100 Cupboards (3 page)

“You ever wonder, Henry, how bits of dust find each other on the floor?” Frank began kicking the remaining weeds into a mound. “Some part of a blade of grass gets eaten by a cow and dropped out its back end, where it dries in the sun and gets trampled. Then some wind picks it up, and, of all the little bits of nothing much in the world, it comes in your window and lands on your floor.”

Henry watched while Frank scrambled out of the ditch and threw the tumble-blobs into the back of the truck.

“Then,” Frank continued, brushing off his hands, “that little bit of dust meets another little bit of dust, only it came off your sweater, which was cut from some sheep in New Zealand, and the two bits grab some of your hair and some other hair that you picked up on your shirt from a booth in a restaurant, and then they get kicked around until they all roll under your bed and hide in the corner.”

Frank was trying to tie down the weeds with string.

“It's the same with people. If they're a little lost, they get blown around until they drop into some shelter or hole or culvert.”

He snapped off the end of the twine and climbed back into the truck. Henry climbed back in beside him.

“There are holes like that in cities,” he said, “in houses—anyplace. Holes where the lost things stop.”

“Like where?” Henry asked.

Frank laughed and started the truck. “Like belly buttons. Like here. And Cleveland. Henry is on a much smaller scale, so fewer people drift here. And when they climb out, they end up pushed around until they come to rest someplace else.”

Henry watched Uncle Frank shift into gear.

“I was lost once,” Frank said, and looked over at him. “But I'm found now. I'm under the bed. I'm in the same culvert you are. Only, I don't think you're done tumblin'.”

Despite the string Frank had thrown across the truck bed, pairs and clusters of tumbleweed gusted away every few hundred yards as they drove home.

“That's how rich I am,” Frank said when Henry pointed out one particularly large cluster in the road behind them. “Thousands of dollars flyin' out of my truck and I'm not even gonna slow down. If I was half smart, I would have brought a tarp. Let's see if I can lose all of them before our turn.”

He punched the gas. A column of dust, flying gravel, and the occasional bouncing weed followed them all the way home.

When they arrived, Frank pulled the truck into the grass and drove across the lawn, around the house, and straight up to the barn. Henry kicked his door open and walked back to where Frank stood beside the tailgate. There were four weeds tangled up in the string, hanging behind the truck. Frank's rummage-sale lamp had lost its shade, and the box of encyclopedias had tipped over and spilled its contents against the tailgate.

“Hmm,” Uncle Frank said. Henry didn't say anything. “Sometimes, Henry, I do wish I had a bit more of your aunt Dotty in me. Grab those weeds and throw 'em in one of the horse stalls. I'm gonna get a tarp and run back out real quick. You stay here. Don't tell your aunt what we've been doin'.”

“Okay,” Henry said.

 

After dinner, Dotty and Frank went out to the front porch for the one smoke Frank was allowed per day. Henry followed the girls to their room and collapsed onto the floor. He had accepted Uncle Frank's offer to divvy up the girls' leftover meat loaf, and now there was more meat inside him than there had ever been in the history of his life. Probably more ketchup, too. His cousins were talking around him, but he couldn't make his mind listen.

A population of dolls was scattered throughout the room. Some, china-skinned and delicate, stood in a line across the top of the dresser, each propped up by its own metal stand. A few others, with floppy limbs and stitched features, sprawled on beds, and one, a plastic child, lay on its side looking at Henry. One of its eyes was shut.

A little creepy, Henry thought. But then, he'd never been around a doll that hadn't been used in primitive rituals. His parents had been bringing those back from their trips for as long as he could remember.

A bunk bed filled one side of the room, a smaller bed squatted on the other, and a big window between them looked out on the barn. The view from Henry's room would have been nearly identical if he'd had a window.

“Why do all three of you share a room?” he asked, trying to sit up. He lay back down quickly. “This is a really big house.” He was interrupting a disagreement over whether everyone should play pirates or Monopoly. The advocate of the board game was Henrietta; of pirates, Anastasia. Penelope lay on the top bunk, unaffected, fully aware that she was the swing vote but ignoring the whole discussion. She was reading something.

“It is,” Penelope said, putting down her book. “There is another room on the first floor, but it's Mom's sewing room. And it's where Dad keeps the television. I wonder if he would let us watch it tonight?”

“There are three bedrooms on this floor,” Anastasia said. She was sitting on the top bunk by Penny's feet. “Mom and Dad's, this one, and…”

“Grandfather's,” Henrietta finished. She looked in Henry's eyes. “He's dead.”

“Really?” Henry asked. “I thought—” He stopped suddenly. He'd known his grandfather had died. He remembered his mother calling him at school. But he was remembering something else, too. Except that he couldn't. Not quite. He could only remember that he was forgetting something. His cousins were looking at him. He blinked.

“Yeah,” he said. His face felt hot. “I knew that.”

“Grandfather's is the best,” Penelope continued. Anastasia and Henrietta both tried to cut in, but Penelope just spoke louder. “It's got a huge bed, because he was so tall, and the two windows right on the front of the house. Mom and Dad will take it once they get it unlocked. Dad lost the key. He thinks it's on his desk somewhere.”

“And he won't call the locksmith even though Mom wants him to,” Henrietta added. “Says he's a sneak, and he'll fix it himself.”

“The windows won't open, either,” Penelope said.

“And there's the attic,” Anastasia said. “Where you live. You get the whole thing. Mom says we can't play up there anymore unless we ask.”

“Shhh,” Penelope said.

“Who locked Grandfather's room?” Henry asked.

“Mom thinks it isn't locked, just broken,” Penelope said. The other girls nodded. “Dad says old doors do funny things.”

