If Jack's in Love (29 page)

The minute they weren't looking I shot out the door. I headed for the woods, the good woods where Stan and Anya didn't go, where the creek didn't smell like sulfur, where I had a private nook in the trunk of a tree. I sat and watched the minnows curve through the water like highway arrows. The day before, some kids had tried to dam the creek with bricks and blocks of wood and since then the water had broken through. It was still dammed near the remnants, and I went down there with a stick and toppled the dam to release the backup and watched as the blocks twirled downstream and came to rest against the left bank. I wiped my fingers, pulled out a Winston. The humming was barely audible when you weren't listening, but otherwise it was louder than a freight train.

Car doors slammed on the road above. Pop's shrill whistle (he used two fingers) sounded through the trees. Stan came down the path and stopped fifty feet up.

“Come on, we're going to Fairglade!”

“How did you know I was here?”

“I didn't, I just came down to check.”

“I don't wanna go to Fairglade.”

“Pop says you have to.”

“Why?”

It was out of family character to be ordered to do something if it wasn't necessary. I reluctantly climbed to my feet and followed Stan up the path. Through the trees I could see the road and the battered Ford and someone moving beside it. When I got closer I spotted Pop. He was pacing beside the car. His hands were clasped behind him. When he saw me he nodded. “I want to pose you in front of the bamboo forest so I can draw you.”

“Why don't you get Stan to pose?”

“He's too ugly.” They laughed, wanting me to laugh with them.

The Ford was idling. I was at the edge of the woods. I didn't want to die in the bamboo forest among the stalks.

“Hop in,” Pop said.

He had his sleeves rolled up. Pop never wore short sleeves, not even in summer.

“I don't want to go.”

“We'll only be an hour or so. I'll drop you off here when we're through.”

I started thinking about the hot shack and the pissy mattress and the cicadas. I saw myself lying in all that stink with a knife in my chest. Meanwhile the gnats and the mosquitoes and the bees and the flies and the wasps kept buzzing. Add to that the airplanes and the jet fighters leaving vapor trails and the helicopters and the lawn mowers on Lewis Street and the vacuum cleaners and the other appliances and the fans and the air conditioners and the traffic north on Cherokee and the traffic south on Matson and the trains on the tracks beside the river and the chemical and pharmaceutical plants next to the interstate pumping pollution into the air and the barking of neighborhood dogs and the frogs croaking along the banks of the creek and the snapping and buzzing from the satellites circling the earth and the cicadas in my mind that never stopped singing.

I broke into a run. I dashed past Stan and swerved around Pop (he was reaching out to snatch me) and hightailed it between the houses until I came to Lewis Street. Pop and Stan were hollering behind me; the doors to the battered Ford slammed shut and the car got in gear. At the corner I swung right and took the shortcut and came out on Livingstone. I was already winded and cramping up, but I kept running as hard as I could. I headed along Stanley and took the road behind Dickie Pudding's house and reached Myra Street and slowed to a walk, holding my side and looking back. When I got to the break in the fence I turned into the shopping center and mounted the terraced walkway just as the Ford pulled into the lot.

I started running again. Some old lady who was windowshopping gave me a stern look and told me to slow down, and when I got to the Ben Franklin I busted in and leaned against the counter, panting.

Mom said, “What on earth!” She was all embarrassed because a customer was with her.

I couldn't talk. I shook my head.

The Ford pulled up and I pointed through the window. “They're making me go to Fairglade with 'em and I don't want to. Tell 'em I don't have to.”

The customer picked up her bag and left with a smile and a shake of the head for the vagaries of children. Pop dashed in, exasperated and glaring at me. “Will somebody tell me what is going on?”

I glanced at Mom.

“He says he doesn't want to go to Fairglade.”

“All right, fine, he doesn't have to. But why is he running from me?”

“He's upset, let him be.”

“What's he so upset about?”

“I don't know, just let him be.”

“Well damn it, he doesn't have to act like I'm a leper.”

Pop looked self-conscious, as though he'd unduly exposed himself by coming in the store. And maybe he had.

“Can I see you a minute?” he said to Mom. She left the store and they stood on the sidewalk.

Mr. Harris came walking up and said, “Hello, Jack.”

“Fuck you,” I said.

“Excuse me?”

His brow wrinkled. He went to the register and stared blankly into the drawer. A lady with palsy approached and placed a few items on the counter. In his bafflement, Harris had neglected to inquire how she was doing. Outside, Pop and Mom were moving their lips. Occasionally they would toss a glance towards the store.

Mr. Harris rang up the items for the lady with palsy, and Pop went back to the car. Mom held the door for the palsied lady, who stopped to say a few palsied words.

Behind them the Ford was backing out and Stan's sunglasses were moving in reverse with the car. Mom was patting the palsied lady's hand, nodding.

She came in.

“Your son just swore at me,” Mr. Harris said.

“Don't pay attention to him, he's upset at something.”

“Well, so am I,” he said. He strutted off, showing his indignation. He kicked an empty box in the aisle.

Mom watched him leave. She turned to me and said, “I have two hours before I get off.”

“I'll go see Mr. Gladstein and when it's time for you to leave I'll walk you home.”

After that I went up the steps to the jewelry store, feeling sheepish and defiant at the same time. What a mess I had become! Who was I?

It must have shown on my face. Gladstein pulled a stool from the back room and let me sit behind the counter. When customers came in I was allowed to unlock the display cases; he showed me how to work the register.

After a couple of hours the prissy bell tinkled. Mom had come to pick me up.

“Hi Margaret.”

“Hello, Moses.”

My ears pricked up.

