Behind the Curtain

by Peter Abrahams

  “How was Chloe’s?” he said.

  “Fine.”

  “What did you do?”

  “Swam.”

  “How’s Chloe doing?”

  “All right.”

  “What did you talk about?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Was Tim around?”

  “They were on their way out.”

  “Did you talk to them?”

  “Just said hi.”

  “Where were they going?”

  “I don’t know, Dad.” He looked like he was about to ask another question, but before he could, Ingrid headed him off with one of her own. “You’re playing golf in this weather?”

  Dad’s face relaxed a little. “Want to come?”

  They both knew that was a joke. Playing golf made Ingrid giddy. Last visit to the club, several years ago, her conduct on the practice green resulted in a letter from the membership committee.

  “You’re wearing that jacket with those pants?” she said.

  “Why not?” said Dad. “Red goes with green.”

  “You think that’s red?”

  But Dad was already out the door.

  Ingrid popped some waffles into the toaster, mixed up a nice blend of maple syrup and melted butter for filling up those tiny waffle squares. Waffles were a brilliant invention. She whipped up some hot cocoa to go with them.

  Eating happily away in the breakfast nook, light rain fogging up those lovely windows on three sides, Ingrid made a mental list of great inventions, the ones that changed the world. Waffles, for sure. Pillows. Snow days. Gift wrapping. Theater curt—

  Mom walked in with a cardboard box in her hands. “Morning, Ingrid.”

  “Morning, Mom.”

  “Sleep well?”

  “Yeah,” said Ingrid. Mom herself looked a bit tired, those two vertical lines between her eyes pretty deep. “What’s in the box?”

  Mom put it on the table, sliced through the packing tape with scissors, opened the flaps. Ingrid knelt up on her chair, peered in.

  “Statues,” she said. “Cool.”

  Mom took one out—a plastic man, about a foot high, bearded and long-haired, wearing a robe. There were eleven more in the box, all the same.

  “Who is he?” Ingrid said.

  “St. Joseph,” said Mom. “A freebie to any client who wants one.”

  “I don’t get it,” Ingrid said.

  Mom smiled. She picked up St. Joseph and gave him a close look. “Some people believe if you bury St. Joseph upside down in your yard, the house sells quicker.”

  Wow. People were amazing. “Don’t give one to the Goldbergs,” Ingrid said, the Goldbergs being a new listing of Mom’s in Lower Falls.

  Mom laughed, tousled Ingrid’s hair. “That’s what you’re having for breakfast?” she said. “Different forms of sugar?”

  Ingrid took another St. Joseph out of the box. “What if you buried him right side up?”

  Mom thought for a moment. “I guess your house would never sell.”

  “Can I have one?” Ingrid said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Just to have.”

  Mom shrugged. “Sure. And Nigel could use a walk.”

  Nigel, dozing by his food bowl in the corner, didn’t look like exercise was on his mind.

  “He’s sleeping,” Ingrid said. But the words were hardly out of her mouth before Nigel suddenly lurched to his feet, eyes opening in slow motion.

  “And it’s miserable out there,” Ingrid said.

  “This is New England,” Mom said.

  “That makes you a New England dog,” Ingrid said through gritted teeth, dragging Nigel, who’d changed his mind about the whole thing the moment he’d stepped outside, across the backyard. He didn’t start self-propelling until they entered the town woods, acres and acres that stretched all the way to the river.

  Ingrid let him off the leash. Twenty or thirty yards along the path, rain dripping down off bare branches overhead, Nigel paused and sniffed the air. After that he wanted to trot around in circles.

  “Whatever you’re doing, make it quick,” Ingrid said.

  He kept circling. Just ahead and slightly off the path stood a thick oak with a kind of double trunk bearing the remains of the tree house that Ty and Ingrid had built—and Dad had rebuilt more safely—years ago. Nigel trotted over and rubbed his head against the bark.

  “Any idea how you look right now?” Ingrid said.

  He kept doing it, only now there was some drool.

  “Evidently not.”

  She moved closer to the tree. When had she last been up there? Ingrid couldn’t remember. The tree house had somehow just slipped away.

