Z Ward

by Jay Mouton

  Z Ward

  A Novella

  By Jay Mouton

  Copyright 2017 Jay Mouton

  Jay Mouton Distributed Edition

  Z Ward

  A Novella

  By

  Jay Mouton

  Robey Paquette and his best friend, Buddy Whetherby, were doing the two things they liked to do more than anything else in their Jacksonville Beach, Florida lives.

  The boys were skipping school. They opted to catch up on their skateboard activities which had been rained out over the last weekend. Skateboarding held the top spot on their, current, list of favorite things. But, skipping school ran a close second.

  Robey and Buddy had been best friends since the fourth grade. Robey had just moved to Jacksonville Beach, from Glen Saint Mary, Florida. The glen was a small town not so many miles west of the beach town the young boy now called home.

  When Robey Paquette first arrived in Jacksonville Beach, or Jax Beach as most of the locals called it, he didn’t know a soul. The semester had already started a couple months before. Robey’s mom had recently graduated from a nurse assisting program, and had been offered a job at a convalescent center just south of Jax Beach, in Ponte Vedra Beach. Thus, the change of academic venue was inevitable for the boy.

  It was tough to begin anew at another school, especially in the middle of a semester. But young Robey was an old hand at packing up and leaving schools and towns. By his count, his mother and he had changed addresses seven times. At least seven times that he could remember, since the boy first began attending school over in Pensacola, Florida. Robey guesstimated, just after his mother’s announcement that they would be moving to Jax Beach, that if the two of them kept moving eastward they were going to end up living on a boat somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

  Still, for the first time in her life, Robey’s mom had managed to quit drinking long enough to finish something she’d started. That something was the three-week course in nurse assisting that had landed her the job that she currently held. And had, miraculously, held onto for nearly three years running. The best part, as far as Robey was concerned, was that his mother had stopped drinking. Anyway, however the cards were cut, it was the best move the little family had ever made. And, it had been the best move ever in the boy’s life.

  And, his mother’s life.

  So, Robey Paquette, all of nine years of age, walked into Mr. Stanley Cambridge’s fourth grade classroom. All to the soundtrack of the typical whispers and snickers the new kid always heard upon entering the unknown territory of a new school.

  A wire haired, densely freckled redhead, one Buddy Whetherby, was the first kid to vie for a spot as Robey’s friend. He did so by putting a wad of chewing gum on the handle of Robey’s assigned book locker. Overly ambitious when it came to finding mischief, Buddy had found the time, in his busy fourth grader’s schedule, to implement his welcome for the new kid in class. His plan, simple. He chewed up a wad of gum, and wedged it on the inside of the new kid’s locker handle. And, being an ambitious lad, he managed to accomplish his prank well before lunch period that day.

  Robey found the sticky mess when he reached for the metal handle to retrieve his bag lunch from the tiny locker.

  But, find it he did.

  And, as irony is always in control of the lives of children, by the end of his first day at his new school Robey Paquette and Buddy Whetherby had become fast friends.

  *****

  Together, the boys formed an informal pact. It was one they’d kept since their early days of getting in whatever trouble they could find. It was a simple pact, thus easy to remember. When the heavy foot of circumstance came stomping down upon them, surrounding whatever escapade they, currently, found themselves involved in, the pact was implemented.

  Blame the other guy!

  Experience had taught them both that punishment, usually, was easier to endure if one had a best friend to endure the punishment with.

  And so, their pact was, once again, implemented. This time, on the parking lot behind the CVS Pharmacy a block up the street from Huguenot Park. The one just on the southside of Beach Boulevard in Jax Beach.

  Buddy had just finished an impressive stunt on his skateboard.

  Robey, not accustomed to his friend getting the best of him when it came to acrobatics performed with the help of his worn-out skateboard, shot over to the far end of the wide expanse of the parking lot. The business day was just kicking off and, so far, there weren’t any cars in the lot to contend with. It was the reason the boys used the drug store parking lot instead of the skateboarding facilities at Huguenot. It was just a cooler place to begin their day of playing hooky.

