by Wally Lamb
“What did he say about me?” Daddy said.
“That we should lock you up and let you dry out, same as we do with all the other bums.”
The cruiser had a radio, and a siren, and chains on the tires because of the snow. The policeman told me to sit in the back. “Did I get arrested?” I said. He said I didn’t because I didn’t do anything wrong. “You know what you need for the ride back home?” he said. He pulled in front of the Mama Mia Bakery.
I don’t think the Italian lady recognized me, because she was nice again. “Which would you like, sweetheart? A sugar cookie or a chocolate chip?” I took a chocolate chip and it was free. The policeman got a free cruller. He was going to pay for it, but the bakery lady said, “Oh, go on. Get out of here. Your money’s no good in here.” She said it nice, though. Not mean.
On the way home, I remembered about my hula hoop and my Silly Putty: I’d forgotten them back at the Cheery-O. I didn’t eat my cookie. I just held it, all the way back. Even with the snow chains on, the police car kept wiggling back and forth on the snowy road. The cows were out in the pasture still, not in the barn. They had smoky breath and snow on their backs, and when I saw them, I started crying.
One time, I had a scary dream that Daddy was giving me a ride in a helicopter. We were flying over our farm, and he said, “Hang on. Something’s wrong. We’re going to crash!” And then I woke up.
In this other scary dream, Mr. Zadzilko grabbed me and put me in that dark space under the stage where the folding chairs go. He locked that little door and nobody knew I was there. When I tried to scream, nothing came out.
Mr. Zadzilko told me he killed a dog once, by tying a rope around the dog’s neck and throwing the other end over a tree branch, and then yanking. “You oughta have seen the way that dog was dancing,” he said. “You got a dog. Don’t you, Dirty Boy?” he said.
I said no, I didn’t.
“Yes, you do. He’s brown and white. I seen him that time my mother and me drove out to your farm for cider. Maybe if Dirty Boy tells certain secrets, his dog will get the Stan Zadzilko rope treatment.”
“How come you have a mother but no wife?” I said, and he got all red, and told me that was his business.
I DUCK UNDER THE KEEP-OUT rope and take the shortcut to the middle of the maze. That’s where Daddy meets me. His tent’s somewhere in the woods, past the gravel pit. Sometimes he’s by himself and sometimes he’s with that kerchief lady who always stares at me and smiles. He’s trespassing.
I hide the ham and the cookies and potatoes in the baby carriage, under the Quirk baby, the way he says to do when he’s not here. I’m glad he’s not here this morning—him, and that lady, and his stupid jack-o-lantern missing teeth.
Back at the farm, there’s trouble: a big fight, Hennie and Aunt Lolly on one side, and Zinnia and Chicago on the other. “One little raggedy-ass jug of cider—that’s all I ever snitched from here, so help me Jesus!” Zinnia says. “So that later on down the line, I could sip me a little applejack.”
“Then why’s half a ham missing?” Hennie says. “Why is it that this morning a package of icebox cookies was unopened, and now it’s half-gone?”
“I don’t know about no icebox cookies!” Zinnia says. “Ax him!” Her finger’s pointing at me.
“Caelum?” Aunt Lolly says. “Did you eat some of the cookies that were in the pantry?” I shake my head. And I’m not lying, either. I took them but I didn’t eat them.
“Come on, Zinnia,” Aunt Lolly says. “I’m escorting you back. You’ve broken a trust, so I can’t have you working here anymore.”
“Then take me back, too!” Chicago chimes in. “You can crank your own damn apples. Haul your own damn slop barrel down that hill.”
“Don’t you realize that it’s a privilege to work here?” Hennie says.
“Privilege my black be-hind!” Chicago says. “What’s so ‘privilege’ about me breaking my back all day for no pay?”
I can’t tell Lolly and Hennie that it was me who took the food, because then Grandpa will find out Daddy’s trespassing and get him arrested. And it’s a secret. I promised him I wouldn’t tell. And you know what? I think Lolly’s wrong. I think I can love and hate Daddy. Because now Zinnia and Chicago are in trouble, just like Thomas Birdsey got in trouble that time when it was me who was the secret spitter. And tonight, if I die in my sleep like the prayer says, I’m probably going to hell because getting other people in trouble for something you did is, I think, a mortal sin, not a venial sin, and probably hell is going to have a hundred million Mr. Zadzilkos with devil horns.
