by Geof Johnson
“Maybe Jason and Justin will help,” Zach said. “They have to pay me back for the money I loaned them.”
“It’s going to be rough work. They can expect to get a lot of scratches on their arms.”
Zach’s mother tapped the side of her nose with one finger and stared thoughtfully at Zach. “Maybe I should pay them a little extra if it looks like it’s going to be hard. I bet they could use the money.”
“How about Shelby?” Grandpa said. “She’s going to feel left out if you give the boys some paying work but not her.”
“I don’t think that cutting back shrubs and hauling the old branches to the street is a good job for her.”
“Let her help you with the porch.”
“Yeah.” Zach said. “Then it’ll just be me and the guys doing the hard work.”
“But I only have one set of gardening gloves. Dad, do you think those boys have any? I don’t want to buy more just for this one job.”
“I doubt very seriously that those boys have gloves.”
“Zach, you’ll have to wear—”
“I’m not wearing your gloves, Mom,” Zach said quickly.
She started to argue with him but Grandpa cut her off by saying, “Just get a couple of cheap pairs from the Val-U-Mart. You can probably get ’em for a dollar each.”
“All right. I’ll go tomorrow afternoon. Zach, you can come with me. We need to get you some more T-shirts.”
“I hate shopping with you. Can I stay home?”
“You’d be by yourself.”
“Oh.” That suddenly seemed like a terrible idea. But so did shopping with his mother. Beepee didn’t look like she’d offer much protection if he stayed home. She was asleep on the floor under the table, worn out.
“He can come over to my house and watch TV,” Grandpa said. “I’ve got a little job I gotta do in the morning, but I’ll be done by lunch.”
“But what if Jason and Justin and Shelby come over?” Zach said. “They said they might, and I won’t be here.”
“Leave a note on the door and tell ’em to come to my house. They can watch TV, too.”
Zach’s mother leveled her eyes at Grandpa. “In your messy house?”
“It’s not that bad.”
“Can you at least pick up the beer bottles and dirty dishes from the coffee table?”
“I did that already. Zach helped me clean up a little.”
“How about the bathroom? Is it still disgusting?” He shrugged innocently and she said, “I’m cleaning it tonight. It’s embarrassing! Honestly, Dad, you can be so lazy, sometimes.” She frowned and angled her head to one side. “Speaking of lazy, when are you going to fix the light in the basement? I put a new bulb in it, but it doesn’t work right. It sizzles and pops and cuts on and off.”
“I’ll do it right after dinner. Probably just have to tweak the little contact inside the fixture. I’ll need to use your flashlight and a screwdriver so I won’t have to go back to my house.”
“Good. One of these days I want to sort through the junk that’s down there and see if any of it’s worth keeping.”
“Can I see Uncle Nicholas’s laboratory?” Zach said.
“You can see the door to it,” Grandpa said. “That’s about all, unless you can find the key.”
Zach sat up straight in his chair. “The key! Maybe Jason and Justin and Shelby can help me look for it.”
“Not tomorrow, you can’t,” his mother said. “I don’t want all of you here while I’m at the store.”
“You don’t trust us.”
“Not yet. Not until I get to know those kids a little better. Wait until I’m home before inviting them over here.”
“Well, maybe the next day, then.”
“You’re helping your grandfather with the shrubs.”
“Oh. But soon, though. We’ll find the key, if it’s here.”
* * *
Later, Grandpa came up from the basement with a screwdriver in one hand and a flashlight in the other. “Okay, the bulb’s working and you can see down there now. Want to check it out?”
He stepped aside and gestured for Zach to go ahead of him, but Zach shook his head.
“I’ll go.” His mother walked past Grandpa and began going down the stairs. Grandpa held his arm out wide for Zach, and Zach went to the open doorway and looked. The light was on and the steps were illuminated but he couldn’t see any farther than that, so he clenched his jaw and followed his mother with Grandpa behind him.
