Jack frowned. “But if it’s cut and burned and stitched, how…?”
“It happens,” Kate said with a shrug. “Dad wasn’t a unique case. It’s been documented a number of times, most often shortly after surgery, but also years later. And it’s not so surprising when you think about it, since everything in our body, in our genes, in our very being, is aimed toward reproduction. It’s second only to self-preservation. A vasectomy is, in a sense, the creation of a vacuum, and nature abhors a vacuum.”
Jack thought of the margarine commercial where the lady says, It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature!
He tried to picture the two cut ends wriggling toward each other and fusing, but had trouble. It required picturing Dad’s scrotum, and his mind rebelled.
“So think about it,” Kate said.
“I’d rather not.”
“No, really. According to the bill, Dad had had a vasectomy in 1962. That would be a year after I was born.”
“Yeah, it would. You think they had their boy and had their girl, and decided to call it quits?”
She shrugged. “Seems obvious. They were both in their thirties already. The older the mother, the greater the chance of birth defects. The birth control pill was brand-new back then, so it was probably the smart thing to do.”
“Easy for you to say. You were already born.”
The thought that he hadn’t been wanted popped into Jack’s brain. He knew it was childish, but it was hard to ignore. Getting sterilized meant they didn’t want any more kids. Therefore his folks hadn’t wanted him.
He shook it off before woe-is-me violins could begin whining in the background.
“But listen—six years is a long time to wait before recanalization. Think what Dad must have thought when Mom told him she was pregnant.”
That hadn’t occurred to Jack.
“Mom? Oh, he couldn’t have even—”
“I’m sure it crossed his mind. How could it not? Here he was, certified sterile for six years, and suddenly his wife is pregnant. But a simple sperm count cleared things up, I’m sure.”
Jack took a breath. “Okay. So I’m an accident.”
She slapped his arm. “A much-loved accident.”
Yeah, well, he couldn’t argue with that. His family life was nothing if not tranquil. At least so far. All that might change if his folks learned he’d been sneaking out at night and breaking into the high school, or snooping through their room and trying to get into Dad’s lockbox.
It was risky business, but sometimes you had to break the rules.
“So, we’ve learned that this bill means Dad had a vasectomy in 1962 that reversed itself in 1968 and was then redone by this Doctor Welsch. Fine. But you said it explains lots of things. What? It doesn’t explain anything to me.”
Kate grinned. “It explains why Mom calls you ‘miracle boy.’”
Her words hit like a hammer against the side of his head.
“Oh, God! It does!”
All his life he’d wondered about that, but she’d never had a good answer. Now he knew why she couldn’t explain it to him. By some—in her eyes—miracle, her supposedly sterile husband had become fertile again to give her a surprise baby.
“It also explains why you’ve been her favorite since the day you were born, something that did not endear you to your big brother.”
Jack shook his head. He fought a smile but it broke through.
“I guess I am a miracle boy.”
In a way it was a relief to realize that he wasn’t expected to perform a miracle sometime in the future. The miracle was already behind him.
Kate rose and kissed him on the top of his head, then handed him the folded bill.
“I’m glad you found it. I don’t know how you got your hands on it and I’m not sure I want to, but I’m glad to know what I know. As I said, it answers some questions.” She tousled his already messed-up hair. “Heading back?”
He shook his head. He had some thinking to do.
“Not yet. Think I’ll stay here. Catch you later.” As she started to move away, he laughed and said, “And tell the folks their accident says hi.”
Kate came back and leaned close, shaking a finger in his face. She wasn’t smiling.
“Don’t make me sorry I explained this to you. I don’t want to hear you refer to yourself as an ‘accident’ again. Okay? Please?”
He realized he’d upset her, and Kate was the last person on Earth he wanted to upset.
“Okay. Deal. Never again.” Anything for Kate.
She smiled. “Great. See you home.” Waving, she walked off.
Jack slouched on the bench. Now that the “miracle boy” mystery had been cleared up, and a family secret revealed, he felt an oddly peaceful feeling settle over him. But it didn’t last long.
The lock … Toliver’s damn lock. He couldn’t find any way past it.
He stared at the water and the canoers for a moment, then let his eyes drift closed. Maybe he could dream up a solution if he caught another forty winks. If nothing else, he needed the sleep.
5
“Some things that seem like accidents are not.”
Jack’s eyes popped open at the sound of a voice to his right. He thought it sounded like—
“Oh, hi, Mrs. Clevenger.”
The old woman sat next to him on the bench, her black scarf around her neck despite the warmth of the day. Her three-legged dog sat at her feet, panting as he stared at Jack.
Once again, where had these two come from? When he’d closed his eyes, they’d been nowhere in sight. Had he napped?
She turned her dark eyes on him. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”
Overhearing from where? he wanted to say. You weren’t in eyeshot, let alone earshot.
But then, she might have been screened by one of the trees or the people wandering around.
“Overhearing what?”
“About the ‘miracle’ of your birth.”
Jack suddenly felt uncomfortable. “That was private.”
She smiled. “But spoken in such a public place.”
