Brendan Buckley's Universe and Everything in It

by Sundee T. Frazier

  I pushed the questions out of my mind and tried to remember what he looked like. His face had been pink, his hair orangish white, like calcite. Mostly I remembered his hands and how they had been straightening those little boxes of rocks. And he had been friendly. He had invited me to his club meeting.

  But that was before Gladys showed up. She had known who he was. Had he figured out who we were? Thinking about talking to him put a lump in my throat the size of a piece of coal.

  We passed Mr. Sudsy Car Wash, Surprise Lake Middle School and a skate park where boys in knit caps and no shirts zoomed back and forth on their skateboards. On a peak a few blocks away, a water tower rose up above everything else.

  “You got the map?” I asked.

  Khalfani pulled it out of his back pocket. This was also part of the plan. He had printed it at his house, just to be safe.

  “He lives on Emerald Street,” I said. “That’s a mineral. Also known as beryl.”

  “Way ahead of you.” He held up the paper. He’d highlighted the route with a yellow marker. “Don’t forget who’s the lieutenant here.”

  “Whatever you say.” The sidewalks had disappeared. We walked along a gravel shoulder. The houses sat back from the road, with flowers growing in rectangles of dirt, and large grassy yards. They looked like one-story LEGO houses.

  We hit Emerald Street. “Right,” Khalfani ordered.

  “Yes, sir.” A car with a loose muffler came up behind us and my palms got sweaty as I wondered if it was Ed DeBose. Part of me hoped he wouldn’t be home. The car rattled past. The driver was a lady with a big hairdo. I wiped my hands on my pants.

  “Here it is,” Khalfani said.

  And there it was: 1425 Emerald Street. I stopped and stared. We stood in the street in plain sight, like two deer waiting to get shot.

  The house was half one thing, half another—white siding above and brick below. It looked heavy on the bottom. Bright green turf, like on an artificial football field, covered the porch and the steps leading to the door. An American flag fluttered on a pole sticking out from the front of the house.

  The roses stood straight—like if they got out of line, they’d lose their recess. The grass looked like Dad’s hair after a trip to the barber, short and perfectly trimmed around the edges, which reminded me that I needed a haircut. My hair was getting bushy. If Grampa Clem had still been here, he’d have taken me to his barber.

  Looking at this yard, this house, with everything perfect and in its place, I wanted to turn and run. This was a house I should have been to many times already, a yard I should have played in. Inside lived a man I should know. A man who if he didn’t exist, I wouldn’t exist.

  A truck sat in the driveway to the left. It was the color of limes, sparkly clean, except the hood, which was dull green, like the olives Grampa Clem put in his tuna salad. A shell, like a camper, covered the back. The truck looked like a little house on wheels.

  “What are we waiting for?” Khalfani asked.

  “He’s probably not home,” I said.

  “There’s a truck here.”

  “It might not be his.” The license plate said GEMXPRT. Gem expert. That sure sounded like the license plate of a rock club president. Maybe Khalfani hadn’t noticed.

  He nudged me toward the driveway.

  I walked up between the truck and the yard. A white wooden fence stood beyond the truck. I was about to touch the olive-green hood when I saw a NO TRESPASSING sign on the gate. I pulled my hand back.

  Khalfani pushed past me and strolled to the foot of the steps.

  “What are you doing?” I whispered.

  “Ringing the doorbell. You’re too slow.”

  “Wait.” I walked into the yard and stood in front of the rosebushes. I stretched my neck to look through the large living room window. The curtains were sort of see-through, like fog, but I couldn’t tell if anyone was home. I needed to think of something to say.

  Hi, I’m Brendan Buckley, your grandson. I couldn’t just say it like that, could I?

  Good afternoon, I’m Brendan, Katherine’s son. No. Too formal.

  Hey, Gramps, what’s up? Too Khalfani.

  Hello, sir. I’m Brendan, and I think we might be related. That sounded okay. I’d go with that.

  “You want him to catch you spying on him?” Khalfani leaned on the black iron railing near the stairs.

