“I don’t think so,” Heather said quickly as they weaved around a series of short metal poles that stuck out of the ground. “It’s probably radioactive in there.”
“Radioactive?” Rip said.
“Yeah,” Heather said. “The EPA wasn’t real busy when this place was running. Hey, there’s a sign over there,” she blurted, gesturing over her shoulder. “Maybe we—”
“Watch it!” Rip said.
Somewhere between watch and it, Heather did her part in lowering the pole population by one. She flattened it and then slammed on the brakes, sending her passengers up and forward.
“Oh my gosh!” Heather said. “Please don’t be bad.”
“Hang on,” Rip said. Heather ignored him and by the time he made it out to the front of the car, she was looking at the same thing he was.
“Two accidents this week,” Heather said. Her hands were on her head and she was looking at Rip like she wanted him to tell her she wasn’t going to get fired. “You think it’s bad?”
“It could be worse,” Rip said.
The front bumper was smiling at them like a kid who had lost his front teeth. There was a two-foot hole in the plastic, right in the center of it. The grill was broken in half and the top of the hood had a jagged V-shaped dent. This wasn’t one of those quick-fix dings where you could rush it to a buddy at a collision shop. The whole front end of the car needed to be replaced.
“I’m going to have to tell them where this happened.”
“So?” Rip said. “You’re allowed to be here.”
“What reason will I give them? Some crazy hunt for a secret garden?”
“I dunno,” Rip said with a shrug. “Maybe.”
“Oh man, it’s smoked!” Andy said. He and Judi had joined them.
Rip cocked his head toward Andy. “You’re lucky you don’t have your helmet on.”
“Think it’s okay to drive?” Heather asked.
“I don’t know why not,” Rip said. He kneeled down in the catcher’s position and studied the damage. And then he stood and nudged the bumper with the tip of his work boot.
The whole bumper fell off.
“Then again, maybe it isn’t,” Rip said.
They all stared in silence. Rip glanced to his left at Judi and Andy, and then they all turned and looked over at Heather. Rip half expected her to take out her sword and perform the honorable duty of doing herself in. She looked at him and closed her eyes.
“Don’t you dare say something smart, Gerald Ripley.”
Rip held up his hands, signaling that he wouldn’t.
“I am so toast,” Heather said, followed by silence.
“Oh boy,” Judi cried, studying the bumper. Something about the way she said it forced Rip to look the other way. He was struggling not to burst out in laughter until Heather snorted and giggled. By the time he turned around, all four of them, even Andy, were laughing uncontrollably.
They agreed that Heather’s best play was to leave the broken parts, as none of them were salvageable. They also figured that since they were out there, they might as well still check out the flowers, so they all got in the car and Heather drove them toward the back fence.
There were three separate gates at the rear of McLouth Steel, and the one that was closest to the flower bed happened to be the one in the middle. Heather stepped out of the car again, unlocked the gate, and then returned. They drove past the poison ivy that surrounded the fence and down to a small clearing. She stopped the car. Then they all got out and made their way toward the canal through forty yards of high grass, spooking a pair of deer that jumped up and almost gave Judi a heart attack. Not too long after, they could see the back side of the flower bed.
“Isn’t it awesome?” Rip said, walking quickly in front of them.
“Stop, Uncle Rip!” Andy yelled. “Don’t get near it!”
Rip turned around and glanced at Andy. Heather was standing about ten feet behind him, and Judi another twenty feet farther back.
“Why not?” Rip asked. “You okay?”
The kid looked a little pale. “There’s something in there. You aren’t ready to go in there yet.”
Rip flipped him a you’re crazy look and walked toward the flowers, and with each step he took, little shots of adrenaline fired through his body, causing something to flutter on the inside of his stomach. Andy was right. Something was in the flowers, and whatever it was had him feeling better the closer he got. It was like it was calling to him. And the call was a song of such peace, such joy, such love . . . it was unlike anything he’d ever experienced before. He walked to the edge of the garden and studied the dark soil that separated the four sections of flowers. He reached down to take a handful of dirt.
