They’d done it. Instead of crane-killing pavement, the church was actually encircled with harmless water. It gleamed like liquid sapphires in the camera lens.
Ware wished there were a seat behind him, because suddenly he really needed to sit down. Then he realized something pretty great: there was a seat behind him.
There were rows of seats behind him, in fact. Great long rows of seats, long enough for a whole flock of people to sit on, ready-made for admiring the wonder of things.
He located the end of a pew and began plowing off shingles and boards and screens and insulation and chunks of concrete. When he’d cleared off a couple of feet, he kept going, because number five in the Knights’ Code was: Thou shalt persevere to the end in any enterprise begun.
He cleared off the whole thing, and then he went to the janitor’s closet and got some rags and cleaner. He polished the wood until it shone.
And then he sat down dead center. On the back of the pew in front of him was a brass plaque, carved with the word BEHOLD! It seemed to be an order.
Ware folded his hands together on his lap. He lifted his gaze to where the moat sparkled through the gaps in the wall. And he beheld.
Forty-Nine
“Behold!” Ware ordered Jolene when she got there. But Jolene had been beholding since she’d run into the lot.
“Wow,” she breathed as she settled herself on the pew beside him. “And it’s not leaking?”
“A few places. I’ll patch it. We’ll keep the hose trickling. Plus it rains every day.”
As if to prove him right, a bank of dark clouds drifted toward them, trailing veils of rain.
This was lucky, because Ware had something to ask, and Under the Table Jolene would answer. Under the Table she took off her sunglasses and he could see right into her soul.
He got up and led the way. “You said the people went back to their old ways after they got dunked. Like going to the bar. How did you know that?” he asked when the candles were lit.
Jolene shifted. “I only said one did.”
“But how did you know?”
“My window is over the bar’s parking lot.”
“Okay, but how did you know about the rest? Hitting their kids, you said. Drinking the rent?” Ware looked right into her eyes. He looked into her soul.
And he saw something terrible hiding there. He learned who the one person was. “Your aunt.”
Jolene put up her dukes, cartoon fierce. “I’m almost bigger than she is.”
Ware found his arms curling, too. As if they were a team. “And drinking the rent?”
“When my papayas are ripe, we’ll always have the money.”
Ware was struck silent for a moment. He hadn’t known Jolene’s home was at stake. “You won’t lose your garden,” he said, hoping he sounded more sure than he felt.
Jolene nodded. “I can’t lose my garden.” Then she leaned in and squinted right into his eyes. She looked as if she were trying to see into his soul. “How come you’re so interested, anyway? Are you trying to get yourself reborn?”
Ware turned away. He could use some mirrored sunglasses right now. Or a pair of nictitating membranes.
He kept his gaze on the candles. “Of course not. It’s all stupid anyway. A do-over tub, ha. Saints and angels and all of it.”
“Right. Except for saints.”
Ware laughed. “I thought you were a realist?”
Jolene shrugged. “Saints are real. I see one every day.”
The instant Jolene left for the Greek Market, Ware marched down to the moat. He started to peel off his shirt, but he remembered in time. The preacher dunks them, clothes and all.
He waded to the deepest part of the moat. He took a moment and made himself perfectly still.
Make me a different person, he wished, as hard as he could. Make me normal.
He filled his lungs and fell back as hopefully, as start-overly, as possible. He kept his eyes closed, because it felt wrong to be looking around, enjoying the view, at a life-changing time like this. Then he got up.
Ware assessed himself. He felt cooler. Less dusty. His mosquito bites didn’t itch. But did he feel different inside?
No, he did not. He felt exactly the same.
He heaved himself out of the water and climbed the back steps.
And there, dripping pools of water onto the church floor, he realized: He did feel different. For the first time ever in the lot, he felt sad.
Fifty
“My father says he can’t tell a bank what to do. He’s only a city councilman.”
