Hacker

Here. This is my place. My secret place. Snow and trees and hedges surround me here. No-one can see in. I come early, while the others are still crawling out of their warm beds or starting to have their bacon and eggs. Before the cars start to warm up in the drives up and down Beard Street. Soon, their tailpipes will billow sluggish gray smoke into the cold, dense air, and I will hear their sound and smell the exhaust. A short while after that, the streets of the little town will start to fill with cars and school busses and the voices of children walking to school, and then I will be afraid again. But, not yet.

I have a big army jacket. It has no liner, but it’s warmer than the thin windbreaker I had last year. I found it in a trunk in the garage. I love it because it’s green and it camouflages me here, and because it was my father’s. He wore it in Vietnam. When I wear his jacket I feel protected. Especially when I’m here in my secret place, or on the nights when Hank makes me sleep in the backyard. When I’m here I feel close to my dad. In the backyard, too, because there are trees, and because I have my jacket. It’s an M-65 Field Jacket, made by Alpha Industries, Inc. It has a secret hood and it’s pretty good in snow and rain. I think of him wearing it in the jungles in Vietnam. Hacking through the forest. Sleeping under the stars. Killing snakes. Hackin’ it, man. My old man was a hacker. There’s a stain on it. I think it might be his blood. He died there. In the jungles. We have the same first name, too. Sometimes when I watch Apocalypse Now I cry because the war is over. It ended seven years ago, when I was four.

I reach into one of the large front pockets and take out the Vienna sausage can that is wrapped tightly in foil and sit it next to me on the log. I search the pocket again and find the cornbread wrapped in a piece of newspaper. I eat here because of Hank, my mom’s boyfriend. If I am still in the house when he wakes up he gets very angry. He doesn’t like me much in the evening, either, but it’s better then because he drinks beer after work and is in a better mood.

I remove the foil from the sausage can and try to drink down the brown beans but they are too cold and won’t slide out. I use my fingers. The cornbread is cold, too, and hard to swallow, but I will swallow it because I’m a hacker like my old man. And by the time I am walking again the cornbread and the beans will be warm in my stomach.

I carefully fold the piece of tinfoil into a tight square and put it into the breast pocket of the jacket, underneath my last name, and fasten the snap. I’ll put it with the pop cans I collect on my way home from school and one day I will have enough to buy the liner for my coat. Dad’s coat. They have one at the surplus store.

I check my jeans for the lunch tickets. I know they are there, but I like to see them, and to look at my name that is signed on them in pencil, because it is my dad’s name, too.

I peek out of my hiding place – a clump of trees at the side of Beard Street, at the place where the creek goes under the road – and scan the houses. Only a few cars are warming. When there are more I will know that it is time to go. But, not yet.

Sean O’Grady and his little cousin, Larry will come this way. If they see me, they will chase me. If they catch me, they’ll whoop up on me and they might take my coat or my shoes. I usually keep ahead of them, but I have to be careful in case they come early because they walk right by here. If they come by while I am still in here, I’ll have to hang back and let them get a few blocks ahead, and then I might be late. They are rich and call me names and they hate my coat and my haircut. They call me an Army reject and a welfare re… ruh…resipidunt. Something. But I am careful, and I will di di mao by then.

I read some of the paper and then I can hear more cars warming and kid voices. I crumple the piece of newspaper and stuff it in the sausage can. I dig a shallow hole and bury the can and then sit on the log again for a moment. I quickly talk to God in his secret place, and to my dad in his, and then hack it down Beard Street.