The ceiling had exposed beams, the joists that supported the kitchen floor and other parts of the house. The air grew noticeably cooler as they descended, and smelled musty and old.
The stairs ended at an open area of the basement, which seemed to be only half the size of the main level of the house, the other half blocked by a long wall with a steel door on it. The concrete floor was dusty and unpainted. Trunks and boxes were stacked and scattered around, and cobwebs hung thickly overhead.
Zach looked up at them and frowned. “Are there any spiders here, Grandpa?”
“They’re probably all dead by now.” He crossed his arms loosely and gazed about. “Nobody’s been down here for years, I bet. Certainly not Winnie while she lived in this house. She had trouble with stairs because of her arthritis.”
“Whose things are in these boxes?” Zach’s mother asked. “Great Uncle Nicholas’s?”
“More than likely.” He pulled open the top of the nearest one and peered inside. “Looks like a bunch of old newspapers and stuff. Probably not very important.”
“I need to go through them and toss out anything that’s not worth keeping,” she said. “We could use the storage space for our own junk. I want to clear out the garage eventually and park my car in it.”
“Put it on the list.”
She eyed the clutter around them with a distasteful curve of her mouth. “It’ll be low priority, that’s for sure. I have a million other things to do.”
Zach inspected the solid, charcoal-gray metal door that led to the lab. “Are you sure we can’t get in here, Grandpa?” He grabbed the handle and tried it, but it wouldn’t budge.
“Not unless you know how to pick a lock.”
Zach’s mother put her palm on it and her brow creased. “But why such a heavy one? And steel, at that.”
“Uncle Nicholas was a secretive man. He didn’t want people snoopin’ on him while he was making his inventions.”
“What did he invent?” Zach said.
“I think he was developing stuff for the military. He also had some patents on a couple of things that went into televisions, I believe, which made him a lot of money. All I know is what my mother told me about him. I never came down in this basement while he was alive, and only once after we moved Winnie in here.”
“And this door was locked?”
“As far as I know.”
“Grandpa,” Zach said, “how am I related to him? I forgot.”
“He was my mother’s brother. My uncle, your great-great uncle.”
“Mom?” Zach said. “How come you didn’t know him better if you grew up two houses away?”
“I hardly ever saw him. He kept to himself, mostly. He only came over to our house for holiday dinners, and he was quiet then.”
“Why did he live in such a big house if he wasn’t married?”
“It was supposed to be a wedding gift for his fiancé,” Grandpa said, “but she died of influenza.”
“I never knew that,” Zach’s mother said. “That’s sad.”
“Lots of people died. There was a real bad outbreak of it around here. Uncle Nicholas had already bought this big place and had it furnished and decorated, all according to her wishes. They were planning on having a big family.”
“It must’ve cost a small fortune back when it was new,” she said.
“I’m sure this house was beautiful back in its glory days.” He gestured at the trunks and boxes behind them. “There might even be some pictures of it somewhere in those.�
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“Grandpa, was your house expensive, too?” Zach said.
“Not when I bought it. It was almost thirty years old by that time.”
“That house was nice when I was growing up,” Zach’s mother said. “Mom always made it so. She kept it spotless and planted flowers out front and cooked and…everything. It was a good home.” She pointed a reproachful finger at Grandpa. “It would still be nice if you’d clean it once in a while.”
“Haven’t had a reason to, lately.”
“Well, you’ve got one, now. I don’t want Zach and his new friends going over there tomorrow if it’s going to look like a pigpen.” She turned toward the stairs. “Come on. I’ve got to go over there and clean your bathroom.”
Chapter 5
It was after lunch the next day before the Ross kids showed up. Liz heard the doorbell, and when she answered it, she found them waiting on the front porch. Their bikes lay on their sides in the grass, except for Shelby’s red one, which was parked on its kickstand on the walk.
“Hello,” Liz said as she held the door open. “Did you eat already?”