  “Watch this, Buddy!”

  Robey grinned over at his friend, as he picked up speed. He was heading for a drainage culvert that he knew he could jump.

  He was moving even faster when he heard Buddy holler out, “Car!”

  Like so many of the misadventure in life, there would be no do-overs.

  Just as Robey reached peak speed, and was only inches from where he would make his daring jump, a car swung, wildly, into the rear exit of the parking lot.

  The car missed Robey Paquette’s body. This was only because, in his failed attempt to stop when he heard alarm in Buddy’s yell. But the front end of his skateboard caught the red Honda Fit’s right front tire. The board was crushed beneath the tread as the car whizzed by. The boy’s momentum, from the speed he’d managed from one end of the parking lot to the other, lifted his body up and over the car.

  Buddy yelled, again. But it was too late.

  The red Honda, seemingly oblivious to the fact that a child’s body was flying directly over it, just shot forward. Then without breaking speed, it slammed into the drive-by-window of the CVS Pharmacy.

  Astonished, Buddy watched as his best friend went airborne and sailed through the cool, morning air.

  Then Buddy hollered, “stop!” But, by that point, it didn’t make a difference.

  Buddy’s yell was drowned out by the loud crash of plastic, steel, brick, and glass. The red Honda came to an abrupt stop half-way into the west wall of the CVS Pharmacy.

  As they will during so many traumatic events, the very laws of Physics ceased to exist. And time downshifted to an unnerving crawl as Robey felt himself become weightless.

  For what had to be only a second or two, the child felt the exhilaration from something that he’d never experienced before: flight.

  Then, as Robey Paquette’s first flight ended, there was darkness.

  *****

  His eyelids fluttered.

  His first thought? Why was it so cold?

  Then he thought of his mother.

  He thought about how slurred her words were when she had picked him up, sometimes, near his school in the glen. He’d wait, nearly a block down the street from the front entrance of the building. At the exact spot she had instructed him to wait at after school each day.

  She’d been drinking this day, but she didn’t seem drunk.

  He smiled when he saw her car turn off the main highway, and onto the street that ran in front of his school.

  He waved at her. She waved back. She slowed, and then she was close enough for him to see inside the tinted windows on the passenger side. She, the boy noticed, was smiling back at him.

  “ay, fella!” he heard her welcome as he opened the door, and it swung wide open. Then he slid onto the torn passenger seat of the battered, but ever faithful, Oldsmobile.

  He dropped his bookbag on the sand dappled floormat. And, at the same time, he turned his small frame toward the door and yanked it closed. Then he reached up for the seatbelt.

  He fiddled with the strap, then heard the reassuring metallic click as the belt locked.

  As he turned ba
ck to his mother, she had already started singing the song she would sing every time she had rustled up a new job, or apartment, or whatever.

  Robey knew the song by heart.

  “Takin’ care of the business! Every day! Takin’ care business! All the way,” she slurred, her voice filled with the happiness of the moment. And, of course, what always seemed a tiny hint of failure in the notes as she sang out. As she tried to remember the words to a song that she had to have sung for him a hundred times.

  Still, it was the theme song of her quest for happiness. And, as most kids do during those most tender years of childhood, he accepted her quixotic quests with an unconditional love.

  And, as always, the song was prelude to another, possible, lull in the continuum of upheavals son and mother Paquette were accustomed to.

  “Hey, Mom! Do you have some good news to tell me?” he asked, reciting the lines of to the play of their life to the letter.

  “Takin’ care of business! Every single day!” she blurted out, still singing. The slurred and mismatched lyrics of her song continued, as she jerked the wheel of the car to aim the tank of a car back towards the street. Then, still singing away, she drove, ten miles over the posted speed limit, past the front of her son’s, current, school building.