Couldn’t argue with her on that.
“Yeah, well…”
“As I said, some happenings that appear accidental are not.” She lowered her voice. “Like your father’s return to fertility, perhaps.”
Jack looked around. Now he was really uncomfortable.
“I don’t think that’s something to talk about outside the family.”
She laughed. “Nor inside the family, I gather. Not to worry, no one will hear us. This is a conversation between an old woman and a teenage boy. No one is interested.”
They could be very interested, Jack thought, if the old woman is rumored to be a witch.
“Still…”
She leaned closer. “You should realize that ‘miracles’ very often happen for a reason.”
“What sort of reason? My father—”
“There are times when something needs to happen, and so what needs doing gets done, no matter what. Obstacles are removed, plans are undone, sometimes in a ‘miraculous’ or ‘accidental’ fashion.”
She was sounding a little too much like Mr. Drexler now. Movers and Moved …
“What are we talking about here? What needed doing?”
“You, perhaps.”
“Me? Who needs me?”
“Perhaps no one. Perhaps the entire world. An important word to remember in this case is ‘perhaps.’”
Jack felt like he’d entered the Bizarro World, but that wasn’t a complete surprise with Mrs. Clevenger. She always seemed to talk in circles.
She held up a finger. “A singular event occurs. A threatening event. It triggers other events, defensive moves. Perhaps one of those moves was your conception.”
“Me?” Unease wormed through his gut. “Why me? What for?”
She shrugged. “Maybe for nothing. Maybe as a contingency. Maybe just one of a number of contingencies for use against a potential future threat. Perhaps you will face
that threat, perhaps not.”
He forced a laugh. “What comes next? You tell me I have hidden magical powers that I must use only for good?”
She didn’t seem to think it was funny. She shook her head. “You have no magic, but you are special in your blood and in how you use your brain.”
Jack had heard enough. She was a crazy old woman who had a knack for sounding like she knew more than she really did. He wasn’t going to learn anything useful here—because useful right now meant finding a way to open Toliver’s lock.
He hopped up from the bench.
“Nice talking to you, Mrs. Clevenger, but I’ve gotta go.”
“Of course you do. You’re a busy young man. Go on about the business of being a boy. Now is the time to enjoy every day. For one thing is certain about joy—it never lasts.”
Now there’s a cheery send-off, Jack thought as he turned away. But a thought popped into his head and he turned back.
“Say, you wouldn’t know how to dissolve Krazy Glue, would you?”
She didn’t even blink as she said, “Acetone.”
“Really?”
“Really.”
“Cool!”
6
Jack picked through the entire inventory of the lock section in Spurlin’s Hardware until he found a two-inch, laminated-steel Master padlock exactly like Toliver’s. In fact, he found three.
He carried all of them plus two tubes of Krazy Glue to the front counter.
Mr. Spurlin grinned and said, “What’s up, Jack? Building a new Fort Knox?”
He was a chubby guy with a salt-and-pepper beard.
“Just replacing some old locks.”
This was a potentially risky move. Jack didn’t know where Toliver had bought his lock. Could have been right here. What if he came back for another and found them all gone? He might ask and Mr. Spurlin might say Jack had bought them. Might even mention the Krazy Glue too. And then Jack’s ass would be grass.
Even though the chances of that happening were way remote, Jack was still uneasy about it. If he could drive he’d have bought his supplies in another town. But with only a bike, it was Spurlin’s or nothing.
As he paid for the locks and glue, he pointed to the tubes and said, “If I, um, spill some Krazy Glue, what’s a good way to get it off?”
“Wicked stuff. Keep it off your hands. It’ll glue your fingers together like you wouldn’t believe. Did you know it was used to close battlefield wounds in Nam?”
Jack had heard something like that.
“Yeah, but what takes it off?”
He frowned and scratched his jaw. “Acetone’s the only thing I know.”
So Mrs. Clevenger was right.
“Got any?”
“Afraid not. But most nail polish removers are basically acetone. Use some of that.”
He was sure his mother had some.
Operation Toliver was not dead yet.
7
As soon as Jack got home he set up shop in the garage. He spread the classified section of the Sunday paper on the battered workbench, borrowed a hammer and a couple of little tacks from his father’s toolbox, some nail polish remover from his mother’s dresser, and went to work.
The first thing to do was test the shims. Once he found one the right size, it opened the lock without a hitch.
Okay. He knew now if he could get past the glue, he could open the lock.
Next step: Duplicate what Toliver did—Toliverize the locks. So he tapped a tack into the keyhole of one of them and followed it with some Krazy Glue. Then he filled the shackle hole with glue and snapped the shackle into it. He did the same thing with a second lock and put both aside to set.
He left the third as it was in case he needed an untampered lock for reference.
He’d promised Mr. Rosen three hours at USED today. That would give the glue plenty of time to set and cure. He’d tackle the locks then.
8
Later, Jack returned to the garage straight from USED. He had a bad feeling as he inspected the two Toliverized locks. The Krazy Glue had cured for hours now, forming a clear, hard seal around the tacks in the keyholes and around the shackles. He went to work on them.