  The footholds Dad had nailed into the trunk were still in place. Ingrid ran her hand over one. Just a scrap piece of pine or something, but it had a special feel that brought her back. The next thing she knew, she was climbing up the tree.

  The entrance to the tree house was a round hole in the floor, twenty feet up. Ingrid pulled herself through. Inside was a small square room, moss growing on one of the walls, a pile of leaves in one corner, everything damp. But the two stools, red for Ingrid, blue for Ty, were still there, and so was the sign Ty had painted: THE TREEHOUS. OWNR TY. ASISTENT INGRID. They’d played a game called Dark Forest Spies, consisting mostly of hiding out from imaginary intruders, talking in whispers, and dropping Ping-Pong balls that were actually grenades over the side when things got menacing. Their deadliest enemy was the Meany Cat. When Ty thought he heard it coming, he’d tell Ingrid to hide behind the stools and close her eyes. “I’ll protect you,” he’d say. After that, she’d hear him making little explosion sounds, and soon the coast would be clear.

  Ingrid gazed out the window. Outside was a high-up world she’d forgotten. A gray squirrel stood motionless on a nearby branch, an acorn in its mouth. White mushrooms grew from a hole in a tree trunk. A brown oak leaf drifted by.

  Ingrid turned to go, spotted something half hidden in the leaf pile. Could it be? Yes. A Ping-Pong ball. She reached for it and, as she did, felt something else under the leaves.

  Ingrid brushed the leaves away, picked it up—a little plastic bottle, empty. It was the kind vitamins might come in, although the label said nothing about vitamins, at least nothing she could understand. The writing was all in Spanish, the words at the bottom reading Fabricado en México. The only other words she knew were halfway down: Anabolic Steroids. Ingrid placed the bottle back in the leaf pile, covered it up.

  Back at home, she found a note on the fridge: At the office, won’t be long. Mom.

  “Ty?” she called. “Ty?”

  No answer. She checked the mudroom. The Red Raider varsity jacket, with TY on one sleeve and his number 19 on the other, wasn’t hanging on his hook. She was alone in the house.

  Ingrid went upstairs. The door to Ty’s room stood open. She went in. Chaos. She looked around, not knowing what she was looking for. Maybe just some sign that everything was all right. What she saw were clothes all over the place, four or five copies of Sports Illustrated scattered on the bed, lights blinking from all the electronic stuff on Ty’s shelf—TV, CD player, VCR, DVD.

  Something was bothering her, but what? She stepped over some damp towels, switched on the TV. ESPN. She pressed Play on the CD player. Rap. She popped open the drawer of the VCR. Jerry Maguire. What was wrong? Some little thing, some trifle.

  What trifle was she looking for? She reached for the DVD player, popped open the—Only she didn’t. The DVD player was gone.

  Dust balls lay on the shelf where it had been. A cable hung unattached. That was all data. Impossible to reach conclusions unless you had enough of it, according to Holmes. She could think of one more bit of data: Sean Rubino had a new DVD player. What did Stacy say? Some friend of his didn’t want it anymore.

  Ingrid stood in her brother’s room, very still, waiting for some idea to arrive. She was still waiting when a horn honked on the street.

  Ingrid peered ou
t the window. A pickup was parked outside. A bright-red pickup, pretty old, but spotless.

  Another honk, longer this time. Grampy didn’t like waiting.

  eight

  “HI, GRAMPY,” INGRID said through the open window of the pickup. “No one’s home.”

  “What does that make you?” said Grampy. “A ghost? Hop in.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Questions, questions,” said Grampy.

  “That was only one question,” said Ingrid.

  “What if the answer was ice cream?”

  “At Moo Cow?” Moo Cow had the best ice cream in Echo Falls.

  “Where else?” said Grampy.

  “I’ll just leave a note,” Ingrid said.

  They drove off in the pickup. A cold day, the clouds dark and heavy, but Grampy kept the windows open. He wasn’t wearing a jacket, just a T-shirt, old corduroys held up with suspenders, and filthy work boots. The wind ruffled his hair, white as chalk but very thick. He looked pretty happy about something.