  Robey just fixed his smile, sank a little bit further down into his seat, and hoped that her good news would not require another move.

  For some reason, he also wished his mother would turn the heat up in the car.

  “Robey?”

  Robey had never heard the voice of an angel, but he was now thinking one was speaking his name.

  It was still cold. Why?

  Was Heaven, cold? He struggled to gather his thoughts, as he drifted from his memory back into a sort of reality.

  Where is my skateboard? Robey, thought, I’m sure I just had my skateboard.

  Where am I? He wondered.

  “Robey? Can y’all hear me?” It was the angel’s voice, again.

  He tried to speak, but his words sounded garbled as they stumbled out of his mouth.

  “Son,” another voice, this one deep and serious, put his curiosity about possibly meeting an angel to rest.

  His eyelids, which seemed so heavy for some reason, finally, opened.

  His eyes, unable to fully focus, darted about.

  I’m in jail? For a fraction of a second he thought that he and Buddy’s most recent nefarious deed had caught up with them with a vengeance.

  “Robey?”

  It was the angel, again.

  That’s not an angel, Paquette! He admonished himself for his silly, almost childish thought.

  He tried to speak, again.

  This time, it worked. A little.

  “I’m Robey,” he said. He found his voice, but it came out a dry, raspy whisper.

  “Robey? My name is Susann Beckett,” the soft, and he allowed himself to think, angelic voice, said to him. The voice was soothing.

  His eyes shifted toward the direction the lilting sound of the woman was coming from.

  “Robey, you had an accident,” the woman told him. She added, “do you remember anything?”

  The boy struggled to steady his focus. The woman, standing just to his right, leaned toward him. She may not have been an angel, Robey thought. But if angels were for real, he was convinced, they would look a whole lot like the woman standing next to him.

  “An accident?” he asked.

  “That’s right, young man.” He heard the voice of his, imagined, jailer, again.

  “Sir?” the boy said. He hoped that he was not in trouble.

  “Robey!”

  Finally, the bewildered child heard a voice he recognized. It was his friend, Buddy.

  Good old Buddy. My best friend in the entire world, Robey thought. He managed to put a smile on his dry lips, and he turned his head toward the reassuring sound of his friend.

  “Buddy,” the serious voice spoke, directing its volume toward Robey’s classmate, “it’s probably best to not get young Mr. Paquette too excited right now.”

  “Sure, Dr. Huddleston,” Buddy answered, his tone resigned, “I’m sorry.”

  “Robey, do you remember anything about this morning?” the doctor asked him.

  Robey took a couple of deep breaths, and continued to clear his thoughts.

  He tried to recall the morning events as quickly as possible.

  Involuntarily, his head started to bob up and down. Yes, he thought, he was starting to recall things.

  Suddenly, in his mind, he was in his bed at home.

  He had just woken up.

  He climbed out of bed, threw on his clothes, then walked out to the little kitchen.

  His mom had already gone to work. She’d left a box of brown sugar Pop Tarts on the little card table in the kitchen. He toasted two of them, then wolfed them down with the help of a glass of milk. He went back into his bedroom, and grabbed his bookbag from off his bed. Then, just as quickly, he slid the bag under the bed. He ran down the short length of hallway. He opened the small closet where his mom kept the cleaning stuff, their jackets, and, of course, his skateboard.

  Robey’s mind was, rapidly, clearing.

  He continued running through the events of his morning.

  He caught a sleeve of his jacket on the jagged edge of the screen door as he was exiting their apartment. He cursed. Then he reminded himself that he wasn’t supposed to use that particular word, though it was available in his current vocabulary. Then he chuckled and reminded himself that he was in the 7th grade and no longer a little kid. Out loud, standing just outside the door, he repeated the curse word he’d just uttered. But he said it in a hushed voice, just in case a nosey neighbor was nearby. He darted down to the sidewalk, and lowered the working end of his skateboard down to the cement. As soon as the front wheels of the board made contact, he hoped on and headed over to the CVS parking lot to meet up with Buddy.

