“Okay,” I said. I rubbed my eyes hard. Then I turned and walked away. Went to the bus stop. Waited in the sunshine for over an hour until the next bus arrived. Then another hour of inhaling exhaust, trying not to vomit as the bus bounced and jerked and drove all over before it reached Little Sliding. Stopped at the very top of Pinchkiss Circle.
I spent the whole bus ride deciding about Telly. Over and over in my head I heard him say “You’re my boy, right?” But if I was his boy, why had he upped and left? Why didn’t he come and get Maisy and me? It took me a while, but I finally figured it out. I was the same as those old ladies he used to brag about to Gloria. They came into the garage with their not-so-broken cars. Had no clue about engines and carburetors, about brake pads or the cost of replacement parts. He would fix stuff that didn’t need fixing or break something just enough so they’d drive a couple of weeks and come right back again. Every now and again he’d lift up the hood, pour oil on the inside, then point at the dripping underneath. A fresh black stain spreading on top of all the other black stains. Smooth words slid out of Telly’s mouth, right into their brains. And they believed him.
Telly had fooled me, too. I was just another con. Another stupid scam. But that was the last time.
When I got back to the circle, Darrell was in his driveway again. He waved at me and said, “Hey, Row. Got the motor purring. Want to listen?”
I didn’t even answer. I marched past him and went straight into the woods.
ROWAN
Stomping through the trees, I kicked every stick and root and rock I passed. Eventually I reached the bridge. The creek was gurgling along. It smelled of damp cement and dog and fried egg. Insects buzzed and leaves shivered. When my eyes adjusted, I saw the circle for the fire. A finger of smoke wiggling up. I saw a mess of twigs that looked like a nest. I saw a folded blanket. I saw a mound of wrappers and cans off to the side. And after I’d stood in the middle of the camp for several minutes, I saw Carl. He and Girl lumbered out of the bushes.
“Heard you coming a mile away,” he said and cleared his throat. There were more shards of metal worked into his bushy beard. “Thought you might’ve been the Workers.”
He had mentioned workers before. Were there people repairing the bridge? “What workers? Why are there workers out here?”
“Not much sun finds its way, urh. Always stays pleasant. And cool. It’s a fine place to live.”
“Oh.” Girl came over and licked my hand. A bird was cheeping up above. “Yeah, yeah. I can see that.”
He stared at me for a minute without moving. I shifted my feet.
“Anyway,” I said. I started to feel wobbly inside. Carl kept twisting strands of his beard in his blackened fingers. Tugging and releasing the loose hairs. There were some patchy spots. “Um. I was just walking through.”
“No, I don’t think so, Stan. Urh. I don’t think that’s it. He doesn’t have a two. They always have a number two. That’s the key. The piece of, urh, irrefutable evidence. The rules never change. They’re rules.”
I wiped my sweating hands on my T-shirt and took a deep step backward. “I just wanted to say—” I swallowed. “Um, thanks for, you know.”
“For what, Magic Boy?” He twisted and tugged. Twisted and tugged.
Magic Boy. He remembered me. “For helping me out the other night. Sharing your orange and all.”
He lifted both his hands and shook them. Like an angry preacher. “I don’t need reminding for every single, single, single, urh, thing. I don’t. You hear me?” He bellowed out that last part. It echoed off the underside of the bridge. Girl lowered her head, pawed at Carl’s pant leg.
My throat went dry and I glanced behind me. It was a mistake coming here. I could run. I took another step back. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
“Your mother taught you nice manners, Magic Boy, but rational truth professed, you helped me out. Guided me out of a perpetual conundrum, you see?”
His voice had flipped to soft and friendly.
“I didn’t. Um. Carl.”
“You did, then. I was stuck in a time spot, really tight, and the temporal shift wouldn’t budge. Dark for about three days before you showed up, urh, and fixed it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“The government,” he said. “Can give you the worst charley horses. They have your nerves all mapped out. Strategic defense and all. Control your mind.”
“Oh. I didn’t know.” Was that even possible?
