You know what felt good? I knew I was the only person in the world who could feel this hooked in to nature and stuff. Damn right I was special, and tough luck on the rest of you.
I opened my eyes. That little carnivore turned out to be a raccoon. It was on the gravel shoulder now, about ten feet away from me. It stood up on its hind legs and twitched its nose in my direction.
About the same time, we both heard a car coming. Mr. Raccoon hustled off into the brush. I strolled over to the side of the road and kept walking.
Headlights washed over me and a blocky white van went by. It swerved a little as it passed, then rounded the corner ahead. Through the trees, I could see its headlights tilt off into the woods. There was a screech, and a dull thud. I heard the whine of wheels spinning in air before the engine went dead.
The breeze carried the citrus taint of radiator fluid. I was irritated. So much for my moment communing with Mother Nature. I felt a little guilty about that, since it sure sounded like somebody just drove off the road. I went to check it out.
The van had gone into a little ditch. The back tires were a foot off the ground. The front of the van had kissed a fir tree.
I came up alongside the driver’s door. “Anybody hurt?”
“God damn it!” It was a man’s voice, loaded with irritation, but without pain or fear.
I looked in the driver’s side window. An older guy, with receding, kinky hair, a short goatee, and glasses, fumbled with his seat belt.
The window was down. I pulled the lock up and opened the door. It seemed to me there were too many gear shifts next to his seat.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah, dammit.” He succeeded in undoing his seat belt, and had to lean an arm on the steering wheel to keep from tilting forward. He looked at me. His eyes narrowed.
“I’ll be damned.”
“Excuse me?” I didn’t like the way he looked at me. I’ve seen that expression before when people first see me and can’t decide if they should stare or look away. “I asked if you were all right.”
“Oh, hell, kid, I’m fine.” He shifted a little in the seat.
I didn’t get why we were just hanging out. “So… do you want to get out of the van?”
He adjusted the glasses on his face and squinted at me. “I said I was fine. I still need your help. I don’t have the use of my legs. I can’t walk. Get it?”
I almost felt like going back to my stroll. I didn’t like this guy’s attitude, even if he claimed to be handicapped.
“If you can’t walk, how do you drive?”
He frowned, but his eyes were bright. “Not very well, apparently.” He shook his head and sighed. He pointed to the extra levers between the front seats. “See these? The van is a custom job.”
I got it. He could shift, or brake, or accelerate with his right hand. “Well, look, if I have to, I can carry you back to our cabin. It’s just down the road…”
He put his head on the steering wheel and sighed. “Listen, it might be less embarrassing for the both of us if you just get my chair out of the back.” He handed me the keys.
“Oh.”
I went around to the back of the van. It was a little awkward, since the whole tail end was up off the ground. I managed to open the back doors.
Inside the van, large pieces of wood and animal sculptures in various stages of completion had been thrown around from the crash. There were bears, deer, even one that looked like it would eventually be a griffin. There was also a wheelchair.
I muscled the wheelchair out, figured out how to snap it open, and wheeled it around to the driver’s side.
“Here you go,” I said.
He slid an arm across my shoulders. He smelled of aspen and denim, and he was not light. I got him into the chair.
“Okay. Thanks.” Once he was settled, he gave me another long look.
“What’s your story, anyway? I knew this kid, down Glendora. He had this bone disorder, made his face all flat and broad. You got something like that?”
Doesn’t matter how often it happens, I still get knocked over by people’s blunt stupidity. Maybe this was worse, since the guy throwing stones apparently hadn’t walked on two feet for some time.
“Do you want my help or not?”
He scowled and seemed a little surprised. “Already got it. You don’t want to help any more, that’s fine.”
“Doesn’t look like you need it.” I wanted to leave him there, but something wasn’t right.
He grinned. He stuck out his right hand.
“Denver Colorado. That’s my name, not where I was headed.”
Totally confused, I automatically shook his hand. “Nate Charters.”
“Charters?”
“What’s your story, anyway?” I don’t know why he repeated my name, since he’d clearly heard me. I decided I could play along. “You one of those, whattaya call, deaf dudes?” I gave him a smarmy grin.
He smiled, and conceded with a tilt of his head. “Okay, Nate Charters. Nice to meet you.”
“Sure it is.”
Now he did laugh. “Relax. I didn’t mean anything. Just taking your measure.”
“Make a lot of friends that way?”
“Just enough,” he said.
I bit my tongue. “I’m just up the street here. You can come in and call a tow truck, or something.”
“That’d be neighborly of you.”
From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Eight
He wheeled himself alongside me with strong, economical strokes. He continued to stare at me. I avoided looking at him.
“So you’re, what, in high school?”
“Yep.”
“Take a lot of ribbing?”
“Why do you ask?”
“Let me tell you something, kid. I was in tenth grade when I lost the use of my legs. Thirty years have gone by and not a day passes where at least one total stranger looks at me like I’m carrying the plague. Just because I’m not vertical.”
I looked at him.
“All I’m saying is,” he said, “you gotta find something that reminds you you’re not any worse off than them. Maybe even better.”
Advice like that, I’ve heard before. I know it’s well-meaning, but it never fails to irritate me. “Like making wooden bears?”