“Stop, Uncle Rip!” Andy shouted. “Please!”
Andy walked toward him, his eyes never leaving the flower bed.
“It’s okay,” Rip said. “They’re just flowers.”
Rip noticed Andy was trembling.
“When I look at those flowers,” Andy said, his eyes wide and wild, “I feel the same way I did after Mom told me I called her, using her middle name. The same way I felt with Mr. Hart after church. I’m not sure how I know this, but you’re not supposed to go in there yet. Don’t get too close to it. Please.”
“Okay, okay,” Rip said, putting his arm around Andy. His nephew didn’t flinch or make his normal fuss about being touched. He just stared at the flowers.
“Rip?” Heather said. She had her arm around Judi. “Come here.”
Rip walked back to them and Judi had her arms crossed. She looked dazed, her eyes fixed dreamily on the first section of the flowers.
“What did he say to me a few days ago?” Judi whispered. “When he called me Judith Ann? I need to know.”
“That’s the third time she’s asked that in the last two minutes,” Heather said. “Come here, Andy!”
Andy didn’t move. He was still facing the flower garden like it might leap up and grab him.
“What did he say to me?” Judi said, louder this time.
She moved out from under Heather’s arm and walked quickly down toward Andy. Rip and Heather followed her, and Judi stopped halfway, her eyes clearly still on the flowers.
“What did you say to me?” she yelled. “I need to know!”
Rip and Heather shared a look. For the first time, an arrow of fear shot through Rip. Maybe Heather was right and the old place was toxic . . . maybe this garden was some freakishly weird side effect of factory poison that was already seeping into all of them. A whole different kind of weed from the one he used to favor, with an entirely unique effect. And yet he couldn’t deny that he felt great being here. Better than he’d felt in weeks. And it wasn’t a bio-high. It was deeper. More internal. Like part of his soul . . .
Rip tried to see exactly what Judi was looking at. “Who you talking to? I thought you were talking to Andy.”
“It’s okay, Judi,” Heather said, wrapping her arm around her friend’s back. “It’s okay.”
Rip could see the tears working their way down Judi’s cheeks. Judi started walking again and stopped next to Andy. Then she looked right at him. “You said it to me, Andrew. Right after you called me Judith Ann. What was it? I need to know!”
“I don’t remember,” Andy said.
Rip made his way down to the very edge of the flowers. There was something he wanted to know as well. Something he’d find out if he just—
“Don’t go in the garden, Uncle Rip. You aren’t ready.”
“Okay,” Rip mumbled. He somehow knew Andy was right.
But everything in him wished he wasn’t.
ELEVEN
What Kevin Hart lacked in sincerity, Rip mused, he made up for in boat and boathouse. The two nicest boathouses in Benning were both owned by him. The one behind Kevin’s house was big enough for a family of six to live in, and the one on the lake behind Hart Industries was arguably the nicest one in the state, complete with a game room, Jacuzzi, and state-of-t
he-art home theater.
Rip sat in the driver’s seat of Kevin’s Cigarette boat, which rested on a trailer near the boathouse’s main entrance, and tried to catch his breath. He held a towel dipped in lake water against the top of his hand. He’d been waxing like the Karate Kid for the better part of three hours and had bloodied a knuckle, banging it off the edge of a vent that led down to the boat’s cabin. His back was killing him and his left rib cage felt like he had a porcupine inside trying to get out. It sucked getting older, because lately it seemed he suffered one sore body part after another.
Rip lifted the towel off his hand and wondered where he could find a ten-cent bandage on a half-million-dollar boat. He figured he’d go below and see if one of the thirty-six keys on Kevin’s ring worked on the medicine cabinet down in the head.
He’d fiddled with at least thirty of the keys before one didn’t just go in but also turned. Inside was a little plastic box with the words First Aid stenciled in white on its side. He pulled at the lid for what seemed like forever and couldn’t get it to open. He leaned over and tapped the edge of the box against the wall and noticed a little panel had moved next to the toilet.