Swing, crash, BOOM. Ware actually grunted at the blow as his ruined pledge crumbled to dust, and beside him Jolene staggered a step back.
He straightened up and mustered a protest. “But we covered the pavement with water. Look! Those cranes can’t get hurt now. That was the deal.”
“Um . . . a city councilman?” Ashley repeated. “That’s a person that does city stuff, like programs and budgets?”
At that, Ware felt a very small click in his brain. Like a tiny key being inserted into a good idea.
Before he could pursue it, Jolene interrupted his thought. “It’s who. Your father is a person who does city stuff. Unless your father is a thing, not a person? Is he a thing?”
Jolene’s attack surprised Ware, but it shouldn’t have. Sometimes when castle defenders threw down rocks on an attacking enemy, the enemy picked them up and threw them back. He just hadn’t ever thought of grammar as a weapon.
“My father is a person,” Ashley said, recovering. “But he’s not the head of the bank.”
Jolene shot her a look like a lance, steely and sharp. “Basically useless.” She smashed a mosquito.
Just then a flock of white birds floated down. They began leading a purpose-driven march up the slope to the papayas on long pink legs, pecking the ground with long pink bills.
Jolene flung off her hat, revving up for a charge.
Ashley stepped in front of her. “Hold on. You want those ibises here. They eat bugs.”
“Cutworms?” Jolene demanded. “Will they eat cutworms?”
“Are they worms? Then, sure. They eat worms.”
“They’re caterpillars.”
“Um . . . caterpillars? Like popcorn.”
Jolene settled back. But Ware could see she was going to keep a sharp eye on those ibises. Those ibises weren’t going to get away with anything.
Ashley hurried after the flock. “You birds,” Ware heard her comfort them. “This is your place. I’ll keep guard.”
Jolene turned to him. “Now what? ‘I pledge,’ you said. ‘Ashley will get her father to stop the auction,’ you said. Some plan.”
Ware swallowed hard. “Well, that was plan A,” he agreed. “Plan B might be a little different.”
Luckily, Ashley came back down before Jolene could ask what plan B was. She swatted around her head. “Birds would help with these mosquitoes, too. A single purple martin will eat a thousand mosquitoes a day.”
“Hope some show up, then.” Ware scratched at a bite on his arm. “They’ve been terrible this week.”
“Well, duh . . . standing water?” Ashley swept a hand toward the moat. “You made a mosquito factory here.”
Standing water.
Of course. Each week Ware’s father tore around the yard, upending every leaf and bottle cap that might hold a drop.
“So if the water moves, the eggs can’t hatch, right?”
Number two on page eleven of his report: Thou shalt always be prepared to help others in need.
This was his moment. He was prepared.
He lifted his jaw and thrust out his chest. He stripped off his shirt and leaped boldly into the water.
Chivalry. Not such a crock, after all.
Fifty-One
For the next few days, coming up with plan B occupied much of Ware’s time.
It was extremely satisfying work. Most of the scenarios involved chaining himself to the ruined church or lying down in fro
nt of Jolene’s papayas when the bulldozers came to scrape the lot. He’d face those machines down—ideally, surrounded by a crowd of breathless admirers, including a national television crew—unafraid in the face of the danger.
In all the scenarios, the machines backed off. Jolene’s admiration would know no bounds. She’d laugh her soft gurgling laugh. Maybe she’d even hold his hand again.
But there was a problem, he knew. Even if he had the courage to follow through—which was not entirely certain—his parents surely held strict positions against a kid challenging a bulldozer, especially if that kid was the only one they had. Overprotection: one of the many disadvantages of being an only child.
Since forever, Ware had wished for a sibling.
Didn’t matter which, brother or sister. His mother wouldn’t have a spare minute to hang over him, she’d be so busy scheduling feedings and nap times and diaper changes, and then, later, playdates and ballet classes and ninja camps.
