Stranger in the Woods

by Geof Johnson

  She took it and said, “Are you sure you don’t mind? I can survive without it, but it’s just so cold right now.”

  “I don’t mind.” But he did, he just didn’t want her to know. He jammed his hands into his pockets and hunched his shoulders against the chill, and he grimaced when a breeze blew by, sending a few stray leaves swirling at his feet like tiny brown-and-gold dancers.

  They walked wordlessly the rest of the way. Most of the houses on the street were newer than Zach’s, and smaller, including Shelby’s. Hers had a front porch, where a wooden swing hung from chains at one end. That must be where she reads. Zach pictured her lying on it with a book in her lap, a pillow behind her back and her small feet pushed against the other armrest.

  When she reached the door, she took off the hoodie and handed it to him. “Thanks again for walking me home. My stupid brothers are useless, sometimes.”

  “It was nothin’. Don’t worry about it.”

  “You’re a good person, Zach. You’re the nicest boy I know.”

  He remembered something his grandfather said to him, once. “Don’t spread that around, okay? It’s bad for my reputation.”

  Chapter 31

  They finished the hardest part of cleaning the lab by late Sunday afternoon. It wouldn’t be up to Zach’s mother’s standards, if she were the one judging it, but it wasn’t filthy anymore. Zach stood with his friends and Grandpa and surveyed the room. “Looks a lot better,” Grandpa said. “Now we can start working on this old equipment without getting grubby.”

  “When can we start taking stuff apart and fixing it?” Zach said.

  “Maybe one day later this week.” Grandpa eyed the control station between the cylinders and scratched his chin. “We’ll start with that, since it seems to be the most important piece of equipment.”

  “Can’t we do it sooner?”

  “I’ve gotta work most every day. Gotta pay the bills, you know.”

  “But what about Bo?” Shelby said.

  “How’s that mark on his arm? Any change lately?” Grandpa said.

  “I don’t think so,” Shelby said.

  “Then I’ll get to the lab machinery when I have time.”

  Zach felt a surge of frustration and he wanted to protest, but he clamped his jaw instead. He knew his grandfather was doing them a big favor by agreeing to help them, and Zach had to be patient and let things happen on his grandfather’s terms.

  “Have you been reading through the lab log any?” Grandpa asked him.

  “I’ve been too busy.”

  “Try to get back to it when you have a chance. You need to find the entries that relate to this transport machine. If we’re going to recreate the experiment that brought Bo here, we need to know exactly what Uncle Nicholas did, all the settings and everything.”

  “I’ll try.”

  “Do you really think it’s in that book somewhere?” Jason said.

  “Uncle Nicholas probably took notes on everything he did. He was very methodical.”

  “Must be where Mom got it from.” Zach said.

  “She didn’t inherit it from me.”

  * * *

  Zach set the cordless phone back on the kitchen counter and shouted, “Mom! We got a job.”

  She appeared in the doorway to the front hall. “Really? Where and when?”

  “It’s right next door, at Mrs. Schultz’s house. That was her grown son who just called, and apparently they put their mother in an assisted living facility and they’re getting the house ready to sell it.”

  “I didn’t know they’d moved her out. I guess that’s why I haven’t seen the home care nurse over there lately.” She lifted one eyebrow. “You still haven’t told me when you’re supposed to do this job.”

  “Tomorrow afternoon. It should only take an hour or so, if all four of us do it together.”

  “You can’t do it if you have homework.”

  “But Mom! We gotta, or they’ll get somebody else, and they’re going to pay us thirty dollars.”

  “You know the rule. Homework first.”

  “I’ll get my homework done. I promise. But please let me do this.”

  She looked at him for a long time, her face inscrutable, and he felt certain she was going to say no, and he was already preparing himself to be disappointed. She said, “All right, we’ll try it just this once. If you have to stay up late to get your studying done, I won’t let you work on school days again.”