BUT THAT NIGHT? WHEN I’M lying in bed, thinking about Mr. Zadzilko and getting scared again? I put my light on, and take my pen, and do what Zinnia did: I write “Jesus” on the palm of my hand, and the S in the middle of Jesus becomes the first S in “saves.” It’s not a tattoo, but maybe it’ll work. I kept staring at it and staring at it, and saying, “Jesus…Jesus.” I don’t feel his arms around me, though; I don’t feel anything. Maybe it’s because I didn’t prick myself with a pin, or because every time I say “Jesus,” all’s I can see is Mr. Mpipi, up on the stage, dancing his crazy dance.
On Monday morning, Miss Hogan makes an announcement. “We have to be extra tidy for the next several days,” she says. “Poor Mr. Zadzilko’s mother died over the weekend. He’s going to be absent all week.”
She shows us the sympathy card she’s going to pass around and says to make sure we sign in cursive, in pen not pencil, and neat not sloppy. When the card gets to me, I write “Caelum Quirk,” but Mr. Big Fat Glasses Face probably doesn’t even know my name. All’s he ever calls me is “Dirty Boy.”
All day, I keep thinking about Mr. Zadzilko being absent. And after school—after I empty our wastebasket and wash our board and I’m still waiting for Mother—I go up to Miss Hogan’s desk. “What is it, Caelum?” she says.
“I’ve got a secret.”
“You do, do you? Would you like to tell me what it is?”
“Miss Anderson smokes,” I say. “When she sits on the toilet. I seen her from Mr. Zadzilko’s peeking hole.”
For a long time she just looks at me—like I said it in Japanese or something. Then she gets up, takes my hand, and has me show her.
And you know what? The next morning, when I wake up? The egg case on my windowsill has hatched. There’s tiny little praying mantises scrambling all over the sill, and on the floor, and even in my bed.
Hundreds of them.
Thousands.
Millions, maybe.
chapter five
LOLLY’S CAT WAS CAUTIOUS AT first, watching me from doorways, scooting from the rooms I entered. But half an hour into my homecoming, she sidled up to me, brushing against my pant leg. My aunt had given her some goofy name I couldn’t remember. “Where is she, huh?” I said. “Is that what you’re asking?”
In the pantry, I found a litter box in need of emptying, an empty bag of Meow Mix, and a note in Lolly’s handwriting: “Get cat food.” There were a couple of tins of tuna in the cupboard. “Well, whatever your name is, you’re in luck,” I told the cat. With the first twist of the can opener, she began bellowing. We were probably going to be friends for life.
Thinking I should call Maureen, I flopped down on Lolly’s sofa and grabbed the remote. The Practice was on. Okay, I thought. Not my favorite, but watchable. I stood up and brushed the grit off the sofa, sending cat fur flying. My aunt had many talents, but housekeeping wasn’t one of them; that had always been Hennie’s department. I pried off my shoes and put my feet up. Lolly’s cat hopped aboard, walked up my leg, and nestled against my hipbone. Gotta call Maureen, I thought. Soon as the commercial comes on….
WHAT? WHERE…? I stumbled toward the ringing telephone, realizing where I was: back in Three Rivers, back at the farmhouse.
“Hey,” I said. “I was going to call you. I must have conked out.”
Except it wasn’t Maureen. It was some doctor, talking about my aunt’s stroke. Ye
ah, I know all this, I remember thinking. That’s why I’ve come back. But somewhere in the middle of his monologue, it dawned on me that he was talking about a second stroke. Lolly hadn’t survived this one, he said. They’d pronounced her dead ten minutes earlier.
I went outside. Sat on the cold stone porch step. The sun was rising, coral-colored, over the treeline. Higher in the sky, the moon was fading away.
I went back inside. Called Maureen and woke her out of a sound sleep.
“Caelum? What time is it?”
“I’m not sure. It’s sunrise here…. She died, Mo.”
I waited out the silence, the sigh. “How?”
“Another stroke.”
“Oh, Cae. I’m so sorry. Are you at the hospital?”
I shook my head. “The farmhouse. I sat with her for a couple of hours last night, but then I came back here. They said when they checked her at four, she was stable. But then, twenty minutes later…Maureen, I don’t feel sad. I don’t feel anything. What’s wrong with me?”
