by Geof Johnson
“Of course I don’t. Why don’t you hang out with Zach for a little bit and I’ll let you know when Shelby wakes up?”
Liz was touched by how concerned the twins were for Shelby. Even though they normally picked on her, often mercilessly, according to Zach, they obviously cared deeply about her. Once Shelby woke up, they took turns staying in the room with her and keeping her company.
Zach got the boom box and put it on Shelby’s bedside table so she could listen to the radio, and offered to play cards or read to her if she felt like it. She didn’t. She mostly just lay in bed looking miserable and sounding worse.
Liz took her a bowl of chicken soup around lunchtime, and Shelby managed to eat some. After that, she seemed to have a little more energy, and the boys ended up all together in her room with a deck of cards.
The next day was more of the same, but by Saturday Shelby was out of bed. She still had a cough, but the color had returned to her face and she was exhibiting more signs of life.
For lunch, Liz served them grilled cheese sandwiches, and as they ate them at the kitchen table, she said, “School starts in just over a week. Are you kids going to be ready?”
Jason made a sour face and Justin groaned, but Shelby offered a smile. “Mama’s taking us clothes shopping tomorrow because it’s her day off. I can’t wait.”
“Are you going to be up to it?”
“I feel a lot better now and I really want to go. I saved all the money you paid me and Mama’s got some, plus the money you kept aside for us after we worked for you. I’m going to have some nice clothes for the first day of school instead of junk from the second-hand store.”
Liz turned to the twins, who sat together on the other side of the table. “How about you? Are you getting new clothes?”
Jason shrugged one shoulder and looked at the half-eaten sandwich in his hands. “Don’t really care, but Mama said we got to.”
Justin frowned. “She said she don’t want us starting the school year lookin’ like white trash.”
“Do you want to go with them, Zach?” she said. “We could all go together. You need new clothes, too.”
“Can we wait? I hate shopping.”
“Tomorrow is the best time because I have to go to work next week. I’ll be busy.”
“Why? School doesn’t start ’till the following week.”
“Teachers and administrators have to start early, on Monday. It’s that way every year, remember? And I need to get oriented and everything. This will be a big change for me. It’ll be a big one for you, too. Do you want to go with me one day to see the school?”
Zach grunted and shook his head.
“Okay, but you still have to go with me tomorrow to buy clothes.”
* * *
After lunch they settled in the family room to watch television. Grandpa Rick came over with Beepee, and he sat in the kitchen with Zach’s mother while the dog joined the kids in the family room. She hopped up on the couch next to Shelby and curled against her leg.
The doorbell rang and Zach looked over his shoulder toward the kitchen. “Mom? You want me to get that?” He called again, “Mom?”
“I think she went out on the terrace with your grandpa,” Justin said, sitting nearby in the armchair.
Zach stood. “I’ll go see who it is.”
He opened the front door to find Marty, the Ross kids’ uncle, waiting on the porch. His eyes seemed unnaturally wide, almost maniacal. “Can I help you?” Zach said.
An unpleasant smile stretched Uncle Marty’s cheeks and his eyes seemed to expand, showing too much white. He had several small scabs on his face that Zach hadn’t noticed the last time they’d met, and his scraggly beard was even more unkempt, a wild furry animal that had fiercely attached itself to his jaw. He was rank with body odor, and Zach had to fight the urge to hold his nose.
“Finally, I think I found the right house,” Uncle Marty said. “I musta done knocked on every single one in the neighborhood. You’re Jason and thems’ buddy, right?”
“Uh…so?”
“They here?”
“Why do you ask?”
“That’s ’tween me and them. I bet they are here, aren’t they? Could you go fetch ’em?”
Zach did not like this wiry, scruffy-looking man with the too-wide grin and too-wide eyes, and briefly considered slamming the door in his face, but instead he turned and called for his friends.
Moments later the twins and Shelby joined him in the foyer. Jason scowled at his uncle through the open front door. “What do you want?”
