The Pigman's Legacy

by Paul Zindel

  “Come on,” he said, “we're going in.”

  He reached out his hands to us, and once again we became his crutches. We walked down the steps that led to the basement. It was one of those jobs where, beneath a set of stairs going up to the main floor, there are steps that lead down to the basement. There was an iron gate protecting that area, and Gus shoved a key in my hand. “Open it,” he ordered.

  I hesitated because I didn't want to let go of him.

  “Don't worry about me,” he blurted. “I can handle myself from here on in. Get that gate open and throw a garbage can through the window.”

  “Gus,” Lorraine said, “don't you have a key for the door?”

  “I lost it,” Gus yelled, “but my whole life is in this house, and nobody's going to take it away from me without a fight!”

  I took the key and opened the gate. A shot of energy ran through the old man and he broke away from Lorraine. Before we could stop him he actually lifted a garbage can and hurled it at the window. The can bounced off the middle frame but shattered two huge panes of glass. The glass and the garbage can crashed onto the cement patio like an explosion.

  “Somebody will call the police,” Lorraine cried out.

  “Ha,” Gus said. “My neighbors wouldn't call the police if maniacs were setting me on fire!”

  A car honked on the street several times just then. The three of us froze. We heard steps on the pavement. I peeked around from under the steps and all I could see was a woman across the street getting into some car. Somebody was double-parked and a few cars had come to a stop behind them. They started honking, and after some loud verbal exchanges they all drove off.

  “Climb in and unlock the basement door,” Gus ordered.

  “We'll be shot for trespassing,” Lorraine moaned.

  “Did they really lock your trunk up inside?” I asked Gus.

  “Yes,” he said. I could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn't lying.

  “Then you're going to get it back,” I said, and I knocked away the glass and climbed in.

  The front room of the basement was dark with stabs of light flying through from the boarded windows. I took one breath of the dark, cold air and hurried to the door. I fumbled with the locks, waiting for a rat to run over my feet, but managed to get it open before anything bit me.

  “Now we're in business,” Gus cheered as he rushed in. Lorraine stepped gingerly behind him.

  “Did they board the place up right after the Colonel died?” I asked, but the old guy ignored me and kept saying, “We'll show them. We'll show them.” He went straight to a workbench in the far left corner of the basement.

  “This feels like a real haunted house,” Lorraine said. But then I could see she regretted it, because Gus obviously loved the house. She mumbled an apology immediately, but Gus paid no attention to us for the next few moments while he was testing flashlights with various degrees of battery strength. I moved in to get a closer look at what was the best collection of flashlights and lanterns I'd ever seen. He must have had seventeen regular flashlights and two or three bigger contraptions. I started testing them along with him, and when I found a couple that were pretty good I gave one to Lorraine. The old guy took a big lantern for himself.

  “I built this area of the house myself,” Gus said, pointing to built-in filing cabinets. He pulled out this long drawer that resembled a refrigerated compartment in a morgue. “These are the designs for some of the subways I did,” he babbled. His voice sounded stronger as he grasped a cluster of long vinyl tubes and slipped out some blueprints. There were so many arcs and lines and angles and notations it gave me a headache to look at them with only the illumination of a couple of flashlights.

  “How long does it take to draw something like that?” I asked.

  “Almost a year,” Gus answered solemnly.

  “That long?” Lorraine asked incredulously.

  “The Colonel wasn't a hack,” Gus bellowed.

  “I'm sure he wasn't,” Lorraine agreed.

  Gus dumped the whole mess of plans back in the drawer and slammed it shut. He turned his lantern and followed the light beam, with us straight behind him. We proceeded down a dark narrow hallway, made a sharp right turn, then a sharp left, and found ourselves in a rectangular-shaped room with cushiony sofas and lots of pillows on them. Then a little farther down another hall was a kitchenette off to the right, but we didn't go in there. Instead we kept going straight until we reached these dusty old drapes. Gus pulled a string and the drapes parted, to reveal sliding glass doors and a rear patio beyond.