This brother or sister would be nuts about sports, too, so his father would finally have the kid he wanted sitting next to him on the couch instead of a boy who couldn’t remember the difference between innings, sets, and quarters.
Or maybe it would go the other way. Maybe the new kid would be an even worse disappointment than he was. We should have appreciated Ware more, his parents would realize. He’s terrific just the way he is.
The only problem with having a sibling would be his room. His room was the one place on the planet he had some privacy. When he closed the door, every cell in his body sighed in relief. He didn’t think he’d survive if he couldn’t have his own room. But still, he wished he had a sibling. Since forever.
Ware shook himself back. He had a plan B to come up with.
Sometimes he felt as if the answer was right there, in front of his eyes. Right at his fingertips. But the only thing in front of his eyes and at his fingertips was a secondhand, nothing-special movie camera.
Fifty-Two
Birds, with their height advantage, discovered the moat right away. Ware liked imagining the first one doing a cartoon double take in midair—feet braked out, wings wheeling backward—then spreading the word.
The word spread quickly. A giant heron floated in to stalk the wall, a pair of cormorants paddled the circuit, and a flock of what looked like black-and-white scissors skimmed the shallow end, all on the same day.
The next day, a chattering of wild parakeets settled in the three queen palms like bright little limes. After that, they came every morning and stayed for a few minutes, squawking a ruckus over every move he and Jolene made.
Soon after the birds came other animals: rabbits and frogs, chipmunks and squirrels, dragonflies, beetles, and toads.
A full week after the moat was filled, a comically perfect latecomer crawled into the lot. Ware got down on his belly beside the turtle, his camera pressed to his face. “What took you so long?”
The turtle raised its head in a stately arc, looked straight into the lens, and blinked one eye.
Ware tapped the turtle’s shell with a blade of grass. “I dub thee Sir Wink. You are welcome here.”
Not all the visitors were. One morning Jolene discovered that the newest contributions to her compost had been swiped. What looked like tiny human handprints led to the moat.
“Raccoons,” Ware identified the culprits. “They like to rinse their food.”
He lashed together five window screens and settled the cage over the pile, then weighted it with a board. “You can lift it off, but the raccoons can’t.”
Jolene blew her bangs out and studied him. And for just a second he saw, reflected in those mirror glasses, a kid who was kind of okay.
Fifty-Three
Ashley started showing up most mornings. She said it was because she liked digging, and maybe that was true. Hand her a shovel and she always looked ready to burst into song.
But Ware noticed that what she was really doing was making the lot into a sanctuary for birds. She scattered the worms they turned up like little presents, and she piled bread crumbs and raisins and sunflower seeds on the moat wall. One day, he saw her sprinkling a trail of something red all around the lot. “Cayenne pepper,” she explained. “Cats hate it? On their paws?”
Ware liked having her around. He liked how clean she always looked. How when a speck of dirt did get on her, it somehow looked intentional, like a piece of jewelry. Most of all, he liked how she ended her sentences on an up note, making them sound like questions even when they weren’t. It made you feel included, as if she wanted your opinion on things.
Jolene, however, picked fights with her whenever she could. It began to bother Ware more and more.
“My great-great-great-great-grandfathers tried to kill each other once,” he told Jolene one day.
That got her attention. “Why’d they do that?”
“Well, because of the Civil War. They were on different sides. But they didn’t know about me. That they were going to have something in common.”
“You think Ashley and I are going to have a kid together someday?”
“Maybe. But no—I mean, maybe you have something in common with her that you don’t know about yet.”
Jolene sputtered out her bangs at that stupid idea.
“What do you have against her, anyway?”
Jolene peeled off her giant leather work gloves and tossed them to the ground. The move reminded Ware of knights throwing down their gauntlets to issue a challenge to battle.
“She lives in Magic Fairness Land, like you. Whenever she doesn’t like something, her daddy fixes it. Except, unlike you, she actually gets to live there. Because she’s rich.”
