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

by Jeff Jacobson

  He looked away from the window, but the strange sensation didn’t leave. It was as if he could see out the window without using his eyes, could sense what was happening out there. Three crows sat perched on the branches of a nearby Douglas fir tree, and they were pecking at needles near their claws. Douglas fir? How did he know it was a Douglas fir? Or that the latin name for Douglas fir was Pseudotsuga menziesii? A woman in a raincoat walked her dog on the sidewalk, and Charlie could feel how each of her toes pressed against the front of her boots, how the dog’s paws padded on the wet cement. He knew the woman carried twenty-three dollars in her purse, as well as a canister of mace and a pack of cherry-flavored bubblegum. The dog’s collar tag said, “My name is Lucy. Please call this number if found.”

  The tag on the back of Beverly’s shirt said Linda, size medium. Her toenails were painted a warm brown red, and she had a tiny cut on her left shin from gardening.

  He began to panic, throwing his arms over his head. “I can, I can hear everything. I can see it all. I can’t block it out, I can’t…”

  Beverly grabbed his wrists. “Breathe, Charlie, take some deep breaths with me. Come on, breathe.”

  He opened his eyes and saw her face, inches from his own. Her mouth moved, and while he couldn’t make out her whispered Words, he could feel them settling into his skin. Her eyes were calming, their liquid brown pouring outward toward him, their color helping to block out the rest of the sensations trying to invade his mind.

  “There you go. Just breathe. Like that. It’ll help you relax.”

  She reached for the bottle of water. “Have a sip,” she said. He drank, and the anxiety seemed to melt away even more.

  “Are you…are you making me tired?” he asked, for her eyes seemed large, incredibly large, their soft brown pulling at him, holding his attention.

  “I’m helping you sleep. Resting will make it get easier, Charlie. It’ll get easier, I promise. In a few days’ time, it’ll all calm down.”

  “Do you…can you hear it like that? All the time?”

  “No, nowhere near as strong as you can. It’s as loud for you as it’ll ever be right now. It’s at its worst. It’ll only get better from here on out.”

  “Was it like this for you when you got popped?”

  “Yes.”

  “But I know that that woman on the street has twenty-three dollars in her purse. How could I know that? And the raindrops! What about the guy with the heart attack? What is that?”

  “Shhh, shhh. Lay back. You won’t be awake for much longer,” she said.

  He did as he was told, and could feel himself melting back into his bed.

  “I’m worried about the guy in the dream. The one who might be having a heart attack tonight.” His tongue felt thick and sloppy.

  “Honey, you might have to let it go. I don’t know if there’s much we can do without knowing who, or where…”

  “But, but…”

  “I’ll tell you what. I’ll make some inquiries, and we’ll see if we can’t come up with something. Maybe when you go back to sleep you’ll have another dream that will help.”

  He nodded, his head heavy on his pillow.

  “Try to get some rest, okay?”

  “But I jes slep fer eleven hours. Who sleeps fer that long? I jes don’t…” His words were beginning to slur. He sounded like an actor playing someone drunk on TV. And not a very good actor.

  “New witches do, that’s who. Your job is to rest now. It is the thing that helps the most.”

  “Is Randall here?”

  “Yes, and he knows to keep a safe distance from you.”

  “Cuth I’m dangeruth?”

  Beverly smiled. “A little, yes. But I am watching out for you. Rita and Jeremy are downstairs, ready to help too. This is what we do. We watch out for you.”

  Charlie tried hard to keep his eyes open, but they burned and itched too much. He didn’t like putting Randall at risk. And he didn’t like this sense of utter chaos. And…how could he be dangerous?

  “Anyway, Randall is cheering you on. From a distance, okay?”

  “Okay. Will you tell him hi from me?”

  “Will do. Goodnight for now.”

  “Behurly, thankth, uh, for every…”

  He was asleep before he could finish the sentence.

