The Boy Who Couldn't Fly Straight (The Broom Closet Stories)

by Jeff Jacobson

  “You’re just saying that cuz I said it.”

  “Come on. I mean it.”

  “Really?”

  “Really,” Charlie answered, realizing that telling the truth about how he felt was even harder then lying.

  The group of kids sat waiting in the warehouse. Some of them looked over their shoulders and waved to their parents. One boy had to keep getting up to go to the bathroom.

  Beverly had explained that there would be a lot of adults there.

  “To help out.”

  “Help out with what?”

  “Well, Charlie, when people get popped, everything can get a little weird. It’s like taking the lid off of a pressure cooker. There’s a lot of heat in there, and you never know what could happen.”

  “You mean, like bad stuff?”

  “No, not bad stuff. More like, it wouldn’t be a good idea to have thirty kindergarteners over to your house for a birthday party without other adults around to supervise. One person couldn’t be everywhere at once, keeping an eye on things.”

  “So the adults will be there to keep an eye on us?”

  “Something like that. Listen. When someone is popped, a lot of power comes out. There’s more power present when you are popped than you’ll ever experience as a more mature witch. We just want to make sure everyone stays safe.”

  “Why isn’t Randall coming?”

  “What? Oh, Charlie, this event is only for us.”

  “You mean, like us us?” he asked, pointing his finger at her and then back at himself.

  “Yes, just for us us.”

  Beverly walked in front of the kids and got their attention.

  “Listen up, everyone. Malcolm just texted me to say that he should be here in about five minutes. Does anyone want a juice box or water? Or some snacks? We’ve got plenty of…”

  With that, they all stood up and rushed over to a small table filled with drinks, fruit, and potato chips.

  “Hope this isn’t a bad idea. Do you think they’ll all keep it down? I don’t want to have to clean up…” Charlie heard a man behind him say.

  “Ron, will you shut it? Please? Just shut it. You can be so insensitive sometimes,” a woman whispered back. Charlie didn’t want to think about what the man meant.

  “Hi everybody,” a voice called a few moments later from the small doorway at the corner of the building. The larger entrance with a garage-style door and a hydraulic hoist remained closed.

  “Sorry I’m late,” said Malcolm as he greeted a few of the adults nearest the door. He carried a travel mug and sipped at it as he walked. He came to the front of the chairs and asked the kids to sit down and join him.

  “Was everyone able to make it?” he asked the adults standing in the back. They replied with nods and yeses.

  “Okay. Now, why don’t we begin? Does anyone have any questions?”

  “I do,” said a thin, wispy-haired girl sitting two chairs down from Charlie. She had thick-lensed glasses, a large scab on her chin, and looked to be about twelve or thirteen years old. Charlie hoped she didn’t get teased too much. Kids back in Clarkston would have pounced on her nerdy looks.

  “Approximately how long do you think this will take?” she said.

  Malcolm smiled. “Why, do you have somewhere else to be, Princess? Maybe a club opening?”

  The adults laughed. None of the kids did. Charlie couldn’t figure out if it was out of a sense of solidarity, or just plain nerves that kept the other kids from joining in on the joke.

  “No,” answered the girl, her neck turning red and blotchy. “I just…I just want to know what’ll it be like, is all,” she said, her voice dropping off to a whisper at the end.

  “Like nothing you’ve ever experienced before. Other questions.”

  “I’m not really sure if I’m ready. What if it isn’t time for me yet?” asked a pudgy boy in a navy-blue sweatshirt who looked to be about Charlie’s age.

  “You are, kid. No worries about that. You are all ripe as late August peaches.”

  “If there are no other questions…”

  “My daughter Madeleine has to take allergy medication,” said a woman in the back. “It’s usually before she goes to bed. Should I give it to her now, or…”

  “Yes, now would be fine,” said Malcolm, his smile wearing thin.

  The woman walked up to the group of kids, rummaging around in her purse.

  “Mom, please!” whispered an older girl with red hair tied in a braid. “You’re embarrassing me.”