“Nothing, Cae,” she said. “You just haven’t been able to take it in yet. Absorb the shock of it.” She said she’d talked to Lolly’s doctor the day before, while I was en route to Connecticut. More of the test results had come back; the damage had been massive. “She might not have been able to walk, or talk, or even swallow food. Lolly would have hated living like that.”
“They asked me did I want to come in and view the body. I said no. Is that something I’m supposed to do?”
“It’s a personal decision, Cae. There’s no ‘supposed to.’”
“I should have stayed with her last night. Slept in the chair or whatever. God, I hate that she died alone.”
Mo said should-haves weren’t going to do Lolly or me any good.
“Last night? I got up and started combing her hair. More out of boredom than anything else, I guess. I’d just been sitting there, watching her sleep. And her hair was all smushed down and I found this comb in her drawer and…and when I stopped combing? She opened her eyes. Stared at me for a few seconds.”
“Then she knew you’d come back.”
“No. Uh-uh. Nothing registered.”
“Maybe it did, Cae. Maybe knowing you were there, she could let herself die. The hospice team at Rivercrest always used to say that the dying—”
“Yeah, okay. Stop. I doubt it, but thanks.”
“How did it feel?” she asked.
“What?”
“Touching her? Combing her hair?”
“It felt…it felt…” The question made my eyes sting and my throat constrict. Trying to stifle tears, I uttered a weird guttural noise that caught the cat’s attention.
“It’s okay to feel, Caelum,” Mo said. “Just let yourself—”
“What’s her cat’s name, anyway?” I said, cutting her off. “I fed her tuna fish last night and now she’s like my shadow.”
“The black and white? Nancy Tucker.”
“Oh, yeah. Nancy Tucker. Where’d that name come from?”
“Some folksinger Lolly likes,” Mo said.
I stood there, nodding at the cat. “Liked,” I said.
Maureen asked me if I’d thought about what I needed to do that day. Should we go over stuff? Make a list? I told her what the hospital had said: that I had to let them know ASAP which funeral home they should contact to arrange for the transfer of the body. “I guess I’ll tell them McKenna’s,” I said. “We used them when my mother died, and my grandfather. My father, too, I think. Or did we? Jesus, that’s weird.”
“What?”
“I can’t remember my father’s funeral.”
“Well, you were so young.”
“No, I wasn’t. I was fourteen.” For a second, I caught myself thinking I’d have to ask Lolly about it.
Maureen said I should tell the hospital to notify Gamboa and Sons.
“The Mexican funeral parlor? I don’t think so, Mo. I doubt Lolly would have wanted a ‘cat licker’ sendoff.”
“A what?”
“Nothing. Never mind.”
Mo said Lolly had used Gamboa and Sons for Hennie’s services—that Lolly and Victor Gamboa had been friends since the days when they’d worked together at the prison. “Lolly’s preplanned and paid for her funeral, Cae. After Hennie’s burial, she decided to do that. Which makes it easier, right? Now you won’t have to second-guess what she would have wanted.”
“Typical Lolly,” I said. “Miss Practical. So what do you think? You going to try to get back here? Because I’ll understand if you don’t think you can—”
Sure she was coming, Mo said. She’d call Galaxy Travel as soon as they opened and let me know when she had the details. Now that she thought of it, she’d better call the kennel, too. “Sophie drove them crazy last time, and they were hinting about not taking her anymore. But under the circumstances…Maybe you should try to plan the wake for Wednesday and the funeral for Thursday,” she said. “That way, if I can’t get everything in place until—”
“Today is what day?” I asked.
“It’s Monday, Caelum. Monday, the nineteenth.”
“Monday. Yeah, that’s right. I’m a little disoriented.”
“Well, that’s understandable. You were traveling all day yesterday. Plus, the time change. And you’re probably overtired on top of that.”
It wasn’t those things, though. It was being back home: remembering, not remembering. How could I not recall my father’s funeral? “I guess you better bring my suit,” I said. “And those shiny loafers you had me get.”
“Sure. Should we go over what you’ll need to do today? Make that list?”
I grabbed a pen, a scrap of paper. “Yeah, okay. What?”
First, I should call the hospital and tell them about the funeral home—get that done. Then I’d need to make an appointment with Gamboa’s to go over the details. “And you’re going to have to make some phone calls. Let her friends know.”
