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The two houses in the middle of the street were built largely in part of a zoning error. They sat nearly on top of each other, their coloring and the addition over the garage to the Joestar’s house the only distinguishing marks. A wood fence had been put up between the two homes to allow for some privacy on the bottom floor, but upstairs the windows of the second bedrooms were perfectly level.
And that was where the trouble started.
"Caesar, Caesar get uncle."
"I told you not to do it," Caesar hissed, his hands shaking as they held Joseph's wrists. The windowsill pressed harshly into his stomach, but he couldn't let go. Not with Joseph griping the metal track and his knuckles turning white.
The gap between their rooms was short. Joseph should have fit. He could have fit, if he’d reached a little further, or taken a running start. The trouble with judging the gap between their windows was that no one had ever tried to measure it, but it didn’t look far.
When Caesar had flung open his window he’d fully expected the other boy to climb in, not to hang there like a limp shirt on laundry day, the toes of his shoes scuffing new marks into the siding of the Joestar house.
“Caesar you have one minute, maybe two,” Joseph puffed his cheeks out, “I can hold on but you really need to go get uncle—Jesus!” his arms tensed, a sharp squeak tearing from the window frame.
Joseph’s neck turned a deep red that had Caesar tightening his hold. “You’re an idiot,” he whispered, glancing at the reflection of his bedroom door in the windowpane. “You’re such an idiot, what if someone wakes up?”
“Caesar, not now,” Joseph whined.
“You better not fall.” Caesar scrubbed his hands along his pajama pants. “I’ll be back soon.”
“Yeah, yeah, that’s great, okay. Hurry.”
Caesar backed away. The image of the ruffled back of Joseph’s head peeping over the windowsill forcing him to run.
- - - - -
Speedwagon lived in the room above the Joestar garage. He’d been there, as far as Caesar knew, since before the Zeppeli family had moved in next door. A friendly man, Speedwagon worked at the local hardware store doing something or other that Caesar probably should have known by now.
When he wasn’t downtown, Speedwagon puttered around the Joestar house. He did the yard work, the parts at least that hadn’t been doled out to Joseph, and he helped Erina with other odd jobs whenever he could. He wasn’t old, or at least, he didn’t look it. His gray hair gave his age away, but his laugh was loud and deep, and when he talked he talked fast, and he walked with a swagger.
Caesar had seen Joseph trying to copy it more than once. The last time, Joseph had fallen face first into a ditch for a new tree that Caesar had just finished digging.
It wasn't rare for Speedwagon to draft one or both of them into yard work. Weeding the vegetable garden, watering the flowers, even the occasional hedge trimming was fair game. The harder work, the kind that Caesar often noticed Erina lingering outside to observe, was often sparse and only required minimal assistance.
Last summer Caeasar had watched quietly, holding a bucket of nails and a level, as Speedwagon had scaled a wobbling ladder to the roof to patch a leak. He’d been sure that the old man would fall, or at the very least, that the cigar he’d kept clenched between his teeth would crumble away and catch the brown shingles of the Joestar house on fire.
Speedwagon had made it up without an incident though, and from the roof he’d shouted directions down, interspersed with stories about a childhood spent rough housing around the old train tracks that used to run through town. Caesar had gathered broken shingles dropped down onto the tarp he’d laid out, and held the ladder when he was asked to.
You’re a good kid, Speedwagon had barked three hours in, when Caesar had scrambled up to the roof with lunch from Erina. The palm that had slapped his shoulder had been thick and rough, and Caesar would have tumbled off the roof into the rhododendrons if Speedwagon hadn’t snagged the collar of his shirt and pulled him up short.
Little clumsy though, aren’t you? the man had grinned around his cigar.
And Caesar's face had flushed red. Under his summer tan it was nearly invisible, but he’d felt it, and he’d scrubbed his hands against his shorts, looking everywhere but at the old man's grin. That cigar smells bad, he’d shot back, wrinkling his nose.
Speedwagon had only laughed, that same low rumble laugh of a much younger man.
He remembered the relief that had washed over him when Joseph had slammed his bedroom window open and called for Caesar to come inside. He’d hurried off the roof, and carefully picked his way down the ladder and back into the familiar sunny walls of the Joestar house. The sounds of hammering on the roof dulled considerably.
Caesar hadn’t had the chance to help Speedwagon much since then, but doubled over and out of breath in front of the bright salmon colored door to the garage apartment, he hoped the old man would at least remember him.
Though Caesar doubted after this that Joesph’s uncle would still think he was a good kid.
- - - - - - -
Fact: Kids did stupid things.
As a kid, Robert had gone around doing just about every hell raising thing he could think of in this quiet little town. He'd been a terror, driving the school guidance counselor to early retirement. Some of his best stunts continued to live in stories passed in the halls of the local high school, told between class bells in hushed whispers by wide eyed students. Without fail one or two of the seniors each year tried to replicate something he'd done. Robert had been big. He'd been a rebel. The Speedwagon name was soaked in infamy.
This though, this took the cake.
“Okay, Joseph? Joseph let go of the window,” he urged, staring up at the boy whose sneakers were leaving skid marks on the new siding.
“Tell Suzie she can have my graphing calculator!” Joseph wailed.
“Shut up!” came a quiet hiss from the somewhere near Speedwagon’s elbow, and he glanced down, surprised to find the Zeppeli boy hovering like a moth. The kid still was white as a sheet, the same way he’d been when Speedwagon had answered the door in his bathrobe and nearly been bowled over by the garbled plea for help we need help, please.
Caesar had always been the level headed one, as far as he knew, and it was Caesar who kept Joseph more or less in line. Though Speedwagon knew that trying to herd a Joestar was about as easy as trying to herd cats. Which stood to reason that Joseph had been the one to think up this window-crossing scheme.
And since Joseph was partially Speedwagon’s responsibility, getting him out of this mess fell squarely on his shoulders, because if Erina found out...
If Erina found out…
Speedwagon swallowed hard past the sudden dryness in his throat.
Kids did stupid things, right?
No one knew that better than Speedwagon.
- - - - - - -
“Jump, Joseph,” the old man urged.
Caesar felt himself tense as Joseph’s shoes slipped a little more.
This had gone far past funny. It had been comical at first to see Joseph’s uncle standing out here in his checkered bathrobe and hair curlers, but that had been five minutes ago, and Joseph was still stuck exactly where he was between the two houses.
“Caesar you know that box under my bed? Burn it, Caesar. Burn it with fire. But don’t open it,” Joseph rambled. “Old man, tell grandma I love her.”
“Joseph I’ll catch you,” Speedwagon tried again, “now jump!”
“Jump Joseph!” Caesar echoed. “Stop giving your shit away!”
“Tell coach I hate the new jersey!”
“I’m not telling coach anything!” Caesar yelled.
“Tell my mom I love her!”
“You idiot, jump!”
Behind them, the light in grandma Erina’s room turned on.
Joseph’s precarious grasp on the windowpane faltered, and he slipped, his shaking arms locking straight.
“Now, Joseph!” Speedwagon pleaded. “Jump now!”
Joseph had hung on a lot longer than any of them had thought.
Caesar could see his face, the sheen of sweat plastering his hair to his head, and the wide, nervous set to his eyes.
Joseph took a deep breath, “Remember me as I was!”
And he let go.
- - - - - -
They were a pile of limbs on the ground, all three of them.
“I think by the end of summer I’ll be tall enough to make it.”
Caesar shoved Joseph’s head off his shoulder.
“Please don't,” Speedwagon wheezed.
A light in the Zeppeli house went on.