by Eric Ellert
ERIC ELLERT ©
DEDICATED TO INANNA SNOW
QUEEN OF THE MOUNTAIN
Chapter1
Mice weren't supposed to have two tails. This one did. Faudron crossed the Astroturf lawn, mud squishing through her toes and stared at the puddle surrounding mom and dad's Brady Bunch split-level with the asbestos shingles and the reservoir backyard. She hoped the mouse hadn't come from the house and it would drown so she could start her day. Faudron hadn't slept and if she saved it, it would find a way into the house, into the army of traps mom had left and she'd have to face it again. It would stare up at her out of glue and it would sit in their garbage can for days waiting for the pickup, chirping. No, better if it drowned. If she felt sorry for it, she'd have to touch it. She'd have to scoop it out of the water with her bare hands, hoping it didn't bite. At least Moren, her little sister, was out of the house and off to school. Moren was fourteen and taller than Faudron at eighteen, not apt to listen, not even to dad if he was here; it wasn't going to be an easy two weeks on their own, taking care of the little one, as mom liked to say.
"Drown, already," Faudron said, "before I get stupid and try to save you."
It didn't and it looked at her as it spun around in the water so she took off her red windbreaker, her sister's actually, scooped the mouse up and fumbled for the door but Moren had locked it.
Faudron held the mouse jacket, which is what it would be for all time, under her arm, found the four-bladed Fichet key, opened all three locks and slipped inside, holding the mouse high like the Statue of Liberty's torch.
Luckily, when she'd arrived last night to the house she'd never seen, she'd fed the fish and somehow killed them. Feeding them Skittles as well as fish food might have had something to do with it, but lures were shiny; Skittles were shiny. She thought it would have made them happy, but the Skittles had melted in there and something about the sugar made green, moldy stuff fill the tank in just a few hours. She'd dumped them into the reservoir at Three, hoping to find a pet store at Six to replace them but couldn't get the phone to work. When she thought about it, that wasn't exactly it. The land-line connected her to some local exchange who'd told her they couldn't make the call.
Faudron put the mouse, jacket and all into the empty fish-tank. "One phobia conquered; thanks Mom; thanks Dad. Stop staring at me, Mr. Mouse."
She crossed the room, pushed a bill off the dining room table and tried to squeeze the squat telescope laying there into her knapsack but the top stuck out so she pulled the opposing zippers as tight as she could get them and tied them together with a rubber band from the pine-fronted kitchen cabinet. The telescope had been a Christmas gift to dad, though he hadn't been here to see it and she hadn't been home to give it. She hefted the knapsack. "Might work after all."
Faudron stuck the knapsack on her back and headed out the back door, but came back when the size of the bill started bouncing around inside her head. She picked it up, wiping off the footprint she'd left on it and read it three times, looking for some mistake. They'd printed $100,000 dollars all over it, due to The TreePros Company, yesterday. She hadn't been home in two years and nothing had changed. The Falkirk's were in the red again.
Faudron looked out the window at the monstrosity outlined at the foggy dock, DasBoat, as she liked to call it after the cheery sub movie dad liked. Even from here, the reservoir-edged dock was difficult to see but the floating smoke monster out there just might have sunk them. When they'd moved here, Mom decided to become a tree-plucker. There was a bit more to it than that, but that about summed it up and it hadn't worked out too well so far. The bill was either for the loan on the barge or the rent on it. Either way, it was a turn-key business. She didn't actually know what that was, though she was sure they never worked.
Faudron picked up the Fichet. She had yet to lock the door; why did they need the security door in what ought to be Mayberry? She didn't want to put it on her key chain. She didn't want their key. It wasn't like she'd expected them to send her one when they'd moved last year, while she was starting her second year in graduate school, but she had expected mom to at least stick around long-enough for her to arrive and present it to her, with the wonder that was Moren.
Faudron's grey-blue eyes weren't considered lovely, but people called them unforgettable, and they could grow cold over small matters, like an Irish biddy's, at least that's what mom said. Mom said she had peasant hands too, big ones, no piano fingers there. Moren got those.