“How long has it been broken?”

“Since Grandfather died,” Penelope said. “Two years ago.”

“It's been locked for two years?” Henry asked.

Penelope nodded.

“And no one has been in there since?” Henry climbed to his feet. He opened the girls' door and stepped onto the landing. “That's the one, right?” He was whispering.

“Yeah,” Henrietta said.

Henry walked slowly down the landing, past Frank and Dotty's room, and past the bathroom. The girls, all silent, watched him. The door to Grandfather's room looked old but normal enough. The stained brass handle drooped. Henry put out his hand, then stopped. His eyes weren't focused on what was in front of him. They were straining at an image in his head. A short old man. Was he purple? Dressed in purple? In a purple dress? A short old man in a purple robe was watching him play baseball.

“See? Watch.” Henry jumped at Henrietta's voice in his ear. She jiggled the handle. “Now c'mon. Let's go do something.”

“I don't want to play Monopoly or pirates,” Anastasia said.

“Fine,” Penelope said. “Hopscotch Cannibals. I'll even play with you kids for a bit.” She looked at Henry.

“They do it in the barn.”

“Like you're so old,” Anastasia said. She turned to Henry. “She
invented
Hopscotch Cannibals.”

Penelope started down the stairs. “When I was little,” she said.

“Were you little last summer?” Henrietta asked.

The three girls disappeared as they descended. For a moment, Henry stood looking at Grandfather's door.

“Henry?” Anastasia yelled. And Henry followed them.

 

Henry tried to play. And while he enjoyed being up in the barn and jumping around and watching the dust fly, the game was a little embarrassing. He was not above make-believe, he just usually did it by himself in his room.

So Henry left the girls, descended the ladder, and wandered over to the house and inside. He borrowed a tattered old book from Uncle Frank titled
Up Periscope
and climbed the flights of stairs to his room in the attic, glancing at Grandfather's room as he went. The sun was not long down, and he sat on his bed looking out his doors, across the length of the attic, and out the round window at a few of the flickering, halfhearted, or malfunctioning streetlights in Henry, Kansas. After a while, he shut his doors, leaned back on his bed wondering what sort of book Frank had given him, and fell asleep with his light on.

Henry jerked awake and squinted in the light. At first, he wasn't sure why he was awake. He didn't need to use the bathroom, his arms weren't asleep, and he wasn't hungry. He couldn't have been sleeping long.

He sat up. A piece of plaster rolled down his forehead, bounced on the tip of his nose, and landed on his chest. He ran one hand through his hair, and more bits of his wall dropped onto his lap. He looked up.

Above him, two small knobs protruded from the plaster of his wall. One of the knobs was turning, very slightly. A small scraping noise grew until a final thump rained fine plaster dust down on Henry and his bed.

For a few minutes, Henry simply stared—holding his breath, breathing heavily, and then holding it again. The knobs were so perfectly still that he began to wonder if one had actually moved. He had been sleeping. He could have dreamed it.

I didn't dream it, he told himself. They're right there, sticking through my wall. Henry knew what was on the other side of the wall—absolutely nothing. One floor down, the girls' window looked out over the fields, and beneath that, there was the kitchen wall, a mudroom door, and the grass that ran down to the barn.

Henry turned around and carefully poked at the knobs, then began picking chunks of plaster off the wall. Leaving a pile of dust on his blanket, he cleared out the area around both knobs and discovered a square metal door no more than eight inches wide, tarnished and stained green and brown under the dust. He leaned forward to take a closer look at the knobs themselves. His shadow wouldn't get out of the way, so he brought his lamp over onto the bed beside him.

The knobs were in the center of the door. They were a very old and dull brass, slender—hardly knobs at all—with filthy broad skirts. Henry took one in each hand and turned them. They spun easily and silently, but nothing happened. One large arrow stuck out of each skirt. Around the left-hand knob, symbols had been inlaid into the door, and around the knob on the right, numerals. The symbols on the left began with
A
and ended—back beside the
A
—with something like a
G
. He didn't recognize the others. The knob on the right was simpler. It was surrounded by letters that he knew were actually numbers: I to XXII in Roman numerals. He counted the strange alphabet on the left and found that there were nineteen letters.

Henry had never been terribly good at math, but he knew he would have to multiply nineteen by twenty-two to find out how many possible combinations there could be to open the door. But knowing what he needed to do and being able to do it were two different things. After several attempts to do the math in his head, he left his room and went as quietly as he could down his stairs, to the second-story landing, and down again. He was less careful once he was on the first floor and made his way quickly into the kitchen, where he began rooting through the junk drawer for a pencil. He found a pen and a small instruction manual for a blender. He tore the back page off and hurried upstairs.

Back in the attic, Henry ran on his toes straight to his small room and knelt on his bed. The knobs had not disappeared. He scratched out the math on his bit of paper: 22 times 19 was…418. Henry sat back and looked at the number: 418 was a lot.

“What are you doing?” a voice asked from behind him. Henrietta stood in his doorway. Her thick hair stuck out from her head and a pillow crease ran down her cheek, but her eyes were bright. “I heard you coming down the stairs.” She stepped into his room, looking past him. “What did you do to the wall?”

Henry coughed and unswallowed his Adam's apple. “I didn't do anything. It just cracked, and I was trying to see what was underneath the plaster.” Henry turned to the wall. “I found this little door. And it won't open unless you know the combination, and I figured out that there are 418 possible combinations and only one of them will work, and I'm going to try all of them until I get it open.”

Henrietta knelt on the bed beside him. “What do you think's inside?” she asked.