“Every single one of us. Your mom might’ve called them growing pains, but that’s a falsehood, Magic Boy. A bold-faced lie. It’s neural stretching.” Twist and yank, twist and yank. Scattered hairs tumbled down from his fingers.
“That doesn’t sound so great. You a doctor?” Even though he looked about as much like a doctor as Girl did, he sounded like he knew what he was talking about.
“No,” he laughed. “Could’ve been but all those doctor types were a proliferation of arrogance, urh. I stayed on the legal side of things. Graduated top of my, urh, class.”
“Yeah. Okay.”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll say. I’ll say it. Don’t worry, though, Magic Boy, about your nerves. Not much you can do about it. Dot says no point in getting stressed. Solid structures can conceal.” He smacked the concrete wall with his open hand. It was clean except someone had spray-painted the word Almost up near the top. Maybe Carl? Almost what, though?
He smacked the wall again, and I jumped.
“You understand?”
“Sure,” I said. I didn’t understand at all. I stepped back again. “Sure.” I was close to the rocky slope now.
He started laughing again. “Is the condition that, urh, led to your signpost still applicable?”
“What sign?”
“Your T-H-E-I-F sign.” He winced as he said it, as if he hated misspelling the word.
“I’m no thief, Carl. Not really.”
“I’m no thief, Carl.” A piece of metal fell out of his beard and he bent, plucked it up, fixed it back in place. “I meant, are you hungry?”
I one-shoulder shrugged.
“I have another orange. All that acid dissolves your metals.”
“What do you mean by acid?”
“Vitamin C. It’s beneficial. Structures and metals are excellent blockers. Metals and structures. Solid, solid, urh, solid. Prevent government infiltration.”
He smiled then, and his teeth were not what I expected. They weren’t cramped together or missing or sharpened or full of brown decay. They were white and neatly organized in his mouth. They were perfect. Not Telly perfect, but fairly close.
“Would you care for some?”
“Um.” I wasn’t sure. Maybe he was harmless after all? He did look after his dog, didn’t he? And Girl seemed healthy enough. Then I said, “If you want to share.”
“I always want to share,” he replied.
He sat down on a rock, and without thinking too much I walked over and sat down beside him. After he’d peeled the orange and thrown the rinds on the dead fire, he cracked it and handed me half.
“Thanks,” I said.
“You’re welcome, Magic Boy.”
I sucked on a segment. It was sour but good. “Do you live here all the time?” I asked.
“I do. I’m going to live here for the rest of my life. Until they reclaim me.” He looked me up and down then, scratched the knots of hair on his head.
“What about your mom and dad. Don’t they miss you?”
“My mom, urh. She doesn’t exist. Just a ghost now.” He tapped his head and shuddered. “Just a ghost.”
“Oh,” I said. That was a strange way for him to say his mother was dead. “And your dad?”
“Never had one. I just came to be. Spontaneous generation, I suspect, though it’s not notarized. No stamp, urh, no stamp on me. You, Magic Boy?”
I ran my thumb over the white spot on my other hand. “I don’t really have a dad either,” I said. “Not much of one an
yway.”
“Did you make him a ghost?”
“Make him? No. Sometimes I wish it though.”
“Urh. Difficulties.”
“Yeah.” And then, because Carl was listening, I told him everything that had happened with Telly. How Gloria was always picking at him, but he never seemed to mind. Until this lady came into his work, needing her belts replaced. She was a dental hygienist at the clinic that opened across the road from the garage. After Telly fixed her car, she entered him into this smile contest they were running. Somehow Telly won, and they fixed his teeth, scraped off the gunk, took out chipped ones, glued on fake ones. He had a plastic and metal thing he clipped in when he slept, even though Gloria called him Tin-Mouth Telly.
Everything changed after that. He shaved off his enormous mustache. Grinned like a hissing cat. I barely even recognized him. He looked like he should be inside the television instead of gawking at it. And then I noticed how his nails got cleaner and he trimmed the hair out of his nostrils and there was more space between his words. When Gloria took little swipes at him he started clapping back, a little here and there. She didn’t like it.