  “I know, I know, it’s what I’ve been put on this planet to do, apparently. Here,” she said, handing her daughter some capsules and a bottle of water.

  The girl swallowed the pills, handed the bottle back to her mother, and turned away in a huff. However, soon after swallowing, Charlie saw her turn around and mouth the words “thank you” to the line of adults against the back wall.

  “If there are no further interruptions,” Malcolm said, “ let’s begin.”

  Chapter 46

  Malcolm stood about ten feet in front of them and closed his eyes. His lips began to move. Occasionally he would hold one hand or the other out in front of him, then let it drop. He looked a little like a crazy guy on a street corner, talking to the voices in his head.

  ‘Or to God,’ Charlie thought. He’d heard those crazy people sometimes thought they were talking to God.

  “Could be God,” said the girl sitting to his right. “Or he could just be one of those crazy people on the street corner.”

  Charlie looked at her. Her lips were pursed tightly together, trying to stifle a laugh. Had he spoken aloud? Malcolm had said witches couldn’t read minds. Then how…?

  He snorted, and then laughter bubbled out of his lips before he could hold it back. They giggled together with their hands clamped over their mouths.

  ‘Charlie, stop it!’ he tried to tell himself. ‘This is not appropriate for the popping ceremony!’

  “How did you do that?” the same girl asked him.

  “Do what?”

  “Make your nose and ears move like that?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like this,” she said. Her ears began to wiggle, and the surface of her nose undulated as if tiny ball bearings were moving back and forth beneath her skin.

  “Cool! Gross!” Charlie exclaimed.

  One of the boys in the front row stood up and said to no one in particular, “Come on, Lisa, let’s blow this taco stand!”

  The boy started to walk forward, but as he moved, he flickered like a light bulb about to go out, changing from a young kid to a much older man in a white suit with silver hair, then back to a kid again. Charlie wondered who Lisa was.

  “Looks like Steve Martin is the evening’s entertainment,” said the girl next to him. She was right! The kid kept switching back and forth, between himself and what looked like Steve Martin!

  Charlie found himself leaning against the wall, quite far from the rows of folding chairs. The cement felt cool on his face. He didn’t know how he’d moved across the floor so fast. But he didn’t care.

  “I really like it here,” he said, then looked up to see a few adults nearby, watching him.

  “That’s great,” one of them said.

  “I know, huh? It’s so great. But not as great as up there,” Charlie said, pointing to the ceiling.

  He began to crawl up the wall. It was much easier than he would have thought. Not like an insect, or a rock climber. It was more like…

  “A wall champion!” he said, then wondered why he’d never done this before. It was such a nice thing to do, and such a useful way to get around. An electric guitar solo exploded in the air as his own personal wall-climbing soundtrack.

  When he reached the top of the wall, he saw that the pudgy kid in the navy-blue sweatshirt had climbed up with him. The music had stopped.

  “Pretty good view, hey sailor?” the kid said, then winked.

  “I’ll say,” Charlie replied. But he found himsel
f crying, tears streaming down his face in torrents.

  “What’s wrong? Did someone die?” asked the kid.

  Images of a black-skinned family were running through Charlie’s head. They were hard-working, dressed in old-fashioned clothes. He saw them building the airplane hangar that he was in. He knew they had built it with a government contract, and then had leased it to Boeing Field after the war. It had given them pride, a good income, and status among their community.

  “The first Negroes to win a government contract, the Tanner Family built this warehouse in 1938 with determination, commitment, and excellence in design. Seattle is proud to call them citizens,” Charlie said, his voice sounding like a narrator from a documentary on public television.

  He placed his hand against the blank wall in front of him. A soft orange light began to glow between his hand and the cement. When he pulled his hand away, a gold-plated plaque was embedded in the wall.

  It read: The first Negroes to win a government contract, the Tanner Family built this warehouse in 1938 with determination, commitment, and excellence in design. Seattle is proud to call them citizens.

  “That was the right thing to do,” said the kid next to him. He was crying too. “We need to honor all of our heroes, no matter their skin color.”

