House of Wings (2 page)

Sammy turned over and fell asleep waiting to hear if his father was going to do anything about the owl. When he awoke for the second time it was ten o’clock in the morning. He lay on the bed without moving for a moment. The only thought in his mind was that he was hungry. The afternoon before he had had a Moon Pie and an R C Cola when they stopped at a gas station, and he had not eaten since.

Slowly he got out of bed and stood on the floor. His feet could feel the grit on the bare boards; it was as fine as spilled sugar. In the dusty discolored mirror over the dresser he could see himself. He looked strange, and suddenly that was the way he felt too.

He turned and walked out into the hall. His red hair was standing up like a rooster’s comb. He said, “Mom!”

The floor in the hall was so dirty that it appeared to be a continuation of the yard. Mud had been tracked in and had dried, so that there were ridges in the dirt like corduroy. Sammy looked into the parlor. Curtains hung at two of the windows; the others were bare. The furniture was old and faded. One of the legs of the sofa was broken off and had been replaced by a concrete block.

Sammy stood in the hallway without moving. He had been to this house only once, when he was a baby, and he did not remember it. He had heard his older brothers talk about his grandfather’s house, though, and a picture had formed in his mind. The picture was of a large white house set in a green meadow.

His brother Tom had told him of croquet games on the front yard and lemonade stands at the end of the driveway. According to Tom, a person could make a living doing nothing but selling lemonade on that road.

Jim had told him about a peacock who strutted up and down the drive and opened up his feathers like a fan whenever Aunt Minnie came out in the yard. The peacock was the only admirer Aunt Minnie ever had.

And Bertie had told him about his grandfather’s parrot, who had once belonged to a man with a gas station, and this parrot could say anything that had to do with cars. It was a lot of fun, Bertie said, to take an unsuspecting person into the dining room and ask the parrot, “What’s wrong with him?” because the parrot would say instantly, “Out of gas” or “Needs a muffler” or any of a dozen funny things. Sammy had decided that the first thing he would do when he got to his grandfather’s was to run into the dining room and listen to the parrot talk about cars. “What’s wrong with me?” he would ask.

Sammy walked back down the hall. He found the dining room and looked in, but there was no parrot. There was not even a place for a parrot, Sammy thought, only a dark dusty table, seven empty chairs, and a cabinet without any china left in it. He wondered if there had ever been a parrot, or a peacock on the lawn. His mom had been right. This was the wilderness.

He walked out onto the porch, shielding his eyes from the hot sun. “Mom!” He did not see anybody. He went down the steps, taking them one at a time because the steps sagged on one side. There was a large hole worn into the earth at the bottom of the steps, and a rock had been set to fill it. Sammy stood on the warm rock, curling his toes over the edge. He looked out over the yard. For the first time he began to feel alarmed. He didn’t see the truck.

“Mom!”

He left the rock and walked quickly through the weeds. Then he started running. He ran to the trees where the truck had been parked.

He stood there a moment, looking at the imprint of the tires in the weeds. He could see where the truck had stopped. He walked slowly forward and paused. He could see where the truck had turned around and then he could see where the truck had left. It was as plain as railroad tracks.

He heard a shuffling noise behind him and he spun around, startled. He saw his grandfather. His grandfather looked wild even in the daylight. He wore an old railroad man’s jacket and faded soldier’s pants and a cowboy’s shirt and miner’s boots. Sammy didn’t think his grandfather had been any of those things.

Sammy stood where he was in the tracks of his father’s truck. He watched his grandfather. There was no sign of greeting in Sammy’s face.

His grandfather crossed the yard slowly, shuffling along in the weeds. The miner’s boots were too narrow, and he had cut out the sides.

Sammy said, “Where’s my mom and dad?” He spat out the words. It was an accusation. “What’d you do with them?”

His grandfather cleared his throat. His army pants were big and loose because he had sewn some extra cloth in each side. He had his hands hooked into the belt loops. He cleared his throat again and wiped either side of his mustache with his hand. His skin had the soft dustiness of leather.