“Yes ma’am,” Jason said. “Peanut butter sandwiches.”
“I thought you were tired of those.”
“Yes ma’am, but Mama said we shouldn’t mooch off you, and we had to eat at home.”
The yes ma’am stood out to her this time, and in noticing it, she realized that these kids were not made entirely of rough edges. “I don’t mind feeding you, as long as we have enough. I need to go to the grocery store, though, so maybe it’s a good thing you ate already.” Thunder rumbled in the distance and she motioned with one hand. “Come inside before you get struck by lightning.”
They stepped into the foyer and looked at their surroundings. Justin said, “We never been in a house this big before.”
“It’s not much to look at right now. We have a lot of work to do on it. I want to talk to you about that, but let me get Zach down here, first. I think he’s in his room.” She called up the stairs for him and turned back to the kids. “How would you like to earn some money?”
All of them raised their eyebrows at once and Justin said, “Doin’ what?”
“Trimming the shrubs in the backyard and hauling the cuttings to the street for the garbage men. It’ll be hard work and you might get some scratches, but I’ll pay you twenty dollars each.”
“Twenty dollars!” Their eyes flared simultaneously, as if they were connected to the same circuit and someone had flipped a switch. Jason said, “But Zach already loaned us some money and we gotta pay him back by helping him with chores.”
“He didn’t loan you that much. You don’t realize how hard this is going to be.” She turned to Shelby and said, “It might be a little too hard for you, though.” Shelby’s chin fell and Liz added, “But I might have something else for you to do. Have you ever painted before?”
She shook her head without looking up. Liz said, “Would you like to learn? It’s not hard.”
“Yes ma’am,” she said in a small voice, still staring at the floor.
“Then you and I can paint the front porch trim while these boys wrestle with the shrubs. I’ll pay you the same, twenty dollars. Does that sound fair?”
Shelby lifted her chin and nodded, and a pale smile appeared.
Liz heard footsteps on the stairs, and Zach came thumping down. “Sorry it took me so long,” he said. “Had to find my shoes.”
Liz turned back to the three Ross kids and said, “I have to run some errands this afternoon, and I thought you kids could go to Zach’s grandfather’s house and watch TV, since our cable isn’t hooked up yet and you can’t go outside if it’s going to storm.”
“When is our cable getting hooked up?” Zach said.
“Friday, I think. They’ll connect that and the Internet at the same time. The phone people are coming then, too, so we’ll be stuck here all day.”
“Can we go to the river on our bikes then?”
“We’ll see. But right now I have to go shopping, and you have to go to your grandfather’s house. Do you kids need to call your mom and tell her where you are?”
“She can’t take personal calls at work,” Jason said, “but I’m sure it’s okay. We already told her about you. She said she knows you.”
“Really? How?”
“She went to high school with you, but she said she graduated two years after you.”
“What’s her name?”
“Tina Ross, but it used to be Wainwright.”
“Huh.” She rubbed her lower lip with one finger. “That name sounds familiar, but I can’t picture her face. I’d like to meet her sometime. Maybe she can come over for coffee soon.”
“I don’t know when she could,” Justin said. “She works most all the time.”
“We’ll figure something out.” She turned to Zach and said, “Why don’t you show them the rest of the house before you go over to your grandfather’s? And then I’ve got to leave.”
Zach gave them a quick tour of the main floor and then he took them upstairs. He made it a point to hurry into his room first so he could yank his nightlight out of the wall socket and kick it under his desk.
Jason plopped on the edge of Zach’s bed and glanced around. “You get this all to yourself? I gotta share with him.” He pointed at his brother, who was poking through the things on top of Zach’s dresser.
“Oh, what are these?” Shelby picked up one of the two carved bears from Zach’s bedside table. “They’re beautiful. Where did you get them?”
