Light from a Distant Star (7 page)

“Peck. Peck,” Mrs. Brickman mused. “Are you the hardware store family?”

“Yes,” she said, adding that her father was Benjamin.

Reverend Brickman said he’d known her grandfather Peck. They’d been in Rotary together.

“Really,” Nellie said, staring at Bucky. Caught in his grandmother’s fond gaze, he faked a smile.

“Yes,” Mrs. Brickman said. “The reverend always made a point of keeping parish business in town.”

“Think globally, act locally,” the retired parson said with a lift of his cup.

Right. But Nellie was too well raised to say what she was thinking. Bucky’s chair scraped away from the table, and she made a move to get up. He had to go to the bathroom, he said. He’d be right back.

After he left, Mrs. Brickman asked if she was enjoying the summer so far. Oh, yes, Nellie told her, straining to hear a toilet flush or a door open. Bucky’s made so many nice friends, his grandmother was saying. A blessing, considering all the poor boy’s gone through.

With more to come, Nellie thought, looking past her, hands clenching the chair seat. She’d already made up her mind to hit him if she had to. They were the same size and that was one thing she wasn’t afraid of—a fight. Not that she’d ever been in one, but she’d memorized most of the holds illustrated in
Get Tough!
The book had belonged to her great-uncle Seth, who was killed in World War II. She had practiced the “handcuff hold” so many times on Henry that she knew it by heart, but he was sick of always being on the losing end, so he wouldn’t be her enemy victim anymore. The Bent Arm Hold was trickier. According to the major, the movements had to be done in “one rapid and continuous motion.” The blows were in the beginning
of the book. She particularly liked the Chin Jab; so far, though, she’d never tried it on anyone. If she had to, Bucky would be her first victim.

Wondering what was taking so long, Mrs. Brickman went off looking for her grandson. “Bucky. Bucky? Bucky!” Nellie heard her voice pitch higher as she tapped on a door. “Answer me! Answer me right now, young man!”

“We don’t,” Nellie, meanwhile, answered the reverend, who had asked what congregation the Pecks belonged to. He seemed puzzled. Mrs. Brickman had scurried back into the kitchen. She removed a metal skewer from a drawer. Water was running in the bathroom, but Bucky wasn’t answering and the door was locked.

“He must be sick,” the reverend said, shuffling after his wife, Nellie next down the hallway.

“I thought he looked awful peaked,” Mrs. Brickman said. Her hands shook as she kept trying to poke the skewer into the tiny hole in the knob. “I’m coming, dear,” she called as the lock finally popped open.

The embroidered hand towel fluttered on the rack. Water was running into the sink and the window over the toilet was wide open.

“My Lord!” she exclaimed, staring for a moment, trying to make sense of it all. She looked back at them. “Why did he do that?”

“He’s a troubled child, Florence. Who knows why he does anything?” the reverend scoffed with surprising bitterness.

Mrs. Brickman snatched her straw purse from the closet shelf. She would drive around until she found him.

“Let him go,” Reverend Brickman said with a weary sigh.

“No!” she declared on her way outside. “We gave our word.”

Her slammed door sent a shudder through the old clergyman. Seemingly unaware of Nellie’s presence, he shuffled along the dim hallway, back toward the kitchen, feeling along the wall. If this was a test of his spiritual mettle, he wasn’t looking up to the task. He sat down with a groan.

“I guess I better go, sir,” Nellie said, standing over him.

“Randolph. That’s his name. Your grandfather,” he said, spoon clinking as he scraped the last green Jell-O bits from the footed bowl. “He liked the horses.”

“I never met him.”

“Here, have some.” He pushed a bowl of it across the table.

With little choice, she sat down. If Mrs. Brickman didn’t find Bucky,
she
would. Eventually. The Jell-O was very good, she told him. “My mother used to make it but not anymore. She works, so now for dessert we mostly have cookies.”

“What?” he demanded irritably. “What?” He peered past her.

She glanced over her shoulder, but no one else was there. “Cookies!” she repeated, louder. “Store-bought,” she added because he looked so confused.

“We don’t have any,” he called back. “Just applesauce cake.” He pointed toward the domed cake stand on the counter. “Cut me a piece, too. Good size.” With two fingers he indicated how thick.

So she did, and they ate in strained silence. She could barely swallow with Reverend Brickman scowling at her as he chewed. Crumbs flecked his chin whiskers. That was very good, she said when she was done.