  “That was the garden,” Gus pointed out.

  Lorraine and I pressed our faces to the window. The garden outside was very eerie-looking, or maybe it was just the darkness of the rain clouds hovering above. There were these long vines hanging all over the place that looked like mutated octopuses. They covered the white wrought-iron furniture that wasn't so white anymore. And on both sides of the garden there were these strange statues. One had the body of a horse and the head of a man, and the other one had this voluptuous woman who the old guy said was Venus. I was expecting a whole bunch of violinists to show up and start playing the first act of The Nutcracker. Gus was really getting very freaky, I thought. He not only did not need us as crutches, he could have used roller skates at the rate he was traveling. He led us back down the hallway into the kitchenette. Beyond that was a dark archway where I could glimpse some stairs heading up into the house. We went through the arch and Lorraine let out a big scream. I mean what greeted us on the other side wasn't what you'd ordinarily expect to find at the foot of a staircase. And I was surprised to hear Gus chuckle. We had come face to face with a giant plaque on the wall that was a full-color, three-dimensional, four-foot dinosaur. It had a little gold plate underneath it that said it was a STEGOSAURUS. But it looked like a plain old spiky lizard to me. “The Philadelphia museum gave that to the Colonel,” Gus said, “because he was putting in a subway down there and found the hipbone to that thing.”

  Gus started up the stairs. Lorraine and I hurried to his side just in case he decided to go to sleep and fall backward. It was a weird sensation walking up partially carpeted marble, and when we got to the top Lorraine and I had to rest against the banister. Lorraine let out another shriek. This time there was a PLESIOSAURUS on the wall.

  Gus laughed. “The Colonel really loved the dinosaurs. He really loved them.” Then he took off and we had to practically trot to keep up with him. He went into a large room at the front of the house. We all spun our flashlights in different directions, and I couldn't believe my eyes. The walls were made of crocodile skin. There was even a guest book made with a crocodile-skin cover, stationed on a podium near the front of the room. It looked like the Colonel must have really been loaded, and maybe a little nuts too.

  “This room was imported from Tanganyika,” Gus bragged. “It was the Colonel's favorite room.”

  Bam! Gus was off again. We rushed after him this way and that way. Sometimes running into closets or dead ends in bathrooms. It felt like we were journeying through tunnels. On the next floor Gus pointed out the Colonel's office in the back of the house, red- and blue- and green-colored glass covering the entire back wall. The slivers of glass sparkled like rubies and amethysts and emeralds; either that or a lot of cut-up old soda bottles. The room was flooded with intricately designed woodwork—the kind my mother would have adored spraying Johnson's wax on.

  “This room was imported from England,” Gus stated. “You can't get mahogany like this anymore.”

  “Gus,” Lorraine said soberly, “I think we'd better get your trunk and get out of here. Someone may have heard us breaking in.”

  “Well, I'm tired,” Gus complained, plopping down into a big swivel chair behind the desk.

  “We'll get it for you,” I said. “Where is it?”

  “Just keep going up the stairs to the top floor,” Gus said. “You can't miss it. The black one.”

  “What if there's an alar
m system or something Gus doesn't know about?” Lorraine whined.

  “Don't worry about it,” I said, grabbing her hand and dragging her to the stairs. I held on to her and had to practically yank her all the way up the next flight. There was a little hall and it seemed like this floor had been divided only into two rooms. The rear room was huge. I flashed my light around and saw that it was a bedroom. A huge four-poster bed was sitting smack in the middle of the floor. A semicircular window was set in one wall, and it was made up of at least forty little framed windows. There was an old-fashioned telescope planted right at the foot of the window. Lorraine and I went over to try the thing out immediately, but there wasn't a crack wide enough in the shutters, which had been nailed shut from outside.

  “This room is creepy,” Lorraine said.

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  “I don't know,” she said. “I think it's because I get the feeling no woman ever lived here. I get the feeling there was never a woman in any part of the house.”

  “Did some ghost tell you?” I asked.