“Where’s my mom and dad?” Sammy asked again. His voice rose because he suddenly knew that they had not merely gone into town or to the gas station. He reached out and grabbed the front of the railroad jacket and shook his grandfather. “Where’s my mom and dad?” His grandfather rocked slowly back and forth like a buoy in the water.

Then his grandfather said one word. “Gone.” It was like the sound of an old sad church bell in the hot empty yard. “Gone.”

S
AMMY COULD NOT BELIEVE
he had heard correctly. He released his grandfather’s jacket and stepped back as if to improve his hearing. He dared his grandfather with his eyes. He said, “What did you say?”

His grandfather held out one hand. “They’re gone,” he said. “Your mom and dad is gone.”

“What are you talking about?” Sammy was small and he had the wariness and quickness of an animal. Now his eyes narrowed and he came forward one threatening step.

His grandfather was still holding out his hand. It was trembling a little with uncertainty and age. “This morning,” he said, “when your mom and dad got up, they was talking about all the trouble they was going to have getting settled in Detroit. Your dad doesn’t have a job yet, boy. They may even have to sleep in the truck. Well, then, while we was talking, it just came about naturally that you would be better off staying here with me.”

“They wouldn’t leave me like that.”

“They didn’t want to wake you. It was—”

“They wouldn’t.”

“Listen, I tried to tell them,” the grandfather explained. “I said, ‘You better
tell
the boy, hadn’t you, before you go driving off?’ But your ma said you’d make a fuss. She said once you saw they was gone you’d be fine. She said that’s the way you always were. She—”

“Liar!”

The grandfather stepped back. He began to rub his hands together. He said, “Listen, boy, they’re going to send for you. In August they’re going to write me a post card and I’m going to take you in to Gatsburg and put you on the bus. It’s not—”

“Where did they go? Don’t you lie to me!” Sammy’s hands had become fists, hard as rocks.

“They went on to Detroit,” his grandfather said. “That’s all that’s happened. They went on
first.”
He nodded. “You and me, boy, can—”

“What
really
happened?”

“They went on to Detroit,” the grandfather said in his same patient voice. Then, fumbling a little, he put out his hands and tried to take Sammy by the shoulders. “Boy—”

Quickly Sammy stepped back. He looked at the outstretched hands with the suspicion he would give a steel trap. Then he looked at his grandfather’s face. His own face drew into a sneer.

“Liar!” he said. “Dirty, stinking liar. They wouldn’t leave me.” He spun around in the weeds. “Liar, liar,
liar!”
And then he started running.

He ran between the tracks of his father’s truck. He ran hard and fast, his arms pumping machinelike at his sides. He was going so fast that when he came to a stop on the pavement of the road he burned his feet. He glanced over his shoulder. “Liar!” he cried to the trees.

He hesitated. He had been sleeping in the back of the truck when they had turned off the road the night before, and he was not sure now which direction to take. He heard his grandfather shuffling through the weeds behind him. Quickly Sammy turned to the right and started running along the white center line of the road.

“Boy! Wait, boy!” his grandfather was crying behind him. “Boy, you’re going to get to ride on the bus to Detroit. You’re going to Detroit on the—”

“Shut up,” Sammy shouted. “And I’m not waiting for any bus either.”

“Boy!” It was like a last gasp. Sammy kept running. He thought with satisfaction that if he turned now, he would see his grandfather standing helplessly in the weeds on the side of the road. His old shoulders would be sagging with defeat. Sammy decided that was something he wanted to see, and he turned around without breaking his stride. Instead he saw that his grandfather had turned onto the road and was running behind him. He was slow and heavy but he was coming.

His grandfather saw him look back and he cried, “Boy!” He put out one hand.

“Old man,” Sammy shouted back, sneering. Then he looked ahead and concentrated on his running.

There was not a car on the road, and the asphalt was hot under Sammy’s bare feet. Ahead of him the heat was causing the road to disappear. Suddenly as he ran he began to feel strange and lightheaded.

“Boy!”