Faudron's nose was straight and wide, lips full, face round, with lots and lots of leonine, blonde hair. She'd never be in the movies, so mom often said, unless they started making fifty's movies again and a Kim Novak address at either end came back in style. Everything was a movie to her parents and Moren. She was the modern girl, light and slim as a ferret, tall-enough to play someone older in a modern movie.
Faudron's watch alarm went off -- 8:55. She had ten minutes. She headed outside, grabbed the ladder from the side of the house and set it up just under the eaves, cracking one of the sideboards. She'd noticed a couple of replacements by the side of the house. She'd have to get on it tomorrow. She looked around, half-expecting some neighbor to complain but she could barely see the dock behind her and couldn't make out the left or right neighbor's houses, never mind the island the development's brochure had bragged about. It probably smelled as bad as the reservoir, anyway. She could have told her parents if they found a bit of rustic land in New Jersey, it was only still green because it was uninhabitable and full of deer ticks like the one who'd gotten mom. Faudron had a theory about nature; stay on your lawn.
She lost a shoe on the way up and tilted back, pulling the ladder to the vertical. When the ladder settled again, the corner tapped the storm-window and cracked it slowly, the way lake skaters drown.
Moren came to the window. Her brown, blond-streaked hair clipped back, coming down to her shoulders, like Veronica Lake before she fell into the booze. Whatever she'd done to it made it look smooth and almost wet all day long. Her eyes were narrow, almost Eastern. Faudron liked to think her ancestors had been the Hun, hence the endless friction on general principle they shared. Moren never wore makeup and looked better without it. She ate everything in sight and turned it into height, elegant height at that. She could pass for Connecticut Illuminati, as Moren liked to call her last neighbors after she'd heard a guest on Art Bell go on about yet another conspiracy. Faudron didn't hate her because she got away with murder; she just sort of hated her because she got all the affection from the parents without trying at all. Like this, staying home from school was the Moren the parents never saw, the Moren that existed from 8:30 to 3:00.
Moren opened the inner-window and fumbled with the catches on the storm-window, knocking out a portion of the windowpane as she raised it. "Why are you staring in my window?"
"Morning to you too." Faudron paused as mom used to but Moren didn't fess up so easily. "And you, why aren't we at school? First day is always as good-un."
"Whatever."
That word, that awful word, the word Faudron hated the moment she had stopped using it. She'd flown 900 miles on a seven-our flight, if she counted the four hours on the ground she couldn't even sue over and had used her last cash to get here when mom hadn't picked her up at the airport as planned. Faudron wanted to crack the window but held her breath before she said something harsh. She could feel it coming out anyway. She'd taken a heavy load at school and had taken leave because it wouldn't be two weeks watching Moren, it'd be a year; she could smell it. Mom with the recovery from surgery, and it had to be surgery, no one rushed to the hospital for Lyme's disease and of course dad with the job that made him leave more than he arrived a
nd little sister with the mouth. She'd run away if she hadn't already left. She would have run away when she was Moren's age, but no one was ever home to leave the note to. She did run away, to college then graduate school, but came home to an empty economy, so she was on graduate diploma number two. "Moren, if you say that again I'll leave."
Moren stepped back, pouting, fox-faced. "I hate you."
Faudron smiled. "Now I'm really glad I'm not mom. That doesn't work on me, hate you right back. You don't want to make the phone call...and watch the glass."
Moren thought for a moment and of course had to reach out and play with the edge of the window, sending another piece down to the lawn. "Nah."
Faudron climbed onto the roof, set the telescope up on the faux chimney and turned it on. She'd already punched in the coordinates and the telescope spun left and right, up and down in smaller and smaller increments until it settled on the cloud-hidden moon. If it had been a clear day, she would have been able to see the Space Station. She thought it best to ignore the detail of rain. Pointing it dead-on was better than seeing the dot of silver in the sky she'd see if the weather were better.