When he was done bandaging his wound, he locked the medicine cabinet back up and went to straighten out the panel that had shifted. When he did, he could see what looked like the barrel of a pistol pointing straight down, so he pulled the panel off.
“Whoa,” he said, immediately noticing that it was a large pistol with an unusual orange rubber grip.
“Quite a gun, isn’t it?”
Rip spun around and thought he was going to add a coronary to the sore back and ribs. Kevin Hart had climbed up on the boat and joined him in the cabin. Rip figured he might as well toss in being deaf to his ever-increasing list of ailments.
“Sorry,” Rip said. “I cut my hand and came down for a bandage and couldn’t get the first aid kit open. I tapped it on the wall and here we are.”
“No problem,” Hart said, and smiled as if he understood. “I don’t broadcast the fact that that gun is there. Remember about seven years ago when those drunks came on my boat out in the middle of the lake and ripped me off?”
“Yeah, I remember,” Rip said. One of them had a gun and held it to Kevin’s wife’s head.
“Not fun,” Kevin said.
Rip glanced back at the pistol. It was huge—an absolute hand cannon. “Next time somebody comes on the boat uninvited, just pull that bad boy out and watch them start walking the plank.”
“Exactly,” Hart said. He hesitated. “Please keep the gun between us, though, Rip. I don’t want anybody thinking I’m the gun-toting type.”
“No problem,” Rip said. Messes with your golden boy image, huh?
“I appreciate it,” Hart said.
“Hey,” Rip said. “I haven’t had a chance to apologize to you about what happened with Andy at church.”
“Yeah,” Hart said. “What was that all about? And how in the world did he know my middle name?”
Not sure, Frances.
“I have no clue,” Rip said with a shrug. “Kids sometimes have minds of their own.” He also still didn’t have the faintest idea what happened with Judi out at McLouth a couple days ago either. But Hart didn’t need to know about that. “I’m sure he meant no harm, though.”
“No worries,” Hart said. “Boat looks great, by the way.”
Rip slid the panel back over the gun, and when he turned around, Hart was holding out four hundred-dollar bills.
“That’s way too much, Kevin. I appreciate it, but it’s not necessary.”
“Seriously, Rip, take it. A few extra bucks for a great job, and I also appreciate you keeping the gun thing under wraps.”
“Well, thanks,” Rip said. He took the money. It was more than he’d made all week and Andy needed that new iPod . . .
But he couldn’t shove down the feeling that he’d just taken something he shouldn’t have. Money that was meant to pay for more than the job.
Kevin Hart was a rich man. He’d been attacked on board his boat before. Rip thought he’d want the world to know he was armed . . . to keep others from coming. So why the big secret?
It had taken Andy a little longer than usual to sweep off the roof at Mack’s, but he had expected it to. Whenever he carried Milo up there with him, the dumb dog always got in his way. Most weeks he left him behind, whining at the base of the ladder, but today Andy had relented.
When he finally finished sweeping, Andy decided to stay up top for a while because the roof was one of the quietest places in town to read. Mr. McIntosh didn’t mind if he and Milo sat up there all day and Andy liked the heat, so he figured over the next hour or two he’d forget about the crazy things people said he’d been doing and get through the rest of his latest book. But first he wanted to take another glance at that article in the copy of the Benning Weekly he’d brought with him. He thought it was pretty cool that some guy wore a black mask and showed up places, leaving things for people.
Andy took the three hamburgers out of the bag that Mr. McIntosh had given him, sat down, and leaned his back against the brick chimney that stuck out of the roof. Milo lay at his feet and Andy unwrapped two of the burgers and gave them to the dog. They were gone by the time Andy had his out of its wrapper and Milo begged for more, but Andy only opened the newspaper and read:
SANTA VACATIONING IN BENNING?
Brianna Bruley—TBW Reporter
Benning—Officer Heather Gerisch of the Benning Police Department has confirmed that they are continuing to investigate a pair of bizarre break-ins that have taken place within the township over the last couple of weeks.