  “All right, all right.” I tiptoed past him, up the steps, and stood in front of the door. Khal ran his hand across the bars of the railing, making a pinging noise. “Shhh.” I put my finger to my lips.

  My hand felt sweaty and shaky as I reached for the doorbell. A sticker on the screen door said NO SOLICITING. The lump in my throat grew to the size of a meteorite.

  At the sound of the chime, a dog came bounding from somewhere inside. I jumped. My heart pounded so hard, I thought if I looked down, I’d see my shirt moving.

  The animal barked and scratched at the door.

  “I hope your grandpa’s nicer than his dog,” Khalfani said.

  I swallowed, trying to get the meteorite down.

  The door opened a crack and the dog’s head appeared behind the screen. It wasn’t a big dog. Just medium. White with large brown patches that made it hard to tell if it was a white dog with brown spots or a brown dog with white spots.

  A large hand, also covered with brown spots, grabbed the dog’s collar. I remembered those hands. The dog strained forward, still barking. I felt like I was under a spell—I couldn’t get myself to look up at the person at the other end of that hand. Khalfani poked me from behind.

  “Uh, hello,” I said. The rest of my prepared introduction wouldn’t come out.

  “Sorry, boys. Not today.” His voice was rough, like unpolished granite.

  I looked up just in time to see the door close.

  I stared at the crisscross pattern of the screen until my eyes blurred. Didn’t he even remember me from the other day?

  “Was that him?” Khalfani asked.

  I nodded.

  “What’d he do that for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re not going to let him shut the door in your face, are you?” Khalfani reached for the doorbell.

  I grabbed his arm. “Wait.” I pushed the bell. The chime rang again, but there was no more barking. Finally, the door opened.

  “Look, kid, didn’t you see the sign on my door? I’m not buying anything.” The creases in his forehead ran in straight lines, like the grooves in Dad’s old records.

  “We’re not selling anything,” I said.

  I looked into his pool-water blue eyes. Grampa Clem told me always to look into people’s eyes. It was the only way to know the soul of a person, he said. The old man’s eyes were the color of the mineral azurite, but duller. “I was at the mall,” I said. “At the rock show.”

  Ed DeBose peered through the screen as if he was trying to recognize me. “The double-refracting calcite?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, I remember now. Where’d you go in such a hurry?”

  What should I tell him? That my grandma dragged me off because she knew he was the grandpa we never talked about?

  He pushed the door open. “Come inside.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Ed DeBose’s walls were as white and smooth as eggshells. I could practically see my reflection in the polished wood floors. Across the room hung a large framed picture of four people.

  I stared at it, hard.

  There, in front, smiled Mom. She had braces on her teeth, and her hair hung down past her shoulders, but it was Mom. A woman I guessed was Grandma DeBose sat next to her, and behind Grandma DeBose stood Mom’s older brother, wearing a suit and tie.

  The other person in the picture stood in front of me, just a little more pink and a lot more creased. Grandpa DeBose.

  The dog sniffed my hand. “What’s his name?” I asked, stroking his head.

  “P.J.—Patches Junior.”

  “So there was a P
atches Senior?”

  “Had to put him down years back. Got rabies from a raccoon.”

  Mom had told me that story. It was why she never wanted to have another dog.

  “Was that your grandma at the mall?”

  I nodded. Had he recognized her? Did he know he was my grandpa? It sure didn’t seem like it.

  “What crazy bug crawled under her skin?”

  I shrugged, then stared at the picture, frozen like a petrified tree trunk.

  Ed DeBose looked in the direction of the portrait, then back at me. The skin between his eyes crinkled. “You must really want that calcite to track down where I live.”

  I nodded again.

  He moved toward the wall and a display case on the left. He flipped a switch and the case glowed. It was full of amazing-looking rocks, just like the ones I’d seen in my library books. The specimens glistened in the light.

  Khalfani elbowed me. “Aren’t you going to tell him?” he whispered.

  “Not yet,” I mouthed back. If Khal opened his big mouth…I stepped closer to take a look. One rock in particular caught my attention. It sat in the center of the case under a spotlight—sliced in half and set on a stand so you could see the inside. It was perfectly blue, like the sky after rain. I thought I could even see a rainbow running through it, like the surface of oil on a sunny day. “What is that one?” I asked, pointing.