  * * *

  Zach told Grandpa about the job when he came over for dinner and brought Beepee. The old man pulled out his chair at the head of the kitchen table and sat down, his wrinkled face thoughtful. “That makes me kinda sad. It’s good that you got the job, but Mrs. Schultz has lived there for as long as I can remember. I’m sorry to see her go.”

  Zach’s mother placed the steaming-hot chicken casserole in the center of the table, set aside her oven mitts, and sat down, too. “Zach said they’re going to put the house up for sale. Maybe a nice family will move in there.”

  “Or it’ll stay empty for months and months, like the other three or four houses on this street.” Grandpa pressed his mouth tightly and stared at the table for a moment. “I hate to see this neighborhood go downhill.”

  “It’s not going downhill, it just needs some new blood in it.” She turned to Zach and said, “So tell me again exactly what you and your friends are doing there tomorrow.”

  “They want us to haul junk out of their garage and take it to the street, where they’re going to have a truck.”

  “What about all of Mrs. Schultz’s furniture?” Grandpa asked. “Her kids are grown and they probably don’t need it or have room for it.”

  “They’re having an estate sale in a couple of weeks.” Zach shrugged a shoulder. “Whatever that is.”

  Grandpa spooned some of the casserole onto his plate. “It’s when the family of a deceased person hires an agency to come in and put price tags on everything in the house, and they place an ad in the paper about it and they take care of the sales. We’ve had several of those in this neighborhood over the last few years. They might as well put a sign out front that says somebody died here, or we put Gramma in the nursing home. Come buy her stuff because we don’t want it.”

  Zach’s mother frowned at him. “That’s a harsh way to put it.”

  “It’s true, though. When I croak, just lay me out on my couch, lock the doors, and burn the place down. Okay?”

  “No way,” Zach said. “We’d never do that.”

  Zach’s mother narrowed her eyes at her father. “That might not be a bad idea. Then we wouldn’t have to clean up your house.”

  “Hilarious,” Grandpa grumbled and turned his attention to his food.

  Before he left that night, Grandpa took Zach aside and asked him what he and his friends were going to charge for their yard work, if they get more calls. Zach confessed that he hadn’t thought about it. “What should I do?” he asked.

  “You want to sound as professional as possible. So, first off, you need a minimum price that you’ll give out over the phone,” Grandpa said, “say…twenty-five dollars. Then you can make it higher if it looks like the job is going to take a long time. You won’t be sure of that until you get a little experience, but you definitely should keep your price low so you’ll be affordable. If there are going to be four of you working, it’ll be easy and go fast if you’re efficient.”

  “How to we do that?”

  “Division of labor. You don’t want any of your friends having to stand around and watch because you don’t have enough rakes or whatever. I’ve got a leaf blower you can borrow and that’ll speed things up. How about a lawn mower? Are you planning to just use yours, or do the Ross kids have one? Two at once would be faster, though it’s almost the end of the grass growin’ season.”

  “Uh….” Zach didn’t know what to say. He was clearly unprepared for this.

  “Also, what are you going to do with the leaves once you get ’em in a pile? Yo
u need to have a plan before you bid on the job. If the owner of the house wants them burned, then he should have to do that because it takes a long time, and your mother won’t like you doing that, anyway. If the owner wants them bagged, he should provide those, or you could bring your own and charge them for them.”

  “I don’t have any bags yet. Are they a special kind?”

  “They’re the big paper ones. I’ll get you some and you can pay me back after your next job.”

  “Grandpa, this is way more complicated than I thought it would be. What if we screw up or it takes a long time and we end up looking like a bunch of idiots?”

  “You’ll be fine if you do what I tell you. And there isn’t a lot of competition around here, in case you haven’t noticed. There aren’t many teenagers in the neighborhood.”

  “But there’s so much to remember. I’ve never done anything like this before.”

  “There’s a first time for everything. I’ll do what I can to make sure you’re ready for it. Now go get a piece of paper. I’m going to tell you what you need to remember, and you’re going to write it down.”