“You got the key to your house?”
Jason looked at him critically. “Are you high?”
Marty’s bizarre grin broadened, revealing a few discolored molars in the back of his jaw. “Maybe I am and maybe I ain’t. Don’t make no difference. You got the key or not?”
Jason’s eyes narrowed to suspicious slits and his brother moved closer so that they stood shoulder to shoulder. “What for?”
“I need to get something outta your house, something that belongs to me.”
“There ain’t nothin’ in there of yours.”
“The hell there ain’t! Now gimme the damn key!” He stuck out his dirty hand, but Jason and Justin crossed their arms simultaneously and shook their heads in perfect sync, as if they’d been practicing the maneuver for days. Shelby stood silently behind them with Zach.
Marty’s face turned red and he shouted, “Gimme that goddamn key or I’m comin’ in there and snatchin’ it from you!”
By this time, Grandpa and Zach’s mother had come inside and made their way to the foyer with Beepee, and her hackles bristled and she began barking so ferociously that Zach’s mother had to clamp her hand on the dog’s snout to quiet her.
Grandpa pushed past the twins and said, “What’s all the commotion?”
Marty stepped back to the edge of the porch when he saw him. “This ain’t none a’ yer business. This is ’tween me and my nephews.”
Grandpa crossed his arms, too, and stood up straight, making it obvious that he was much bigger than Marty. “You’re standing on my daughter’s front porch, so it is my business. What do you want?”
“Just the key to their house. I gotta get something.”
“What you gotta get,” Grandpa growled, “is off of this property. Right now.”
It was Marty’s turn to cross his arms. “I’m not budgin’ ’till I get me that key. Their house belongs to my brother and I got a right to go in there if I want.”
Grandpa leaned forward and his face turned to steel. “If you don’t leave right now, I’m going to call the police.”
“Go ahead.” Uncle Marty shrugged. “They won’t lock me up or nothin’, not for being on your porch. They’ll just run me off and I’ll come right back, or I’ll wait out on the sidewalk. Ain’t no law against that, last I checked. Like I told you, I ain’t leavin’ ’till I get what I came for, the key.”
Grandpa turned around and walked to the rear of the foyer, pulling Zach with him. He bent close to Zach’s ear and whispered, “I need you to go get my shotgun. You remember where I keep it?”
Zach’s felt his heart leap. He whispered back, “Is your garage open?”
“I unlocked it this morning. Go out your back door and sneak around the side, and hurry.”
Zach glanced toward the front door, where Uncle Marty waited. “What if he sees me going across the neighbor’s yard? He can, from where he’s standing.”
“Don’t worry about him. I’ll keep him occupied. Just be quick and he won’t notice.”
Zach zipped through the hall and the kitchen and out to the terrace, then rushed to the side gate. He eased it open, cringing as it squeaked, then slipped through it and ran across the yard next door, all the way to his grandfather’s driveway, not daring to check over his shoulder to see if Marty was watching.
He sprinted to the garage in the back and yanked the heavy wooden door up, cringing again at the squealing racket it made as it rose on
its metal tracks. Against the wall on a pair of short brackets was the leather bag that encased the shotgun. He grabbed it and ran back to his house as fast as he could, carrying the cumbersome weapon in both hands, scared he would trip and fall, scared the gun would go off accidentally, scared of everything.
“Psst! Shelby” Zach hissed from the rear of the hall, near the kitchen. She turned and he showed her the gun. “Get Grandpa.”
Grandpa was still standing in the open front door, drawn up to his full height with his arms crossed, staring down at Marty, who stared back from the porch with his face stretched into a crazed grin, arms also crossed. Everyone else waited anxiously in the foyer, their arms crossed, too. It was an arm-crossing, tense situation.
Shelby tapped Grandpa on the arm and he came back to the hall to join Zach, out of sight of Uncle Marty.
Zach offered him the weapon, and Grandpa took it and smiled thinly as he unzipped it and said, “We’ll see what Marty thinks about this.”