“Say what you want, but your grandma’s a pretty fine cook, gotta give her that,” he said.

“You knew my grandmother?”

“Don’t get fresh with me, boy. I’ve just about had it with your mouth.”

“Sorry, sir, I thought you meant my father’s mother.”

His head snapped up. “Doing it again, aren’t you? Trying to mess me up, aren’t you?”

“No, sir. I’m sorry, I better go. My mother, she doesn’t know I’m here.”

“Doesn’t know where you are! Let’s get something straight here, she doesn’t care. That’s how you ended up here. We’re the ones calling the shots now. We’re the ones you better be concerned about, not
her
!”

Nellie waited a respectful moment. The old man of God was either crazy or senile, and it wasn’t her place to try to set him straight. This time she wouldn’t say anything, just leave. He concentrated on eating his cake again. She slipped from the chair and eased toward the door.

“Sit down!” he bellowed, pointing his buttercream frosting–smeared
fork at her. She froze. “And don’t move until I say so!” he warned, unbuckling his belt. He snapped it on the edge of the table, and that’s when she took off. Running. Straight home. Good thing for Bucky it was getting dark.

A
FEW DAYS
later Max showed up at the house. He’d come for Charlie’s mending, frayed shirts that needed collars turned and buttons replaced, stained work pants with balky zippers and torn seams. Most everything belonged in the rag bag, Nellie’s mother had said the other night, but if she didn’t mend them, he’d just keep wearing them in their sorry state. In the past she’d been able to buy him new clothes whenever he needed them, but now she could only at Christmas. Nellie was telling Max all this when Dolly knocked on the door.

“Hey!” she called through the screen with her perky-jerky little wave that Ruth was now imitating. Dolly asked to borrow some bread for toast. Sure, Nellie said, as she let herself in. Max’s eyes moved so hungrily up and down her body that it was embarrassing, for Nellie, at least. Dolly wore skimpy black shorts and matching sequined halter top and, as usual, was barefoot. Raving about what great toast their oatmeal bread made, she opened the wooden bread box on the counter and took two slices from the bag. She’d done the same thing the other day, which had really annoyed Nellie’s mother.

“I’m getting ready and all of a sudden I have an attack of the munchies,” she said, twirling the plastic bread bag before fastening the twist tie. When neither adult acknowledged the other, Nellie figured they were waiting for her to make the proper introduction.

“Dolly, I’d like you to meet Max. And Max, this is Miss Dolly Bedelia. Ms., I mean,” she added, hoping Dolly wasn’t offended. She realized she didn’t know Max’s last name and he didn’t offer it.

“Hi,” was all Dolly said, which even Nellie knew was inadequate.

He gave a stiff nod back.

“I gotta go eat fast,” she said on her wiggly way to the door. “Or I’ll be late for work. Nice meeting ya!” She waved back with a breezy flap of the bread that sprayed crumbs onto the floor.

“An’ you,” Max grunted as the door banged shut.

Nellie continued what she’d been saying before, that her mother said to tell Charlie his pajamas weren’t in the bag.

“Where’s she work?” he interrupted.

“Frederic’s. But she doesn’t have them there. They’re not worth mending, she said. She’s just gonna get him some new ones.”

“I mean …” He nodded at the door.

“Oh. Up on Route nine. The Paradise. Yeah, Dolly. She’s a dancer. And a singer, too. A really good one.” Nellie was enjoying her moment of authority. “She used to be in New York. You know, like, Broadway or something.”

“Hey, mister!”

With the burst of Dolly’s voice through the screen, they both glanced back.

“Your friggin’ dog—he’s on my porch and I can’t get in.”

“He was in the truck,” Max said.

“Yeah, till he jumped out the window.”

Muttering, Max hurried outside and pulled Boone by the collar into the truck. A moment later he returned for the mending. First time Boone’d ever done that, he said, seeming oddly flustered as he lingered in the doorway. He most always left the window open and Boone just knew to stay put. Every time. Maybe it was the bread, Nellie suggested, not wanting him to be too disappointed. Or angry. She still remembered his attack on that other dog. Probably smelled it and just wanted some. Here, she said, starting to open the bread bag, but Max shook his head; that’s no kind of lesson, he said, rewarding him for doing the wrong thing. Maybe he just saw a squirrel or something, she said, and he just forgot for a second, that’s all. With animals, it’s all about instinct. One going after the other. She was on a roll, and best of all was having an adult listen to what she had to say. Like that time in the junkyard, she continued without pause for breath, the pit bull, remember? And the way Boone charged right at him. That was different, Max said. He’d acted on command. He said he’d had a lot of dogs and Boone was the smartest one yet.