  Soon Charlie was floating in midair, suspended high above the folding chairs. A boy and a girl he didn’t recognize were in front of him, also floating. They were holding hands and facing each other. He watched as they leaned back and away from each other, bringing their knees up to their chests, and then pushed against each other’s feet, executing backwards somersaults while never letting go of each other’s hands.

  “Looks like I’ll have to get in on this little party,” Charlie said. Soon he was turning endless somersaults with the boy and the girl, sometimes holding hands with them and sometimes doing them all by himself.

  At one point they all held hands with their bodies stretched like skydivers in formation, as a strong wind blew up at them, making their cheeks shake and their eyes water.

  Then the wind stopped.

  “But what I’ve always really wanted to do is trick waterskiing,” said the girl, as she began to fade away like the Cheshire cat.

  Charlie found himself alone in midair, high up near the ceiling. He looked down at the floor. He saw adults running here and there as the thin, wispy-haired girl, whom Malcolm had called a princess, shot sizzling bolts of white electricity from her hands. The bolts didn’t seem to hit anyone, but small flames erupted wherever they landed.

  A sudden sense of heaviness descended on him, and he began floating downward against his will. Below him, several adults stood with arms outstretched as if to catch him.

  “Don’t you touch me!” he shouted at them. “You’re all a bunch of faggots and lesbians! Where’s my aunt Beverly? She’s the only one I let catch me. Where is Beverly?”

  “I’m right here, Charlie,” said a voice that he recognized. He was standing on his hands in the middle of the floor with his legs pointing toward the ceiling, looking up at a woman with long dark hair, wide cheekbones and large, familiar eyes.

  “You have the best nostrils in the world,” he told her.

  Before he could do anything else, he began to hear something. Or sense something. It was as if the sound of everything on the planet began to reverberate in his skin cells. Everything had a smell, a color, a voice, and it all insisted that he pay attention to it. To all of it. He saw an Asian family in a small wooden boat with fishing nets, then a brick-sized container of plastic wrap, followed by blades of grass, the Grand Duke of Luxembourg, a flock of geese in northern Canada, and every single Ford Mustang ever produced. He heard a cacophony of music, like an orchestra warming up. He smelled orange soda, dog manure, dust, and the kind of perfume only worn by old ladies.

  “It’s too much, I can’t hear, I can’t, it’s too much!” he yelled, still standing on his hands, his wonderful aunt Beverly with the kind and lovely nostrils holding his ankles.

  “Breathe, Charlie, you’re all right. You’re all right,” she said.

  His gut filled with heat, and before he could stop himself, he vomited the entire contents of his stomach up his throat, and out his mouth and nose, onto his aunt’s shoes. The last thing he saw was a little yellow chick, walking among the contents of his retching. It peeped at him, and then winked. In a very human-sounding voice it said, “The chicken does come before the egg.”

  And then, nothing.

  Chapter 47

  In the dream, Charlie sat with his legs hanging over the back of a pickup truck, as it barreled and bounced down a dirt road. On either side of him small children also sat with their legs hanging over the edge. More children were scattered throughout the truck bed behind him. They were all blond, fair-skinned kids singing a beautiful kid song, something about trees and the future and blue sky.

  The long line of grass and weeds that divided the two small lanes of the dirt road mesmerized Charlie. It appeared as if the line of grass sprang up right between his feet as the truck rolled over it. The sun glared high and hot in the sky. He knew they were somewhere near Clarkston.

  “But what about them, mister? What about them?” asked a young voice in his ear. He looked over his shoulder to see a small boy, probably no more than six years old, standing behind him with one hand on his shoulder for balance. He was pointing past Charlie to the road behind them.

  Charlie had the sudden urge to take all the kids and cover them up with a large blanket, to protect them somehow, then yell to whoever was driving the truck to drive faster. He didn’t know what the kid was pointing to, but he didn’t want to find out.