  “No,” she said. “The house is too rugged. There's nothing feminine. Nothing soft and delicate. There's something frightening about it. I just don't think a woman would put up with all the wood and dinosaurs.”

  “If you plan on having an anxiety attack,” I told her, “I wish you'd save it awhile.”

  Lorraine let go of my hand and walked closer to the bed. She touched one of the huge posts, which practically stabbed its way through the ceiling. “I feel like I'm standing in a mausoleum,” Lorraine said. “That's what this is.”

  “Come on.”

  “I mean it, John. This place is some kind of shrine to all the Colonel's achievements. There's nothing really lovely here.” She moved the flashlight to a corner of the room. A glass cabinet sparkled and we hurried to it. It was a store display case with several medals of honor lying on black-velvet backgrounds. It looked like a ten-year supply of graduation honors, tons of awards from all over the world honoring Colonel Parker Glenville. I opened a huge wooden thing that must have been a closet of some sort because it was filled with old uniforms.

  “The Colonel must have been a tall, thin man,” Lorraine said, her eyes sizing up the clothes. “Look at the jackets. They could fit you.”

  I grunted and took her hand to get her out of there. We moved back into the hall and were just about to enter the front section when Lorraine let out another scream. This time it was a full-blown model of the IGUANODON, according to the plaque hanging right beneath its open mouth. It looked like a cross between a turtle and a lizard. Its glassy stare was the kind of thing nightmares are made of.

  We moved forward into the front room. It was filled with a lot of packed boxes and several trunks of varying shapes and sizes. I kicked a few of the trunks lightly with my foot, but they each gave back a hollow ring. Then Lorraine flashed her light onto a black one with leatherette covering. I gave it a kick, and there was no doubt that this one was packed full. I stooped down and started to flip open the locks. Lifting the top, I was sure it was the trunk Gus wanted. I started rummaging through it.

  “John, what are you doing?”

  “Just checking.”

  “John, we have no right.”

  Right on top was a long yellow tassel, the type an officer would wear on his shoulder. It looked like Gus wanted to take a memento of the Colonel with him, which was nice, I figured. There was a big pile of clothes underneath that looked like they could use a few years in a General Electric washing machine. Then there was a box of weird-looking tools—points and curves and angles. I figured they must have been some of the tools of the Colonel's trade, and I supposed there was no harm in Gus sucking them up too. After all, the Colonel was no longer going to use them, and it was probably better that an old friend got them. Next to them was a ratty wooden cigar box that contained a bunch of old silver dollars. They all had dates like 1883 and 1867 on them. I think that about this point I had to admit that Gus was getting into the area of what could be called theft.

  “John, you can't let Gus take some of those things. Those are the kinds of things that belong in the Colonel's estate, and I'm sure courts and lawyers and all kinds of people like that would put us in reform school if we helped Gus steal them!”

  Just then a cold weird wind began to blow in the room. There were no windows open. But we could feel this chilling breeze, and the dust moved around us enough to give us a minor choking fit.

  “John, I feel as if there is someone else in the room with us now,” Lorraine whispered, turning rapidly and flashing her light all about.

  I felt the hair begin to bristle on the back of my neck, and I was about to close the trunk when I noticed a white envelope strapped against the lid. I lifted it up, opened it, and took out one of those folders that look like they're going to hold a high-school prom picture. Lorraine practically ripped it out of my hand, and opened it to reveal a very old picture of a man with a beard. The man was in a uniform and he was saluting. There was a big grin on his face. A grin that was at least thirty or forty years younger than the one on the man we knew, who was sitting downstairs in a swivel chair. Engraved in gold letters beneath the photograph was “Colonel Parker Glenville,” and we knew then that indeed the Colonel was not dead. Our Gus was the Colonel.

