Among the Brave

Chapter Two

For once, Trey’s instincts had been wise. Seconds later, a whole army of black cars swarmed down the street and onto the Talbots’ property. They overflowed the driveway; the last few cars had to park harum-scarum on the lawn. Peeking daringly over the rim of the huge flowerpot, Trey saw the doors of all the cars opening, and dozens of men in black uniforms spilling out. He ducked down immediately, trying to fit his body in as small a space as possible behind the flowerpot.

You know, it really wasn’t a good idea to grow four inches in the past year, he thought, then marveled that he could think so clearly at a time like this. He pulled his long legs even closer to his body.

Walkie-talkies crackled instructions: “Search the basement.

‘Affirmative.”

“Search the yard.”

Trey began to sweat. What if someone was dispatched to search the porch? He strained to hear every instruction, all at once. He listened for footsteps up to the porch. It wouldn’t take any great observational skills to find Trey. What was he going to do if — no, when — that happened?

Come out fighting. Trey ordered himself sternly. Don’t go down gently. You’ll have the element of surprise on your side. As soon as you hear someone nearby, jump up and start swinging punches….

And then what? Did he really think he could prevail? Maybe he could surprise one of the uniformed men. Temporarily. But two? Three? Fifty?

A board creaked nearby. The first step of the stairs up to the porch had creaked just like that when Trey was walking to the door. His heart began pounding so hard he thought the sound itself would give him away. He held his breath as another board creaked, and then another. Closer, closer…

Trey had his head down, practically tucked between his knees. But the suspense was too much to bear. Trey, the biggest coward in the world, decided it was better to know what was about to happen. Silently, slowly, he tilted his head back.

A uniformed man — no, really just a boy, barely older than Trey himself — stood there silently looking down at him. Trey’s eyes suddenly seemed to work like a camera, registering every detail of the boy’s face in a single glance. The boy had freckles across his nose, and that detail alone seemed so out of place that Trey could do nothing but stare.

“Liber?” the boy said, oddly.

Wait a minute. Was he actually speaking Latin?

“Free?” Trey translated incredulously.

The boy rewarded him with such a small nod that Trey wondered if he’d imagined it. Because then the boy raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth and pressed the button on the side.

That’s it, Trey thought, disappointment swelling through him. Why didn’t I fight when I had the chance? Why didn’t I run?

He probably still had a few seconds before the boy summoned the other uniformed men and they came swarming around the porch. But Trey couldn’t move. He could just imagine where running or fighting would lead. He could hear the gunfire that was bound to come, could see the hands that would undoubtedly grab him, maybe pummel him — maybe beat him to death….

It’s better to be captured alive. To be meek and abiding. Then maybe they won’t kill me right away.

No, they’d just torture him to try to get him to betray everyone he knew. No matter what, Trey couldn’t win.

Then he heard what the boy shouted into his walkietalkie.

“Porch all clear,” he said. “Nothing here.”

Trey stared up at the boy in amazement. He was so stunned, he couldn’t make out the words that crackled out from the walkie-talkie in response.

“Affirmative,” the boy said. “I’ll join the search in the backyard right away”.

He paused only long enough to glance at Trey one more time, and whisper, “Stay hidden.” Then he turned on his heel and left.

Gradually, Trey’s heart rate returned to normal — or at least what had passed for normal since he’d stepped out of the car, instead of the I’m-about-to-die rate his heart had reached when the boy was on the porch. He almost wondered if he’d been hallucinating. Could he have gone so insane with fear that he’d imagined the whole exchange?

Trey didn’t think he had such a strong imagination.

He could hear bits and pieces of the continuing search — someone shouting for a shovel, another man grunting as he carried a heavy trunk to a car. But no one else stepped up onto the porch. Nobody else came to look for Trey. And Trey was so paralyzed with fear that he couldn’t have disobeyed the boy’s order if he’d wanted to.

Then, amazingly, he began to hear doors slamming, engines starting, cars driving away. They went slower now, their engines making the same letdown hum as fire trucks driving away after a fire. Trey tried to eavesdrop— he listened so hard that his ears roared. But he couldn’t tell whether the men had found whatever they were looking for or not. They were talking about women; they were talking about smoking the cigars they’d discovered in Mr. Talbot’s closet

“Illegal as all get-out,” one man said loudly.

“Yeah, we’re just going to have to smoke them and destroy the evidence,” another shouted back. “It’s the least we can do for an old friend.”

This made the men laugh, like it was funny that any of them might be friends with Mr. Talbot Or maybe it was that Mr. Talbot had thought they were friends, but they weren’t.

Trey could never understand what people meant when their words and meanings didn’t match up.

That’s called irony, he reminded himself. I don’t get irony. I admit it. Okay, Dad? Are you happy now?

He was so busy carrying on an imaginary conversation with his father that he missed the exact moment when the last car drove away For hours, it seemed, there had been a general hubbub all across the Talbots’ property — raucous laughter, bossy shouts. But suddenly the entire area was plunged into an eerie silence. Trey strained his ears again, listening. He risked another peek over the top of the flowerpot. There were no more cars within sight or earshot. But he didn’t have to wonder if he’d hallucinated everything, because the uniformed men had left behind plenty of evidence of their visit: trampled flowers, skid marks on the driveway holes scattered in a seemingly random pattern across the yard.

Trey ducked out of sight again.

Maybe the chauffeur will bring Nina and the others back now, he thought. Maybe the chauffeur knew somehow that the uniformed men were coming. And he’ll know that they're gone now and it’s safe to come back and get me.

Trey didn’t want to think about how the chauffeur might have known about the uniformed men. He didn’t want to think about what that probably meant about whose side the chauffeur was on. He just wanted to be rescued.

Because if he wasn’t rescued, he didn’t have the slightest idea what he was supposed to do.