The Way to Schenectady

by Richard Scrimger

  “Well,” said Grandma. “Aren’t you going to get out and open the hood?” She sounded a bit snippy. More worried than angry, though.

  I was beyond anger, beyond worry. I felt hopeless.

  Steam poured out from the front of the van, as if there were a little witch’s cauldron underneath the hood. Dad turned around in his seat. “Why would I do that?”

  “To fix the engine, of course.”

  Dad smiled. “But, Mother-in-law, I don’t know how to fix it.”

  She made a noise of exasperation. Tchah, it sounded like.

  “Sorry. I wish there was a way to fix the van. I wish that a good fairy would suddenly pop out of the backseat and announce an intimate knowledge of the internal combustion engine.”

  “Aren’t you even going to check under the hood?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Tchah!” she said again.

  “Gesundheit,” said Bernie.

  Dad turned around and started to cough. His eyes opened wide and he pointed, like the heroine’s girlfriend in the horror movie just before the “Thing” gets her. I turned around to see what had panicked my father, and saw a long skinny arm reaching over the back of the rear seat. A skinny arm, with a skinny hand attached. A not-quite-clean hand, a man’s hand, though the nails were rather long. Marty’s hand.

  After a moment, Marty’s head appeared over the back of the seat.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” I asked.

  He nodded. “Swallowed my mint,” he whispered.

  Grandma helped Marty climb over the backseat, and sit beside her. The smell was stronger. “Bit dusty back there,” he said. “Cramped, too. Hello, Jane. Helen.”

  Dad glared at me. I blushed.

  Bernie couldn’t see over the back of his car seat. “Who is there?” he asked.

  “A man named Marty,” I told him. “He’s a stowaway.”

  Bernie digested this for a moment. Dad didn’t speak.

  “Do you know him?” Bernie asked me.

  “I don’t,” Bill put in hurriedly. Coward. “Not really.”

  “Yes,” I said. “So do Grandma and Bill.”

  “Oh. That’s okay, then,” Bernie said.

  I was glad to have Bernie’s approval. I was more worried about Dad. He hadn’t gone this long without saying anything since last spring, when he had laryngitis.

  Marty spoke first. “Well, I guess you’ll want me to take a look under the hood. Would you mind opening it? Please,” he added.

  “Who are you?” Dad croaked. “What are you doing here? What’s going on? WOULD SOMEONE TELL ME WHAT IS GOING ON?”

  My spirits sank as Dad’s voice rose higher. “It was all my fault,” I began.

  “No, it was my responsibility, dear.” Grandma had a soft little smile that actually looked like it belonged on her face. “Alexander, if you’re going to waste time getting angry, you might as well get angry at me.”

  “How do you know,” said Dad, “that I’m going to get mad? Why would I get mad that you two smuggled a strange man into our family van without telling me? Who would get mad at being circumvented, manipulated, and lied to?”

  Oh, dear. His eyebrows jumped up and down as he talked. They looked like a pair of fighting caterpillars.

  Grandma tried to speak, but I stopped her. “Dad, do you remember when I told you about punching the bully in grade three?”

  “No,” said Dad, eyebrows down, frowning.

  “I do,” said Bill.

  “It was like punching the bully. We had a long talk and you told me that there were some things that were sort of wrong and sort of right at the same time. Greg the bully, remember? He used to take our cookies? And I punched him in the nose when I was wearing my Hercules ring of power, and he bled all over the place, and I got sent to the principal’s office?”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Eyebrows up almost to his hairline.

  “And you made me write an apology to Greg, and then you gave me seconds at dessert?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, it was like that with Marty. Taking him with us was wrong, and it was right, too. It was. I asked Mom about it last night.”

  A car went past us going the other way.

  Dad’s jaw fell open like a trapdoor. “Your mother knows?” he said.

  “Sort of.”

  “Are you going to fix this van or not?” Grandma was sounding testy.

  “I am not,” said Dad.

  “What kind of -”

  “Now, Helen,” Marty spoke up. “Not everyone can fix cars.” Sitting next to her on the backseat, his head came up to just past her shoulder. The expression on his face was reproving. “If you beat a cow, it will not lay eggs for you.”