The first incident occurred on the morning of June 8th out on Old Parker Road, and the second on June 13th at the Recreation Center. Both police and the victims of the first break-in describe the suspect as a six-foot-tall male wearing all black and a ski mask.
“Early indications seem to suggest we are dealing with the same perpetrator,” Gerisch said. “In both cases, the suspect seems to have entered the premises in the middle of the night without damaging or taking anything. It seems the sole intent of this person was to drop off items of value. In the first location, our perpetrator dropped off grocery cards. In the second, sports equipment. Regardless, this individual should be considered a threat, and we are taking these investigations very seriously.”
Anyone with any information regarding these incidents involving the “Summer Santa” is being asked to contact the Benning Police Department or the Benning Weekly’s anonymous tip line.
Andy folded the paper and looked around him. To his right, he had a clear view of the rear parking lot for Mack’s, and then the fields and trees that ran out toward the lake. To his left and beneath him were the front of the building and Main Street. It felt good to be up where he was, where he could see without worrying about being seen. Only a few cars moved up and down the street with most of them heading to the gas station. Right across the street, through the glare on a window, he could see a red-and-white barber pole spinning and old man Backus sitting in his barber’s chair, waiting for a customer. To the right of the barber shop was McNair’s Sporting Goods with a sign in the window that read “Arrows Half Off.” Bow season was still close to five months away, but everyone in Benning quietly knew that poaching over at the McLouth property had no season. “Shoot them during the day and drag them off at night” was what the old-timers always said. Next to McNair’s was the oldest building in Benning, a dark brick structure that used to house the old IGA, a grocery store that went out of business when all the people like his mother started to go to the Walmart over in Woodhaven to save a few bucks. Uncle Rip had been a bagger at the IGA when he was about Andy’s age and supposedly got fired for smoking pot on his break.
Andy glanced past the roof and beyond the abandoned grocery store, across the field behind it. He could see the back of the Dairy Queen. He had a fresh twenty in his pocket, and the idea of taking Milo over there and tossing a few
bucks at a banana split sounded pretty good.
Andy looked back at the gas station and could see Eric Bower, the guy who squealed on Uncle Rip, getting out of an old white van. The only thing whiter than that van was the look on Bower’s face the last time he saw Uncle Rip. A few months back, Andy and Uncle Rip were down below in Mack’s eating breakfast. Bower walked in and when he saw Uncle Rip sitting there, his Adam’s apple did a funny little dance, and then he turned around and went right back out the door. It reminded Andy a little bit of a white rat he had seen a couple years ago at a pet store over in Flat Rock, moseying happily around the aquarium until it rubbed noses with a boa constrictor in the corner.
Andy heard the back door slam and Milo sprang up. He tilted his nose up in the air like he smelled something, and then he walked over to the edge of the roof and started wiggling his backside as he looked down below. Andy knew one of the employees had just tossed a garbage bag of scraps in the dumpster and Milo was hoping to score.
“Come here, Milo,” Andy said.
The dog ignored him. His tail and backside just waggled faster and when he leaned a little closer, over the edge he went.
“Milo!” Andy yelled, jumping to his feet, his heart pounding. He raced to the edge of the roof and looked down.
Milo’s neck and collar looked like they were caked in mashed potatoes, and he was standing on top of a pile of loaded trash bags, pawing at the one he had just landed on.
“Milo, you idiot!”
Even though the dumpster was emptied three times a week, Andy had never seen it so full, and Milo’s lucky butt just happened to go off the edge on a day when he could survive the fall. Had it been just about any other day, Milo would have had four legs again and would be chasing and catching cars up in puppy heaven.
Andy climbed down, fished Milo out of the dumpster, wiped him off with some napkins that were in the burger bag, and had him up on the roof again, this time with his leash on and attached to an exhaust fan. Milo wasn’t happy about it and cried for a few minutes before giving up and rolling over for a midday snooze.
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