder? Either way seemed sure to end in disaster.

Suddenly a thought came to him.  What if they didn't do either one?  What if they climbed out the window, jumped over to the tree, climbed down and never came back?  He measured the distance with his eye; he was pretty sure they could do it.  They frequently escaped out their second story window for nocturnal trips to the swimming hole or the orchard, but this was five stories up.  Still, it was worth a try. 

He grabbed Kid's arm and dragged him over to the window as he explained his plan.  Kid listened wide-eyed, then stared out the window as Heyes watched him soberly.  Finally Kid said, "We always talked about running away from here, but not now. What are we gonna do?  Who's gonna give two kids like us a job?  How'll we eat?  No, I like my idea better."

"What idea?"

"You go on downstairs, and I'll kill old Minchin."

Heyes grinned.  "I suppose we could both kill him, and then climb out the window."

"Okay," said Kid.  But he was starting to grin, too.

Heyes punched him lightly on the shoulder.  "Come on, let's go," he said. "Minchin's not worth it."

"Okay," Kid said again.

The window was nailed and bolted shut, but they used Kid’s metal rod to pry it open.  Finally, after much heaving and banging, they got the bolts loose, and shoved the heavy window up in a rain of dust and dead spiders. They both stuck their heads out.  The ground below seemed very far away.

“If we fall from up here, it’s no joke,” observed Kid.  Heyes nodded. 

“So who’s gonna go first?” he asked. 

“I dunno,” said Kid. 

“Maybe we should flip a coin or something.”

Kid snorted.  “Who’s got a coin?”

“Good point,” admitted Heyes.  They studied the tree, their eyes tracing possible routes.