  In spite of his fear he finally turned around and looked. Four large German shepherds were running along the dirt lane toward the truck. The distance between them and the truck was quickly vanishing. Behind them, another line of four dogs rounded the bend and gave chase. All eight dogs ran with their tongues hanging from their mouths at the exact same angle. Before Charlie could register what was happening, another line of four dogs appeared behind the second, and then another, making sixteen dogs in total chasing after the truck. They made no noise as they ran, and Charlie couldn’t tell if every dog was a simple facsimile, or if each one was unique.

  “It’ll be tonight. After nine o’clock. A heart attack. He might not make it. You’d better tell someone,” said the same boy in his ear. He didn’t understand what the boy meant.

  When Charlie looked back at the road, the German shepherds were now only a few feet from the truck. One of the middle dogs in the first line ran up to the tailgate and opened its mouth.

  Unable to stop himself, Charlie stuck his foot out toward the dog’s muzzle, until it was a mere inch from the sharp teeth.

  “After nine o’clock, mister. A heart attack. Tell someone,” said the boy.

  The dog clamped down on Charlie’s foot. His screams resounded in the thin hot air of the summer day…

  …and bounced off the walls of his bedroom.

  “Charlie. Charlie, wake up! It’s okay. You’re okay. Charlie, you’re having a bad dream,” someone was saying to him. A hand shook his foot.

  He yanked his leg up toward his chest, trying to free his foot from the jaws of the German shepherd.

  When he opened his eyes, he saw that he wasn’t sitting in the back of a pickup truck. He was in his room. In bed. In Beverly and Randall’s house (his house, his mind corrected). Raindrops were beating against the windowpane. Beverly stood at the foot of his bed, a cautious smile on her face.

  “Hi. It’s me, Charlie. Your aunt Beverly. You’re okay.”

  “Whu…what happened? How did I…?” he tried to ask. His throat was parched. He reached for the water bottle on his nightstand. He saw his hand shake as his arm brushed up against the bottle and knocked it toward the floor. Beverly was at his side in an instant, catching it and placing it into his hands.

  “Thanks,” he squeaked. His mouth felt like it was full of sand
. He twisted the lid off the bottle and took a sip of the cool water before leaning back against his headboard with a sigh.

  “You’re popped, honey. You did it. You’re home and safe now.”

  “What? How can…it worked?”

  “It sure did. Sorry, my friend, but no breakfast in bed. Looks like you’ll have a long list of chores ahead of you.”

  Then, with pride and solemnity filling her voice, she said, “You’re one of us now, Charlie. Welcome to your legacy.”

  He tried to recall what happened. All he could remember was sitting in the warehouse, and seeing Malcolm. Some kids asked some questions, and then Malcolm started mumbling stuff. And then what? What happened after that? He remembered feeling nauseous, and a strange floating sensation. That was all.

  “Are you sure? I don’t really remember anything.”

  “Positive,”

  “How long have I been in bed?”

  “About eleven hours. It’s just past one right now, on Monday afternoon. We got home after two this morning. You went straight to sleep.”

  “I had a dream. A bad dream.”

  Beverly sat on the end of his bed. “Tell me.”

  “I was in a truck with all these little blond-haired kids who were singing. One of them pointed, and I saw a bunch of German shepherds running at us. As they got closer, this one kid said…uh, wait, I can’t remember…what did he say? Oh God, it was important.” He closed his eyes.

  “Take your time, kiddo. Just try to…”

  “He said something about a heart attack. Tonight after nine o’clock. Somebody, some man, was going to have a heart attack. The kid told me I had to tell someone. Oh God, the kid said the guy might not make it. Who is it?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe it was just a dream.”

  “No, I don’t think so. It felt different.”

  A gust of wind blew hard against the trees outside, and a branch struck the side of the house. Charlie jumped as if the limb had hit him. He looked outside. Raindrops spattered against the windowpane. He flinched, expecting his face to get wet.

  That was strange. It was as if he could feel the drops through the glass. Each one. Wait, he could feel them. Tiny droplets of silver light, round marbles of liquid smacking themselves again and again against the window, against the wooden shingles along the roof. He could feel each wet trajectory, the grain in each shingle as it was struck, the tiny ping every time a drop hit the pane.