He pulled out the long black gun and Zach sucked in his breath through his teeth. “You’re not going to shoot him, are you?”
Grandpa winked at Zach, then took two shells out of the side pocket of the case and loaded them in the weapon. He turned and said in a firm voice, “Step aside, folks.” The crowd in the foyer parted for him and he strode to the door without limping and leveled the shotgun at Marty.
Marty’s grin vanished and his eyes somehow widened even more, and he moved back to the edge of the porch again and held up both hands. “Now, hold on there, chief. We don’t want to do nothin’ rash.”
“No,” Grandpa said, “we want you to leave. Now.” He aimed the gun squarely at Marty’s chest. “Get off this porch and don’t come back. And if I hear that you’ve been harassing these kids or my daughter, I’m gonna come find you and blow your head off. You understand?”
He cocked the weapon with a vicious ca-chik and Marty spun and leaped from the porch, missing all of the steps and landing with a rolling tumble on the ground. He bounded to his feet and took off running. When he neared the sidewalk, Grandpa aimed low at the yard and squeezed the trigger. The gun exploded with an ear-shattering boom! and a chunk of grass blasted upward. Marty screamed and streaked away in a blur.
“Look at him go!” Justin said. “He looks like he’s got rockets on his butt!”
Grandpa lowered the weapon and turned to face them. “I don’t think he’ll be back, but what about you kids? Is he going to hassle you at your house?”
“Naw,” Justin said. “Mama threatened him, too, couple days ago. That’s why he came over here, thinking he could bully us without anybody interfering. He didn’t count on you being here. He probably thought it would be just us and Mrs. Webster.”
“What does he want out of your house so badly?”
“Anything he can take and sell at the pawn shop. Mama said he spends all his money on drugs.”
“Why doesn’t he just get a job like a civilized human being?” Zach’s mother said.
“’Cause he’s too lazy and worthless.”
Zach’s mother frowned deeply. “I really don’t like that man.”
“Nobody does,” Shelby said. “He’s nothing but trouble.”
Zach’s mother hardened her eyes. “I don’t trust him one bit. I’d feel better if you kids came over here in the morning next week, even though I’ll be at work until three o’ clock. Tell your mother I want you here.”
“We don’t have to come,” Jason said. “We’ll be safe.”
“I won’t worry as much if you do. You can keep Zach company when his grandfather’s not around.”
Zach muttered out of the side of his mouth, “He sleeps late.”
“Hey!” Grandpa said. “I heard that. Careful what you say about a man holding a gun.”
Chapter 22
Liz felt a subtle tightening in her throat as she made her way across the hot asphalt parking lot of Whitmer High on her first day of work. The building was gleaming and new, much nicer than the school it replaced, the one she attended years ago.
She stopped for a moment and considered the differences. It’s a lot bigger than the old one. More glass — the front doors, the wide windows on the second story — and it had a broader parking lot. She’d heard about why it was so large, designed to house 2,500 students, an anticipated surge in attendance when the new factory opened and more families moved in. It never happened. The state had kicked in extra money for the construction, all in the hope of luring the prospective company, but in the end, the people of Whitmer had been played for suckers and the company chose a different town, different state.
Now they were expecting fewer than 1,400 students when classes started the following week, and it would’ve been even less if officials hadn’t decided to combine the middle school with the high school.
That’s not a lot of kids. This town is shrinking, she thought sadly. “Oh well,” she sighed to the parking lot, which was only one-quarter full of cars. “You chose this, Liz. Don’t whine about it.”
She pulled the front door open and took a moment to consider what she saw. The atrium where she stood was spacious and bright from natural light streaming through the windows around the high ceiling. The floor was tan-colored and clean, and stretched away into the distant halls, three wide corridors that converged about fifty feet away. A group of adults stood together at that intersection, deep in conversation.