Faudron dialed her cellphone, moved it this way and that and finally held it over her head and put the ear-piece in when she got a signal. She pressed the speed dial. They patched her through. "Dad?"
"Now isn't that something? I'm right above you."
There was something in his voice. They must have shot the call out on the airwaves, tv, radio, cable and internet; she hadn't known it was going to be a p.r. call. For just a second, the thought that he'd been put up to this stung so much Faudron bumped into the telescope. She caught it with one hand and her chin and had to remind herself not to think too much about things. What did it matter? It didn't matter, so she said what she thought they wanted to hear. "I can see you."
"Let me speak to Moren."
Faudron dropped the phone onto the top of the chimney and pressed her cheek against it to talk. "She's downstairs," she said in a voice that sounded immature in her headset. "I'm on the roof. Reception's crackly."
"Well, give her my love and Faudron, your birthday's soon."
"Three days. Don't worry about it."
Static filled her ear piece. The line clicked and the call became so clear she knew they'd been switched to a private channel.
Her father's voice sounded closer than the clouds. "You know, you turn twenty, get yourself to a doctor, the visiting doctor in town. Well?"
The strange tone in his voice ruined the phone-call but Faudron smiled and tried to think of something cheerful to say but someone in the background on the other end screamed, the sound carrying for so long it might have come from the sky, falling with the rain, tapping on the broken, storm-windows.
"Are you all right?" The phone cut out. "Hey, hey." Faudron pressed redial and looked through the telescope and for just an instant saw a flash across the lens that she imagined was a track of burning fuel.
She dialed and got a shaky call into NASA. "Could you patch me back to Astronaut Falkirk? It's his daughter." She wondered if they'd do it, if there wasn't some Astronaut's daughters code. Shouldn't there be?
Static filled the speaker. "We just don't know, Ma'am..."
Faudron dialed again but the reception was so bad she had to stand as tall as she could, shaking the phone back and forth at the three-legged cell-tower sticking up from the far end of the neighbor's property. "If you're going to give me cancer, at least let me make the phone call."
Her feet slipped; she tried to adjust her stance and fell flat against the shingles, sliding down in slow motion, pawing the roof with flat hands then cupped fingers.
She fell off the roof, hit the Astroturf and felt a pain in her wrist. She moved a little of this and a little of that. Everything hurt but everything but the wrist seemed to work.
Moren screamed. She must have found the mouse.
Faudron closed her eyes and cried. She couldn't tame the wild child and she saw the slice of light she'd seen through the telescope play across her red, imaginary vision as she held her eyes shut too tight.
A spray of water hit her. The right neighbor's sprinkler was so strong, it shot water right over the house. The scratchy refrain of a recording of La Vi En Rose played through the neighbor's open window. The song had played on and off all night long.
A moment later, the '62 Lincoln mom insisted on driving because she figured it was safer to let the other car in an accident be the one to squish, started, backed away, rubbed against the mailbox, leaving it at an angle and sped out of the driveway, Moren at the wheel.
Faudron closed her eyes again, hoping she'd broken her back and could call an ambulance and escape this place. She imagined holding the doctor's hand just before they put her under for world-class surgery, maybe even robot surgery with the surgeon in Canada or somewhere. "One more thing," she'd say, "There's a minor all alone. Please call Social Services and have them take her, for her sake, just for two weeks, or if not two weeks, then a year. I live very far away, you see, and if I don't get my GPA up, I might lose my financial aid."
She heard something, smelled something and felt something warm on her legs. She opened her eyes and some creature, a lama, something from the zoo, or Jungle Habitat, of all things, was peeing on her leg. She'd heard of people who grew strange animals to make an extra buck. If this was that kind of place, she'd never put the Fichet on her key chain.
"Go, go away." Faudron crawled back to the house and tried to push the lama away but it followed.