  Bill snickered.

  Dad scowled. “If you think I’m about to -”

  “Dad, please, we’re falling behind. It might be simple.”

  “It would have to be pretty darned simple for me to be able to do anything about it. I’m not bad at fixing kids’ toys, or changing lightbulbs, but that’s my limit. If there’s a broken lego carburetor in there, maybe I’d be able to rebuild it. And even then, I’d need the instruction booklet.”

  “There is no carburetor in this van,” said Marty. “It has fuel injection.”

  Of course, he knew about engines. I remembered him talking about ours this morning. Hope flew up inside me like a startled bird.

  “Dad, you have to let Marty try.” I could picture Mom all by herself at The Music Man.

  “Do you know how to fix cars?” asked Dad.

  Marty ducked his head. “It is why I climbed out of the storage area. Didn’t you say you wanted someone to come and fix the car? A good fairy? I thought I heard you say that.”

  Dad stared at him. “I believe I did say that.”

  “And so I thought, Marty, here is something you can do.”

  “So you are the good fairy I called into being? You can fix our van?”

  “I can try,” he said, “to repay you for your kindness in taking me to …”

  “Schenectady?” Dad finished the sentence for him.

  I don’t know about Grandma, but I felt guilty.

  “How,” Bernie asked, “can something be wrong and right at the same time?”

  Dad sighed. “Don’t you start. I heard about that from your mom for days.”

  Dad handed me a bag of jelly beans and told me to take the boys to look at the cows in the pasture while Marty looked at the van. “Bernie, don’t wander away,” he said. Bernie nodded solemnly. “And Bill, don’t climb over the fence.” Bill’s shoulders slumped.

  We hopped across a dry ditch, except for Bernie, who hopped through it, and climbed up the bank to the pasture. We looked at the cows and ate jelly beans. “No black ones, Bernie,” I said. “They’re not good for you.”

  “Oh,” he said.

  Bill and I ate the black ones.

  “Have you noticed his fingernails?” Bill asked me, his mouth full.

  “Marty’s?”

  “No, Grandma’s. Of course, Marty’s. They’re like claws.”

  Yes, I’d noticed. “Maybe he’s a vampire,” I said.

  “Yes. He is from Schenectady after all. Maybe he’s a werewolf.”

  We were joking, but Bernie started to whimper. I felt bad. “Sorry, little guy,” I said. “Here, have a black jelly bean. They’re really tasty.”

  He whimpered some more. “But they’re bad for you.”

  O what a tangled web we weave. “Okay,” I said, and ate the black jelly bean.

  We were standing in the shade of a pine tree. Near us was a farm fence – strands of rusty wire strung between thick, old posts. On the other side of the fence stood the inhabitants of the field: huge, ungainly, piebald beasts, large-eyed, deep-voiced, uncaring. Bill regarded them with a thoughtful eye.

  “Alien life-forms,” he said. “They should be investigated.”

  “They are cows,” said Bernie.

  “They have horns, Bernie. Horns. And they hav
e four stomachs.” Bill made his voice sound low and thrilling – as low and thrilling as a ten-year-old can. “Think of that, Bernie. Pretty strange, hey?”

  Bernie nodded.

  “Fortunately, I am fluent in the cow language. Let me see if I can communicate with them.” Bill went up against the fence and mooed as loudly as he could.

  The cows looked up.

  “Ah, ha! Contact!” he said. “Now I’ll ask them to take me to their leader.” He mooed again. And, very slowly, the cows began to amble over.

  Bill put his hand on a strand of wire.

  “Remember what Dad said,” I told him.

  “What?” he called over his shoulder, without looking back. “What business is it of yours. Miss Bossy?”

  “Bill, you’re going to get in trouble for nothing.” I clenched my fists in frustration. We were falling behind schedule. Everything was being pushed back – Schenectady, the Berkshires, The Music Man.

  “Nothing?” said Bill. “Communication with aliens is not nothing.”

  “Climbing a stupid fence is nothing. Dad is already upset about Marty. Come on, Bill. Don’t make it harder on him.”