Doors were spaced on walls on either side of her, and her eyes were immediately drawn to a sign over one that said Attendance, where she would be working for the rest of the year. Right next to that was the main office, and on the other side of the atrium was the clinic, flanked by a set of restrooms. She scanned the area, fixing it into her memory, wondering where she was supposed to go next.
A man walked directly toward her from the group that had been chatting in the hall. His head was shaved bald and he was thick-set but not fat, like a former athlete. She guessed that he might be a coach, and as he drew closer she tried to read his badge that hung from the lanyard around his neck.
“You must be Liz Webster. I recognize you from your job application,” he said as he neared. “I’m Donny Ward, the assistant principal.” He extended his hand and she shook it, his grip firm but not painful.
“I’m totally lost here,” Liz said. “Where am I supposed to go first, the attendance office?”
“We have a staff meeting in ten minutes in the cafeteria. Let me give you a quick tour of the school, first.”
* * *
Zach and his friends returned to the woods on Monday afternoon, their first trip since Shelby’s asthma attack. They pedaled their bikes along the bumpy trail and Zach said, “You sure you got your inhaler?”
“Yes!” Shelby snapped, “For the forty millionth time! It’s in my pocket.”
“You don’t have to bite my head off. I’m just being careful.”
“You about died on us last time, Shelby,” Justin said, riding in front of her.
“Well, I’m fine now, so quit buggin’ me about it.”
They stashed their bikes and continued on foot with Beepee, all eyes on the woods around them, looking for Bo.
“I hope he’s okay,” Zach said. “He looked awful when he left us.”
“I wonder how he did that,” Jason said, “keeping Shelby alive the way he did, giving her his energy and all. Never heard a’ nobody doin’ nothin’ like that before.”
“Never heard a’ people doin’ lots of the things he does,” Justin added. “Moving around like a ghost, getting’ the woods to part for him like he was Moses or something. Gettin’ logs to merge, or askin’ the trees in the meadow to stop growin’.” He shuddered and grimaced. “Ain’t natural.”
“You scared of him?” Jason asked.
“Naw.”
“He likes us,” Shelby said. “I can tell. We don’t have anything to be afraid of.”
Zach pondered it for a moment. “I think he’s scared of something, though, which is wei
rd, because he’s enormous. If I were that big, I wouldn’t be afraid of anything.”
“You heard what he said when he was carrying Shelby the other day. He said he can’t be seen. That’s what he’s afraid of. People will know right off how different he is, and some crazy fool might try to kill him.”
“Like Uncle Marty,” Justin said. “Zach, I wish your grandpa had shot him instead of aiming at the yard.”
“Grandpa said he’s not worth going to jail for.”
“Wish Uncle Marty was in jail. He should be, instead of Daddy.”
“If he keeps messin’ with drugs,” Jason said, “maybe he will be.”
They hiked past the unfinished clubhouse since no one wanted to stop there. The idea of working on it seemed to have been permanently pushed to the back burner.
Soon they came upon the new bridge, and waiting there was Bo, standing on the near bank with his arms crossed behind his back.
Zach felt relieved to see the giant, who appeared to be healthy and whole again.
“I have been expecting you,” Bo said when they neared. “Are you well now, Shelby?”
“I’m fine, thanks, but how are you?”
“I am revitalized.” He bowed his head once. “My energy is restored.”
“Did the forest do that?” Zach asked.
“Yes.”
“Can we learn to get energy from the woods, too?”
“I believe that you already do, in a way.”
Zach tried to imagine how that could be, but he didn’t have time to think about it because Bo waved one big hand and turned to cross the bridge. “We need to converse. Let us go to my cabin where it is more comfortable.”
They followed him down the trail, across the gorge and through the woods, to the unusual home of the white giant. It was just as Zach remembered it, only seemingly more alive and green in the early August sunlight. Bo put one hand on the door and pulled it open.
Jason gestured at it and said, “What would happen if we tried that?”
“It would remain fast.”
“Does the wood from the door join up with the frame somehow, like you joined the planks onto the bridge?”
“It is the same technique.”