It bent down to the faucet by the back of the house and pressed down on the lever next to the tag on the pipe that read Lawn Doctor. A moment later, her own sprinkler came on, adding to the water that flowed over the Astroturf and pooled against the red-tiled edging of the lawn. For some reason, the pipes ran around the edge of the lawn, making a kind of fountain all around her, spraying the roof and working its way down to the lawn and her face.
"Go away."
The lama came close and spit. Faudron moved out of its way and thought to smack its front leg but she'd once read they were stompers.
"Get out of here," a voice coming from the fog behind the lama said. It had that accent foreigner's who learned English in an English school often had, the kind of precise diction the voices on language tapes used.
He came into view, pushed the lama aside and slapped it on the rump. "Home."
It ran to the house next door, entered the fence in the backyard and pushed the gate shut with its snout then slipped into what looked like an aluminum tool-shed but must be a barn, because a horse whinnied from inside.
"I'm terribly sorry about that."
He had dark-red hair cut one length and slicked back, running down to his collar. If it had ever seen a scissors, Faudron doubted it. He had a straight nose and a terribly healthy face, too healthy, spooky healthy. He stood a tad over six feet, long limbed, too long and with strange, black eyes Faudron felt compelled to look at and felt, for a second, as if they'd met before. "Why can't you make a call with the cellphone tower right there?"
"It's not a phone tower."
"No?"
It stuck up from his lawn, with large microwave dishes pointing to the four corners of the earth at its apex; its long, thick, aluminum legs made it look as if it held the crow's nest of a Pearl Harbor battleship.
He sat down next to her, amused. "I guess you'll have to get to town."
"How'd you know?"
"Lil'n needs a phonebook to sit on when she drives."
Faudron couldn't answer for a moment. Only mom called Moren Lil'n, and only then when she acted up. That meant he must know mom and talk to her more than Faudron did because she kept the phone off the hook. Faudron didn't care for helpful neighbors, nor this one with the brown, plaid shirt that made him look like a farmer out of season, though she'd never actually met a farmer. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that he was only being helpful. "She do it often? Lil'n?"
"None of my business.
" He sat back on the shiny lawn as if he'd be happy to sit there all day and stared across the road in the direction of the woods, fished in his pocket as if looking for a cigarette then noticed Faudron as if for the first time, smiling as if she ought to know better then to get up on the roof. He pointed at the telescope. "Lightning?"
"I tried but it wouldn't strike?"
"Can I help you up?" Rau asked.
"No." She'd torn her skirt on the way down and a lama had peed on her feet. She was pretty sure this story would be brought to the front door by every nosy neighbor towing a coffee-cake so they could get a look at the dining room. They'd moved so often; she'd eaten so many homemade coffee-cakes. She wasn't about to do it here. "Please turn around. Spin time backwards and go back inside."
"And forget all about it." He pulled out his keys and tossed them to her. Faudron tried to catch them with the broken wrist and missed. "Sorry, I'll see you in town. You'd rather drive?"
"Oh, I never drive. I keep the car just for emergencies."
"Thanks. Thanks a lot, I'll drive, but I'd rather not take your personal vehicle."
Faudron had said personal vehicle, the way dad did, as if they were back on some base, but this wasn't a base, this was mom and dad's retirement move, but Rau lending his car to a stranger, even if he knew the secret code word, lil'n was ok, really ok. He hadn't even blinked for a second. She wanted to get up and introduce herself, but there was the tear in her skirt and she smiled that Alfred E. Newman smile to let him know she had what they called on military bases she'd lived on, a personal problem.
Rau leaned to the side, tilting his head at an angle the way the guy on CSI Miami did when he pretended he was wise. He must have noticed her problem because he shook his head and pointed from the telescope to the ground to the telescope as if he'd warned her about roofs, rain and lightening many times before. "I'm not much of a passenger, either. I wouldn't worry too much about Mor," he said as he took Faudron by the hand and helped her up, making a point of shifting his stance so he remained well in front of her as he looked up at the telescope and mouthed the words, "It's gonna fall. Yours or Mors?"