  I could see Ed’s pink face in the glass. “Ellensburg Blue. Not for sale. Only agate considered a precious stone by the Smithsonian Institute.”

  Ellensburg Blue. I hadn’t heard of that one before. I wondered how I could get some.

  “Everyone argues about what color makes for the best grade. What I’ve got there is the highest quality you can get—as pure as I’ve ever seen.” Ed DeBose opened a drawer under the display and ran his finger over several white-lidded boxes until he found what he wanted. “You’re lucky I still got it.” He opened the box and held it so we could see the mineral.

  My heart thudded. My arms felt like they might drop from their sockets. “Do you know who I am?” My voice sounded like a squeak.

  “I said I remembered you.” He held it out for me. “You still want it, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I started to unzip my backpack for my wallet. Khalfani elbowed me again. I glared at him.

  He glared back. “If you don’t tell him, I will.”

  “What’s going on here?” Ed asked.

  I stared at the picture of Mom again. “That’s”—I pointed at her—“my mom.”

  Ed’s head swiveled on his neck, slowly, back and forth. He narrowed his eyes at the picture, then at me. At me, then at the picture. “You mean to say…,” he said, “you’re…”

  “Brendan, sir. Brendan Buckley.” I couldn’t get the words your grandson out, so I left it at that.

  “Hmm.” He rubbed his chin. “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle. I thought that grandma of yours looked sorta familiar. Of course, it’s been over ten years….”

  Ed DeBose pulled on his ear. “How the heck did you find me?”

  “The Internet, sir,” I said.

  Khalfani held up the printed map.

  “I’m on the Internet?” Ed asked.

  “Everyone’s on the Internet,” Khal said, as if Ed should have known this.

  Ed dropped the calcite back in the box and closed it in the drawer. I guessed he didn’t want me to have it now. I felt a twinge in my heart, as if it’d been pinched by tweezers.

  The room suddenly seemed stuffy. I glanced toward the closed drawer. Ed cleared his throat.

  “Do you have anything to drink?” Khalfani asked. I was glad, because my mouth was as dry as chalk.

  “Got some of that instant lemonade,” Ed said. “You drink that?” We nodded and followed him into the kitchen. The walls were as yellow as sulfur and the air smelled like bacon.

  I watched Ed as he poured our drinks. His skin looked like it had spent a lot of time in the sun. His neck was as wrinkled as his forehead. Gladys said white people were always “worshiping the Sun God.” White people, she said, looked up at the sun and thought, Give me a tan, but don’t make me black! When I was little, I didn’t know what that meant. I do now.

  We sat at the table and drank our lemonade. Ed put a bowl of grapes in the center. He sat, popped in a grape and rolled it around his mouth, watching us closely, as if waiting for us to spill. He chomped on the grape. I heard the skin split and the seeds crunch between his teeth.

  Khalfani gulped down the last of his lemonade and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  Ed looked straight at me. “So what’s that mom of yours up to?”

  I shrugged. “She works part-time—Monday, Wednesday, Friday. At a place for ladies who are having babies and need help.”

  “Sounds like your mom.” He ran his hand up and down the sweaty sides of his glass.

  “Brendan’s dad is a cop,” Khalfani said. “Mine’s just a boring estate lawyer.”

  “That so?” Ed said to me.

  “He’s a detective, actually,” I said.

  “Been promoted, eh?”

  “I guess.” It sounded like Ed had already known what Dad did.

  Ed stared at me. I felt like a bug under my own microscope. “Sorry about the ears,” he said.

  The skin on my face tingled. I touched my big ears. They stuck out a little from my squared-off head. Just like Ed DeBose’s ears.

  He opened his mouth to eat another grape. His small bottom teeth crowded together like barnacles on a rock. They looked real. Gladys’s dentures stood tall and straight like soldiers at attention.

  The basalt rock in my pocket dug into my hip. “I’d like to know more…” Ed’s eyes narrowed. “About minerals, I mean.” Flecks in the table shone like mica. I kept my eyes down. “Could you teach me?”