  Chapter 48

  Tom Krull shifted on his chair. He had been sitting in the booth for nearly four hours, and his butt ached. They were short three agents today, which meant longer lines, grumpier passengers, less breaks. It didn’t matter that their contract stated clearly that no agent would be required to perform customs duty longer than two hours straight without a break. He could force the issue and leave his booth for a while, but it would just mean that the passenger line would get longer and his work would be that much more awful. People hated getting off international flights only to stand in long lines. He grew tired of hearing their complaints. Besides, his co-workers would blame him for it. The break room would be intolerable for weeks to come.

  So he sat and fidgeted. He looked at face after face, passport after passport, asking the same questions over and over again.

  “What brings you to Canada?”

  “Where will you be staying?”

  “You here for business, then?”

  “How much money are you carrying?”

  Canada. The land of the free, the land of the polite. The land of political correctness. He agreed with it, most of the time. The Canadians who came through his lines were courteous. Respectful. The Americans? Not so much. He hated their entitlement, their indignation at having their very important plans slowed down by a customs agent who wanted to know their business.

  It was a common if unspoken practice to pull more Americans out of line than any other nationality. Not to cause real trouble. Just to slow them down a bit. Help them cool their jets while they sat in the immigration office, waiting for one of the agents to ask them more questions. He figured he was doing his part to keep Canada friendly by reminding the Americans to be nice. And also reminding them that they weren’t in charge up here.

  “Next in line!” he called, keeping his voice neutral, commanding.

  A tall woman walked toward him. She did not look like most of the other passengers. Fresh-faced, not tired. Quite beautiful, actually. Soft red hair pulled back in a chignon, wearing a smart powder-blue suit, and man, what a pair of legs showing in that skirt. Her smile was sweet and clean, like a bowl of washed apples sitting in sunlight.

  That was strange. Since when did he start comparing women’s smiles to bowls of fruit?

  He cleared his throat and wiggled his head, remembering that he had a job to do. He tried to ignore his sore rear end.

  The woman arrived at his booth and stood less than a foot from the counter.

  He shifted in his seat again, for he felt heat in his chest. He felt it lower in his body, too. His face flushed. The woman reminded him of somebody, but he could not place who it was. Someone he’d met? Someone in a movie?

  She smiled, and he could almost hear the soft skin of her lips expanding. He saw the surprise of her white teeth, strong and feminine. They reminded him of the square mints his grandmother used to keep in a candy dish on the table near her front door.

  More heat. His breathing quickened. He shifted again, trying to make more room in his regulation uniform trousers.

  “Passport, please,” he managed to say, his eight years on the job at Vancouver International Airport helping him to maintain focus.

  “Hello, Tom,” the tall woman said to him.

  His name, just like that, sent to him like a gift, right from her mouth, right into his ears.

  For some strange reason, he wanted to cry then, just a little. He wanted to lay his head down in this woman’s lap and cry, for his name sounded so beautiful on her lips, like the right kind of homecoming, or a welcome he had always wanted. She would stroke his hair, and he would weep, and she would say, “Tom. Hello, Tom,” all night until he cr
ied himself empty. Until she bent forward and pressed her mouth to his, until…

  He shivered, then sat up straight. He found the frown he used when he needed to slow a passenger down. He could feel the crease between his eyebrows grow.

  “Stern face,” his ex-girlfriend Sheila had called it. “You’re doing stern face at me, Tom. Knock it off.”

  “Tom,” the tall woman said again, and her face was smooth, so smooth, the skin fresher than most women’s past a certain age. It seemed spreadable to him, a creamy spread of skin reddened at the cheeks. He looked away from her lips to her eyes.

  “Hello,” his mouth said. His mind began to spin, for there were specks of light in her eyes, yellow and white specks against the background of soft green. How did her eyes do that? How did those tiny lights swirl together like that?