Ware thought it over. He picked up the gloves, the sign that he accepted the challenge. “But her father didn’t fix anything. She helps here at the lot herself, and she has other places she’s working on, too. Getting them lit up, for those cranes.”
“Oh, it’s not for those cranes. Why would a rich girl care about birds?”
“Maybe because she cares about birds.”
“Nuh-uh. It’s probably for a school project. Or maybe she’s going to write an essay about how great she is, saving them, so she can look good for college.”
That sounds like an assumption. You shouldn’t make assumptions about people. Ware heard Big Deal’s advice in his head. But he gave Jolene her gloves back, the sign he wouldn’t fight anymore. Jolene knew how the world worked. She was usually right. Still, he hoped she was wrong this time.
Fifty-Four
“Mm-hmm . . .” Uncle Cy leaned in closer to the screen. “Mm-hmm . . .”
When he’d arrived after visiting Big Deal, he’d only dumped his bag on the sofa before asking to see Ware’s film. Since then, he’d been scrolling back and forth, reviewing.
While his uncle studied the screen, Ware studied his uncle. Silver-rimmed glasses, a silver stud in his left ear. Black jeans, a black T-shirt made of something silky, not rough like his own.
Ware’s mother made him get new clothes for school every fall. He’d ask for black jeans and T-shirts. She’d never let him get his ear pierced, but he’d try.
Finally, Uncle Cy paused the film and leaned back. He pointed to the screen. “You keep cutting to those three palm trees.”
Ware didn’t know if this was a compliment or a criticism. “Well, they’re always there,” he explained. “Everything else in the lot is always changing.”
“But see? They change, too.” He scrolled back. “Like here, they’re sunny and languid. All’s good. Then after we see the auction notice, you cut to them whipping around like they’re distraught. How come?”
Ware made a mental note to use words like “languid” and “distraught” more often. “The bank’s going to sell the lot. All our work gone.”
Ware took a gulp of air. Saying it out loud made it real. Uncle Cy waited patiently while he got himself under control.
“I figure I could build something in the backyard once we own it, but Jolene re
ally needs her garden. I’ve promised her I’ll save it, but I don’t know how yet.”
“I’m sorry,” Uncle Cy said. “But I meant the palms. Why are you doing that with them?”
“That’s how I see them,” Ware admitted. “It seems like they’re reacting to what we do.”
Uncle Cy nodded. “A Greek chorus. That’s what I thought.”
“I know it’s dumb, just imagining . . .”
“No, not dumb. A Greek chorus is a device from ancient storytelling. In a play, it’s a group of people in the wings who comment on what’s going on. They let the audience know what emotion is expected. See? You’re a storyteller.”
“No, because I didn’t mean to do it.”
“Exactly. You did it intuitively. I called it. You’re a filmmaker.”
Ware had to laugh. “That’s crazy. Filmmakers are people like you. Not kids like me.”
“People like me were all kids like you, once.”
Ware tried, but the closest he could get to an image of his uncle as a kid was a smaller version of his grown self. Cool, semifamous, black jeans and an ear stud. “What were you like at my age?”
Uncle rubbed his back against the chair. The move reminded Ware again of a cat, lanky and cool. He scratched his own back on his chair to test out the move.
“So . . . I remember I was always trying to explain myself,” Uncle Cy said. “I used to drift off, and then I’d apologize, as if I’d done something I needed to apologize for. People thought I was lazy, or stupid or stuck-up. I had a really hard time in school.”
“That’s weird. You’re a hero in school now. Last winter our grade watched the documentary you did in the refugee camp with all those little kids following you around. I got to tell everyone you were my uncle.”
“Thanks.”
“Half the kids were crying. They gave their allowances, they held a fund-raiser afterward. That must feel good.”
“Well, it’s great when that happens, sure. But it doesn’t happen like that very often. You never know who will see your work, and you can’t predict how they’ll react. Plus that’s not why you make it.”
Here in the Real World Page 11