  eight

  I couldn't stop John from rummaging through that trunk for another five minutes. He's one of the nosiest boys I've ever seen, and I was on the verge of having a huge anxiety attack. I had to go to the front window and breathe a few extra millimeters of fresh air that leaked in around the sills. The louvers on one of the outside screens were turned in a way so I could glimpse the street below. I was expecting to see a police car, but instead there was nothing but a scrawny German shepherd moping down the sidewalk. I bent my head to see if anybody was across the street, and managed to glimpse the figure of a real bum. This destitute old man seemed to have nothing to his name but a pile of blankets that he was clutching, and he was drinking a bottle of wine as he went along his way. He looked so solemn and awful, I couldn't help wondering if he was one of those ordinary bums or one of those extremely intelligent people who had become so disillusioned by society that he just couldn't handle his life anymore.

  When John was good and ready, he engineered our exit. I never felt more mortified than when he made me help him drag the trunk down the outside steps while people were walking back and forth on the street. I don't know what be thought they could think, but I knew what they thought—seeing a couple of kids yanking this big leatherette trunk out of a boarded-up, dilapidated town house. When we finally got the thing all the way to the rear of the Studebaker we couldn't even open the car trunk!

  “Kick it,” Gus yelled, as he came down the steps to the sidewalk, still under his own power.

  We tried a few times until John kicked just the right spot and the car trunk flew open. We swung the trunk inside, closed everything up, and John ran around to open the car door for me. I went to slide in but stopped short. The German shepherd I had seen from the upstairs window was now lying on the backseat of the old convertible. He was literally sprawled across the cushions, his head buried in his front paws. He had obviously jumped in and made himself entirely at home. He had two of the saddest eyes in the world and looked like he was suffering from a persecution complex. I should have known there was a reason he had picked this particular car.

  “Get out,” John yelled at the dog. The dog wouldn't budge. By now the old man was at our side, and I figured when he saw the dog he'd probably pick up a stick and smack him for trespassing. Instead Gus' eyes began to twinkle. And the dog's eyes brightened too. Gus immediately grabbed a piece of fudge out of his pocket and offered it to the dog, saying, “You're a good boy. You're a good boy.” The dog accepted the offering and began chewing it as though he was a connoisseur of sweets.

  “Come on now, get out,” John ordered the dog.

  “He's okay,” Gus said.

  “Wha
t do you mean, he's okay?” John wanted to know. “Get out! Get out!” he yelled at the dog again.

  “John, let's get out of here. We can dump the dog later,” I suggested. “The police are coming. You can let the dog out down the block.”

  “Let the dog come with us,” Gus demanded.

  I was really getting worried now, because I could see the headline, “Lorraine Jensen Mutilated by Mad Dog.” But I got in. John took the old man around to his side, shoved him in next to me, then got behind the wheel again. He started the engine, and we took off with the old man yelling happily, “We'll fix the IRS! We'll fix the IRS!” The very next thing he did was fall asleep. I couldn't believe how Gus could be jumping around one minute, and snoring to beat the band the next. John turned the car sharply right and then he turned it left, and the Colonel's head began to roll between us once more like it was in a Ping-Pong tournament. Then the Colonel's head crashed against my shoulder and stayed there for five minutes as we began to climb up Victory Boulevard and out of St. George. I was thankful when we had to make a sharp right and Gus' head went flying onto John's shoulder. I couldn't help watching the two of them while I massaged the circulation back into my clavicle. They made quite a picture. Even with their ages so far apart there was something very similar about the two of them. Something of destiny, perhaps. It was that their noses were alike even though Gus' nose was older than John's. Maybe it was the strong look of determination in their faces. But whatever, the position of Gus' head on John's shoulder made Gus look like a little boy resting against his father.

  It started to drizzle again and I opened up the umbrella. The dog began to whimper as though he was afraid of rain. I turned around to pet him, to reassure him that everything was all right. I was also concerned that he not get carsick. He started to lick my hand, and I rubbed his forehead. Then the dog barked, and I could just tell he wanted another piece of fudge. I reached into Gus' pocket and found the last little squashed piece. I gave it to him, and as he chewed it the expression in his eyes was that of a pooch in canine heaven.