“How am I supposed to do that? She wasn’t exactly the Rolodex type.”
“Look in that little telephone table by the stairs. I bet she’s got an address book in there, or numbers written inside the phone book. Call the people whose names you recognize, and ask them to call whoever else they think might want to know. And Ulysses. Call him. I guess you’ll need to start thinking about what to tell him, job-status wise. Whether or not you’re going to keep him on for a while to look after the property. You’re her executor, right?”
“So she said.”
“Then you can probably write checks from her estate—pay him that way—but I’m not sure. I guess you’d better try to get an appointment with her lawyer, too.” Oh, great, I thought. Lolly’s lawyer was Lena LoVecchio, the attorney who’d represented me on my assault charge against Paul Hay. Just what I wanted to do: revisit that whole mess. “I’m sure most of the legal stuff can be put on hold,” Maureen said. “But there may be some short-term decisions to make, and while you’re back there, you might as well—”
“Oh, man.”
“What?”
“I suck at this kind of stuff. I’ll probably screw everything up.”
“No, you won’t, Cae. People will help you. They’ll want to help.”
“And you’re going to get here when?”
“Tomorrow, hopefully. Tuesday. Wednesday morning at the latest.”
“Oh, man.”
“Hey,” she said. “You know what? After you call the hospital, why don’t you go for a run? It’ll help clear out the cobwebs, get rid of some of that tension. Then go back, take a nice hot shower and—”
“There’s no shower here. Remember?”
“Oh, right. A nice hot bath, then. Even better. And eat breakfast, Caelum. You need to remember to eat.”
“What else?” I said. “For this list?”
She said if she thought of anything else, she’d call me, but that she’d better get off. The dogs were chafing to go out.
I didn’t want her to hang up. “Hey, I forgot to tell y
ou. I saw Velvet before I left. At the airport. I guess she’s on a cleaning crew?”
“Was,” Mo said. “She called last night to tell me she quit. She saw you, too, she said. Oh, that reminds me: I better try and get ahold of her. She was going to meet me at school tomorrow to talk about reenrolling, but if I get a flight…okay, the dogs! I’ll let you know when I’m coming. Call me if you need to. I love you, Caelum. I’ll get there as soon as I can.”
I DIDN’T RUN, AS MO suggested. I wandered, from room to room downstairs and then up to the second floor. At the top step, I looked down the hallway. Stood there, rocking on the balls of my feet. I couldn’t do it.
From the house, I headed up the gravel road to the barn. Undid the latch, flipped on the overhead lights. Empty of cows, with its floor hosed and swept down to bald, cracked concrete, it was nothing but a glorified garage now—a parking place for the tractor and Lolly’s truck. “Come, boss!” I shouted, calling in the ghost-cows for morning milking. “Here, boss! Come, boss!” My voice bounced around and rose to the empty loft.
At the height of things, Bride Lake Farms had milked a herd of sixty-five registered Holsteins. Every other day, the Hood Dairy truck would pull up, pump nine thousand pounds of raw milk out of the tank, and drive it off for processing. As a kid, one of my chores had been to take care of our personal milk supply: put out two big pans for the barn cats and carry six quarts back to the house whenever we got low. Damn, but that was good milk: icy cold, cream on the top. “You drank it unpasteurized?” Maureen asked once, when I was comparing farm milk to the watery gray skim milk we bought at the KwikStop. “Yeah, and look,” I said. “I survived to tell you about it.”
I walked over to Grandpa Quirk’s beat-up wooden desk, still parked against the barn’s south wall. It was covered now with half-empty cans of paint and turpentine. Back in the day, Grandpa had sat there, hunched over his bills and receipts and ratios. He’d hated that monthly math, I remembered, but God, he’d loved his milkers. Named them after movie stars: Maureen O’Hara, Sonja Henie, Dorothy Lamour. Whenever one of his girls started producing, he’d take three Polaroid pictures of her: a head shot, a body shot, and a closeup of her udder. He’d label them on the back, date them, and put them in his big tin box. Standing there, I recalled something I hadn’t thought about in years: a game Grandpa and I had played. I’d pull one of the udder shots out of the box, hand it to him, and he’d look at it—study it at arm’s length, hold it close, scratch his chin. Then he’d identify whose milk bag it was. He never got any wrong. Had there been some trick to it? Could Grandpa really recognize all those girls by their udders?