His laughed boomed off the mountains. “That shit pays the rent, I guess. No, I’m talking about something in here.” Inevitably, he tapped his chest.
I wanted to groan. “Here’s the cabin. Let’s keep it quiet; I don’t want to wake up my mother.”
He snickered. “Was someone out past curfew?”
I unlocked the door and held it open. “You might say that.” He wheeled himself over the small step at the entryway with no trouble at all. I turned the light on and showed him the kitchen and the phone.
“I’ll give Ditko over at the Gas ‘n’ Tackle a holler.” It seemed like he was talking half to himself. “He’s the only one old man Lee trusts with the tow truck.”
“Will he be awake?”
“I’ll wake his ass up if he isn’t!” Denver laughed, barely quieter than his bellow outside.
I flinched and padded to my mother’s bedroom door. I listened, and sniffed automatically. Panic flushed through me when I realized Ditko wasn’t the only one Denver was waking up. I backed away from the door as my mother opened it, clutching at her robe.
“What the hell is going on out here?”
“Mom, I…”
She pushed past me and into the kitchen. Denver Colorado said into the phone, “Well, put on your pants and get down here, then!” He saw my mother. “I gotta go, Steve.” He hung up the phone. “Hello, Lucy.”
My mother’s face flickered between a scowl and a smile. “I’ll be god damned. Denver Colorado.”
Denver pivoted his chair. “It’s been a while.”
“What are you doing in my kitchen, Denver?”
“Your boy.” He cocked his head toward me and put oddly strong emphasis
on the last word. “I ran my van off the road, and he helped me out. Very resourceful young man.”
“I didn't know you were still up here.”
He looked away from her, then back. “I had my reasons to come back.”
I stepped forward. “How do you two know each other?”
Denver looked at my mother. “Well, that’s a story for another time, I think, but I’ve known your mother and dad since before they were married. We used to raise some hell up here, that’s for sure.”
“You knew my father?”
“Oh, sure – even before he met your mother, actually. He was a piece of work, that old spook…”
My mother said, “It’s late, Denver. Maybe we can have lunch tomorrow. Catch up.”
Something passed between them that wasn’t meant for me. A warning from my mother; reluctant compliance from Denver. “Well. I’ve still got a few before Ditko gets his act together. Unless you want me to wait on the porch...”
My mother sighed, a hand at her temple. “Of course not. I’ll make some coffee – it's going to be instant, though.”
“That’d be nice.” Denver winked at me. I smiled, but I didn’t get it. “So, what are you two doing up here, anyway? Isn’t it a school night?”
I blurted it out before my mother could say a word. “My mom’s afraid they’re gonna come after me ‘cause of that guy Donner and all this Sovereign stuff going down.”
She turned from the open kitchen cabinet and gave me a look that spoke of lousy times to come.
Denver’s face scrunched up. “Lucy, that’s the stupidest thing I’ve heard in a very long time. Why would you think the boy’s so special?”
She scowled and looked up from filling a battered pot at the sink. “You know how things get, Denver.”
“Yes, I sure do.” He shook his head. “He’s just a kid, Luce. He’s no danger to anyone, and certainly not worth anyone’s trouble when big fish like that guy in Washington are swimming around.”
“That’s what I said,” I put in.
“You don’t know that,” my mother said.
“So, what, you’re gonna keep him locked up in your mother-in-law’s cabin and hope no one notices?” He snorted. “Hell, Luce, I took one look at him and damn near knocked down a tree with the van. That’s not gonna work so well, is it?”
She seemed to shrink, but smiled a little. “You know it’s going to get bad.”
He shrugged. “It’s always bad. I’ve never known you to run from a fight.”
“We’ve managed to stay out of it so far, Denver.”
“What fight?” I was utterly lost.
Denver rolled his eyes. “Ask the kid if he’s managed to stay out of it, being the way he is all these years.”
I felt like I should defend myself, or at least try one more time to be part of the conversation. “It’s cool, I can handle it.”
Denver pointed at me and nodded curtly. “I rest my case.”
My mother looked at me. “Honey, it’s going to get worse. They’ve got a name to call you.”
She was so not there. “Mom, they’ve got lots of names for me. Duh.”
She looked a little hurt. “I mean it’s going to be more difficult to make friends.”
“I’ve got friends.”
She was relentless, but her tone was apologetic. “I mean keep friends.”
“But taking me up here, away from everybody, is like… like leaving the scene of the crime,” I said. “It’s gonna make me stand out even more.”
Denver nodded. “Precisely.”
My mother glared at him. He spread his hands.
She sat down at the small table next to him. “You bastard.” She shook her head and smiled slightly.
“Nice to see you, Luce. Really is.”
“What have you been doing up here, Denver?”
He glanced at me and flashed a grin. “Passing the time. Feeding the, uh, animals.” He chuckled, but I read nervousness I didn’t understand. “Selling piece-of-crap art to tourists. Making do.”
“Better than that, I’ll bet.”
Outside, a horn honked.
“Well, that’ll be Ditko.” Denver rolled away from the table. “No time for coffee, I guess.”