  He thought of weeping again. He thought of that early evening over ten years ago, sitting on a log up at Savary Island. The day had been dry. He’d seen two female belted kingfishers perched on the branch of a Bigleaf maple earlier in the day, and several harbour seals just off the shore. He and his friends had built a campfire before the sun had set. He sat next to Laura, who had lifted her shirt to him a few hours earlier. He had lain nestled between her breasts for some time. Together their fingers had played beneath each other’s waistbands. It had been his first time, and it had been gentle and slow, not the fumbled rush he feared it would be. When they kissed later, she told him it had been good.

  That day had been his best ever. He didn’t like to think about it too much, because it reminded him that all the days since then had been less days, worse days, nothing like that weekend on Savary, with beer, and his friends, those female kingfishers flushed with red, brighter than the male of the species, with Laura and her freckled chest, her grape-flavored lip gloss that had gotten all over him. He’d licked some of it off his arm later that night when he was alone, knowing that he should taste as much of this day as he could. Because it wouldn’t last.

  “Tom,” repeated the woman, her voice personal, his name like something she was sharing only with him. “I didn’t bring my passport today. Isn’t that funny?” she said, her smile growing.

  His breathing was nearly a rush now. He wanted to stand up, to leave this booth and the intimacy he felt with this woman, because it was too much. But he knew he wouldn’t stand. This woman tasted too good in his mind to leave.

  He stared at her smile the way he and his brother used to stare at the sun when they were little, seeing how long they could last before their eyes burned.

  “Um,” he said. Regulations and lists of customs laws fanned through his head, the pages of rules, their printed clutter a noise loud enough to drown out the lushness of Savary Island, threatening to push away the woman before him who was the one kind person he’d seen today, maybe even this whole month. He did not want the drone of his responsibilities to block out this sip of honey, the first taste he’d had in a long, long time.

  “I’m glad that won’t be a problem today, Tom. I’m so glad I came to your booth,” she said, leaning closer to him. He smelled the fresh apples on her breath, saw the ginger in her hair, heard the delight in her voice from having seen him. Really seen him, maybe even shared a part of his memory of Savary Island, tasting the charred hotdog he’d cooked over the fire, felt the pressure of his skin against Laura’s, seen the canopy of western hemlock surrounding them as they’d held onto each other and pushed on the forest floor.

  The thought that this woman could see him was nearly too much, was…

  “That’s right,” she said to him. “That’s right, Tom. Just. Like. That.” And he saw the pink tip of her tongue inside the set of her teeth, watched as it poke out, saw it grow brighter as she bit down on it.

  He didn’t see the frail teenage girl approach the booth from the passenger line and stand next to the woman, her child eyes vacant, her mouth open, looking more like a street urchin than an international traveler.

  His heart hammered against his rib cage. There was too much blood coursing through his veins. His head felt dizzy. For a moment, he couldn’t breathe. He pressed his hands against his desk to keep himself from pitching forward. He looked away from the woman without a passport, aware that something wonderful and awful had almost just happened, aware that he was in way over his head.

  The woman gave him one last smile, like the final glimpse of a red dress before it rounds a corner, then stepped past his booth in a wave of cool air and the unexpected scent of wet wood. Then she was gone. He stared straight ahead, not seeing the dull-looking teenage girl shuffle after her.

  Tom felt the brightness of Savary diminishing, the memories of pleasure fading away from him as if down a long, dim tunnel, replaced by the dirty backwash of shame and the sight of the long line of impatient passengers with their passports and their self-importance.

  He wondered if he should do anything. If he should alert someone.

  But he didn’t. He sat still for a moment in his booth at Vancouver International Airport, as the familiar film of boredom and ambivalence washed down over his eyes and mixed with this new humiliation.

  “Welcome to Canada,” he said over his shoulder, too quiet for anyone but a witch to hear.

  And then, facing forward, he sighed.

  “Next in line.”

  Chapter 49

  Charlie heard himself sigh. He rolled over in bed, aware that he was awake. The bedside clock read eight forty-nine. At first he couldn’t tell if it was morning or night. Then he saw the tiny letters reading “am” beside the hour.