“It’s weird,” Zach said. “They just kinda showed up here one day. It was right after I went skateboarding and saw you guys for the first time. I came back upstairs and they were right there.”
Justin seemed to lose interest in what he was perusing and looked at the carvings. “Bears, huh? It would be cooler if they were eagles. Or at least one of them was. That’s what me and Jason like. Big ol’ birds with their wings out like this.” He spread his arms into long arcs and extended his fingers. “That would be awesome.” He gestured at the tiny wooden figures. “But the bears are okay. Your mom didn’t give them to you?”
“No, neither did my Grandpa. He says they were probably already here, but I think someone snuck in and put them there. Same thing with this.” He picked up the leaf-origami swan from his desk and showed it to them. It was still vividly green, as if it were alive.
The twins didn’t seem impressed, but Shelby’s eyes widened and she rounded her mouth. “Oh,” she said softly. “That’s…just…it’s wonderful. I love swans.”
Zach could tell she wanted it, and the right thing to do would be to give it to her, but he couldn’t bring himself to make the offer, even though the tiny figure didn’t mean much to him. He started toward the open door. “Let me show you my dad’s stuff.”
He led them to the room across the hall and stepped aside so that the others could see.
“Holy shmoly!” Justin said. “Look at all this.”
Zach let them wander around and read the inscriptions on the trophies and plaques, marveling at his father’s awards.
“Our daddy never won nothin’,” Jason said, “seems like. I think your dad won ’em all, though. Why’d he blow his brains out if he was so successful?”
Zach squeezed his mouth closed without answering aloud. Because he was disappointed in me.
Justin gestured at one of the trophy shelves and said to Zach, “None of yours in here?”
“I never won anything.”
“Me neither.” Justin wrinkled his brow at Zach. “But you know somethin’? You talk funny.”
“What do you mean?”
“You don’t say never won nothin’ or ain’t got no, or nothin’ like that. You talk like a city kid.”
“I can’t help it. My mom makes me talk that way. She’s an English teacher and she’s always correcting my grammar.”
“Don’t she work in the school office?”
“She will now, but she used to be
a teacher, and she said I’ve got to speak correctly because people judge you by the way you talk. She doesn’t want me to talk like a hick or white trash.”
“You sayin’ we’re white trash?” His eyes became stony.
“No! Of course not. It’s just what my mom says, that’s all.”
All three of the kids were staring at him, all with the same, distrustful expressions and their arms crossed tightly over their chests. Zach was startled by their strong, sudden reaction. He knew he had to do something to ease the tension, but he couldn’t think of anything to say.
He abruptly rushed back to his room. He grabbed the origami swan from his desk, took it back to where the kids waited, and thrust it into Shelby’s hands. “Here.”
She accepted it with a confused look. “Huh?”
“Take it,” Zach said.
“But what…I mean—”
“Don’t ask. Just take it.”
A delighted gleam filled her eyes, and her brothers seemed to relax a little. They uncrossed their arms, at least, and Zach hoped he’d defused the situation enough so they could still be friends.
The silence was broken when his mother called to him from below, and he headed toward the door. “Come on. We gotta go.”
Liz waited in the foyer at the bottom of the stairs while the kids came down the steps, their feet clopping all together, making their own thunder to rival the rumbles outside. When they joined her she said, “Zach, I just talked to your grandfather and he’s ready for you to come over. The television is all yours.”
“Let’s watch Zombie City,” Jason said.
“We seen ’em already, every episode,” Justin said, and the two brothers began to argue about which shows they were going to watch. Zach stayed out of the discussion, and Shelby’s chin fell and she became silent.
Liz put her hand on Shelby’s thin shoulder. “Are they always like this?”
Shelby nodded disconsolately. “I never get to pick. They always hog the remote.”
“Would you rather go shopping with me?”
She raised her eyes to meet Liz’s. “Could I? But I don’t have any money.”
“You could stay with the boys and watch gory zombie shows, if you’d rather.”