Sammy kept running. He had always been a good runner, but today something was wrong. It was the sun or the hunger or maybe it was the hard knot that had come in his chest when his grandfather had said “Gone.” He had not run far at all, only past the first bend in the road, when he began to feel tired. His eyes stung. His legs hurt. He wanted to lie in the shade by the road and rest. He wanted to put wet leaves on his eyes. He forced himself to keep going. When he was a hundred miles up the road, he decided,
then
he would stop. It was even possible, he told himself, that he could overtake his parents. If the truck overheated again, he might come upon them beside the road, his father asleep on the quilt. He thought of flinging himself down on his father’s chest. He thought of his father lifting his hat from his face and saying in a pleased voice, “Well, where’d you come from?” The hard knot moved up into his throat.

He could hear his grandfather behind him, gasping out from time to time the word “Boy!” He could hear the heavy shuffling of his grandfather’s feet. “Boy!” He did not look around, but it seemed to him that perhaps his grandfather was slowing down. His voice was getting weaker anyway.

Sammy was getting weaker too. He stumbled, went down on one knee, and got quickly to his feet. Blood began to trickle down his leg. He did not even notice. He glanced over his shoulder and gasped to his grandfather, who was too far away to hear, “I didn’t hurt myself.” He kept running and after a while he stumbled again.

As he rounded another turn he saw the superhighway ahead. On the grassy bank leading up to the highway was a culvert. Sammy ran slower, then he hesitated and stopped. Glancing back to make sure his grandfather couldn’t see him, he jumped across the drainage ditch, scrambled up the bank, and crawled into the pipe.

Halfway through the pipe he decided he was safe. His grandfather would never think to look for him in here. His grandfather would run on down the road, thinking he was getting farther and farther behind. Finally his grandfather would have to turn around and go home.

Sammy sank down in the culvert and let his face drop into his hands. The knot in his throat was choking him. He could not swallow. He could not even breathe. There was a moment in which this pain in his throat was so great he could not even move.

Then, abruptly, he began to sob in a wild, tearless way. He did everything but shed tears. He kicked and shook his fists. He punched at the air. He made choking strangling noises in his throat. He cursed. He socked his head. He struck the pipe until his hands were bruised. He wailed, throwing himself around in the culvert like a fish out of water.

And then he put his head on his arm and didn’t move at all. The tears came then, hot tears that burned his eyes. They rolled off his face and onto his arm and left a strangely cool, wet track behind.

Sammy was lying there, completely spent, when he heard his grandfather’s voice. He got up in a crouch and listened. Then in a few minutes his grandfather had appeared, and the chase had begun all over again, through the culverts, across the field.

That was what had happened, and now Sammy sat behind the old shed, wondering about it, going over it in his mind. He felt he could sit here all day thinking about it and never understand. His life had changed and it was never going to be the same again. That was the only thing that was certain, that and the fact that his grandfather was to blame.

Dully Sammy looked around. There were woods to the right, and up the hill beyond the old cornfield, the brush thickened and there were clumps of rocks and small trees. It seemed to Sammy suddenly that he had chosen the poorest hiding place of all.

“Boy!”

Sammy got to his feet. He peered around the side of the shed. His grandfather was coming up the hill toward him. He felt trapped.

“Boy!”

S
AMMY HESITATED AND THEN
he stepped out from behind the shed so that his grandfather could see him. He glared down the hill. He hated his grandfather with a fierceness that made him shudder. He wanted to pick up one of the boulders by the shed and throw it down the hill. He wanted his grandfather to hear the sound of the boulder coming toward him, rumbling and threatening, and know that Sammy hated him that much.

Sammy shouted, “You better let me alone!” His voice seemed thin and sad in his ears. It was not at all the thundering demand he had intended. He said it again, screamed it. “Let me alone!” His throat began to hurt.

His grandfather looked up. He did not answer. He just kept coming up the hill with one slow steady step after another.

Sammy said, “Don’t you ever get tired?” He threw the words down the hill at his grandfather. He thought his own legs were going to collapse at any moment, and he wondered how this old man could keep going on and on.

His grandfather stopped for a moment. He looked down at his feet in the open-sided miner’s boots. He bent and pulled a stick out of the side of his shoe, then he straightened. He held on to a small tree like it was a staff. He said, “I get tired like everybody else.”