  He counted the numbers in his head. Did that mean that he’d slept over seventeen hours? How was that possible? Hadn’t Beverly told him that he’d already slept for eleven?

  He thought about their conversation as he climbed out of bed. His legs were wobbly. He staggered to the bathroom and stood peeing above the toilet for what seemed like a full two minutes.

  He looked at his face in the mirror. Lines from the pillow were etched across his cheeks. One of his eyes looked swollen. His hair was even messier than normal, flat against his skull in places, sticking out in others. His mouth tasted like burnt ham and bad fruit. He rinsed it out with water and brushed his teeth.

  The fuzziness in his head began to clear as he walked back into his bedroom. He saw his phone on the nightstand. He turned it on, then sat down on the edge of his bed.

  Numbers were flashing in his text box and his voicemail box. One, two, three, …eight, nine. He flipped to his voicemail and saw that they were all from Diego. He smiled. He would enjoy listening to them.

  The text messages started out with simple lines: Whassup? Hope CA’s fun. Thinkin bout u. But one from this morning read differently. Call me. And another one: Call me, Charlie. Bad news.

  He pulled on some shorts and grabbed a sweatshirt, then began to head downstairs. He could hear voices from below. He pressed Diego’s number. It was answered after only one ring.

  “Charlie! Charlie, is that you?”

  “Yeah, what, what’s hap…”

  “Charlie. I hate to bother you. I know you’re on your trip, but…”

  And just before he heard the rest of Diego’s words, just as his bare foot stepped down onto the floor at the base of the stairs, a sensation like running water flooded over him. It was as if someone had dumped the water, a bucket of it, lukewarm, onto his head just below his scalp. It was pleasant, if not a bit surprising.

  Beverly came running toward him down the hallway from the kitchen. Rita and a man he didn’t recognize rounded the corner from the living room. They seemed to be moving in slow motion, and the looks on their faces ranged from worry to concern to downright panic.

  “Charlie!” his aunt was calling to him, but the running water warped her voice, making it sound warbled, muffled.

  “…Principal Wang had a heart attack last night, Charlie. He might not make it,” said Diego’s voice, clearer because it was on this side of the water, in the phone, close to his face, al
most as if Diego were perched on his earlobe.

  The water drained from his head and down through his face, a warm cascade on the inside of his chest cavity, past his hipbones, down through the soles of his feet.

  He didn’t see the three flower vases explode in the living room. Nor did he see the couch upend itself, the magazines catch fire on the coffee table, or the dirty dishes in the kitchen sink fly up and crash against the ceiling.

  He couldn’t feel the soft blue light descend as his aunt ran at him with her hands outstretched, her lips mumbling fast, didn’t know the coolness that the light offered him. He didn’t know that the strange man held his hands in front of him, turning the light in the living room dark, spreading a heavy fog throughout the rest of the house, protecting all that was in it.

  He didn’t see Rita running out the front door, slamming it shut behind her, stopping Charlie’s explosions from getting outside. He didn’t see Daniel Burman on the deck, doing the same thing from the back of the house.

  He sat down on the floor at the foot of the stairs, the phone in his ear, hearing Diego’s voice.

  “What’s that noise, Charlie? Are you okay? Was there a crash?”

  “No, I just, I just dropped something…uh, I gotta go.”

  “Charlie, did you hear me? Principal Wang had a heart attack. He might…” Diego’s voice cracked, and he was unable to finish the sentence.

  “Yeah, I got it. Diego, I’m sorry, my mom is, uh…”

  He hung up the phone, and then looked up to see Beverly and the man he didn’t recognize standing over him.

  “Did you hear?” he asked his aunt.

  “Yes, we heard. We got a call just before you came downstairs.” The water was gone. Her voice sounded normal.

  “But I knew. I didn’t, why didn’t…?”

  “Honey, you couldn’t have. You just couldn’t have.”

  For the first time he saw that the two adults had their hands facing toward him, palms outstretched. There was a buzzing sound in his ears, and the air around him shimmered as if rising from hot pavement.