  * * *

  Zach and Justin carried the last cardboard box full of junk down the next-door neighbor’s driveway, and as they neared the trash truck where Jason and Shelby waited, Jason said, “What’s in that one?”

  “Old books,” Zach answered. “Mostly for little kids.”

  “Hold up.”

  Zach and Justin paused while Jason looked inside it. He shook his head once. “These are nasty. Looks like they’ve been chewed on by mice.” He gingerly picked one up and showed it to his sister. “Here’s your biography, Shelby. The Ugly Duckling.”

  Shelby frowned. “Ha ha.” She glanced into the box, too, and said, “Oh, here’s one about you and Justin, The Two Stupid Brothers.”

  “You made that up. Is that supposed to be funny?”

  “No, it’s sad.”

  “Are you done yet?” Zach said between clenched teeth. “I can’t hold this much longer.” Zach and Justin stepped to the rear of the truck, and heaved their load into the back to the join the other junk — more cardboard boxes, cans of dried up paint, a rusted bicycle that had no front wheel, and other unwanted things from a lifetime of living in one house. Zach wiped his hands on his pants. “Is that it?”

  “That’s the last of it,” Jason said. “Let’s go get paid.”

  Zach handed his mother the money, a twenty dollar bill and a ten. “Can you give us change for this? It was all Mr. Schultz had.”

  “Why do you need change?”

  “So we can split it up.”

  “Divided by four? That’s seven-fifty each. I don’t have that kind of change.”

  Zach and his friends looked at each other cluelessly, standing in the foyer of Zach’s house. Zach said to them, “What do you want to do?”

  Nobody had an answer.

  “Are you going to spend all of your earnings on the lab?” Zach’s mother said.

  “At first, yeah, ’till it’s fixed up.”

  “Why not just keep it together?” She gestured at them as she spoke. “One of you can be the treasurer.”

  Zach took the bills from his mother and handed them to Jason. “You guys keep it. There are more of you, anyway.”

  Jason raised his eyebrows. “You trust us?”

  “Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

  * * *

  Zach looked up from the book he was reading at his desk when his mother stepped into the open doorway of his bedroom. “It’s almost ten o’clock, honey. Time to go to bed.”

  “Already?” He glanced around for his watch and found it on his nightstand, where he’d laid it before his bath.

  “Did you get everything done?”

  “Yes ma’am. I was just doing a little studying for a history test tomorrow.”

  “Don’t stay up any later. You know the deal. If you can’t get your homework done at a reasonable time, then you can’t do any jobs for the neighbors during the week.”

  “It’s fine. I got it all done.” Just barely.

  She left and he closed the book, leaned his head back, and exhaled heavily. Hoo boy. Long day. Then his gaze turned to the lab log, still on top of the dresser where he’d left it. Guess I won’t get to look through that tonight.

  Before, he’d always had time after school to do homework and still watch television or mess around on the computer, or both. But not today. This is hard. Hope I can keep this up until we can send Bo home.

  Chapter 32

  Late the next day, Zach walked down the basement stairs to the lab, where he found his grandfather. “Mom said dinner’s ready.”

  Grandpa acknowledged him, then turned back to what he’d been working on. He had taken the panel off the front of the control station, and he gestured at the blackened, jumbled mess inside. “This is worse than I thought. It’s a disaster.”

  “Why?” Zach moved closer to the old, partially disassembled device so he could see it better. The inside of it was dark with soot.

  “Just about everything in it is fried, totally. Most of the wiring’s got to be replaced, and I wouldn’t be surprised if these tubes are all kaput. Gonna be a chore to find new ones.”

  “What are tubes?”

  “These doohickeys.” He pointed to a couple of small glass cylinders mounted on an aluminum board; charred wires snaked away from them like frazzled hair. “Televisions and radios used to use them, back in the old days. I saw a lot of these when I had my repair business.”

  “Are they expensive?”

  “Some are, some aren’t. We won’t know until we start hunting for new ones.”

  “Does anybody even make them anymore?”