  Finally, I looked up. Ed blinked a few times, then pushed back from the table and left the room. I sat for a moment, wondering if I should follow him. I grabbed my backpack from the floor. Khal scrambled to catch up.

  Ed turned from the drawer in the display case with his fist extended. “Here.” He dropped the piece of calcite into my palm. “For your collection,” he said.

  “You’re giving it to me?”

  “Sure.”

  “Thanks!” I squeezed it in my hand.

  He gave me the box, then looked again at the wall and the family picture. “Katherine had a collection when she was a girl.” He shoved his hands into his pockets. “Didn’t last long, though. Minerals weren’t interesting, she said. People were interesting.” He turned back to us. “If you ask me, people are a pain in the neck. Way too complicated.” He gazed at his collection. “Minerals, on the other hand…”

  “Why do you keep talking about minerals? Aren’t those just rocks?” Khalfani asked.

  “They’re totally different,” I said. This was my chance to show Ed something I knew. “Minerals make up rocks. Rocks are a mixture of different minerals.” When I’d read that the night before, it had made me think about the first time I got called mixed. I told Grampa Clem about it and he said, “Everyone’s mixed with something, son. Don’t you never feel shame ’bout who you are.”

  “I see you know some already,” Ed said.

  My insides felt light, full of helium.

  “Minerals are pure substances,” Ed continued. “They have a structure that can be summed up by a simple chemical formula. For example, quartz—” He opened his display case and reached for a specimen.

  “S-i-oh-two!” I said. The soles of my feet buzzed.

  “That’s right.” Ed held up a piece of rose quartz. I recognized it from the field guide.

  I’d gotten two answers right already! I smiled so hard, I could see my cheeks.

  Ed, however, wasn’t smiling. He reached into his back pocket and pulled out a white rag, like a tiny security blanket, and wiped his forehead. “Of course I’d be able to teach you. And I’m sure you’d make a fine student.”

  Th
e electrical storm went off in my body as I thought about the questions I already had for Ed. I unzipped my backpack to get my notebook.

  “But what about your mother?” Ed’s face turned so red, I thought if I touched him, my finger would sizzle.

  I suddenly remembered I needed to call her—in less than fifteen minutes. “Maybe you could talk to her,” I said.

  “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea.” Beads of sweat popped out on Ed’s face. He wiped his upper lip with the cloth.

  The top of my head tingled. A twitch jiggled my eyelid. I had so many questions to ask—about more than just rocks—but I couldn’t press him to answer them all right now. I didn’t know how he would respond. This was my grandfather, but he was an unknown species to me. I took a deep breath. The electrical storm died. Things had suddenly turned gray and rainy.

  Khalfani pulled on my arm. “We gotta go,” he said. “My stepmom’s going to start wondering where we are.”

  One final spark zapped my brain. “Do you have a pick I could borrow?” I’d read about this tool in the books. Every serious rock collector had a prospector’s pick. And if I borrowed one from Ed, I’d have to bring it back.

  Ed disappeared down the hallway and around a corner. His footsteps faded down a set of stairs. He came back with a black bundle in his hands. He unrolled it. In the center lay a pick, a chisel and a pair of goggles! The tools were a little rusty, but that just made them look like the real deal. He tied the bundle again and handed it to me. “Make sure you bring these back, now.”

  I thought maybe he looked at me like we shared a secret. “I’ll be careful with them,” I said. “Thanks. Thanks a lot.”

  As I passed him on the way out the door, I could smell his clothes. They smelled the same way ours did right after Mom did laundry.

  Khalfani and I ran down the street. I held the roll in the crooks of my arms, close to my chest. I thought about where I would hide the things in my room so Mom wouldn’t find them. Why didn’t she like Ed DeBose? I just didn’t get it. He didn’t seem so bad.

  At a gas station near the bus stop, I called Mom. Yes, I was fine. Okay, I’d be home by three. She asked me why there was so much car noise in the background. I told her we were out riding our bikes, which was true, or at least would be as soon as we got back to the bushes where we’d hidden them.