“We'll go to breakfast tomorrow?” My mother asked.
“You mean you’ll still be here?”
She let out a sigh that tricked her into a laugh. “Bastard. I’ll call you in a few days.”
“We’re going home?” I felt like I’d walked into the middle of a movie, and now I could barely make sense of the ending. I shook Denver’s hand. “I guess I’m glad I ran into you, Mister Colorado.”
“Almost the other way around,” he quipped. “By the way, ‘Mister Colorado’ sounds like I won a beauty contest. Make it Denver.”
“All right, Denver.”
“Don’t take up wood carving, kid. It’s rough on the hands.”
He reached out, tapped my chest with one hard finger, and winked.
From The Journal Of Nate Charters – Nine
By the time we got home, it was the middle of the afternoon on Friday. The newspaper in the driveway announced “The Superman Lives” in gigantic black capital letters. After my mother insisting we listen to talk and news radio the whole drive back, I wasn’t up for reading. I dropped it on the dining room table.
She came in behind me and swept up the paper. “Aren’t you interested?”
“I’ll read it later. I’m Sovereign’ed out, mom.”
She clicked her tongue critically. “You need to keep up,” she said, but thankfully didn’t push it.
“Is it all right if I use the phone?”
She looked at the paper again. Her nostrils flared. “Go ahead. I’m going to take a shower.”
There were three messages on the answering machine: two from Mel, one from Lina. Mel called first, Thursday night. “Turn on the news, Nate.” He called again about an hour before my mother and I got home, which would have been about when he got home from school. “Where were you today?” He was all hyper.
Lina called not ten minutes later. “Hey, so, this is a message for Nate. It’s Lina. Call me if you still want to go out and stuff, okay?” And she left her number, like nothing had just turned the world upside-down in the last twenty four hours. Perfectly normal. Maybe even a little nervous.
I didn’t even consider calling Mel. I dialed Lina’s number and paced while her phone rang in my ear.
A man picked up. “Porters.”
“Uh, hi… is Lina there?”
“Who’s calling, please?” He sounded like a disk jockey, or a politician.
“Oh, it’s… a friend of hers. Nate.”
I heard the crinkling static of a receiver covered by a hand. Far beneath this, a quick conversation.
Then, she was there.
“Hey, Nate. Did you ditch today, or something?”
“Hi!” She made me feel like we’d already been talking, and I’d missed the first part of the conversation. “Uh, no, we had to go out of town. Kinda quickly.”
“My, how mysterious,” she said. “So, where’d you go?” There was something in her voice, but I couldn’t figure it out. I wished I could smell her. Maybe she was just as anxious as I was?
“We have this cabin, up in Kirby Lake. My grandma’s. My, uh, mom wanted to go up there.”
Lina’s opinion of my mother, shaped by three very bad minutes in my driveway twenty four hours before, came through. “She’s a spontaneous one, isn’t she?”
I tried to laugh. “Yeah.”
There was a little silence then, an uncomfortable gulf that confirmed she was as nervous as me.
She said, “Hey, did you see that guy on TV? Crazy, huh?”
Well, I thought, this is it. “Yeah. Pretty wild.” I swallowed. “So… what do you think of all this Sovereign stuff, anyway?”
I pictured her, probably in her kitchen like I was in mine, propped against the wall or sitting in a chair. I paced and played slow ju
mp rope with the telephone cord.
I imagined a shrug. “I don’t know. It’s kinda hard to believe. My dad says it’s the start of a new age, that nothing’s going to be the same… I can’t even believe it’s real.”
“Yeah.”
“I mean, how could anyone even do all that stuff? And we’re supposed to believe a guy with gargoyle wings?”
“Well…”
“So, what are you doing Saturday night, anyway, around seven? Off on another day trip?”
I swerved and changed mental lanes to catch up with her. She made me dizzy, even on the phone. I laughed. “No day trips.” I hoped. “What am I doing around Saturday night around seven?” She wouldn’t be asking me out if she thought I was the anti-Christ. I relaxed a little.
“Well, The Breakfast Club is at the Kane Theater at seven thirty. You still want to go, right?”
“Hold on.”
I covered the receiver with my hand and hollered. “Mom! Can I go out Saturday night?”
My mother, in her around-the-house sweats, toweled her hair as she came down the hall. “You don’t have to yell.”
“Sorry.” Lina had me so distracted, I hadn’t even noticed the moist air and odor of shampoo drifting through the house. “Can I go out tomorrow night?”
“With who?” Caution colored her tone.
“Lina. You met her… sort of… yesterday.”
“The girl who drove you home.”
“Yeah. We wanna go see The Breakfast Club.”
I watched the “no” begin to shape on her face. I gathered my arguments.
“I guess so,” she said. “Just be careful… it’s still…”
My mouth dropped open.
I twisted away from her and uncovered the phone. “I can go,” I said to Lina.
“Awesome!”
“You still remember how to get here?”
“I was just there, like, yesterday, Nate.”
I think I was blushing. “Right. Sorry. I guess that seems like a long time ago.”
She laughed lightly. “Do you miss me, Nate?”
The Sovreign Era (Book 1): Brave Men Run Page 4