  “Hey,” said Ingrid.

  “What?”

  “Isn’t Moo Cow down that way?”

  “How did that happen?” said Grampy. “We’ll swing by after.”

  “After what?”

  “You’ll see,” said Grampy.

  He crossed the bridge, the river flowing fast and black down below, and turned up Route 392 on the other side. After a while the farm appeared on the right—brown fields, bare apple trees in the orchard, and the sheds, barn, house, all painted red that might have been bright at one time.

  “How old’s the farm, Grampy?”

  “We stole it from the Indians,” Grampy said.

  “Very funny,” said Ingrid.

  Grampy did not reply.

  He parked by the barn, led her out back, where a stack of boards and a toolbox lay waiting.

  “Just hold things steady while I hammer,” Grampy said.

  “What are we building?” said Ingrid, holding things steady.

  “A box,” said Grampy, hammering. He hammered hard and fast, his arm muscles like stiff cables under his skin.

  “A box for what?” said Ingrid. The look in his eye reminded her of a recent project she’d helped him with, a sort of ecological renovation down below the orchard that had involved dynamite and rare toads.

  Grampy plugged a power saw into an outlet on the barn wall, started sawing. “Can’t hear you with all this noise,” he said.

  He worked faster and faster, almost reckless, never took a single measurement, but after a very short time there stood a perfect box, about six feet square and three feet high, with a hinged door and even a roof.

  “Forgot the windows,” he said, changing saw blades, and zip, zip, cut out three round windows. “Know the story about Giotto?” he said.

  “Who’s Giotto?”

  “Some painter guy trying out for a job,” said Grampy. “The pope says let’s see how good you are, so what does Giotto do?”

  “What, Grampy?”

  “Draws him a little circle,” said Grampy. “But perfect.”

  How did Grampy know something like that? He’d never shown any interest in art. She looked at him closely. He caught the look and said, “Not this pope, of course. Earlier.”

  “Did he get the job, whatever his name was?” Ingrid said.

  Something about her question made Grampy smile. “No idea,” he said. “Ask your mom.”

  “My mom?”

  “Head on her shoulders, your mom,” said Grampy. “She’s the one told me the story.” He handed Ingrid a pitchfork. “Get some of that hay into the box.” He picked up the tools and went into the barn.

  Ingrid tossed a few forkfuls of hay through the hinged doorway. From the barn came some high-pitched squeaks. Grampy came out with a squirming pink thing in his arms.

  “A pig, Grampy? You’re going to have animals again?”

  “Just the one piglet for now,” said Grampy, stooping to shove it into the box. “Tax purposes.”

  The piglet poked its snout through one of the round windows, made miserable noises.

  “Ugly little fella,” Grampy said.

  “I think he’s kind of cute,” said Ingrid. “What does tax purposes mean, Grampy?”

  Grampy took a Slim Jim from his pocket, peeled off the wrapper, offered it to Ingrid.

  “No thanks.”

  He bit off a piece, held the rest out for the pig, who scarfed it up with one snort. “All on paper, the tax situation,” he said, and set off toward the house, Ingrid following. The pig started whining before they were out of sight.

  “Should we give him a name?” Ingrid said.

  Grampy shook his head. “Only makes it harder in the end,” he said.

  Grampy had a great kitchen with wide-plank pine floors and a huge fireplace—big enough for roasting grown-up pigs, Ingrid recalled, which used to happen long ago. But he didn’t have a fire going and it was cold. Ingrid touched a radiator.

  “Is the heat on?” she said. At 99 Maple Lane, the heat went on by the middle of October; earlier if Mom had her way.

  “Not till Thanksgiving,” said Grampy.

  He stood by the table, searching through the mail. There were piles and piles of it. Ingrid went over. Piles and piles of mail, almost all unopened, going back for weeks.

  “Here we go,” he said, pulling out an envelope. It had one of those green Registered Mail stickers, meaning the mailman had stuck around for Grampy’s signature. He handed her the letter.