“Sure, you treat Chicken better than you treat me,” Telly said once.
“That’s ’cause I don’t like dogs.” She laughed. If that was a joke, Telly didn’t find it funny.
One night at dinner he started to describe a book he was reading. About a man who made this fortune and built a house to get a girl’s attention. “Daisy’s her name.”
“Daisy?” Gloria replied. “Daisy who? Who’s Daisy?”
“The girl in the book, Glow. Aren’t you listening? This guy improves himself hoping she’ll fall in love with him.”
She put down her fork. “What’s wrong with you? You never read a book your whole life.”
“So? Does that mean I can’t change? Better myself?”
“Change why? You think someone else’d put up with you?”
It turned out someone else would. Telly left the next weekend. Took most of his stuff in garbage bags. Some of his beloved guns from the basement in a couple of totes. Piled it all in the bed of his truck. “Going where I’m wanted!” he yelled.
“You’ll be back!” Gloria screamed as he drove off. “Begging me. Hands and knees, Telly. Hands and knees. You’re nothing without me.”
After his truck disappeared, Maisy and I just stood there watching the cloud of dust fall back to the ground. Gloria bumped past me, said, “Too bad he didn’t throw you in a garbage bag. Toss you on top of the rest.” Maisy started to gasp, trying to hold her crying inside.
“And he hasn’t called once or come around since,” I told Carl.
“Urh,” Carl said. “Real difficulties.” He pinched the metal beads in his beard. “The molars. That caused the fluctuation. I never realized there was so much power in teeth. Electrical impulses in the roots, I suppose.”
“I went to see him today. Took the bus all the way out to his garage. He was there with that lady. Dian. And he kicked me out. Right on my ass.”
“Right on my ass. Urh, the two of them. They could be Workers, Magic Boy. You’ve got to protect your mind. Avoid being encapsulated. Monitor the beams.”
I picked up a pebble and threw it into the creek. “Yeah, you’re right, Carl. I’m not going to think about it. Not believe any more of his shit.”
“Good, good,” he said. “Critical analysis.” He dug around inside his coat and pulled out a deck of cards. On the back they had a picture of a woman in a flowing dress.
“Do you want to play a hand?” I asked. “Poker? I’m not very good though. And I don’t have money.”
“No, Magic Boy. Don’t, don’t, don’t, urh, play with these.”
“Missing some, then?”
“No.”
“Oh, okay.” I was confused.
Then Carl said, “Tomorrow’s on them. In, urh, hypothetical analogies. Divide and divide and divide until the single option remains. They belong to my mother.” He snapped the cards slowly in his hands.
“The ghost?” I didn’t want to ask him how she became that way.
“Urh,” he said.
“Did your mom teach you?”
“Urh,” he said again.
Carl dug out a handkerchief from one of his pockets and laid it on a rock. He shuffled the cards and then held the deck toward me. “Tap with your pointer finger,” he said. “Three times.”
After I tapped the deck he fanned out the cards, turning five of them over slowly on the handkerchief. He tugged at his beard. Hard. “Oh, oh. I never, urh, saw that before.”
I went closer. All five cards were black. A row of spades.
“What does it say? Am I going to be famous? Have an enormous boat in the ocean somewhere?”
“It doesn’t mean a thing, Magic Boy.”
“Come on, Carl. What’s my future?”
“Not right, not right.” He grabbed up the cards. He pushed them back into the deck and put a red elastic around them. Then he hid them inside a pocket. “I haven’t got that knack. Too many responsive guidelines. Infinite manifestations.” He picked up a bottle of soda and twisted the cap. Foam rolled out on his hand. “You’re fine. You’re perfectly fine.” He took a long swallow from the bottle.
I was disappointed, but I didn’t let it show. Not like it meant anything anyway. They were just cards.
“I should get home, Carl. I got stuff to do.”
“Sure, sure, sure. You can visit me anytime.”
“I can?” This surprised me. It made me feel warm on the inside. “You don’t mind?”