  “There are still some manufacturers in China and Russia, and some companies specialize in what they call new old stock, which are parts that were made a while back but never got sold. I have a couple of catalogues lying around somewhere, but I don’t know if they’re good, anymore. Those companies may be out of business by now.”

  “We can probably find a supplier on the Internet,” Zach said.

  “That can be your job, then. I’ve still got my tube tester in my garage, so I’ll bring it down here and check everything out and see what have to replace, but I’m guessing we’ll have to replace all of it.”

  “Is this going to be hard?”

  “It’s not going to be easy, or cheap.” He tapped a scorched metal box inside the sooty device. “See this thing? If I’m not mistaken, this is a magnetron, and it’ll cost a hundred bucks, easy.”

  “Magnetron? Sounds like a superhero from a comic book.”

  “Does sound corny, doesn’t it? They used to use them in radar, but I think they have other applications, now.”

  “Does it really cost a hundred bucks for just that one little thing? It’s not even as big as a lunchbox.” Zach bit the corner of his lip, hard. “And we have to pay for all the other parts, too?”

  “That’s the deal. I’ll help with the work, but you gotta pay for everything.”

  Zach took a long look at the blackened electronics and then nodded firmly. “We’ll do it, Grandpa. We’ll rake every yard in town if we have to, if you think we can fix it.”

  “I’m not saying we can for sure, but it’s possible. That is, if Uncle Nicholas left good instructions in his log. If he didn’t, we don’t stand a chance, because I’ll have no way of knowing what to do.”

  “I’m sure he did. I just have to find it. Are we going to have to take everything over to your house to fix it?”

  “I don’t think so.” He nodded toward the far side of the room. “There’s a work bench over there near the corner, and it looks like it’s still useable. I think I’m going to give one of you guys soldering lessons, though. Some of those connections in the control station are in pretty tight spaces, and my big old hands aren’t as flexible as they used to be, so one of you kids will have to do that job.”

  Zach looked at his own hands and asked, “Is
it hard to learn?”

  “Not really. Some people are better at it than others, though.”

  * * *

  The rest of the week was just as busy for Zach. He got several more calls about yard work, studied for two more tests, and still found a few minutes here and there to go through the log book. He’d watched no television since the previous Sunday, and it was late Friday afternoon before he was able to catch his breath and relax.

  He settled in front of the computer for what seemed like the first time in ages, and loaded Facebook. He had one notification. His cousin had finally responded.

  He clicked on her page and called, “Mom! Emily answered my friend request.”

  She hurried into the family room, drying her hands on a small towel as she neared. “Let me see! Did she post pictures?”

  “Some. Mostly of herself, and a few of her with her friends.” His mother leaned over his shoulder while they viewed the display.

  Emily looked a lot like Zach’s mother, with dark-blonde hair and hazel eyes, but her face was fuller. Zach studied one photo for a moment, taking in her features, memorizing them, trying to appreciate the significance of what he was seeing.

  “Are there no pictures of her family?” his mother said. “I want to see them, too.”

  Zach scrolled to the bottom without finding anything, then looked up at his mother and shrugged. “I’ve checked before to see if her brothers have pages, but they don’t. They’re probably too young.”

  “How about her parents? Surely Will or Lucy has one.”

  “Just Emily. I looked already.”

  “Oh, well. At least Emily does. Maybe you can call her sometime.” She patted the top of his head. “With your new cell phone.”

  “I can try to get her number, but I don’t know if she’ll respond. It took her forever to answer my friend request.”

  “Maybe she’s busy.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  * * *

  Saturday afternoon, Zach and his friends raked their first yard together. They were disorganized at first, but gradually found a system that seemed to work the best for them. They took turns, rotating between the two rakes, the leaf blower, and the wheelbarrow, so nobody got too tired or got blisters. Before dark they had everything bagged and set out by the street for the garbage pickup, and they got paid twenty-five dollars — not as much as their previous job, but enough to make them feel optimistic about their chances of earning enough to fix the lab.