  He pulled himself up higher. Now his head was level with the top of the fence. “He’s not upset with me about Marty,” he said.

  “Why,” Bernie asked, his big eyes on me, his throat sliding up and down as he swallowed a jelly bean, “is Dad upset about Marty?”

  Bill stuck his foot into a twisted clump of wire, and pulled himself up to the top of the fence. “Moooooo,” he called.

  “Marty is a stowaway. Remember? Do you know what a stowaway is?”

  Bernie frowned. “Is it a vegetable?”

  “No. It’s someone who hides in your van, and you don’t know he’s there.”

  Bernie nodded to himself.

  Bill’s foot was caught in the tangle of wire. He wiggled his foot, but it wouldn’t come free. He couldn’t climb up, and he couldn’t climb down.

  “Hey, Jane,” said Bill.

  “Yes?”

  “Uh. Help.” He wiggled his foot harder.

  “Help with what?”

  “Come on, Jane. Get me down.”

  I like Bill. I really do. But I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t move.

  “Jane, please!” Bill hung on with one hand while he tried to free his foot with the other. He sounded scared. I figured enough was enough, and moved forward to help him.

  “BILL! BILL PEELER! GET DOWN!”

  “Oh, shoot,” he said.

  13

  Good Comes from Evil

  “GET DOWN FROM THAT FENCE!” Dad roared.

  “Hang on, Bill.” I pulled the shoe off his foot, which, of course, he hadn’t thought to try to do. With his foot free he climbed down easily, but the shoe remained stuck at eye level. I set about untying it. I’ve always been pretty good at knots.

  Dad came bounding toward us, still roaring. He sounded like a hungry lion. Bill bowed his head, a one-sandaled Christian resigned to his fate.

  “What did I say?” Dad shouted. “What did I tell you not to do?”

  “Climb the fence,” Bill mumbled.

  “And what did you do?”

  “Climb the fence.”

  “That’s the second time in two days! What am I going to do with you?”

  What do they call those questions where you aren’t supposed to answer? Not categorical, but something like that. Stupid is what they are, but there’s another word. Anyway, Dad’s question was one of those. Bill knew better than to try and answer it. Silently, I handed him his shoe, and he bent down to put it on.

  “I can’t send you to your room because we’re in the van. I can’t yell at you for the next hour because I’d get hoarse. What am I going to do?”

  Another trick question. Bill didn’t look up. Bernie was frowning.

  Dad sighed. “Let’s get back to the van.”

  We trooped back. I offered Bill the bag of jelly beans. He shook his head.

  Marty was sitting on the step of the van. He looked tired. He took a whole handful of jelly beans.

  “I have discovered the trouble,” he said.

  “What is it?” said Dad. Standing beside the little old man, he looked like a giant.

  “I wonder,” said Marty, looking around, “if there is any water around here? Did you see any water when you were up by the field, Jane?”

  “No,” I said.

  “That’s too bad,” said Marty.

  “There is water,” said Bill. “A little stream on the other side of the fence. It’s hidden from the road. The cows told me about it,” he added, in a low voice.

  “Ah, ha!” Marty stood up. “There is a stream beyond the fence,” he said. It sounded like one of those phrases I had to learn in French class. It y a un ruisseau au delà de la clôture. The hairs of my aunt are shorter than those of my mama. My car has a pain in the gas tank.

  I wondered what Marty was getting at. He looked earnest, like he was trying to be helpful, but what he said didn’t sound helpful.

  Dad frowned. “Thank you. There is a stream beyond the fence. And there are clouds in the sky. In the nearby copse, a lonesome red-winged blackbird sings its song of love. Thank you for the nature lesson. Now could you tell us what’s wrong with the van?”

  “There is water in the stream,” continued Marty.

  “And a bump on the log, and the green grass grows all around all around. Come on, Marty.” Dad was getting impatient. I think he was upset that he couldn’t fix the car, even if it was something simple.

  “I wonder if there is a can in the car,” said Marty. “An empty can. Or a bottle. Or a hat.”

  “A hat?” I asked.

  “A hat for water.”

  “What’s a hat for water?” Was it another obscure figure of speech, like the one about the cow and the eggs?