He tried to force the shim inside but no use. And no surprise. He’d expected that.
As he unscrewed the cap on his mother’s bottle of nail polish remover, the chemical stink wrinkled his nose. He took one lock and brushed some acetone on the keyhole and on the rim of the shackle hole. Then he waited. He gave it five minutes, then tried the shim.
No go.
The acetone seemed to have softened the surface of the glue enough for the shim’s point to scrape it, but that was it. The solvent had had no effect on the deeper levels.
Same with the keyhole. Jack could not budge the tack.
Maybe he’d have to use more acetone and leave it on longer.
He slathered the same areas of both Toliverized locks with nail polish remover, then stood back.
How long to wait? He’d go nuts standing here counting the minutes.
Well, he’d planned to stop in on Weezy today. Why not now?
He grabbed his bike and wheeled it out of the garage.
9
“Oh, Jack,” Mrs. Connell said with a smile when she opened the front door. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Is Weezy around?”
Her smile faded. “Around? Of course she’s around. Where else would she be? She’s up in her room, as usual. Go knock on the door, but I can’t guarantee she’ll open it.”
On his way up the stairs Jack heard the sounds of a football game from the TV in the living room. The Sunday afternoon game. He’d been so wrapped up in vasectomies and Toliverized locks that he’d forgotten all about the NFL. His Eagles were playing the Baltimore Colts.
He knocked on Weezy’s door and got no answer, so he knocked again.
“Hey, Weez, it’s Jack.”
Her voice came faintly through the door. “I’m kinda tired, Jack.”
“I’ve got news—good news. You’ll really want to hear this.”
A few seconds later the door opened and Weezy stood there, looking pretty much the same as the last time he’d seen her. Except maybe a little paler, if that was possible.
“What news? What about?”
Jack lowered his voice to just above a whisper. “About ‘Easy Weezy.’”
Her face contorted and she started to close the door. “I don’t want—”
“Wait.” Jack blocked the door with his foot. “It’s good news. Very good news.”
She allowed it to swing open again.
“All right. But just for a minute.”
He ducked into the dimly lit room—as usual, the shades were drawn—and she shut the door behind him.
“I could use some good news,” she said. “But I can’t see anything about ‘Easy Weezy’ being good.”
“How about if nobody’s saying it anymore? Wouldn’t that be good?”
“That’s only because I’m not around. All I have to do is show my face again—just once—and it’ll be a different story.”
“No way. Because the only thing on people’s minds now that has anything to do with Carson Toliver is his locker.”
Weezy gave him a strange look. “What are you talking about?”
Jack gave her a quick rundown of the surprises in Toliver’s locker—the toy spider, the spring snake, the marbles—and his increasingly furious reactions, capped by his rigging a supposedly unopenable lock.
“The thing is, Weez, opening his locker has become an event. It’s all anybody’s talking about—‘What’s gonna be in Carson’s locker this time?’ That’s all you hear. ‘Easy Weezy’ is old news—way old news.”
Weezy stood silent a moment, then, “Who do you think’s doing it?”
The last thing Jack wanted to do was lie to Weezy.
He really, really, really wanted to brag that he was the guy and that he’d done it for her because no one dumps on a friend of his wit
hout paying a price. He knew it sounded like something out of a lame western, but that was the way he felt.
But no way could he tell her or anyone else. At least not now. Maybe next summer, after Toliver had graduated and moved on, he could let her know, but not before. She might let something slip.
“The ‘who’ is another constant topic of conversation. Nobody’s got a clue as to who or why someone would want to make a fool out of the wonderful and glorious Carson Toliver. Or how. Nobody knows how he’s getting into the locker, or when.”
Weezy folded her arms. “What makes you so sure it’s a ‘he’? You don’t think a girl could be capable?”
“I didn’t say that. I just—”
“But anyway,” she said, waving her hands, “it doesn’t mean I won’t be hearing ‘Easy Weezy’ if I show up.”
“Trust me, Weez: That’s over.”
Her expression softened. “Are you sure that’s not just wishful thinking on your part?”
“Even Eddie will tell you.”
Weezy closed her eyes. “He’s never mentioned ‘Easy Weezy.’ I don’t know how, but I gather he’s never heard it.”
“That’s because of his headphones and the fact that no one’s going to say that about his sister to his face. Especially since it died down once you weren’t around. But let me get him up here. He’s got no wishful thinking going on, so we’ll see if he has the same impression I do.”
Jack stepped out into the hall and called down the stairs to the living room where Eddie was watching the game. He arrived a few minutes later.
“Wow,” he said as he entered Weezy’s room. “I’m allowed to enter the Bat Cave?”
Jack jumped in before Weezy could respond. “I was just telling her about what’s been going on at school. Besides Toliver screwing up the NBR game, what’ll everybody be talking about tomorrow morning?”
Eddie’s eyes widened. “You kidding? The crap going on with his locker.”
He then launched into a tirade about how somebody from NBR had been pranking Toliver to psych him out of the game.
Jack: Secret Vengeance Page 16