I swung my head to check out Gladstein. He was leering at my mom with that hot-sausage-demon grin of his.

“Just coming to get my boy,” she said.

“Came to the right place, huh?”

He gave me a wink, and Mom allowed him a smile. I was looking back and forth at them.

JUST WHEN, I wanted to know, had Mom and Mr. Gladstein started calling each other by their first names?

“His name is Moses,” she told me. “Isn't that funny? God must have given him the Ten Commandments.” She laughed out loud at her little joke.

We were on Myra Street, walking home.

“That doesn't answer my question,” I said.

“What's your problem? We've been having lunch at the drugstore.”

“Does Pop know?”

“Of course he does. Moses is a friend from work.”

“You don't work in the same place, how can he be a friend from work? And how come you never told me?”

“I didn't realize it would be so important.”

“Not important! Mr. Gladstein is my friend.”

She laughed. “Well, I'm not trying to steal him from you. I like Moses,” she said. “He's different from the people around here, he's not so judgmental.”

We walked quietly for a while. I kept looking back over my shoulder.

“What's wrong with you, you're acting like the Fugitive.”

She meant the TV series.

“I think I might be getting an ulcer. Can't you get ulcers from worrying too much?”

“Are you worrying too much?”

“Do you ever hear cicadas in your head?”

“What?”

“I think Pop and Stan want to kill me.”

She didn't say anything. She walked beside me thinking about what I'd said.

“If anything happens, if I disappear, that's what happened, they killed me.”

She hugged me close. “All this has been too hard on you. You're too young for all this stress.”

We walked along without saying anything, and then she said, “We're good people, we are not trash. My parents didn't raise me to be trash and I didn't raise you to be trash.”

“I'm not crazy.”

“I never said you were crazy. This has been too stressful for you. I wish I could protect you from the ugly side of life.”

“I wish you could too. But you can't. And Stan is crazy, and I have to sleep in the same room with him. The night Gaylord disappeared he came home at six in the morning. I heard him in the bathroom and he had the sink and the tub running and he was tearing something up in there and he kept flushing the toilet over and over. And Anya told me he wasn't even with her that night, she doesn't know where he was or what he was doing when Gaylord disappeared. He went out in her car about the same time Gaylord was hitchhiking and Gaylord might have got in the car with Stan because he thought they made friends.”

She just blinked at me. “What are you talking about?” she said.

I don't know why I was telling her. Maybe it was because she had acknowledged how hard it was on me. I couldn't carry this anymore. My brother might kill me and she needed to know.

“Stan told me he saw Gaylord earlier that day and they shook hands and made friends.”

“Are you saying Anya told you that Stan wasn't with her that night?”

“Yeah. And when he came back to her house he was all cut up and bloodied.”

My mother gaped at the horizon and back at me. Her darkest fears, everything she secretly believed, it was all passing before her eyes.

“God damn them!” she said.

I don't think I'd ever heard her swear before.

“What are they lying for? What are they hiding?”

“I think he did something to Gaylord.”

“Don't say that.”

“Well, how do you explain it?”

“I don't know how to explain it.”

We were passing the Pudding woods and I took her hand and pulled her in.

“Where are you taking me?”

“You have to help me look for my ring. It's here somewhere.”

“What ring?”

“The one Mr. Gladstein gave me.”

“Can't we look some other time?”

I kicked at the earth. I dug at the dirt with a stick. Mom wasn't helping. She was standing in the woods, wearing a dress. Down at the Pudding house Dickie and his brother were staring. Dickie came on up.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a ring. If you find a ring in here it's mine, okay? It looks like a diamond but it's not.”

Dickie watched me uncertainly. He stood next to Mom. They both had their mouths open.

“Jack, let's go home, you can look later.”

“Give me five more minutes.”

Dickie watched for a while and then he said he had to go.

The cicada song, that humming in the world, kept playing, and I could hear the traffic on Matson. Trucks flew past and shook the rafters of the Pudding house.

I came upon an exposed root that belonged to an oak and tugged until I got the spine slightly out of the ground.

I peeked underneath.

“When did Anya tell you Stan wasn't with her?”

“One day when we took a walk. And now Stan knows she told me and he said he'd kill me if I told anyone. So you can't tell him. Because if he finds out I'll be dead for sure.”

“Stan is not going to hurt you.”

“Mom, he killed Gaylord.”

This time she didn't deny it.

I kept scraping with my feet and brushing leaves to the side. Jet fighters were leaving vapor trails; sometimes they're up so high you can hear them even when you can't see them. There'll be a sonic boom and the whole world will shiver.

Insects were buzzing, little balls of mites were tussling next to my head.

Mom took me by the arm.

“I am not standing here a moment longer. I want to go home and get out of this dress.”

“You can't tell Stan what I told you,” I said.

She didn't answer.

We followed the curve in the road that led to Stanley Street.

“We can't keep telling the police lies,” she said, “they're trying to solve a crime.”

“You didn't tell them a lie, you told them what you believed.”

“No, I sat right there and listened while your pop lied, and I knew he was lying. It's just I didn't see what difference it made at the time. I thought Stan was at Anya's that night.”

“Well, he wasn't, he was out murdering Gaylord.”

“Will you stop saying that?”

“It's the truth. And he'll kill me too if you say anything. Remember that. If he kills me it's your fault.”

“My God, my two sons, the boys I gave birth to.”

“You don't believe in God.”

“I can't believe what I'm hearing. All this talk about killing. You're my baby boys!” She burst into tears.

“If we had the ring it might've protected us, that's what Mr. Gladstein said.”

“Oh, he's as crazy as the rest of you.”