  Marty made a gesture with his hands. “You put the water from the stream into the radiator of the car.”

  “Oh,” said Dad.

  “And the radiator would cool down the car. Now the radiator is not working, and the car is too hot.”

  “Oh,” said Dad again. “And we could carry the water in a can. If we had a can. Or a bottle. If we had a bottle.”

  “Yes. Or a hat,” I said.

  “If we had a hat,” said Bill.

  Dad and Bill went back up the hill to find the stream. Grandma lit a cigarette. Bernie and I got down on our hands and knees to root around the floor of the van and through our vacation luggage. Bernie found an old waxed paper cup, which used to have a milkshake inside it, and now had a dried butterscotch crust. I found five baseball caps, with holes all over them for ventilation, and a couple of twist ties. Bernie found a pen and a peppermint lifesaver. I found thirteen cents.

  Dad came around to the side door. “The stream is there all right. We’ll be able to get all the water we need. What did you guys find?” We showed the results of our search. His face fell. “That’s it? That’s all you found? Did you check our beach stuff? What about plastic buckets?”

  “We have shovels,” said Bernie. “And rakes.”

  “No buckets?”

  “No buckets.”

  Dad took the dixie cup from Bernie’s hand. Stared at it doubtfully.

  It was a glorious day, if a little buggy, on our secluded little patch of highway. Dad stared from the cup to the farmer’s fence. Bill stood on the other side of it, wagging his finger up and down in front of a cow’s face, as if he was arguing with the animal. Grandma was butting out her cigarette.

  “Are we going to wait here all day?” she said.

  You can’t carry a lot of water in a dixie cup with a hole in the bottom. You can’t carry any water at all in a well-ventilated baseball cap. Marty suggested using plastic bags, which we should have thought of. Everyone has plastic bags in their car. Bernie and I went back and rummaged around. The first plastic bag we found had a big hole in it. So did the second plastic bag. The third bag had three holes. After that he stop
ped looking. I kept at it, and found a fluff-covered mint, a whole bunch of twist ties, and another seven cents.

  “This is going to be a long, slow process,” said Dad, after running with the dripping plastic bag in one hand, and the dripping dixie cup in the other, and finally pouring about three teaspoonfuls of water into the steaming radiator.

  “A raindrop does not fill a bucket,” said Marty, “but enough raindrops will fill an ocean.”

  The expression on Dad’s face was hilarious, but I didn’t feel like laughing.

  Marty gestured into the engine. “There is, I think, another problem.”

  That’s when we saw the approaching car. Ahead of us was a straight stretch of road. Dad ran into the oncoming lane and started waving his arms, stopping just in time to jump out of the way as the car sped past.

  Then, from around the bend behind us, we heard the sound of another vehicle. A noisier vehicle by far – a rackety-banging, slow-moving, backfiring vehicle. The noise stopped and started and came on again, and then we saw the rusty pickup truck chugging toward us. You know how you always seem to see the same cars over and over again when you’re traveling? This was the truck we’d had so much trouble passing. Blue smoke bellied out of its exhaust pipe.

  Dad was careful to stay on the side of the road. He made a half-wave at the driver, who grinned a wide yellow-toothed grin. The truck crawled slowly past us, backfiring. It didn’t stop. The tailgate flapped up and down, like a waving hand. When the truck hit a pothole, down the road from us, the tailgate opened and something bounced out of the truck. It fell onto the road, bounced again, and rolled. A clear bright flashing thing. The bottle – that’s what it was – came to rest on the gravel edge of the road. The truck lurched slowly away into the distance, belching smelly smoke and sudden spurts of flame.

  I ran to get the bottle. “It’s not broken,” I said, holding it up to the sun.

  Marty shuddered when he saw it. “Whiskey,” he said.

  “Not now,” said Dad.

  Marty looked away.

  Dad took the bottle from me, ran to the fence, passed the bottle to Bill, and came back a minute later with a bottle full of water. He poured carefully. I stood on tiptoe to watch.

  Marty was on his knees at the side of the van. “Are you okay?” Grandma asked him. “Marty, are you okay?”