  Dear Mr. Hill,

  It has come to the attention of the Echo Falls Board of Assessors that your property on Route 392, town lots 103 A through T, is no longer a working farm. Accordingly, your tax category for the upcoming fiscal year has been changed from D to A. You have thirty days to appeal this ruling.

  Sincerely,

  Scrawled Signature

  “What does it mean?” Ingrid said.

  “Means they’re bloodsuckers,” said Grampy. “Pure and simple.”

  “Who?”

  “All of them,” said Grampy, waving his hands. He was getting agitated, all at once seemed older. “The whole town.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He jabbed at the letter. “Farms are D. Houses are A. Get it now?”

  Ingrid didn’t. “Sorry, Grampy.”

  He looked angry for a moment; then his face softened. “Farms don’t get taxed. Houses do.”

  “Oh.”

  “And the more acres you got, the more you pay. I own more acres than anybody in town.”

  “You do?”

  “Know how much the taxes are going to be?”

  “How much?”

  “The earth,” Grampy said.

  “But it’s going to be all right,” Ingrid said. “You’ve got the pig. We’ll appeal.”

  “Takes more than one pig,” Grampy said.

  He sat slowly in a chair. Mail cascaded off the table. Ingrid bent down, started picking it up. Under the table, she could see his legs. They were shaking.

  Ingrid rose, began arranging the mail in neat stacks. “We’ll have to get more, that’s all.”

  Grampy nodded, but not an energetic sort of nod.

  “Where should we get pigs from?” Ingrid said.

  “There’s places,” he said, but his eyes had a faraway look and he didn’t really seem to be listening. Raising pigs was going to demand a lot from Grampy. Hadn’t he had it up to here with farming? Why couldn’t the board of assessors have just left him alone? Maybe Chloe was right: selling the farm might be the best thing for Grampy. How long can this Grampy character take care of it?

  She sat down beside him. “Grampy?”

  He turned to her. “What is it, kid?”

  “Do you think that maybe…” The flow of words dried up.

  “Maybe what?”

  She licked her lips. “Maybe it’s time to sell the farm.”

  Energy came rushing back into Grampy’s body. He seemed to get bigger and redder,
and just like that he was on his feet, a neck vein throbbing. “You too?” he said.

  “No, Grampy, I’m only saying that since—”

  He pounded his fist on the table, Ingrid’s careful stacks all tumbling back down. “Never,” he said. “Is that clear?”

  “Yes.”

  He gazed down at her. “With me or against me?”

  “Me, Grampy?” There were all these questions, taxes, pigs, how long he could live here by himself. Ingrid ignored them. “With you,” she said.

  Grampy nodded. “Then let’s roast up some marshmallows,” he said.

  Grampy built a roaring fire. They roasted marshmallows, Ingrid getting those perfect golden-brown crusts on the outside, Grampy burning most of his although he didn’t seem to care. The house warmed up. Grampy practically went through the whole bag of marshmallows by himself, like he’d been starving.

  “We’ll have to get those pigs pretty soon,” Ingrid said.

  Grampy popped another blackened marshmallow into his mouth. “Thing with bullies,” he said, “you got to punch ’em right in the nose.”

  “Won’t just filing the appeal be enough?” Ingrid said.

  The flames flickered in Grampy’s eyes. “I learned about bullies when I was—how old are you again?”

  “Thirteen.”

  “When I was even younger than you. Just a little guy back then, didn’t get my strength till I was eighteen, went to Wyoming and worked on a ranch.”

  “You worked on a ranch?”

  “But this was before, right here. Those days there were still lots of farms around, including a small one the Prescotts had right across 392.”

  “There were still Prescotts then?”

  “Yup.”

  “How long was this before the accident at the falls?”

  “You know about that?” said Grampy. “Four or five years, maybe. But that’s not the point. The Prescotts didn’t live on the farm—they had tenant farmers, the Krakens, a rotten family from way back, and the Krakens had a boy a few years older than me. Liked to play cowboys and Indians. I was the Indian.” He stared at the fire for a long time. “Always ended up in their barn, somehow,” said Grampy, “me with my hands tied, noose around my neck.”