“Like, some things he just knows, like some kind of …”—he tapped his chest—“… thing inside. He just knows.”

“Yeah!” she said, warming to this, one of her favorite topics. “And some people’re like that, too.”
Like me
, she’d been about to say.

“Like Charlie,” he was saying. “He’s that way. I’ll be tryna think of something, next thing I know he’s saying it. He’s good at that.”

“Charlie!” She couldn’t help it. “He never talks, not to me, anyway.”

“He’s just kinda worn out, that’s all. Early morning, now, that’s his good time.” He laughed. “Four-thirty, five, come then, he’ll fry up a sunny side and tell you whatever you need to know.”

“About what?” she scoffed, making his eyes flash.

“All the stuff you don’t get in books,” he said sharply.

“Like junkyards?” She squirmed with her own smart-assiness, but talking to Max was different from talking to most people. She’d pushed past some barrier. And he liked her for it.

“Yeah. And, like, how everyone’s always after him about it, but like Charlie says, here we are on a dying planet, and they just keep on making things to break down, for the economy, so if it wasn’t for him, where would it go, all the broken stuff? Everything’d be an even bigger mess when you think about it.”

She tried considering Charlie in such heroic light, unappreciated and performing a service to humanity with his haphazard mountains of useless goods right in the heart of town. But she couldn’t get past the cranky old man part, the grandfather who’d admitted he didn’t like kids.

“Well, anyway,” she said, wanting to turn the conversation back to herself and Max, “that thing with Henry, I mean, you were really brave, and me, I just froze. I couldn’t do anything.”

“Just wasn’t your time, that’s all,” he said as Boone began to bark.

“Hey!” Dolly was at the screen door again. “Hey, can you give me a hand?” Her car wouldn’t start. She’d called her girlfriend for a ride, but she wasn’t answering her phone.

“How ’bout I take a look?”

“Yeah. Jesus, that’d be great. Stupid car. I been late so many times now, it’s not funny.” She followed Max outside, then went into her apartment. Nellie stood on the side of the driveway while he tried to start her car. But Dolly was right. It was dead. Boone watched from inside the truck, frozen in chastisement, though alert to Max’s every
move. When Max climbed back in, Boone sat so close the two dark profiles appeared to be one as Max inched the truck nearer Dolly’s car. He got out and popped the car’s hood then attached jumper cables from his battery to hers. That done, he sat in her little car, one long leg stretched through the open door. He turned the ignition. Nothing. He kept getting out, adjusting clamps, going back, sliding half onto the seat—still wouldn’t start. He turned off the truck, then asked Nellie for a cloth and some rubbing alcohol, so she ran inside.

She hurried back with a bottle and rag. Dolly came out then and Boone’s head rose through the window in a whiny howl.

“Quiet!” Max snarled and the gleaming black dog froze. Nellie stuck her hand in and stroked Boone’s warm silky ear. Poor animal. He hadn’t done anything wrong. All he’d wanted was a little attention. Some kind of connection. And Nellie knew that feeling well, the dull ache of the ignored. There was Dolly chattering away at Max, who would have picked up her car and carried her to work in it if she wanted, while Boone and Nellie looked on.

Dolly waited with her arms folded while Max leaned over her engine cleaning the leads on her battery with the alcohol soaked rag. She was telling him how the club was just temporary, for now. Her agent in New York really wanted her to come back. She was still thinking it over. The thing is, she’d needed a break.

“You’re going along fine, and all of a sudden it’s like, whoa—I don’t want to do this anymore. You know what I mean? People’re going, ‘Don’t quit! C’mon! I got this great gig for you.’ So you leave what you’re doing and after all the rehearsals with hardly any pay, you end up in this show and it only goes for six days. Crazy!” she sighed. “Just crazy, the whole thing. But that’s what happens.”

With the uplift in her voice, Max turned. He covered his mouth, smiling so hard his eyes were all crinkled up.

“Sounds pretty exciting, though,” he said behind his hand.

“Being paid woulda been even more.”

“Yeah, I guess.” He chuckled.