  Yep, he thought, as his lips formed a wicked feeling smile. I remember.

  His head nodded, again.

  Robey felt a little silly when the doctor cleared his serious sounding voice and repeated his question, “Do you remember, anything?”

  Quickly, the boy let his smile drop. Hopefully, it now mirrored the doctor’s own frown.

  “Yes, sir,” he said, his voice getting stronger now.

  The pretty woman standing next to the bed that Robey, suddenly realized, he was laying on, held up a glass of water with a straw protruding up. The tip of the straw bent toward his parched lips. He took the tip of the plastic straw into his mouth, and took a long sip.

  “And?” the doctor prodded.

  “And, yes sir,” Robey said, not quite sure what the doctor was getting at. Then he added, “Yes, sir. I remember everything that happened this morning.”

  “Good, good,” Dr. Huddleston said. His voice seemed to soften a bit, and he even managed to grin down at his patient.

  Robey offered his own smile in exchange. Then, again, started the silly nodding of his head.

  “Robey,” the doctor, again, using his serious tone, droned on. “There’s a good possibility that you sustained a concussion when you hit your head on the ground earlier.”

  Robey kept smiling and, unconsciously, continued to bob his head. He wasn’t clear about what the doctor was now rambling on about. But, he was pretty sure that it had something to do with why he’d just woken up in a hospital.

  “I’d like to run just a few tests, young man,” Dr. Huddleston said. Now he sounded a lot like Mr. Cambridge. Robey wondered if he, too, would always sound so serious when he grew up to be a man.

  “Tests?” Robey said, his smile wavering a little. Visions of long, sharp needles popped up in his mind when he heard the word tests.

  The pretty woman next to his bed spoke up.

  “Don’t you fret, young man,” she told him. Robey took notice that she was using that angel’s voice, again. He wondered if she spoke like that all the time.

  �
��I’m not worried,” he told her, and forced another brave smile to his lips.

  She laughed, ever so lightly. Then she, too, nodded at the boy in front of her.

  “Good. There’s nothing at all to worry about,” she said. “And none of these tests are painful in any way.”

  Robey felt an immense rush of relief, and unclenched his fists from the sheets of the bed he was laying in. He glanced down at the tops of his fingers, and noticed his white knuckles were getting their color back.

  “Nurse Beckett is absolutely right, Robey,” the doctor said. His voice had softened once more. Robey wondered if Dr. Huddleston had any kids that were his and Buddy’s age. He wondered if they, too, were serious like their father.

  Dr. Huddleston and nurse Beckett moved over near the window of the room. They stood, huddled together, and were now talking in a hushed tone.

  Robey, feeling better by the minute, glanced over to Buddy. The other boy sat, fidgeting, in an oversized chair tucked in a corner of the room.

  Buddy seemed to be glaring over towards the doctor and Robey’s nurse. Then he caught Robey’s eye and grinned at his best friend. Buddy’s left hand moved in his lap. Robey saw that he was now flashing him a thumb’s up sign.

  Robey grinned back, nodded his head, and returned a thumb’s up to Buddy.

  The serious Dr. Huddleston, and the beautiful angel—stop! She wasn’t an angel, he thought. But she was his wonderful nurse Beckett, Robey corrected himself. His beautiful nurse and his doctor walked back over to the side of his bed.

  Just like a thousand doctors that Robey had seen on television shows and movies, Dr. Huddleston reached down for something at the foot of Robey’s bed. Then, as if on cue, produced an officious looking clipboard. He held it up in front of his face, and stared down at for several seconds. Momentarily, it struck the boy as odd that the notes on the chart hanging from his bed were not kept in some notebook computer pad. Just as quickly, the thought leapt from his mind, and he stared once more at Dr. Huddleston. The man seemed to look more serious than ever. Then the man grinned one more time. He hung the clipboard back down on the whatever it was hanging from.