“You don’t mind?” He had this habit of repeating what I said, but I don’t think he was mocking me. “You’re one of them, I know,” he said. Soda dripped off the hairs of his beard. “But you’re not like the others. You’re not a Worker. It’s nice to see you out here, urh. I like that. I do.”
I had no idea what he meant, but I liked it, too. Having a secret place to go. Even though he was peculiar, I had the feeling he was also kind and dependable. People could be more than one thing at the same time.
MAISY
Since school was done, Rowan’s been keeping a secret. I could tell because lots of days he was sneaking off into the woods and never asked me to come along. Not once. Last summer he always let me go with him. Well, mostly. But now when I asked him where he went he just said, “Nowhere, Turtle. I’m right here.” That was a big lie. He was playing at something, and he wasn’t letting me join his game. I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
I thought he was gone again that afternoon, but then a bird smacked the window and I heard him yelp. He ran right down the stairs and out into the yard. I ran after him. Together we hunted in the grass until we found a robin. When Rowan picked it up its head wobbled around like a marble.
“Why did it make itself dead?” I asked him.
“Because it didn’t see the glass. Just its reflection. And trees and leaves and outdoor stuff.”
“Bad,” I said.
I got a shovel from the shed and I dug a hole near the side of the house. There was a broken plastic thing on the wall above where I was digging. Rowan said it was a vent that “snakes right down into the basement bathroom.” I didn’t know much about our basement, only that it had guns. Lots of guns. Telly took most of them when he left, but there were still a bunch, Gloria said. We weren’t ever allowed to go down there.
“Should we say something?”
“Like what?”
“That we hope it likes heaven? That it gets better?” I imagined the bird with a little white collar around its neck. Gloria had one of those last year because a man bumped into the side of Telly’s truck. Not a big bump, but Gloria got really, really hurt. Sometimes she still limped when we were outside. That man had to give her money.
Rowan squinted his eyes in the sunlight. “Won’t make any difference, Turtle.” Then he said, “No one’s listening.”
I didn’t like that. How did he know?
After he dr
opped the bird in the hole, I scooped the dirt. Rowan pushed down on the spot with his bare foot. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, so I could see the white spots on his back. It looked like when Gloria spilled that cleaning stuff all over Telly’s clothes. Accidentally. I never told Gloria, but I thought my brother’s skin was like a special map. I spied on him whenever I could. I was waiting for his islands to grow because I knew someday a tiny x would show up and it would tell us where we had to go. Just me and Rowan. And Gloria, of course. I’d never leave her behind. Maybe Telly. I didn’t decide yet about him.
I rinsed off the dirt with the hose. The water was hot. Then I went and sat on the steps of the front porch. Nails were poking out of the boards, but I knew just where to sit so I wouldn’t get stuck. Rowan plunked down next to me without even looking. He didn’t care about getting a nail in his rear end.
Gloria was painting the front door of our house. It used to be angry red and she was making it look like sunshine. But she wasn’t a neat worker. The paint was on her T-shirt and the porch and on the screen and even on Chicken’s fur. He was yipping in his sleep and didn’t mind.
“So? What do you think?” Glorai said.
“It’s nice,” I said.
“Nice?”
“Super duper?”
“That’s better.”
“Do you think Telly’ll love it?”
My hands turned sweaty. “Is he coming home?”
She didn’t answer me. She just started growling. I saw spit pop out of her mouth. Paint went all over. I knew she was making a mess because she was in a big knot ever since Telly went away. Once after he left we took the bus out to his garage. I snuck a secret love note under his windshield wiper. Then me and Gloria hid in the bushes and we saw this lady who had yellow hair. She walked over to the garage and went inside and her laughing came right out through the big open door. That made Gloria mad. She threw rocks at Telly’s truck and they bounced off the roof. On the way home she kept asking me, “Do you think she’s pretty?” I shook my head, but we got off the bus early and went into a store and Gloria bought a box of stuff so she could make her hair yellow too.
Hideaway Page 4
